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OPERATION BARBAROSSA AS GENOCIDAL WARFARE

André Mineau

After World War II, the Holocaust was not initially recognized as a single substantial event, formally distinct from war crimes or crimes against mankind as they had afflicted Eastern Europeans in general. In the fifties and early sixties, when awareness grew that the Jewish catastrophe could stand no comparison with any other case of criminality brought about by World War II, the Holocaust became increasingly portrayed as a genocide endowed with some uniqueness. Although I do not challenge this view, the fact remains that the Holocaust represented the actualization of an ideology that gave a global meaning to the war as a whole. For that reason, the Jewish catastrophe can be understood only in reference to the main sequences of events that made up World War II.1 The Holocaust took place as a consequence of a broad ideology or Weltanschauung that included an ontology based on fashionable biology, an anthropology that opposed higher-value people to lesser-value ones, and an ethic glorifying military virtues. This ideology posited the desirability of war for its own sake, as well as for the conquest and racial purification of Lebensraum (vital space). Its fulfillment required a war in the East and a war against the Jewish people at the same time. Logically, both wars were interconnected, as they happened to be also in the historical sequence of events that surrounded the invasion of the Soviet Union. In this sense, Operation Barbarossa did more than just provide a military context for the extermination of Jewry. And its scope as a genocidal undertaking extended beyond the Holocaust proper. This paper purports to explore the connections between the Holocaust and the more general aspects of the war in the East. More specifically, I will try to show how and to what extent the genocidal potential of World War II took shape in the context of Operation Barbarossa. I will argue that Oper- ation Barbarossa was a genocidal form of warfare, which represented in fact the war of the Holocaust. 1. Some Definitions: Genocides and Wars According to Guy Richard, genocide had been part of the human evolution, from pre-historical times to the contemporary era, even if the word “geno- 118 ANDRÉ MINEAU

cide” appeared in the wake of Nazism and World War II. Although the concept would apply only to the extermination of national, ethnic, racial, or religious groups, the reality of genocide under different forms had permeated history long before the Holocaust took place.2 According to its Latin roots, genocide refers to the killing of a whole people endowed with an identity of some sort, however defined. It entails that individuals will get killed because of their alleged membership in a group, and not for any reason connected with their individuality proper. In this sense, genocide consists in the intent- ional killing of a large number of people, because and only because they allegedly belong to a given group, targeted for elimination as a group. Strictly speaking, Operation Barbarossa was the code name given in December 1940 to a German operational plan for the invasion of the Soviet Union, to take place in the spring of 1941. It designated the military campaign that would be launched on 22 June 1941 against the territory of the Soviet Union by three German Army Groups heading for Leningrad, Moscow, and the Ukraine. It ended after the initially unforeseen encircle- ment operation against the Soviet forces in the Ukraine. It was superceded in October by a new operation called Typhoon, the objective of which was the seizure of Moscow. Both Barbarossa and Typhoon ended in the middle of December 1941, when the German offensive stalled in the Moscow area. I use “Operation Barbarossa” as a designation for the whole war against the Soviet Union, because that war has no name. The Soviets called it the “Great Patriotic War,” but they were alone in using that expression, which was far from ideologically neutral. Western historians speak about war in the East, the Eastern front, etc., but this amounts to viewing it mostly as a part or an episode of World War II. These expressions overlook the singularity of that war against the Soviet Union, while emphasis must be put precisely on this singularity, in its connection with the accomplishment of Nazi ideology and with the Holocaust. Given the lack of a proper name, “Operation Barbarossa” has the merit to provide that war with an identity. The name “Barbarossa” had connotations in reference to the idea of conquest, to historical claims in the East, to the notion of crusade, and to a great warlord, at least in the minds of its designers. Besides, according to OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres or High Command of the Army) plans, war as such would have been over after the accomplishment of the plan. In this perspective, the expression can be extended to cover the initially unforeseen prolongation of the war. It may be a delicate matter to try to establish a formal distinction between warfare and genocide, since both phenomena kill large numbers of people. In a sense, a genocide is a kind of warfare against a given people, whereas acts of war usually result in the massive killing of people, whether they wear a uniform or not. But an essential difference lies beyond the level of similarities. In genocide, the killing of people is intentional and constit-