Not all plans for Operation Barbarossa are as successful as hoped. In August 1941, Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler push forward their plans to wage war on all Jews, unleashing the Einzatsgruppen and the SS Cavalry Brigade of Hermann Fegelein on the Jewish people of Eastern Europe.

In the first half of September, Nazi murder campaigns in Vilnius and the Pripet Marshes continue. In the rest of Europe, the Germans tighten their grip on the occupied countries, taking away media privileges and further restricting the freedoms of Jewish populations.