Operational Situation Report USSR No. 116
(October 17, 1941)
The Chief of the Security Police and the Security Service
Berlin,
October 17, 1941
50 copies
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(36th copy)
OPERATIONAL SITUATION REPORT USSR No. 116
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Einsatzgruppe A
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Location: Krasnogvardeisk
The cooperation of security police work in the pacification of the
area behind the front and in the Rear Army area continued at the time
of this report. As to details, the activities of The Einsatzgruppe
can be summarized as follows:
1) Partly in collaboration with the Field and Local Military Commanders
the population was recently checked on the basis of security police
standards. Unreliable elements blocking efforts to pacify the region
were segregated and either transferred to military and civilian prisoner
camps or executed by the Kommandos. Between October 2 and 12, 260
persons in all had to be executed.
2) Owing to the change-over to trench warfare and, in compliance
with requests from our side, the Army evacuated a strip next to the
front line. The respective orders of the various army corps differed
in their basic approaches (some ordering complete evacuation, others
the evacuation of all men, others again to transfer to definite quarters
in towns, etc.). Upon the request of the Army, Security Police investigations
were carried out in the transient camps.
3) As partisans were still alive behind the fighting troops, special
measures became necessary in this matter as well. In the first place,
the intelligence work had to be broadened by dispatching our own spies,
by drawing in the village elders, and the population in general. The
results of this preparatory intelligence work served as the basis
of various operations actively combatting partisans. For the rest,
a partisan report which was intercepted indicates that because of
the imminent cold season, the partisans do not expect to be able to
hold out beyond the middle of November.
Actions for combatting sabotage followed the same lines as with the
cooperation in combatting partisans. For instance, on October 6, ten
people had to be shot in Slutsk, the population being informed thereof
by the following announcements:
"Notification: On October 6, 1941, ten people were shot in Slutsk
because a Wehrmacht telephone line was cut with the intent to commit
sabotage. Should further acts of sabotage of the same kind be committed,
twenty people will be shot in the future. The German Security Police."
4) During the time covered by this report, one of the main tasks
of the Einsatzgruppe was setting up the organization to secure information
from Petersburg. (1) In general, the information
is being collected in the following ways:
a) By Russian deserters (either caught by our own
Sonderkommandos or delivered by the fighting troops or local military
commanders;
b) By prisoners (methodical searches and clearing
of military prisoner-of-war camps; this way proved to be exceptionally
successful)
c) By dispatching our own agents (owing to the increasing
rigidity of the fronts and the development of stable lines with trenches,
entanglements and mine-fields, it is extremely difficult to get an
agent through the lines and back. Moreover, every reasonably healthy
man is being enlisted at once in the workers defense force in Petersburg.
At any rate, only agents with good Bolshevik identification papers
can be sent out).
Although our intelligence work originally aimed
at the collection of information concerning the general political
climate, the questions of general mood, supply conditions, important
persons and offices, from the outset information of a purely military
character was forwarded in great quantities. Therefore the military
circles were extremely interested in reports on the situation. In
some cases, this went so far that the results of our intelligence
service regarding military targets were being used by the HQ of the
10th Army for giving orders to the artillery. According to our investigations,
the targets of military and war-economic importance in Petersburg
tally with the statements of the Army, as laid down in the military-geographical
plan.
Source: The
Nizkor Project
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