Richard Rhodes is a winner of the Pulitzer Prize and has written both fiction and non-fiction, on topics as diverse as the Donner Party, the invention of the Atom Bomb and the Audubon Society.  In this work, he traces how the Einsatzgruppen were organized, their scope of activity, their relationship with the Wehrmacht and the impact of mass killings on the individuals within the units.

Originally deployed in Poland at the start of the war, their primary directive was the murder of the leaders of Polish society; lawyers, doctors, educators, political leaders, etc. as the conqueror Poles were destined to be a source of ignorant slave laborers who did not need to count much above 100 in their future live.  The “special action groups” also targeted any Poles who offered any resistance either real or imagined.  At the same time, they went after suspected communists and finally, the Jews of Poland.  As the original plan was to move the Jews out of Europe, the concept of committing mass murder of the Jews was not in their primary list of objectives.  Yet once the killing began, and they were under the protection of SS-Reichsfuehrer Himmler, their murderous campaign quickly expanded.