Order 37: The Clone Order Worse Than Order 66

The execution of Order 66 was one of the most dramatic events in galactic history. In minutes the Jedi Order went from being the most powerful institution in the galaxy to being on its knees, and hours later the Republic itself was gone, replaced by the Galactic Empire. Order 66 was not a standalone command though. It was one entry in a set of 150 clone contingency orders, and it was not even the cruelest of them. That distinction belongs to Order 37, which was written to run after Order 66 and was aimed squarely at civilians. This page walks through the contingency order system, exactly what Order 37 instructed, and the one documented occasion it was used. This is Legends material, from the Last of the Jedi novels and the Republic Commando era sourcebooks.

The 150 clone contingency orders#

Order 66 was part of a compilation of 150 orders that the clone army was required to obey without question in various emergencies. They could be activated by the Galactic Senate, by the Security Council, or by the Chancellor himself. Compliance was not left to the clones' judgment. An inhibitor chip implanted during their development compelled them to carry the orders out. Any clone who managed to resist the chip's effect and refused to follow an order was to be demoted, and was subject to execution.

You already know who wrote them. Palpatine built the system with a single goal: to eliminate and then hunt down the Jedi. Two orders did that work. Order 66 and Order 37.

Why the rest of the list was so boring#

The other orders were not filler by accident. Burying the two that mattered among nearly 150 pieces of dry legal procedure was the whole trick, because nobody reads to the end of a document like that. Order 5 is a fair sample of what the rest of the list looked like:

In the event of the Supreme Commander (Chancellor) being declared unfit to issue orders, as defined in Section 6 (ii), the Chief of Defense Staff shall assume GAR command and form a strategic cell of senior officers (see page 1173, para 4) until a successor is appointed or alternative authority identified.

Order 65 followed the same pattern, dealing with the detention and possible execution of the Supreme Chancellor if he was declared unfit for office, which did a lot of work in hiding what Order 66 was actually for. Anyone skimming the contingency list found page after page of chain of command paperwork, exactly as intended. Palpatine deterred prying eyes by making the document tedious.

What Order 37 was designed to do#

Order 37 was written to be used after Order 66. Where Order 66 dealt with killing Jedi who were already in the field with clone units, Order 37 dealt with the ones who got away. It was a fugitive hunting order, and Jedi were the intended target.

The method is the difference. Order 37 was designed to prey on a Jedi's own morality. A Jedi who would fight to the death rather than surrender will still surrender to save other people, and the order was built entirely around that. It did not need to find the fugitive. It only needed to make staying hidden unbearable.

How Order 37 actually ran#

The order laid out a sequence, and it was precise about it.

First, the clone army shut down all HoloNet communication on the planet. That stopped citizens talking to each other, and, worse, stopped them contacting anyone off world. Second, a complete blockade went up, so nobody could enter or leave. Third, the population was ordered into their homes while a large portion of them were arrested.

Then came the ultimatum. The clone army informed the civilian population that unless the Jedi or other fugitive was handed over, every prisoner would be executed.

What happened if nobody surrendered#

This is the part that separates Order 37 from anything else on the list. It did not stop at the threat. If the fugitive failed to present themselves and the prisoners were duly killed, the order gave strict instructions for what to do next.

The embargo on people and information moving in or out of the system was to be held for over a month. During that time the Commission for the Preservation of the New Order was to push out fabricated reports and propaganda making it look as though nothing had happened. The most disturbing clause is the one about the dead. The order stated it was imperative that the bodies of the executed were not to be returned to their families, again to stop neighboring systems working out what had taken place and starting to question Imperial control.

The Inquisitors oversaw these operations directly. That was not about their combat ability. It was about containment, keeping any information from reaching the Senate or the wider galaxy.

Bellassa, the one documented use#

As far as the record goes, Order 37 was used only twice, once while trying to capture a Jedi fugitive and once on Bellassa. The Bellassa case is the one that survives in detail.

The target was Ferus Olin, and the man who issued the order was the Inquisitor Malorum. Obi-Wan Kenobi had tracked Ferus down and decided to help him, and not long after that, Malorum triggered Contingency Order 37. Mass arrests followed in the city of Ussa, and an ultimatum went out over the HoloNet: if Ferus was not turned in within 48 hours, the civilians would be executed. The order worked exactly as designed. Ferus planned to give himself up. His safehouse was found first, by Boba Fett and the bounty hunter D'harhan.

Why the Empire kept it secret#

Order 37 and Order 66 both show how far the Empire would go and how willing it was to rule through fear. What stands out is that Palpatine thought it was essential that atrocities like this were never shared with the wider galaxy.

Fear became his instrument later, in the back half of his rule. In the early days of the Empire his main source of power was his overwhelming popularity. That is why the Inquisitors ran the containment, why COMPNOR filled the silence with fake normality, and why the bodies never went home. A planet that had been emptied out was only useful to Palpatine if the systems next door never found out.

Order 37 against Order 66#

Order 66 was horrific, but it was narrow. It targeted a few thousand Jedi and it happened in a single coordinated stroke. Order 37 had no such limit. It scaled to whatever a planet's population happened to be, and it treated every civilian on that world as a hostage.

The brutal irony is that mass murder of civilians was a genuinely effective way of drawing out a Jedi. The clones themselves rarely employed it. The Inquisitors used the same logic constantly, and it is the approach you see them fall back on again and again, including in the Obi-Wan Kenobi series. For a full breakdown of the clone units that would have carried out an order like this, the guide to every clone legion, corps, battalion and company covers the whole Grand Army.