Max von Schenckendorff

Max von Schenckendorff (24 February 1875 – 6 July 1943) was a German military general in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany during World War II. He was the commander of Army Group Centre Rear Area, the area of military jurisdiction in the rear of Army Group Centre, from March 1941 until his death in 1943. He organized the Mogilev conference, in which Wehrmacht and SS officers discussed "bandit fighting" tactics, meaning the mass murder of Jews and other real or perceived enemies. The conference resulted in an intensification of the genocide that was already taking place in Army Group Centre Rear Area. Max von Schenckendorff died of a heart attack on July 6, 1943, while on leave in Krummhübel in the Giant Mountains.

Security operations in occupied Soviet Union

The Wehrmacht's aggressive rear security doctrine, and the use of the "security threat" to disguise genocidal policies, resulted in close cooperation between the army and the security apparatus behind the front lines during Operation Barbarossa, the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union. Schenckendorff organised a three-day field conference in Mogilev to create an "exchange of experiences" for the Wehrmacht rear unit commanders. Participants included representatives of the Army High Command and Army Group Centre.

The conference began on 24 September and focused on "combating partisans" (Bekämpfung von Partisanen) and reflected Schenckendorff's views on the need for total eradication of the resistance to German occupation as the only way to secure territory behind the armies. Talks presented included: the evaluation of Soviet "bandit" organisations and tactics, why it was necessary to kill political commissars immediately upon capture, and gaining intelligence from local collaborators.

The conference included three field exercises. According to the after-action report, the screening of the population revealed fifty-one Jewish civilians, of whom thirty-two were shot. A 16-page executive summary of the conference was distributed to the Wehrmacht troops and police units in the rear area. The conference, while ostensibly an "anti-partisan training", resulted in a dramatic increase in atrocities against Jews and other civilians in the last three months of 1941.

In December 1941, Schenckendorff's issued orders to liquidate the Chachersk ghetto in the Gomel region. The Jews of Chechersk and local Romani people were shot and buried together in a mass grave, in an Aktion that murdered a total of 432 people.