Nazi "new order" in Europe. "New Order" in Europe

"Fascist "new order": politics, occupation regime"

(from the book "War Behind Enemy Lines", Political Literature Publishing House, 1974)

During the Second World War, many European countries found themselves under the yoke of Nazi Germany. Everywhere the fascist conquerors established a "new order" - their bloody dictatorship. They considered the population of the occupied countries as cheap labor, and national wealth as spoils of war. The Nazis substantiated their predatory policy with a misanthropic "racial theory" invented by the ideologists of German fascism in order to intoxicate the German people with the poison of chauvinism, to inspire them that, by virtue of "divine providence", they are called to be the ruler of the world, to command other peoples.
The Slavic peoples aroused special hatred among the German fascists. "If we want to create our great German empire," Hitler preached, "we must first of all expel and destroy the Slavic peoples - Russians, Poles, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Ukrainians and Belorussians."
The lands of "inferior peoples", according to the plans of the ideologists of German fascism, were to constitute "the living space of the thousand-year-old empire of the German nation." The Nazis intended to populate many of the occupied territories with Germans and include them in the "Third Reich", others - to turn them into colonial possessions of Germany or form dependent states on them. The population of these lands was supposed to be significantly reduced, mainly through mass destruction, and subsequently - by special violent measures to reduce the birth rate. The rest of the population was prepared for the fate of slaves. “Whether other peoples live in prosperity or they die of hunger,” said one of the Nazi leaders, Himmler, “interests me only to the extent that they are needed as slaves.”
The "racial theory" of the Nazis was, therefore, nothing but an expression of the predatory, colonizing plans of German imperialism, its striving for world domination.
Numerous documents of the leadership of the Nazi Party and various departments of the "Third Reich" have been preserved and published, which make it possible to judge the scale and consistency of the expansionist program of German imperialism. According to this program, it was supposed to first establish the undivided domination of fascist Germany in Europe, then to extend the power of German monopolies to vast areas of Asia, Africa and partly to the American continent. The crowning achievement of the program was the establishment of the world hegemony of fascist Germany. German imperialism linked the achievement of these goals primarily with the defeat of the Soviet Union.
In hatching plans for a war with the Soviet Union, the Nazis were guided not only by "racial theory", they pursued not only predatory goals. The main determining factor in this was the ideology of anti-communism, the class hatred of German imperialism, of the entire world imperialist reaction to the world's first country of socialism - a bulwark of progress and freedom of peoples. Formulating the social order of the monopoly bourgeoisie, Hitler emphasized that the war against the Soviet Union "would be sharply different from the war in the West", that here "we are talking about a struggle for annihilation." "I will destroy Russia," he declared boastfully, "and in doing so I will inflict a mortal blow on Bolshevism." One of the ideologists of fascism, Goebbels, spoke in the same spirit. "This struggle," he said, "...is basically a struggle of worldviews."
An organic product of the ideology of anti-communism and the "racial theory" of the Nazis was the policy and occupation regime of the fascist aggressors in the Soviet territory they had captured. History has not yet known such monstrous crimes against humanity, such mass bloody terror, such bullying and mockery of people, which the fascist invaders did on Soviet soil.
Another thing is monstrous: in the post-war literature in the West, attempts to justify the atrocities of the fascist invaders have not stopped to this day, to present the matter as if the occupation policy towards the Soviet Union was not developed by the Nazis in advance, that it was of an improvised nature, and cruelty towards the population was forced response to his resistance. Similar statements were made after the war by the former Hitlerite generals Guderian, Rendulich and others, who tried to whitewash themselves, to absolve themselves of responsibility for the atrocities carried out on their orders and under their leadership. They are echoed by some American, British, West German and other reactionary bourgeois historians. For example, the West German historian E. Hesse not only denies the premeditation of the fascist occupation policy towards the USSR, but also openly justifies the Nazi troops and occupation authorities who allegedly had to resort to killing innocent hostages "due to provocations from the Soviet side."
How was it in reality?

Everything was thought out in advance

Already during the war, and then at the Nuremberg trials of the main German war criminals, it was irrefutably proved that the occupation policy of the Nazis on the territory of the USSR was carefully, in all details, developed long before the first fascist soldier set foot on Soviet soil. In the post-war years, a number of new documents were published, fully revealing the plans of the bosses of Hitler's "Third Reich" in relation to the Soviet state and its peoples.
These plans were hatched by Hitler even when he expounded his crazy ideas in Munich pubs. Having become Reich Chancellor, Hitler, in his first speech to the Wehrmacht generals in February 1933, declared that when Germany reached the necessary power, its task would be "to capture a new living space in the East and its merciless Germanization." When practical preparations for war with the Soviet Union began, the leadership of the Nazi Party, the Hitlerite government and the high command of the Wehrmacht developed a number of plans, directives, memos, which set out in detail, in detail, the goals of aggression against the USSR and methods for achieving them.
The plans of the leaders of fascism and the German imperialism behind them in relation to the Soviet Union and its peoples received the most concentrated expression in the so-called "General Plan Ost". It was a plan to conquer the peoples with fire and sword of Eastern Europe, including the peoples of the USSR.
According to the "Ost" plan, it was planned to liquidate the Soviet Union as a state and deprive its peoples of the possibility of an independent state existence. Instead of the old imperialist colonial policy (in which the indigenous population remained in place and were exploited by the invaders), the new "Eastern territorial policy" formed the basis of the plan. Its goal was the destruction and expulsion of the population of the conquered eastern territories and its gradual replacement by German colonial settlers. Later, already during the war, the organ of the imperial leadership of the SS (1 SS, or security detachments, is an elite part of the fascist party that enjoyed Hitler’s special confidence, which had practically unlimited power. In addition to the functions of the “guardian of racial purity” of the fascist party and the fight against “subversive activities "Inside it, the SS ran concentration camps. Special military units were staffed from the SS, which formed a special branch of the German armed forces -" SS troops ".) The Das Schwarzekor newspaper, explaining the meaning of the "eastern territorial policy", wrote: in Germanizing the East not in the former sense of the word, i.e., not in inducing the people living there to assimilate German and German laws, but in populating the East with people with truly German, Germanic blood.
It was planned to exterminate and partially deport about 31 million Slavs within 30 years and settle Germans on their lands. The Nazis intended to leave only 14-15 million indigenous people on the occupied Soviet territory and, over time, "Germanize" them.
The drafters of the plan expressed confidence that as a result of the implementation of the measures outlined in it, the Slavic peoples would be liquidated as ethnic units, and many of them would be exterminated altogether.
The starting points for the Ost plan were reported to Hitler in May 1940 and approved by him.
In the pre-war period and at the beginning of the war with the USSR, the Ost plan was refined on the basis of proposals from Hitler's closest henchmen and government agencies of Nazi Germany. So, on May 25, 1940, Himmler submitted to Hitler his considerations on how to deal with the population of the occupied eastern territories. Himmler considered it necessary to evict and physically destroy a number of Slavic peoples. In Ukraine, in his opinion, up to 35 percent of the local population should have remained to work for the German colonialists, in Belarus - up to 25 percent of the local population. Hitler signed these proposals as a directive entitled "Some considerations for the treatment of the local population of the eastern regions."
In the instructions of the Ministry for the Affairs of the Occupied Territories, or, as it was called, the "Eastern Ministry", much attention was paid to the fate of the Russian people. They said: “It is not only about the defeat of the state with its center in Moscow. Achieving this historical goal would never mean a complete solution to the problem. The point is, most likely, to defeat the Russians as a people, to divide them ... Important so that on Russian territory the population in its majority consists of people of a primitive semi-European type. It will not cause much concern for the German leadership. " The territories inhabited by Russians, the "Eastern Ministry" provided for before the completion of colonization to be divided into separate areas, putting German governors-general at the head of them.
The "Eastern Ministry" outlined measures to reduce the "biological strength" of the Russian and other Slavic peoples, up to the introduction of mass forced sterilization. "For us Germans," his memorandum emphasized, "it is important to weaken the Russian people to such an extent that they will no longer be able to prevent us from establishing German domination in Europe."
The plan "Ost" and other documents of the Nazi Party and the Hitlerite government put forward the task of eliminating the ethnic integrity of the peoples of the Soviet Baltic. The Nazis referred these peoples to the "lower races" with all the ensuing consequences. The leader of the Gestapo, Himmler, pointed out to his subordinates that in order to colonize the territory of the Soviet Baltic republics, "the bulk of Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians must be resettled or disposed of in another way ...".
In a number of documents, in particular, in the proposals of the "Eastern Ministry" on the "General Plan Ost", it was said about the enslavement of the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia. None of the peoples of the USSR was bypassed in the aggressive plans of the Nazi aggressors - each of them was prepared for the fate of the slaves of the "Aryan masters."
Along with the "General Plan Ost", the embodiment of the colonial plans of German imperialism in relation to the Soviet Union and its peoples was Directive No. 21, code-named "Plan Barbarossa" - the plan of an aggressive war of fascist Germany against the USSR. Based on this plan, approved by Hitler in December 1940, various departments of the "Third Reich" developed practical measures to carry out the occupation of Soviet territory.
On March 13, 1941, that is, more than three months before the attack on the USSR, the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces issued the "Instruction on Special Areas to Directive No. 21." It followed from it that an integral part of the "Plan Barbarossa" was the liquidation of the Soviet state as a political entity, the division of the occupied Soviet territory into separate regions controlled by German officials.
At the beginning of April 1941, the Hitlerite government formed the "Central Bureau for the Preparation of a Solution to the Question of the Eastern Space," headed by one of Hitler's closest henchmen, Alfred Rosenberg. The task of this bureau was to develop practical measures aimed at enslaving the peoples of the USSR.
In the original plan developed under the leadership of Rosenberg, it was planned immediately after the end of the war, that is, according to the calculations of the Nazis, in the autumn of 1941, to turn the Baltic Soviet republics and the Crimea into areas of direct German colonization with their subsequent inclusion in the state territory of the "Third Reich". Ukraine, Belarus and Turkestan were to become buffer states fully subordinate to Germany. The Nazis hoped to move their borders far to the East in order to reduce the territory inhabited by Russians, who, according to the plans of the drafters of the plan, should generally be deprived of any kind of statehood. In the Caucasus, Rosenberg planned to create a puppet state association, federally connected with Germany and controlled by its representative.
Taking into account the multinational composition of the population of the Soviet Union, Rosenberg adopted the principle tested by the imperialist colonialists: "Divide and rule." He proposed to establish a milder attitude towards the peoples of Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and the Caucasus than towards the Russians. In his opinion, such a policy should have contributed to bringing these peoples into a state of obedience and even make it possible to use them to suppress the resistance of the Russian people.
Hitler considered the measures envisaged in the Rosenberg Plan to be too lenient and rejected the plan. In Hitler's opinion, the Wehrmacht had sufficient strength not only to defeat the Red Army, but also to keep the conquered peoples in subjection without the help of bourgeois nationalists. Therefore, Hitler demanded during the colonization of the "eastern space" not to indulge any people and not to create any puppet states.
Somewhat later, after the start of the war with the USSR, Hitler told his associates that in this war he was pursuing the goal of depriving the Eastern peoples of any state organization and, in accordance with this, keeping them at the lowest possible level of culture. "Our guiding principle," he emphasized, "should be that these peoples have only one and only justification for their existence - to be useful to us economically."
Hitler's views were completely shared by Goering, Himmler, Bormann and other Nazi leaders.
It was decided not to create any puppet states on the occupied Soviet territory and to put it under the control of the German administration before colonization. To this end, it was planned to create four imperial commissariats - "Ostland", "Ukraine", "Moscow", "Kavkaz" - headed by Reichskommissars appointed by Hitler. The imperial commissariats were divided into general, and the latter - into regional commissariats. In total, the Nazis intended to form 1050 regional commissariats on the occupied Soviet territory. (During the war, the names of the general and regional commissariats were changed. The first were called general districts, the second - districts.)
However, to reduce resistance Soviet people, Hitler and his closest henchmen hoped to sow national discord among the peoples of our country. Instructing the future officials of the occupation administration, Goering taught them: “In the Baltic countries, the German authorities should rely on the Germans; use in the interests of Germany the contradictions between Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians and Russians ... In the south, use in our interests the possible presence of contradictions between Ukrainians and Great Russians ... In the Caucasus, to use in our interests the contradictions between the natives - Georgians, Armenians, Tatars - and Russians ... "
The incitement of national hatred was considered by the Nazis only as an additional means of strengthening their domination. But the main method of "management" of the occupied Soviet territory, worked out in detail even before the start of the war against the USSR, was considered by the leaders of the "Third Reich" to be mass terror. His "ideological justification" was Hitler's racial nonsense and the attitudes based on them about clearing "living space" for the "Aryan race." “If I send the flower of the German nation into the heat of war, shedding precious German blood without the slightest pity,” Hitler said, “then, without a doubt, I have the right to destroy millions of people of an inferior race who multiply like worms.”
Hitler's misanthropic attitudes acquired a particularly sinister character in relation to the peoples of the Soviet Union, since they were based on the ideology of anti-communism. That is why the functions of "preparing political administration" of the occupied Soviet territory, even before the attack on the USSR, were transferred to Chief Executioner Himmler. He was instructed to proceed from the idea of ​​a decisive struggle between two diametrically opposed political systems and the right to act independently and on his own responsibility. Thus, the fate of tens of millions of Soviet people was given into the hands of the Gestapo executioners and SS assassins.
The personnel of the German armed forces and officials of the occupation apparatus were to use the methods of merciless, unlimited terror in the occupied Soviet territory, which was provided for by special directives and instructions. On May 13, 1941, the Supreme High Command of the German Army issued a directive approved by Field Marshal Keitel "On military jurisdiction in the Barbarossa region and on special powers of the troops." The directive ordered the use of mass violent measures against the Soviet population and removed from the soldiers and officers of the Wehrmacht in advance any responsibility for any violence against Soviet citizens, even in cases where these actions simultaneously represent a military crime or misconduct. The fascist German army thus received the "legitimate right" to behave on Soviet soil as an army of rapists, robbers and murderers.
10 days after the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, a special instruction was issued for officials of the occupation apparatus, dressed in the form of "The Twelve Commandments of the behavior of Germans in the East and their treatment of Russians." "Don't be soft and sentimental," one of them said. "The most cruel and most merciless measures" should be carried out, another said. Each commandment demanded: no mercy for the Soviet people.
Thus, carrying out the most brutal mass terror was made the "duty" of all German authorities in the occupied Soviet territory - military and civilian.
Special formations for the implementation of terror were also created in advance. To this end, two weeks before the start of the war against the USSR, the high command of the German armed forces and the main department of imperial security concluded an agreement on the joint actions of the army and punitive organs. In particular, they agreed on the creation of four "operational groups" (Einsatzgruppen) SD "-" A", "B", "C", "D", specially designed for the mass destruction of the Soviet population. For each of these groups, an area was determined in advance actions: for group "A" - the Soviet Baltic republics; for group "B" - the region of Smolensk and Moscow; for group "C" - the region of Kyiv; for group "D" - Southern Ukraine.
The heads of the operational groups, writes the French researcher, author of the book "History of the Gestapo" Jacques Delarue, "were experienced Nazis ... The size of each operational group was 1000-1200 people, distributed among a certain number of operational teams (Einsatzkommandos). There were an average of 350 per 1000 people SS troops, 150 drivers and mechanics, 100 Gestapo officers, 80 auxiliary police officers, 130 order police officers, 40-45 criminal police officers and 30-35 SD officers. Leading personnel were supplied by the Gestapo and in a smaller proportion by the SD and criminal police. "
You can learn about what the Eisatzgruppen and Ein-Zatzkommandos were supposed to do from the order of the acting deputy head of the SS and police, Heydrich. “The immediate goal of all operational work,” the order said, “is the political, that is, police, pacification of the newly occupied regions. The ultimate goal is economic pacification.” At the same time, it was ordered to act "with merciless severity on the widest scale, taking into account the Bolshevik transformation of the country that lasted for decades."
The main task of the SD operational groups was, first of all, to destroy the most advanced, ideologically consistent, politically most active part of the Soviet people. To this end, long before the attack on the USSR, various intelligence services of fascist Germany collected information about leading party, Soviet, Komsomol and economic workers, public figures and other Soviet citizens and compiled all sorts of lists and search books, which included persons who were to be destroyed in the first place. turn. The "Special Investigation Book of the USSR", "German Investigation Book", "List of Identification of the Location" and other similar "allowances" were prepared, which were supposed to make it easier for the Nazi assassins to achieve their criminal goal.
However, the fascist rulers considered these books and lists insufficient and demanded that the initiative of the perpetrators of the murders not be hindered. One of Heydrich's orders said: "For the implementation of our tasks, it is not possible to make allowances available to the commands. The German Investigation Book, Lists of Location Identification, USSR Special Investigation Book" will be useful only in a small number of cases. "Special Investigation Book The book of the USSR" is therefore insufficient, since only an insignificant part of the Soviet Russians, who should be considered dangerous, is included in it."
Who, according to the instructions of the Nazi leadership, should be considered dangerous for the "new order" and executed in the first place? All party, state and economic leaders, up to the district level, workers of public organizations - trade unions and the Komsomol, political workers and commanders of the Red Army, the intelligentsia.
First of all, the Nazis sought to destroy the communists. They understood that it was the communists who were the leading and organizing force of the Soviet people. "After the liquidation of the activists," Halder, the chief of the Hitlerite general staff, wrote in his diary on March 17, 1941, "he (the Soviet people. - Auth.) will disintegrate."
Eliminating the activists was a top priority. Ultimately, according to the Ost plan, tens of millions of Soviet people were subject to physical destruction. The head of the Gestapo, Himmler, instructing his subordinates at the beginning of 1941, said that 30 million Slavs would have to be destroyed in the war with the Soviet Union. In addition, the Nazis intended to significantly reduce the number of non-Slavic Soviet peoples and completely destroy all Jews. For the implementation of such monstrous plans, special equipment was required. Hitler cynically declared: "We must develop the technique of depopulation." The fascists began to carry out this task even before the attack on the USSR. In the occupied European countries and in Germany itself, special camps were built with "increased capacity" crematoria and "special-purpose baths." Gas cars were designed - gas chambers, the bodies of which with deadly equipment were made in Berlin.
The rulers of fascist Germany worked out in advance a detailed program for the economic use of the occupied Soviet territory. Its essence was to turn the Soviet Union into an agrarian and raw material appendage of Germany and a source of cheap work force. The rulers of the "Third Reich" believed that without mastering the resources of our country, Germany would not be able to achieve both the immediate and final goals of the war she had started for world domination. The abundant flow of food and raw materials from the conquered Soviet territory, according to the plans of the fascist leaders, was supposed to radically improve the supply of the army and the population of Germany and minimize the dependence of German industry on imported supplies. This war, said Goebbels, is "a war for wheat and bread, for a richly laid table for breakfast, lunch and dinner", a war "for raw materials, for rubber, for iron and ores."
One of the central tasks of the fascist program for the economic use of the occupied Soviet territory was to solve the problem of Germany's "surplus population", that is, to ease the social contradictions in the country, associated, in particular, with the growing number of small and landless peasants. It was supposed to create on the eastern lands a layer of German landowners-colonizers who would profit from the slave labor of agricultural workers from among the local residents partially saved for this purpose. According to the plans of the fascist bosses, the German landowners would be the dominant social element and the political support of the Nazi regime in the occupied Soviet territory. The statement of the Hitlerite Minister of Agriculture, Darre, gives an idea of ​​these designs. "The land of the countries we have conquered will be divided between soldiers who have distinguished themselves especially, and among exemplary members of the National Socialist Party. Thus, a new landed aristocracy will appear. This aristocracy will have its own serfs: local residents."
Landowners were supposed to make up at least one third of the total contingent of German colonizers. Approximately the same number of craftsmen were planned to be settled on the conquered Soviet lands, up to 15 percent - merchants and up to 20 percent - various German officials.
As the Nazis expected, the main economic units in the occupied Soviet territory would be German privately owned estates and enterprises, as well as joint-stock companies operating under the supervision of government regulators. From industrial enterprises the Nazis intended to keep only those that were required to meet the urgent needs of the German army. All the rest were to be liquidated, and their equipment was to be dismantled and exported to Germany. The Nazis intended to use the workers of the liquidated enterprises in agriculture, in the construction and repair of roads.
After the victory, the leaders of the "Third Reich" planned to leave on Soviet soil only enterprises for the extraction of minerals, the production of small agricultural implements and the primary processing of agricultural products. The creation of monopoly companies for the operation of individual sectors of the economy was envisaged.
Thus, the fascist rulers proceeded from the fact that a large industrial production in the occupied territory of the USSR will be destroyed. This, in turn, was to lead to the elimination of large industrial centers, and consequently, the working class, which posed the greatest danger to the invaders. "The politically undesirable accumulation of the native population (as the Nazis called the Soviet people. - Auth.) in industrial centers will be avoided," one of the secret documents of the "Eastern Ministry" said.
The program of plundering and using the economic resources of the Soviet country was outlined in a number of government documents. The "Barbarossa plan" had a special economic section, codenamed "Oldenburg". It outlined a system of measures for the development of the wealth of the Soviet territory and the unrestrained exploitation of its population. Goering, one of the leaders of Nazism, a major capitalist, closely associated with the German imperialist monopolies, was engaged in the development of this system.
On April 29, 1941, the main ideas of the economic section of the "Plan Barbarossa" were discussed and approved at a meeting between Hitler and the leaders of the Wehrmacht. They were set out in detail in a directive included in Goering's so-called "Green File". Subsequently, a number of other directives and instructions were issued on these issues, which together constituted a complete program for the total robbery of Soviet territory and its population. In their cynicism, the Green Folder documents can only be compared with the General Plan Ost. In one of the documents - "Principles of economic policy in the East", approved on May 2, 1941, it was said:
"1) A war can be waged only on the condition that ... all German armed forces can be supplied with food at the expense of Russia.
2) When we take everything we need from the country, tens of millions of people will undoubtedly starve to death."
At a conference with Hitler, a structure was drawn up for a special economic apparatus to carry out the predatory plans of German imperialism. At this meeting, they decided to create an extensive organization with its own command, intelligence and other services. Directly on the ground, it was planned to form five economic inspectorates, 23 economic teams and 12 branches. At the meeting, the locations of economic inspections and teams were named: Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv, Minsk, Riga, Tbilisi, Baku, Tula, Murmansk, Vologda, Gorky, Yaroslavl, Stalingrad, Krasnodar, Grozny and other cities of the Soviet Union. It was also envisaged to create a wide network of small units - economic headquarters, special military units and detachments for the collection of raw materials. The institution of so-called agricultural officers was introduced, who were supposed to "watch over the interests of Germany" on the ground - to supervise the work of the peasants and to extort agricultural products in a timely manner to supply the Nazi troops.
The economic headquarters "Ost" (codenamed headquarters "Oldenburg") became the highest command authority of this organization. "What's new for the organization subordinate to the Oldenburg Economic Headquarters," the minutes of the meeting said, "is that it deals not only with questions of the military economy, but also with the entire economy of the territory as a whole."
The economic headquarters of the "Ost" was subordinated to Goering, who was appointed imperial commissioner for managing the economy of the Soviet territory to be captured.
Thus, the economic use of Soviet territory was planned by the Nazis as a prearranged armed robbery, the implementation of which began in the course of hostilities, and then continued and deepened in the areas remaining behind the front line.
The implementation of the priority tasks outlined in Goering's "Green Folder" was entrusted directly to the army. To this end, the fascists created in advance a special military-economic apparatus, which was guided by the statement: "The needs of the army must be met to the maximum at the expense of local resources."
The military-economic apparatus was headed by the department of the military economy and equipment of the General Staff of the German Armed Forces. Like the economic headquarters of the Ost, it was under the command of Goering.
The department launched its activities even before the war - it collected information on the location, nature of products and capacities of industrial enterprises, on the nature and volume of production of agricultural areas on Soviet territory. During the war, on the basis of this information, quartering points and sources of supply for the troops were determined.
An economic department or group was created at the headquarters of each army. In addition to the staff apparatus, the economic intelligence detachment and the technical battalion were directly subordinate to the head of the economic department of the army headquarters. With the outbreak of hostilities, these units were to advance along with forward formations, identify the presence and condition of warehouses, industrial and agricultural enterprises, provide initial protection of military and economic facilities, quickly restore and put into operation enterprises capable of producing the products necessary to supply the army, organize harvesting, etc. As the front advanced, economic issues passed into the jurisdiction of the field organizations of the economic headquarters "Ost".
The central document of the "Green Folder", as already noted, was Goering's directive on the robbery of the territory of the USSR planned for occupation. It said: "Getting as much food and oil for Germany as possible is the main economic goal of the campaign. Along with this, other raw materials from the occupied areas should be provided to German industry." The directive ordered, simultaneously with the advance of German troops on Soviet soil, to immediately carry out a complete requisition of all grain and other food products, oil and oil products, light metals, vehicles, industrial raw materials, semi-finished products and finished products.
It was a setting for mass armed robbery. “The point of view is completely inappropriate,” the directive emphasized, “as if the occupied regions should be put in order as soon as possible, and their economy restored ... Development of the economy and maintenance of order should be carried out only in those areas where we can obtain significant reserves of agricultural products and oil. And in other parts of the country that cannot feed themselves, that is, in Central and Northern Russia, economic activity should be limited to the use of discovered reserves. Moreover, the directive demanded "resolutely prevent the leakage of food into the consuming regions of Central and Northern Russia."
The fulfillment of these requirements should have led to the starvation death of tens of millions of people. Four months after the attack of fascist Germany on the USSR, Goering, in a conversation with Italian Foreign Minister Ciano, cynically stated: “This year, 20 to 30 million people will die of starvation in Russia. Maybe it’s even good that this will happen: after all, some peoples needs to be reduced."
Such, in their main outline, are the intentions of the fascist aggressors towards the Soviet Union and its peoples. They show that the bloody occupation regime on the Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis was not a "chain of random mistakes" and a "forced measure", as Hitler's current lawyers claim. Plans for the liquidation of the Soviet Union, the destruction and enslavement of its peoples were drawn up by the leadership of the Nazi Party, the Nazi government and the military command long before the attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. Embodied on the eve of the war in directives, instructions and other guiding documents of the fascist government of Germany, they acquired the force of state laws and constituted the system of state policy of the "Third Reich". This policy, worked out in advance, formed the basis of the savage occupation regime of the fascist aggressors on Soviet territory.

bloody terror regime

The fascist aggressors began to carry out their villainous plans as soon as they invaded the Soviet earth. These plans corresponded to the administrative structure and "organization of power in the regions of the USSR captured by the Nazis.
The Nazis divided all the occupied Soviet lands into two parts: the army rear zone, which included the territory from the front line to the rear borders of army groups, and the military-administrative zone, which included areas to the west of these borders.
By Hitler's order of June 25, 1941, all power in the army rear zone was transferred to the commander of the Wehrmacht. On July 17, Hitler issued an order to civil administration occupied Soviet regions. Upon the cessation of hostilities, it was said, the administration of these areas passes from the military administration to the civil authorities, that is, to the Reichskommissars. Since it was not possible to capture Moscow and the Caucasus, instead of the planned four Reichskommissariats, two were formed by the beginning of September: "Ostland" and "Ukraine". The Reichskommissars were subordinate to the Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Regions Rosenberg, who was in Berlin, and his deputy Meyer, whose residence was to be located in the occupied territory of the USSR.
The territorial division of the Soviet regions captured by the Nazis was based on two interrelated goals: to facilitate the colonization of Soviet land and to fragment the Soviet socialist nations in order to ultimately eliminate them. Thus, the Reichskommissariat "Ostland" (with the center in the city of Riga) included Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, parts of the Leningrad region and Belarus. Almost the entire Gomel region, the southern regions of Brest, parts of the Pinsk and Polessye regions of Belarus, the Nazis included in the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine". Bialystok region and northern part Brest region were allocated to a special district - "Bezirk Bialystok", which was under the control of the East Prussian administration. Vitebsk, Mogilev regions and the eastern part of the Minsk region were part of the army rear zone. Thus, Belarus was torn apart. Actually, its territory was made up of the Baranovichi region, the western part of Minsk and certain areas of the Vileyka, Pinsk, Brest and Polesye regions.
Ukraine was also dismembered. Part of its southern regions west of the river Southern Bug and Moldavia were transferred to royal Romania. The western regions of Ukraine - Lvov, Drohobych, Stanislav and Ternopil - were included by the Nazis in the "Polish Governor General". The rest of the Ukrainian territory was included in the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" with the center in the city of Rivne.
The Reichskommissariats were divided into general districts. The Reichskommissariat "Ostland" had four districts: "Lithuania", "Latvia", "Estonia" and "Belarus"; in the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" - six: "Volyn", "Zhytomyr", "Kyiv", "Nikolaev", "Dnepropetrovsk", "Tavria". The general districts "Latvia" and "Lithuania" consisted of regions, and those, in turn, of rural communities, which included several rural settlements. The invaders divided Estonia into districts and districts, Belarus - into districts, districts and volosts. In Ukraine, the general districts consisted of districts, as well as large cities (over 100,000 people) that were not part of the districts. Each general district included 20-30 districts. The district included rural communities, several villages in each.
The zones of the army rear (these were mainly the occupied territories of the RSFSR) did not have a central control and were under the jurisdiction of the head of the rear of the army group and the military field commandant's offices created by him. They were divided into districts and counties, and the latter - into rural communities.
During the course of the war, the fascist leaders continued to concretize plans for the colonization of those Soviet territories that, as they assumed, would be captured by the Wehrmacht in the very near future. So, when in the summer of 1942 the Nazis launched an offensive on the southern sector of the front, Rozonberg wrote a special note "On the transformation of the Caucasus." At the head of the German administration, in his opinion, it was necessary to put an "imperial patron", at the head of individual regions - "deputies" or "patrons".
All power in the occupied Soviet land belonged from top to bottom to the German administration. The Reichskommissars and general commissars were appointed personally by Hitler, all other leading officials, up to the district commissars, by the Minister for the Occupied Regions Rosenberg, the commandants of the military field commandant's offices in the army rear zone by the army command.
Each Reichskommissariat had departments in charge of national and racial politics, religion, law, finance and taxes, industry, agriculture, transport, etc. Corresponding services were created in the general districts and military field commandant's offices.
On the ground, the occupiers tried to create the appearance of "self-government." For this purpose, city and regional councils were formed, headed by chief burgomasters, mayors, burgomasters, and positions of elders were introduced in the villages.
In reality, the bodies of the so-called local self-government were absolutely powerless and acted only on the orders of the occupying authorities. "It must be borne in mind," one of the instructions of the invaders said, "that the employees of the city government are not employees of the population, but only of the German command. Any independent action is prohibited." The bodies of "local self-government" were supposed to provide the Nazis with maximum assistance in carrying out the political, economic and military tasks of the occupation regime. Numerous instructions instructed the organs of "self-government" in every possible way to prevent any actions of the population against German interests, to help the military commandant's offices or to conduct searches for communists, Komsomol members and non-party activists, partisans who were surrounded by Red Army soldiers, commanders and political workers, to identify persons who provided them with asylum, organize auxiliary police, take into account local residents and aliens, ensure agricultural and other work, collect taxes from the population, etc.
The heads of the organs of "self-government", up to the headmen of the villages, gave written obligations to fulfill all orders of the occupying authorities. The political reliability of the employees of the "self-government" was checked by the field gendarmerie and the Gestapo, all of them were under constant covert surveillance.
When organizing "local self-government" the occupiers met with serious difficulties - with an acute shortage of personnel. Thus, referring to the situation in Belorussia, Rosenberg stated in one of his speeches that “as a result of the 23-year rule of the Bolsheviks, the population of Belarus is so infected with the Bolshevik worldview that there are no organizational or personal conditions for local self-government”, that “positive elements that could be relied upon were not found in Belarus. Exactly the same situation was in Ukraine and in the occupied regions of the RSFSR. The invaders had to be content with the dregs of the White Guard emigrants and nationalist rabble who arrived in their wagon train. In the localities, only decomposed elements, criminals and lurking enemies of Soviet power - former kulaks, Nepmen, etc., voluntarily went into the service of the invaders.
In the Baltic republics, the Nazis found some social support for themselves among the remnants of the exploiting classes. From them, "local self-government" bodies were created, as well as everywhere, absolutely powerless. By the Rosenberg Decree of November 18, 1941, the supreme power in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was completely retained in the hands of the German general commissars, who supervised the central organs of "self-government" and had the right to interfere in all their affairs. Officials of the bodies of "self-government" were appointed by the occupiers, petty officials - by local bodies, but only with the sanction of the occupying authorities. Official relations between German institutions and the central organs of "self-government" were conducted in German.
When characterizing the German civil authorities in the Reichskommissariats and the military in the army rear zone, it should be borne in mind that there was practically no difference between them. They pursued the same goals, acted with the same terrorist methods. Moreover, in accordance with Hitler's order, the military command was obliged to assist the Reichskommissars in solving administrative and political problems, especially in the field of using the country's resources to supply the army in the field.
Another, in fact, dependent on no one and endowed with emergency powers, which operated throughout the occupied Soviet territory, were the SS bodies headed by Himmler. They were entrusted with the police protection of the occupied Soviet regions. A huge terrorist apparatus was subordinate to the SS organs - teams and groups specially created for the mass destruction of Soviet people. The task of this apparatus of suppression and bloody terror was to "completely pacify" the occupied Soviet territory, to implement the misanthropic general plan "Ost".
The same task was assigned to the civil occupation administration in the Reichskommissariats and to the military command in the army rear zone. To ensure its implementation, by order of Hitler, a senior SS and police chief was seconded to each Reich commissar, and SS and police chiefs to the general and regional commissars. They had at their disposal police units, security divisions, SD formations. The head of the rear of the army group for the performance of police functions received three divisions, each of three infantry regiments, with artillery and communications attached to them, a motorized police battalion, and an SS brigade. The SS men controlled the local police and special forces. In the Reichskommissariats and in the zone of the army rear, the SS created various kinds of formations from traitors to the Motherland and Soviet citizens forcibly driven there.
An important role in planting the "new order" was played by local organizations of the National Socialist, that is, fascist, party, although they were not directly part of the structure of the occupation apparatus. The main task of these organizations was to indoctrinate the German occupation administration in the spirit of frenzied Nazism and hatred for the local population. One of the representatives of the occupation apparatus on the territory of the USSR authorized to create Nazi Party organizations, Schmidt, stated: “The victor is in danger, because he can accept the way of life of the vanquished and capitulate to his spirit. We must not succumb to the vital laws of other peoples. The Party must prevent this by all means. It must create a German community here, as well as a German cultural environment."
The leaders of the National Socialist organizations in the Reichskommissariats were the Reichskommissars. In each general district, a general commissar was at the head of the Nazi party organization. Party leadership on the territory of the administrative region was carried out by the commissar of this region. Groups of the National Socialist Party were created at enterprises, railway junctions, etc. All these organizations and groups zealously saw to it that the members of the Fascist Party and in general all the occupiers - employees of institutions did not deviate a single step from the requirements of the "Fuhrer" in establishing and maintaining the occupation regime, in every possible way strengthened the "Aryan spirit".
Such was in in general terms the structure of the occupation apparatus in the Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis.
Having chosen mass, unrestricted terror as the main means of achieving their criminal goals, the method of "governing" the occupied Soviet territory, the leaders of the "Third Reich" did not hesitate at all. Criminal goals are achieved only by criminal means, and this was clearly shown by the occupation regime established by the fascist aggressors.
Near Moscow and Leningrad, in Belorussia and Ukraine, in Moldavia and Karelia, in the Smolensk and Oryol regions, in the Baltic and Crimea - everywhere the invaders left terrible traces of unprecedented crimes. It is difficult for the generations that grew up after the war to even imagine the scope and cruelty of the occupiers' terror. But numerous documents and photographs have been preserved, witnesses of the fascist robbery are still alive. Yes, it was, and mankind has no right to forget about it.
And there was this.
Immediately after the capture by the fascist troops of a Soviet city or other locality military commandant's offices, the Gestapo and other fascist punitive organs began to "filter" the population. The most politically capable part of it was destroyed or imprisoned in concentration camps. First of all, the Nazis identified communists, Komsomol members and non-party activists, as well as those who were surrounded by commanders and political workers of the Red Army. Anyone who ever spoke at a meeting, subscribed to a loan, or wrote an article in a wall paper was considered an activist. So, in the report of the Einsatz-group "A" operating in the Baltic States for the period from October 16, 1941 to January 31, 1942, that is, for two and a half months, it was indicated: "In total, about 14,500 communists were arrested in Estonia, of which 4,070 were executed and about 5,500 are imprisoned in concentration camps." If we take into account that before the war (by June 1, 1941) the Communist Party of Estonia numbered 3,732 communists, it becomes obvious that the invaders included in the number of arrested communists all persons objectionable to them.
The report of one of the Nazis testifies to how the Nazis began their hostage in Zhitomir, which they captured. It said: “When we finally climbed the embankment, our eyes presented a picture disgusting in its cruelty, shocking and terrifying an unprepared person. A hole was dug there about 7-8 meters long and about 4 meters wide, on one edge of which lay a pile of of earth from it. This hill and the adjacent wall of the pit were completely filled with streams of blood. The pit itself was filled with many corpses of men and women of various ages, the total number of which is difficult to determine, as well as the depth of the pit. Behind the embankment was a team of police headed by police officer. There were traces of blood on the uniforms of the policemen. In the distance, all around, were many soldiers of the units stationed there; some of them were present as spectators ... Coming close to the pit, I saw a picture that I still cannot forget. Among others in this In the grave lay an old man with a bushy gray beard, clutching a cane in his left hand.Since he was still alive and breathing police officers to finish him off, to which he replied with a smile: "I already drove 7 bullets into his stomach, now he himself must die." The shot ones were not stacked in the grave, and they lay side by side as they fell into the pit from above. All these people were killed by a shot in the back of the head, and the wounded were fought in the pit with pistols."
The commander of the 528th Infantry Regiment, Major Resler, described this bloody orgy. “According to the stories of the soldiers who often saw these executions,” the report continued, “many hundreds of people were shot every day in this way.” Resler stated that he did not suffer from "exaggerated sensitivity" and was only outraged that the mass extermination of Soviet people was taking place "quite publicly, as if on an open stage."
Twice the Nazis occupied Kerch. At first they stayed in it for about two months. After the liberation of the city, the place of mass executions carried out by the invaders near the village of Bagerovo near Kerch was examined for the first time. There was an anti-tank ditch 4 meters wide and 2 meters deep. For a kilometer it was all filled with the corpses of women, old people and teenagers. Stumps of arms, legs and other parts of the human body and all sorts of children's things - toys, bottles with nipples, hats, galoshes, boots were lying around the moat. All this was spattered with blood and brains.
In each city, fascist dungeons - prisons - were immediately created. Masters of shoulder cases were operating there - Gestapo investigators. By monstrous torture and torment, they "extracted" from the prisoners information about the Soviet people who were to be exterminated in the first place. The stay in prisons was short-lived and, as a rule, ended in execution. Only in rare cases were prisoners placed in concentration camps, where a slow martyr's death awaited them.
There was a certain sequence in the extermination of the population of the occupied Soviet territory. First of all, the activists were destroyed. Only Einsatzgruppe B, as is clear from the report of its command dated December 29, 1942 to Berlin, from November 15 to December 15, 1942, destroyed 134,198 people in the rear area of ​​Army Group Center.
The whole world knows the tragedy of Babi Yar in Kyiv, where more than 100 thousand Soviet people were brutally murdered. These murders began with the mass extermination of Jews. At the end of September 1941, the field commandant's office of the Nazi troops pasted an order around the city ordering all Jews in Kyiv and its environs "to arrive at Melnik Street at exactly 8 am on September 29, taking with them valuables, warm clothes and underwear." The order ended with a threat: "Whoever does not appear will be shot." A rumor spread throughout the city that the Jews would be resettled somewhere. The next day, thousands of people who had gathered were herded to the Lukyanovskoye cemetery to a ravine called Babi Yar. The Nazis took away valuables and clothes from the doomed, after which they lined them up in rows throughout the day and shot them.
There is evidence of how this happened. Here is one of them - a statement from a resident of Kyiv N. T. Gorbacheva.
“I and several other women living near Babi Yar,” writes N. T. Gorbacheva, “unbeknownst to the German guards, approached the place where the cars stopped. And the people brought on them were unloaded. the Germans forced the Jews they had brought to undress and ordered them to run along the ravine, shooting those who fled with submachine guns and machine guns.
I personally saw how the Germans threw infants into the ravine In the ravine were not only shot, but also wounded, as well as living children. Nevertheless, the Germans were digging in the ravine, and it was noticeable how a small layer of earth was moving from the movement of living people.
Throughout the entire period of the Nazi occupation of Kyiv, Babi Yar was the site of mass executions of Soviet people. Everywhere on the territory occupied by the Nazis there were their own "Babi Yars", where hundreds of thousands of people were brutally killed, including the elderly, women and children.
Especially widely used by the Nazis for the destruction of Soviet people were gas wagons, which became known as gas chambers. These were specially equipped cargo vans with hermetically sealed bodies. People driven into these vans were poisoned with exhaust gases from diesel engines. Death in the gas chambers was very painful. However, among the executioners there were also "humanists" who wanted to "ease" the fate of their victims. One of them, SS Untersturmfuehrer Becker, wrote from Kyiv to Berlin to his superiors: “Fasing is often wrong. To complete the procedure as soon as possible, drivers always give full throttle. this was foreseen. My instructions led to the fact that now, with the correct setting of the lever, death occurs faster and, moreover, the prisoners peacefully fall asleep. The distorted faces and stools that were observed before were no longer noticed."
In fact, the entire occupation regime of the fascist invaders was a system of systematic mass extermination of Soviet people. All invaders were endowed with unprecedented in the history of wars, unlimited rights in relation to the local population. The fate of a Soviet person depended entirely on the whim of any Nazi. As shown above, even before the attack on the USSR, the invaders of all ranks and any official position were not only given the "right", but also charged with the duty to display extreme cruelty. During the war, this obligation was repeatedly brought to the attention of each occupier in various forms. In the German Soldier's Memo it was said: "You have no heart and nerves, they are not needed in the war. Destroy pity and compassion in yourself, kill every Russian, do not stop if there is an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy in front of you. Killing, in this way you will save yourself from destruction, secure the future of your family and become famous forever.
Field Marshal Keitel, in a directive to the troops of July 23, 1941, pointed out: “The troops available to ensure security in the conquered eastern regions, in view of the vastness of this space, will be sufficient only if all kinds of resistance are broken not by legal punishment of the perpetrators, but if the occupying authorities inspire that fear which is the only thing capable of discouraging the population from any willingness to resist... Not in the use of additional security units, but in the application of appropriate draconian measures, the commanders must find means to maintain order in their security areas.
And draconian measures were applied with might and main. The population of the occupied Soviet territory was deprived of all political and generally any human rights. But he was required to perform many duties and comply with a number of prohibitions. For violation of them, in most cases, the death penalty or imprisonment in a concentration camp was supposed. In order to intimidate the population, executions were usually carried out in public. Gallows with the bodies of the hanged were an indispensable attribute of every Soviet city occupied by the Nazis.
The vile system of hostage-taking was practiced everywhere. For the murder of a German, 100 were to be shot, for the murder of a policeman - the first 50 local residents who came across, if the perpetrators were not found. Hostages were seized and killed in case of sabotage, sabotage, shelter of Soviet encircled soldiers and partisans. For example, in Kyiv, in connection with sabotage and sabotage at enterprises on November 2, 1941, 300 people were shot, and 27 days later, 400 people. After the war, the tragedy that befell the Latvian village of Audriny became known. The Nazis arrested all the inhabitants of this village (235 people, including the elderly, women and children). On January 4, 1942, they publicly shot 30 men in the market square of the city of Rezekne. The rest of the villagers - among them dozens of children from a few weeks to ten years of age and a hundred and ten-year-old peasant woman Vera Glushneva - were shot the day before in the Anchupan forest. The village of Audrina was burned to the ground by the Nazis.
Complete arbitrariness reigned in the measures of punishment. There was practically no investigation of the misdeeds of local residents, especially judicial ones. The "legislator" and "judge" was any Gestapo or Wehrmacht soldier. Each of them could do as he pleased. So, the commander of the 106th Nazi infantry division in an order dated April 8, 1943 inspired personnel that "a German soldier, regardless of rank, must feel like a master and, in accordance with this, treat the Russian population"; he established something like a scale of penalties that his subordinates were to follow when punishing local residents. Here is another example of the "legislative creativity" of the invaders. In the villages of Alyokhino, Sukhanka and other settlements of the Khotynets district of the Oryol region, the occupiers forbade girls to marry own will. The right to decide the issue of their marriage was given to the headman, who could marry the girl to whomever he wanted.
Sometimes general laws were issued. They corresponded to the guidelines of the fascist leadership about merciless terror against the Soviet people. Himmler's directive "Concerning the Prosecution of Crimes Against the Empire or the Occupation Authorities" of February 4, 1942 explicitly stated: "The Führer considers: in the case of such crimes, the punishment of imprisonment, including life imprisonment, would be regarded as a sign of weakness. Effective and consistent deterrence can only be achieved by capital punishment or by measures that leave relatives and the population in the dark about the fate of the perpetrator."
In accordance with the aforementioned directive, on February 17, 1942, by order of Rosenberg, "Special Criminal Laws" were introduced for the occupied regions of the USSR. According to these laws, Soviet people were threatened with the death penalty for insulting the "honor" of the National Socialist Party, the German army and the police, for behavior "lowering respect for the German state or the German people", and also if they did not inform the occupying authorities about anti-German sentiments or actions. It is quite clear that any Soviet person could be accused of violating each of the articles of these laws. Moreover, the local occupation authorities and commanders of military units and subunits were given the full right to make their own decisions on death penalty Soviet people. They received appropriate explanations on this matter. Thus, the order of the Zhytomyr head of the gendarmerie stated that "it is not necessary to ask for permission to carry out executions in cases where there are grounds for this."
There was no legal protection of the population from the arbitrariness of the invaders. Notices were hung on the buildings of the military commandant's offices: "Complaints of the civilian population against German servicemen are not accepted." Moreover, the occupation authorities and the command of the Wehrmacht in every possible way encouraged bullying and mockery of the Soviet people and often organized such actions themselves. In Vitebsk, for example, a field commandant ordered girls between the ages of 14 and 25 to report to the commandant's office, ostensibly to be assigned to work. In fact, the youngest and most attractive of them were sent to brothels by force of arms. In the Belarusian town of Shatsk, the Nazis gathered all the young girls, raped them, and then drove them naked to the square and forced them to dance. Those who resisted were shot on the spot by the fascist fiends. Such violence and abuse by the invaders was a widespread mass phenomenon.
The mockery and mockery of the Nazis over the Soviet people acquired the most savage forms. Before shooting or hanging their victims, the Nazis tortured them in every possible way. Before the eyes of women doomed to death, they killed or threw alive into the graves of their young children. The Nazis burned people at the stake, drove them into minefields, buried the wounded in the ground.
Now some bourgeois historians define the atrocities of the fascists as nothing more than "senseless cruelty", "unjustified extremes". Moreover, these "cruelties" and "extremes" are explained by war, which, allegedly, in itself inevitably coarsens morals and erases moral foundations.
Is it so?
In fact, as shown above, these violence and atrocities were part of an elaborate system of systematic mass extermination of Soviet people. The fascist ruling elite needed not just murderers and robbers, blind executors of their will. To educate millions of "superhumans" free, as Hitler said, from the "disgusting chimera of conscience", capable of "proactively", according to their own needs, to create bloody robbery - such was the goal set by the Nazis.
The unleashing of the basest instincts, bringing them to fanaticism and sadism in relation to representatives of the "lower races", and especially to Soviet people - the bearers of socialist ideals hostile to fascism - all this played an important role in the selection and education of the layer of "Aryan masters". The fascist bosses and the kings of the German monopolies could be pleased. In the bloody atrocities on Soviet soil, the "superman" cherished in their plans - a fanatic and a sadist - really took shape. He was free from both conscience and pity. "People are crying, and we are laughing at tears," Chief Corporal Johann Herder, a participant in the reprisals against the population in Belarus, boasted in a letter to the Fatherland.
The SS and Gestapo men were especially atrocious on Soviet soil. Sophisticated savagery was for them something like "professional chic". For example, the deputy head of the security police and SD in Minsk, Heuser, who was responsible for the destruction of several tens of thousands of Soviet people, "amused himself" by tying his victims to poles, dousing them with fuel and setting them on fire.
One cannot read without a shudder the testimony of M. I. Prokhorova, an eyewitness to the destruction of Soviet people in early July 1941 near the village of Zhurzhevo (near Vitebsk). “Two kilometers from Zhurzhev,” M. I. Prokhorova wrote, “I saw naked people standing on the edge of a huge pit. Fascist cannibals shot them with machine guns. One of the women, wounded, escaped from the pit and tried to escape. The fascist caught up her, hit her on the head with a machine gun. When she fell, he killed her with several shots. Children were thrown into the pits alive, some of the kids were grabbed by the fascist murderers together by the legs and tore their bodies apart. Over the place of execution there were screams and groans of bleeding and dying people "When they were covered with earth, a bloody mess formed. Hundreds of people in terrible agony tossed and turned in the pits. After closing, the earth trembled for a long time. A few days later I saw arms and legs sticking out of the ground, and the earth was cracked. It was evident that people were dying painfully death, trying to escape from the weight of the earth poured on them.
Yes, the fascist leaders could well rely on such monsters. They were capable of any crimes against humanity.
In the postwar period, some bourgeois historians and memoirists - C. O. Dixon, O. Heilbrunn, L. Rendulich, G. Guderian, K. Astman, E. Hesse and others - began to persistently propagate the thesis that the monstrous atrocities on Soviet soil only special punitive organs of the Nazi Party and the fascist state were created - the Gestapo, the troops and organs of the SS and SD, detachments of the secret field police and others. As for the German fascist army, it was supposedly a blind tool in the hands of the Nazi clique and was used only for its intended purpose - it fought at the front, and its generals, "far from politics", performed only their "professional functions" - supervised the combat activities of the troops. By falsifying historical events, bourgeois ideologists are making an attempt to morally rehabilitate the Nazi Wehrmacht, to present the matter as if it were not guilty of carrying out a criminal occupation policy.
It was shown above that the leadership of the Wehrmacht took an active part in drawing up all the plans of Nazi Germany in relation to the Soviet Union. And after the beginning of the aggression against the USSR, the high command of the German armed forces issued various orders, directives, instructions, memos, etc., which defined in detail both the goals of the occupation of Soviet territory and the specific methods for its implementation. Among these methods, the main place was occupied by merciless mass terror. “Your hair stands on end when you read the orders sent to the troops signed by Halder about the measures to be taken in Russia,” Hitler’s diplomat Ulrich von Gassel, far from sympathizing with the Soviet people, wrote in his diary.
To match the orders of the high command were the orders of the generals of the army in the field. Characteristic in this regard was the order issued on October 10, 1941 by the commander of the 6th German Army von Reichenau "On the behavior of troops in the East." This "far from politics" field marshal demanded "the complete destruction of the Bolshevik heresy" and ordered his soldiers and officers to take decisive and cruel measures in advance against all local residents - men, "in order to prevent possible attempts on their part," as well as to destroy women who somehow show hostility to the occupiers.
Just as cannibalistic was the "practice" of the German fascist troops- they did bloody deeds as zealously as the SS units, tortured Soviet people with the same sophistication as professional executioners and murderers - the Gestapo and SS. For example, here is how ordinary field units of the Wehrmacht operated in the Smolensk region. In September 1942, in the village of Zelenaya Pustosh, Nazi soldiers burned alive 150 old people, women and children. By order of the commander of the 102nd Infantry Division, Major General Fizler, the soldiers forced the inhabitants of the village of Kholmets to walk along the mined road by force of arms. All people were blown up by mines and died. Sadists in Wehrmacht uniforms looked for more and more savage ways to destroy the Soviet people. In the same Smolensk region in the village of Terekhovka, they tied up 75 old men, women and children, put them in a pile, covered them with straw and set them on fire.
I. K. Alekseenko, an eyewitness to the atrocities of Wehrmacht soldiers in the village of Krasnye Gorki, Leningrad Region, said: “Children are always children. They gathered near the school building and played. A cheerful group of children attracted the attention of two-legged fascist animals. ... a few moments passed... Near the school, in the dust, in a pool of blood, nine children's corpses remained lying ...
I know how brutally they tortured the family of partisan Nikolai Glukhov. They tortured all family members in front of each other. They tortured the old and the young... Furious beasts seized the old mother, tied her up and threw her into a burning stove, burned her alive... Two girls - twelve and fourteen years old... were raped and then shot..."
The typical image of an ordinary Nazi warrior with all his corrupt morality of a sadistic rapist appears from the pages of the diary of a participant in the massacres of the population of Belarus, soldier Emil Goltz. “On the road from Mir to Stolbtsy,” Goltz wrote, “we spoke with the population in the language of machine guns, we did not feel any compassion. In every place, in every village, my hands itch at the sight of people. I want to shoot a pistol at the crowd.”
The facts of this kind are innumerable. They constituted the daily practice of the Nazi troops in the occupied Soviet territory. And no matter how zealous the bourgeois falsifiers of history may be, they will not be able to hide the obvious truth: the Nazi Wehrmacht was the criminal army of a criminal state.
As a pretext for the mass extermination of the Soviet people, the Nazis widely used the struggle against the partisan movement. Already on July 16, 1941, not yet imagining what a nationwide guerrilla war would bring, Hitler declared: "Guerrilla warfare also has its advantages: it gives us the opportunity to destroy everything that rises against us."
After the war, the organizers and leaders of the counter-partisan struggle, who appeared before the court, were forced to reveal in more detail the scale of the mass extermination of Soviet people planned by the Nazis under the pretext of fighting the partisan movement. At a trial in Kyiv in January 1946, the former head of the security police in the Kyiv region, General Scheer, cynically stated: “It was necessary, under the guise of fighting partisans, to destroy most of the Ukrainian people, and resettle the rest to the north. In general, it was necessary to carry out draconian measures against the population of Ukraine". The former SS General Bach-Zelevsky, who was entrusted with the leadership of the counter-partisan struggle in the occupied Soviet territory, was forced to admit at the Nuremberg trials that all Practical activities occupation authorities and German troops to suppress the partisan movement was aimed at fulfilling Himmler's instructions for the destruction of 30 million Slavs.
In accordance with this installation, the Wehrmacht command also acted. Already on September 16, 1941, the high command of the German ground forces issued an order in which it categorically demanded the widespread use of measures to combat partisans to destroy the civilian population, emphasizing that in the East human life "in most cases has no price." On December 16, 1942, it issued a directive "On the fight against gangs" (as the Nazis began to call partisans). The directive charged soldiers and officers with the most cruel punishment not only against partisans, but also against the entire population in areas of counter-partisan operations, and to use "any means, without limitation, also against women and children."
The punishers did just that. The commanders of units and subunits reported on the atrocities committed by them in a businesslike manner, as if they were fighting. Here is one of these reports - the report of the company commander, Captain Pells, about the massacre of the population of the Belarusian village of Zabolotye. "The company was given the task of destroying the village of Zabolotye, located northeast of Mokran, and shooting the population ... - the report said. - The results of the operation are as follows: 289 people were shot, 151 yards were burned, 700 heads were stolen cattle, 400 pigs, 400 sheep and 70 horses. Bread was exported: 300 centners of threshed and 500 centners of non-threshed bread. Only during the “cleansing from partisans” of the territory of the Volozhinsky region (Belarus) in the second half of July 1943, the Nazis burned alive in the houses the population of the villages of Dora, Dubovtsy, Mishany, Dovgalevshchina, Lapintsy, Srednee The village, Romanovshchina, Nelyuby, Palubovtsy and Makrichavshchyna. No investigation was carried out in this case. The inhabitants, mainly the elderly, women and children, were herded into separate buildings, which were then set on fire. In the village of Dory, the inhabitants were gathered in a church and burned with it.
There is no exact data on the number of Soviet people killed by the Nazis under the pretext of fighting the partisan movement. But the scale of this atrocity - it was committed throughout the occupied Soviet territory and throughout the entire period of occupation - allows us to conclude that this number is huge. It was not for nothing that Bach-Zelevsky admitted at the Nuremberg trials that the methods of exterminating the Soviet population, used under the pretext of fighting partisans, "would actually have led to the extermination of 30 million if they continued to be used and if the situation had not changed as a result of the development of events."
One of the weapons of mass destruction of the Soviet people were concentration camps. They covered the entire occupied Soviet territory with a dense network. In addition, Soviet people were sent for the same purpose to concentration camps located in other countries captured by the Nazis. There were especially many such camps in Poland.
The Nazis treated Soviet prisoners of war with particular cruelty. First of all, the political workers of the Red Army were subject to immediate destruction. Numerous directives on this subject repeatedly stated that political workers "should be exterminated at the latest in transit camps. They are not evacuated to the rear."
The invaders ruthlessly liquidated sick and emaciated prisoners of war. There were also direct instructions from the fascist leadership on this score. The directive of the Chief of the Security Police and the SD of Germany to the heads of concentration camps of November 9, 1941 directly prescribed that "all Soviet prisoners of war who are clearly doomed to death (for example, patients with typhoid fever) and therefore unable to withstand the stress associated with even a brief on foot, were no longer delivered to the concentration camps intended for their extermination.
The fascist leadership officially demanded that the performers treat Soviet prisoners of war more cruelly than prisoners of war from other countries. Explaining this requirement, the head of the prisoner of war department, General Reinecke, said: “A Red Army soldier is not regarded as a soldier in the usual sense of the word, as is understood in relation to our Western opponents. A Red Army soldier must be regarded as an ideological enemy, that is, as a mortal enemy of National Socialism, and therefore must be treated appropriately."
On September 8, 1941, the Nazi command issued a "Memo on the protection of Soviet prisoners of war." It directly stated that in relation to Soviet prisoners of war, the Nazis renounce the relevant provisions of international law. In fact, it was a setting for the extermination of captured Soviet soldiers and officers. The Memo emphasized the need to apply the strictest measures to Soviet prisoners of war, to suppress resistance without hesitation in resorting to weapons. Punishment was envisaged for military personnel who did not fulfill this requirement zealously enough. Such attitudes were repeatedly confirmed, including by the most senior figures of the fascist Reich. Field Marshal Keitel, on a report on the violation of international conventions on the issue of the treatment of captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army, wrote: "Here we are talking about the destruction of an entire worldview, so I approve of these measures and cover them up."
The captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army were kept in POW camps. For civilians, including the elderly, women and children, there were special concentration camps. There were many mixed camps, where, together with the Soviet military, men of military age who were declared prisoners of war were sent.
The most varied in size, accommodating from a few hundred to a hundred or more thousand prisoners, fascist concentration camps fully justified the ominous name "death factories" that appeared during the war years.
The Nazis divided the prisoners of the concentration camps into different categories: "politically harmful elements", "persons worthy of trust", "suitable for use in various kinds of work", "national groups among prisoners of war and civilians", etc. In accordance with this division, the occupiers outlined the sequence and methods for the destruction of prisoners .
The "politically harmful elements" were eliminated by the fascists immediately. This was done by special "Sonderkommandos". Team leaders were required to report every week to the main department of imperial security information containing: 1) a brief description of the activities over the past week; 2) the number of persons who are considered suspicious (suffice it to indicate the figure). In the corresponding directives to the "Sonderkommandos" it was signed: "Executions should not be carried out in the camp itself and not in its immediate vicinity, they are secret and should be carried out, if possible, unnoticed."
However, in practice, the Nazis carried out executions (read: executions) either in the camps themselves or near them. The reprisals against prisoners were distinguished by wild fanaticism and sadism. The doomed were forced to dig their own graves, sing and dance before execution. The Nazis tortured them in every possible way.
The SS leadership in every possible way encouraged the zeal of the fascist sadists, for which even special bonus funds were created. So, on November 14, 1941, the commandant of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp received a notice: "From a special fund, an amount of 600 Reichsmarks is provided at the disposal of your concentration camp for a one-time distribution to persons who participated in the execution of death sentences."
As for "persons worthy of trust", the Nazis included among them such prisoners who, in their opinion, posed a threat to the "new order" less than others. But, since the overwhelming majority of Soviet people fiercely hated the fascist invaders, any, even the most passive manifestation of resistance, just a sidelong glance, was enough for the "guilty" to be among the "politically harmful elements."
From the so-called "national groups among prisoners of war and civilians," the Nazis tried to recruit reinforcements for all sorts of national treacherous formations. Those who evaded recruitment were included in the number of "politically harmful elements."
The division of concentration camp prisoners into various categories determined only the order and methods of their destruction. Ultimately, each of the prisoners was expected to die. This ultimate goal was also served by the use of prisoners for various kinds of work, and the regime established in concentration camps.
The intensity and inhuman working conditions of the prisoners led to the fact that they died in droves and very quickly. This was the deliberate course of the Hitlerite leadership, fixed in numerous official orders. One of them - the order of the Main Administrative and Economic Directorate of the SS of April 30, 1942 on the management of concentration camps - said: "The camp commandant is personally responsible for the use of labor. This use must take place in the full sense of the word until the exhaustion of all forces so that there is the highest productivity has been achieved... The working day is unlimited".
The prisoners of the concentration camps were kept even in autumn and winter under the open sky, they were deprived of any medical care. Informing Rosenberg about the situation in one of the concentration camps in Minsk, ministerial adviser Dorsch wrote: “In the prisoner-of-war camp in Minsk, located on an area the size of Wilhelmplatz, there are approximately 100 thousand prisoners of war and 40 thousand civilian prisoners. space, they can hardly move and are forced to fulfill their natural needs where they stand ... Prisoners of war, whose food problem is hardly solvable, live for 6-8 days without food. In the concentration camp in Uman, on an area designed for 6-7 thousand people, 74 thousand prisoners were kept. The vast majority of them were constantly in the open air. "Food" (50-100 grams of ersatz bread with sawdust and half a liter of "pottage" per person) was prepared for no more than two thousand people. As a result, the prisoners were starving in droves. And these are not isolated examples.
How things were in the concentration camps can be judged, in particular, by such facts. According to the order of the Nazi command of August 6, 1941, the daily rations for Soviet prisoners of war were: bread - 200-214 grams, meat - 13-14 grams, fat - 14-15 grams, sugar - 20-25 grams. These norms in themselves doomed people to starvation. Since in practice these norms were by no means always respected, and the products were of extremely poor quality, this made the existence of prisoners even more painful and hastened their death.
The quality of the camp food is evidenced, for example, by the composition of the "bread" that the prisoners received: 50 percent wholemeal rye flour, 20 percent sugar beet pulp, 20 percent cellulose flour, 10 percent flour from straw or leaves. Another type of "bread" was made from chaff with an insignificant admixture of starch. Studies have shown that such a diet led to progressive malnutrition and severe digestive disorders. Liquid food was no better: a mixture of millet husks, unpeeled, half-rotted potatoes, and all sorts of garbage.
The prisoners were housed either in the open air or in completely uninhabitable barracks, where incredible crowding was deliberately created. In all camps it was extremely unsatisfactory sewer system, there was not enough water, the barracks were infested with fleas and lice. Here is how, for example, the Soviet prisoner of war F. E. Kozhedub described the conditions of existence in a concentration camp located in Kaunas: “I live in the open air in a pit, or in a cave, or in a basement. We get food per day 200 g of bread, half a liter boiled cabbage and half a liter of mint tea. All unsalted, so as not to swell. They are driven to work with sticks and wire whips ... We have millions of lice ... 200-300 people die every day. "
The barbaric conditions of detention and labor in the concentration camps were supplemented by wild arbitrariness and bullying. The Nazis subjected the prisoners to cruel torture and mockery, hung them by the legs and arms, poured cold water over them in the cold, and set dogs on them. The Nazis often turned young children who were in concentration camps with their mothers into living targets for shooting exercises.
The Nazis tried in every possible way to humiliate the human dignity of the prisoners. They were deprived of names and surnames and were designated by numbers, and prisoners of war were also branded.
The appalling scale of mortality in the concentration camps did not satisfy the Nazis. The fact is that "the right to linger a little in this world" had only able-bodied prisoners. In the camps, as a result of the barbaric content and treatment, there were more and more people who were not capable of working. In this regard, a special meeting was held in Berlin to discuss the fate of the wounded and emaciated prisoners of the concentration camps. The Nazi doctors who participated in the meeting proposed to collect such prisoners in one place and kill them with poison. Another decision was made: to destroy the disabled directly on the ground, using the medical personnel of the camps for this.
In accordance with such installations, genuine death plants were created. A terrible example of such a plant was a huge camp in the city of Slavuta, Khmelnytsky region, as if in mockery called by the Nazis "Slavuta's grand infirmary." Parties of Soviet prisoners of war were continuously sent here - the wounded and suffering from various diseases, including infectious ones. Moreover, infectious patients were placed in the camp deliberately. Hunger, disease, exhausting labor and bullying quickly took their toll. The conveyor of death worked continuously: no more than 18 thousand people were in the "gross infirmary" at the same time, and in two years up to 150 thousand captured soldiers and officers of the Red Army were exterminated in it.
The destruction of the wounded, sick and weakened people was carried out in all concentration camps. The intentional spread of epidemic diseases was widely practiced everywhere. For this purpose, patients with typhus were specially transported to concentration camps and placed together with healthy prisoners. Thousands of prisoners were killed by injections of poison.
The Nazis used prisoners of war and civilian prisoners for criminal "experiments". First of all, the issues of mass sterilization of women and castration of men were "studied". Conducting such studies was a natural consequence of the state policy of Nazi Germany, which provided for the biological genocide of "non-Aryan" peoples. The "experiments" of a certified killer, Dr. Z. Rascher, who, by order of Himmler, were provided with "human material" from concentration camps for experiments, were distinguished by exceptional cruelty. He "explored" ways to revive people exposed to low temperatures. The subjects were placed for a long time in ice water, where they were kept almost until death (in most cases they died). Then they tried to revive them by rapid heating. Some representatives of the medical community tried to object to the conduct of criminal experiments, but were rebuffed by Himmler, who declared: "People who still reject these experiments on people, I consider as traitors and traitors to the state."
On living people, Nazi doctors tested vaccines against typhus, yellow fever, paratyphoid A and B, cholera, and other infectious diseases. People who were previously infected with these diseases usually died.
At the trial of the atrocities of the fascist invaders in the Smolensk region, which took place in 1945, the former medical assistant of the infirmary No. 551, Modish, spoke about the "scientific activities" of the German professors Schele, Goethe, Müller and doctor Wagner, who, experimenting on Soviet prisoners of war, caused them severe suffering, and then they were killed with strophatin or arsenic. In the same infirmary, the Nazis forcibly took blood from the civilian population, mainly from children 6-8 years old. 600-800 blood cubes were taken from each child at one time. In almost all cases, the children died. Modis cynically declared: "The death of Russian children saved the lives of the Germans."
The fascist concentration camps were one of the links in the system of mass extermination of Soviet people carefully planned and directed by the fascist leadership. In the Yanovsky concentration camp (near Lvov), the Nazis killed 200 thousand, in the Trostenets camp (near Minsk) - over 150 thousand, in the Salaspils camp (near Riga) - more than 53 thousand, in the Alytus camp (Lithuanian SSR) - 60 thousand Soviet people - prisoners of war and civilians, including the elderly, children and women.
In total, 3,912,283 prisoners of war, as well as millions of civilians, including the elderly, women and children, were killed in concentration camps on Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis.
Equally tragic was the fate of Soviet people who ended up in concentration camps in Germany. On February 28, 1942, Rosenberg wrote to Keitel that "the fate of Soviet prisoners of war in Germany has become a tragedy of enormous proportions. Of the 3.6 million prisoners of war, only a few hundred thousand are currently fully functional. Most of them died of starvation or cold. Thousands died of typhus typhus."
One of the monstrous crimes of the fascist invaders on Soviet soil, which were of a massive nature, was the destruction of the sick who were in special clinics and hospitals, as well as orphans kept in orphanages. So, in December 1941, in the Sapogovskaya regional psychiatric hospital (Kursk region), the Nazis killed about a thousand patients by poisoning. In early 1942, the Nazis destroyed all the patients and staff of the Simferopol psychiatric hospital. In December 1942, they killed in gas chambers children with bone tuberculosis who were being treated in the sanatoriums of the Teberda resort. AT Krasnodar Territory 380 patients of the Krasnodar city hospital, 320 patients of the Berezansk medical colony, 42 sick children from the Tretya Rechka farm were deprived of their lives in gas chambers. The invaders brutally dealt with the pupils of Yeysk orphanage. L. Dvornikov, a former pupil of the orphanage who accidentally escaped death, later said: “I remember everything well. Children were dragged by the legs, by the hands.
And these are not isolated facts. In this way, the occupiers got rid of "unpromising" eaters who could not be exploited "in the interests of the Reich."
10 million men, women and children were exterminated and tortured by the Nazi invaders in the occupied Soviet territory - almost a third of the original outline of the "Ost" general plan. In addition, a large number of Soviet people died in "death camps" in Germany and in the European countries occupied by the Nazis.
When examining the occupation regime on the Soviet territory occupied by the Nazis, reactionary bourgeois historians do not skimp on its criticism. However, they speak with great restraint of the criminal aims of the fascist occupation policy and criticize, in the main, the methods by which the invaders sought to realize these aims. Reactionary bourgeois historians "reproach" Hitler and his henchmen for allegedly neglecting the "classical" methods of the imperialists in enslaving the population of enslaved countries, including such methods as the method of "carrot" and "stick" - terror in relation to one part of the population and flirting with another. Such an approach, in the opinion of some bourgeois historians, would have created a support for the fascist invaders among the population, prevented or, at least, significantly weakened the guerrilla war. Another technique, reflected in the well-known formula "divide and conquer", consists in setting peoples against each other. Under the conditions of the multinational Soviet Union, this method, according to reactionary bourgeois historians, could weaken the unity of the Soviet peoples, quarrel them with each other, and even win over some of them to the side of the fascist invaders.
Such "criticism", in fact, is a recommendation to the imperialist aggressors for the future. But whatever goals the bourgeois historians pursue, in this case (as in many others) they are in clear contradiction with the actual facts.
And the facts show that the fascist aggressors by no means neglected the tried and tested methods of subjugating the peoples of the conquered countries. The Nazis carefully concealed their true intentions regarding the Soviet Union and its peoples. Even before the attack on the USSR - in early June 1941 - the supreme command of the German armed forces issued "Instructions on the use of propaganda according to the "Barbarossa" variant". In particular, they said: “So far, propaganda aimed at dismembering the Soviet Union should not be carried out. In various parts of the Soviet Union, propaganda should use the most common language. This, however, should not lead to the fact that the nature of individual texts would prematurely give grounds for concluding that there were intentions to dismember the Soviet Union.
In the secret instruction of Goebbels dated February 15, 1943, the inadmissibility of propaganda of the colonial policy of fascist Germany was emphasized, it was prescribed in speeches and press appearances not to call "Eastern peoples" "animals", "barbarians", etc., not to publish "theoretical studies" about Germanization of the "eastern territories", "reduction", Germanization and eviction of the peoples living in these territories.
Hitler's propaganda in every way repeated that the war was being waged in the name of "liberating" the peoples of the USSR from Bolshevism, that those who supported the occupiers in the implementation of this "mission" were granted all sorts of benefits and privileges. And the invaders were not limited only to promises. They endowed traitors with land plots, livestock, exempted them from a number of taxes, etc. The invaders believed that they would win over a significant part of the population by restoring private property relations, and therefore encouraged the creation of small private enterprises in every possible way. But there were too few traitors and lovers of private property. Soviet people with contempt turned away from such undertakings by the occupiers.
In some occupied regions of the Russian Federation, the Nazis tried to "politically consolidate" elements that, in their opinion, could become the backbone of the "new order." To this end, they inspired the creation of a Russian fascist party called the People's Socialist Party of Russia. Voskoboinik, chief burgomaster of the Lokotsky district (Oryol region), was placed at its head. In November 1941, he published a "manifesto" in large circulation, in which he called for the creation of organizing committees in the districts and volosts and for enrollment in the "ranks of the party." The idea of ​​the Nazis failed. Even among the notorious traitors, there were almost no people willing to join this organization. And after the partisans destroyed Voskoboinik, the invaders no longer tried to form a Russian fascist party.
The fascists made attempts to use religious organizations as a support for the regime they were imposing. For example, in August 1942, in Minsk, the occupying authorities convened a "church council" at which the question of the attitude of religious organizations to the "new order" was discussed. However, most of the clergy participating in the cathedral did not go into the service of the invaders. Only in the Baltic republics, the western regions of Ukraine and in the Crimea, some part of the local Catholic, Lutheran and Muslim clergy helped the invaders. (1 For refusing to cooperate with the invaders, the Nazis killed many clergymen. In particular, many participants in the aforementioned "church council" in Minsk were executed - Orthodox priests and priests.)
In a number of regions, the fascist occupiers generally began their rule not with a "stick", but with a "carrot". So, having captured the Krasnodar Territory and some regions of the Caucasus, they declared themselves friends of the Cossacks and patrons of the Caucasian peoples. Flirting with the Kuban Cossacks, the Nazis proclaimed the restoration of "the former Cossack liberties", introduced the institution of chieftains and officers. They brought the former White Guard Cossack generals Krasnov and Shkuro to the Kuban. With the help of these political dead, the invaders hoped to create volunteer Cossack units to fight the Red Army. Initially, in the Kuban, the invaders did not resort to mass requisitions of food and livestock from the peasants, and arrests and murders were carried out covertly (for example, Jews were evacuated from Krasnodar Territory and destroyed elsewhere).
But, despite all the efforts, the Nazis failed to bring the population of the North Caucasus and the Kuban into a state of obedience. Here, as elsewhere in the occupied territory, guerrilla war broke out. Then the invaders threw off their mask - they launched a mass bloody terror against the population of the Krasnodar Territory and the North Caucasian peoples.
The fascist invaders resorted to all sorts of means to quarrel the Soviet peoples among themselves, and above all with the great Russian people. They were especially zealous in "cultivating" the Ukrainians, who made up about two-thirds of the population of the occupied Soviet territory. However, the Nazis failed to instill nationalist views in the Ukrainian people. The people surrounded the bourgeois-nationalist organizations operating in the Ukraine with general contempt.
The fascists made a lot of efforts to deceive and win over the population of Belarus. To this end, they created various kinds of Belarusian bourgeois-nationalist organizations. So, in October 1941, the "Belarusian People's Self-Help" (BNS) was formed. Hitler's General Commissar of Belarus Kube pretended that the occupiers highly valued this "expressor of the public opinion of the Belarusian people." He stated that the occupying authorities were concerned about "establishing close cooperation" with the "honest Belarusian population." In June 1943, Cuba announced the creation of the "Union of Belarusian Youth", whose task was "to separate the Belarusian youth from the East and introduce them to the Aryan West."
In December 1943, the creation of the so-called Belarusian "national government" - the "Belarusian Central Rada" was proclaimed with great fanfare.
But all these organizations and the "Belarusian Central Rada" did not receive any support from the Belarusian people. All of them were formed from bourgeois nationalists. Some organizations managed to involve a small number of former kulaks and criminal elements. The Belarusian people sabotaged the activities of the bourgeois-nationalist organizations and the puppet "government". The guerrilla struggle on the territory of Belarus has reached a huge scale.
In Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, the fascist invaders were supported by representatives of the defeated exploiting classes. In an effort to expand this support, the Nazis advertised in every possible way the "independence" of the bodies of "local self-government" created from bourgeois nationalists. The occupiers tried to portray the matter as if Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were controlled by the Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians themselves through their "representatives". To this end, they allowed the general councilors to issue orders on economic, political and other issues. At the same time, this made it possible for the invaders to shift responsibility for the measures that caused discontent among the population to the puppet local authorities. With the sanction of the invaders, some of the old reactionary bourgeois organizations resumed their activities. The fascists returned to their most zealous servants from among the bourgeois nationalists part of the property taken from them by the Soviet government. However, all their efforts were in vain - the flames of the guerrilla war flared up rapidly.
A major political provocation by the fascist invaders on Soviet soil was an attempt to unleash a fratricidal war: to use Soviet citizens in an armed struggle against the Red Army and suppress the partisan movement.
This question was specially discussed at a conference held on December 18, 1942 in Berlin. It was directly stated here that in order to achieve victory over the Soviet Union, it was necessary by any means to turn the Soviet people against each other, to set one Soviet people against another.
To this end, with the help of demagogic propaganda, all sorts of promises, inciting ethnic hatred, and mainly by coercion, the Nazis created the formations of the so-called "Russian Liberation Army" (ROA), national SS units from Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians, the SS division "Galicia" in the western regions of Ukraine, detachments of Tatar nationalists in the Crimea, etc. Voluntarily, only former kulaks, shopkeepers, all sorts of nationalistic and decomposed rabble went into these formations. Therefore, the occupiers carried out violent mobilization. In Latvia, for example, a call for 30 ages was announced. For evading "voluntary" entry into the fascist army, execution was supposed. The “Belarusian Central Rada”, at the behest of the invaders, announced the mobilization of 14 ages into the so-called “Belarusian Regional Defense”, the main task of which was to suppress the partisan movement.
Extensive recruiting work was launched by the Nazis in prisoner of war camps. However, its results were meager, and the Nazis had to forcibly select and enlist in the treacherous formations the captured Soviet soldiers and officers.
The attempt of the invaders to unleash a fratricidal war on the occupied territory of the USSR failed. The men who were to be mobilized hid or went into partisan detachments, soldiers and officers of the formed units, often in whole units with weapons in their hands, also went over to the partisans.
The most that the Nazis could do was to use the traitors who were in such formations, mainly from among the bourgeois nationalists and decomposed elements, to massacre the population. Moreover, the Nazis organized these massacres in such a way as to set the Soviet peoples against each other. For example, gangs of Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Kalmyk, Tatar (Crimean) nationalists, units of the so-called "national legions" were involved in punitive actions in Belarus, Ukraine and in the occupied regions of the Russian Federation. But the Soviet people quickly realized the provocative nature of these actions. Another idea of ​​the Nazis did not bring them success.
Thus, contrary to the assertions of reactionary bourgeois historians, the fascist invaders used all means, both "old" and "new", to suppress the resistance of the population of the occupied Soviet territory. However, they ran into an insurmountable obstacle - the devotion of the Soviet people to their socialist Motherland, the moral and political unity of the Soviet people, their fiery Soviet patriotism, and the indestructible friendship of the peoples of the USSR.
In addition, the occupiers' flirtations with the peoples of the conquered countries always have limits determined by the goals of aggression. The goal of the fascist invaders was to deprive the Soviet peoples of their freedom, eliminate their political and social gains, turn their lands into their possessions, destroy a significant part of the Soviet people, and Germanize the rest and turn them into powerless slaves of the "Aryan masters." Such goals, of course, could not be achieved by liberal methods. Therefore, the occupation policy of the fascist aggressors on the Soviet land they captured was exactly what it could only be - a regime of mass bloody terror.

Goals and objectives of the lesson:

• Describe the features of the occupation regime and the resistance movement in the occupied territories, its political orientation and forms of struggle.
• Explain the reasons for the transition of the military initiative to the Soviet troops in 1943.
• Work with new historical concepts: “New Order”, “Resistance Movement”, “Collaborationism”, “Holocaust”.
• To develop in students the ability to analyze, compare, justify their point of view.
• To improve the ability of students to identify causal relationships in the process of considering historical events.
• To form the skills and abilities of working with generalizing tables and diagrams; a system for working with maps, atlases, historical primary sources, textbooks.
• To instill in students tolerance, respect for people of different nationalities, a passion for history, the ability to find a connection with the history of their family in events from the past.

Lesson equipment:

• Multimedia projector for showing the prepared presentation (see Attachment 1).
• Map “Second World War”.
• World history textbook for grade 11.
• A blackboard prepared in advance for the lesson.
• Handout for students (see Appendix 2).
• Tasks for group work (on two questions).
• Test tasks for the final control of students' knowledge.

Basic terms and concepts:

• "New order",
• "Resistance movement",
• "Collaborationism"
• "Holocaust".

Type of lesson: Combined lesson of mastering new knowledge with elements of critical thinking of students in the process of group work with historical sources.

Lesson structure:

1. Organizational moment. Explain to students the goals and objectives of the lesson.

2. Checking the previous homework (based on a conversation on questions).

3. Motivation learning activities. Updating the basic knowledge of students (introductory speech by the teacher).

4. Studying new material according to the following plan:

Plan for studying new material:

1. Work on historical concepts (“New Order”, “Resistance Movement”, “Collaborationism”, “Holocaust”).
2. "New order".
3. Features of the occupation regime in the occupied territories.
4. Resistance movement.
5. Holocaust.

5. Generalization and systematization of students' knowledge (carried out by testing students, followed by mutual verification in pairs and analysis by talking on questions).

6. Explanation of new homework.

7. Summing up the lesson. Grading students.

During the classes

I. Organizational moment. Explain to students the goals and objectives of the lesson. Making student workbooks.

Epigraph of the lesson:

“But swirling around behind us,
Not visible to other generations
Like a mirage, like a curse, like a banner,
World War II”
Julia Drunina

II. Checking previous homework.

Questions to ask students:

1. What countries were occupied by Germany, Italy and Japan during 1939-1942?
2. What goals did the aggressors set for themselves when they seized the territories of other countries?

III. Motivation of educational activity. Updating the basic knowledge of students.

Introductory speech of the teacher:

Committing aggression in Europe, Asia and Africa, the countries of the fascist bloc pursued a brutal occupation policy, which included merciless exploitation and robbery of bonded peoples, terrible destruction, terror and mass extermination of the population. Applicants for world domination, taking racial theory as a basis, proclaimed the “New Order”, the essence of which was the elimination of all human rights and democratic freedoms, brutal violence and lack of rights, the genocide of “inferior peoples” - Slavs, Jews, Roma (Gypsies).

IV. Learning new material.

1. Work on historical concepts (students work in notebooks).

"New order" - the terrorist regime of the Nazis in the occupied territories.

The “Resistance Movement” is an anti-fascist movement in occupied countries.

"Holocaust" (from English Holocaust) - the systematic persecution and physical destruction of people on the grounds of their race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation or genetic type as inferior, harmful. (Total genocide (destruction) by the Nazis of Jews in the occupied territories).

2. "New Order".

Teacher's story:

The Nazi “New Order” in Europe was:

• Unlimited occupation control in the occupied territories.
• Accession of puppet governments (Vichy government in France and Quisling in Norway).
• Creation of pro-fascist governments (Czechoslovakia - the Venesh government, Croatia - the Ustasha government).
• Carrying out a policy of "allied" relations with fascist regimes.
• Elimination of real independence of the country.
• Politics of genocide.
• Elimination of all democratic freedoms and conquests.
• Economic exploitation of the population and natural resources of the country.
• Using the economic potential of the country for personal purposes.

3. Features of the occupation regime in the occupied territories.

Teacher's story:

The Ost plan was submitted to Hitler on May 25, 1940. He immediately approved it as a directive. This plan provided for the colonization of the Soviet Union and the countries of Western Europe, the destruction of millions of people, the transformation into slaves of the Reich of Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs and other peoples of Western Europe who will remain alive.

It was planned to evict in 30 years 65% of the population of Western Ukraine, 75% of the population of Belarus, 80-85% of the Poles from the territory of Poland, a significant part of the population of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - a total of 31 million people. Later, the German government increased the number of people who were subject to deportation from Western Europe to 46-51 million people. It was planned to relocate 10 million Germans to free lands, and the local residents who remained (according to the estimates of the Nazis - about 14 million people), gradually "Germanized". Documents of the Nazi Reich testify that the USSR was subject to dismemberment and liquidation. It was supposed to create four Reichs Commissariats on its territory - the German colonial provinces "Ostland", "Moscow", "Ukraine", "Caucasus", which should be managed by a special "Eastern Ministry" under the leadership of A. Rosenberg.

The meaning of the “new order”, as the Nazis called the regime they established, was to eliminate the independence and sovereignty of all democratic and social gains, unlimited economic exploitation and the willfulness of the invaders.

The economies of all the occupied countries were placed at the service of the invaders. The industry worked at the request of the invaders. Agriculture supplied them with food, the labor force was used in the construction of military facilities.

Millions of Europeans were forcibly driven away to work in Germany. Toward the end of the war, the shortage of labor became so acute that the Nazis began to use even the labor of children. To keep the population submissive, a system of denunciation and mass executions was widely used. The symbol of this policy was the complete destruction of the inhabitants of the villages of Oradour in France, Lidice in Czechoslovakia, Katyn in Belarus, in the Russian Federation, the Nazis destroyed more than 10 million men, women and children. The Nazi regime demonstrated its anti-human essence to the whole world.

History will never forgive fascism for these inhuman atrocities, which were called the “New Order”

Name the components of the "New Order".

Working with document #1:

From the Communique of the French National Committee on the atrocities of the Nazis of June 23, 1942.

“October 3, 1941, Germany began to use its usual methods of violence in France. Now it is not possible to establish how many French people were victims of these methods ... Among the methods of violence used by the Germans, we can distinguish:

1. Mass executions of hostages. After the first execution of hostages in Nantes in October 1941, the practice of executing from fifty to one hundred French hostages for every killed German is spreading throughout the occupied French territory.

2. Forced escort by French civilians of German military echelons. After an incident that occurred near Caen with one of the German echelons loaded with weapons, it was decided that from that day on, the French would be forcibly placed on every German train. Thus, thirty Frenchmen died when one of the trains derailed near the city of Vira.

3. Mass evictions... Thousands of people who were in the concentration camps of the Paris region, primarily Jews, were sent in groups of five hundred people to the territory of Poland and occupied Russia.

4. Repressions against the families of the so-called “saboteurs”.

Document question:

What methods of violence did the Nazis use against the civilian population of France?

4. Resistance movement.

Teacher's story:

The resistance movement is the struggle of democratic forces in the occupied countries against the invaders, which can be divided into two main directions - national and communist. While in the countries of Western Europe, both of these directions were in contact, in Central and South-Eastern Europe, representatives of these movements not only fought against the Nazis, but also fought among themselves.

This movement took many forms. In some cases, these were meetings and the transfer of valuable information to the allies, in others - sabotage, disruption of military supplies, disruption of the rhythm of military production, sabotage. In the same years, the first partisan detachments appeared in Poland, Yugoslavia, Albania, and Greece. One of the first acts of the European resistance movement was the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943. For almost a month, the poorly armed ghetto inhabitants, doomed to destruction, fought against the German troops.

In the territory occupied by Japan, the situation was almost the same. Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Malaysia, Burma, Indonesia and the Philippines did not have independence before the war. The Japanese occupation meant only a change of metropolis. Moreover, for some time the peoples of these countries hoped that from the hands of Japan they would receive independence; as a justification for her conquests, she put forward the slogan "Asia for Asians." So the illusion was quickly dispelled. The Japanese occupation regime turned out to be more cruel than the colonial one. Anti-Japanese resistance arose in Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

The situation was similar in occupied Soviet Ukraine, when the leaders of the Ukrainian National Movement expected, with the advent of the Nazis, to receive independence from them, to create their own state. On June 30, 1941, in Lvov occupied by the Germans, the “Act on the Independence of Ukraine” was proclaimed and the Ukrainian government headed by Y. Stytsko was established.

The invaders reacted quickly and harshly to this step - arresting all members of this government and sending them to concentration camps, where they stayed until the end of the war.

Working with a table:

"National Liberation Movement in the Countries of Europe".

How did the national liberation movement in Poland differ from similar movements in Yugoslavia and France?

Teacher's story:

The partisan movement reached its greatest scope on the territory of Ukraine, Belarus, and in the western regions of Russia.

"National Liberation Movement on the Territory of the Former USSR".

Collaborators are representatives of the local population who collaborated with the occupation authorities.

The patriotic and anti-fascist Resistance Movement played a very important role in the victory over fascism. And, despite the fact that its participants chose various forms and methods of fighting against the enemy, their activities significantly weakened the enemy and brought Victory closer.

Group work No. 1: (the class is divided into 4 groups).

Task for group number 1.

"The National Liberation Movement in France".

Task for group number 2.

Fill in the table according to the material of the textbook "The National Liberation Movement in Italy".

Task for group number 3.

Fill in the table according to the material of the textbook "National Liberation Movement in Yugoslavia".

Task for group number 4.

Fill in the table according to the material of the textbook "National Liberation Movement in Poland".

After discussing the material of the tables filled in by the students, an initial test of their knowledge on the topic under study is carried out on the following issues:

1. What was the plan "Ost"?
2. Outline the features of the "New Order" in the occupied countries of Europe.
3. What explains the participation of representatives of the civilian population in the Resistance Movement, regardless of their political and religious beliefs?

5. Holocaust.

Teacher's story:

The word "holocaust" refers to the catastrophe or destruction of the Jewish people during the Second World War. Let me remind you that "Holocaust" (from English Holocaust) - the systematic persecution and destruction of people on the basis of their race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation or genetic type as inferior, harmful. (Total genocide (destruction) by the Nazis of Jews in the occupied territories).

The “new order” assumed the implementation of a special racial policy, the victims of which were Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and, over time, the Slavic population of Eastern Europe.

In 1942, the German government decides to begin the physical extermination of all Jews in Europe. On January 25, 1942, a meeting "on the final solution of the Jewish question" was held in the city of Wannsee near Berlin. Heydrich spoke at this meeting about the exact number of Jews who are to be exterminated in Europe, naming 33 countries.

In Poland, a network of “death factories” was created - concentration camps, the largest of which were Auschwitz (two “death camps” were located on the territory of this Polish city - Auschwitz and Berkenau) - from May 1940 to January 1945 it was more than 4 million people were destroyed, Majdanek - more than one and a half million prisoners died here, Treblinka, Sobibur, Helmo, Belzec. The Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück camps arose on German territory. The Mauthausen camp also appeared on the territory of Austria.

In total, about 18 million people ended up in concentration camps, more than 12 million of whom were destroyed. Among the dead, Jews accounted for 6 million people. Only in "Babi Yar" in Kyiv, the Nazis killed 195 thousand people in 2 days, 150 thousand of whom were Jews. Bloody pogroms were carried out by specially created Sonder teams.

Work with document No. 2: (carried out in groups, the class is divided into 5 groups).

Task for group number 1.

Question for the group:

Task for group number 2.

Read an excerpt from the diary of a Jewish girl (Anne Frank) during the occupation. Discuss the document and answer the question after its text.

“One of the policemen was very annoyed and said: “…None of the Jewish children have the right to keep a bicycle anymore. And the Jews also have no right to bread; they should not eat everything, but leave food for the soldiers.” And then they came and took silverware, carpets, paintings, a Venetian mirror, my camera…”

“... A peasant from Krajno came to us and said that the daughter of our judge was shot dead because she was walking down the street after seven in the evening ...”

Question for the group:

What do you think about the social status of the family of the author of these lines?

Task for group number 3.

Read an excerpt from the diary of a Jewish girl (Anne Frank) during the occupation. Discuss the document and answer the question after its text.

“One of the policemen was very annoyed and said: “…None of the Jewish children have the right to keep a bicycle anymore. And the Jews also have no right to bread; they should not eat everything, but leave food for the soldiers.” And then they came and took silverware, carpets, paintings, a Venetian mirror, my camera…”

“... A peasant from Krajno came to us and said that the daughter of our judge was shot dead because she was walking down the street after seven in the evening ...”

Question for the group:

How would you feel if you were in such a situation?

Task for group number 4.

Read an excerpt from the diary of a Jewish girl (Anne Frank) during the occupation. Discuss the document and answer the question after its text.

“One of the policemen was very annoyed and said: “…None of the Jewish children have the right to keep a bicycle anymore. And the Jews also have no right to bread; they should not eat everything, but leave food for the soldiers.” And then they came and took silverware, carpets, paintings, a Venetian mirror, my camera…”

“... A peasant from Krajno came to us and said that the daughter of our judge was shot dead because she was walking down the street after seven in the evening ...”

Question for the group:

In what country and in what years, in your opinion, did the described events take place?

Task for group number 5.

Read an excerpt from the diary of a Jewish girl (Anne Frank) during the occupation. Discuss the document and answer the question after its text.

“One of the policemen was very annoyed and said: “…None of the Jewish children have the right to keep a bicycle anymore. And the Jews also have no right to bread; they should not eat everything, but leave food for the soldiers.” And then they came and took silverware, carpets, paintings, a Venetian mirror, my camera…”

“... A peasant from Krajno came to us and said that the daughter of our judge was shot dead because she was walking down the street after seven in the evening ...”

Question for the group:

What thoughts did you have after reading the diary entry?

V. Generalization and systematization of students' knowledge (carried out by testing students with subsequent analysis during a conversation on questions ).

1. Arrange in chronological order:

A) Battle of Kursk.
B) Creation of the headquarters of the partisan movement.
C) Battle of Stalingrad.
D) Creation of an anti-Hitler coalition.
E) Plan "Ost" approved.
E) Tragedy at Babi Yar.

2. Match the concepts:

3. What was the name of the plan of attack on Moscow by the troops of Nazi Germany?

A) Buran.
B) typhoon.
B) breakthrough.

4. How many days did the heroic defense of Odessa last?

A) 70 days.
B) 71 days.
C) 73 days.

5. Which city in the USSR was the first to be awarded the title of “Hero City”?

A) Sevastopol.
B) Moscow.
B) Odessa.
D) Leningrad.
D) Stalingrad.

The test is checked by mutual checking in pairs with the help of a teacher.

After checking the test, a final conversation is held with students on the following questions:

1. What is the Resistance Movement? What character did it have?
2. Which segments of the population and why took part in the Resistance Movement?
3. Name the countries in which the Resistance Movement has taken on a mass character?
4. How in early XXI century honor the victims of the Holocaust?

VI. Explaining new homework.

• Work out the text of the corresponding paragraph of the textbook.
• Prepare reports on the balance of forces on the Soviet-German front by the autumn of 1942.
• Answer the question: What does the name of the Volga city - Stalingrad tell you?

If desired, each student can accompany his message with a computer presentation.

VII. Summing up the lesson. Grading students.

"Anti-Hitler Coalition" - Lesson plan. Potsdam conference. The western borders of Poland have been finally determined. Tehran conference. Tehran. Soviet Russia became a deadly threat to the free world. Anti-Hitler coalition and the results of the Second World War. The Russian armies will undoubtedly capture all of Austria and enter Vienna. Results of the Second World War. Problem solving. A decisive role in the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

"Normandie-Neman" - Meetings with veterans. French and Soviet awards. Panel "Sergey Agavelyan". Igor Eikhenbaum. The combat path of the air regiment. Panel "Translators of the air regiment". School. Tricolor panel curtains. Pilots were the heart of the regiment. French mechanics. French air regiment. Panel "Ases". Soviet mechanics. General de Gaulle. Rise of resistance in France. Albert Mirless. Museum exposition. Air Regiment "Normandie-Niemen".

"Lessons of World War II" - Creation of the United Nations. Nuremberg Trials. duration. Changing borders in Europe. International Military Tribunal. Change of boundaries. Losses in World War II. Creation of the UN. Lessons from World War II. The Second World War. Results of the Second World War. Results and lessons of the Second World War.

"Results of the Second World War" - At the Livadia Palace. Destruction of the powers. The first test of an American atomic weapon. Losses of the USSR. The invasion of American troops. Results of the Second World War. The defeat of politics. End of the war in dates. Victory. After the war. human losses. Atomic bombardment. Figures and facts.

"Questions about the Second World War" - Germany is developing a plan to capture the USSR. Which side do you think the United States fought on? How many states participated in the second world war. Do you know what happened on June 22, 1940. Name the date of Germany's surrender. Which state cities are Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1944, the Soviet Union was completely cleared of enemies. 110 million people took part in hostilities. Why 1943 is a turning point in World War II.

"History of World War II" - Fighting England. Eagle Liberation. The USSR demanded to move the Finnish border away from Leningrad. Heroic defense of Odessa. Capture of Poland. USSR at the final stage of the war. The landing of the American and French armies. control of North Africa. Attack on Karelian Isthmus. The forces of the parties on the eve of the war. The Allies were trapped on the coast at Dunkirk. Unification of states and peoples. USSR in the first days of the war.

AT During the first period of the war, the fascist states by force of arms established their rule over almost all of capitalist Europe. In addition to the peoples of Austria, Czechoslovakia and Albania, who became victims of aggression even before the outbreak of World War II, Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, a significant part of France, Greece and Yugoslavia were under the yoke of fascist occupation by the summer of 1941. At the same time, the Asian ally of Germany and Italy, militaristic Japan, occupied vast areas of Central and South China, and then Indochina.

In the occupied countries, the fascists established the so-called "new order", which embodied the main goals of the states of the fascist bloc in World War II - the territorial redistribution of the world, the enslavement independent states, the extermination of entire nations, the establishment of world domination.

Creating the "new order", the Axis powers sought to mobilize the resources of the occupied and vassal countries in order to destroy the socialist state - the Soviet Union, restore the undivided dominance of the capitalist system throughout the world, defeat the revolutionary workers' and national liberation movement, and with it all forces of democracy and progress. That is why the "new order", based on the bayonets of the fascist troops, was supported by the most reactionary representatives of the ruling classes of the occupied countries, who pursued a policy of collaborationism. He also had supporters in other imperialist countries, for example, pro-fascist organizations in the USA, O. Mosley's clique in England, etc.

The "new order" meant, first of all, the territorial redistribution of the world in favor of the fascist powers. In an effort to undermine the viability of the occupied countries as much as possible, the German fascists redrawn the map of Europe. The Nazi Reich included Austria, the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, Silesia and western regions Poland (Pomorie, Poznan, Lodz, Northern Mazovia), the Belgian districts of Eupen and Malmedy, Luxembourg, the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine. Entire states disappeared from the political map of Europe. Some of them were annexed, others were divided into parts and ceased to exist as a historically formed whole. Even before the war, a puppet Slovak state was created under the auspices of Nazi Germany, and the Czech Republic and Moravia were turned into a German “protectorate”.

The non-annexed territory of Poland became known as the "governor general", in which all power was in the hands of the Nazi governor. France was divided into an occupied northern zone, the most industrially developed (while the departments of Nord and Pas de Calais were administratively subordinate to the commander of the occupying forces in Belgium), and an unoccupied southern zone, with a center in the city of Vichy. In Yugoslavia, "independent" Croatia and Serbia were formed. Montenegro became the prey of Italy, Macedonia was given to Bulgaria, Vojvodina - to Hungary, and Slovenia was divided between Italy and Germany.

In artificially created states, the Nazis planted totalitarian military dictatorships that were submissive to them, such as the regime of A. Pavelich in Croatia, M. Nedich in Serbia, J. Tisso in Slovakia.

In countries that were completely or partially occupied, the invaders, as a rule, sought to form puppet governments from collaborationist elements - representatives of the big monopoly bourgeoisie and landowners who had betrayed the national interests of the people. The "governments" of Petain in France, Gakhi in the Czech Republic were obedient executors of the will of the winner. Above them was usually an "imperial commissar", "viceroy" or "protector", who held all power in his hands, controlling the actions of the puppets.

But it was not possible to create puppet governments everywhere. In Belgium and Holland, the agents of the German fascists (L. Degrel, A. Mussert) turned out to be too weak and unpopular. In Denmark, there was no need for such a government at all, since after the surrender, the Stauning government obediently carried out the will of the German invaders.

The “new order” meant, therefore, the enslavement of European countries in various forms - from open annexation and occupation to the establishment of “allied”, and in fact vassal (for example, in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania) relations with Germany1.

Nor were the political regimes implanted by Germany in the enslaved countries the same. Some of them were openly military-dictatorial, others, following the example of the German Reich, masked their reactionary essence with social demagogy. For example, Quisling in Norway declared himself to be the defender of the country's national interests. The Vichy puppets in France did not hesitate to shout about "national revolution", "fight against the trusts" and "abolition of the class struggle", while at the same time openly collaborating with the occupiers.

Finally, there was some difference in the nature of the occupation policy of the German fascists in relation to different countries. So, in Poland and a number of other countries of Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the fascist "order" immediately manifested itself in all its anti-human essence, since the fate of the slaves of the German nation was intended for the Polish and other Slavic peoples. In Holland, Denmark, Luxembourg and Norway, the Nazis at first acted as "Nordic blood brothers", sought to win over to their side certain sections of the population and social groups these countries. In France, the occupiers initially pursued a policy of gradually drawing the country into the orbit of their influence and turning it into their satellite.

However, in their own circle, the leaders of German fascism did not hide the fact that such a policy was temporary and dictated only by tactical considerations.

1 N. Muller. Wehrmacht and occupation (1941 - 1944). Translation from German. M., 1964, p. 38.

The Hitlerite elite believed that "the unification of Europe can be achieved ... only with the help of armed violence"1. Hitler intended to speak to the Vichy government in a different language as soon as the "Russian operation" was over and he would free his rear.

With the establishment of the "new order", the entire European economy was subordinated to German state-monopoly capitalism. exported from the occupied countries to Germany great amount equipment, raw materials and food. The national industry of the European states was turned into an appendage of the German fascist war machine. Millions of people were driven from the occupied countries to Germany, where they were forced to work for the German capitalists and landowners.

The establishment of the rule of German and Italian fascists in the enslaved countries was accompanied by cruel terror and massacres.

Following the model of Germany, the occupied countries began to be covered with a network of fascist concentration camps. In May 1940, a monstrous death factory began to operate on the territory of Poland in Auschwitz, which gradually turned into a whole concern of 39 camps. The German monopolies IG Farbenindustri, Krupp, and Siemens soon built their enterprises here in order to finally get the profits once promised by Hitler, which "history did not know"2, using free labor. According to prisoners, the life expectancy of prisoners who worked at the Bunaverk plant (IG Farbenindustri) did not exceed two months: every two or three weeks a selection was carried out and all weakened were sent to the ovens of Auschwitz 3. The exploitation of foreign labor turned here into “destruction through work” of all people objectionable to fascism.

Among the population of occupied Europe, fascist propaganda intensively propagated anti-communism, racism and anti-Semitism. All mass media were placed under the control of the German occupation authorities.

The "new order" in Europe meant brutal national oppression of the peoples of the occupied countries. Asserting the racial superiority of the German nation, the Nazis provided the German minorities (“Volks-Deutsche”) living in puppet states, for example, in the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia, with special exploitative rights and privileges. The Nazis resettled Germans from other countries to the lands annexed to the Reich, which were gradually "cleared" from the local population. From the western regions of Poland, 700 thousand4 were evicted, from Alsace and Lorraine by February 15, 1941, about 124 thousand people5. The eviction of indigenous people was carried out from Slovenia and the Sudetenland.

The Nazis in every possible way incited national hatred between the peoples of the occupied and dependent countries: Croats and Serbs, Czechs and Slovaks, Hungarians and Romanians, Flemings and Walloons, etc.

The fascist invaders treated the working classes and industrial workers with particular cruelty, seeing in them a force capable of resistance. The fascists wanted to turn Poles, Czechs and other Slavs into slaves, to undermine the fundamental foundations of their national viability.

1 N. R i s k e g. Hitlers Tischgesprache im Fuhrerliauptquartier 1941 -1942, S. 420.

2 German history in modern and contemporary times. T. II. M., 1970, p. 258.

3 German imperialism and the Second World War. Materials of the Scientific Conference of the Commission of Historians of the USSR and the GDR in Berlin (December 14-19, 1959). M., 1963, p. 453.

4 "Internationale Hefte der Widerstandsbewegung". Wien, 1963, No. 8-10, S. 108.

5 E. Jackel. Frankreich in Hitler's Europe. Die deutsche Frankreichspolitik im zweiten Weltkrieg. Stuttgart, 1966, S. 231.

“From now on,” said the Polish Governor-General G. Frank, political role the Polish people is finished. It is declared to be a labor force, nothing else... We will ensure that the very concept of "Poland" is erased forever1. In relation to entire nations and peoples, a policy of extermination was carried out.

On the Polish lands annexed to Germany, along with the expulsion of local residents, a policy of artificially limiting population growth was carried out by castration of people, the mass removal of children to raise them in the German spirit2. Poles were even forbidden to be called Poles, they were given the old tribal names - "Kashubs", "Mazurs", etc. The systematic extermination of the Polish population, especially the intelligentsia, was also carried out on the territory of the "governor general". For example, in the spring and summer of 1940, the occupation authorities carried out the so-called “Aktion AB” (“emergency pacification action”) here, during which they destroyed about 3,500 Polish scientists, cultural and art workers, and also closed not only higher, but also secondary schools3.

A savage, misanthropic policy was also carried out in the dismembered Yugoslavia. In Slovenia, the Nazis destroyed the centers of national culture, exterminated the intelligentsia, clergy, and public figures. In Serbia, for every German soldier killed by partisans, hundreds of civilians were subject to "merciless destruction".

Doomed to national degeneration and destruction of the Czech people. “You closed our universities,” wrote the national hero of Czechoslovakia Yu. Fuchik in 1940 in an open letter to Goebbels, “you Germanize our schools, you robbed and occupied the best school buildings, turned the theater, concert halls and art salons into barracks, you rob scientific institutions, stop scientific work, want to turn journalists into mind-killing automatons, kill thousands of cultural workers, destroy the foundations of all culture, everything that the intelligentsia creates.

Thus, already in the first period of the war, the racist theories of fascism turned into a monstrous policy of national oppression, destruction and extermination (genocide), carried out in relation to many peoples of Europe. The smoking chimneys of the crematoria of Auschwitz, Majdanek and other mass extermination camps testified that the savage racial and political nonsense of fascism was being carried out in practice.

The social policy of fascism was extremely reactionary. In Europe of the “new order”, the working masses, and above all the working class, were subjected to the most cruel persecution and exploitation. Reduction wages and a sharp increase in the working day, the abolition of the rights to social security won in a long struggle, the prohibition of strikes, meetings and demonstrations, the liquidation of trade unions under the guise of their "unification", the prohibition of political organizations of the working class and all workers, primarily communist parties, to which the Nazis fed bestial hatred - that's what fascism brought with it to the peoples of Europe. The "new order" meant an attempt by German state-monopoly capital and its allies to crush the hands of the fa-

1 Nuremberg trials of the main German war criminals. Collection of materials in three volumes (hereinafter referred to as the Nuremberg Trials (in three volumes). T. 3. M., 1966, p. 125.

2 "Internationale Hefte der Widerstandsbewegung", 1963, No. 8-10, S. 108.

3 Ibid., S. 109.

4 Yu. F u h i k. Selected. Translation from Czech. M., 1973, p. 232.

Shists of their class opponents, crush their political and trade union organizations, eradicate the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, all democratic, even liberal views, planting the misanthropic fascist ideology of racism, national and class domination and subjugation. In savagery, fanaticism, obscurantism, fascism surpassed the horrors of the Middle Ages. He was a frank cynical denial of all progressive, humane and moral values ​​that civilization has developed over its thousand-year history. He planted a system of surveillance, denunciations, arrests, torture, created a monstrous apparatus of repression and violence against peoples.

Accept this or embark on the path of anti-fascist resistance and a determined struggle for national independence, democracy and social progress- such was the alternative that confronted the peoples of the occupied countries.

The people have made their choice. They rose to fight against the brown plague - fascism. The brunt of this struggle was courageously taken up by the working masses, primarily the working class.