The initial, formal killings of the Final Solution were undertaken by the SS Einsatzgruppen ( Task Forces ) death squads who followed the Wehrmacht during the Operation Barbarossa invasion of the USSR in June 1941.

In an act of retaliation for the killings on Bloody Sunday, a number of Polish civilians were executed by German military units of the Einsatzgruppen, Waffen SS, and Wehrmacht.

Sydnor remarked that Irving's statement that the Einsatzgruppen were in charge in the death camps seems to indicate that he was not familiar with the history of the Holocaust, as the Einsatzgruppen were in fact mobile death squads who had nothing to do with the death camps.

In parallel, the SS organized special Einsatzgruppen (" task forces ") to murder Jews in these areas and a few massacres were carried out.

Gross asserted emphatically that Polish perpetrators were not coerced by the Germans: “ the ‘’ Einsatzgruppen ,’’ German police detachments and various functionaries who implemented the ‘ final solution ’ did not compel the local population to participate directly in the murder of Jews ... the so-called local population involved in killings of Jews did so of their own free will .” ( p. 133 )

The Einsatzgruppen were initially ordered to establish " security " in the rear areas by killing communists and partisans, but by 1941 the identity between Jews and communism was strongly established in the minds of most SS men and Police officers.

Since Reichenau's order was widely understood as endorsing the mass killings of Ukrainian Jews which were going on behind the German lines, with which 6th Army at any rate was actively co-operating, Rundstedt's open endorsement of its strongly anti-Semitic language clearly contradicts his later assertions that he did not know what the Einsatzgruppen were doing.

These inconsistencies were exposed both at Nuremberg, in the trials of the Einsatzgruppen leaders ( who also claimed they had a duty to obey distasteful orders ) and in the 1947 trials of senior officers, and in Manstein's trial in 1949.

Timothy Snyder notes that in the Soviet Union alone there were 8, 000 documented cases of Roma murdered by the Einsatzgruppen in their sweep east.

Starting in July 1941, the Jewish inhabitants were subjected to mass extermination by shooting in a German campaign carried out by four Einsatzgruppen (" operational groups ") specially organized for the purpose.

After the German attack on the Soviet Union in June 1941, special extermination squads ( the Einsatzgruppen ) were organised to kill Jews in the areas of eastern Poland which had been annexed by the Soviets in 1939.

It commanded a number of Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD formed with Gestapo, Kripo and SD officers who were theoretically subordinate to local Wehrmacht commanders.

Through the use of Einsatzgruppen A and B over a million Jews were killed in the Reichskommissariat Ostland.

Most of the town's Jewish population ( which in its history included such famous rabbis as Leo Baeck and Jacob of Lissa as well as the Polish-Jewish writer Ludwig Kalisch ) and remaining Poles were murdered by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen.

Einsatzgruppen (;, " deployment groups " singular Einsatzgruppe ; official full name Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD ) were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting.

The Einsatzgruppen were responsible for the murders of over 1, 000, 000 people, and they were the first Nazi organizations to commence mass killing of Jews as an organized policy.

The Einsatzgruppen were formed under the direction of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich ( deputy to Heinrich Himmler ) and operated by the Schutzstaffel ( SS ) before and during World War II.

SS leaders discussed merging the Einsatzgruppen into the new Werwolf units, designed for guerrilla fighting in occupied Germany ; ultimately Werwolf was never an effectual force, either during or after the war.

These Einsatzgruppen were under the control of the RSHA ; i. e., Reinhard Heydrich and later his successor Ernst Kaltenbrunner.

Heydrich drafted new orders on July 2, 1941 stating that the Einsatzgruppen were to execute all Soviet officials of medium rank and above ; members of the Comintern ; " extremist " Communist Party members ; members of the central, provincial and district committees of the Communist Party ; Red Army political commissars ; and all Communist Party members of Jewish origin.

There is no evidence to support these assertions ; Hedyrich's order to the Einsatzgruppen leaders of June 29, 1941 was to " silently " encourage pogroms, and on July 2, 1941 he ordered the murder only of Jews who were Communist Party members or who held positions in the Soviet government.

Manstein's only wartime complaint about the actions of the Einsatzgruppen occurred in a 1941 letter to Einsatzgruppen D commanding officer Otto Ohlendorf ; since his soldiers were so helpful in assisting Ohlendorf's men to murder Jews, Manstein said, it was unfair that the SS insisted upon keeping all of the murdered Jews ' wristwatches for themselves instead of sharing with the Army.

Even more far-reaching were the plans to extend the " Final Solution " to India ; in the summer of 1942, the exiled Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose living in Berlin asked Himmler for " special SS training " of Bose's fellow anti-British émigrés so that when the Germans reached India, there would be a cadre of SS-trained Indians to work with the Einsatzgruppen in killing the Jews of India.

* Reichssicherheitshauptamt ( RSHA ) – an SS subsidiary organization made up of 7 main departments including, the intelligence & security forces and secret police forces for Germany and occupied territories ; also oversaw the Einsatzgruppen.

In the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, four Einsatzgruppen were formed, each attached to an Army group: Einsatzgruppe A to Army Group North ; Einsatzgruppe B to Army Group Center, Einsatzgruppe C to Army Group South, and Einsatzgruppe D to the 11th German Army.

A slogan put forth by the Bandera group and recorded in the July 16, 1941 Einsatzgruppen report stated: " Long live Ukraine without Jews, Poles and Germans ; Poles behind the river San, Germans to Berlin, and Jews to the gallows ".

The fact that Nolte has found eloquent supporters both inside and outside the historical profession has little to do with the normal process of research and much to do with the political implications of the relativization of the Holocaust that he has insistently championed for so long ... The fundamentally apologetic character of Nolte's argument shines through most clearly when he concedes Hitler's right to deport, though not to exterminate, the Jews in response to the supposed " declaration of war " issued by the World Jewish Congress ; or when he claims that the activities of the SS Einsatzgruppen can be justified, at least subjectively, as operations aimed against partisans fighting the German Army ".

The Einsatzgruppen massacres were usually justified under the grounds of anti-partisan operations rather than racist attacks, but the historian Andreas Hillgruber wrote that this claim was just an " excuse " for the Wehrmacht's considerable involvement with the Einsatzgruppen massacres.

Authorised by Hitler and under the direction of Himmler and Heydrich, the Einsatzgruppen units — now repurposed as death squads — followed the Heer ( army ) into Poland, and by the end of 1939 they had murdered some 65, 000 intellectuals and other civilians.

" Hitler thus intended to prevent internal friction like that occurring earlier in Poland in 1939, when several German Army generals had attempted to bring Einsatzgruppen leaders to trial for the murders they had committed.

The Germans also decided to bring rear forces ( mostly Waffen-SS units and Einsatzgruppen ) into the conquered territories to counter the partisan activity they knew would erupt in areas they controlled.

Further east, in the Balkan states and the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, travelled from village to village massacring the inhabitants where they lived and typically leaving little to no records of the number of Roma killed in this way.

The Einsatzgruppen were to travel in the wake of the German armies as they advanced into Czechoslovakia, and secure government papers and offices.

Sub-paragraph B was intended by Hitler to prevent the sort of friction that had occurred in Poland in 1939 when several German Army generals had attempted to bring Einsatzgruppen leaders to trial for the murders they had committed.

As the Einsatzgruppen advanced into the Soviet Union after July 1941, accompanied by Einsatzkommando sub-groups, they transitioned from encouraging pogroms into directly carrying out mass murders of local Jews.

After a time, it was found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen were inefficient: they were costly, demoralizing for the troops, and sometimes did not kill the victims quickly enough.

Streckenbach detailed the mission of the Einsatzgruppen, they were to seize and destroy all political and racial enemy groups, such as Bolsheviks, gypsies, partisans and Jews.

Originally, the Nazis used death squads, the Einsatzgruppen, to conduct massive open-air killings of Jews in territory they conquered.

Before Operation Reinhard, over half a million Jews had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen, mobile extermination units, in territories conquered by the German army.

The second part of the action began on September 1, 1939, and ended in October, resulting in at least 20, 000 deaths in 760 mass executions by Einsatzgruppen special task units with some help from regular Wehrmacht ( armed forces ) units.

Once the overall military campaign ended, however, the Einsatzgruppen units were disbanded.

These groups helped the Einsatzgruppen and other killing units to identify and find Jews in a very short period of time.

By late 1944, most Einsatzgruppen personnel had been folded into Waffen-SS combat units or transferred to permanent death camps.

By the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, there were no longer any active Einsatzgruppen units in operation.

* Einsatzgruppen – " Special-operation units " that were death squads under the command of the RSHA and followed the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front to engage in the systematic killing of mostly civilians, including: Jews, communists, intellectuals, and others.

Einsatzgruppen were battalion-sized, mobile killing units made up of SiPo, SD or SS Special Action Groups under the command of the RSHA.

The Quartermaster General Eduard Wagner ( representing Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht ) met Heydrich and agreed to the activation, commitment, command, and jurisdiction of Security Police and SD units in the Wehrmachts table of operations and equipment ( TOE ): in the rear operational areas, the Einsatzgruppen were to function in administrative sub-ordination to the field armies in order to effect the tasks assigned them by Heydrich.

The death squad units of the Einsatzgruppen were considered part of the Allgemeine-SS and under the operational control of the RSHA.

The units were themselves a mixture of civilian ( SS auxiliary ), police, and SS personnel, although all Einsatzgruppen personnel wore grey Waffen-SS type uniforms in the performance of their duties.