The murderous activities of Himmler’s Einsatzgruppen – or death squads—rank high among the horrors of the Nazi regime during the Second World War. As the Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht advanced into Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia, these hand-picked groups followed in their wake, committing mass murder of civilians.

Their killing in occupied territories will never be accurately quantified but is likely to have exceeded two million people, including some 1.3 million of the 6,000,00 Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

The graphic and shocking photographs in this Images of War book show Einsatzgruppen operations, including the hunt for and rounding up of civilians, communists, Jews and Romani people. It also shows the active support given to the Einsatzgruppen by SS and Wehrmacht units. The latter strenuously denied any collusion, but the photographic evidence here refutes this.