The only good thing in Stalins rule compared to Hitler was that he did kill people far more democraticly (evenly) among ethnical/political groups...

.... not that it was really an great improvement.
yes the Germanica you are right the expulsion of germans from eastern europe would not been possible without active participation of soviet armyGermanica wrote:Oleg, what about the campaign of Stalin against the ethnic German population of Eastern Europe? If I remember correctly, the "volksdeutsche" bore the brunt of Soviet reprisal activities outside of Germany. The death toll (according to my own knowledge) was approximately 1.5 million, although the operation itself extended to some 30 million in total.
Regards,
Germanica
Source-Some years ago, I stood in the pouring rain at the Bregenzstrasse in Berlin in an attempt to look for the shadows of my parents in 1941. - My father Harald, then a young, good looking, enthusiastic attaché at the Swedish legation in Berlin, with high ambitions and my mother Louise, innocent and sweet, with dimples in her cheeks and my new-born brother Carl in her arms, lived in one end of the street.
Bregenzstrasse is a little street in the vicinity of Kurfürstendam. Easy to seal off from both sides. There were nearly only Jews living in the quarters. Harald woke up many times during the night by trucks; the rush of spike clad boots, commando shouts and screams of anguish.
He used to run down to the entrance door, dressed only in pyjama and waved in so many he could of the despairing people who looked for cover. They hid in the little apartment, crouching and trembling. Next day he was forced to let them go. There was no lifeline - the Swedish government had even forced a J in the passport of the Jews to differ them from the other German citizens.
Harald, who felt completely powerless regarding to this, proposed to his boss, the envoy Arvid Richert, that one perhaps could give these people a kind of passport of protection, like what his college later gave the Jews of Budapest. - Richert got white in his face and raged: - Do you want to throw us in war with Germany?
And that was it.
The Jews were driven from their homes, deprived from all possibilities of support and were put in a kind of quarantine of deprivation and starvation, till it was time for eradication.
In January 1945 the time came to the Germans themselves. In a way their own Holocaust. In any case, for some of them. A result of Hitler’s merciless politics.
It is called the Expulsion (der Vertreibung) - the ethnic cleansing of 15 million Germans from central and Eastern Europe. Hitler had cleaned out many groups of people, but this expulsion was something quite different.
Today the world has been shocked by what happened in former Yugoslavia, where Muslims, Croats and Serbs were driven away from their homes. Like cattle, with a scant hope of returning home again. The concept of ethnic cleansing has become very familiar, which one hears in all sorts of different contexts. One often hears:” The worst ethnic cleansing since World War II...” - But what happened then?
Very few people today have a slightest idea what happened all these Germans the years after the war and the tremendous suffering they had to endure. Nobody has, anyhow, been interested. The common idea is that the Germans got what they deserved. An idea that, 55 years afterwards, it is, perhaps, time to revise. The subject is very touchy. A former German ambassador warned me that to bring this topic up today in Germany, might classify you as a neo-nazi. Anyhow, the Expulsion represents a big white area on the historical map.
My own introduction to the Expulsion was the book of Marion Dönhoff, the founder of ”Die Zeit”: ”Namen die keiner mehr nennt”, in a dusty antiquarian shop in Berlin. She had big estates in East Prussia and had to flee as the Red Army approached. She left on her riding horse in - 25º cold and snow storm and joined the fleeing population on the full packed roads. After two weeks she halted her horse at two a clock in the night, at the big train bridge, crossing the river Nogat, by Marienburg, near Danzig.
The bridge was deserted, but she heard a strange, clattering sound, as from a three legged being: ”...soon I saw three figures in uniform, slowly dragging themselves over the bridge in silence: One of them was walking with crutches, one with a stick and the third had a big bandage round the head, and the left arm hanging down limb... For me this was the end of East Prussia: three dead sick soldiers, dragging themselves over the Nogat Bridge to West Prussia. And a woman on horse, whose ancestors 700 years before, had pushed, from west to east, right in to the great wilderness on the other side of the river, who now was riding back to the west. - 700 years of history was now wiped out...”
The story of Marion Dönhoff is typical and tells much about the historical background. The laborious and industrious German burghers and farmers colonised Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages, often invited by local lords. From the Baltic States, through Prussia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia (Czech Rep and Slovakia today), down to Hungary and the Balkan, they cultivated the land and founded thousands of cities and villages. The First World War changed all and a big part of the German population in these areas became minorities under national governments. The second word war made things worse with the Nazis as a ruthless occupation force, terrorising all these countries. The ethnic Germans became the scapegoats as the Reich fell apart in ruins. - The situation was a bit different in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, since they were purely German areas since the 13th century.
During the Second World War, several politicians on the allied side demanded that the Germans in these areas should be driven away. The first one to air such thoughts was the Czech, exiled premier, Eduard Benes. The British government agreed.
During conferences, the fate of the Germans was sealed. Stalin wanted to keep the eastern part of Poland, that he got from Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and as compensation Poland would get East Prussia, West Prussia and Silesia. And then the current population must go. Roosevelt and Churchill promised help with transports. Stalin beamed. Churchill said in a speech:”...a clean sweep will be made...”
An other question that came up, was the matter of ”reparations of war damage” in the devastated Soviet Union. Stalin wanted German labour. Request was permitted. The result was that around 875.000 people, mostly elderly people, women and children, was sent to mines and slave camps, and were the greater part perished of starvation and hardship. The responsibility of Roosevelt and Churchill in this program is undeniable.One can divide the Expulsion in three phases:
1. The Soviet phase with flight from the terror of the Red Army.
2. The flight from revenge, primary from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
3. The organized expulsion from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Balkan.
The first phase opened when Stalin launched his winter offensive, ”Uranius”, against East Prussia, the 12th of January 1945, with 2.2 million soldiers. Facing them was 400.000 Germans. The Russian soldiers were highly motivated and had been instructed to kill so many Germans they could and that included the civilians. After reconquering his own devastated fatherland for years, each man was filled with revenge.
The population knew what was in store for them. During the fighting in the autumn, the Red Army had conquered some communes and been driven away again. What they left was horrible. Murdered civilians in all houses, raped women and something that would be repeated during all the conquest - naked women crucified to barn doors. These incidents were ruthlessly used in the Nazi propaganda to strengthen the resistance.
The violence against the civilians was documented where it was possible, for example, when German forces reconquered areas, like in Metgehten, a suburb of Königsberg, in the end of January 1945. The chocked soldiers could not believe their eyes, when the entered the town.
Big piles of dead bodies littered the streets. Most of them were women and children. Few were men. Nearly all women had been beaten to death or stabbed with bayonets. A big number were mutilated, especially by the genitals, and had cut off breasts. In the biggest pile, they counted to 3.000 dead. In one place people were driven down in a big bomb crater and then blown to pieces by explosives. I all buildings civilians lay dead. Several trains that had come with fugitives stood motionless, full of dead. A witness saw the rests of two women, who had been tied to their ankles and torn apart by two cars, which had driven in opposite directions. In a big villa, 60 surviving women were found. They had been raped 60 - 70 times per day. The villa had obviously served as a brothel. Half of the women had to be taken to psychiatric institutions.
A bit outside, in the village Gross Heydekrug, stood an abandoned tank, which had been dragging four naked women in ropes. In the church a young girl was nailed to the cross of the altar, with to German soldiers strung up on each side... - A bizarre biblical metaphor of pain and suffering.
The road to the west was filled with hardships and suffering for the fugitives. - When the Russian tanks advanced north from Poland, they cut off the German territory in several places. The population was thus caught in pockets and could not flee west by land. Instead they moved to the coast and the harbours where they hoped to get on a ship. The German navy then organized an evacuation that far surpasses the one made in Dunkerque in May 1940.
1,5 million fugitives and 700.000 soldiers were evacuated by 790 boats of different sizes from January to the end of the war. The admiral Dönitz, who was the successor of Hitler, delayed the final capitulation, just in order to evacuate as many as possible from the east.
But the evacuation could not be made without sacrifices. The 30th of January the passenger ship ”Wilhelm Gustloff” sailed out from Pillau, the harbour of Königsberg, with 6.000 fugitives on board. Outside in the snowstorm, waited the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of captain A.I. Marinesko. Three, well-aimed torpedoes sank ”Wilhelm Gustloff”. Despite the storm and cold temperature, the escort ships saved 1.100 people. The same submarine sent the hospital ship ”General von Steuben” to the bottom. It was painted white with red crosses, carrying 3.500 wounded soldiers. The worst sinking was ”Goya”, with 7.000 fugitives on board. There only 183 survived.
The problem was that the Red Army chased the fugitives as much as the German soldiers. The endless columns of charts that crossed the ice if Frischer Haff from Königsberg, towards the harbour Pillau, were bombed without mercy. On the roads the Russian tanks simply mashed the fugitives with their chains, mowed them down with their machine-guns or liquidated them at the roadside.
After the Russians came the Polish army, polish militia and civilians who should take over the country. They co-operated closely with the Soviet occupation authorities and participated in the looting and the killings. Polish fugitives from the eastern parts took over the houses of the Germans. The former owners were thrown out in the street. The provision of food stopped completely. Famine and diseases like typhoid and cholera ravaged.
Later the Allies stared to organise train transports to the west. They became veritable trains of horror, that was constantly stopped and plundered by hooligans and armed gangs. The conditions soon became so unbearable that the Allies had to stop the transports.
Of course there were exceptions. Decent Soviet officers were chocked by the violence. Solsjenytsin, who participated in the fighting of East Prussia, wrote in the ”Gulag Archipelago” that rape and the following murder of the woman, almost was considered as a combat distinction. Individual Poles gave Germans food and shelter and helped them cross the border. In many farms the Polish workers hid the German owners.
The inhabitants of Silesia that fled from the Red Army, mostly tried to get to Dresden. The city had not been bombed any time during the war. Thanks to the exquisite art treasures and the unique baroque architecture of the town, it was considered as an open city, like Rome and Paris. No military installations or industries were in the vicinity. A safe place.
The 13th of February the Royal Air Force attacked with a first wave of planes during the night. The city was packed with refuges, around 200.000. The night after the next wave came. A total of 1.400 planes participated. As if it was not enough, 450 American planes made daylight bombings, which completed the destruction.
The city was engulfed in a firestorm, never seen since the destruction of Hamburg in 1943. Very little was left. The figures concerning the number of perished are very unsure, but it is estimated that between 150.000 and 200.000 people died and 400.000 were left homeless. It shall be noted that in Hiroshima, around 50.000 people died.
In the rest of Europe, revenge struck hard on the ethnic Germans. It was like in Poland. In Czechoslovakia the Germans had to wear white sleeve badges with an N (Nemec, which means German in Czech). The Germans had to take off their hat for every Czech or Soviet officer they met.
In Prague, thousands of civil Germans were massacred by the end of war. At Uti 2.000 women and children were tossed from a bridge (Vaclav Havel had a commemoration plate put up at the place in 1990) and the Czech militia detained hundreds of thousand people in concentration camps. The old German camps were handy. No food was distributed and diseases ravaged. People died like flies. The ethnic Germans got the same treatment as Czechs and Jews had before.
With all the free looting, rapes and other atrocities, it must be said that the majority of the Czechs were revolted and ashamed over the treatment of the Germans. Vaclav Havel later publicly apologised for these events.
In Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania the ethnic cleansing followed the same pattern. The German inhabitants had to leave their farms, houses and business with what they could carry in a suitcase. No valuables were permitted. It was just to hand over the keys. - Here the Germans were particularly struck by the deportations to the Soviet Union.
Most of the Germans were put in labour camps. Those who could not work, like women, children and old people, were put in special starvation camps, were most perished. A witness tells about the starvation camp in Jarek. In June 1945 there was 25.000 prisoners. In May next year there was only 2.800 left. Other starvation camps were Rudolfsgnad, Gakovo, Mitrovica or Molidorf.
Those who were driven away from their ancestral lands came to a Germany that thanks to the bombings not could provide shelter for its own population. Nothing worked and food was scarce. The fugitives got no fugitive status of the Allies, which did that they could not get help from the Red Cross or other help organisations. They were in fact busy repatriating the displaced slave workers that the Nazis had brought in to Germany during the war. The question of the expulsed Germans was regarded as an ”internal German affair”.
In this situation Germany received more than 13 million fugitives!
Around two million of the expulsed Germans are estimated to have lost their lives, due to starvation, liquidations and other hardships.
The ethnic Germans had a terrible fate. They were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were surely Nazis, but the majority were simple farmers and artisans who did not care much about politics and just wanted to live in peace. The tragedy is that the governments that drove out the Germans treated them in the same way as the Nazis had treated their own people.
Now some facts start to emerge, concerning the Expulsion. Witnesses and victims dare to testify. Governments apologise. For the victims, it is perhaps not enough. One witness said:
”...It is difficult to loose all you have, but unbearable when you loose your identity and your history...”
No, the Western Allies did not hold sympathy for any German or pro-German, but I had not known of their role in the deaths of approximately 1.5 million ethnic Germans.Oleg wrote:if there were other troops than Soviets in EE it would not have chnage anything - WA did not have much simpathy for Germans either, nor did the have it for anybody who collaborated with Nazis - turning over Vlasovsti etc - is quite an indicator.
Gorbachev himself admitted it! What more proof could you want?...the streets and houses were overgrown with weeds. In the streets there were no signs of any living being, human or animal, not even a cat or a dog. In some of the houses doors and windows were open, while in others they have been removed to fire,
and there were only black spaces showing. Decomposing dead bodies were lying about in the weeds around the houses and evidently in the houses themselves, and an incredibly putrid odour, intensified by warm weather, permeated the
village...
This meant that they would take a long strand of piano wire and kill every woman and child regardless of age.We had 40 kulak families and we sent them all away. It was not enough to send the men only, because we must pluck up all the kulak elements by the roots
http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_ ... e_farm.htmIn the Ukraine, in one collective the ration was 20 lb. The peasants complain: “Come and see the grain, rotten grain: that is what they keep for us. All the best grain is sent to the nearest town for export, and we do not get enough to eat. Poor Mother Russia is in a sorry plight. What we want is land and our own cows.”
Oh, Mighty Oleg, show me how I, the stupid Ukrainian, have gone wrong?Stalin's Famine In Ukraine: Malcolm Muggeridge
Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge by Marco Carynnyk
Special Edition Issued by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee
Edmonton Branch, October 14,1983
"The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind, without any consideration whatever of the consequences of human suffering," Malcolm Muggeridge said.
He was talking about the genocidal famine that swept Ukraine in the winter on 1932 and the spring and summer of 1933.
Muggeridge was there that terrible winter and spring. As a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Moscow, he was one of the few Western journalists who circumvented Soviet restrictions and visited the famine regions and then honestly reported what he had seen.
Marco Carynnyk talked to Muggeridge at his cottage in Sussex, England.
Why did you decide to write about the famine in Ukraine?
It was the big story in all our talks in Moscow. Everybody knew about it. There was no question about that. Anyone you were talking to knew that there was a terrible famine going on. Even in the Soviets' own pieces there were somewhat disguised acknowledgements of great difficulties there. I realized that that was the big story. I could also see that all the correspondents in Moscow were distorting it.
Without making any kind of plans or asking for permission I just went and got a ticket for Kiev and then went on to Rostov. The Soviet security is not as good as people think it is. If you once duck it, you can go quite a long way. At least you could in those days.
Going through the countryside by train one could sense the state of affairs. Ukraine was starving, and you only had to venture out to smaller places to see derelict fields and abandoned villages.
On one occasion, I was changing trains, and I went wandering around, and in one of the trains in the station, the kulaks were being loaded onto the train, and there were military men all along the platform.
I'll tell you another thing that's more difficult to convey, but it impressed me enormously. It was on a Sunday in Kiev, and I went into the church there for the Orthodox mass. I could understand very little of it, but there was some spirit in it that I have never come across before or after. Human beings at the end of their tether were saying to God, "We come to you, we're in trouble, nobody by You can help us."
What were you thinking and, more importantly perhaps, what were you feeling when you saw those scenes of starvation and privation in Ukraine? How does one respond in such a situation?
First of all, one feels a deep, deep, deep sympathy with and pity for the sufferers. Human beings look very tragic when they are starving. And remember that I wasn't unaware of what things were like because in India, for instance, I've been in a village during a cholera epidemic and seen people similarly placed. So it wasn't a complete novelty.
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
That was what I found so terrifying. Think of a man in an office who has been ordered to collectivize agriculture and get rid of the kulaks without any clear notion or definition of what a kulak is, and who has in what was then the GPU and is now the KGB the instrument for doing this, and who then announces it in the slavish press as one of the great triumphs of the regime.
Given the deliberate nature of the famine in Ukraine, given the fact that food continued to be stockpiled and exported even as people dropped dead on the streets, is it accurate to talk about this as a famine? Is it perhaps something else? How does one describe an event of such magnitude?
Perhaps you do need another word. I don't know what it would be. The word 'famine' means people have nothing whatsoever to eat and consume things that are not normally consumed. Of course there were stories of cannibalism there. I don't know whether they were true, but they were very widely believed. Certainly the eating of cattle and the consequent complete destruction of whatever economy the farms still had was true.
I remember someone telling me how all manners and finesse disappeared. When you're in the grip of a thing like this and you know that someone's got food, you go and steal it. You'll even murder to get it. That's all part of the horror.
WB first off found out what kind of learning disability you had? Secondly are not you ever get of recalling of good of “barn door” garbage.?wildboar wrote:yes the Germanica you are right the expulsion of germans from eastern europe would not been possible without active participation of soviet armyGermanica wrote:Oleg, what about the campaign of Stalin against the ethnic German population of Eastern Europe? If I remember correctly, the "volksdeutsche" bore the brunt of Soviet reprisal activities outside of Germany. The death toll (according to my own knowledge) was approximately 1.5 million, although the operation itself extended to some 30 million in total.
Regards,
Germanica
Germenica just refer to my previous posting in this forum-
http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... highlight=
Also refer to article on internet by europe by Erik Edelstam who is son of a Swedish attaché in Berlin, in war period. -Source-Some years ago, I stood in the pouring rain at the Bregenzstrasse in Berlin in an attempt to look for the shadows of my parents in 1941. - My father Harald, then a young, good looking, enthusiastic attaché at the Swedish legation in Berlin, with high ambitions and my mother Louise, innocent and sweet, with dimples in her cheeks and my new-born brother Carl in her arms, lived in one end of the street.
Bregenzstrasse is a little street in the vicinity of Kurfürstendam. Easy to seal off from both sides. There were nearly only Jews living in the quarters. Harald woke up many times during the night by trucks; the rush of spike clad boots, commando shouts and screams of anguish.
He used to run down to the entrance door, dressed only in pyjama and waved in so many he could of the despairing people who looked for cover. They hid in the little apartment, crouching and trembling. Next day he was forced to let them go. There was no lifeline - the Swedish government had even forced a J in the passport of the Jews to differ them from the other German citizens.
Harald, who felt completely powerless regarding to this, proposed to his boss, the envoy Arvid Richert, that one perhaps could give these people a kind of passport of protection, like what his college later gave the Jews of Budapest. - Richert got white in his face and raged: - Do you want to throw us in war with Germany?
And that was it.
The Jews were driven from their homes, deprived from all possibilities of support and were put in a kind of quarantine of deprivation and starvation, till it was time for eradication.
In January 1945 the time came to the Germans themselves. In a way their own Holocaust. In any case, for some of them. A result of Hitler’s merciless politics.
It is called the Expulsion (der Vertreibung) - the ethnic cleansing of 15 million Germans from central and Eastern Europe. Hitler had cleaned out many groups of people, but this expulsion was something quite different.
Today the world has been shocked by what happened in former Yugoslavia, where Muslims, Croats and Serbs were driven away from their homes. Like cattle, with a scant hope of returning home again. The concept of ethnic cleansing has become very familiar, which one hears in all sorts of different contexts. One often hears:” The worst ethnic cleansing since World War II...” - But what happened then?
Very few people today have a slightest idea what happened all these Germans the years after the war and the tremendous suffering they had to endure. Nobody has, anyhow, been interested. The common idea is that the Germans got what they deserved. An idea that, 55 years afterwards, it is, perhaps, time to revise. The subject is very touchy. A former German ambassador warned me that to bring this topic up today in Germany, might classify you as a neo-nazi. Anyhow, the Expulsion represents a big white area on the historical map.
My own introduction to the Expulsion was the book of Marion Dönhoff, the founder of ”Die Zeit”: ”Namen die keiner mehr nennt”, in a dusty antiquarian shop in Berlin. She had big estates in East Prussia and had to flee as the Red Army approached. She left on her riding horse in - 25º cold and snow storm and joined the fleeing population on the full packed roads. After two weeks she halted her horse at two a clock in the night, at the big train bridge, crossing the river Nogat, by Marienburg, near Danzig.
The bridge was deserted, but she heard a strange, clattering sound, as from a three legged being: ”...soon I saw three figures in uniform, slowly dragging themselves over the bridge in silence: One of them was walking with crutches, one with a stick and the third had a big bandage round the head, and the left arm hanging down limb... For me this was the end of East Prussia: three dead sick soldiers, dragging themselves over the Nogat Bridge to West Prussia. And a woman on horse, whose ancestors 700 years before, had pushed, from west to east, right in to the great wilderness on the other side of the river, who now was riding back to the west. - 700 years of history was now wiped out...”
The story of Marion Dönhoff is typical and tells much about the historical background. The laborious and industrious German burghers and farmers colonised Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages, often invited by local lords. From the Baltic States, through Prussia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia (Czech Rep and Slovakia today), down to Hungary and the Balkan, they cultivated the land and founded thousands of cities and villages. The First World War changed all and a big part of the German population in these areas became minorities under national governments. The second word war made things worse with the Nazis as a ruthless occupation force, terrorising all these countries. The ethnic Germans became the scapegoats as the Reich fell apart in ruins. - The situation was a bit different in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, since they were purely German areas since the 13th century.
During the Second World War, several politicians on the allied side demanded that the Germans in these areas should be driven away. The first one to air such thoughts was the Czech, exiled premier, Eduard Benes. The British government agreed.
During conferences, the fate of the Germans was sealed. Stalin wanted to keep the eastern part of Poland, that he got from Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and as compensation Poland would get East Prussia, West Prussia and Silesia. And then the current population must go. Roosevelt and Churchill promised help with transports. Stalin beamed. Churchill said in a speech:”...a clean sweep will be made...”
An other question that came up, was the matter of ”reparations of war damage” in the devastated Soviet Union. Stalin wanted German labour. Request was permitted. The result was that around 875.000 people, mostly elderly people, women and children, was sent to mines and slave camps, and were the greater part perished of starvation and hardship. The responsibility of Roosevelt and Churchill in this program is undeniable.One can divide the Expulsion in three phases:
1. The Soviet phase with flight from the terror of the Red Army.
2. The flight from revenge, primary from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
3. The organized expulsion from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Balkan.
The first phase opened when Stalin launched his winter offensive, ”Uranius”, against East Prussia, the 12th of January 1945, with 2.2 million soldiers. Facing them was 400.000 Germans. The Russian soldiers were highly motivated and had been instructed to kill so many Germans they could and that included the civilians. After reconquering his own devastated fatherland for years, each man was filled with revenge.
The population knew what was in store for them. During the fighting in the autumn, the Red Army had conquered some communes and been driven away again. What they left was horrible. Murdered civilians in all houses, raped women and something that would be repeated during all the conquest - naked women crucified to barn doors. These incidents were ruthlessly used in the Nazi propaganda to strengthen the resistance.
The violence against the civilians was documented where it was possible, for example, when German forces reconquered areas, like in Metgehten, a suburb of Königsberg, in the end of January 1945. The chocked soldiers could not believe their eyes, when the entered the town.
Big piles of dead bodies littered the streets. Most of them were women and children. Few were men. Nearly all women had been beaten to death or stabbed with bayonets. A big number were mutilated, especially by the genitals, and had cut off breasts. In the biggest pile, they counted to 3.000 dead. In one place people were driven down in a big bomb crater and then blown to pieces by explosives. I all buildings civilians lay dead. Several trains that had come with fugitives stood motionless, full of dead. A witness saw the rests of two women, who had been tied to their ankles and torn apart by two cars, which had driven in opposite directions. In a big villa, 60 surviving women were found. They had been raped 60 - 70 times per day. The villa had obviously served as a brothel. Half of the women had to be taken to psychiatric institutions.
A bit outside, in the village Gross Heydekrug, stood an abandoned tank, which had been dragging four naked women in ropes. In the church a young girl was nailed to the cross of the altar, with to German soldiers strung up on each side... - A bizarre biblical metaphor of pain and suffering.
The road to the west was filled with hardships and suffering for the fugitives. - When the Russian tanks advanced north from Poland, they cut off the German territory in several places. The population was thus caught in pockets and could not flee west by land. Instead they moved to the coast and the harbours where they hoped to get on a ship. The German navy then organized an evacuation that far surpasses the one made in Dunkerque in May 1940.
1,5 million fugitives and 700.000 soldiers were evacuated by 790 boats of different sizes from January to the end of the war. The admiral Dönitz, who was the successor of Hitler, delayed the final capitulation, just in order to evacuate as many as possible from the east.
But the evacuation could not be made without sacrifices. The 30th of January the passenger ship ”Wilhelm Gustloff” sailed out from Pillau, the harbour of Königsberg, with 6.000 fugitives on board. Outside in the snowstorm, waited the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of captain A.I. Marinesko. Three, well-aimed torpedoes sank ”Wilhelm Gustloff”. Despite the storm and cold temperature, the escort ships saved 1.100 people. The same submarine sent the hospital ship ”General von Steuben” to the bottom. It was painted white with red crosses, carrying 3.500 wounded soldiers. The worst sinking was ”Goya”, with 7.000 fugitives on board. There only 183 survived.
The problem was that the Red Army chased the fugitives as much as the German soldiers. The endless columns of charts that crossed the ice if Frischer Haff from Königsberg, towards the harbour Pillau, were bombed without mercy. On the roads the Russian tanks simply mashed the fugitives with their chains, mowed them down with their machine-guns or liquidated them at the roadside.
After the Russians came the Polish army, polish militia and civilians who should take over the country. They co-operated closely with the Soviet occupation authorities and participated in the looting and the killings. Polish fugitives from the eastern parts took over the houses of the Germans. The former owners were thrown out in the street. The provision of food stopped completely. Famine and diseases like typhoid and cholera ravaged.
Later the Allies stared to organise train transports to the west. They became veritable trains of horror, that was constantly stopped and plundered by hooligans and armed gangs. The conditions soon became so unbearable that the Allies had to stop the transports.
Of course there were exceptions. Decent Soviet officers were chocked by the violence. Solsjenytsin, who participated in the fighting of East Prussia, wrote in the ”Gulag Archipelago” that rape and the following murder of the woman, almost was considered as a combat distinction. Individual Poles gave Germans food and shelter and helped them cross the border. In many farms the Polish workers hid the German owners.
The inhabitants of Silesia that fled from the Red Army, mostly tried to get to Dresden. The city had not been bombed any time during the war. Thanks to the exquisite art treasures and the unique baroque architecture of the town, it was considered as an open city, like Rome and Paris. No military installations or industries were in the vicinity. A safe place.
The 13th of February the Royal Air Force attacked with a first wave of planes during the night. The city was packed with refuges, around 200.000. The night after the next wave came. A total of 1.400 planes participated. As if it was not enough, 450 American planes made daylight bombings, which completed the destruction.
The city was engulfed in a firestorm, never seen since the destruction of Hamburg in 1943. Very little was left. The figures concerning the number of perished are very unsure, but it is estimated that between 150.000 and 200.000 people died and 400.000 were left homeless. It shall be noted that in Hiroshima, around 50.000 people died.
In the rest of Europe, revenge struck hard on the ethnic Germans. It was like in Poland. In Czechoslovakia the Germans had to wear white sleeve badges with an N (Nemec, which means German in Czech). The Germans had to take off their hat for every Czech or Soviet officer they met.
In Prague, thousands of civil Germans were massacred by the end of war. At Uti 2.000 women and children were tossed from a bridge (Vaclav Havel had a commemoration plate put up at the place in 1990) and the Czech militia detained hundreds of thousand people in concentration camps. The old German camps were handy. No food was distributed and diseases ravaged. People died like flies. The ethnic Germans got the same treatment as Czechs and Jews had before.
With all the free looting, rapes and other atrocities, it must be said that the majority of the Czechs were revolted and ashamed over the treatment of the Germans. Vaclav Havel later publicly apologised for these events.
In Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania the ethnic cleansing followed the same pattern. The German inhabitants had to leave their farms, houses and business with what they could carry in a suitcase. No valuables were permitted. It was just to hand over the keys. - Here the Germans were particularly struck by the deportations to the Soviet Union.
Most of the Germans were put in labour camps. Those who could not work, like women, children and old people, were put in special starvation camps, were most perished. A witness tells about the starvation camp in Jarek. In June 1945 there was 25.000 prisoners. In May next year there was only 2.800 left. Other starvation camps were Rudolfsgnad, Gakovo, Mitrovica or Molidorf.
Those who were driven away from their ancestral lands came to a Germany that thanks to the bombings not could provide shelter for its own population. Nothing worked and food was scarce. The fugitives got no fugitive status of the Allies, which did that they could not get help from the Red Cross or other help organisations. They were in fact busy repatriating the displaced slave workers that the Nazis had brought in to Germany during the war. The question of the expulsed Germans was regarded as an ”internal German affair”.
In this situation Germany received more than 13 million fugitives!
Around two million of the expulsed Germans are estimated to have lost their lives, due to starvation, liquidations and other hardships.
The ethnic Germans had a terrible fate. They were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were surely Nazis, but the majority were simple farmers and artisans who did not care much about politics and just wanted to live in peace. The tragedy is that the governments that drove out the Germans treated them in the same way as the Nazis had treated their own people.
Now some facts start to emerge, concerning the Expulsion. Witnesses and victims dare to testify. Governments apologise. For the victims, it is perhaps not enough. One witness said:
”...It is difficult to loose all you have, but unbearable when you loose your identity and your history...”
http://www.wordsandart.com/forums/viewt ... ?TopicID=4
The million dollar question is will russia shed from its stalinist mentality and apologise for war crimes commited against germans by stalin and beria.
it is good to see that Vaclav Havel has apologised and poland has taken steps to bring to justice persons who commited crimes against german civilians , but will russia shed its stalinist mentality
Germenica your contention of soviet responsibility of expulsion of germans from eastern europe is completely correct
sining the documenst that allowed for that kind of put it there.Germanica wrote:No, the Western Allies did not hold sympathy for any German or pro-German, but I had not known of their role in the deaths of approximately 1.5 million ethnic Germans.Oleg wrote:if there were other troops than Soviets in EE it would not have chnage anything - WA did not have much simpathy for Germans either, nor did the have it for anybody who collaborated with Nazis - turning over Vlasovsti etc - is quite an indicator.
Regards,
Germanica
here you goGalicia wrote:What B.S.
How dare you have the balls to say that the Ukrainian Famine was not Man made. People drowned their own children in a death of mercy so they wouldn't starve. Then, most ate them. People were boiled people alive in pots.
Stalin killed people intentionally from 1930-1932 in the Ukraine. Your family wasn't there, Oleg. Mine was.
Gorbachev himself admitted it! What more proof could you want?...the streets and houses were overgrown with weeds. In the streets there were no signs of any living being, human or animal, not even a cat or a dog. In some of the houses doors and windows were open, while in others they have been removed to fire,
and there were only black spaces showing. Decomposing dead bodies were lying about in the weeds around the houses and evidently in the houses themselves, and an incredibly putrid odour, intensified by warm weather, permeated the
village...
http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/famine19.htm
This meant that they would take a long strand of piano wire and kill every woman and child regardless of age.We had 40 kulak families and we sent them all away. It was not enough to send the men only, because we must pluck up all the kulak elements by the roots
http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_ ... e_farm.htmIn the Ukraine, in one collective the ration was 20 lb. The peasants complain: “Come and see the grain, rotten grain: that is what they keep for us. All the best grain is sent to the nearest town for export, and we do not get enough to eat. Poor Mother Russia is in a sorry plight. What we want is land and our own cows.”
The article said they went to Siberia. I don't believe that. The Ukrainians were scum in the eyes of the mighty [Russian] Red Army.
Oh, Mighty Oleg, show me how I, the stupid Ukrainian, have gone wrong?Stalin's Famine In Ukraine: Malcolm Muggeridge
Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge by Marco Carynnyk
Special Edition Issued by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee
Edmonton Branch, October 14,1983
"The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind, without any consideration whatever of the consequences of human suffering," Malcolm Muggeridge said.
He was talking about the genocidal famine that swept Ukraine in the winter on 1932 and the spring and summer of 1933.
Muggeridge was there that terrible winter and spring. As a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Moscow, he was one of the few Western journalists who circumvented Soviet restrictions and visited the famine regions and then honestly reported what he had seen.
Marco Carynnyk talked to Muggeridge at his cottage in Sussex, England.
Why did you decide to write about the famine in Ukraine?
It was the big story in all our talks in Moscow. Everybody knew about it. There was no question about that. Anyone you were talking to knew that there was a terrible famine going on. Even in the Soviets' own pieces there were somewhat disguised acknowledgements of great difficulties there. I realized that that was the big story. I could also see that all the correspondents in Moscow were distorting it.
Without making any kind of plans or asking for permission I just went and got a ticket for Kiev and then went on to Rostov. The Soviet security is not as good as people think it is. If you once duck it, you can go quite a long way. At least you could in those days.
Going through the countryside by train one could sense the state of affairs. Ukraine was starving, and you only had to venture out to smaller places to see derelict fields and abandoned villages.
On one occasion, I was changing trains, and I went wandering around, and in one of the trains in the station, the kulaks were being loaded onto the train, and there were military men all along the platform.
I'll tell you another thing that's more difficult to convey, but it impressed me enormously. It was on a Sunday in Kiev, and I went into the church there for the Orthodox mass. I could understand very little of it, but there was some spirit in it that I have never come across before or after. Human beings at the end of their tether were saying to God, "We come to you, we're in trouble, nobody by You can help us."
What were you thinking and, more importantly perhaps, what were you feeling when you saw those scenes of starvation and privation in Ukraine? How does one respond in such a situation?
First of all, one feels a deep, deep, deep sympathy with and pity for the sufferers. Human beings look very tragic when they are starving. And remember that I wasn't unaware of what things were like because in India, for instance, I've been in a village during a cholera epidemic and seen people similarly placed. So it wasn't a complete novelty.
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.
That was what I found so terrifying. Think of a man in an office who has been ordered to collectivize agriculture and get rid of the kulaks without any clear notion or definition of what a kulak is, and who has in what was then the GPU and is now the KGB the instrument for doing this, and who then announces it in the slavish press as one of the great triumphs of the regime.
Given the deliberate nature of the famine in Ukraine, given the fact that food continued to be stockpiled and exported even as people dropped dead on the streets, is it accurate to talk about this as a famine? Is it perhaps something else? How does one describe an event of such magnitude?
Perhaps you do need another word. I don't know what it would be. The word 'famine' means people have nothing whatsoever to eat and consume things that are not normally consumed. Of course there were stories of cannibalism there. I don't know whether they were true, but they were very widely believed. Certainly the eating of cattle and the consequent complete destruction of whatever economy the farms still had was true.
I remember someone telling me how all manners and finesse disappeared. When you're in the grip of a thing like this and you know that someone's got food, you go and steal it. You'll even murder to get it. That's all part of the horror.
[/quote]R.W.Davies, M.B.Tauger and S.G.Wheatcroft
[note by MJ: the culpability or otherwise of Stalin and his close
associates for the famine which afflicted Ukraine, the Soviet
breadbasket, in the early 1930s, has generally been seen as a key
question when it comes to judging Stalin[ism]. Did Stalin force thru
collectivisation and deliberately condemn millions of his fellow
citizens to death as part of the process of terrorising the population
and entrenching his dictatorship, as Robert Conquest and others allege?
Or was the famine the inevitable price to be paid for rapid
industrialisation in conditions of imperialist encirclement and the
threat of war, as others (including me) have argued? Was
collectivisation and the 5-Year Plans a disastrous error or an
absolutely necessary preparation for inevitable war with imperialism?
Here R.W.Davies, a respected, non-marxist academic based at Birmingham
University's Centre for Russian and East European Studies, interprets
new evidence from recently opened Soviet archives. I can provide the
footnotes separately to anyone interested; I'm afraid I do not have the
url.
Mark Jones]
Most western and all Soviet studies of the stalinist economy have
ignored the role played by the stockpiling of grain in the agricultural
crisis of the early 1930s. Thus in his major work on stalinist
agriculture published in 1949, Naum Jasny frankly admitted that data
were insufficient to reach a conclusion, merely noting that "stocks from
former years probably declined during 1932"2. Baykov, Dobb, Volin and
Nove said nothing about grain stocks.3 At the time, western commentators
did pay some attention to the possibility that the stockpiling of grain
exacerbated the famine. In autumn 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria, and in
spring 1932 British diplomats reported that Karl Radek had told them
that, owing to the threat of war in the far east, enough grain had been
stored to supply the army for one year.4 In February 1933 the notorious
but shrewd journalist Walter Duranty wrote in The New York Times of "the
unexpected additional demand for grain necessitated by the Far Eastern
war danger last winter".5 Since the food and fodder grain consumed by
the Red Army in one year amounted to about 800,000 tons,6 this would
have been enough to provide a rather modest annual bread ration for
several million people. A stockpile of this size was, of course, less
important than the 4.79 million tons exported from the 1931 harvest or
even than the 1.61 million tons exported from the 1932 harvest (see
table 4). But was such a military stock accumulated in those years?
Enlightenment had to await the opening of the Russian archives. The
impact of the first revelations about grain stocks has been dramatic. On
the basis of a preliminary, unpublished typescript by the eminent
Russian historian V.P.Danilov, Robert Conquest has announced that the
archives have revealed that in the famine year of 1932-1933 Stalin was
holding immense grain stocks, the existence of which was previously
completely unknown. He wrote in this journal:
there were 4.53 million tons of grain in
various reserves - the 'Neprikosvennyi Fond' and the
special 'Gosudarstvennyi Fond', neither (he [Danilov]
points out) justified by any danger to the country, and
readily available to prevent the real danger - mass death
by famine.7
Addressing a wider public in The Times Literary Supplement Conquest
further explained:
even apart from the fact that the 1.8 million tons
of grain exported would have been enough to have
prevented the famine, there were in addition two secret
grain reserves between them holding 4.53 million tons
more, which were not released to the starving peasantry.8
Grain stocks of 4.53 million tons would certainly have been enough to
feed millions of peasants in 1932-1933. One ton of grain provided a good
bread ration for three persons for a year, so 4.53 tons would have
provided bread for some 13-14 million persons for a year. In view of the
importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched
Russian archives for evidence of Soviet planned and actual grain stocks
in the early 1930s. Our main sources were the Politburo protocols,
including the osobye papki ("special files" - the highest secrecy
level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag,
of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom
records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head
of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the
deputy chairs of Sovnarkom at that time. We have not obtained access to
the Politburo working papers in the Presidential Archive, to the files
of the committee on reserves, or to the relevant files in military
archives. But we have found enough information to be confident that this
very high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that Stalin did not have
under his control huge amounts of grain which could easily have been
used to eliminate the famine. The definition of "grain stocks" is a
complicated business. The literature divides them into two main
categories: "invisible stocks" (nevidimye zapasy) and "visible stocks"
(vidimye zapasy). The former are those held by peasants (and in the
1930s by collective and state farms) for food, seed, fodder and
emergencies. Peasant carry-over is very difficult to assess; the
official estimate for 1 July 1926 was 7.21 million tons, while a careful
independent estimate amounted to only 4.19 million tons.9 These
calculations were of some politico-economic importance: the central
political authorities believed and sought to demonstrate that peasants
and collective farms were concealing substantial stocks; peasants and
collective farms sought to minimize knowledge of their stocks. During
the grim winter of 1932-1933, the authorities seized the seed stocks of
collective farms on the pretext or belief that concealed grain stocks
were available to them. In the archives widely-varying estimates of
invisible stocks for the early 1930s may be found; not surprisingly,
they show a general decline in the course of 1931-1933, and an increase
in following years.10 The "visible stocks" rather than the invisible
stocks will be our main concern in this article. These were those which
had passed from producers to traders, to state and other collection
agencies and to subsequent grain-consuming organizations, plus the
stocks in transit. Soviet statistical agencies estimated the total of
all visible stocks on l July 1929 at 1.76 million tons)11, of which
there were:
held by state and cooperative collection agencies .912
held by consuming organisations (including industry).331
miscellaneous .141
in transport system .376
The figure in Table 1 for 1 July 1929, 781,000 tons, is a revised
official estimate by Komzag of the figure given above for state and
cooperative collection agencies, 912,000 tons. It thus excludes grain
held by consuming organisations and in the transport system. This was
that part of the visible stocks which the state had more or less readily
at its disposal for distribution to the population, for export and for
other uses. These stocks were generally known in the statistics as
"availability with the planning organisations" (nalichie u planovykh
organizatsii); we shall refer to them here as "planners' stocks".
Planners' stocks were further divided into "commercially available"
(kommercheskoe nalichie) and "various funds" (raznye fondy) (see table
2). The "funds" were those parts of the planners' stocks which were set
aside for special purposes, sometimes in special stores, sometimes
merely notionally. As we shall show, the funds included both the
"untouchable fund" ("Neprikosnovennyi fond" or "Nepfond") and the
"mobilization fund", also known as the "state fund" ("Mobfond",
"gosudarstvennyi fond" or "gosfond"). "Commercially available" was
something of a misnomer: it referred to stocks held by grain- collection
and related agencies which could be passed on to consumers in accordance
with an approved plan of utilization. Grain stocks naturally varied
considerably during the course of the agricultural year, reaching a peak
immediately after a harvest, and falling to their lowest levels just
before the next harvest. Harvesting and the grain collections began in
the south in early July, but in many other areas not until August.
Normally the 1 July figure was given as the minimum level of stocks; but
this was not quite accurate. During July, grain available from the new
harvest in the month as a whole is less than grain consumed, and stocks
continue to fall until the last days of the month. 1 August would be a
better date for assessing minimum stocks, but data for that date are not
always available. Thus, quite apart from the need for a permanent grain
reserve, a major problem for the central authorities was the need for
"transitional stocks" (usually known as "perekhodiashchie ostatki" to
enable continuous supply at the end of one agricultural year and the
beginning of the next. Ever larger transitional stocks were needed from
1928 onwards, with the attenuation of the grain market and the
dependence of larger numbers of people on state supplies (including many
peasants in grain-deficit areas). From 1930 onwards state allocations of
grain for internal purposes only (food rations, army, industry, etc. but
excluding exports) amounted to some 1.35-1.5 million tons a month.
Moreover, areas requiring supplies were often thousands of kilometres
from the main grain-producing areas; and, once available, the grain had
to be processed and delivered. In the course of establishing a state
grain monopoly in the mid-1920s, the Soviet authorities did not succeed
in building up a state grain reserve. In December 1927 the directives
for the five-year plan approved by the XV Party Congress stressed the
importance of the accumulation of stocks in kind and foreign currency
reserves during the course of the plan. The accumulation of stocks of
all kinds would achieve "the necessary insurance against large
vacillations in the conjuncture of the international market, and against
a potential partial or general economic and financial blockade, against
a bad harvest within the country, and against a direct armed attack."12
But a Soviet grain handbook published in 1932 noted that "all attempts
to create a large grain reserve did not have positive results", even
though "the difficulties experienced in 1927/28 and 1928/29 revealed the
categorical necessity of creating such a reserve".13 According to Soviet
data, on 1 July 1929 the total amount held in the state grain fund
(gosfond) including the remnants of the centralised milling levy from
the previous harvest, amounted to only 69,000 tons.14
The 1929 harvest and the 1929/30 agricultural year.
On 27 June 1929 the Politburo adopted a much-increased plan for grain
collection from the 1929 harvest, resolving:
In accordance with the resolution of the XV Congress on the formation
of a grain fund, it is considered necessary to create an untouchable
stock amounting to 100 million poods [1.638 million tons] of food grains... It is
considered that the untouchable stock may not be expended
by anyone in any circumstances without special permission
from the Politburo and Sovnarkom of the USSR.15
Two months later, on 29 August 1929, Stalin wrote to Molotov, praising
the success of the first stage of grain collection from the 1929 harvest
and emphasizing the importance of reserve stocks, that "we must and can
accumulate 100 mln poods [1,638 million tons] of untouchable stocks
[neprikosnovennye zapasy], if we are really Bolsheviks and not empty
chatterers."16 By the beginning of December, 13.5 million tons of grain
had been collected, well over twice as much as on that date in any
previous year; and the first drive for the collectivization of
agriculture was rapidly accelerating. Stalin, jubilant and jovial, again
wrote to Molotov: "Greetings to Molotshtein!... The grain collections
progress. Today we decided to increase the untouchable fund of food
grains to 120 million poods [1.966 million tons]. We will raise the
rations in industrial towns such as Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kharkov, etc."17
The grain handbook of 1932 noted that the establishment of a grain
reserve "was posed as a central and top-priority task for the grain
campaign of 1929/30".18 The main statistical journal, reporting record
grain stocks accumulated by January 1, 1930, noted that "a fundamental
difference between the stocks of the current year and the stocks of the
previous year is the formation of a special fund, not used for current
needs, while in past years grain was used entirely for meeting current
requirements." The journal described this "untouchable fund" as "having
an insurance function in case of a bad harvest or any other
extraordinary needs."19 Although grain collections from the 1929 harvest
were extremely large, they had both to supply grain to many consumers
who had previously obtained it on the peasant market and to provide for
increased export. Planners' stocks increased by 1.3 million tons between
1 July 1929 and 1 July 1930, reaching 2.084 million tons. The Politburo
deemed it possible to allocate only 786,000 tons of this to the Nepfond
on 1 July 1930; but explained that this amount was to be "absolutely
untouchable."20
The 1930 Harvest and the 1930/31 Agricultural Year.
The harvest of 1930 was exceptionally good: collections were 38 percent
higher than in the previous year, and more than twice as much as in
1928/29 (see table 4). Planners' stocks on the peak date of 1 January
1931 were even higher than on 1 January 1930 (see table 1); on that
basis the Politburo concluded on 7 January that the Nepfond could amount
to 150 million poods (2.457 million tons) and that, in addition, the
"mobilisation fund" (Mobfond) could amount to 50 million poods (.819
million tons) - 3.276 million tons in all.21 The Mobfond was later
described by Kuibyshev as intended to provide adequate grain (and other
commodities), amounting to 1_-2 months' supply, to cover delays in
supplies during mobilization, and also to make some provision for the
largest industrial and political centers.22 But, although planners'
stocks had increased to 2.332 million tons on 1 July 1931 and remained
as high as 2.026 million tons on 1 August 1931 (see table 1), they were
far below the level of reserve stocks proposed by the Politburo on 7
January 1931.
The 1931 Harvest and the 1931/32 Agricultural Year.
Unlike the 1930 harvest, the 1931 harvest was poor (and much worse than the Soviet political authorities believed). Nevertheless grain
collections in the agricultural year 1931/32 slightly exceeded the 1930/31 level (see table 4), and the authorities continued their efforts
to accumulate substantial reserve stocks. Their aims were now somewhat less ambitious: in October 1931 the Politburo decided that the Nepfond
and Mobfond together should total 150 million poods (2.457 million tons), as compared with the 200 million poods specified in the Politburo
decision of 7 January 1931. But it also decided to consolidate central control over the reserves: both the "grain Nepfond and the grain-fodder
Mobfond" were to be transferred from Narkomsnab (the People's Commissariat for Supplies) to the committee on reserves 23 - a powerful
organization, whose chair was Kuibyshev and whose vice-chair, Iagoda, was head of the OGPU.24 The Politburo intended that "warehouses and
personnel" should also be transferred to the committee on reserves; but at this time they apparently remained in the grain collection and
processing network. Use of grain deemed to be part of the Nepfond or Mobfond required permission of the committee on reserves or even the
Politburo. Sovnarkom further decreed that all 2.457 million tons were to be transferred to the committee on reserves by 1 December 1931, togetherwith large stocks of other foodstuffs, consumer goods and metals.25 By 1 January 1932, the grain set aside in "various funds", nearly all ofwhich was Nepfond and Mobfond, amounted to 2.033 million tons (see table 1): the plan for the reserve funds had been largely achieved. But this apparent triumph was short-lived. The demand for grain relentlessly increased. Grain exports in the agricultural year 1931/32 were one
million tons less than in 1930/31; simultaneously, however, state grain allocations within the USSR increased (see table 4). The increase in
internal utilization in 1931/32 was part of a process which had been proceeding relentlessly since 1929, resulting from: a substantial increase in the number of industrial and building workers and their dependents; a growing necessity to supply grain for seed and food to collective farmers and others in areas where harvests had been low and grain collections too high; an increase in the use of grain to feed sections of the population, including cotton-growers and timber-cutters, who had previously obtained their grain from the market, and to feed exiled kulaks and others; an increased consumption of grain by industry. The total amount of grain allocated by the state for internal useincreased from 9.015 million tons in 1928/29 to 16.309 million tons in 1931/32; in 1931/32 alone the increase amounted to 2.477 million tons. 26 The pressure on stocks was relentless. Despite demand, the Politburo endeavored to reduce the rate of issue of grain. In March 1932 it agreed to drastic cuts in the bread ration for consumers on the lower-priority ration Lists 2 and 3 27. Many requests for additional rations, even from high-priority industries, were refused. These reductions, and the irregular delivery of bread and other food supplies, led to famine in the towns in spring 1932. Among the urban population of the lower Volga region the death rate more than doubled between January and July 1932; among the urban population of the Kiev region it increased by 70 percent; and even in Moscow the death rate rose by one-third.28 But the severe measures of March 1932 failed to reduce food allocations to which the state was committed to the level of the available grain. On 23 May 1932, an alarmed Kuibyshev prepared a emorandum concerning the grain situation for the Politburo, in which he outlined the additional measures needed if an uninterrupted grain supply to the main industrial centers was to be maintained until the new harvest; his proposals even included the reduction of the bread ration for workers on the Special List and List 1. The draft memorandum preserved in the Kuibyshev papers includes his handwritten note in blue crayon:
With a full sense of responsibility I want to
emphasize that last year we had 88.8 million poods [1.45
million tons] [of food grains] on 1 July, and that in the
current year there will be only 57.7 million poods [0.945
million tons].
What does this mean?
It means that we can cope with the supply of
bread only by an exceptional level of extremely
thorough organization.
Another handwritten sentence, crossed out, reads, "I ask you to give tothe committee on reserves dictatorial powers until the new harvest."29The Politburo did not accept Kuibyshev's proposal to reduce rations for the Special List and List 1; but on 25 May it decided that it was necessary before 1 July to collect the outstanding 14 million poods [229,000 tons] of grain from the remains of the 1931 harvest, to add more barley to the food grains and to transfer various grain stocks from one part of the country to another. It also reduced the allocation to the military by about 16 percent, and called for the acceleration of the import of grain from Persia and its immediate transfer to the far east. In spite of all these measures, it was estimated that planners' stocks of food grains (excluding fodder) would decline from 2.01 million tons on 10 May to .886 million tons on 1 July. For the difficult months of July and August 1932 when the new harvest was beginning to come in, the Politburo also resolved that all grain collected from the new harvest would be used solely to supply industrial centers and the army.30 In the outcome, planners' stocks on 1 July 1932 were as low as the Politburo had anticipated in May: food grains amounted to 915 thousand tons and all grains to 1.36 million tons - 1 million tons less than on 1 July 1931, and even less than on 1 July 1930. The Nepfond and Mobfond, intended to total 2.457 million tons, and reaching about 2 million tons on 1 January 1932, amounted to only .641 million tons on 1 July (see table 3). The demand for grain had impelled the Politburo to use up most of its "untouchable" fund. On 1 July total stocks of food grain amounted to about one month's supply: in Ukraine, the lower Volga and north Caucasus less than a month's supply was available.31 Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the authorities had utterly failed to build up grain stocks in east Siberia and the far east: total stocks of food and fodder grains in these two regions amounted to at most 190,000 tons on 1 July;32 the 1 million tons of military stocks that Radek reported to the British was apparently sheer bluff.
The 1932 Harvest and the 1932/33 Agricultural Year.
In May 1932, in preparing its plans for the forthcoming harvest, the
Politburo somewhat reduced the grain collection plan below the previous
year's level, and sought to fill the gap by permitting trade in grain at
market prices once collection quotas had been met. But the sharp
decrease in grain stocks below the 1931 level had greatly alarmed the
authorities. In spite of the reduced collection planned in May, on 16
July 1932 the Politburo again sought to set aside substantial stocks in
the Nepfond and Mobfond from the new harvest. It resolved that in
1932/33 the Gosfond (state fund, another name for Mobfond) would amount
to 55 million poods (.901 million tons) and the Nepfond to 120 million
poods (1.966 million tons), 2.867 million tons in total.33 On 9 December
1932, the Politburo approved a reduced plan for grain utilization in
1932/33 by which Gosfond and Nepfond would together total 1.966 million
tons on 1 July 1933; together with transitional stocks, all planners'
stocks would amount to 3.699 million tons on 1 July, as compared with
1.36 million tons on the same date of the previous year. Thus the
authorities certainly planned to hold very substantial stocks at the end
of the 1932/33 agricultural year (if not the 4.53 million tons claimed
by Robert Conquest). And on 1 January 1933, with total stocks at their
seasonal peak, as much as 3.034 million tons were attributed to "various
funds" (the main components of which were the Gosfond and the Nepfond)
(see table 1). The grain utilization plan for 1932/33 was built on
illusion. While grain exports were again reduced, this time by 3 million
tons below the previous year's level, grain collections declined by over
4 million tons (see table 4). The net decline in grain available for
internal use amounted to more than 1 million tons (see table 4),
collections minus export in 1932/33 versus 1931/32), and this placed an
immense strain on resources, quite incompatible with the decision to
allocate 2.339 million additional tons to planners' stocks on 1 July
1933 as compared with 1 July 1932. Moreover, the grain balance of 9
December 1932 had assumed that no grain should be allocated to the
countryside for seed and food, apart from earmarked allocations to
cotton growing and other specialized areas. In the course of the first
six months of 1933, the Politburo reluctantly, little by little,
released between 1.99 million and 2.2 million tons in seed, food and
fodder, primarily as allocations or "loans" to areas which had been
stripped of grain by the state collectors earlier in the year.34 While
neither large enough nor timely enough to prevent the devastating
famine, these allocations did use up most of the Nepfond and Gosfond
which had been set aside at the beginning of the year. In spring 1933,
as in the previous year, leading grain officials addressed a series of
urgent memoranda to the Politburo warning of shortages. In March a
memorandum from Chernov to Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov and Kuibyshev
pointed out that receipts of food grain might be .5-.6 million tons less
than in the grain utilization plan of 9 December 1932, while expenditure
might be .5 million tons more; the shortfall in oats and barley might
amount to a further half million tons.35 A memorandum from Kleiner to
Kuibyshev, prepared in February or March, concluded that on 1 July 1933
the Nepfond would be .256 million tons less than planned on December
9.36 Two or three months later, on 17 May, a telegram from Kleiner to
Stalin and Kuibyshev makes it clear that the situation had drastically
deteriorated: "surpluses in the Nepfond are almost exhausted." To
provide seed, food and fodder the Politburo had agreed to release 69
million poods (1.13 million tons) from the committee on reserves, so
that only 100 million poods (1.638 million tons) remained in all its
reserves; Kleiner asked for conditional permission to use a further 15
million poods (.246 million tons) from funds of the committee on
reserves.37 Within a few weeks the situation had apparently deteriorated
still further. On 4 June 1933, Chernov sent a memorandum to Stalin,
Kaganovich, Molotov and Kuibyshev, setting out the results of the 1 May
inventory of the remaining grain (ostatki) in the USSR. Chernov
estimated that, as a result of commitments made in May and June, all
planners' stocks would total 84.7 million poods (1.392 million tons) on
1 July 1933, including food grains amounting to 63.8 million poods
(1.045 million tons), a slightly larger amount than on 1 July 1932. In
several places the memorandum referred to this estimate as the
"transitional remainder including funds" (perekhodiashchii ostatok
vkliuchaia fondy).38 In practice, the level of grain stocks was
apparently somewhat greater than Chernov and the other officials
anticipated. When Chernov submitted the grain plans for the following
year, 1933/34, to Stalin, Kaganovich and Molotov, on 4 July 1933, he
stated, as he had a month previously, that the total transitional stock,
including fondy, on 1 July 1933 was 1.392 million tons (including 1.045
million tons of food grains).39 But the grain utilization plan for
1933/34 approved a month later by the Politburo recorded the
"availability" of all grains on 1 July, including fondy, as 1.825
million tons (including 1.386 million tons of food grains).40 The final
official figure published in the grain yearbook was 1.997 million tons
(including 1.397 million tons of food grains) (see table 1).(see table
2) We have not yet found any satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy
between these three sets of figures. The planners' stocks available on 1
July 1933 certainly included enough grain to save the lives of many
peasants. But they amounted not to 4.53 million tons but to less than 2
million tons, smaller than the stocks available on the same date three
years previously. The alternative figures for 1 July 1933, including the
published figure (1.997 million tons) certainly include both the Gosfond
and the Nepfond. Robert Conquest's confusion about the level of stocks
may be due to a somewhat ambiguous passage in Chernov's memorandum dated
4 July 1933, submitting the draft grain plans for 1933/34 to the
Politburo. He proposed that in 1933/34 the Nepfond should be "120
million poods [1.966 million tons], the same level as last year," while
Gosfond should be "significantly increased to 72 million poods [1.179
million tons] instead of the 55 million poods [.901 million tons] of
last year".41 According to this draft, then, both fondy together would
amount to 3.145 million tons. But Chernov's tables and the figures
approved by the Politburo make it clear that "the same level as last
year" did not mean the actual reserve stock in July 1933 but instead the
stock planned in July 1932.42 In 1933/34 Nepfond and Gosfond had to be
built up from existing planners' stocks. Thus the plan approved by the
Politburo on 7 August 1933 fixed total grain stocks on 1 July 1934 at
3.941 million tons, including a total Gosfond and Nepfond of 2.776
million tons; the Politburo compared this with the total stocks on 1
July 1933 of only 1.825 million tons.43 The failure to establish reserve
stocks at planned levels also meant that the efforts to build up grain
stocks in the far east had again been unsuccessful. According to the
published data, total planners' stocks in east Siberia and the far east
amounted to only .147 million tons on 1 July 1932, increasing to .269
million tons on 1 July 1933;44 some additional stocks, not included in
these figures, were held by the army itself. But the serious effort to
build up grain stocks in the far east began not after the 1931 harvest,
as Radek and Duranty claimed at the time, or even after the 1932
harvest, but only during and after the 1933 harvest. It was not until
July 1933 that Chernov received an urgent commission from Stalin to
create a "special defence fund" of 70 million poods (1.147 million tons)
in east Siberia and the far east. This grain stock would require
extensive new grain stores, since those of the Mobfond in the far east
and east Siberia had a capacity of only .143 million tons.45 How
reliable were these data on grain stocks? After the civil war, during
which local authorities underestimated the level of stocks, the Soviet
authorities were anxious to obtain accurate and timely figures. In the
early 1920s a comprehensive system was established, by which monthly
estimates of grain stocks by local statistical departments were
supplemented by quarterly on-site inventories. Statistical departments
telegraphed regular "short summaries" to the center two weeks after each
survey, followed by more detailed (and more accurate) reports sent
through the mail.46 The same system was used in 1930-1934.47 In 1928, A.
Mikhailovskii, at that time the principal authority on grain statistics,
claimed that the figures for the USSR which were assembled centrally
from these data were "quite reliable".48 The data on grain stocks for
1932-1933, were also, in our opinion, "quite reliable". This is not to
say that they should be accepted uncritically. The discrepancy between
the lowest and highest figures for all planners' stocks on 1 July 1933 -
1.397 million and 1.997 million tons - dramatically illustrates this
point. If the later and higher figure is correct, the additional .6
million tons of grain could have saved many lives. But this figure does
not appear in any of the records we have used until some weeks after the
end of the agricultural year, and it was evidently not known to the
Politburo before July 1933. There were no private inventories of grain
stocks kept for Stalin and his immediate entourage, separate from those
regularly assembled by the normal state agencies; the figures in the
top-secret files of Sovnarkom, of Kuibyshev's secretariat and in the
special files(osobye papki) of the Politburo all coincide. These figures
also agree - somewhat to our surprise - with the figures for grain
stocks published in the unclassified small-circulation Ezhegodnik
khlebooborota.49 But the relationship between public and secret
statistics in the USSR was complicated. While they were identical for
grain stocks, the exaggeration in the published figures for the grain
harvests is well known. And our research shows that those responsible
for planning and recording grain allocations did not contradict - even
in private - the distorted official harvest figures; they therefore
included in the grain balances a large residual item - entitled
neuviazka! - so that consumption could be brought in line with the
alleged harvests.50 And in the extreme case of the defense budget for
1931-1934, the large increases in these years were concealed by the
deliberate decision of the Politburo to publish falsified figures. The
true figures appeared only in documents classified as top-secret, and
were more than treble the size of the published figures.51 The
complicated relations between archival and published data can only be
established by investigating each case on its merits.
We therefore conclude:
1. All planners' stocks - the two secret grain reserves, the Nepfond and
the Mobfond or Gosfond, together with "transitional stocks" held by
grain organizations - amounted on 1 July 1933 to less than 2 million
tons (1.997 million tons, according to the highest official figure).
Persistent efforts of Stalin and the Politburo to establish firm and
inviolable grain reserves (in addition to "transitional stocks"),
amounting to 2 or 3 million tons or more were almost completely
unsuccessful. In both January-June 1932 and January-June 1933 the
Politburo had to allow "untouchable" grain stocks set aside at the
beginning of each year to be used to meet food and fodder crises. On 1
July 1933, the total amount of grain set aside in reserve grain stocks
(fondy) amounted not to 4.53 million tons as Conquest claimed, but to
only 1.141 million. It is not surprising that after several years during
which the Politburo had failed to establish inviolable grain stocks,
Kuibyshev in early 1933 recommended a "flexible approach" to the Nepfond
and the Mobfond, denied that they were separate reserves and even
claimed that the flexible use of the two fondy had enabled uninterrupted
grain supply in spring and summer 1932.52
2. We do not know the amount of grain which was held by grain- consuming
organizations, notably the Red Army, but we suspect that these
"consumers' stocks" would not change the picture substantially.
3. These findings do not, of course, free Stalin from responsibility for
the famine. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to assess the extent to
which it would have been possible for Stalin to use part of the grain
stocks available in spring 1933 to feed starving peasants. The state was
a monopoly supplier of grain to urban areas and the army; if the
reserves of this monopoly supply system - which amounted to four-six
weeks' supply - were to have been drained, mass starvation, epidemics
and unrest in the towns could have resulted. Nevertheless, it seems
certain that, if Stalin had risked lower levels of these reserves in
spring and summer 1933, hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of
lives could have been saved. In the slightly longer term, if he had been
open about the famine, some international help would certainly have
alleviated the disaster. And if he had been more far-sighted, the
agricultural crisis of 1932-1933 could have been mitigated and perhaps
even avoided altogether. But Stalin was not hoarding immense grain
reserves in these years. On the contrary, he had failed to reach the
levels which he had been imperatively demanding since 1929.
yes it wasd customary for Red Army to use English names for its operations...Galicia wrote:What about repatriation Oleg? Operation Kickback, you familiar with that? It's when the Red Army would torture every single living sole that came back from a train, usually from a DP camp, because they were running from the Red Army and the Nazis. How about the streams of blood comming out from the cattlecars that they were shipped in? We call that mass suicide in the normal world. The camps in Finland the lucky few were able to "attend?" He killed Millions. Fess up to it. Mostly non-communists. Then if you really want to nit pick, we can go on and on about the Korean War where he supplied troops with old Nagants and Kalishnikovs.
Events in Kazakhstan in 1930 seem to have given Stalin the answer to the dilemma of how to obtain more produce and simultaneously deal with troublesome peasants. The Kazakhs, primarily herdsmen, had responded to collectivization with the wholesale slaughter of their livestock. So many starved subsequently that the 1939 Soviet census shows 21.9 percent fewer Kazakhs in the Soviet Union than there had been in 1926._71_ But resistance among the Kazakhs had ceased. The lesson that famine could be used as a weapon was applied to the Ukrainians in 1933.
Graphic portraits of the horrors of village life emerge from the files of the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, which was conducted during the early 1950s. It should be stressed that the interviewers were not particularly interested in the famine and that the responses were, therefore, made without any prompting in the course of respondents' stories of their life experiences. One rather typical account (case No. 128) is the following:Still, the quotas were not met, in spite of the fact that they were lowered three times._76_ The most draconian measures imaginable were taken against the farmers. On the union level, the law on inviolability of socialist property, adopted on August 7, 1932, declared all collective farm property "sacred and inviolate." Anyone who so much as gleaned an ear of grain or bit the root off a sugar beet was to be considered an "enemy of the people," subject to execution or... a concentration camp for collective farmers who attempted to force others to leave the kolkhoz, (working camp)
Nor were such horrors confined to the countryside, as you claim Oleg."...there was the famine in Ukraine in 1933. We saw people die in the streets; it was terrible to see a dead man, when I close my eyes I can still see him. We had in our village a small church which was closed for services and in which we played. And I remember a man who came in there; he lay down with his eyes wide open at the ceiling and he died there! He was an innocent victim of the Soviet regime; he was a simple worker and not even a kulak. This hunger was the result of Soviet policy."
Out of Churchill's memoirs, selected by Dr. James Mace, who is the head of the Deposition on the Ukrainian Famine, appointed by the US Senate:Mikoyan told me that Comrade Demchenko, who was then first secretary of the Kiev Regional Committee, once came to see him in Moscow. Here's what Demchenko said: 'Anastas Ivanovich, does Comrade Stalin - for that matter, does anyone in the Politburo - know what's happening in Ukraine? Well, if not, I'll give you some idea. A train recently pulled into Kiev loaded with the corpses of people who had starved to death. It picked up corpses all the way from Poltava to Kiev...
The above is from Dr. Mace yet again.The 10 million figure even comes out of Stalin's mouth, although the dictator did not actually say that so many had died. Winston Churchill recorded the following conversation which he had with Stalin:
"'Tell me,' I asked, 'have the stresses of this war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of the collective farms?'
"This subject immediately aroused the Marshal.
"'Oh, no,' he said, 'the collective farm policy was a terrible struggle.'
"'I thought you would have found it bad,' said I, 'because you were not dealing with a few score thousands of aristocrats or big landowners, but with millions of small men.'
"'Ten millions,' he said, holding up his hands."
And since you want references as well:A study of previously unopened records of the U.S. Department of State for 1933 brought to light one paper which provided some idea of knowledge of the famine among the diplomatic corps in Moscow._3_ According to the memorandum, the existence of the famine "was frankly admitted on several occasions by officials of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to members of the Moscow diplomatic corps." It was the general opinion of the diplomats that the famine was even more severe than that of 1921-22. The number of people dying from starvation was placed at 7 to 8 million. The reasons given for the famine and for suppression of its knowledge were essentially those which I outlined in my earlier article.
I don’t care about him – what care about is Soviet archival sources the article uses –anything to confront them?1. This article quotes Duranty all over the bloody place. If you haven't noticed, his pulitzer has been revoked.
there is no such a thing in Soviet penal systemsubject to execution or... a concentration camp for collective farmers who attempted to force others to leave the kolkhoz,
oh 1950 – the midst of the clod war –now I ma convinced.Graphic portraits of the horrors of village life emerge from the files of the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, which was conducted during the early 1950s. It should be stressed that the interviewers were not particularly interested in the famine and that the responses were, therefore, made without any prompting in the course of respondents' stories of their life experiences. One rather typical account (case No. 128) is the following:
how is your quote shows that –it talks about a village.Nor were such horrors confined to the countryside, as you claim Oleg.
upon his transfer to Ukraine Khrushev asked for permission to execute 100000 men – not by names –by his discretion – does he writes that in his memories.And, something from Khruschev's memoirs:
yes Churchill was very much in picture of internal Soviet polices –he received briefings every day –right form the Soviet government. Quoting Churchill on USSR it is like quoting Trotsky on Great Britain.Out of Churchill's memoirs,
so what about the rest of the population –that was not local it was ok to Strave them? Becouse these is would have happened.The local population had produced enough food to feed itself, but the state had seized it, thereby creating a famine by an act of policy.
any of your sources operates with taht?Our main sources were the Politburo protocols,
including the osobye papki ("special files" - the highest secrecy
level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag,
of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Sovnarkom at that time.