“In the meantime, I have also set up the office of the chief of the anti-partisan units. Our comrade SS Obergruppenführer Von dem Bach is chief of the anti-partisan units. I considered it necessary for the Reichsführer SS to be in authoritative command in all these battles, for I am convinced that we are best in position to take action against this enemy struggle, which is decidedly a political one. Except where units which had been supplied and which we had formed for this purpose were taken from us to fill in gaps at the front, we have been very successful.
“It is notable that by setting up this agency by division, corps, army in turn, we have gained for the SS the next higher step—which is the High Command of an army or even a group, if you wish to call it that.”
What the SS did with its divisions, corps, and army out of which the anti-partisan units were formed, is illustrated in the reports rendered as to the activities of such units. I offer in evidence the Activity and Situation Report 6 of the task forces of the Security Police and SD in the U.S.S.R., covering the period from the 1st to the 31st of October 1941. It is our Document R-102, and will be found in Volume 2 of the document book. It is Exhibit Number USA-470. The report shows that so-called “anti-partisan” activity was actually nothing but a name for extermination of persons believed politically undesirable and of Jews. The report is a very carefully organized and detailed description of such extermination. Section I describes the stations of the various task forces involved, Section II their activities. The latter section is divided into parts, each dealing with a different geographical region—the Baltic area, White Ruthenia, and the Ukraine.
Under each area the report of activities is classified under three headings: (a) Partisan activity and counteraction, (b) arrests and execution of Communists and officials, and (c) Jews. I shall read only a few typical paragraphs selected almost at random.
First, to show the units involved, I quote the second and third paragraphs of Page 4 of the translation, which also appear on Page 1 of the original:
“The present stations are:
“Task Force A, since 7 October 1941 Krasnowardeisk; Task Force B, continues in Smolensk; Task Force C, since 27 September 1941 in Kiev; Task Force D, since 27 September 1941 in Nikolaiev.