Reichenau Order
라이헤나우 명령
The order "Conduct of the Troops in the Eastern Territories" issued on 10 October 1941 by Field Marshal Walter von Reichenau, commander of the German Sixth Army. It defined the soldier in the East as the bearer of a merciless racial idea and an avenger, and said soldiers must understand the need for harsh atonement from "Jewish subhumanity". Hitler called it excellent, and other commanders issued orders modelled on it.
In depth
After more than 33,000 Jews were murdered at Babi Yar near Kyiv on 29–30 September 1941 with the participation of the Wehrmacht, signs of discontent appeared in Sixth Army units. The historian A. M. Ermakov sees the order as Reichenau's response. It declared that the aim of the campaign against the "Jewish-Bolshevik system" was the complete destruction of its instruments of power, and that uprisings behind the German lines, always instigated by Jews, had to be crushed at the outset. The order was passed down to company level and read out to the troops.
Gerd von Rundstedt, commanding Army Group South, circulated it to his subordinate formations. When Hitler called it excellent and told every army commander on the Eastern Front to follow Reichenau's example, the army commander-in-chief Walther von Brauchitsch asked army commanders to issue similar orders. In November Erich von Manstein (20 November), Hermann Hoth, Ernst Busch and Karl Kitzinger signed orders on the treatment of Jews. Some generals, such as Eberhard von Mackensen of the III Motorised Corps on 24 November, told their troops to treat the population decently, but Ermakov stresses that the legal basis of the Wehrmacht's occupation policy was laid not by such exceptions but by the orders of commanders like Keitel, Brauchitsch, Reichenau, Manstein and Hoth.