Nazi Rule in Ukraine (the New Order)

Since Nazi racial doctrine regarded Ukrainians as sub-humans it did not look surprisingly that Ukraine’s territory was artificially divided into several parts. Transcarpathia was given to Hitler’s ally Hungary. Bukovyna and a part of southwest Ukraine, which included Odessa, was given to another Hitler’s ally Romania and called Transnistria. “District Galicia” together with some Polish territories formed an administrative unit called General-Government. The largest Ukrainian administrative unit, which included the Right Bank and much of the Left Bank (except for the easternmost areas which were under the jurisdiction of the German army), was called Reichskommissariat Ukraine, and was placed in the hands of Erich Koch, a notoriously brutal and narrow-minded administrator known for his personal contempt for the Slavs. Refusing to establish his capital in Kyiv, Koch chose instead the provincial Volhynian city of Rivne.

Koch’s attitude toward Ukrainians was clearly shown in the speech he delivered to his stuff upon his arrival in Ukraine in September 1941: “Gentlemen, I am known as a brutal dog. Because of this reason I was appointed as Reichskommissar of Ukraine. Gentlemen, I am expecting from you the utmost severity towards the native population. We are the master race and must rule cruelly. I will squeeze everything till the last drop from this country. The local population must work, work, and work.” This was the man who more than any other managed to turn Ukrainians against the Germans. Stalin even remarked jokingly that Koch “deserved” the highest Soviet decoration – the Golden Star. Some German generals and high-ranking officials asked Hitler to depose Koch, but Führer refused.

Hitler planned to “Germanize” Ukraine through bringing there “Arians” (Germans, Dutch, Danish, Norwegians, and other Germanic peoples). As to the local Ukrainian population, part of them was to be turned into slaves; the rest – to be deported into Asia.

The Jews suffered especially severe under Nazi’s rule in Ukraine. Ukrainian Jews, many of whom remembered the German occupation in 1918 as a time of social order, decided to stay in Ukraine. They did not understand that there was a huge difference between the Germans of 1918 and Nazi Germans, contaminated by racial theories. During their rule in Ukraine, the Nazis, and especially SS execution squads (Einsatzgruppen) with the help of Ukrainian auxiliary police, killed about 850,000 Jews.[6] In Kyiv about 33,000 Jews were executed in Babyn Iar in two days alone.[7] The same danger of total execution struck the Gypsies. Hitler believed that these two races were parasitic (because they lived at the expense of the others) and it was impossible to change them.

Many Jews in Western Ukraine perished in pogroms at the beginning of the war. In July 1941 pogroms happened in 58 cities and towns of Galicia. Because of these pogroms and participation of Ukrainian auxiliary police in Jewish executions many Jewish historians often portray Ukrainians as anti-Semitic by nature. Ukrainian historians often stress the fact that some Ukrainians risked their lives by hiding Jews from Germans. For example, in Galicia alone, about 100 Ukrainians were killed for trying to save Jews.

In the first six months of the war, millions of Red Army men had surrendered, many willingly, to the Germans. They did not have much desire to fight for Stalin and hoped to survive in captivity till the end of the war. They did not expect that Nazi treatment of Soviet prisoners of war would be inhuman. Nazi authorities kept the prisoners in open-air camps encircled by barbed wire where they died of climatic conditions, disease, and hunger. Often they simply executed their captives. Consequently, by the end of the war, of the 5.8 million Soviet prisoners who had fallen into German hands, about 3.3 million had perished. About 1.3 million of them died in Ukraine. Another explanation to the horrible fate of Soviet military prisoners was Hitler’s unwillingness to feed such large numbers of people. He was furious when he learned that Stalin had not asked the International Red Cross to help Soviet prisoners with food and medicine. Such treatment of prisoners was not only inhuman, but also stupid. It gave Soviet soldiers, many of whom had little or no enthusiasm for Stalinism a good incentive to fight harder. As they understood that it was almost impossible to survive in German captivity their resistance strengthened and German casualties rose.

The life in Ukrainian cities was very hard during Nazi rule. Since Germany needed food that Ukrainian urban dwellers consumed, Germans drastically limited the flow of foodstuff into the cities. As a result, starvation became commonplace. Many thousands of city dwellers starved to death during the course of war.

The position of Ukrainian peasants was also difficult. They were forced to produce food for the Reich. Koch even decided to retain Stalin’s collective farm (kolkhoz) system in the village as the best way to squeeze cheep foodstuffs from peasants.

When it became apparent that the war would not be short the Nazis decided to use Ukraine not only as the major supplier of food (85% of all food supplies from occupied Soviet territories), but also as their main source of forced labor for the undermanned industries and farms in Germany (because many Germans were mobilized into the army). Initially, Ukrainians had volunteered to work in the Third Reich in order to escape poor conditions at home or to learn a profession and see Europe. However, as word spread about the harsh working conditions of Ostarbeiter (eastern workers), people tried to avoid the labor drafts by all means possible. Koch’s police had to capture young Ukrainians in the streets and bazaars and ship them to Germany. Out of the 2.8 million Soviet Ostarbeiter in Germany at the end of the war, 2.3 million were from Ukraine.[8]

The educational opportunities in Reichkommisariat Ukraine were severely limited. Koch believed that three years of elementary school was more then enough education for Ukrainians.[9] Hitler was strictly against giving education to ‘subhuman’ races. He wrote, “If we teach Russians, Ukrainians, Kirghizians… to read and write, we will get negative results. Education will give them an opportunity to read history. The knowledge of history will urge them to develop political ideas which can be fatal to our interests.”

Not everywhere the position of Ukrainians was as horrible as in Reichkommisariat Ukraine. In Galicia the Germans’ attitude to Ukrainians was better than in Reichskommissariat. The Nazi in Galicia decided to apply the old Austrian policy of creating a Ukrainian counterbalance to Polish domination in that region. Ukrainians were favored over Poles in appointments to positions in the local administration. They were also allowed to form a representative body (Ukrainian Central Committee) to defend their interests. Ukrainian educational, cultural and religious organizations in Galicia were tolerated. Professor Volodymyr Kubiiovych, the head of Ukrainian Central Committee, made a number of useful contacts with important German officials and was respected by them. He was on friendly terms with Otto Wächter, the Governor of Galicia, and made a lot for protecting Ukrainian interests in the region. According to Nazi racial doctrines Galicians belonged to the Celtic race and thus were different from the rest of Ukrainians, who were Slavs. (The Nazis believed that the Celtic race was racially higher than the Slavic race). This fact partially explains relatively tolerant attitude of Germans to West Ukrainians in Galicia. Galicians, in contrast to other Ukrainians, who worked in Germany, did not have a humiliating label with the word ‘Ost’ on their clothes. Their leaving and working conditions were also better.

The position of Ukrainians in Romanian and Hungarian zonesof occupation was also much better than in Reichskommissariat Ukraine. These countries did not consider Ukrainians as sub-humans but rather as part of their nations (Romanian and Hungarian). The aim of such policy was practical – assimilation. Though Ukrainians in these areas were denied their cultural rights they were often treated well.

In general, Nazi policies in Ukraine were brutal and irrational. Some high-ranking officials of the Third Reich understood that it was a rude mistake. For example, as early as 1942, Otto Brautigam, a high-ranking German official, admitted that “the forty million Ukrainians who greeted as joyfully as liberators are today indifferent to us and are already beginning to swing into the enemy camp.” But Nazi racial doctrines completely clouded reality for Nazi leadership. In the view of many historians, the failure of the Nazis to use effectively the non-Russian nationalities, and particularly the Ukrainians, against the Soviet regime was one of their greatest political mistakes in the war.

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