Over a third of the victims of the Holocaust were shot dead or suffocated in gas vans by Germans and their local helpers, their bodies hastily buried somewhere between the Baltic and the Black Sea. Countless other men, women and children fell victim to so-called partisan and retributive actions or intentional starvation. One main perpetrator organization were the Offices of the Commanders of the Security Police and the SD (Dienststellen der Kommandeure der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD – KdS), which were rapidly set up across vast areas of the occupied Soviet Union. They often derived from outposts of the mobile killing squads of the Security Police and the SD and just like them represented the Reich Security Main Office on the ground.

This dissertation project focuses on an in-depth study of the history of these outpost in the Reich Commissariat Ukraine. Which role did the KdS offices and their outposts play in carrying out occupation rule and mass murders? What part did they have in fighting imagined and real partisans? What sort of intelligence activities did they pursue? To answer these questions, the place of these units is defined within the SS and police as well as in the civilian administration. As the front approached, the stationary units were either transformed back into mobile units or disbanded with the personnel deployed elsewhere. This process is also part of the study.