By late 1941, the Einsatzgruppen members were becoming less efficient. The unit was routinely issued with extra rations of alcohol as the members often reported being unable to sleep. The alcohol was thought to help ease their guilty consciences. But now, the unit was beginning to suffer from a higher rate of alcoholism than the regular army. In addition, suicide rates were skyrocketing, as were desertions from the unit. As a result, the Nazi leaders began to worry that the broken men in the Einsatzgruppen wouldn’t be able to continue killing at the pace they needed. The Nazis needed a better way to kill Jews.
The Nazis began to explore other, more impersonal methods. Even before the invasion of Russia, the Nazis had tried using specially equipped trucks to kill prisoners. These trucks were airtight and the exhaust was funneled by a special pipe into the back of the trucks. When victims were locked inside, the carbon monoxide from the engines quickly killed them. So, all the Einsatzgruppen had to do was load up the truck with victims and drive to a disposal site. By the time they arrived, the victims would be dead. All that was left was to dump the bodies into a mass grave.
But once again, this method proved to be too slow for the Nazis. By 1942, they were experimenting with more poisonous gasses than car exhaust. They soon identified a particularly effective pesticide gas called Zyklon B. Zyklon B was usually used to kill lice or other pests, but the Nazis found that it was equally effective at killing people. And once they had the tool for mass murder, the Nazis needed to find the most effective way to use it. Their experience on the Eastern Front was quickly teaching them that the mobile killing units weren’t the best way to commit genocide.
Instead of bringing the killers to the victims, they needed to bring the victims to the killers. They needed to industrialize mass murder. The Nazis had long used concentration camps as a place to hold Jews, communists, and political prisoners. As the army moved east, the concentration camps followed. Originally, the prisoners in these camps were simply worked to death or shot. There was nothing like the industrialized genocide that marked the later stages of the Holocaust. It was their experiences in Russia that gave the Nazis the idea of turning these camps into death factories.
So, the Nazis began rounding up Jews by the millions and deporting them to these camps, particularly Auschwitz in occupied Poland. By late 1942, the Holocaust as we know it today had truly begun. The Nazis had turned mass killing into a science. Victims were transported by train to the camps. There, they were gassed, and their bodies incinerated. The remains were dumped in mass pits. Millions would eventually perish in these factories of death. But it was the Nazis’ experience in Russia, a part of the Holocaust that’s largely forgotten today, that really made these mass killings possible.
Where did we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
Einsatzgruppen. United States Holocaust Museum Memorial.
The Nazis & the Jews: The Madagascar Plan. The Jewish Virtual Library.