Commissar Order
The Commissar Order had its roots in a speech. On the 30th of March 1941, Adolf Hitler addressed more than 200 senior officers in the Reich Chancellery. He told them the coming war against the Soviet Union could not be conducted in what he called a "knightly fashion." Commissars had to be "liquidated" without mercy. They were, he declared, the "bearers of ideologies directly opposed to National Socialism." The order that followed was formally issued by the German High Command on the 6th of June 1941. Its official name was the Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars. It required that any Soviet political commissar captured by German forces be executed immediately. No hearing, no prisoner-of-war camp, no appeal. How did an order that its own authors knew was illegal reach the hands of hundreds of thousands of soldiers? And when those soldiers returned home from the East, how did they answer for what they had done?
Planning for Operation Barbarossa began in June 1940, more than a year before German forces crossed into Soviet territory. By that point, the Wehrmacht had already been drawn into deliberate political violence. German forces had participated in the extra-legal killings of Ernst Rohm and his associates in 1934. They had killed communists in the Sudetenland in 1938. They had killed Czech and German political exiles in France in 1940.
In December 1940, Hitler began making vague allusions to senior generals about how the eastern war would be conducted. He was probing their reactions to matters such as collaborating with the SS in the "rendering harmless" of Bolsheviks. Those conversations culminated in Fuhrer Directive 21, signed on the 18th of December 1940. On the 3rd of March 1941, Hitler laid out the vision more directly to his senior military advisers. He explained how the war of annihilation in the East was to be waged. That same day, written instructions incorporating his demands went to Section L of the German High Command, under Deputy Chief Walter Warlimont. Those instructions formed the basis of a document called the "Guidelines in Special Areas to Instructions No. 21." It addressed, among other matters, the "need to neutralise at once leading bolsheviks and commissars."
On the 17th of March 1941, a situation conference convened at the German High Command. Franz Halder, the Chief of the OKH General Staff, was present alongside Quartermaster-General Eduard Wagner and Adolf Heusinger, Chief of Operational Department. Hitler declared that "the intelligentsia established by Stalin must be exterminated." He added that "the most brutal violence is to be used in the Great Russian Empire." Halder recorded both statements in his war diary that same day. The demands Hitler was building over those months were not just strategic. They also required a legal fiction to justify them.
Hitler knew that the Commissar Order violated international law prohibiting extra-judicial executions and other atrocities in wartime. He chose to act anyway, and offered those around him a legal argument. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907, he claimed, did not apply to the coming war. His reasoning: the Soviet Union had not signed them. The argument was legally specious. As a distinct entity from the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union had indeed not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929. But Germany had. Article 82 of that convention was direct: if one belligerent was not a party to the convention, its provisions remained in force among those who were. Germany's obligation held regardless of the Soviet position.
Hitler went further. He stipulated the "annihilation of the Bolshevist commissars and the Communist intelligentsia." He dismissed the idea of courts-martial for felonies committed by German troops in the East. And he made a personal declaration: any soldier or officer who violated international law while enforcing the order would be absolved in advance. Even writing those demands into an official document would prove more complicated than Hitler had anticipated.
General Eugen Muller issued the first draft of the Commissar Order on the 6th of May 1941. It called for the shooting of all commissars, so that none would be allowed to reach a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany. From the start, the men involved understood exactly what they were doing. German historian Hans-Adolf Jacobsen wrote that there had never been any doubt among German Army commanders that the order deliberately flouted international law. He cited as evidence the unusually small number of written copies of the Kommissarbefehl that were distributed.
Muller's draft had included a paragraph calling on commanders to prevent "excesses." The OKW had that paragraph removed. Army Commander-in-Chief Walther von Brauchitsch then stepped in. On the 24th of May 1941, he amended the order by reattaching Muller's paragraph and calling on the army to maintain discipline in enforcement. The final draft was issued by the OKW on the 6th of June 1941. It went only to the most senior commanders. They were told to pass its contents to their subordinates verbally, not in writing. The violence the order demanded did not arrive in a vacuum.
Nazi propaganda framed Operation Barbarossa as an ideological and racial conflict between German National Socialism and "Judeo-Bolshevism." Soviet soldiers were dehumanised in official language as Slavic Untermenschen, a word meaning sub-humans. They were also branded as "Asiatic" savages engaging in "barbaric Asiatic fighting methods." Commissars were depicted as Jewish figures commanding these forces, and German troops were told to grant them no mercy. The vast majority of Wehrmacht officers and soldiers accepted this framing. They regarded the war in Nazi terms, seeing their Soviet opponents as sub-human.
The Commissar Order's reach went beyond commissars with a formal title. It directed that any prisoner who could be identified as "thoroughly bolshevised or as active representatives of the Bolshevist ideology" should also be killed. The definition was inherently broad. Soldiers in the field could apply it as widely as circumstances allowed. The Commissar Order was one of a series of criminal orders issued by the Nazi leadership.
Jurgen Forster wrote in 1989 that it was simply not true that the Commissar Order went unenforced. The majority of German units carried it out. The enforcement of the order led to thousands of executions.
Erich von Manstein stands as the clearest documented example. Manstein passed the Commissar Order to his subordinates, who then executed every captured commissar under their control. A British court convicted him of this in 1949. After the war, Manstein told a different story. He claimed he had opposed the order and never enforced it. That was a lie, and the evidence from his own units contradicted him.
Manstein was not alone in that denial. German Army commanders broadly claimed in their post-war memoirs that they had refused to carry out the Commissar Order. Forster noted that some German historians, including Ernst Nolte, were still repeating those claims into the 1980s. On the 23rd of September 1941, Hitler had already made clear that no modification would be permitted. Several Wehrmacht commanders had asked him to soften the order, hoping it might encourage Red Army soldiers to surrender. Hitler declined any such change to the existing orders regarding the treatment of political commissars. The order's cancellation, when it finally came, was driven not by conscience but by calculation.
When the Commissar Order became known among Red Army soldiers, it had an effect no one in the German command had intended. It provoked stronger resistance. Soviet soldiers who understood that surrender meant execution had powerful reasons to keep fighting. Claus von Stauffenberg was among those who cited this unwanted consequence in appeals to Hitler. Hitler cancelled the Commissar Order on the 6th of May 1942, one year after Eugen Muller had produced its first draft.
The Commissar Order did not disappear quietly from history. At the Nuremberg trials, it was used as evidence against the surviving commanders. The proceedings examined whether German generals were obligated to follow Hitler's orders even when they knew those orders to be illegal. The men who had transmitted the Commissar Order down through the ranks, and then claimed they had not, faced that question directly. Whether an order known to be illegal still had to be obeyed was the question Nuremberg pressed them to answer.
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Common questions
What was the Commissar Order and what did it require?
The Commissar Order, officially titled the Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars, was issued by the German High Command on the 6th of June 1941. It required that any Soviet political commissar captured by German forces be executed immediately, with no legal process, trial, or prisoner-of-war protections. Hitler had laid the ideological groundwork for the order in a series of addresses to senior officers in early 1941.
Did German soldiers and commanders actually carry out the Commissar Order?
German historian Jurgen Forster established in 1989 that the Commissar Order was widely enforced, contradicting post-war claims by German Army commanders. The majority of German units carried out the order, and its enforcement led to thousands of executions.
What role did Erich von Manstein play in the Commissar Order?
Erich von Manstein passed the Commissar Order to his subordinates, who executed every captured commissar under their control. A British court convicted him of this in 1949. After the war, Manstein falsely claimed he had opposed the order and never enforced it.
How did Hitler argue the Commissar Order did not violate international law?
Hitler claimed the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 did not apply because the Soviet Union had not signed them. The argument was legally unfounded. Germany had signed the Geneva Convention of 1929, and Article 82 of that convention stated that its provisions remained binding on belligerents who were parties to it, regardless of whether the opposing side had signed.
When was the Commissar Order cancelled and why?
Hitler cancelled the Commissar Order on the 6th of May 1942, one year after General Eugen Muller had drafted its first written version. The cancellation was prompted by an unintended effect: when Red Army soldiers learned that capture meant execution, they fought harder rather than surrender. Claus von Stauffenberg was among those who cited this consequence in appeals to Hitler.
How was the Commissar Order used at the Nuremberg trials?
The Commissar Order was entered as evidence at the Nuremberg trials. It was central to the broader question of whether German generals were legally obligated to follow Hitler's orders even when they knew those orders to be illegal.
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