The professional army general at Babi Yar

The largest mass shooting murder of all time in one location was committed here in Kyiv, on 29 – 30 September 1941. This is what the Babi Yar gorge looks like today but it looked very different in 1941. The topography changed completely after the massacre when Wehrmacht engineers blew up the walls of the ravine to hide the bodies. In 1943, the bodies were dug up and burned, then after the war there was a flood and then redevelopment. Nonetheless, one can still find the remains of a ravine on the site. 33,771 people were collected and murdered here in the space of less than 36 hours in the last two days of September 1941. What may be surprising is that the person responsible for this killing was not a hard core Nazi racist but a 67 year old professional army officer brought out of retirement, Major General Kurt Eberhard.

Kurt Eberhard was born on 12 September 1874 in Rottweil. With the outbreak of the First World War , Eberhard was deployed on the Eastern Front . After being promoted to Major on 27 January 1915, he was given command of the 2nd Division of the regiment from 4 September 1916 . On 10 April 1918, he was appointed commander of Field Artillery Regiment No. 501, with which he served on the western front . After the end of the war he led the regiment back home, where it was demobilized in Minden on 21 December 1918 and finally dissolved in June 1919.

Eberhard was accepted into the Provisional Reichswehr and was initially employed from 1 July 1919 to 1 October 1920 as commander of the Fifth Reichswehr Artillery Regiment. Eberhard was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel on 18 October 1920 and took command of the II. (Baden) Division of the 5th Artillery Regiment in Ulm. He was appointed military commander of the city of Ulm on 1 April 1923 and promoted to colonel on 1 November 1923. On 31 March 1925 at the age of fifty, Eberhard was relieved of his duties and retired from active service whilst being promoted to major general .
The tradition of the German armed forces had been to be politically neutral. Soldiers did not have the right to vote in the Weimar Republic. However that changed. Hitler aimed to create what he would term a National Socialist army. It would seem that Eberhard came over to share this opinion. Eberhard did not join the National Socialist party until 1938 and received the party membership number 5,645,459 . On Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, 20 April 1939, the 64 year old Eberhard joined the SS membership number 323,045. He received the SS rank Standartenfuhrer – roughly equivalent of colonel which was lower than the military rank he held. The following year he was appointed SS-Oberfuhrer, an SS rank that had no army equivalent. On 9 November 1942 he was advanced another rank to Brigadefuhrer of the Allgemeine SS.
Shortly before the start of the Second World War, on 26 August 1939, the 65 year old Eberhard was reactivated into the army, however he did not get a field command. Eberhard was assigned to the staff of the commander of rear army area where he headed the organisation of artillery units on the east bank of the Rhine. The Eberhard Artillery Staff, as it was called following the custom of the time to use the commanding officer’s name, was dissolved on 7 July 1940 following the victory in France.
On 13 May 1941 he took over as commander of Feldkommandantur 195. The Feldkommandantur 195 (FK 195) was set up on 29 May 1941 in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia with a view of being deployed in the occupied Soviet Union. The staff was subordinated to the Commander of Army Group South. From this, the staff was deployed to the 454th Security Division in Kyiv. Eberhard was appointed city commander in Kiev on 26 September 1941 and the staff was reorganized into the Kyiv City Command on 6 October 1941.
Kiev had been captured only a few days earlier in what in my opinion was the greatest military victory of all time – 650,000 Soviet prisoners were taken in a huge enveloping action. The army was followed on 19 September 1941 by an advance detachment of the SK 4a, led by the two Obersturmfuhrers August Häfner and Adolf Janssen, demonstrating that the plan was to kill the Jews of the city very quickly. The excuse they used was that Red Army engineers had had the time to booby trap a number of buildings in Kiev which led to a number of deaths both amongst local civilians and German personnel. One of the explosions hit the headquarters of Army Group South on 24 September.

#Hitler #Holocaust #WW2

[kaycox]

Your delivery, and your channel, is phenomenal. I'm in the US, and likely will never get to visit these European sites. I thank you GREATLY for going to these places, your commentary which in fact brings history alive. Thank you sir!

[mohammedsaysrashid]

Wonderful introduction...thanks for sharing Sir 🙏

[rbir]

They are building a new memorial at the site. A kurgan is being built over the ravine where you can look down. Similar to the one at the victory park. I saw the last time i visited in February.

[DominicFlynn]

How can we ever know what really happened at Babi Yar when the investigation, prosecution and proceedings (including the use of torture to extract confessions) were organized and run by the same people behind the Stalin show trials?