Taylor, Telford, The Anatomy Of The Nuremberg Trials, Knopf (New York, 1992)

p. 189 Re: Testimony by General Erwin Lahousen, one of four section chiefs of Abwehr (German M.I.)

As Canaris’ representative, Lahousen attended a conference called by General Reinecke, chief of the division of OKW responsible for, among other duties, the supervision of prisoner-of-war matters. The other participants were Heinrich Mueller, Chief of the Gestapo, and Colonel Breyer of Reinecke’s prisoner-of-war section.

The purpose of the meeting was to present the order which had been issued for the treatment of Soviet prisoners. Reinecke first explained:

The war between Germany and Russia is not a war between he two states or two armies, but between two ideologies–namely, the National Socialist and the Bolshevist ideology. The Red Army must be looked upon not as a soldier in the sense of the word applying to our western opponents, but as an ideological enemy. He must be regarded as the archenemy of National Socialism and must be treated accordingly

Reinecke added that these ideas must be made plain to the German officer corps, "since they were apparently still entertaining ideas which belonged to the Ice Age and not to the present age of National Socialism." On the basis of this philosophy the new orders provided that immediately after capture all Soviet "commisars" should be killed and that thereafter, under a "special selection program of the SD," all those prisoners should be killed who "could be identified as thoroughly bolshevized or as active representatives of the Bolshevist ideology."