The confusion of cause and effect has been very widespread in the study of the Second World War. Therefore, it is important to accurately reconstruct the chronology of events connected to the war between Nazi Germany and Soviet Union, especially the connection between the Nazi doctrines and the development of the partisan movement in the occupied USSR.

The following is a raw-material essay based on the article cited below.

Streit, Christian “ Partisans - Resistance - Prisoners of War.” Operation Barbarossa (1993, Charles Schlacks, Jr., Publisher) ed. Joseph L. Wieczynski

Because all of the Nazis expected a quick victory against USSR, it was assumed by many that Germany (through Oberkommando Heer, OKH) was free to do whatever the Fuhrer of Germany Adolf Hitler desired. The Nazis expected to exploit the captured eastern territories in every possible way: “subhuman” jews were to be completely exterminated, only a small number of the similarly “subhuman” Slavs were to be left alive as slaves for labor and sex, industrial resources were to exploited, and finally food resources were to be exploited to the degree that would result in millions of deaths from starvation.
So, given the available evidence on the Nazi ideology, planning and execution of the annihilation and exploitation campaigns in the occupied Eastern territories, was it really that surprising that the people under occupation resisted so ferociously?

“Contrary to the view long held in German historiography it was not Stalin’s appeal of July 3, 1941, and not the atrocities of Soviet partisans, which started a ‘spiral of violence.’

Strangely enough this view has been reiterated only recently by Joachim Hoffmann, "Die Kriegfiihrung aus der Sicht der Sowjetunion," in Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion, p. 756 f. See, however, Jiirgen Foerster, "Das Unternehmen 'Barbarossa' als Eroberungs - und Vernichtungskrieg" and "Die Sicherung des 'Lebensraumes'," in the same volume, pp. 413-47 and 1030-78; Foerster takes with much better evidence the opposite view.” (Streit 262)

Another argument that had been popularly used first by the OKW and then by numerous historians justified the harsh conduct of the war by claiming that the USSR had not signed the Geneva and Hague conventions on the law of war. Once the war began, the small scale atrocities committed by the Soviet soldiers were used to justify much larger crimes against POW’s and civilians.
Yet, USSR had signed the Geneva accords to the conduct of war. (Evidence)
Secondly, even if it did not, Germany had, and that alone should have been enough to obey those conventions. Finally and lastly, none of this mattered since the law in the Eastern Front was dictated by Hitler and Nazi ideology (as was the whole Operation Barbarossa) - this was the beginning and the cause of all the crimes committed in that war.

“Long before the first shot was fired the military leaders agreed to a series of measures which determined the singular character of the war against the Soviet Union.8 The first one was the consent of the OKH, on March 26, 1941, to the deployment of SS Einsatzgruppen, whose primary objective was the liquidation of all those who might form the nucleus of a resistance movement - Party functionaries, intellectuals, the ‘Jews in state and party positions.’ (I am convinced that the Einsatzgruppen did not, at that point, have orders to kill all the Jews; the liquidation of the groups mentioned in the area which the Wehrmacht planned to conquer in 1941 - up to the line connecting Archangel and Astrakhan' - would have meant more than enough ‘work’ for the 3,000 men of the Einsatzgruppen.)9
The Barbarossa Directive of May 13, 1941 called on the troops to shoot all civilians who ‘attacked’ German soldiers. The official interpretation of ‘attack’ was extensive; it included the distribution of leaflets and the simple non-observation of German orders. Officers were to decide on the spot whether suspects were to be shot. Upon the request of the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Halder, a clause was introduced which permitted a field grade officer to order that a village be laid to ashes and that a part of the inhabitants be shot if he suspected the villagers of supporting partisans. The provision that, on the other hand, crimes of Wehrmacht soldiers against Soviet civilians were to go unpunished if the perpetrator claimed political motives was clearly intended to indicate to the troops that the Soviet citizens were of no significance.
The Commissar Order of June 6, 1941, finally, charged the troops with the shooting of all captured Red Army commissars. The commissars were seen as those who would above all try to stir up resistance in the conquered territories of the East.” (Streit 262)

After the war, under the conditions of the reviving Cold War tensions a certain cult of the “honorable” Wehrmacht had developed. High ranking Nazi officers like General Halder claimed that they had no connection to the Nazi ideology as represented in the Barbarossa Directive, Commissar Order and the general conduct of the war and the occupation of the eastern territories. In the Cold War atmosphere most historians believed such claims that Hitler alone was behind all the decisions and the Wehrmacht simply “followed the orders.”

“Recent research has established that in the spring and summer of 1941 there were no decisive differences of opinion as to the decisions concerned between Hitler and the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht, on the one side, and the High Command of the Army and the army commanders, on the other side. Even before Hitler laid down, in his notorious speech to an audience of some 250 army generals on March 30, 1941, how the war in the East ought to be conducted, the Commander in Chief of the Army, von Brauchitsch, told army commanders that this would be a war between two races and that they had to proceed with the requisite fierceness.10 Halder himself played an important role in drafting both the Barbarossa Directive and the Commissar Order.11" (Streit 263)
Whether convinced Nazis or opponents of Hitler, all German officers agreed that what they understood by Bolshevism should be liquidated. Because of this, many people were willing accept a ruthless war, genocide, and mass murder of foreign and domestic civilians. Therefore, the great majority of Heer commanders did not care about the people in the occupied territories but preferred to concentrate on the victory. The Germans, however, understood from the beginning that the success in the war would at least partially depend on their ability to ‘live of the land’ both in the agricultural and industrial terms. When it came to food, most German officers understood that large-scale famines would develop as part of their requisition campaigns. The famine was also a part of the overall Nazi plan of subjugation of the USSR.

The largest contradiction in the Nazi doctrine concerned the general treatment of the civilian population of the USSR. On the one hand, it was believed that while pro-Bolshevik people (all Jews and most Russians) were to be ruthlessly exterminated, the anti-Bolshevik people (Western Slavs, and most non-Slavs alienated by Stalin’s collectivization and the purges) were to be encouraged in cooperation with the new Nazi authorities. It was, therefore, believed by many top officials like Brauchitsch and Halder that if they were properly rewarded for cooperation, the anti-Bolshevik people would readily obey their German masters. Indeed, a small number of people living in the western parts of USSR waited to see if the Nazi Germans would treat them the same way as the Germans did during the First World War. Most officers also believed that as long as the unprecedented violence against “undesirable elements” was kept under strict control of the OKH, a considerable portion of the Soviet people would stay loyal to the Nazi regime. Finally, many believed that as long as strict discipline was kept in the army (no civilians were to be shot without an officer’s order), the violence could be controlled. What they clearly did not realize was that instead of limiting the violence it only spiraled out of control and deeply implicated the entire Wehrmacht in the total war of annihilation against the USSR.

At the same time large scale cooperation was expected from the local people, the subsequent practice of the occupation evaporated most the people’s hopes in the authorities by the end of 1941. Thus, the German occupation practices contributed to the rise of a large partisan movement and the transformation of a state-vs-state war into a people’s war, a war Germany could not win. The ferocity of the ensuing partisan war, which Germans themselves ensured, led many German soldiers and officers to believe that the USSR has been preparing for this kind of “illegal” war for many years in advance. This, however, was not true.

The USSR had a considerable experience in guerrilla war going back to the days of the Russian Civil War. Before 1939 the Soviet considered partisan warfare to be an essential part of the modern war, just as a strategic retreat and evacuation of the valuable resources. The Small War movement was organized with the intention to create a “second front” in case of an invasion in the 1930's. However, after the signing of the Pact in 1939, the whole Soviet war theory changed. Instead of conducting a defense in depth, the Red Army was supposed to respond with a major offensive of its own as soon the enemy penetrated its borders. While this theoretically sound plan appealed to Stalin and other politicians because of the illusionary security to the industry and agriculture in the western USSR, it put way too much pressure on the Red Army. This pressure proved to be too much in 1941 when the Red Army was at its weakest state. Nonetheless, true to the new war theory all preparations for the partisan war were stopped. The sophisticated network of experienced commanders, secret bases and supply depots were dissolved. Thus, while the Red Army was incapable of conducting a strategic defense, it was also incapable of waging an effective partisan campaign in 1941.

“The partisan movement and popular resistance gained momentum at the close of the year, and it was clearly the German policies of extermination, starvation and enslavement which in fact helped to produce a partisan movement which, from the spring of 1942, was to gain more and more political, military, and economic significance.” (Streit 268)
Hitler was not disquieted by the prospect of the partisan war which Stalin had announced on July 3, 1941. He clearsightedly recognized the possibilities which this afforded: "'. .. it enables us to eradicate everyone who opposes us.' The best method to pacify the enormous spaces of the East, he said, was to shoot everyone who looked askance.27" (Streit 268)
“Traditionalist German historiography claimed that only SS units had committed crimes against the civilian population, and only in areas ‘far behind the front,’ whereas Wehrmacht units had, in a war whose brutality had been determined by the enemy, fought in accordance with soldierly concepts, and had not followed criminal directives like the Commissar Order.28 The cruelties connected with the war against the partisans had, according to this view, been provoked by the barbaric methods employed by the partisans. Recent research has proved beyond all doubt that this view is completely untenable. 28. The implementation of the Commissar Order has been particularly disputed, but there can be no doubt that, in 1941, Red Army commissars were shot in most German divisions: cf. Streit, Keine Kameraden, pp. 83-89 and now, with additional evidence, Foerster, "Die Sicherung des 'Lebensraumes'," pp. 1062-70.
“As early as June 24, a German corporal noted dejectedly in his diary that a fellow unit had shot all inhabitants of a Belorussian village, women and children included, because it had been attacked from that village, one of the first of hundreds of similar such incidents.31" 31. Printed in Hans Dollinger, ed., Kain, wo ist dein Bruder? (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1987), p. 78 ff. For another early example which must have happened in June/July 1941, see Friedrich Freiherr Hiller von Gaertringen, ed., Die Hassell-Tagebuecher 1938-1944 (Berlin: Siedler, 1988), p. 265 (Aug. 18, 1941).
“Keitel's infamous order of September 16, 1941,32 which demanded the execution of 50 to 100 Communists for the life of every German who fell victim to a partisan attack, did not mean anything completely new on the Eastern front, even if the commanders there seem to have hesitated to follow the scale set by Keitel. But the execution of hostages had become general practice before Keitel's order, and the troops which proceeded in that way were by no means only SS units or security divisions. Crimes of that kind also happened in the areas of front-line combat divisions, which were no less prepared to deal ‘ruthlessly’ with the population in their areas.33"
32. Printed in Cooper, Phantom War, p. 169 f.
33. Bartov, The Eastern Front, p. 119 f.
(Streit 269)

“To what inconceivable extent some units carried their activities is made evident by a report of the Wehrmachtkommandant Weissruthenien (707th Infantry Division): within a one-month period in autumn, 1941, this unit had captured 10,940 "partisans," of whom 10,431 had been shot. The unit's own casualties were two dead and five wounded. The context reveals that the ‘partisans’ were almost exclusively Red Army stragglers, escaped POWs, and Jews.34
A particularly bleak chapter is the tight connections between Bandenbekampfung and the destruction of the Jews.35 This has always been accepted as a fact for the large-scale anti-partisan operations of 1942 to 1944, which, in fact, often enough served as a cover. Not enough attention has been paid, however, in my opinion to the fact that this connection existed practically from the very first day, and that it played a very important role in the genesis of the Endlosung. The willingness of soldiers of all ranks to accept the equation, ‘A Jew is a Bolshevik is a partisan,’ is palpable in orders and reports from armies all along the front from the first weeks of the conflict.36"

34. Streit, Keine Kameraden, p. 107.
35. Ibid., pp. 109-27; Krausnick-Wilhelm, Die Truppe des Weltanschau-ungskrieges, pp. 205-78; Foerster, "Die Sicherung des 'Lebensraumes'," pp. 1030-62; Theo J. Schulte, The German Army and Nazi Policies in Occupied Russia (Oxford: Berg, 1989); Arno J. Mayer, Der Krieg als Kreuzzug. Das Deutsche Reich, Hitlers Wehrmacht und die 'Endloesung' (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1989).
36. Cf. e.g., Panzergruppe 4 to OKH of 6 July : Streit, Keine Kameraden, p. 124. Illrd Army Corps (mot.) of July 9; 44th Infantry Division (assigned to 6th Army) of July 21; 2nd Army of July 17; 221st Security Division of July 18; 17th Army of July 30; Rear Army Group Area South of August 18, 1941: Foerster, "Die Sicherung des 'Lebensraumes'," pp. 1038-40. Rear Army Group Area Center of July 9: Schulte, The German Army, p. 229. List Army Corps (assigned to 6th Army) of July 8, 1941: Hesse, Der sowjetrussische Partisanenkrieg, p. 73.
(Streit 270)

From the very beginning of the war, the armies cooperated very closely with their Sonderkommandos because they did not want to fight small partisan groups alone. The Einsatzgruppen saw the advantage in using regular army troops to kill partisans and anybody else they defined as such. Everybody from the low ranking soldiers to the highest commanders like von Bock accepted this practice because, as they believed, all those killed were “bandits and criminals carrying arms when they were seized.” (von Bock’s diary)

“It is impossible to say how many Soviet citizens fell victim to the anti-partisan operations of the first six months of the war. According to the calculations of Timothy Mulligan the number of partisans and partisan suspects killed in the Rear Area of Army Group Center alone between June 1941 and May 1942 amounted to 80,000, a number that gives just the vaguest idea of the amount of suffering caused by these operations. 38" ( Streit 271)

As the war progressed some high-ranking German officers, such as Gehlen, realized that terror would only complicate the situation in the occupied lands. Nonetheless, no serious attempts were made to alter the policies, and most of the German commanders remained true to Hitler’s directive of July 23, 1941: “that the resistance in the Eastern territories could be broken if the occupying forces ‘spread the kind of terror which alone is likely to make the population lose all interest in insubordination.’”39 (Streit 271)

Yet the Soviet people learned a different lesson from the terror: they realized that they would also be murdered sooner or later regardless of their ethnicity or political loyalties.

“The Soviet prisoners of war were, next to the Jews, the largest group which fell victim to the Nazi policies of extermination.40 A total of approximately 5.7 million Red Army soldiers were taken prisoner between June 22,1941, and the end of the war. In January 1945 there were some 930,000 Soviet POWs left in the prison camps of the Wehrmacht. About one million more had been released from captivity, most of them as so-called Hilfswillige, i.e., auxiliary personnel for the Wehrmacht. According to estimates of the German Army General Staff another 500,000 prisoners had either escaped or had been liberated by the Red Army. The remaining 3,300,000, more than 57 percent of the total number, had perished by 1945. These figures have been disputed by a minority of German historians, but I do not see any reason to modify my estimate.41" (Streit 272)

POW’s were entirely Wehrmacht’s responsibility, not of the SS or SD. Wehrmacht was truly Hitler’s army when it deliberately killed millions of Soviet prisoners, while keeping Allied prisoners in much better condition. Several popular excuses were reiterated by many after the war: the USSR supposedly had not signed Geneva accords, and its prisoners did not receive help from the Red Cross. Just like in the case of other war crimes, this was no excuse at all.

The systematic democide that resulted in the deaths of 3.3 million Red Army prisoners was conducted through the following methods:

1). Starvation. Wehrmacht deliberately kept the rations for the Soviet prisoners to the very minimum, and forced them to walk extensive distances on foot.
Examples of such rations: "one ounce of millet and three ounces of bread, no meat," or "three ounces of millet, no bread," or just "two potatoes."

2). Deportation. Thousands of Soviet prisoners died during the long foot marches or were shot when they could not continue without enough water and food. Many more starved or froze to death when they were transported in open train cars even in winter.

3). Exposure. Wehrmacht minimized its expenses for shelter for the Soviet prisoners. POW’s were not allowed to have huts, but only dugouts and sod houses. Predictably, this lead to very high mortality rates due to cold and epidemics.

These three factors combined represent a very ancient and effective method of democide - the "death march." The deniers of democide are known to use a popular excuse associated with the method: poor (not deliberate imposing of!) conditions prevented the authorities to ameliorate the suffering despite of its general willingness to do so.

4). Treatment. Since Soviet POW’s were considered subhuman, anything was allowed to be done to them.
“In a basic directive of September 8,1941, General Reinecke, who was responsible for POW affairs in the High Command of the Wehrmacht, stressed that ‘the use of arms against Soviet POWs [was] generally considered lawful.’ This was a clear licence to kill, and there were enough guards who understood it that way.” (Streit 273)

“In the Government General, for example, 54,000 prisoners had died before October 20,1941. In the ten days which followed, to October 30, there were another 45,690 deaths, close to 4,600 every day. Of the 361,000 prisoners who were in the camps of the Government General in the autumn of 1941, 310,000 - more than 85 percent - died before April 1942.43 By February 1942 some two million, more than half of the Soviet prisoners taken in 1941, had perished.”
(Streit 273)

Some high ranking German officers like von Moltke and Admiral Canaris did indeed, at least on paper, oppose such measures. Overall, however, they were overshadowed by Keitel and many others who believed any measure was just in the ideological war.

5). Systematic liquidation of “intolerable elements.” Not later than three weeks after the war began in the East, Wehrmacht and SS closely cooperated and arrived at an agreement under which the Einsatzkommandos gained the authority to “sort out” and exterminate politically and racially “intolerable elements” among the Soviet POWs. The definition of such “elements” was very loose and included Jews, communists, intellectuals etc.
“Far more than 140,000 POW’s fell victim to the ensuing selections which were continued to the end of the war.” (Streit 274)
On one occasion Zyklon B was tested on 600 Soviet POW’s in Auschwitz. Overall, tens of thousands POWs died in the SS concentration camps which were later filled up with Jews and other civilian “intolerable elements.”

A noticeable change in the policy occurred in the Spring 1942, due to Hitler expectation for the Soviet prisoners to build roads in the eastern territories once the war would be won. Nonetheless, the conditions of these prisoners remained appalling and so their mortality rate remained still the highest among all other POW’s the Germans had captured.

Given all this evidence, it not surprising that the ranks of the anti-German partisan swelled up starting in 1942. Those prisoners who managed to somehow escape had no illusions about what awaited them if captured again. Therefore, the partisans usually did not surrender, and quite unsurprisingly, preferred not to take prisoners either.

After the war, many people thought that had the German policies been slightly different most of the Soviet population could have been won over. Today, however, increasing evidence exists that the Soviet population was not broken by Stalinism and largely remained loyal to the Soviet regime even after the collectivization and the purges. (Robert W. Thurston, Life and Terror in Stalin's Russia, 1934-1941) Furthermore, only a small portion of people in the western parts of USSR were willing to wait and see what the new German regime had in mind for them.
Finally, any significant change of German policy would have been hard to occur given the well-known fixation of German leaders to the racist Nazi ideology. Only a tiny portion of powerless German officials wanted to change the policies dictated by Hitler. Even they, however, agreed on the general aims of defeating the USSR and, therefore, remained loyal if not to Hitler personally, then at least to the Third Reich.

In any case, by the time the war started on June 22, 1941 not much could have been changed in German policies.

“The policies of extermination decided upon in the spring of 1941 and implemented with the first shot had effects which could not be undone. The Nazi leaders were perfectly aware of the fact that they were burning their boats with the course upon which they were embarking. On June 16, 1941, Goebbels wrote in his diary: 50 ‘The Fuhrer says that we must gain the victory, no matter whether we do right or wrong. We have so much to answer for anyhow that we must gain the victory because otherwise our whole people . . . will be wiped out’.”
50. Quoted in Elke Froehlich, "Joseph Goebbels und sein Tagebuch," Viertel-jahrshefte fur Zeitgeschichte, 35 (1987), 522. (Streit 275)