Generalplan Ost

[witness]

Roberto .
Just awesome !

[walterkaschner]

Roberto, excellent post -- as usual! I don't believe we disagree significantly on the basics.

But I do believe - acknowledging Witness' views to the contrary - that the virulent anti-Jewish sentiment in the Third Reich was substantially more bitter and more extensive than anti-Slav sentiment, although there was obviously a world's plenty of the latter. Throughout the latter part of the 19th Century there was a sense of affinity with Russia among a significant (albeit small, but influential) section of Germans, probably for the most part ultra-montaine monarchists or adherents to Bismarkian notions of "Realpolitik", who believed that the primary threat lay in France in the West rather than in Russia to the East. Wilhelm II's unfortunate politics did significant injury to this group, but remnants remained after WWI, particularly in the German army, where there was some strong feeling of solidarity toward the other country which was also anathema to the West.

This strain, however shrouded, of favorable German thinking toward the Russians I can find nowhere replicated in any manner, shape or form in German thinking toward the Jews. Here I must agree with Daniel Goldhagen, in that there seems to have been no significant voice in all of Germany raised in favor of tolerance of the Jews. So to equate, as Witness does, the Germans animus toward Slavs with their animus towards Jews, is simply to blink at reality. To my mind, it is one thing to say that a "race" must be removed from the face of the earth, and quite another to say that it must only be denigated to a subservient, even "helot", position.

Indeed, I see a profound difference between the "I couldn't care less if they are all, of necessity, killed or starved to death in the course of the war" which I think was the general attitude of most of the Germans toward the Russians, vis-à-vis the "We must take action to rid ourselves of all of them them once and for all" which was the attitude toward the Jews.

Perhaps that is simply splitting hairs, but I don't think so.

Regards, as always, Kaschner

[michael mills]

With regard to the post by Walter Kaschner, I would like to say that I agree with it in essence, and that it represents my position quite well.

There is one point on which I think Walter Kaschner has confused two separate themes of mine.

On this thread, I addressed two different themes introduced by "Witness".

1. His demands for proof that there had been racial mixing between Germans and Slavs, which as I recall was touched off by a suggestion by another contributor that Hitler had some Czech ancestry. The way in which "Witness" phrased his demands suggested to me that he found the concept of such racial mixing disturbing or offensive, and that is the issue that I addressed in my posts on this particular theme. Indeed, his intemperate and abusive response to my suggestion that Cossacks had interbred with Tartars and other eastern peoples (to which I attach no moral significance whatever) strongly suggests that I was correct in my assessment of "Witness's" unease about racial mixing between Germans and Slavs.

2. The proposition that the wars waged by Germany first against Poland and subsequently against the Soviet Union were racial wars between Germans and Slavs (a proposition that "Witness" says he does not actually support). My posts aimed at showing that those wars were not ethnic wars between Germans and Slavs, but political wars, in which different Slavic groups were pitted against each other, as allies or enemies of Germany.

However, I did not intend to advance the historical fact of racial mixing as an argument against the proposition of a racial war between German and Slav. It is quite possible for a conflict based on "race" to occur between two groups who are genetically similar through common origin or interbreeding, eg the Hutu-Tutsi conflict. The essential factor is ethnic self-identification rather than ancestry, which may be unknown. Thus, two individuals might identify as "German" and "Czech" respectively, and feel intense antipathy toward each other in a situation where there was poltical or economic rivalry between the two groups to which they adhered, even though their genetic make-up might be practically identical, in terms of the degree of their ancestry from German and Slavic sources.

I might say a word here about the concept of "race" as used by Hitler and other National Socialists. Their concept of race was derived from the 19th century physical anthropologists who had identified a number of different "races" in Europe that were separate from the nations of Europe. These races were distinguished by physical characteristics such as hair colour, head shape etc; a number of such "races" were postulated, including the Nordics, Alpines, Mediterraneans, Dinarics, East Baltics and others.

The physical races defined by anthropologists were adopted by racialist thinkers, who ascribed various mental and moral qualities to them. Thus, for most of such thinkers the Nordic "race" was considered superior, having higher mental and moral qualities than other "races".

Hitler and other National Socialists certainly believed in the reality of "races", and in the superiority of the Nordic "race". But for them, the basic unit of humanity was the "people" (Volk), which in their Social Darwinist ideology was a biological unit in competiton with other "Voelker".

The "Volk" was not the same thing as a race: rather, it was composed of individuals of different "races". Thus, the "racial value" of a "Volk" depended on its racial composition; the greater the proportion of individuals of the allegedly superior Noric "race" in a "Volk", the higher its "racial value", and vice versa.

Hitler saw the Germans as a "Volk" closely related to certain other peoples, such as the English and the Scandinavians, and different from other peoples, such as the Slavs. It is clear that the basis of the relationship between peoples was linguistic rather than "racial". Hitler also believed that history was a process of struggle between peoples, which could also occur between closely related peoples such as the Germans and the English. Whether a "Volk" was successful in those struggles, and flourished and grew in number, depended on its "fitness", which was determined by its "racial value", its racial composition.

Thus, in National Socialist ideology, the German "Volk" was in situation of conflict and competition with other peoples, including the Slavs. But that did not preclude the German "Volk" from making alliances with other peoples, including Slavic peoples, if there was some common interest that could serve as the basis for an alliance; after all, Hitler constantly promoted an alliance with italy, which in racial theory had a quite different "racial" composition than the German people, being mainly mediterranean.

Conflict between peoples was not a factor of their "racial" composition, but was determined by external factors, such as access to resources. Thus, if there was conflict between the German "Volk" and the Poles, for example, it was due to their rivalry for the lands between the Oder and the Vistula, not due to their "racial composition".

National Socialist racial theory taught that both the German people and the Poles and other Slavic peoples had a Nordic and an East Baltic element in their racial composition, with the Slavs having relatively more of the East Baltic component. Since that theory held that the strength of a people in its struggle with other peoples depended on the size of its Nordic component, then a large Nordic component in, say, the Polish people, would make it stronger and hence more dangerous in any struggle with the German people.

That is the reason why Himmler used to say that the Nordic component in the Polish people would either have to be germanised, that is, the individuals comprising it would have to be incorporated into the German people, hence strenthening the latter through an increase in the amount of Nordic "blood" while weakening the Polish people, or else it would have to be exterminated.

It is certainly true that Hitler and other National Socialists saw all war as an existential conflict between peoples. The term they used was "voelkisch", which refers to an ethnic group rather than a physical "race". Thus, it would be truer to speak of a "war between peoples" or "ethnic war" than of a "war between races". Even where Hitler is quoted as speaking of a "racial" struggle, it may well be that in the original German he was using the word "voelkisch".

It was certainly not a tenet of National Socialist ideology that particular peoples were doomed to be eternal enemies due to their "race" or ancestry. As stated, struggles between peoples were over land or "Lebensraum", and thus occurred when two peoples were expanding and came into conflict over territory. Hitler saw the Russian people as an enemy of Germany because it was very large and strong, and was expanding westward, where it would inevitably clash with the German people which could only expand to the east in its quest for land.

Hitler also saw the possibility for conflict between the German and Polish peoples over control of their borderlands. But he also saw the possibility for an alliance with Poland, in which both the German and Polish peoples could satisfy their appetites for "Lebensraum" by expanding to the east, at the expense of the Russian people.

The essential issue is that for Hitler, the question of whether there would be peace or war between the German and Polish peoples, or between the German and Russian peoples, was not determined by the "racial composition" of the Poles and Russians, but by whether they were rivals for the same "Lebensraum". And as I have written previously, "Lebensraum" does not mean solely land for settlement by a particular people, but also control over the resources of a territory, which might have other peoples living on it.

[michael mills]

Walterkaschner wrote:

4. That nonetheless, at the end of the day, the Slavs (or at least the Poles and the Russians, and IMHO the others as well) were considered by the Germans to be so inferior racially as deserving of no greater status than that of helot, or at best puppet, to German masters, which was the intended outcome of the drive towards "Lebensraum"; and

5. That had the Germans prevailed, the Slavic population of the conquered territories would have, at very best, been effectively dominated by the local or imported Germans much as the population of the Baltic States had been dominated for centuries by the "Baltdeutsche Baronen."

I would agree in essence with the above two points.

It was certainly the intention of the German Government that Germany would have hegemony over the whole of East Europe, ie over the area inhabited by the Slavic peoples, as well as other non-Slavic peoples. But the way that hegemony would be exercised would vary from place to place.

In the case of Poland and the conquered areas of the Soviet Union, it was certainly foreseen that German settlers would constitute a class of land-owners, a squirearchy very similar to the German land-owning class that had existed in Estonia and Latvia for many centuries (and perhaps similar to the Anglo-Irish squirearchy). Walter Kaschner's reference to the "Baltendeutsche Barone" is entirely apposite, since Hitler and Himmler did see the Baltic Germans as a model.

But it must be pointed out that the role played by the Baltic German squirearchy in Estonia and Latvia was not entirely negative, or even wholly negative. Not all the Baltic Germans were barons by any means; most of those who were land-owners were much lower on the scale. And a lot of the Baltic Germans were townsmen, forming a typical bourgeois class. It was the existence of the Baltic Germans, both land-owners and townsmen, which had created modern societies in Estonia and Lithuania, more comparable to western Europe, and quite different from the feudal society based on serfdom which had existed in Russia and Poland into the 19th century. Finally, there was no rigid racial separation, and the Baltic Germans intermarried extensively with the autochthonous Estonians and Latvians. Thus, the Baltic German Alfred Rosenberg had Estonian and even Russian ancestry.

The upshot is that if German rule in Russia and Poland had resembled the ascendancy of the Baltic Germans, it would not have been absolute hell for the native Slavic peoples. The extremism of National Socialism could by its very nature not have lasted for long, and a modus vivendi would sonn have been established between German settlers and the existing population.

As for the other countries of Eastern Europe, there were no German plans to settle them as a ruling class of land-owners. Their future would have been as nominally independent countries, economically subordinate to Germany, exchanging raw materials for manufactured products.

As to the status of the Poles and Russians as "helots", it needs to be borne in mind that the population of the Soviet Union at least was already enslaved for all practical purposes. It is unlikely that German rule would have been any harsher on Russians, Ukrainians and Belorussians than the previous Soviet rule had been. It is probable that as many starved under Soviet rule in peacetime as starved under German rule in the desperate conditions of war.

As I have written previously, if Germany had succeeded in defeating the Soviet Union and establishing a sort of colonial rule in the East, it is unlikely than the population of those areas would have been any worse off 60 years later than they actually are at present under the rule of Slavic mafiosi.

[michael mills]

Comments on Part 2 of Roberto's material.

Roberto is here dealing with Hitler's decision to attack Poland in force and eliminate it as a military threat, before turning to face Britain and France.

Roberto adduces only two pieces of material.

One is a quotation from the book "Hitler-Reden 1932-1945", by Domarus. However, the passage quoted is obviously not a speech by Hitler, but a comment, apparently by Domarus. That being so, it is simply the opinion of an editor, and may or may not have any value. The passage does not contain anything to support the claim that the final occupation of Bohemia-Moravia in March 1939 was aimed at the encirclement of Poland, rather than a move related solely to developments in the former Czechoslovakia and totally unrelated to Germany's relationship with Poland.

The second piece of material consists of notes of a meeting held on 23 May 1939. It suffices to point out that the meeting took place almost two months after Britain issued its open-ended guarantee to Poland at the end of March 1939, and well after Hitler had decided in April, in view of the fact that the British "blank cheque" had given Poland the trigger to unleash a war between Britain and Germany, to prepare an all-out attack on Poland to knock it out of the war quickly; therefore, it is not at all surprising that Hitler is talking about annihilating Poland as a military factor.

The Schmundt notes say nothing at all about Hitler's policy toward Poland until the issuing of the British "blank cheque" and Poland's definitive rejection of German attempts to resolve the Danzig issue. Roberto has previously been asked to present any hard evidence of an intention by Hitler to attack Poland prior to the issuing of the British guarantee, and he has failed to do so.

[michael mills]

Comments on Part 3 of Roberto's material.

Ah, so the gentle Rosenberg wished to see the Great Russians treated like sub-humans. Interesting.

Rosenberg's negative view of Great Russians, compared with his more positive assessment of Ukrainians, bears a strong resemblance to a theory developed by Ukrainian nationalists in the 19th century, according to which the Great Russians were not originally a Slavic people, but rather a mixture of Finns and Tartars who had adopted Slavic speech and culture from Kievan Rus'. Thus, according to that theory, the Great Russians were not true heirs of Kievan Rus', as were the Ukrainians, but rather interlopers, being of a "lower" race.

If that theory were true (which it is not), then Rosenberg's discrimination against Great Russians would not be a case of an anti-Slavic attitude, since he favoured the Ukrainians, who were "true" Slavs according to the theory. Rather, his racial animus was directed against Finno-Tartars.

For all I know, Soviet prisoners of war, regardless of whether they were Russians, Ukrainians or Belorussians, were treated like scum throughout the war. Deportation of forced laborers, especially from Ukraine, never ceased either, and neither did the killings sprees called "anti-partisan operations", directed against the peasants unfortunate enough to inhabit "bandit-infested" areas, especially in Belorussia.

In fact, from the beginning there were efforts to separate out prisoners of war belonging to the non-Russian nationalities, in particular Ukrainians, and to give them better treatment, including recruiting them as auxiliaries.

It is true that the deportation of forced labourers from Ukraine continued as long as the area was under German control, but due to the influence of Rosenberg forced labourers of Ukrainian nationality, and other non-Russians, were given better treatment, and were no longer made to wear the "Ost" badge, having their own national badges instead. At the beginning, all forced labourers from the occupied Soviet territories were treated as an amorphous mass, but later graduated treatment was instituted for the different nationalities. Although Great Russians continued to be treated harshly, that cannot be called a racially based anti-Slavic policy per se, since other Slavic groups were treated much better.

As for the anti-partisan operations in Belorussia, which according to Gerlach were combined with the program of rounding up forced labour, they were the result of wartime exigencies, on the one hand the need to suppress armed opposition which was interfering with Germany's prosecution of the war against the Soviet Government and also with its exploitation of the occupied territory, and on the other the increasing need for war-related labour. They were not driven by an anti-Slavic policy, not did they represent an attempt to exterminate part of the Slav inhabitants, even though they resulted in high civilian casualties. Thus, there is no good reason to believe that, if the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1941 leading to a German victory, there would have been partisan activity and that the German Army would have gone on killing sprees in 1943.

If the statement refers to the time before the Third Reich, I agree. The views and policies promoted by the Nazi government created much enmity where such had hardly existed before.

Hostility between Poles and Russians goes back to the 16th century, when the Polish Church became very aggressive and intolerant, due to the Counter-Reformation, and began persecuting the Orthodox subjects of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in an attempt to force them to convert. The hostility between Poles and Russians is thus essentially religious in origin, much like the hostility between Serbs and Croats, that other great example of Slav hatred of Slav. The hostility between Poles and Russians continued right up until the 20th century, and also after the Second World War.

Hostility between Poles and Germans began much later, in the 19th century, due to German attempts to germanise its eastern territories. But as I have previously written, the incredibly violent, brutal course that Polish-German hostility took in the 20th century was as much a result of Polish chauvinism as of German. Violence was first introduced into the ehtnic rivalry between Poles and Germans in the immediate aftermath of the First World War, even though during that war Germany had adopted a pro-Polish stance and had even given Poland independence.

[witness]

So to equate, as Witness does, the Germans animus toward Slavs with their animus towards Jews, is simply to blink at reality. To my mind, it is one thing to say that a "race" must be removed from the face of the earth, and quite another to say that it must only be denigated to a subservient, even "helot", position.

Nowhere do I "equate" Nazi ( not German - for me it is not one and the same thing at all ) attitude towards Slavs ,Jews and Gypsies.
However regardless of degree of this amimosity -this was
sheer racism .As I mentioned earlier Jews were to be exterminated because they were seen by the Nazis as particularly
malicious . Slavs were considered simply dumb masses led by Jewsih elite
(even now there are some nazi-minded individuals like mills who are holding such views)
So Slavs were not to be get rid of per se as Jews .
They were assigned to the different function - to be serfs - the evidence to which is abundunt (as demonstrated by Roberto )
The different racist visions for the different ethnic gropus notwithstanding
doesn't prove that the the worst fate which Nazis had in store for Jews
means that only them could be considered as the victims of Nazi racism.
IMHO this is exceptionalism and as much as I hate this word ( because mostly it used by the people whom I hold in contempt ) judeocentrism.
Jews suffered enormously. But let's not forget how many Slavs died in the Nazi captivity and under their occupation. Let's not forget what was in store for the citezens of Leningrad.
The previous to the Nazi rule German history - all the mentioned above interbreedings with Slavs ( what about Jews -were there no interbreeding between Germans and Jews .So what ? Did it prevent the Kristallnicht ?)
as wel as the previous " joint projects" with Slavic countries or friendly relations with Russia (depending on political situation ) could not be taken as a supporting argument against the fact that this war had absolutely clear
racial ( as well as others ) dimensions .
Again I don't see any essential differences between the Nazi racism towards Jews Slavs and Gypsies it's degree notwithstanding.
Murdering people because of their genes or to enslaving them ( or to make the Nazi poodles for the luckiest ) because of the same reason
is one and the same
racism .
To deny this pretty obvious IMO fact is really quite a "blink at reality"

[michael mills]

Roberto wrote:

Cheerfully mixing apples with oranges, Mills conveniently ignores the fact that the Slav inhabitants of the Soviet Union were to be starved to death, displaced to inhospitable regions or, at best, turned into slaves for whom "the word ‘liberty’ means the right to wash on feast days" (see my quote no. 11).

Not that I have a soft spot for the Brits, but did they deliberately endeavour to exploit India in such a way as to bring about massive starvation, and was starvation in India related to such deliberate policies?

Did they pursue a policy of keeping the Indians dumb and docile, not according them any rights and not caring for their welfare, to the point of letting their cities "die away completely" without remorse, because they thought they had "no obligations whatsoever towards these people"?

Last but not least, did they wage a large-scale war of aggression and conquest against India for the purpose of bringing about a system under which the lot of Indians would have been what Hitler had in store for the Slavs, and did they do this also because they considered the Indians inferior being below the level of humanity?

Let’s see if our Nazi-apologist Mills can show us evidence to such parallels.

Roberto is here making a false distinction between German rule in the occupied Soviet Union and British rule in India, based on an alleged German policy of exterminating part of the population of the occupied Soviet Union by starvation.

In fact, both the British rulers of India and the German rulers (for a very short time) of parts of the Soviet Union followed similar policies of ruthless exploitation for economic gain, policies which could and some cases did lead to mass starvation.

The German food policies did not have as their goal the extermination of part of the Soviet population by deliberately denying them food. Rather, their aim was to feed the German population by seizing the food surplus produced by the Soviet Union, in the full knowledge that would very likely lead to a food deficit and wide-spread starvation among the Soviet population. Thus, starvation would be a by-product of German food policies, rather than their goal.

If extermination had been the aim, then when food shortages had failed to wipe out the required proportion of the Soviet population, then other methods would have been resorted to. But that was not the case. Gerlach shows that the German administrators of Belorussia were surprised in the Spring of 1942 when it became apparent that mass starvation had not occurred during the winter to the extent expected, and that most of the population had survived. However, they did not then search around for alternative methods to kill more Belorussians; instead, they tried to increase food production by various means, including limited land reform, which of course served the aim of increasing the surplus available for export to Germany, but also left more for the Belorussian population. Where food shortages did occur, the German administrators favoured the ethnic Belorussians by killing off the Jews, reducing the competiton for the available supply.

German policies in the Soviet Union were thus quite similar to those of the British in India, who did not deliberately set out to inflict starvation on the Indian population, but were quite willing to let millions die when there was not sufficient available both to feed that population and meet British commercial objectives. Thus, in the 1870s there were famines that caused the death of millions, even though there was much food in storehouses which had to be guarded by British troops to prevent the starving populace from stealing the contents.

There was another famine during the Second World War that caused the death of millions. Although there was a food surplus in certain areas, it could not be transported to the areas of deficit since the British authorities had requisitioned all means of transport for use in the campaign against the Japanese. In this case, the imperative of prosecuting the war against Japan took precedence over providing relief to the starving populace, and so millions were allowed to die, even though their death was not a deliberate British intention.

The British did wage a number of wars of aggression in India for the purpose of subjugating the country and opening it up for thorough-going economic exploitation, which was the basis of British wealth. In like manner, the war waged by Germany against the Soviet Union had economic exploitation as one of its main goals, although strategic considerations also paid a major role.

Further, the British rulers did not care much for the welfare of the Indian people, and did consider themselves as having any obligations toward them, certainly in the first period of their rule. After all, they were there to make money by exploiting the wealth of the country, not to llok after the natives. Toward the end of the British Raj, the attitude of the rulers did become more benevolent, and it was possible for a very small minority of the population to benefit from European education. But who knows whether, if Germany had ruled Russia for as long as the British ruled India, it would have ended up being more humane and benevolent than it was during the three years of its actual rule, which moreover were years of total war.

[witness]

The way in which "Witness" phrased his demands suggested to me that he found the concept of such racial mixing disturbing or offensive, and that is the issue that I addressed in my posts on this particular theme.

mills individual is quite frankly lying here.
Maybe he is able to demonstrate some corresponding quotations where I find ''the concept of racial mixing " between Slavs and Germans ( or between any other etnic groups for this matter )"disturbing or offensive" ?
Nice try though

[michael mills]

Witness wrote:

So Slavs were not to be get rid of per se as Jews .
They were assigned to the different function - to be serfs the evidence to which is abundunt (as demonstrated Roberto )

It would be more accurate to say that the Slavs (or more precisely a particular group of Slavs, the Russians) were to CONTINUE to be serfs, because when the German Army invaded in 1941, the majority of the population of the Soviet Union were already serfs of the Communist ruling elite, agricultural or industrial serfs toiling long and hard in return for a miserably low standard of living, and subject to arbitrary repression at the whim of their masters.

Some of the serfs seem to have wanted to retain their Soviet masters. Yet others demonstrably preferred to have German masters, seeing them as the lesser of two evils. Probably the great majority were indifferent as to whether their masters would be Soviet or German, as long as they were left in peace.

[witness]

2. The proposition that the wars waged by Germany first against Poland and subsequently against the Soviet Union were racial wars between Germans and Slavs (a proposition that "Witness" says he does not actually support).

Again mills individual is lying.
I do support the "proposition'' that it was the racial war of Nazis ( not Germans ) against Slavs as well. Another matter is that I don't consider this war to have just racial motivations . As I mentioned earlier and which is obvious to anybody with no Nazi doctrine -eaten brains -this war had variety of reasons and contributing factors. But yes this was also the racial war .

[Roberto]

Comments on Part 2 of Roberto's material.

Roberto is here dealing with Hitler's decision to attack Poland in force and eliminate it as a military threat, before turning to face Britain and France.

Roberto adduces only two pieces of material.

One is a quotation from the book "Hitler-Reden 1932-1945", by Domarus. However, the passage quoted is obviously not a speech by Hitler, but a comment, apparently by Domarus. That being so, it is simply the opinion of an editor, and may or may not have any value. The passage does not contain anything to support the claim that the final occupation of Bohemia-Moravia in March 1939 was aimed at the encirclement of Poland, rather than a move related solely to developments in the former Czechoslovakia and totally unrelated to Germany's relationship with Poland.

No, but it shows how the "reasonable" demands made to Poland came upon the heels of Hitler having swallowed Czechoslovakia (after having sworn at Munich that the Sudeten region was his last territorial demand in Europe) and thus helps explain why the Poles rejected Hitler’s demands: not because Britain had given them a "blank cheque", but because they not unreasonably feared that a pattern similar to that which had led to the destruction of Czechoslovaquia would develop.

The second piece of material consists of notes of a meeting held on 23 May 1939. It suffices to point out that the meeting took place almost two months after Britain issued its open-ended guarantee to Poland at the end of March 1939, and well after Hitler had decided in April, in view of the fact that the British "blank cheque" had given Poland the trigger to unleash a war between Britain and Germany, to prepare an all-out attack on Poland to knock it out of the war quickly; therefore, it is not at all surprising that Hitler is talking about annihilating Poland as a military factor.

The Schmundt notes say nothing at all about Hitler's policy toward Poland until the issuing of the British "blank cheque" and Poland's definitive rejection of German attempts to resolve the Danzig issue.

Well, given Mills’ fantastic contention that

The only reason why war broke out between Germany and Poland in 1939 is that the vain, corrupt, power-mad colonels ruling Poland wanted it.

and hence kept rejecting Hitler’s "reasonable" demands, it’s still pertinent to point to a document showing that Hitler was not after Danzig, but after the whole of Poland, as the Poles may have suspected when they rejected his demands in March 1939.

The only reason why war broke out between Germany and Poland in 1939 is that the vain, corrupt, power-mad colonels ruling Poland wanted it. Once they had received the "blank cheque" from Britain at the end of March 1939, they took a hard line in refusing Germany's entirely reasonable requests for the return of Danzig, in the full knowledge that that would lead to war; the Polish colonels wanted war because they saw it as the opportunity to achieve their long-held chauvinist dream of seizing the German territories east of the Oder-Neisse Line (East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia).

Thus, the pompous Polish colonels knowingly provoked a war which they thought would be over in a week with the triumphant entry of the Polish army into Berlin. Instead, to their surprise, it led to the utter defeat of Poland, and almost to its complete destruction. Faced with Polish intransigence, Hitler reversed his attitude of friendship for Poland, and opted for a policy of complete ruthlessness in suppressing any resistance.

I’m sure Mills can present hard evidence that Hitler’s intention of destroying the Polish state and conquering Poland as a whole, expressed in his statements on 23 May 1939, came about only because Poland had refused to give in to his "reasonable" demands.

Roberto has previously been asked to present any hard evidence of an intention by Hitler to attack Poland prior to the issuing of the British guarantee, and he has failed to do so.

What thread exactly is Mills, now conveniently trying to change the subject, referring to?

A link and a quote of the pertinent passages would be appreciated.

As to "hard evidence of an intention by Hitler to attack Poland prior to the issuing of the British guarantee", Mills’ demand is somewhat disingenuous for the simple reason that, prior to the issue of the British guarantee, Hitler could expect to play the same kind of game in regard to Poland as he had in regard to Czechoslovakia, and it must be assumed that he would have preferred an annexation without combat to waging war earlier than he had planned to. That Poland was the next dish to satisfy Hitler’s insatiable appetite can be concluded from the fact that, almost immediately after having "solved" the issue of Czechoslovakia, Hitler started applying the same pattern – "reasonable" demands, to be followed by not-so-reasonable ones if conceded, until the whole country was annexed by Germany – to Poland. Hitler’s main goal, as stated in Mein Kampf and a number of proclamations ever since, was to expand the "living space" of the German nation into the East. I see no indication in the quotes below that this quest would have been satisfied with the annexation of Bohemia and Moravia, but maybe Mills can point out what I’m supposed to have missed.

Speech before the commanders of Army and Navy, 3 February 1933

[…]2. Nach außen. Kampf gegen Versailles. Gleichberechtigung in
Genf; aber zwecklos, wenn Volk nicht auf Wehrwillen
eingestellt. Sorge für Bundesgenossen.

3. Wirtschaft! Der Bauer muß gerettet werden!
Siedlungspolitik! Künft. Steigerung d. Ausfuhr zwecklos.
Aufnahmefähigkeit d. Welt ist begrenzt u. Produktion ist
überall übersteigert. Im Siedeln liegt einzige Mögl.,
Arbeitslosenheer z. T. wieder einzuspannen. Aber braucht
Zeit u. radikale Änderung nicht zu erwarten, da Lebensraum
für d(eutsches) Volk zu klein.

4. Aufbau der Wehrmacht wichtigste Voraussetzung für
Erreichung des Ziels: Wiedererringung der pol. Macht. Allg.
Wehrpflicht muß wieder kommen. Zuvor aber muß Staatsführung
dafür sorgen, daß die Wehrpflichtigen vor Eintritt nicht
schon durch Pazif., Marxismus, Bolschewismus vergiftet
werden oder nach Dienstzeit diesem Gifte verfallen.

Wie soll pol. Macht, wenn sie gewonnen ist, gebraucht
werden? Jetzt noch nicht zu sagen. Vielleicht Erkämpfung
neuer Export-Mögl., vielleicht - und wohl besser - Eroberung
neuen Lebensraumes im Osten u. dessen rücksichtslose
Germanisierung. Sicher, daß erst mit pol. Macht u. Kampf
jetzige wirtsch. Zustände geändert werden können. Alles, was
jetzt geschehen kann - Siedlung - Aushilfsmittel.[…]

Source of quote:

http://www.ns-archiv.de/krieg/1933/03-02-1933.shtml

My translation:

[…]2. Towards the outside. Fight against Versailles. Equality of rights in Geneva, but useless, if people don’t have the will fight. Care for allies.

3. Economy! Peasants must be saved!
Settlement policy! Future increase of exports useless.
World absorption capacity is limited and production everywhere exaggerated. Settlement is the only possibility to partially control the army of unemployed. But it takes time and a radical change cannot be expected, because the living space is too small for the German people.

4. Building of the armed forces is most important pre-condition for achieving the goal: re-obtaining political power. Conscription must be reintroduced. But before this the state leadership must see to it that the conscripts are not poisoned already before entering service by pacifism, Marxism, Bolshevism or fall for this poison after having served.

How shall political power be used once it has been obtained? Cannot tell yet now. Maybe fight for new export possibilities, maybe – and probably better – conquer new living space in the East and ruthlessly germanize it. What is certain is that only though political power and fighting the current economic situation can be changed. All that can be done for the time being – settlement – is but an auxiliary means. […]

Emphases are mine.

Minutes of a Conference in the Reich Chancellery, Berlin, November 5, 1937, FROM 4:15 to 8:30 P.M.

[…] The German racial community comprised over 85 million people and, because of their number and the narrow limits of habitable space in Europe, constituted a tightly packed racial core such as was not to be met in any other country and such as implied the right to a greater living space than in the case of other peoples.
[…]
The only remedy, and one which might appear to us as visionary, lay in the acquisition of greater living space -a quest which has at all times been the origin of the formation of states and of the migration of peoples. That this quest met with no interest at Geneva or among the satiated nations was understandable. If, then, we accept the security of our food situation as the principal question, the space necessary to insure it can only be sought in Europe, not, as in the liberal-capitalist view, in the exploitation of colonies. It is not a matter of acquiring population but of gaining space for agricultural use. Moreover, areas producing raw materials can be more usefully sought in Europe in immediate proximity to the Reich, than overseas; the solution thus obtained must suffice for one or two generations. Whatever else might prove necessary later must be left to succeeding generations to deal with. The development of great world political constellations progressed but slowly after all, and the German people with its strong racial core would find the most favorable prerequisites for such achievement in the heart of the continent of Europe. The history of all ages- the Roman Empire and the British Empire- had proved that expansion could only be carried out by breaking down resistance and taking risks; setbacks were inevitable. There had never in former times been spaces without a master, and there were none today; the attacker always comes up against a possessor.
[…]
Germany's problem could only be solved by means of force and this was never without attendant risk. The campaigns of Frederick the Great for Silesia and Bismarck's wars against Austria and France had involved unheard-of risk, and the swiftness of the Prussian action in 1870 had kept Austria from entering the war. If one accepts as the basis of the following exposition the resort to force with its attendant risks, then there remain still to be answered the questions "when" and "how." In this matter there were three cases [Falle] to be dealt with:[…]

Source of quote:

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/d ... ssbach.htm

Emphases are mine.

[michael mills]

Witness wrote:

mills individual is quite frankly lying here.
Maybe he is able to demonstrate some corresponding quotations where I find ''the concept of racial mixing " between Slavs and Germans ( or between any other etnic groups for this matter )"disturbing or offensive" ?

Well, here is an example. I wrote:

Of course, that mixing [between Germans and Slavs] mainly affected the Slavic peoples who lived nearest the Germans, ie Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes. Slavic peoples living further to the East, eg Cossacks, probably did not mix with Germans to any appreciable extent; their interbreeding was mainly with Finns, Ugrians, Tartars etc.

to which "Witness" replied:

Do you have problems with Cossacks now ?Well -Cossacks would not have any problems with you...
Just don't spit on the screen.

.

Not exactly a rational response to my suggestion that a Slavic people, the Cossacks, inhabiting the eastern edge of the Slav geographic area, had interbred with other peoples living close to that eastern edge, such as Ugrians and Tartars.

Obviously I do not have any problems with Cossacks. But the very fact that "Witness" interprets my suggestion of interbreeding between Cossacks and other peoples as eidence as some sort of hostility or disdain on my part for Cossacks suggests that he finds that suggestion disturbing.

Witness also wrote:

Yes I think my race is "precious " as any other race on
Earth .
If mills has problems with it ,
probably thinking that only Germanic " Race " is
"Precious'' then he can just "suck it up " and wipe his Nazi -kissing organ.

Why the intemperate and abusive response? I did not attribute any moral significance whatever to the undeniable fact of interbreeding between Slavs and a variety of other peoples, including Germans.

Again, the nature of what "Witness" wrote suggests that he was disturbed by the thought of that interbreeding. If the racial mixing of Slavs and Germans did not disturb him, then he would not have reacted in such an extreme manner.

[witness]

Witness wrote:

So Slavs were not to be get rid of per se as Jews .
They were assigned to the different function - to be serfs the evidence to which is abundunt (as demonstrated Roberto )

It would be more accurate to say that the Slavs (or more precisely a particular group of Slavs, the Russians) were to CONTINUE to be serfs, because when the German Army invaded in 1941, the majority of the population of the Soviet Union were already serfs of the Communist ruling elite, agricultural or industrial serfs toiling long and hard in return for a miserably low standard of living, and subject to arbitrary repression at the whim of their masters.

Some of the serfs seem to have wanted to retain their Soviet masters. Yet others demonstrably preferred to have German masters, seeing them as the lesser of two evils..

Nonsense.
One thing is to be ruled by the nation own dictators and another by the foreign invaders who consider the conquered nation to be inferior and not quite humans.

Probably the great majority were indifferent as to whether their masters would be Soviet or German, as long as they were left in peace

What a nonsense again. The great majority were not indifferent to the fact of the Nazi occupation at all. The great majority fought the invaders.
This is exactly the reason why mills heroes got such a kick on their asses.

[Roberto]

Comments on Part 3 of Roberto's material.

Ah, so the gentle Rosenberg wished to see the Great Russians treated like sub-humans. Interesting.

Rosenberg's negative view of Great Russians, compared with his more positive assessment of Ukrainians, bears a strong resemblance to a theory developed by Ukrainian nationalists in the 19th century, according to which the Great Russians were not originally a Slavic people, but rather a mixture of Finns and Tartars who had adopted Slavic speech and culture from Kievan Rus'. Thus, according to that theory, the Great Russians were not true heirs of Kievan Rus', as were the Ukrainians, but rather interlopers, being of a "lower" race.

And I’m sure Mills can show us the statements of Rosenberg from which it becomes apparent that this noble fellow, who like his peers considered the starvation death of millions of people in the occupied Soviet territories „eine harte Notwendigkeit, die außerhalb jeden Gefühls steht.“ ("a harsh necessity that stands outside any sentiment"), thought in the terms claimed.

For all I know, Soviet prisoners of war, regardless of whether they were Russians, Ukrainians or Belorussians, were treated like scum throughout the war. Deportation of forced laborers, especially from Ukraine, never ceased either, and neither did the killings sprees called "anti-partisan operations", directed against the peasants unfortunate enough to inhabit "bandit-infested" areas, especially in Belorussia.

In fact, from the beginning there were efforts to separate out prisoners of war belonging to the non-Russian nationalities, in particular Ukrainians, and to give them better treatment, including recruiting them as auxiliaries.

From the beginning, Mills?

Notwithstanding the irrelevance of such efforts given the fact that Ukrainian and Belorussian prisoners of war starved to death or were bumped off just like the Great Russians and other Soviet nationalities, I would like Mills to show us evidence to the time when such efforts to give Ukrainians better treatment and recruit them as auxiliaries (an effort we might conclude from Mills’ statement was not extended to Great Russians) began.

It is true that the deportation of forced labourers from Ukraine continued as long as the area was under German control, but due to the influence of Rosenberg forced labourers of Ukrainian nationality, and other non-Russians, were given better treatment, and were no longer made to wear the "Ost" badge, having their own national badges instead. At the beginning, all forced labourers from the occupied Soviet territories were treated as an amorphous mass, but later graduated treatment was instituted for the different nationalities.

Evidence that Ukrainian forced laborers were treated better than Russian ones, "due to the influence of Rosenberg" or for other reasons, is appreciated.

Although Great Russians continued to be treated harshly, that cannot be called a racially based anti-Slavic policy per se, since other Slavic groups were treated much better.

Where did I say something about a "racially based anti-Slavic policy per se", Mills?

But as you brought it up, was there no difference in treatment between forced laborers from Western or Southern Europe on the one hand and those from Poland or the Soviet Union on the other ?

As for the anti-partisan operations in Belorussia, which according to Gerlach were combined with the program of rounding up forced labour, they were the result of wartime exigencies, on the one hand the need to suppress armed opposition which was interfering with Germany's prosecution of the war against the Soviet Government and also with its exploitation of the occupied territory, and on the other the increasing need for war-related labour. They were not driven by an anti-Slavic policy, not did they represent an attempt to exterminate part of the Slav inhabitants, even though they resulted in high civilian casualties.

Mills is again missing the point, which lies in the much more brutal conduct of anti-partisan war in the Soviet Union and Poland than in Western Europe, Italy or Greece. In Belorussia, hundreds of villages were wiped out together with all their inhabitants, and the killing sprees, as described by Gerlach, targeted not so much the partisans as the peasant population of areas deemed to be "bandit-infested". As a result, more than 300,000 civilians were slaughtered in Belorussia, about ten for every actual partisan. Without the Nazis’ contempt for Slav humanity, such indiscriminate mass killing would probably not have taken place.

The Phantom War
The German struggle against Soviet partisans 1941-1944
by Matthew Cooper
Macdonald and Jane’s Publishers Limited, London, 1979

Introduction

Evil devours itself. Perhaps no other single aspect of the Second World War so well exemplifies the truth of this saying as the German struggle against the Soviet partisans from 1941 to 1944. Unpleasant tale though it is, its telling provides some important truths concerning the nature of the Third Reich and of its Führer, Adolf Hitler; it reveals that National Socialism contained within itself the seeds of its failure. Had it not been for the brutality of its racial dogma, the complexities and contradictions of its organization, and the intransigence and narrowness of intellect of its leader, it is at least arguable that Germany could have pacified the occupied territories of Russia, harnessed for its own purposes the discontent with the Communist regime that was widespread among the Russian peoples, and thereby brought to an end the Soviet Union. The failure to achieve this was the primary cause, in its turn, of the defeat of the Third Reich.

But, interesting though such a thesis may be, it is purely hypothetical. What is certain, however, is that, by their savage repression of the Eastern peoples, the German invaders lost the support of the indigenous population, created hostility where none previously existed, and, despite the great weaknesses inherent in the partisan movement, were forced to surrender large areas of occupied territory to the Soviet guerrillas. Although the Germans could claim, with reason, that the partisans had not succeeded in their primary task - the dislocation of vital supply lines to the armies at the front - they themselves were brought to the realization that their ruthless measures, born of an intolerant radicalism, could only fuel the fires of resistance, and foster, rather than subdue, partisan activity. But by the time this truth had penetrated the prejudices of Führer, High Command, and regime, it was too late; the war in the East had been lost.

The history of German rule in occupied Russia in general, and of its security measures in particular, also reveals much about Hitler’s responsibility for the immeasurable atrocities that took place during the war. Certainly, although he gave orders of great cruelty concerning the policies to be pursued towards the Russian people, they included no mention of any desire to commit genocide. Perhaps, therefore, it could be argued that he had no intention of allowing his political officials and soldiers to engage in the destruction of twenty million Russians, of whom at least 750,000 were Jews - the enormity of which figures becomes clear when it is realized that the number of Soviet soldiers and partisans killed in battle amounted to around one third of the total. Perhaps, even, it might be said that the Führer had no knowledge that such wholesale slaughter, initiated solely by subordinates such as Heinrich Himmler, was taking place. Perhaps. But what can be established beyond doubt is that it was Hitler, and he alone, who created the conditions whereby such evil could be done. He shaped the mentality of the invaders. Without his diatribes against the Slavs and the Jews - the Untermensch - and without his orders, or those emanating at his instigation and with his approval from his military staffs, the High Commands of the Wehrmacht and the Army, the atrocities perpetrated by his SS men and his soldiers would not have taken place. As Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, Chief of the SS Anti-Partisan formations, was to tell the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg after the war: ‘If, for decades, a doctrine is preached that the Slav race is an inferior race, and the Jews not even human at all, then such an explosion is inevitable’. For that, Hitler must bear responsibility.

The struggle behind the German front lines in the East was immense; at its peak, it involved some 250,000 partisans against 500,000 men in the security forces. At times it could cause the invader much consternation. In 1943, for example, the Luftwaffe was forced to issue to its pilots a map on which, in red, were marked areas over which it was dangerous even to fly - areas that were in the German-held rear areas themselves. Claims for the efficacy of the Soviet guerrilla war have been many. General Ponomarenko, Chief of the partisan Central Staff, asserted that up until the middle of 1943, Soviet guerrillas in Belorussiya alone killed more than 300,000 Germans, caused more than 3,000 railway accidents, and destroyed 3,263 bridges, 1,191 tanks, 4,097 lorries, 378 heavy guns, and 895 supply depots. A well-known British military writer, Major-General J.F.C. Fuller, wrote: 'The partisans, whose numbers were always increasing, sowed fear in the hearts of the German soldiers, who were scattered along the endless railways. In the immense spaces which these crossed, the partisan detachments played the same role as did the submarine packs in the Atlantic' - packs which, it should be remembered, nearly brought about the economic demise of Great Britain. Others, however, have been less sure of the value of the guerrillas. Sir Basil Liddell Hart, for example, believed their activities to have been both ineffective and counter-productive, rarely being more that just a nuisance value and having direct consequences for the civilian population by provoking the enemy into taking severe reprisals. Such writers point to the fact that the partisans were but an auxiliary force of the Red Army; that their activities did not become serious until the second half of the occupation; that, even then, they were limited to the poorer, less populated, and often less strategic areas; and that, in any case, Soviet claims for their successes are wildly exaggerated. Indeed, if early Soviet accounts are to be believed, the Germans suffered more than one million casualties from guerrilla activity alone - about one-sixth of all their soldiers who fought in the East. At the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, General Jodl, Chief of Operations of the Wehrmacht High Command, in whose interest it would have been to exaggerate the menace of the partisans, doubted whether German casualties in the Soviet Union at their hands were as high as 50,000. Recent studies suggest that they were even less, at between 15,000 and 20,000, not including those of the Eastern volunteers who also took part in security operations. In this sense, at least, the phantom war lived up to its name, appearing to possess immense form but, in reality, having little substance. This, however, was often overlooked by the Germans, who, in the extreme violence of their security measures, appeared not only to have misunderstood the proper conduct of anti-guerrilla warfare, but also to have overestimated the partisan danger. As the Head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, admitted a few months before the Germans were driven from the Soviet Union: ‘Perhaps we have overreacted to these bandits, and by this have caused ourselves needless problems.’

Pages 82 and following

The destruction that was unleashed on the Russian peoples as a consequence of the directives issued by Hitler and OKW at the end of 1942 outweighed even the brutality that had characterized German occupation policy until then. It was, indeed, a slaughter of the innocents, of which even some of the perpetrators were to grow sick. One eyewitness to an SS anti-guerrilla operation, a member of the Ordnungsdienst (the collaborationist indigenous police) who had accompanied the SS men on their mission as a guide, was so appalled at what he had seen that he wrote the following report, dated May 1943, to his German commander in the vain hope that something could be done to prevent such outrages in the future. It ran:

‘We entered the village [believed to be in the Smolensk region] at midday and called for the mayor. The SS offices treated this man abysmally, even though he seemed to be a friend. He was ordered to gather all the people in the square, even the babies, and to take steps to round in all those who might be working in the fields. Guards were posted. By 14:00 all were assembled. The SS men had meanwhile filled in their time by walking round the village and doing precisely as they pleased. There was at least one rape, and nothing was done about it. To the assembled people, the SS officer, through me, told them that their area was bandit infested, that they must have collaborated with those bandits, and that disciplinary action would be taken against them. There were twenty-three men in the square. Half of them were separated, irrespective of age or health, and taken down a side alley. The SS men seemed to know exactly what to do. Without one word of an order from the offices, automatic firing began, and then the SS men returned, without the peasants. The women became hysterical and had to be beaten into submission. Then the huts were set on fire, and all food that was found was destroyed. As the flames began to engulf the final row of huts, a man who had obviously been hiding ran out, his clothing partially alight. The SS men were clearly expecting something of the sort, and shot him dead before he had taken five paces. This was the signal for further brutality. The SS officer rounded on the mayor, telling him that he was not merely a collaborator, but a full bandit. He was, therefore, to die like a bandit. But first he would admit where the bandit camp was. The mayor refused, quite probably because he did not know. The SS officer then had one of the young girls brought before them, and told the SS Scharführer [Sergeant] to perform. The following incident is impossible to recount. The result was that the girl, stripped naked, had one of her breasts cut off. The mayor still refused to talk. The girl was then shot in front of him, and the SS officer fired a few indiscriminate rounds into the group of women, felling two or three. The final refusal to provide information caused the execution of the mayor by slow hanging and the death by shooting of the rest of the inhabitants. The SS men left, leaving some 70 dead people of all ages behind them. I cannot believe that this is either humane or sensible; action to stop it must be taken.’

In a similar vein on 19 July 1943, Herf, a police general in the East, wrote to the Head of the SS Personnel Main Office in great agitation:

‘You have got to know me well over a number of years, and I hope you have a good opinion of me - at least I think you have. I do not know whether I can remain here. Things are going on here which I cannot stomach, to which I am not prepared to subscribe even in the smallest corner of my mind. The problem concerns our official reports.
‘In my opinion, the reports sent out from here to the Reichsführer are “cooked”. Long before I arrived people in the Ukraine were saying quite openly that our casualty reports were false. People said that the figures were kept artificially low in order to highlight the “successes”. I would not wish even to hint at the reason for this. After I had been here only one day the Head of the Operations Section told me quite openly that things were going on here which were not quite right. The ex Chief of Staff (who by the way had been promised my job) told me the same thing. That was on my second day here. I have told both of them that under these circumstances I cannot remain. They advise me to try to get things changed. As you know, I have done so. Yesterday the Gauleiter and General commissar unintentionally and unwittingly broadcast certain secret reports (intended for the Führer) showing that some 480 rifles were found on 6,000 dead “partisans”. Put bluntly, all these men had been shot to swell the figure of enemy losses and highlight our own “heroic deeds”. I am under no illusions that, this being the system, the winter 1943-4 will see the beginning of the end in the rear areas and probably at the front as well. The increase in guerrilla warfare is simply and solely due to the way the Russians have been treated.
‘I have already on several occasions confided to you my misgivings over the “colonization” process. If, however, we are now going to work on this system, I have no desire to see myself subsequently accused of misleading the Reichsführer-SS, with the files brought forward to prove it. The principle is that dead men there must be, no matter where they come from - otherwise the commander concerned is a bad commander and a bad soldier. What’s more he won’t get a decoration.
The Reichsführer-SS “likes” me; I am very distressed by all this because my liking for him is even greater. But ... Max ... I am not a crook and I don’t intend to become one.
‘Yesterday evening I delved into this “6,000/480” problem I mentioned. Answer: “You appear not to know that these bandits destroy their weapons in order to play the innocent and so avoid death.” How easy it must be then to suppress these guerrillas - when they destroy their weapons!
‘My dear Max, I am prepared to serve the country, not some particular person or a pack of lies.
'I am most grateful to you for all the friendship you have shown me, but ... I must now throw in my hand.
'My reasons I have set out briefly above.
'If you wish, recall me to Berlin and I will gladly come. As you can imagine, this has not been easy to write since it means the end of my career; on that I have no illusions.’

Page 97 and following

The policy of ruthless oppression was not without its critics. Although it was powerless against Hitler’s will, the Army High Command admitted in August 1942: ‘Time after time the population [in this case, of the Ukraine] shows itself grateful for every instance when it is dealt with humanely on the basis of equality, and reacts strongly against contemptuous treatment.’ Terror was found to be counter-productive; the chief of staff to 2nd Army noted in May 1942: ‘We can master the wide Russian expanse which we have conquered only with the Russians and Ukrainians who live in it, never against their will.’ Even some politicians came to disappove of severe security measures. In early 1943, Rosenberg wrote to Himmler complaining of the indiscriminate burning of Ukrainian and Belorussiyan villages that was providing the enemy with excellent propaganda material. After an anti-partisan operation code-named ‘Cottbus’, which took place from 3 to 23 June 1943 in the area of Polotsk, Borisov and Lepel under the command of the SS, and which included also Army and Luftwaffe units, the commander, SS Brigadeführer und Generalmajor der Polizei von Gottberg, reported 4,500 partisans and 5,000 suspects killed for the loss of fifty-nine Germans. As Wilhelm Kube pointed out in a report:

‘The figures mentioned above indicate that again a heavy destruction of the population must be expected. If only 492 rifles are taken from 4,500 enemy dead, this discrepancy shows that among these enemy dead were numerous peasants from the country. The Battalion Dirlewanger especially has a reputation for destroying many human lives. Among the 5,000 people suspected of belonging to bands, there were numerous women and children. The political effect of this large-scale operation upon the peaceful populations is simply dreadful in view of the many shootings of women and children. In December, the town of Begomie was evacuated by the armed forces and the police. At that time, the population of Begomie was preponderantly on our side. In the course of the fighting, Begomie, which was built up as a strong point by the partisans, has been destroyed by German air attacks.’

Lohse, bemoaning the fact that many of the killed would have been suitable for forced labor in the Reich, wrote to Rosenberg enclosing Kube’s report and stating:

‘It should not be ignored in this connection that in view of the difficulties in making oneself understood, as generally in such clean-up operations, it is very hard to distinguish friend from foe. Nevertheless, it should be possible to avoid atrocities and to bury those who have been liquidated. To lock men, women and children into barns and to set fire to these, does not appear to be a suitable method of combating bands, even if it is desired to exterminate the population. This method is not worthy of the German cause and hurts our reputation severely. I am asking that you take the necessary action.’

The Reich Commissar’s request, however, went unheeded.

Page 162

Conclusion

It would be pleasant, for the writing of this book, to conclude by proving that German occupation policy in the East, far from pacifying the population, brought upon its practitioners the full fury of guerrilla warfare - warfare that severely dislocated their supply lines and led to considerable strategic consequences for the course of the war. This, however, would be only partially true. The Germans did, in fact, succeed, through a combination of energy and resourcefulness, in securing their lines of communication for the expenditure of relatively few combat-worthy soldiers; the outcome of the war in Russia was therefore affected very little by the activities of Soviet guerrillas.

Success in the elimination of the partisan menace was, however, to elude the Germans; indeed, by their measures, they actually ensured the continuance and development of the very movement that they were trying to destroy. Certainly the Soviets invested considerable resources in the partisan struggle, resources which might have been put to more use, militarily, at the front, but they were better able to do so than were the Germans, for whom acute scarcity of men and material was a major problem. At a time when the Third Reich, heavily outnumbered in men and material, was fighting for its existence - as it was clearly doing once its soldiers had set foot on Soviet soil - any diversion, however small, of scarce manpower and equipment, or of the attention of already hard-pressed military commands, was bound to be harmful. The irony, from the German point of view, was that the guerrilla war was so unnecessary. Its very existence proved the futility and brutality of German occupation policy, which squandered the valuable potential that lay in the East.

Thus, there is no good reason to believe that, if the Soviet Union had collapsed in 1941 leading to a German victory, there would have been partisan activity and that the German Army would have gone on killing sprees in 1943.

Except, of course, in the areas where the Nazi Hungerplan, which in this case could have been implemented without practical restrictions, would probably have led to the flaming up of desperate resistance. There’s no good reason to believe that those who refused to starve to death or emigrate to inhospitable regions would not have been slaughtered at least as brutally as the victims of wartime "anti-partisan" actions, is there?