Criminal orders is the collective name given to a series of orders, directives and decrees given before and during the German invasion of the Soviet Union in World War II by the Wehrmacht High Command. The criminal orders went beyond established codes of conduct and led to widespread atrocities on the Eastern Front.
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👉 Criminal orders (Nazi Germany) in the context of German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war
During World War II, Soviet prisoners of war (POWs) held by Nazi Germany and primarily in the custody of the German Army were starved and subjected to deadly conditions. Of nearly six million who were captured, around three million died during their imprisonment.
In June 1941, Germany and its allies invaded the Soviet Union and carried out a war of extermination with complete disregard for the laws and customs of war. Among the criminal orders issued before the invasion was for the execution of captured Soviet commissars. Although Germany largely upheld its obligations under the Geneva Convention with prisoners of war of other nationalities, military planners decided to breach it with the Soviet prisoners. By the end of 1941, over 3 million Soviet soldiers had been captured, mostly in large-scale encirclement operations during the German Army's rapid advance. Two-thirds of them had died from starvation, exposure, and disease by early 1942. This is one of the highest sustained death rates for any mass atrocity in history.
In this Dossier
Criminal orders (Nazi Germany) in the context of Wilhelm Keitel
Wilhelm Bodewin Johann Gustav Keitel (German pronunciation: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈkaɪtl̩]; 22 September 1882 – 16 October 1946) was a German field marshal who held office as chief of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), the high command of Nazi Germany's armed forces, during World War II. He signed a number of criminal orders and directives that led to numerous war crimes.
Keitel's rise to the Wehrmacht high command began with his appointment as the head of the Armed Forces Office at the Reich Ministry of War in 1935. Having taken command of the Wehrmacht in 1938, Adolf Hitler replaced the ministry with the OKW and Keitel became its chief. He was reviled among his military colleagues as Hitler's habitual "yes-man".
Criminal orders (Nazi Germany) in the context of Commissar Order
The Commissar Order (German: Kommissarbefehl) was an order issued by the German High Command (OKW) on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars (Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare). It instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed as a purported enforcer of the so-called Judeo-Bolshevism ideology in military forces. It is one of a series of criminal orders issued by the Nazi leadership.
According to the order, all those prisoners who could be identified as "thoroughly bolshevised or as active representatives of the Bolshevist ideology" should also be killed.