Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction
The Einsatzgruppen and the Sources Documenting Their Actions
Preparing for the War on Poland
Personnel and Tasks
Escalating Violence
Part II: Documents and Context
Directives and Initial Actions
Expanding the Scope of Violence
Persecuting Jews
Establishing Long-Term Rule
Afterword: Poland, 1939–Soviet Union, 1941. Einsatzgruppen Actions in Comparison

About the Author

Jürgen Matthäus is director of the Applied Research Division at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Jochen Böhler is a research fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg at Jena University, Germany. Klaus-Michael Mallmann is director of the Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg at the Universität Stuttgart, Germany.

Reviews

This impressive series provides a sense of the depth and diversity of contemporary Jewish documents while embedding them in explanatory narratives. . . .Underscoring this point [how ‘unprecedented’ the nature of Nazi actions in Poland was even prior to the launching of comprehensive genocide] is one of the chief purposes of War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939, one of the stand-alone volumes in the series, ‘the first comprehensive English-language edition documenting and annotating Einsatzgruppen activities against the background of war and Nazi racial policy in Poland in 1939.’
*Yad Vashem Studies*

This important history explains and documents an often-neglected phase of Nazi Germany's war in the east. Anyone who needs a nuanced understanding of the first phase of the Holocaust and Operation Barbarossa should first study Operation Tannenberg, which is fully explored for the first time in this fine work.
*Richard Breitman, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, American University*

For too long, histories of the Einsatzgruppen have neglected the territories bordering the German Reich. The editors of this essential collection have made available to students and scholars of the Holocaust and the Second World War a stunning array of German documents culled from U.S., German, Polish, and former Soviet archives. Carefully translated into English and usefully annotated, the reports and testimonies in this compact volume reveal that unscrupulous Nazi leaders and their subordinates in Poland were determined to wage war, ‘pacify’ the region, and initiate a program of mass murder as of the fall of 1939.
*Wendy Lower, Claremont McKenna College*