 While older historiography tended to emphasize the notion of a " clean " Wehrmacht , the historian Jürgen Förster notes that " In fact , the military commanders were caught up in the ideological character of the conflict , and involved in its implementation as willing participants . " Before and during the invasion of the Soviet Union , German troops were heavily indoctrinated with anti @-@ Bolshevik , anti @-@ Semitic and anti @-@ Slavic ideology via movies , radio , lectures , books and leaflets . Likening the Soviets to the forces of Genghis Khan , Hitler told Croatian military leader Slavko Kvaternik that the " Mongolian race " threatened Europe . Following the invasion , Wehrmacht officers told their soldiers to target people who were described as " Jewish Bolshevik subhumans " , the " Mongol hordes " , the " Asiatic flood " and the " Red beast " . Nazi propaganda portrayed the war against the Soviet Union as both an ideological war between German National Socialism and Jewish Bolshevism and a racial war between the Germans and the Jewish , Gypsies and Slavic Untermenschen . German army commanders cast the Jews as the major cause behind the " partisan struggle " . The main guideline policy for German troops was " Where there 's a partisan , there 's a Jew , and where there 's a Jew , there 's a partisan , " or " The partisan is where the Jew is . " Many German troops viewed the war in Nazi terms and regarded their Soviet enemies as sub @-@ human . 
