Barbarossa decree

[1] The decree, issued by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel a few weeks before Barbarossa, exempted punishable offences committed by enemy civilians (in Russia) from the jurisdiction of military justice.

[7]As a result of this sort of propaganda, the majority of Heer officers and soldiers tended to regard the war less strategically and more in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as nothing but sub-human trash deserving to be trampled upon.

[4] One German soldier wrote home to his father on August 4, 1941 that: The pitiful hordes on the other side are nothing but felons who are driven by alcohol and the [commissars'] threat of pistols at their heads ...

[5] The Wehrmacht did not just obey Hitler's criminal orders for Barbarossa because of obedience to him, but also because they truly believed the Nazis' propaganda that the Soviet Union was run by Jews, and that it was necessary for Germany to completely destroy "Judeo-Bolshevism".

The "Guidelines for the Conduct of the Troops in Russia" issued by the OKW on May 19, 1941 declared "Judeo-Bolshevism" to be the most deadly enemy of the German nation, and that "It is against this destructive ideology and its adherents that Germany is waging war".

[13] The guidelines went on to demand "ruthless and vigorous measures against Bolshevik inciters, guerrillas, saboteurs, Jews, and the complete elimination of all active and passive resistance.

"[13] Influenced by the guidelines, in a directive sent out to the troops under his command, General Erich Hoepner of the 4th Panzer Group stated: The war against Russia is an important chapter in the German nation's struggle for existence.

[15] The Army's Chief of Staff, General Franz Halder, declared in a directive that in the event of guerrilla attacks, German troops were to impose "collective measures of force" by massacring villages.

[12] On May 24, 1941, Field Marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, the head of the German Army High Command (Oberkommando des Heeres – OKH), slightly modified the assumptions of the "Barbarossa Jurisdiction."

[1] As part of the policy of harshness towards Slavic "sub-humans" and to prevent any tendency towards seeing the enemy as human, German troops were ordered to go out of their way to mistreat women and children in the Soviet Union.

[16] In October 1941, the commander of the 12th Infantry Division sent out a directive saying "the carrying of information is mostly done by youngsters in the ages of 11–14" and that "as the Russian is more afraid of the truncheon than of weapons, flogging is the most advisable measure for interrogation".

[19] A decree ordered on 20 February 1942 declared that sexual intercourse between a German woman and a Russian worker or prisoner of war would result in the latter being punished by the death penalty.