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The criminal orders issued in the months prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union starkly reveal not only the murderous intentions of the Nazi regime but also the deep complicity of the military leadership in the planned campaign of racial annihilation of Jews and ‘asiatic elements’.8 While many Wehrmacht officers had been critical of the terror and killing operations of the Einsatzgruppen in Poland in 1939 and had sought to distance the army from such atrocities, by 1941 such scruples had largely disappeared. This may be explained in part as a result of the series of German victories up to mid-1941 which weakened opposition to Hitler within the military and bound the officer corps more closely to its seemingly invincible commander-in-chief.9 There was thus a firm ideological consensus which made the military willing to cooperate unreservedly in planning and executing a war of annihilation against the Soviet Union. A clear example of this is provided by Field Marshall Reichenau's order of 10 October 1941 for the conduct of the troops in the Eastern region:

The essential aim of the campaign against the Jewish- Bolshevist system is the complete crushing of its means of power and the extermination of Asiatic influence in the European cultural region. This poses tasks for the troops which go beyond the one-sided routine of conventional soldiering.10

Reichenau's order was passed on to troops along the entire Eastern front.11