The British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that junior officers in the Army were inclined to be especially zealous National Socialists with a third of them having joined the Nazi Party by 1941.[56] Reinforcing the work of the junior leaders were the National Socialist Leadership Guidance Officers, which were created with the purpose of indoctrinating the troops for the "war of extermination" against Soviet Russia.[56] Among higher-ranking officers, 29.2% were NSDAP members by 1941.[57] The Wehrmacht obeyed Hitler's criminal orders for Barbarossa not because of obedience to orders, but because they, like Hitler, believed that the Soviet Union was run by Jews, and that Germany must completely destroy "Judeo-Bolshevism".[58] German historian Jürgen Förster wrote that most Wehrmacht officers genuinely believed that most Red Army commissars were Jews who in turn were what kept the Red Army going, and that the best way to bring about victory against the Soviet Union was to exterminate the commissars via enforcing the Commissar Order so as to deprive the Russian soldiers of their Jewish leaders.[59]