The Gateway Chronicle 2020

9
Gypsies and the mentally ill. There were 4
drafts of the plan, with the first being in
1940 and the last in 1942. This was prefaced
by the invasion of Poland, where 7
SS Einsatzgruppe, special task forces
formed by Reinhard ‘Young Evil God of
Death’ Heydrich to carry out mass murder
of anyone not deemed acceptable by the
Nazi regime, followed the regular army,
who's goal was to eliminate "all anti-German
elements in hostile country behind
the troops in combat", which is a fancy
way to say killing all Polish figures of political
or military importance and Jews.
The Germans attempted to crush Polish
culture through the execution of 60000
Polish ex-government officials, reserve
army officers, landowners, clergy and
members of the intelligentsia were killed
in 10 regional actions, as characterised by
Hitler’s order ’Whatever we find in the
shape of an upper class in Poland will be
liquidated’. Whilst eliminating many cultural
and political influencers in Poland
with the goal of destroying the Polish
sense of identity, they also took out many
people who could lead an uprising. This
process was continued by Operation AB-
Aktion, where 30,000 more Poles were arrested
from major cities across occupied
Poland, interrogated in prisons then transferred
to concentration camps in order to
keep the growing Polish resistance scattered
so there would be no disturbances
during the upcoming invasion of France.
Thousands of intellectuals were massacred
in mass executions, for example with
the Palmiry massacre, in 1946 investigators
from the Polish Red Cross found the
bodies of 2180 men and women in 24 mass
graves, all executed by gunfire for crimes
such as being a Polish artist, an athlete or
even living in the same a
partment block as a resistance member.
Hundreds of thousands had already died
due to the deliberate actions of the German
authorities in Poland, but that was
barely a drop of blood in a mass grave
compared to what was coming next. Operation
Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the
Soviet Union. Millions of those the Nazi’s
viewed as being from inferior races were
brought under the control of a state with
the will and the means to commit one of
the largest atrocities in history. The
Einsatzgruppen were divided into 4 sections,
marked A, B, C and D, and spread
across the Eastern front to follow behind
the troops executing mid and high level
Communist Party officials, dedicated
Communists, the mentally ill, members of
the Roma people and all Jews, working in
tandem with the regular German army to
commit
massacres
on multiple
occasions.
After November
1941, it was
decided
that there
would be a
transition
to using
gassing targeted
people
after the
leader of
the SS
Heinrich
Himmler
visited a
mass execution
of 100
Jews near
Minsk, being
thoroughly
nauseated by the experience,
it was deemed that
mass shootings were taking too much of a
mental and physical toll on the Einzatsgruppen
themselves. Overall, estimates
put the death toll from the
Einsatzgruppen and related agencies between
1.5 and 2 million with millions
more being sent to labour or death camps.
In the relatively short span of 6 years, the
Nazis perpetrated 3 out of the 5 most
deadly genocides in history if taken in
‘Our Lebensraum even lies
here!’ – A Nazi propaganda
poster from WW2