Abstract
Abstract The mobile paramilitary units known as Einsatzgruppen murdered between one and two million Soviet Jewish and non-Jewish civilians under Nazi occupation. Contemporary and postwar documentation reveals that the units lumped together members of Germany’s various party and state security organizations, who, despite the common image of the Nazi “murder machine,” did not always work in complete collaboration. The article follows Einsatzkommando 12, a subunit of Einsatzgruppe D, which perpetrated executions in the southern regions of present-day Ukraine and Russia. Former members’ postwar interrogations reconstruct the unit’s professional hierarchies, operational structures, and job allocations. The article integrates historical works on SS values and organizational culture with findings in social psychology to explain how the Einsatzgruppen shaped peer group relations, cohesion, and comradeship to enhance members’ compliance with mass murder.
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