Commissar Order
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The Commissar Order was an order issued by the German High Command on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars. It instructed
First page of the Commissar Order, dated 6 June 1941
Political commissar
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In the military, a political commissar or political officer is a supervisory officer responsible for the political education and organization of the unit to which they are assigned, with the intention
Commissar Order
…Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars (Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare). It instructed the Wehrmacht that any Soviet political commissar identified among captured troops be summarily executed as a purported enforcer of the so-called Judeo-Bolshevism ideology in military forces. It is one…
Kombat, a photo of a Soviet political commissar of the 220th Infantry Regiment calling soldiers to an assault, Eastern Front, in Soviet Ukraine, 12 July 1942
The death of the Political Commissar, 1928 propaganda painting by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin
Finnish propaganda poster (1939–1940) aimed at Red Army soldiers: "Politruk: worse than the enemy. He shoots you in the back!"
Leonid Brezhnev (right) in the rank of commissar giving a Communist Party membership card to a soldier (1942)