Talk:Commissar Order

Nazi treatment of Soviet POWs

I understand that Soviet prisoner of wars, even officers, were treated differently than Western ones (I think even differently than '39 Poles). Do we have articles explaining this in more detail (other than Nazis general contempt for Slavs, Generalplan Ost, and such)? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:12, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Found it: Extermination of Soviet prisoners of war by Nazi Germany.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:19, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Picture of Kommissar

Kommissars were soviet soldiers who wore a uniform and participated in regular battles. They differed from regular soldiers in that they were responsible for communist propaganda within the troops. The man in the picture is not wearing any uniform. Therefore, he was not a kommissar. It may have been a member of partisan troops employed by the soviet union behind the German lines. Finally, the picture appears to be manipulated. We can see white lines drawn into the shadow of the man's face. Consequently, I think the picture should be deleted. It is neither an original document nor does it show a kommissar.BarbaraMarx (talk) 09:52, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I agree and have found another image to replace. 86.186.153.228 (talk) 05:13, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

we are not talking about who commissars are: there is a separate article for this. the article is about nazi policies, and must be illustrated as such. - Altenmann >t 07:23, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

after reading the original caption with the aid of machine translation, it appears the Germans claimed he was a political civil official of a 'small provincial town' and had 'subjected the residents to terror' according to the [Wikipedia article on commissioner]"From the October Revolution in 1917 until the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1991, the Soviet government as well as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and its predecessors used commissioner (in Russian комиссар or commissar) as a term for multiple positions. From 1917 until 1946 ministers of government were called people's commissars (and ministries were called "people's commissariats")"

so, with the above information taken into consideration, the question is were "people's commissars' or commissioners subject to the commissar order and did they wear uniforms? -Coasttrip (talk) 19:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

You are right. According to the original German caption, this is not a military political commissar. The usage indicates a generic meaning ("communist functionary"), rather than a technically correct term. The order specifically addresses military kommissars. They did wear a uniform. Therefore I agree that the image does not fit this article. - Altenmann >t 06:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Clean up

At present, this article is full of inaccurate information and needs a serious re-write. This article says that the entire German military leadership "to a man" opposed the Commissar Order and that some German generals like Erich von Manstein refused to enforce the order because they knew it was wrong. Both claims are lies pure and simple. The source for that appears to be The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a book that was published in 1960 when that claim that military was opposed to the Commissar Order was widely believed. Since then, recent scholarship has demolished that claim, and this article should really be re-written to reflect the current historiography. Moreover, just looking at my copy of the The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Shirer himself reports the claim that most generals were opposed to the commissar order, but in a manner that expresses doubt about this self-serving claim to have had "clean hands". Right after quoting Manstein's claims that he did not enforce the Commissar Order, Shirer writes that "As a matter of record, the order, of course, was carried out on a large scale" (Shirer, William The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1960 page 830).

Generals like Manstein and Franz Halder were quite vocal in disagreeing with Hitler on military matters if they thought he was going in the wrong direction, which makes the claim that they were morally appalled by Hitler's plans on how to fight the war with the Soviet Union, but just did not the courage to express that moral outrage to him impossible to believe. The only person who attended that meeting on March 31st of 1941 who expressed disagreement with how Hitler planned to fight the war with Russia was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Everybody else at that meeting expressed their approval. If people like Halder and Manstein who as noted above had no fear of criticizing Hitler to his face on military matters should had no problem on criticizing him about something that claimed after the war to impinge on their honor. Their silence on the meeting on March 30 1941 could only mean that they did not oppose Hitler's plans for a war to be waged in the most savage, inhumane fashion possible. The supposed meeting with Walther von Brauchitsch in the hallways after the meeting with Hitler is now generally believed to have been a post-war fabrication. Conveniently enough there was no typist present to record the meeting in the hallways, and we only have their word of the various German generals that they cornered Brauchitsch in the hallway to express their passionate opposition to Hitler's plans for how to wage war against Russia. It is quite clear that this story was manufactured at least in the way it is presented as a way of showing the military leadership as opposed to how Hitler wanted to fight the war after not expressing any opposition to Hitler at the fateful meeting of March 30 1941.

Anyhow, no-one in Halder's diary does he say anything about opposing Hitler's plans for war or the supposed meeting in the hallway. It was after 1945 that Halder conveniently "remembered" the meeting in the hallway with Brauchitsch and he opposed the Commissar Order. The same goes with Manstein's claims that he did not enforce the Commissar Order, a claim that rests on his testimony at Nuremberg and at his how trial and on his memories. The book The Myth of the Eastern Front: The Nazi-Soviet War in American Popular Culture by Ronald Smelser and Edward J. Davies says quite clearly that Manstein like every other German general was lying about not enforcing the Commissar Order. Likewise, one should read the excellent essay by Jürgen Förster "The Wehrmacht and the War of Extermination Against the Soviet Union" in which he says that the claim that the German Army did not enforce the Commissar Order is nonsense. Förster has an excellent point that the Army often handed over to the SS suspected "commissars" to be executed (please also note that it up to the German soldier to decide if a POW was a commissar or not, so a great many of the "commissars" shot may not have actually been commissars). Förster notes that the SS records of weekly executions of commissars handed over by the Army correspond exactly to the Army's weekly records of commissars being handed over to the SS for execution. Förster notes that this can mean only two things: 1) The Army was not executing commissars, the weekly figures sent back to Berlin of executions and men handed over to the SS for execution were all lies, which must mean that SS was going along with the Army in not enforcing the Commissar Order or 2) the Army really was enforcing the Commissar Order.

Gerhard Weinberg wrote about the Army and the war in the East that:

"The attack on Poland was in some ways a rehearsal for the invasion of Russia. In that case also Hitler had made it clear to his military associates that destroying the life of the Poles as a people, not breaking the strength of the Polish Army , was the aim of German policy. At that time, there had still been some reluctance among the military leaders to become involved in mass murder; and, in any case, the focus of attention had shifted to the great campaign ahead in the West. Now all this was changed. The war in the West was, or at least appeared to be, over, and almost all restraints were cast aside. As Hitler explained in ever greater detail, especially in a speech to military leaders on March 30, 1941, the new campaign would differ from the prior ones, that a war of extermination was at hand, and that a massive demographic revolution was about to begin in Eastern Europe. His views were met with understanding, agreement and support. A minute number had reservations, and one of these, Admiral Canaris, the chief of intelligence, had the courage to voice them, but most either went along with or showed their support for such schemes by putting all their considerable energies into developing careful plans for their implementation.

In post-World War II Germany, a steady stream of military memoirs on the book market and perjury in court proceedings obscured these sad truths for some time, but recent publications based on research in the archives instead of post-war fabrications have provided a more accurate picture-and have not surprisingly have been met with vocal hostility from some. It is now beyond doubt that the orders and procedures worked out in detail before the invasion and calling for the killing of several categories of prisoners of war, including Jewish soldiers and all political officers captured, were very widely carried out and that the assumption was that the huge masses of Russian prisoners that the German army expected to capture would be allowed to die of hunger and disease. The application of these terrible policies, as well as their import for the victims and for the Soviet Union, will be reviewed later; what has to be noted at this point is the inclusion of such in the planning of the invasion."(Weinberg, Gerhard A World In Arms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005 pages 190-191)

This article needs very badly to be rewritten along the lines outlined by Weinberg above, and all the apologetics about the "honorable" field marshals and generals to "a man" being opposed to the Commissar Order needs to go. Along the same lines, the Commissar Order needs to be set in its proper context, as part and parcel of the genocidal war that Germany's leaders unleashed on 22 June 1941. The Commissar Order was only one part of a broader programme to fight a war of extermination that was to be waged in the most barbarous, inhumane fashion possible, and this article should really reflect that.

Manstein's claims of the Commissar Order horrified him as was against his soldier's honor are extremely hard to square with his statements to his troops in 1941 that the Soviet forces were savages who did not deserve any mercy and stated quite explicitly that the war against the Soviet Union was a war to exterminate the Jews. Are we really to believe that somebody who wrote something like that was opposed to shooting captured commissars? That is especially the case because Manstein in his statements to his troops stated that the Jews rule the Soviet Union, the Jews started the war, the war will not end until all the Jews have been exterminated, and that most Red Army commissars are Jews. Finally, Manstein like every German general on the Eastern Front in 1941 co-operated on a massive scale with the Einsatzgruppen in shooting down unarmed Jewish men, women and children. The same people who had no problem with helping the Einsatzgruppen shoot down Jewish children are supposedly the same people who did not enforce the Commissar Order? --A.S. Brown (talk) 23:23, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Bribery

The whole things is a highly dubious POV of a single author. Just as well these payments (if any) may be called "bonuses" for good job done for his Fuhrer. In any cases, in wikipedia practice, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". A theory of a single author that all generals did all killings because they were bribed must be corroborated by other sources. Otherwise it is a sensationalist bullshit, especially in the context of this article about very specific subject. -M.Altenmann >t 14:39, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

June 6 Commissar order issued by OKW, not Hitler

See full text of the document: http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/English58.pdf

Current Wikipedia text: The Commissar Order (German: Kommissarbefehl) was an order issued by Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa.

I would like to make the change soon, unless there are objections. --K.e.coffman (talk) 07:12, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I've made the change. --K.e.coffman (talk) 07:34, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Research notes

• Modern genocide

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Execution of Kommissars

Is it true that the local Russians asked permission from the Germans to execute their own Kommissars? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 1.129.96.60 (talk) 02:16, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

No, it's not. Next question? The andf (talk) 03:13, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Actually that is true. (2A00:23C7:CF07:C300:C551:350F:40CF:36BA (talk) 20:27, 3 August 2019 (UTC))

That is not true