Nicolas Cinquini

clue: the same army has performed 80% of all German military losses during WW2

Nohra, in Thüringen, was the first Konzentrationslager [Concentration Camp], opened on March 3, 1933. Arrested and detained without trial, its inmates were political enemies of the Nazi regime: German communist militants. While the concentration camp system was developing, other enemies, like for example unemployed citizens, were interned. Mass assassination of prisoners started in April 1941, under Schutzstaffel‘s [Protection Squadron, SS] absolute power

The Nazi invasion of Soviet Union began on June 22, 1941. On the heels of European fascist armies from Germany, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Spain, France… etc, SS formations, the Einsatzgruppen [Intervention Groups], were in charge of the mass killing of Jewish civilians

Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker (1900-1942) was leader of the Einsatzgruppe A, which was operating in Baltic countries. Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942) was heading the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), command of the German police and intelligence

Here is the summary that the first addressed to the latter on January 31, 1942. More than 215,000 Jewish civilians had already been murdered, with the assistance of local nationalist militants in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine

In accordance with orders from Adolf Hitler, Heydrich chaired a meeting in Wannsee, on January 20, 1942. Its purpose was the organization of the Endlösung der Judenfrage [final solution to the Jewish question]

Besides forced labor for the sake of the German industry, the concentration camp system became a tool of genocide

The victims of Nazi racist persecutions were notably

• 6 million Jews,
• 4.5 million other Soviet civilians,
• 3.3 million other Soviet service members,
• 1.8 million other Poles,
• between 250,000 and 500,000 Gypsies,
• 310,000 other Serbs

After 1943 Soviet victories in Leningrad, Stalingrad and Kursk, offensive Bagration began on June 22, 1944, destroyed in Belarus the 850,000-strong Nazi Heeresgruppe Mitte [Army Group Center]. The Red Army reached and liberated in Poland, on January 27, 1945, the main concentration camp complex, which was including Monowitz Zwangsarbeitslager [Forced Labor Camp, for the sake of IG Farben chemical firm], Auschwitz and Birkenau Vernichtungslager [Extermination Camps]

related

January 27, 2023: Never Forget the Soviet Heroes Who Liberated Auschwitz – Scott Ritter, Sputnik