Realities in the Occupied Soviet Territories
MGK exhibit a stunning lack
of knowledge regarding the circumstances of the occupied eastern territories,
where nearly two million Jews were supposedly deported in 1942 and 1943.[91] Food
conditions in these areas have been highlighted in Holocaust scholarship over
the past decade as a crucial factor in the extermination of Jews, another area
which MGK have ignored across their work.[92] As
mentioned earlier, German officials had already devised a ‘Hungerplan’ to
starve the Soviet population for the practical and ideological benefit of the
Reich, a plan modified once realities of the occupation set in.[93] Starvation
and malnourishment existed across the areas in the winter of 1941-1942, with
urban dwellers being provided with meagre rations (even less for Jews) and
those in rural areas left to fend for themselves. Millions of Soviet prisoners
of war were also purposefully left to starve, in addition to liquidations.[94] These
types of policies were conducted to, as Himmler’s associate Peter-Heinz
Seraphim noted, bring about the “extermination of useless mouths.”[95] Such
circumstances would continue on throughout 1942, when MGK expect that hundreds
of thousands of ‘useless mouths’ (unnütze Esser) were resettled into the
same territories.[96]
While these areas were suffering from malnourishment (no
small part from German policies), they were also the site of large population
movements even without MGK’s hoped for Jewish resettlement scheme. In the areas
of Army Group Center, between 1942 and the spring of 1943 more than 650,000
Russian civilians were displaced and evacuated westwards by the army group for
various purposes (combat zone, withdrawal, labor, food shortages, etc.).[97] This
movement created havoc among the occupation bureaucracy, with the total of
evacuees being divided amongst several regional administrations due to fears of
overburdening the locations in terms of food, transportation, and other issues.
Collection and transit sites had to be established to accommodate and transfer
these evacuees, in addition to offering hygienic measures; these sites are
documented along with witness accounts, neither of which can be said for MGK’s
resettlement hypothesis. The regions which grudgingly accepted several tens of
thousands of refugees (i.e. Reichskommissariat Ostland, Generalkommissariat
Wessruthenien) would obviously have faced a logistical nightmare if they had
served as further destination for hundreds of thousands of Jews. The problems
of a large population displacement can also be seen in the rejection of
Hitler’s July 1942 plan to evacuate the entire Crimean population of several
hundred thousand into the Ukraine by OKW (the German military command).[98] It is
interesting that in the reasons for such a rejection, the explanation that ‘the
Jews are going there’ was never mentioned.
There also was not a need for Jewish labor inside the
occupied Soviet territories, if MGK were to agree that Jewish laborers were
deported.[99]
Throughout 1942, both the Ukraine and Ostland were filled with Soviet prisoners
of war, with totals varying from a low of 617,000 and a high of 989,000.[100] Indeed
even in mid-1943, 300,000 Soviet prisoners and partisans were requested by
Gauleiter Sauckel to work in the mines of the Reich, while Gauleiter Koch
suggested transferring the 1.5 million Hilfswilligen (Soviet helpers to
the German military) to the Reich for labor purposes.[101] In
addition to all of the above must be added the millions of Ostarbeiters,
laborers taken from across the occupied Eastern territories and sent west to
the Reich.[102]
Resettlement fantasies are also directly refuted by
documents from the Nazis themselves. On July 28, 1942, shortly after start of
deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka, Himmler wrote to SS Main
Office chief Gottlob Berger as follows:
The occupied eastern territories will be cleared of Jews. The implementation of this very hard order has been placed on my shoulders by the Führer. No one can release me from this responsibility in any case. I forbid all interference.[103]
It is also notable
that MGK have failed to address the Himmler-Berger letter across all of their
works. Needless to say it, MGK’s belief that hundreds of thousands of Jews were
being resettled into the occupied eastern territories at the same time that
Himmler was announcing his intent to clear said territories refutes their
fantasy. Prior resettlement plans of Jews had also been abandoned prior to
summer 1942, as can be seen in Wetzel’s April 1942 memorandum on Generalplan
Ost where he states that the evacuation of Jews earlier planned “is no longer
necessary due to the solution of the Jewish question.” Wetzel clearly knew of
the killings of Jews as he stated later in his memo that “one cannot solve the
Polish question by liquidating the Poles like the Jews.”[104]
[91] The classic work on the occupied territories is Alexander Dallin, German
Rule in Russia 1941-1945, 2nd edition, London, 1981.
[92] Cf. Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde; Herbert, National
Socialist Extermination Policies; Aly/Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung,
pp. 365-393; Gerlach, ‘Bedeutung der deutschen Ernährungspolitik’.
[93] See the section Extermination of Soviet Jews, Chapter 2; also Alex
Kay, Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder: Political and Economic
Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940-1941,
Oxford: Berghahn, 2006.
[94] Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde, pp.774-859; Pohl, Herrschaft
der Wehrmacht, pp.201-242; Longerich, Holocaust, pp.247-250; Streit,
Keine Kameraden.
[95] Bericht Prof. Seraphim mit Anschreiben der Rüstungsinspektion
Ukraine, November 29 and December 2, 1941, PS-2174 merged in PS-3257 (IMT, Vol.
XXXII, pp. 79-83). On Seraphim in general see Hans-Christian Petersen, Bevölkerungsökonomie
- Ostforschung - Politik. Eine biographische Studie zu Peter-Heinz Seraphim
(1902-1979), Osnabrück: fibre Verlag, 2006.
[96] Cf. the conditions in Kiev in Karel Berkhoff, Harvest of
Despair: Life and Death in Ukraine under Nazi Rule, Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University, 2008, pp.164-186; in Belorussia, Gerlach, Kalkulierte Morde,
pp.265-319.
[97] Wirtschaftsstab Ost, Chefgruppe Arbeit, KTB-Beitrag 4-10.12.43,
NARA T77/1091/156; cf. Nicholas Terry, The German Army Group Centre and the
Soviet Civilian Population, 1942-1944, PhD, King’s College London, 2006, p.202, p.209.
[98] Angrick, Besatzungspolitik und Massenmord, pp.533-539. The
1939 Soviet census recorded some 1.1 million living in the Crimea, but this
figure no doubt dropped by several hundred thousand after the German invasion
and subsequent battles affecting the territory.
[99] MGK are divided on the issue, see the section ‘Resettlement’ for
MGK in this chapter.
[100] VO/WiRüAmt und WiStab Ost bei GenQu,
Übersicht über Bestand an russischen/sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen, 27.5.42;
Stand 1.6.42, 1.7.42, 1.8.42, 1.9.42, BA R3901/20172; BA R3901/20173, p.63.
[101] Sitzungsvermerk v. 20 August 1943 des ORR Hermann über eine Tagung
am 13.7.43 im RmbO zum Thema: Arbeitseinsatzfragen des Reiches unter besonderer
Berücksichtigung der Verhältnisse in den besetzten Ostgebieten, NO-1831, IMT
XIII, p.1019.
[102] Ulrich Herbert, Hitler’s Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor
in Germany under the Third Reich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997.
[103] Himmler to Berger, 28.7.1942, NO-626; cf. Gerald Fleming, Hitler
and the Final Solution. Berkely: University of California, 1987, p.185.
[104] Heiber, ‘Der Generalplan Ost’, pp.305, 308.
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