The Einsatzgruppen were Nazi mobile killing squads that carried out mass shootings of Jews and other victims behind the Eastern Front during World War II.
They followed the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on 22 June 1941. Operating with support from the army, police units, and local collaborators, they murdered Jewish communities, Soviet officials, Roma, prisoners of war, and others. Victims were often taken to ravines, forests, or pits and shot.
The Einsatzgruppen were organized into four principal groups, designated A, B, C, and D. One of the best-known massacres occurred at Babi Yar near Kyiv in September 1941, when more than 33,000 Jews were murdered in two days.
The term is sometimes confused with the Gestapo, Nazi Germany’s secret state police. The Einsatzgruppen were not ordinary investigative police forces; they were mobile units created for ideological mass murder. Their crimes were prosecuted at a later Nuremberg trial specifically devoted to the Einsatzgruppen.