Commissar Order

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The Commissar Order (German: Kommissarbefehl) was a written order given by Adolf Hitler on 6 June 1941, prior to Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars. It demanded that any Soviet political officer identified among captured troops be shot immediately.

Field Marshal von Manstein in his memoirs, while acknowledging that he gave his written assent to the order, states that he, along with some other field commanders, instructed the units under his command not to follow it, despite the prevailing opinion among the German officer corps that the commissars were not regular officers, but a kind of bolshevik war criminal.

When the commissar order became known among the Red Army, it boosted morale and delayed or prohibited surrender to the Wehrmacht. This unwanted effect was cited in German appeals to Hitler who finally cancelled the commissar order after one year, on 6 May 1942. (Jacobsen p. 184)

[edit] References

Hans–Adolf Jacobsen, Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener, in: Anatomie des SS–Staates, hg. v. H. Buchheim, M. Broszat, H.A. Jacobsen, H. Krausnick, Bd. II, Freiburg 1965, S. 163–283.