Commissar Order
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The Commissar Order (German: Der Kommissarbefehl) was an order given by Adolf Hitler on June 6, 1941, prior to Operation Barbarossa, that any captured Soviet political officer be immediately shot.
Field Marshal von Manstein in his memoirs, while acknowledging that he gave his written assent to the order, states that he, along with some other field commanders, instructed the units under his command not to follow it, despite the prevailing opinion among the German officer corps that the commissars were a species of war criminal.
On May 6 1942 Hitler canceled the commissar order. (Jacobsen p. 184)
The commissar order has been of interest for historians of the Holocaust, as many believe that the order was gradually interpreted more and more broadly and eventually provided justification for the extermination of all Jews.
References
Hans–Adolf Jacobsen, Kommissarbefehl und Massenexekutionen sowjetischer Kriegsgefangener, in: Anatomie des SS–Staates, hg. v. H. Buchheim, M. Broszat, H.A. Jacobsen, H. Krausnick, Bd. II, Freiburg 1965, S. 163–283.