What were the exact texts of the Barbarossa Decree, Commissar Order, and Curtailment of Military Jurisdiction and where can full translations be found?
Executive summary
Three distinct German wartime instruments—the Military Justice/“Barbarossa” Decree (13 May 1941), the Commissar Order (Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars, 6 June 1941), and the related Führer decree on military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa zone (often cited as the directive curtailing ordinary court-martial procedures)—are preserved in public archival translations rather than in a single modern consolidated volume; authoritative English renderings are available in the Nuremberg documentary record (Cornell/Donovan collection), the German History in Documents and Images (GHDI) translations, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum site, and academic appendices such as the JSTOR volume that prints a translation [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Barbarossa Decree — text and where to read the full translation
The formal title of the Barbarossa Decree is Erlass über die Ausübung der Kriegsgerichtsbarkeit im Gebiet „Barbarossa“ und über besondere Maßnahmen der Truppe (“Decree on the exercise of military justice in the ‘Barbarossa’ area and on special measures by the troops”), signed 13 May 1941 and designated C‑50; its content removed ordinary judicial constraints and allowed summary measures against civilians and partisans, explicitly exempting many acts by German troops from mandatory prosecution [5] [6]. Full English translations are published in the Nuremberg/Donovan documentary collection (Document 446‑PS available via Cornell’s Nuremberg Trials Collection) and reprinted in GHDI and scholarly collections—see the Cornell/Nuremberg translation at the Donovan Collection and the GHDI/JSTOR appendix reproductions for the complete rendered text [1] [7] [4].
2. Commissar Order — text and where to read the full translation
The Commissar Order (Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare), dated 6 June 1941, instructs that Soviet political commissars found among captured troops be immediately separated and “dealt with” outside of POW protections—language in the order directs summary execution or handing over to SS units and places restrictions on court‑martials for such cases [2] [8]. The most reliable full English translations are those used at the Nuremberg trials and reproduced online by the German History in Documents and Images project and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s source pages; the USHMM provides images of the original and a public‑domain English rendering, while GHDI cites the National Archives source for its translation [3] [2] [8].
3. “Curtailment of Military Jurisdiction” / Führer decree on military jurisdiction — text and where to read the full translation
What reporting often calls the “Curtailment of Military Jurisdiction” refers to the Führer enclosure and accompanying decree of May 1941 that limited the role of courts‑martial in the Eastern theatre and delegated broad “special measures” to field commanders—a legal architecture that the Barbarossa Decree implemented and that the Commissar Order invoked [7] [9]. English translations and the covering memorandum appear in the same Nuremberg trial documentary sets and in GHDI’s online translations; a commonly cited online reproduction is the “Fuehrer Decree” text available in English at archival sites such as the PHDN/ESS archival mirror and in the GHDI collection where the enclosure to directive No. 44718/41 is printed [9] [7].
4. Provenance, legal weight, and where to cite the originals
All three instruments entered the legal record at the Nuremberg prosecutions and the U.S. National Archives (copies cited in Nuremberg exhibit files and National Archives Record Group entries), which is why major scholarly and museum projects rely on those translations [8] [1]. For readers seeking verbatim wording, consult the Donovan/Nuremberg translations digitized by Cornell (Document 446‑PS and related files) and the GHDI English PDFs that reproduce the Barbarossa Decree and the Commissar Order from Bundesarchiv copies; the USHMM provides scanned originals and public‑domain translations of the Commissar Order with contextual notes [1] [7] [3] [2]. Where single‑page online summaries paraphrase the orders, cross‑check against those archival translations because some popular retellings compress or conflate language about “collective measures” and exemptions from prosecution (see GHDI and USHMM for the authoritative text rather than secondary summaries) [10] [11].