Mass Violence in the Pripet Marshes

Abstract

With the start of their mission in Belorussia, the SS cavalrymen underwent another phase of radicalisation: from executions of small groups of people, the units went over to acts of mass violence with thousands of victims. The ideological role continued to dominate the military aspect, as only a small number of soldiers from the 1^st Regiment had seen action near Bialystok, whereas for the vast majority of the men, deployment in the Soviet Union began with killings of innocent people. This did not change until late 1941, with the exception of occasional skirmishes with Red Army stragglers and an encounter at Turov in August. It has to be noted that an intensification of violence was witnessed by many German soldiers both at the front and in the hinterland; the two SS cavalry regiments, however, soon carried out a murderous campaign that can only be compared to that of units which were deployed for that purpose only, namely the police battalions of the order police and the Einsatzgruppen of the SS. What set the brigade apart from these killing squads was an institutional brutalisation from above: the issuing of radical orders by Heinrich Himmler triggered a new dynamic of violence as Hermann Fegelein and his officers adjusted their instructions to the point of complete annihilation of those defined as enemies by National Socialist ideology.