Abstract
This essay contributes to existing research on the Holocaust in the Soviet Union by reconstructing the initial crimes of an 18-man ethnic German (Volksdeutsche) militia (Selbstschutz) unit in Transnistria in southern Ukraine. Contextualising Volksdeutsche involvement in the Holocaust within the conflicting genocidal policies of the region’s Romanian and German administrators, it argues that the SS ordered local ethnic Germans to murder Jews because it lacked other manpower. The essay analyses an array of causal explanations for area ethnic German involvement in the Holocaust, including antisemitism and social-psychological factors, and concludes that the specific contours of local German policy provided the SS with exceptional leverage over area Volksdeutsche to pressure them to participate in the Holocaust.
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