On December 8, 1939, German troops Ansatzgruppen shot and mass executed residents of Botnia in southern Poland. German soldiers supervised the burial of the bodies after the executions by standing over the corpses.

　　Burial after the mass execution of the inhabitants of Bochnia, southern Poland, who were shot dead by the German Ansatzgruppen on December 8, 1939. The first mass executions of Poles in German-occupied Poland occurred in Bochnia, where a mobile execution unit known as the Ansatzgruppen carried out the initial stages of the Holocaust during the invasion of Poland in 1939. Their mission was to roam behind the front lines, shooting and killing as many Jews and residents as they could, an estimated 2 million. After the executions, the burial of the bodies was supervised by German soldiers standing among the corpses.

　Einsatzgruppen first occupied and operated in the annexed areas of Austria and Czechoslovakia, which they occupied in 1938. The Einsatzgruppen were special task forces of the SS that carried out mass killings of Jews, communists, and others to be exterminated by the Nazis; for the Polish campaign of 1939, six major Einsatzgruppen were organized, each of which was responsible for the mass murder of Jews and communists. The total strength of the Einsatzgruppen during the Polish campaign was approximately 2,700 men. Their role was the arrest of politically suspicious persons, confiscation of weapons, police intelligence, and executions against Jews; from September 1 to October 25, 1939, some 500 towns and villages were burned to the ground and more than 16,000 people were executed. More mass killings were carried out by the Einsatzgruppen, which was organized in the spring of 1941 for the campaign against Russia. Orders were issued for the Security Police and the Security Service to assist the army in fighting the resistance behind the front lines.  

  The common method of execution in the Einsatzgruppe was by firing squad, and gas vehicles were also used. Victims were ordered to report to a central location and were rounded up in organized manhunts, often using local militias. Usually they were taken to a remote location and shot to death. When shooting to kill, the Germans often used ravines, sand pits, quarries, and abandoned Russian anti-tank ditches. In the absence of facilities, the Germans had their victims dig their own graves. Most Einsatzgruppe were disbanded at the end of 1944. Einsatzgruppe D was an exception, disbanding in July 1943. In just a few short years, their deadly activities claimed more than 700,000 lives.