Sources/Stats on German exploitation of Ukraine

[TheMarcksPlan]

I'm wondering if anyone has stats, sources, etc on what Germany got from Ukraine and what it invested there. I've seen references in secondary material but no good detailed tables.

How much in money/resources was sunk into the Krivoy Rog ore operation? How much into the Donets basin (I know Hitler sent Ruhr workers there but not sure how far they got at restoring mining and industry, seems doubtful they got much before retreat)?

Given how close Stalino and other major centers were to the front usually, it seems doubtful they made giant investments there.

Any help greatly appreciated as always.

[GregSingh]

There are several tables in Germany and the Second World War, Volume 5, Part 2. They just collected these from other sources, eg. Die Wirtschaftliche Abhängigkeit des Dritten Reiches vom Ausland Dargestellt am Beispiel der Stahlindustrie by Jörg-Johannes Jäger and Die deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik in den besetzten sowjetischen Gebieten 1941-1943.

Primary source would be archive documents of company called Berg- und Hüttenwerksgesellschaft Ost. Mostly based on this material, Matthias Riedel wrote an article Bergbau und Eisenhüttenindustrie in der Ukraine unter deutscher Besatzung (1941-1944) , but no tables there unfortunately.

[TheMarcksPlan]

There are several tables in Germany and the Second World War, Volume 5, Part 2. They just collected these from other sources, eg. Die Wirtschaftliche Abhängigkeit des Dritten Reiches vom Ausland Dargestellt am Beispiel der Stahlindustrie by Jörg-Johannes Jäger and Die deutsche Wirtschaftspolitik in den besetzten sowjetischen Gebieten 1941-1943.

Primary source would be archive documents of company called Berg- und Hüttenwerksgesellschaft Ost. Mostly based on this material, Matthias Riedel wrote an article Bergbau und Eisenhüttenindustrie in der Ukraine unter deutscher Besatzung (1941-1944) , but no tables there unfortunately.

Thanks for the response! From the wikipedia article there's a link to a German .pdf on the exact topic I was looking for. My German is terrible so I'm going through it on Google translate...

But I've already found the section related to efforts in the Donets basin from January 1942, which seem to have been delayed due to proximity of the front. It discusses the Germans bringing hundreds of engineers into the Donets and relocating several plants from Germany.

Thanks again!

[TheMarcksPlan]

...Per the aforementioned source, Germans had invested at least 80mil RM in Donets basin alone by the end of 1942 (if my German/GoogleTranslate are right).

https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/ ... riedel.pdf pg. 265

...which makes one much more understanding of Hitler's refusal of Mannstein's request for flexible defense in Eastern Ukraine in '43.

[TheMarcksPlan]

In the absence of a table, here's some highlights from the pdf:

• Donets produced 396.000t hard coal in December 1942, employed 60,000 Russian civilians, 2,200 Germans, and had received 8,600 POW (of 60,000 promised). Production peaked at 450,000t hard coal in July 1943, though dipped in winter when RKKA recovered part of Donbas. June 43 activation of the Zaporizhye generation plant forecast dramatic increase from then on. From June41 to August43 Germany shipped 17.5mt of coal to SU (obtained about a quarter of that total).
• "The factory group Dnipropetrovsk provided e.g. from January to March 1942 2225 t of rolling stock to the Wehrmacht, 116 t to the railway and 904 t to agriculture"
• Steel works and stores of grain and coal at Mariupol were taken largely intact due to unexpectedly swift capture.
• Goering's Berg- und Hüttenwerksgesellschaft Ost ["BHO"], which had a monopoly on the Eastern production efforts, was requisitioning idle plant from France and Belgium to send to Ukraine from 1942 at the latest.
• Raw steel production restarted at 11 plants by the end of 1942 (though small initial numbers)
• On average, a total of 8-10,000 t of finished products (e.g. rail brakes, piston rings) were produced each month (in 1942?)
• Ammunition production in Donets region was only beginning when in March 1943 it had to be stopped
• Manganese production (Nikopol) reached 642,000t - 50% of SU pre-war total - and by mid-42 deliveries exceeded by 30% the pre-Barbarossa SU deliveries to Germany. The first shipment left on October 22, 1941. BHO planned to increase production to meet all European needs by end of 43.
• 347,000t iron ore transported east from Krivoy Rog by end of 42.
• BHO estimated that only 20% of the machinery transported to Ukraine was evacuated in 43
• In Dniepr Bend industries, 80% of unskilled and 30% of skilled workers remained. A "significant portion" were willing to work with the Germans, at least as of October 41.