War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939

Jürgen Matthäus is director of the Applied Research Division at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Jochen Böhler is a research fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg at Jena University, Germany. Klaus-Michael Mallmann is director of the Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg at the Universität Stuttgart, Germany.

• Part I: IntroductionThe Einsatzgruppen and the Sources Documenting Their ActionsPreparing for the War on PolandPersonnel and TasksEscalating ViolencePart II: Documents and ContextDirectives and Initial ActionsExpanding the Scope of ViolencePersecuting JewsEstablishing Long-Term RuleAfterword: Poland, 1939–Soviet Union, 1941. Einsatzgruppen Actions in Comparison

This impressive series provides a sense of the depth and diversity of contemporary Jewish documents while embedding them in explanatory narratives. . . .Underscoring this point [how ‘unprecedented’ the nature of Nazi actions in Poland was even prior to the launching of comprehensive genocide] is one of the chief purposes of War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939, one of the stand-alone volumes in the series, ‘the first comprehensive English-language edition documenting and annotating Einsatzgruppen activities against the background of war and Nazi racial policy in Poland in 1939.’