Editing Operation Barbarossa (section)

===War crimes===
{{Main|Einsatzgruppen|German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war|The Holocaust in Russia|War crimes of the Wehrmacht}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 146-1972-026-43, Minsk, Widerstandskämpfer vor Hinrichtung.jpg|thumb|right|[[Masha Bruskina]], a nurse with the [[Soviet partisans|Soviet resistance]], before her execution by hanging. The placard reads: ''We are the partisans who shot German troops'', [[Minsk]], 26 October 1941.]]
While the Soviet Union had not signed the Geneva Convention, Germany had signed the treaty and was thus obligated to offer Soviet POWs humane treatment according to its provisions (as they generally did with other Allied POWs).{{sfn|Bellamy|2007|pp=16, 20–23}} According to the Soviets, they had not signed the Geneva Conventions in 1929 due to Article 9 which, by imposing [[racial segregation]] of POWs into different camps, contravened the Soviet constitution.{{sfn|Bellamy|2007|p=20}} Article 82 of the convention specified that "In case, in time of war, one of the belligerents is not a party to the Convention, its provisions shall nevertheless remain in force as between the belligerents who are parties thereto."{{sfn|Geneva Convention, Article 82}} Despite such mandates, Hitler called for the battle against the Soviet Union to be a "struggle for existence" and emphasized that the Soviet armies were to be "[[war of annihilation|annihilated]]", a mindset that contributed to [[German atrocities committed against Soviet prisoners of war|war crimes against Soviet prisoners of war]].{{sfn|Kershaw|2001|pp=355–389}} A memorandum from 16 July 1941, recorded by [[Martin Bormann]], quotes Hitler saying, "The giant [occupied] area must naturally be pacified as quickly as possible; this will happen at best if anyone who just looks funny should be shot".{{sfn|Browning|1998|p=10}}{{sfn|Förster|1988|p=31}} Conveniently for Germany, the fact that the Soviets failed to sign the convention played into their hands as they justified their behavior accordingly. Even if the Soviets had signed, it is highly unlikely that this would have stopped the Nazis' [[genocidal]] policies towards combatants, civilians, and prisoners of war.{{sfn|Bellamy|2007|pp=20–21}}

[[File:Himmler besichtigt die Gefangenenlager in Russland. Heinrich Himmler inspects a prisoner of war camp in Russia, circa... - NARA - 540164.jpg|thumb|left|Himmler inspecting a prisoner of war camp]]

Before the war, Hitler had issued the notorious Commissar Order, which called for all Soviet political commissars taken prisoner at the front to be [[Summary execution|shot immediately without trial]].{{sfn|Kershaw|2001|pp=357–359}} German soldiers participated in these mass killings along with members of the {{lang|de|SS-Einsatzgruppen}}, sometimes reluctantly, claiming "military necessity".{{sfn|Wette|2007|pp=198–199}}{{sfn|Förster|1998|pp=507–513}} On the eve of the invasion, German soldiers were informed that their battle "demands ruthless and vigorous measures against Bolshevik inciters, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews and the complete elimination of all active and passive resistance". Collective punishment was authorised against partisan attacks; if a perpetrator could not be quickly identified, burning villages and mass executions were considered acceptable reprisals.{{sfn|Förster|1988|p=26}} Although the majority of German soldiers accepted these crimes as justified due to Nazi propaganda, which depicted the Red Army as {{lang|de|Untermenschen}}, a few prominent German officers openly protested against them.{{sfn|Ueberschär|Müller|2008|p=246}} An estimated two million Soviet [[prisoner of war|prisoners of war]] died of starvation during Barbarossa alone.{{sfn|Hartmann|2013|pp=89–94}} By the end of the war, 58 percent of all Soviet prisoners of war had died in German captivity.{{sfn|Glantz|2011|p=48}}

Organised crimes against civilians, including women and children, were carried out on a huge scale by the German police and military forces, as well as the [[Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy|local collaborators]].{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|pp=56–57}}{{sfn|Browning|1998|pp=10–12}} Under the command of the Reich Security Main Office, the {{lang|de|Einsatzgruppen}} killing squads conducted large-scale [[massacre]]s of Jews and [[Communism|communists]] in conquered Soviet territories. [[Holocaust]] historian [[Raul Hilberg]] puts the number of Jews murdered by "mobile killing operations" at 1,400,000.{{sfn|Hilberg|1961|p=767}} The original instructions to kill "Jews in party and state positions" were broadened to include "all male Jews of [[Military-age male|military age]]" and then expanded once more to "all male Jews regardless of age". By the end of July, the Germans were regularly killing women and children.{{sfn|Beevor|2012|p=213}} On 18 December 1941, Himmler and Hitler discussed the "Jewish question", and Himmler noted the meeting's result in his appointment book: "To be annihilated as partisans". According to [[Christopher Browning]], "annihilating Jews and solving the so-called 'Jewish question' under the cover of killing partisans was the agreed-upon convention between Hitler and Himmler".{{sfn|Browning|2000}} In accordance with Nazi policies against "inferior" Asian peoples, [[Turkmens]] were also persecuted. According to a post-war report by Prince Veli Kajum Khan, they were imprisoned in concentration camps in terrible conditions, where those deemed to have "Mongolian" features were murdered daily. Asians were also targeted by the {{lang|de|Einsatzgruppen}} and were the subjects of lethal medical experiments and murder at a "pathological institute" in Kiev.{{sfn|Breitman|1990|pp=341–343}} Hitler received reports of the mass killings conducted by the {{lang|de|Einsatzgruppen}} which were first conveyed to the RSHA, where they were aggregated into a summary report by [[Gestapo]] Chief [[Heinrich Müller (Gestapo)|Heinrich Müller]].{{sfn|Langerbein|2003|pp=33–34}}
[[File:Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-212-0212A-19, Russland, SS-Brigdeführer und Erich Hoepner.jpg|thumb|upright|General [[Erich Hoepner]] (right) with commander of [[SS Polizei Division]], [[Walter Krüger (SS general)|Walter Krüger]], in October 1941]]

Burning houses suspected of being partisan meeting places and poisoning water wells became common practice for soldiers of the German [[9th Army (Wehrmacht)|9th Army]]. At Kharkov, the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, food was provided only to the small number of civilians who worked for the Germans, with the rest designated to slowly starve.{{sfn|Moskoff|2002|pp=54–57}} Thousands of Soviets were deported to Germany for use as slave labour beginning in 1942.{{sfn|Glantz|House|1995|p=57}}

The citizens of Leningrad were subjected to heavy bombardment and a siege that would last 872 days and starve more than a million people to death, of whom approximately 400,000 were children below the age of 14.{{sfn|''Siege of Leningrad''|2011}}{{sfn|Miller|Commager|2001|p=69}}{{sfn|Beevor|2012|p=289}} The German-Finnish blockade cut off access to food, fuel and raw materials, and rations reached a low, for the non-working population, of {{convert|4|oz}} (five thin slices) of bread and a little watery soup per day.{{sfn|Miller|Commager|2001|p=68}} Starving Soviet civilians began to eat their domestic animals, along with hair tonic and [[Vaseline]]. Some desperate citizens resorted to cannibalism; Soviet records list 2,000 people arrested for "the use of human meat as food" during the siege, 886 of them during the first winter of 1941–42.{{sfn|Beevor|2012|p=289}} The ''Wehrmacht'' planned to seal off Leningrad, starve out the population, and then demolish the city entirely.{{sfn|Beevor|2012|p=204}}

====Sexual violence====
{{see also|Wartime sexual violence#World War II|War crimes of the Wehrmacht}}
Rape was a widespread phenomenon in the East as German soldiers regularly committed violent sexual acts against Soviet women.{{sfn|Mühlhäuser|2010|p=74}} Whole units were occasionally involved in the crime with upwards of one-third of the instances being [[gang rape]].{{sfn|Shepherd|2016|p=285}} Historian [[Hannes Heer]] relates that in the world of the eastern front, where the German army equated Russia with Communism, everything was "fair game"; thus, rape went unreported unless entire units were involved.{{sfn|Heer|2000|p=110}} Such instances of sexual violence proved part of a wider pattern of racial and gendered terror. Jewish women and girls, in particular, were subject to rape and other abuses by Wehrmacht, SS, police units, and occupation authorities. These crimes were rarely punished, creating a permissive environment where sexual violence became a normalized element of genocidal operations. Historian Regina Mühlhäuser's findings underscore the systematic nature of these crimes and the complicity of regular soldiers.{{sfn|Mühlhäuser|2014|pp=133–137}}

Frequently in the case of Jewish women, they were murdered immediately after acts of sexual violence.{{sfn|Mühlhäuser|2010|p=134}} Historian Birgit Beck emphasizes that military decrees, which served to authorise wholesale brutality on many levels, essentially destroyed the basis for any prosecution of sexual offenses committed by German soldiers in the East.{{sfn|Beck|2004|p=327}} She also contends that detection of such instances was limited by the fact that sexual violence was often inflicted in the context of [[billet]]s in civilian housing.{{sfn|Beck|2004|p=328}}