The Soviet Union under German occupation, Genocide policy

1941 - 1944

I came to a realization that many people in the West (particularly in America) don't really know the history of the Second World War (aka WWII). And when it comes to the events that took place in the occupied Soviet Union from 1941 till 1944 people are absolutely clueless.

So I decided to open this thread to let you know about the atrocities that were commited by the Gertman state in the occupied Soviet cities and towns...

Everything is well documented.


Operation Barbarossa (German: Unternehmen Barbarossa) was the codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II that commenced on June 22, 1941. It was the largest invasion in written history. The operation was named after the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa of the Holy Roman Empire, a leader of the Crusades in the 12th century. It is not to be confused with the war on the Eastern Front in its entirety.

The operational goal of Operation Barbarossa was the rapid conquest of the European part of the Soviet Union, west of a line connecting the cities of Arkhangelsk and Astrakhan, often referred to as the A-A line (see the translation of Hitler's directive for details). At its conclusion in December 1941, the Red Army had repelled the strongest blow of the Wehrmacht. Hitler had not achieved the victory he had expected, but the situation of the Soviet Union remained critical. Tactically the Germans had won some resounding victories and occupied some of the most important economical areas of the country, most notably in the Ukraine. Despite these successes, the Germans were pushed back from Moscow and were not able to mount an offensive simultaneously along the entire strategic Soviet-German front again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa


June 22, 1941

Operation BARBAROSSA begins.
Over 3 million German soldiers and 3300 tanks cross the Russian border. The Wehrmarcht (German Army) is organized into three Army Groups.






"Russians must die to let us live" (a fascist wrote on a school blackboard on October 2, 1941)

There were many ratified documents of the plan "OST", but the most forthright remarks were made by the head of the Number One Colonization Department of the central political administration of the ministry of the occupied eastern territories affairs of Wetzel. In conformity with that plan, 25% of Belorussians were supposed to be Germanized, if they perfectly corresponded to the racial characteristics, and the remaining 75% were supposed to be killed.

In conformity with such documents like the plan "OST", "Area regulations (supplement to the directive No. 21 or the "Barbarossa" plan) which appeared on March 13, 1941, or "About the military jurisdiction within the frame of the "Barbarossa" plan and about particular power of troops" which was published on May 13, 1941, or "Twelve precepts for Germans in the east and their treatment of Russians" of June 1, 1941 and others, fascist soldiers were not responsible for any crimes or atrocities committed on the occupied territory. Moreover, mass outrage of fascists was legally justified because it was made the policy of the state.

SOURCE -

http://www.khatyn.by/en/genocide

[The following text is from the well known Soviet propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg.]

'Kill'

"The Germans are not human beings. Henceforth the word German means to us the most terrible curse. From now on the word German will trigger your rifle. We shall not speak any moe. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day... If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German before combat. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another - there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill ther German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth.
Do not waver.
Do not let up.
Kill."

[Text is found in Ilya Ehrenburg's book Voyna (The war) (Moscow, 1942-43), and distributed separately among Soviet soldiers as pamphlet.
As the leading Soviet journalist during World War II, Ehrenburg's writings against the German invaders were circulated among millions of Soviet soldiers." His articles appeared regularly in Pravda, Izvestia, the Soviet military daily Krasnaya Zvezda ("Red Star"), and in numerous leaflets distributed to troops at the front.]

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 08, 2008 06:20 am

Hallo New Governor Of Alaska,

You would be surprised how many people in the West and other places are up to speed on what the Germans were doing in Russia in WW2.

The Germans themselves were very quick to film and record what they were at, so I doubt if you will be able to spring any surprises on us here, with "new" information.

But, feel free to tell us about the Russian people who in the early days of the campaign who greeted the Germans as liberators from the Communist shackles, these people were quick to share bread and salt with their new friends, under the mistaken belief that the Germans would allow them to return to a way of life free from political dictatorship.

Unfortunately, for them, (the Russians) they learned too late that they had just received a short reprieve from the Communists and would even suffer new persecution from the liberators from the west who saw most of them as little as "untermensch".
And after the Germans were driven out they were to pay a very high price for their collaboration with the Germans when the Stalinist purges were bought to bear again.

Kevin in Deva.

On a scale of evil, I would place Nazi Germany and Stalinist Soviet Union at the same level.

They just had different targets. Hitler was determined mainly on the mass killings of jews and gypsies. Stalin targeted kulaks and in general all people who did not agree 100% with his Party line (although he went through an anti-semitic phase, too).

All in all, they were both equally evil, single-minded men.

As for the actual battlefield, both armies unfortunately committed horrible atrocities.

My conclusion, exactly.

See what I wrote in the Introduction of my latest book:
http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...arallel+gear-up

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on January 09, 2008 06:34 am

Oh yeah? Was Germany under Soviet Union occupation better? How? It will take generations for Eastern Germany to get over the way the were brutalised and brainwashed by the Russians.
Radu

A slight exaggeration, surely?

the the ex citizens of the DDR, the Eastern Germans seem to be adapting well to the Western World, there will always be a section of the population that falls between the cracks this being the very elderly who had to endure life under the "occupation" longer than others and are now to old to work or change their lifestyle.

Personally I think the Poles had it worse, but there again, any country that was a soviet satalite state and I would include the Russia people themselves, suffered under the Soviets too.

Life was a bed of roses only for a select few.

Kevin in Deva

But do you have any clues about those teritories invaded by USSR before the germans attacked USSR and after the end of WW2 ? What about the atrocities comitted by USSR against half of Europe ?

Very well said !

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on January 09, 2008 01:50 pm

Indeed Mytzu!
No tears to spare.

Yes, you are right in a way. Nevertheless, the life of the East Germans was no picnic under the Russian "liberators" and the effects of that "liberation" are still felt.
Radu

The families living in German occupied Soviet Union had a very harsh life indeed, but due to complex factors.
In a documentary an old woman said that she had one brother executed by the Germans, but another brother (or sister) was executed by the partisans, being labeled as pro-German, or collaborationist.
These families lived scared to death by both Germans and pro-Soviet partisans.
The war damages (airplane bombing, shelling, burning etc.) were incurred by both the Axis, and the Red Army, as well.

This post has been edited by Florin on January 09, 2008 07:57 pm

I answered to Dénes yesterday. Was my post deleted?
Why?

Scale of evil... the "evil" is a subjective element, what is evil for one can be a bless for other.
If you are referring to killing innocent people… none of the sides took a real protective attitude towards that.
[edited by admin]

Hi Guys,

If you want material on the German occupation policy in the USSR try reading the books of Alexander Dallin.

Another of his works dealt with the Romanian occupation of Transnistria and he draws some interesting comparisons between the heavy-handed German policy in the Ukraine compared with a much more relaxed Romanian occupation policy in Transistria.

People in the West are generally aware of the massive number of civilian deaths in the German-occupied USSR, but there is nothing I have ever found available in English that details when, where and how these occurred. By comparison the destruction of thousands of Polish villages and hundreds of thousands of lives is very well detailed, as are German civilian losses.

The absence of detailed information on Soviet civilian losses is one of the major lacks in the English language bibliography of WWII. This allows the record of the German Army and Waffen-SS on the Eastern Front to escape the close scrutiny they get on the Western Front. Perhaps, now that the USSR no longer exists, such a survey will never be done and the German campaign for lebensraum at the expense of Slav civilians in the East will continue to be romanticised as an anti-Bolshevik Crusade instead of seen for what it really was - the first stage in the attempted extinction of the independent existence of many Eastern European peoples.

Cheers,

Sid.

This post has been edited by sid guttridge on March 10, 2008 04:22 pm

Agree 100% Sid. Why do you think that is? I have a few theories:

1. Easier availability of source material, obviously. Many of us above a certain age in Western Europe or the USA have met former concentration camp prisoners, or Allied soldiers who liberated camps or had some other experience with atrocities (sometimes second hand, but still powerful). For example, my father was in the US Army artillery school one class behind some of the prisoners who were killed at Malmedy in the Battle of the Bulge, and he said that was widely talked about at the school and in the press at the time. Our experience with atrocities in the East was usually when some former SS member living in the West was exposed -- obviously they were not usually inclined to volunteer information on their experiences. What sources existed from the Soviet side were so propagandistic and badly written that they weren't that useful.

2. Cold War animosities. At least some of the serious study of warfare on the Eastern front was driven by a feeling that NATO armies were going to be facing the Soviets in battle and needed to understand them. With much of the early source material being German memoirs (v. Manstein's "Lost Victories", v. Mellenthin's "Panzer Battles", Guderian's "Panzer Leader" to some extent) German misconduct wasn't going to get much emphasis for obvious reasons. Even fierce anti-Nazis felt that that they already understood Nazi evil and didn't need more examples. And it got tangled up in criticisms of Stalin, or whatever Soviet leader was in charge at the time (a sense that they were all just bloody dictators anyway, which blurred real distinctions).

This post has been edited by Jeff_S on March 11, 2008 04:03 pm