Commissar Order

The Commissar Order (German: Kommissarbefehl) was an order issued by the German High Command (OKW) on 6 June 1941. Its official name was "Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars" ("Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare"). It stated that captured Soviet political commissars should be summarily executed.

The order was cancelled after less than one year, on 6 May 1942.

The Einsatzgruppen were somewhat similarly ordered to execute certain Communist officials as discussed in the article on the Einsatzgruppen.

The order was one reason for the death sentence given to Wehrmacht commander Wilhelm Keitel.

Most German Army commanders claimed that the order was not enforced. Some did not. This is not necessarily inconsistent, as enforcement by different commanders may have varied.

The Holocaust revisionist Carlos Porter has written that "The Commissar Order had little if any practical effect, partly due to the difficulty of determining who was a Commissar (XXI 404-405 [446-447]); XXII 77 [91])."

Quotes

Question: Is it true that the Germans referred to the Russians as "subhumans"?

Answer: Nonsense! The Russians are human beings just like everyone else.

Your question, whether we called the Russians "subhumans," is nonsense. We had a first-class relationship with the Russian people. The only exception, which was a problem we dealt with, was with the Soviet Commissars, who were all Jews. These people stood behind the lines with machine guns, pushing the Russian soldiers into battle. And anyway, we made quick work of them. That was according to order. This was during a war for basic existence, an ideological war, when such a policy is simply taken for granted.

There was sometimes talk about the so-called Asian hordes, and ordinary soldiers sometimes spoke about subhumans, but such language was never officially used.

—Interview with Wehrmacht general Otto Ernst Remer.

It was not only the likes of the Jew Ilja Ehrenburg who urged Russian soldiers to kill Germans at will. In the Soviet Union no actions by individuals were tolerated, one can thus be certain that this incitement for hatred, the call to murder, was officially sanctioned. The so-called Kommissars played a large role in it, spreading communist ideology, i.e., hatred for Germans. They also positioned themselves behind the lines and ‘urged’ their soldiers on, discouraging any attempt to surrender with machine gun volleys into the formations of their own soldiers (Victor Suvorov, Marschall Schukow. Lebensweg über Leichen, Pour le Mérite, Verlag für Militärgeschichte, Selent, 2002, p. 262f). Hitler was aware of the commissars and issued the so-called ‘Commissar Order’, that order was also largely ignored by German officers, and thus ineffective, to the detriment of German POWs.

The actions by commissars not only resulted in spreading hatred of anything German but also made for a desperate type of warfare on the part of Russian soldiers. Afraid to move back, even in hopeless situations, out of fear of getting shot by the NKVD troops stationed behind the lines and commanded by commissars, they moved forward, resulting in what can only be called massacres. Suvorov describes this in the book mentioned above, but former German soldiers have also told me this. One of them, a former officer, told me that some of his soldiers became violently ill, vomiting, but had to continue firing into the onrushing Russian soldiers, who were often drunk, surrender would have been suicide. I fully understand that I am repeating hearsay, but these people had no reason to lie and Suvorov confirms what they told me.

—Wilfried Heink, The suppressed History of Crimes committed on German soldiers in WWII. Part V.

See also

• Superior orders