Operational Situation Report USSR No. 116
The Chief of the Security Police and the SD Berlin,
October 17, 1941
50 copies ------------------
36th copy
Einsatzgruppe A
Location: Krasnogvardeisk
Security Police Work
The cooperation of security police work in the pacification of the area
behind the front and in the Rear Army area continued at the time of this
report. As to details, the activities of The Einsatzgruppe can be summarized
as follows:
1) Partly in collaboration with the Field and Local Military Commanders the
population was recently checked on the basis of security police standards.
Unreliable elements blocking efforts to pacify the region were segregated
and either transferred to military and civilian prisoner camps or executed
by the Kommandos. Between October 2 and 12, 260 persons in all had to be
executed.
2) Owing to the change-over to trench warfare and, in compliance with
requests from our side, the Army evacuated a strip next to the front line.
The respective orders of the various army corps differed in their basic
approaches (some ordering complete evacuation, others the evacuation of all
men, others again to transfer to definite quarters in towns, etc.). Upon the
request of the Army, Security Police investigations were carried out in the
transient camps.
3) As partisans were still alive behind the fighting troops, special
measures became necessary in this matter as well. In the first place, the
intelligence work had to be broadened by dispatching our own spies, by
drawing in the village elders, and the population in general. The results of
this preparatory intelligence work served as the basis of various operations
actively combatting partisans. For the rest, a partisan report which was
intercepted indicates that because of the imminent cold season, the
partisans do not expect to be able to hold out beyond the middle of
November.
Actions for combatting sabotage followed the same lines as with the
cooperation in combatting partisans. For instance, on October 6, ten people
had to be shot in Slutsk, the population being informed thereof by the
following announcements:
"Notification: On October 6, 1941, ten people were shot in Slutsk because a
Wehrmacht telephone line was cut with the intent to commit sabotage. Should
further acts of sabotage of the same kind be committed, twenty people will
be shot in the future. The German Security Police."
4) During the time covered by this report, one of the main tasks of the
Einsatzgruppe was setting up the organization to secure information from
Petersburg. (1) In general, the information is being collected in the
following ways:
a) By Russian deserters (either caught by our own Sonderkommandos or
delivered by the fighting troops or local military commanders;
b) By prisoners (methodical searches and clearing of military
prisoner-of-war camps; this way proved to be exceptionally successful);
c. By dispatching our own agents (owing to the increasing rigidity of the
fronts and the development of stable lines with trenches, entanglements and
mine-fields, it is extremely difficult to get an agent through the lines and
back. Moreover, every reasonably healthy man is being enlisted at once in
the workers defense force in Petersburg. At any rate, only agents with good
Bolshevik identification papers can be sent out).
Although our intelligence work originally aimed at the collection of
information concerning the general political climate, the questions of
general mood, supply conditions, important persons and offices, from the
outset information of a purely military character was forwarded in great
quantities.
Therefore the military circles were extremely interested in
reports on the situation. In some cases, this went so far that the results
of our intelligence service regarding military targets were being used by
the HQ of the 10th Army for giving orders to the artillery. According to our
investigations, the targets of military and war-economic importance in
Petersburg tally with the statements of the Army, as laid down in the
military-geographical plan.
Sources: NARA Translations by Hermann Feuer
Copyright: H.E.A.R.T 2007 |