Ostkrieg: Hitler's War of Extermination in the East

^{Himmler visiting a camp for Soviet prisoners of war, Minsk, Belorussia, August 1941. At roughly the same time as this visit, Himmler, acting on an order from Hitler, vastly expanded the killing operations in the east. NARA 242-HB-47721-306.}

^{Vitebsk: Transport of Soviet prisoners of war in an open rail car, 21 September 1941. In the winter of 1941–1942, this policy often resulted in large numbers of the prisoners freezing to death before arrival at the prison camps. BA Bild 101I-267-0124-20A.}

^{Two German soldiers before a burning building and a billowing cloud of flames, October 1941. BA Bild 101I-268-0154-11.}

^{The impact of weather and primitive Russian roads is clearly visible as a German vehicle attempts to negotiate a muddy road in a small village in the Moscow region, November 1941. BA Bild 183-B15500.}

^{The fierce snowstorms of Russia burdened both humans and animals, making movement virtually impossible. A German soldier urges on a horse pulling a panje wagon through deep snow, winter 1941–1942. BA Bild 101I-215-0366-03A.}

^{Hunger! Russian women carve a dead horse for food, February 1942. BA Bild 183-B15171.}

^{The fierce fighting of the winter is clearly evident from this photograph of the Kholm pocket, where Germans have stacked dead Red Army soldiers to form a protective wall, early 1942. BA Bild 101I-004-3633-30A.}

^{The spring rasputitsa turned western Russia into a sea of mud. A horse-drawn wagon struggles through deep mud near Kursk, March–April 1942. BA Bild 101I-289-1091-26.}

^{The lack of a quick victory and the need for workers forced the Germans to resort to foreign workers. Here we see the deportation of forced laborers for the German armaments industry, Artemovsk, Ukraine, May 1942. BA Bild 183-B19867.}

^{The decision to use Ostarbeiter in German industry doomed Jews to a different fate. Deportation of Jews to an extermination camp (probably summer 1942). BA Bild 183-68431-0005.1942.}

^{The second attempt at a blitzkrieg triumph. A panzer commander on the Don-Stalingrad front surveys the situation as his forces seem swallowed by the vastness of the steppe, July 1942. BA Bild 101I-218-0510-22.}

^{German infantry on the march in southern Russia, August–September 1942. BA Bild 101I-217-0465-36.}

^{Stalingrad: A German captain takes cover in the debris of the Barrikady artillery factory, October 1942. BA Bild 116-168-618.}

^{Stalingrad: The nerve-wracking nature of house-to-house fighting is illustrated as German soldiers with an MG 34 machine gun and rifles anxiously peer out the window of a building, autumn 1942. BA Bild 101I-617-2571-04.}

^{Stalingrad: German soldiers patrol in a destroyed industrial area, autumn 1942. BA Bild 116-1974-107-66.}

^{Stalingrad: The swastika flies bravely from the ruins of the department store in whose cellar Paulus had his headquarters, October 1942. BA Bild 183-B22531.}

^{Stalingrad: The face of an exhausted Landser after storming the Barrikady artillery factory, November 1942. BA Bild 183-R1222-501.}

^{Executed Soviet partisans, 20 January 1943. The sign at the top says, “We are bandits; we have not only murdered and plundered German soldiers but also Russian citizens.” The sign at the bottom reads, “Photography prohibited!” BA Bild 101I-031-2436-05A.}

^{The cruelty of the partisan war: Soldiers of the Ordnungspolizei (Order Police) throw grenades at a burning building in an antipartisan operation somewhere in the Soviet Union, probably spring 1943. BA Bild 146-1993-025-03.}

^{“Victory or Bolshevism,” February 1943. A poster designed to promote Goebbels’s total war effort. BA Plak 003-029-043.}

^{The German need for foreign workers was insatiable. Forced laborers being marched to a train station for transport to Germany, Jankovo, Soviet Union, March 1943. BA Bild 183-J22099.}

^{Hitler visits a tank factory to urge increased production, 5 April 1943. BA Bild 146-2007-0122.}

^{Kursk, Operation Citadeclass="underline" Pz. VI Tiger tank of the Waffen-SS in action, July 1943. BA Bild 101III-Groenert-019-23A.}

^{Scorched earth: A burning village in Russia, 10 January 1944. BA Bild 146-1971-059-20.}

^{Grinding defensive war: Three men of a tank destruction unit anxiously await a Soviet tank near Nevel, November–December 1943. BA Bild 146-1977-041-01.}

^{Retreat: German soldiers struggle along a muddy, snowy road in the southern Ukraine, early 1944. BA Bild 101I-711-0438-05A.}

^{Retreat: The Leningrad front between Lake Ilmen and Lake Peipus, February 1944. BA Bild 101I-725-0190-15.}

^{A lone German soldier with a hand grenade mans the front just before the start of Operation Bagration, 21 June 1944. BA Bild 101I-696-0442-29.}

^{Soldiers of the Grossdeutschland Division mount a counterattack from woods and a cornfield, mid-August 1944. BA Bild 183-J27512.}

^{Young men of the Reich Labor Service construct a protective wall in East Prussia, August 1944. BA Bild 183-J30355.}

^{The ravages of defeat: A refugee trek in East Prussia with a dead horse in the foreground, early 1945. BA Bild 146-1990-001-30.}

^{The last defense, Frankfurt (Oder): A Volkssturm unit occupies a defensive position on the Oder River, February 1945. BA Bild 183-J28787.}

^{The last gasp, Berlin: A woman being instructed in the use of a Panzerfaust antitank weapon, March 1945. BA Bild 146-1973-001-30.}

^{Nordhausen concentration camp (Mittelbau-Dora): Some of the hundreds of slave laborers who died building the V-2 rockets, 12 April 1945. NARA 111-SC-203456.}

^{The wages of total war, Berlin: Destruction at the Brandenburg Gate, early June 1945. BA Bild B145-P054320.}

Notes

1. Dilemma

1. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 21 June 1940, 420–24; Horne, To Lose a Battle, 646–47; Kershaw, Hitler: Nemesis, 298–99; TBJG, 22 June 1940.