MacLean, French L. The Field Men: The SS Officers Who Led the Einsatzkommandos - the Nazi Mobile Killing Units. Atglen, PA: Schiffer Military History, 1999
ISBN 0-7643-0754-1
231 pages
Acknowledgments; Introduction; photos; maps; tables; Sources
Appendices: SS Ranks; SS Personnel Glossary; SS Officer Efficiency Reports; Order Police Home Station and Commanders; Sonderkommando Dirlewanger Officers; Higher SS and Police Leaders -- Einsatzgruppe Area of Operations; Waffen-SS Units and Leaders -- Einsatzgruppe Area of Operations
Much as he did with volume one of this set -- The Camp Men: The SS Officers Who Ran the Nazi Concentration Camp System -- French MacLean here assembles a database of facts, in this case not about the men who ran the camps, but rather the officers of the Einsatzkommandos, the units in the field that killed more than a million people.
In particular, MacLean focuses on the four Einsatzgruppen with their subordinate Einsatzkommandos which accompanied the German armies in the Soviet Union in 1941. His first chapter describes the genesis of these units and their organization and equipment and lists in chillingly matter-of-fact terms, along with eye-witness descriptions, the "Methods of Killing": shooting, gas vans, burning, and bludgeoning. MacLean then reviews those organizations which provided assistance to the Einsatzkommandos -- the Army, the Order Police, the Auxiliary Police, and the Waffen-SS -- and provides information and remarks about, including those on the Russian front, almost seventy Einsatzkommandos with date formed, campaigns, commanders, parent formation, etc.
The meat of the book is almost one hundred pages of biographical summaries for the officers who served in the Einsatzkommandos. These include name, date of birth, place of birth, highest SS rank, SS number, date entered SS, etc.
A typical entry looks much like this:
| Schramm |
| First Name: | Walter |
| Date of Birth: | 15 July 1909 |
| Place of Birth: | Saarbrucken |
| Highest Rank: | SS-Obersturmfuehrer |
| SS Number: | 72584 |
| Date Entered SS: | 15 March 1933 |
| NSDAP Number: | 2317636 |
| Date Entered NSDAP: | 1 May 1933 |
| Marital Status: | Married |
| Religion: | Agnostic |
| Civilian Occupation: | Agricultural official |
| Education: | High School |
| Foreign Language: | No |
| Einsatzkommando: | B |
| Position: | Not listed |
| Einsatzkommando Service: | 1942 |
| Other Assignment: | RSHA, Officer II A 3 (Indemnification)
RSHA, Office II C 4 (Budget) |
| Highest Award: | None listed |
| Postwar Sentence: | No judicial proceedings discovered |
| Notes: | SD Brussels; SD Breslau
Gestapo Kattowitz |
| National Archives File: | A3343 SSO-100B |
The following chapter consists of analysis of personal data, enumerating quantities and percentages of officers by age, birthplace, education, foreign language proficiency, occupation, WWI service, awards and decorations, marital status, religion, and so on.
In the final chapter, "Conclusions", MacLean discusses the "typical" Einsatzkommando officer, the blending of Einsatzkommando activities and anti-partisan operations, and the responsibilities of Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, and their Einsatzkommando officers for the mass killings. In particular, the author questions the criteria used by Heydrich to select the field men and questions Heydrich's motives, suggesting his officers were picked mostly for purposes of binding their loyalties to him through "monstrous guilt."
The "Photo Section" at the end of the book offers some thirty-five pages of portraits of the Einsatzkommando officers and another twenty pages or so of them in the field, many of a particularly grisly nature as they carry out their murderous work.
MacLean concludes with a poetic but somewhat quirky analogy: "The Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommandos, and the SS officers who led them, were the most terrible scourge to descend upon Europe since the Black Death. Ignoring the causes of the Bubonic Plague could harm our health; ignoring these mass murderers, these field men, would wound our souls."
Available from online booksellers, local bookshops, or directly from Schiffer Military History.
Thanks to Schiffer
for providing this review copy.
