About two weeks before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht high command (OKW) issued the Kommissarbefehl, the "Commissar Order." The order was consistent with the NazisΓÇÖ ideological perception of the invasion of the USSR as an action meant to liquidate Bolshevism by physically eliminating all bearers of the idea and the Soviet State apparatus. Thus, in contravention of international law, the order stipulated:
...If captured during combat or while offering resistance, [these commissars] must on principle be shot immediately.... As for the others, the following rules shall apply: Even if they are only suspected of resistance, sabotage, or instigation thereto... protection granted to prisoners of war... will not apply to them. After having been segregated they are to be liquidated.
The Commissar Order, signed by General Walter Warlimont and approved by the OKW Chief of Staff, General Wilhelm Keitel, directly implicated the German army in involvement in, and responsibility for, war crimes in the occupied territories. In the summer of 1941, Keitel had all copies of the Commissar Order destroyed, in order to remove evidence of the armyΓÇÖs crimes.
