Einsatzgruppen

Unlike the United States Army, the German Wehrmacht had a long standing professional officer corps that had experience going back to the Franco-Prussian War of 1871. While many American career officers had seen action in World War I, the vast majority of Americans entered combat for the first time.

Anti-Semitism had been around in Europe for hundreds of years. Pogroms, attacks on Jewish communities, took place long before the Nazis took power.