Operation Barbarossa Anniversary Lecture
June 22, 1941 marked a significant turning point in World War II with the German invasion of the Soviet Union, codenamed “Operation Barbarossa.” On the 79th anniversary of the invasion, Dr. Nils Roemer explored the significance of this event and the role that it played in the escalation of the atrocities committed during the Holocaust.
At the beginning of his lecture, Dr. Roemer explained that, despite a prevailing assumption that the Holocaust arose from the euphoria of successful German conquest, it was actually the failure of the German Army to secure a swift victory against the Soviet Union that ultimately “shifted the decision-making process toward the Holocaust in the way it was conceived and in the way in which it was planned.”
The opening sequence of Operation Barbarossa, he said, is often seen as largely successful due to the early territorial gains of the Third Reich, but “there is something utterly misleading about viewing [it] in that way.”
While the initial military victories seemed to indicate success, Dr. Roemer suggested, the campaign against the Soviet Union had “failed within the first four weeks” and the initial territorial gains came at a tremendous cost.
It is when Hitler's Germany realized the likelihood of defeat, Dr. Roemer explained, that “the brutality against the Soviets descends very quickly… into what we could call genocide.” It is important to distinguish between the terms “genocide” and “Holocaust.” The violence the Germans unleashed upon the Soviets was initially limited to that geography with “no plan quite yet to include Paris or Amsterdam or Berlin or Vienna.”
Dr. Roemer pointed to Göring’s authorization of Heydrich to develop a “total solution of the Jewish question” in July of 1941 as perhaps one of the earliest indications that foreshadow the Holocaust.
Several other key events, occurring in September and October of 1941 further indicated the movement from genocide to the Holocaust: the decree requiring all Jews to wear a yellow star, Hitler’s authorization for the deportation of German Jews, and the ban on Jewish emigration. Additionally, though ultimately postponed until January 1942, the Wannsee Conference was originally scheduled for mid-September 1941. It is at this time, Dr. Roemer says, that “we see many of the building blocks [of the Holocaust] slowly coming together.” Indeed, “There is a chronology that seems to be constantly moving in the direction of radicalizing,” and Operation Barbarossa is “right in the middle of this chronology” Roemer concluded.
