Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia was a " criminal order" issued on June 4th, 1941, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. The guidelines detailed the expected behaviour of German troops during the

Invasion of the Soviet Union Operation Barbarossa (german: link=no, Unternehmen Barbarossa; ) was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during the Second World War. The operation, code-named afte ...

. Civilians were included as opposition groups. The order states "Bolshevism is the deadly enemy of the National Socialist German people. This corrosive ''

Weltanschauung A worldview or world-view or ''Weltanschauung'' is the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and point of view. A worldview can include natural ...

'' – and those who support it – are what Germany’s struggle is against. This struggle demands a ruthless and strenuous crackdown on Bolshevik agitators, irregulars, saboteurs and Jews, and the complete elimination of both active and passive resistance. The Asiatic soldiers, in particular, are inscrutable, unpredictable, underhand and unfeeling".

Omer Bartov Omer Bartov (Hebrew: עֹמֶר בַּרְטוֹב; pronounced .html" ;"title="�oˈmer ˈbartov/nowiki>">�oˈmer ˈbartov/nowiki>; born 1954) is the John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History and Professor of History and Profe ...

writes that the Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia detailed "ruthless measures against Bolshevik agitators, guerrillas, saboteurs and Jews, and called for the complete elimination of any active or passive resistance". Wade Beorn writing in ''

Marching into Darkness ''Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus'' is a book by the American historian Waitman Wade Beorn, published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. It discusses the participation of the German ''Wehrmacht'' in the Holo ...

'' notes that the order targets Jews explicitly as "racial enemies to be eliminated by the military regardless of their behavior".

References

Bibliography

* * * {{Cite book , last=Beorn , first=Waitman , year=2014 , title=Marching into Darkness , title-link=Marching into Darkness , location=London, UK , publisher=Harvard University Press , isbn=978-0-674-72550-8 Military history of Germany during World War II Military history of the Soviet Union during World War II Eastern Front (World War II) Orders by Adolf Hitler Nazi war crimes War crimes of the Wehrmacht Anti-communism in Germany 1941 documents Nazi war crimes in Russia