Before the German invasion, Ukraine was a constituent
republic of the USSR. It was a key subject of Nazi planning for the
post-war expansion of the German state and civilization.
Germany launched its invasion of the
Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. In the mind of Adolf Hitler and other German expansionists, the destruction of the "Judeo-Bolshevist" state would remove a threat from Germany's eastern
borders and allow Germany to use the vast spaces of the western Soviet Union,
which included the fertile Ukraine, as a source for the fulfillment of the
material needs of the German people. The region would also provide "living
space" for future German colonists.
On July 16, 1941, Hitler appointed
the fervent Nazi Erich Koch as Reichskommissar for the planned Reichskommissariat Ukraine, created by a Führer decree on August 20, 1941. The first
transfer of Ukrainian territory from military to civil administration took
place on September 1, 1941. There were further transfers on October 20 and
November 1, 1941, and a final transfer on September 1, 1942, which brought the
boundaries of the province to beyond the Dnieper river.
The administration's tasks included the pacification
of the region and the exploitation, for German benefit, of its resources and
people.
The Reichskommissariat Ukraine excluded several parts of present-day Ukraine, and included some territories
outside of its modern borders. It extended in the west from the Volhynia region around Lutsk, to a line from Vinnytsia to Mykolaiv along the Southern Bug river in the south, to the areas
surrounding Kyiv, Poltava and Zaporizhia in the east. Conquered territories
further to the east, including the rest of Ukraine (the Crimea, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and the Donbas/Donets Basin), were under
military governance until 1943–44. At its greatest extent, it included just
under 340,000 square kilometers.
The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern
Territories ordered Koch in March 1942 to supply 380,000 farm workers and
247,000 industrial workers for German work needs. Later Koch was mentioned
during the new year message of 1943, how he "recruited" 710,000
workers in Ukraine. This and subsequent "worker registration" drives
in Ukraine would eventually backfire after the Battle of Kursk (July–August 1943) when the Germans
would attempt to build a defensive line along the Dnieper only to discover that
the necessary manpower had been either recruited to forced labour in Germany or
had gone underground to forestall such "recruitment".
Alfred Rosenberg implemented
an "Agrarian New Order" in Ukraine, ordering the confiscation of
Soviet state properties to establish German state properties. Additionally the
replacement of Russian Kolkhozes and Sovkhozes,
by their own "Gemeindwirtschaften" (German Communal Farms), the
installation of state enterprise "Landbewirstschaftungsgessellschaft
Ukraine M.b.H." for managing the new German state farms and cooperatives,
and the foundation of numerous "Kombines" (Great German exploitation
Monopolies) with government or private capital in the territory, to exploit the
resources and Donbass area.
Hitler said "Ukraine and the East lands would
produce 7 Million, or more likely 10 or 12 Million of Metric tonnes of Grain to
provide Germany's food needs".
On 12 August 1941 Hitler ordered the
complete destruction of the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv by the use of incendiary bombs and
gunfire. Because the
German military lacked sufficient material for this operation it wasn't carried
out, after which the Nazi planners instead decided
to starve the city's inhabitants.
Original
Related post: The part of Donetsk and Lugansk regions is an occupied territories now
72 th anniversary of the Koryukovka's tragedy
No comments:
Post a Comment