Libmonster ID: BY-3054
Author(s) of the publication: M. I. SEMIRYAGA

To the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory

The resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the 40th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" emphasizes the need to "expose the anti-national, reactionary nature of imperialism, the militaristic plans of the United States and its NATO allies, revanchism and Japanese militarism, and give a decisive, reasoned rebuff to our ideological opponents, all kinds of falsifiers of the history of World War II." wars " 1 . The working people of the USSR and the countries of the socialist community, all progressive humanity are preparing to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory of the Soviet people.. The 39th session of the UN General Assembly declared May 8 and 9, 1985 as the 40th anniversary of the Victory over Fascism in World War II. At the same time, revanchist forces in Germany and Japan have once again stepped up their activities, and neo-fascists continue to try to remove the blame from war criminals and downplay the severity of the atrocities they committed during World War II. Therefore, it is extremely important to constantly expose the misogynistic hype of fascism, tirelessly remind about the danger of its rehabilitation.

Hitler's fascism, the resolution emphasizes, aimed at destroying the world's first socialist state and establishing world domination. The occupation regime in the part of the USSR temporarily occupied by the Nazis was particularly cruel and provides convincing facts to expose fascism.

Extensive documentary material about the policy of the Nazis in the temporarily occupied Soviet territory is kept in the archives of the Soviet Union: the Central Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the Central Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the archives of a number of union republics and many regional centers, which have already been widely used by Soviet researchers, as well as in the GDR Military Archive in Potsdam (MA DDR), the Federal Archive of the Federal Republic of Germany in Koblenz - Bundessarchiv (BA), The National Archives of the United States (NAUS).

A number of collections of documents revealing the crimes of the German-fascist occupiers on Soviet soil were published in the USSR .2 Similar documents were published in the Soviet republics and many regions that were subjected to enemy occupation. These same questions are reflected

1 Pravda, 17. VI. 1984.

2 Collection of reports of the Extraordinary State Commission on the atrocities of the German-fascist invaders, Moscow, 1946; The Nuremberg Trial of the Main German War Criminals and Themselves. Tt. 1-7. M. 1957-1961; Criminal goals - criminal means. Documents on the occupation policy of fascist Germany on the territory of the USSR (1941-1944). Moscow, 1968.

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in such major works as" History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union", multi-volume histories of the Great Patriotic War and World War II, as well as in a number of other books 3 . The same problems are studied by V. E. Bystrov, V. M. Gridnev, M. M. Zagorulko and A. F. Yudenkov, N. I. Makarov, M. L. Gutin, V. V. Korovin, V. I. Klokov, P. K. Ponomarenko, V. P. Cherednichenko, A. I. Zalessky, M. V. Koval and other historians. Data on the economic situation of the country on the eve of the war and on the consequences of economic plunder by the German-fascist invaders of the occupied regions of the USSR are contained in the book by N. A. Voznesensky 4 . Among the studies published in the socialist countries, attention should be paid to the multi-volume work of GDR scientists on the history of Germany during the Second World War5 . N. Muller and R. Ciolek, researchers from the GDR, published works on the role of the Wehrmacht in the implementation of occupation functions on Soviet territory. 6
Despite the comparative development of a number of issues related to the German-fascist occupation regime on Soviet soil (economic plunder, the use of labor, terror, etc.), it is necessary to introduce new or little-known facts and documents into scientific circulation and, what is especially important, to conduct a comprehensive study of this regime, and above all, such insufficiently developed ones issues such as the structure of the occupation authorities, criminal methods of their activities, attempts to influence the Soviet people ideologically, the desire to incite national discord between them, etc. The task of further exposing bourgeois authors who falsify the character of the German-fascist occupation regime on the territory of the USSR and the struggle of Soviet people against it remains relevant .7 The purpose of this article is to try to fill in the gap in the development of these issues to some extent and draw the attention of the scientific community to them.

As you know, as a result of the offensive actions of the Wehrmacht in 1941-1942. Germany managed to temporarily occupy the Soviet territory with an area of about 1,800 thousand square kilometers, which before the war was home to 88 million people (45% of the total population of the country) and produce-

3 Istoriya Kommunisticheskoy partii Sovetskogo Soyuza [History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], Vol. 5, book 1. Moscow 1970; Istoriya Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny Sovetskogo Soyuza 1941-1945. Vol. 1-6. Moscow 1960-1965; Istoriya vtoroi mirovoi voyny 1939-1945. Vol. 1-12. Moscow 1973-1982; et al.

Voznesenskiy N. Voennaya ekonomika SSSR v period Otechestvennoy voiny [Military economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War]. Moscow, 1948; Zalessky A. I. V partizanskikh krayakh i zony [In the partisan territories and zones]. Patriotic feat of the Soviet peasantry behind enemy lines (1941-1944). Moscow, 1962; Heroes of the Underground. About the underground struggle of Soviet patriots in the rear of the Nazi invaders during the Great Patriotic War. Вып. 1, 2. М. 1965, 1968; Суспільно-політичне життя трудящих Української РСР. Kiev, 1973; War behind enemy lines. On some problems of the history of the Soviet partisan movement during the Great Patriotic War. Issue 1. M. 1974; Koval M. V. Socio-political activity of workers of the Ukrainian SSR during the Great Patriotic War. Kyiv. 1974; same name. The struggle of the Ukrainian population against fascist slavery. Kyiv. 1979; Gridnev V. M. The struggle of the peasantry of the occupied regions of the RSFSR against the German-fascist occupation policy, Moscow 1976; Makarov N. Nepokorennaya zemlya Rossiyskaya, Moscow 1976; Zagorulko M. M., Yudenkov A. F. The collapse of the Oldenburg Plan (On the disruption of the economic plans of fascist Germany in the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR), Moscow 1980; and etc.

5 Deutschland im zweiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 1 - 5. Brl. 1974 - 1984.

6 Muller N. Wehrmacht and Occupation (1941-1944). On the role of the Wehrmacht and its governing bodies in the implementation of the occupation regime on Soviet territory, Moscow, 1974; Muller N. Okkupation. Raub. Vernichtung. Dokumente. Brl. 1980; Czollek R. Faschismus und Okkupation. Brl. 1974.

7 Dixon Ch. O., Geilbrunn O. Kommunisticheskie partizanskie deystviya [Communist Partisan actions], Moscow, 1957; Dallin A. German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945. A Study of Occupation Policies. N. Y. 1957; Schapiro L. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lnd. 1960; Soviet Partisans in World War II. Madison. 1964; The Partisans of Europe in World War II. Lnd. 1975; Hoffman J. Die Ostlegionen, 1941 - 1943. Freiburg. 1976; a. o.

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33% of the gross industrial output was lost, 47% of all acreage was sown, and 55% of the length of railways was located .8 Despite the measures taken to save the Soviet people (about 25 million people were evacuated to the eastern regions of the country), over 60 million, i.e. approximately 33% of the pre-war population of the country, were forced to remain in the occupied territory .9
The aim of Hitler's aggression against the U.S.S.R. was to destroy the gains of the Great October Revolution, eliminate the socialist social and state system, seize the country's material wealth, exterminate some Soviet citizens, and turn the other part into labor for the German monopolies and junkers.

In the temporarily occupied territory of the USSR, Hitler's Germany established a "new order" - the most severe regime of military occupation that history has not yet known. In political terms, it meant bloody terror and arbitrariness, the elimination of state authorities, the abolition of basic democratic rights; in economic terms, it meant unrestrained robbery and destruction of the country's economy and the property of its citizens; in national terms, it meant genocide, discrimination, destruction of culture, and the elimination of the intelligentsia; in ideological terms, it meant an attempt to destroy the moral and political unity of the Soviet people, to break them spiritually.

One of the first actions of the invaders on Soviet soil was the arbitrary redrawing of the occupied territory. The administrative division of the occupied territories of the USSR, the structure of the administration, the functions of its bodies and officials were determined by the decree "On Civil Administration in the occupied Eastern Regions", signed by Hitler on July 17, 1941.10 The occupied territory of the USSR was divided into two zones - military and civil administration. The first included the territory from the front line to the rear borders of army groups. Power in it was exercised by the appropriate commander. The Quartermaster General of the General Command of the Land Forces (OKH) was responsible for the state of the zone on the entire eastern front. The rest of the occupied territory was part of the second zone, which was under the jurisdiction of the civil occupation authorities, who were subordinate to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Regions ("Eastern Ministry"), headed by A. Rosenberg. This zone was divided into Reichskommissariats, and they were divided into general districts, main districts, and districts .11
Occupation power on Soviet soil was exercised by three of the five States whose troops invaded the Soviet Union-Germany, Romania, and Finland; Italy and Hungary had no occupation zones of their own.

Already in the first months of the occupation, out of the five planned by the Nazis, two Reichskommissariats were created - Ukraine and Ostland. The first included the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, with the exception of several western regions attached to the Polish General Government, as well as territories west of the Southern Bug and the front line. It also included the southern part of the Byelorussian SSR. As of January 1, 1943, this Reichskommissariat occupied an area of almost 340 thousand square kilometers, and more than 16 million people lived on it. The Second Reichskommissariat included the Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian SSR, most of the BSSR, as well as parts of Leningrad

8 Voznesensky N. Uk. soch., p. 157; Zagorulko M. M., Yudenkov A. F. Uk. soch., p. 68.

9 Zagorulko M. M., Yudenkov A. F. Uk. soch., p. 86.

10 Czollek R. Op.cit., S. 50.

11 Herzog R. Grur dzuge der deutschen Besatzungsverwaltung in den ost- und sudosteuropaischen Landern wahrend des zweiten Weltkrieges. Tubingen. 1955, S. 92.

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and Pskov regions. Its territory was 232 thousand square kilometers, and its population was more than 8 million people. Bialystok region and the northern part of Brest (31 thousand square kilometers, population about 1.5 million people) They were not part of any of the Reichskommissariats, they received an independent management status and were actually annexed by Germany by joining East Prussia 12 .

A significant Soviet territory was annexed by Royal Romania. Back in August 1941, it included the Chernivtsi and Izmail regions of the Ukrainian SSR and most of the Moldavian SSR. The territory of the Odessa region, the southern districts of Vinnytsia and the western districts of Mykolaiv regions (50 thousand square kilometers, population 2.2 million) was called "Transnistria" by the Romanian invaders, and it was also actually annexed. Finland captured the Karelian Isthmus and East Karelia, where the occupation power was exercised by the Finnish "Military Administration of East Karelia" 13 .

The German-fascist administration in the occupied Soviet territory had a special character and performed specific functions that did not exist in the occupied bourgeois countries; the Soviet social and state structure was eliminated and orders that were alien to the Soviet people were established.

The vast apparatus of the civil occupation administration, the punitive organs, and the Wehrmacht troops were directed at fulfilling the tasks formulated by Hitler's politicians even before the war. One of them was to restore capitalist order in the occupied territory of the USSR with the active participation of anti-Soviet emigrant circles and local traitors. Implementing this policy, the Nazis created "local self-government" bodies in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Belarus, headed by bourgeois elements appointed by the occupiers who had emigrated to Germany. The same purpose was served by the formation of "volunteer legions" and police to fight against partisans and Red Army units. By enlisting a number of local residents, the occupiers sought to bind them to responsibility for crimes committed together .14
In Ukraine, the occupiers placed a special emphasis on bourgeois nationalists, who settled in Germany and neighboring countries of the USSR in the 1930s and collaborated with Hitler's intelligence service. However, attempts by Ukrainian bourgeois nationalists led by S. Bandera to create a "national government" in Lviv contradicted Hitler's plans and were immediately stopped. Only in the spring of 1943, after the defeat at Stalingrad, the Nazis, needing additional reserves, decided to form the Ukrainian SS division "Galichchina" and allow the activities of nationalist administrative bodies in local levels.

The occupied territories of the RSFSR also did not have a single central civil administration consisting of local residents. Only in the area of the town of Lokot (now the Bryansk region) was a "local government" created.

The "local self-government" bodies, of course, had no real power. They were needed by the invaders only for propaganda purposes, to cover up their criminal actions: repression against Soviet patriots, looting of material values, exporting them to Germany, etc. Developing the idea of "self-government", Rosenberg wrote

12 Zentralblatt des Reichskommissars fur die Ukraine, 1943, N 2.

13 Herzog R. Op. cit., S. 25.

14 Komkov G. D. Ideological and political work of the CPSU in 1941-1945, Moscow, 1965, pp. 376-377.

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In a report to Hitler on January 3, 1943:"I see no danger in such experiments on a larger scale, because the leadership will still be in our hands." 15
The specifics of the situation in the occupied Soviet territory also consisted in the fact that there were numerous partisan territories where the occupation administration was liquidated and the Soviet authorities were restored. In some areas, the invaders were not able to enter at all. Partisan territories appeared at the end of 1941, and by the spring of 1942 in Belarus, Smolensk, Orel and Leningrad regions there were already 11-16 of them . According to the occupation authorities themselves, over 17,400 square kilometers of the territory of Belarus were under the control of partisans. In Ukraine, the partisan territories included significant woodlands of several regions, in the Crimea-separate mountain areas. The occupation authorities reported to Berlin that 78,500 square kilometers of Ukrainian land were controlled by the partisans in full and 37,700 square kilometers in part, and that this territory, as a source of agricultural products for Germany, could be considered lost .17 In the rear of the Nazis, there were also extensive partisan zones in which partisans were constantly active, exerting a great influence on the life of the local population. In the summer of 1943, Soviet patriots controlled more than 200 thousand square kilometers in the enemy's rear, i.e., an area equal to such countries as Belgium, the Netherlands and Denmark combined .18
The Constitution of the USSR, the constitutions of the respective republics, and all Soviet legislation remained in force for the population of the occupied regions. Taking into account the specific conditions of the occupation, the functions of the Soviet authorities were performed here by joint party-Soviet underground bodies, and where they did not exist, the functions of the emergency Soviet authorities were assigned to the command of partisan detachments and formations on the basis of the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR "On martial Law" of June 22, 1941. They carried out all measures, including justice against Nazi war criminals, traitors and servants of the occupiers, on behalf of the Soviet government .19
Bourgeois historians who have studied the situation in the occupied territory of the USSR are also forced to admit that the Soviet people who found themselves in the occupied territory never left the consciousness of the continuity of the existence of Soviet power. So, D. Armstrong wrote: "Soviet power never completely disappeared from most of the German-occupied territory." 20
The socialist system that won in the USSR predetermined the moral and political unity of the Soviet people who stood up for the defense of their Homeland. In the Soviet Union, there were no classes or social strata that were interested in cooperating with the enemy. In the occupied Soviet territories, unlike in the occupied capitalist countries, the fascist invaders could not rely on local authorities, which are the direct opposite of the authorities of the bourgeoisie. It was also important that, unlike other countries, only a part of the territory of the USSR was occupied, which is why the Soviet patriots, the action of-

15 NAUS. T. 175, roll 124, p. 000454.

16 History of the Second World War of 1939-1945, vol. 4, p. 353.

17 Deutschland im zveiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 3, S. 358.

18 Istoriya Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny Sovetskogo Soyuza 1941-1945 [History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945].

19 National-state construction in the USSR during the period of socialism and construction of communism. (1937-1978). Vol. 2. Moscow, 1979, p. 78.

20 Soviet Partisans in World War II., p. 39.

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those who were behind enemy lines felt the full support of the Armed Forces and the whole country. At the head of the liberation struggle of the Soviet people was the Communist Party, which had an extensive network of underground organizations in the occupied territory.

The German-fascist occupation policy on Soviet territory was aimed at plundering economic resources in order to strengthen the military and economic potential of Germany and weaken the economic capabilities of the Soviet Union, and eliminate the material basis for the existence of the Soviet people.

In carrying out their plans for the economic plunder of the USSR, the Hitlerites hoped to destroy the economic basis of its social and state system, to restore the capitalist system of economy, so that in the structure of the "third Reich" the "eastern" regions would become an agricultural and raw materials appendage of the German monopolies. One of the goals of economic plunder (it was least advertised, but directly derived from the racist ideology of fascism) was to eliminate the material basis for the normal life of the Soviet people, which the Nazis referred to as the "lower race". It was prepared for the most primitive conditions of existence, sufficient only to ensure the possibility of its exploitation as a labor force.

These goals were formulated during the preparation of the aggression against the Soviet Union in the Oldenburg Plan , a special economic section of the Barbarossa plan. Specific tasks for the economic plunder of the occupied regions of the USSR were set out in the" Directives for the management of the Economy in the occupied Eastern Regions "(Goering's" Green Folder"), which came into force on July 3, 1941 by special order of Goering.

German statistics show that the invaders sought to constantly increase the use of the natural resources and industrial potential of the captured Soviet territory. Even more important for Hitler's Germany was the exploitation of the agricultural wealth of the occupied Soviet regions. By plundering these territories, the supply of bread, meat, fats, eggs, fruits, vegetables and other products to the German population was ensured. In addition, already in the first year of the war, German troops on the Eastern Front (without rear units and services and satellite troops) were supplied from local resources with bread-by 80%, meat-by 83%, fat-by 77% and potatoes-by 70% 21 .

The leaders of Hitlerite Germany proclaimed the elimination of public ownership of the means of production throughout the occupied territory of the USSR, with the gradual restoration of private ownership. Industrial enterprises were declared state property of Germany, small handicraft enterprises in the Baltic republics and western regions of Ukraine were returned to their former owners. Numerous joint-stock companies with the participation of the largest monopolistic associations in Germany were created to exploit the captured industrial enterprises.

Counting on the success of the "lightning war", i.e., on achieving victory at the end of 1941, the Hitlerites initially restored only those branches of production that were needed to immediately meet the needs of the front, but the war took on a protracted character, and from 1942 they began reconstruction work in order to use enterprises on a larger scale to meet the needs of the military needs.

The agricultural policy of the occupiers also served the criminal purposes of economic enslavement of the Soviet people. This problem is in the Soviet

21 Muller N. Uk. soch., p. 130.

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historiography is sufficiently fully covered 22 , however, for a comprehensive coverage of the German-Fascist occupation regime, it is important to recall the most significant features of this policy. In the republics of the Soviet Baltic States and in the western regions of Ukraine and Belarus, collective farms were dissolved. In the remaining occupied regions, in accordance with the Rosenberg Land Law of February 1942, collective farms were transformed into "communal farms" that operated under the instructions of the occupation authorities. State farms and MTS were declared "property" of the German state and were managed as" state estates " by the invaders. With the permission of the relevant German authorities, private land use of former landlords and kulaks was also allowed. The best land was allocated to German colonists 23 .

In the subsequent stages of agrarian transformation, which the Nazis planned to implement after the end of the war, it was assumed to allow the existence of individual peasant farms. By this method, the occupiers hoped not only to solve certain economic problems, but also to carry out social and ideological sabotage: to arouse the private-property instincts of the Soviet peasantry, to destroy the sense of collectivism, cohesion and unity of action that the collective farm system had instilled in them, to attract some part of the peasants to their side, promising to provide them with land plots in the first place. This tactic of the occupiers found a definite echo among certain strata of the peasantry in the Baltic republics and the western regions of Belarus and Ukraine, which only shortly before the war began joined the USSR. The occupiers paid special attention to the agrarian issue in the Baltic republics. During 1942-1943, the old order in the village was completely restored here. 2 million peasants once again became sole proprietors, and small-scale peasants were completely dependent on the kulaks and landlords, to whom the occupiers returned the most fertile land, tools, and livestock .24 In the rest of the Soviet territory, this tactic of the occupiers was not successful. The economic plans of fascism in the occupied Soviet territories, as well as its political and military goals, were nullified by the firm determination of the Soviet people to defend their freedom and independence.

In order to obtain free labor, the Nazis resorted to a system of forcibly exporting almost 5 million Soviet people to Germany .25 Their living and working conditions are an unprecedented crime against humanity. If at the beginning of the recruitment campaign, the occupiers fraudulently tried to persuade Soviet citizens to voluntarily leave for Germany, then from about the second half of 1942, recruitment was carried out exclusively through violence, raids, and threats. According to sources, initially the occupiers expected to export 15 million workers from the occupied regions of the USSR to Germany .26 The deportation of Soviet people to Hitler's penal servitude is primarily an economic factor, aimed at enriching German monopolies. At the same time, Hitlerism also pursued another goal: to physically weaken or eliminate the young part of the Soviet people by overwork, to prevent its growth, and as an intermediate task-to tear millions of young people away from the Soviet Union.

22 Zalessky A. I. Uk. soch.; his. Heroic feat of millions behind enemy lines. Minsk. 1970; Gridnev V. M. Uk. soch.; War in the rear of the enemy. Issue 1; History of the Second World War of 1939-1945 Vol. 5; etc.

23 Istoriya vtoroi mirovoi voyny 1939-1945 gg. [History of the Second World War of 1939-1945].

24 Deutschland im zweiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 3, S. 363.

25 The Nuremberg Trial, vol. 1, p. 126.

26 See Kral ' V. Prestuplenie v Evropy [Crime against Europe], Moscow, 1968, p. 267.

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socio-political and national environment to facilitate their Germanization and political "re-education". But these calculations of the Nazis were also not justified. Far from their homeland, the Soviet people exerted a beneficial influence on the German population with their patriotism, confidence in victory, way of thinking and behavior, to which Hitler's security service responded with repression .27
The unrestrained exploitation of economic resources, the plundering of material values and the use of labor in the occupied regions are only one aspect of the economic and social policy of the Nazis. The other side of it was the ruthless destruction on the territory of the USSR of everything that the invaders did not need to continue the war. In 1941, Hitler's political and military leadership believed that Germany would have enough resources of its own to carry out a "lightning war" against the Soviet Union, and did not consider it necessary, even for tactical reasons, to comply with The Hague Convention and other norms of international law. The fascist rulers were sure that the winners would not be judged.

Already in the first days of the war, many cities and villages, industrial enterprises, bridges, port facilities and other objects were subjected to unjustified air raids and artillery shelling from an operational point of view. Nazi pilots bombed evacuation trains with civilians, ambulance trains, shot herds of cows, sheep, etc. Only during the evacuation of the civilian population and military personnel from Tallinn as a result of air raids and attacks by German submarines, which were subjected to Soviet transport ships, 4 thousand people were killed .28
In the occupied settlements, the German command forbade putting out fires and saving public buildings and historical monuments. The commander of the 6th German Army, Field Marshal W. Reichenau, wrote in the order "On the behavior of troops in the East" of October 10, 1941:: "The troops are interested in extinguishing fires only in those buildings that should be used for quartering military units. Everything else that is a symbol of the former Bolshevik rule, including the buildings, must be destroyed. No historical or artistic values matter in the East. " 29 Under the pretext of fighting the partisans, the fascist punishers burned villages on the territory of the partisan territories, destroyed large areas of forest and crops.

Retreating under the blows of Soviet troops, the invaders produced massive destruction, leaving behind a" scorched earth " and hundreds of thousands of dead Soviet civilians. The scorched earth tactic reached its greatest extent in the summer and autumn of 1943. After the failure of the Wehrmacht offensive on the Kursk Bulge, the German military-industrial bodies began to dismantle many enterprises in the Donbass, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk and other industrial centers. In accordance with the Goering directive of September 7, 1943, agricultural machinery and equipment were exported to Germany; everything that could not be exported was destroyed .30
The Extraordinary State Commission for the Identification and Investigation of the Atrocities committed by the Nazi invaders and their Accomplices considered about 4 million acts of damage caused to the Soviet people during the occupation. It was found that only direct damage (losses from destruction of property) amounted to 679 billion rubles.

27 BA. R. 58/182, B1. 100 - 102.

28 Kuznetsov N. G. Na flotakh boevaya trev. M. 1971, pp. 53-55.

29 Muller N. Op. cit., S. 111.

30 Deutschland im zweiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 4, S. 165.

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(in 1941 prices)31, and the total material damage caused to the Soviet Union - 2569 billion rubles. The country lost a third of its national wealth, and the BSSR lost more than half .32
The occupiers managed to use the economic and economic complex of the occupied regions to strengthen their military and economic potential and wage war, but numerous facts also confirm that they failed to implement all their plans in this direction. This was prevented by the Soviet people, led by the Communist Party.

Extremely important political, social, and military-economic significance was the Soviet Union's evacuation of huge material assets from the threatened areas of the country to the east - enterprises, warehouses, vehicles, scientific institutions, the property of MTS, state and collective farms, etc. Qualified workers, engineering and technical workers, agricultural specialists, and scientists were evacuated along with them. It was a grandiose labor epic, which, according to the figurative assessment of Marshal of the Soviet Union G. K. Zhukov, was equal in importance to the successfully carried out greatest battles of the Second World War .34 Thanks to the energetic measures of the party and government, the heroism and dedication of the Soviet people, by mid-1942, the lost capacity of the military industry was not only restored, but also exceeded. A well-coordinated military economy was created in the country35 .

In order to achieve their political and economic goals in the occupied territory of the USSR, the Nazi invaders used terror, violence, genocide, and mockery of the individual against the local population. These grave crimes against humanity have become the norm of the yal occupation policy. They reflected the essence of fascism, made up its main function, what it came about and existed for. The life of the population was regulated by many orders and orders of the occupation authorities. Residents without a special pass were forbidden to travel to another locality, gather in groups, or appear on the street after dark. A system of all kinds of taxes and levies was introduced - income, poll tax, military tax, tax on buildings, for" extra "windows and doors, "extra furniture", for cattle, dogs, cats, hospital fees and other taxes .

The fascist occupation policy on Soviet soil was characterized by the method of violence, which was used in the most brutal forms. A system of death camps, hundreds of prisons, ghettos, etc. was created here. Thus, in the occupied territory of Ukraine there were more than 230 different camps; only in 180 prisoner-of-war camps more than 1,399 thousand Soviet soldiers and officers were killed. Hostage-taking became widespread in the occupied territory of the USSR, which, according to the Nuremberg Tribunal, was a means of "organized terror used by the occupiers to suppress and eradicate all opposition to their rule"37 .

31 Collection of Reports of the Extraordinary State Commission, pp. 429-430, 433, 444.

32 Istoriya SSSR: drevneyshikh vremen do nashim dni [History of the USSR: ancient Times to the present day].

33 Zagorulko M. M., Yudenkov A. F. Uk. soch., p. 113, 210 - 220, 225 - 230. 282 - 288; Makarov N. Uk. soch., pp. 297-312.

34 Zhukov G. K. Memoirs and Reflections, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1974, p. 301.

35 History of the Second World War of 1939-1945 Vol. 12, pp. 158-159.

36 Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 342-343.

37 Koval M. V. Socio-political activity of workers of the Ukrainian SSR during the Great Patriotic War, p. 247; Grigorovich D. F., Zamlinsky V. A., Nemyaty V. N. Kommunisticheskaya partiya Ukrainy v gody Velikoy Otechestvennoy voyny [The Communist Party of Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War]. Kiev, 1980, p. 282; Nuremberg Trial, vol. 7, p. 381.

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The Nazi invaders launched terror against the local population from the very first days of the invasion of Soviet land. Already at the end of June 1941. they carried out mass executions in Lviv - within seven days, 5 thousand Soviet citizens were shot. In Kiev, on the orders of the city's commandant, 700 people were shot in the first days of the occupation .38 The Nazis also acted in the same way throughout the temporarily occupied Soviet territory.

Mass executions of Soviet citizens were directly carried out by four special operational groups (Einsatzgruppen), which were created back in March 1941 and numbered from 800 to 1200 people each, which in turn were divided into 16 operational teams. Here are some of the results of their bloody crimes in 1941 alone: group A (operating in the band of Army Group North) shot 135567 people until October 15; Group B (Army Group Center) until November 14-45467 people; group C (Army Group South) until November 3-80,000 a person. In total, the task forces destroyed more than 1 million Soviet citizens before they were liquidated at the end of 1942 .39
On December 7, 1941, by order of Hitler, the action "Darkness and Fog" was undertaken, during which civilians in the occupied countries who posed the greatest danger to the Hitlerite authorities were arrested, isolated in camps and prisons, and shot without trial.

On instructions from Berlin, in mid-1943, special teams began to be created in the occupied territory of the USSR, which, during the retreat of German troops, were supposed to destroy evidence of Nazi crimes in concentration camps and places of mass executions of Soviet people. The corpses of the executed were exhumed and burned, camp barracks and crematoria were set on fire; the Nazis shot eyewitnesses to the crimes.

The criminal actions of the fascist invaders in the occupied Soviet territory were determined by the main political goal of German imperialism - the intention to destroy the socialist social and state system of the USSR. As early as March 1941, at a meeting of the Wehrmacht's top commanders, Hitler emphasized that the war against the Soviet Union would be a struggle between two ideologies and therefore must be uncompromising and brutal. "This war," Hitler said, " will be very different from the war in the West. In the East, cruelty itself is a blessing for the future. " 40
The crimes committed on Soviet soil were not the result of the indiscipline of individual Wehrmacht soldiers, as the war criminals in Nuremberg tried to justify themselves, but an expression of the political course of Hitler's leaders and the high command. Thus, on May 13, 1941, the order of the Chief of the General Staff of the Land Forces of the Wehrmacht stated that all military personnel are exempt from criminal liability for actions against the local population on the territory of the USSR. In the order of Field Marshal W. Keitel of September 16, 1941, it was emphasized: "Human life in the respective countries in most cases has no price", "intimidating action can be achieved only by extremely cruel measures" 41 . The atrocities of the German-Fascist troops acquired a monstrous scale. For the destruction of Soviet people, the invaders widely used specially equipped vehicles for this purpose - " soul-

38 Deutschland im zweiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 2, S. 125.

39 Ibid., S. 125, 127, 435.

40 Cit. by: Halder F. Military Diary, translated from German, vol. 2, Moscow, 1969, p. 431.

41 The German-fascist occupation regime (1941-1944), Moscow, 1965, pp. 282-283.

page 12

sponges". Carrying out a punitive operation codenamed "Cottbus" in May - June 1943 in the Minsk - Vitebsk region, the Nazi invaders burned 113 villages to the ground, shot many thousands of residents, including women and children, and stole 6 thousand to work in Germany .42
At the Nuremberg trials, it was recorded that only in the files of the Extraordinary State Commission there were 54,784 acts of atrocities committed by Hitlerite criminals against peaceful Soviet citizens .43 The terror of the occupiers took on a huge scale. In Ukraine, more than 4 million civilians and prisoners of war were killed; in the occupied regions of the RSFSR, almost 1.7 million people were killed; 44 in Belarus, more than 2 million people, every fourth inhabitant of the republic; 45 in the Baltic Soviet Republics, the Nazis and bourgeois nationalists killed about 1 million local residents and prisoners of war. 46 In total, in the occupied territories of the USSR, the fascists destroyed and tortured 6 million civilians and about 4 million prisoners of war .47
The criminal actions of the fascist occupiers also include the mass forced relocation of millions of Soviet citizens. Evictions of local residents from areas where various military installations were located or were supposed to be built became widespread. Residents were expelled from settlements located near partisan zones. Hundreds of thousands of local residents were being evicted from the front line.

In 1942-1943, along with the intensification of terror, the occupiers sharply intensified the indoctrination of Soviet people in the anti-Soviet spirit through political and social demagogy. This was done, in particular, by publishing numerous newspapers and magazines in the languages of the peoples of the USSR.

The occupiers sought to intimidate the Soviet people, to sow fear and uncertainty among them and thereby paralyze their will to fight, to inflame the local population's private property instincts, encouraging haggling and speculation. Through newspapers, leaflets and other mass media, the occupiers tried to instill in the Soviet people the idea of the invincibility of the Wehrmacht, of the hopelessness of further struggle against it, of the" collapse " of the Red Army; they called on the local population to stop all resistance to the occupation authorities, etc.

The invaders eliminated the Soviet school system. Only lower-level schools were opened, but the number of students in them was sharply limited .48 Soviet children were bullied, deported, and forced into hard labor. From the spring of 1944, especially in the areas of operations of Army Groups North and Center, children aged 10 to 15 whose relatives were executed were rounded up in so-called "children's villages" and then deported to work in Germany. By August 1, 1944, out of 40 thousand children, 2500 children were transferred to the Junker factories .

42 Deutschland im z veiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 3, S. 358.

43 The Nuremberg Trials, vol. 3, p. 203.

44 The German-Fascist occupation regime, p. 35. According to other sources, in Ukraine the invaders destroyed about 3.9 million civilians and almost 1.4 million prisoners of war, i.e. more than 5 million people. Grigorovich D. F., Zamlinsky V. A., Nemyaty V. N. Uk. soch., p. 282.

45 Krasnaya Zvezda, 28. XII. 1978; German-fascist occupation regime, p. 35.

46 Paleckis Yu. A land revived to a brighter life (To mark the 30th anniversary of the restoration of Soviet power in the Baltic States). Problemy mira i sotsializma [Problems of Peace and Socialism], 1970, No. 7, p. 90.

47 Izvestiya, 20. III. 1975.

48 Zentralblatt cles Reichskommissars fur die Ukraine, 1942, N 7.

49 Anatomy of war. New documents on the role of German monopoly capital in the preparation and conduct of the Second World War. Translated from German, Moscow, 1971, p. 447.

page 13

Famine and unsanitary conditions accompanied the Soviet people during the years of occupation, caused epidemics, health disorders, and increased mortality. In Kharkiv alone, and in January - March 1942 alone, more than 23,000 people died from famine and epidemics .50 In Ukraine, after the liberation, a complex epidemic situation has developed. From February to December 1944, 340 thousand cases of various infectious diseases were registered here, including more than 80 thousand cases of typhus .51 And after the liberation, despite the care of the Soviet state and public organizations, everyone, especially children, endured severe suffering from the material and spiritual consequences of the occupation.

The invaders combined genocide with forced Germanization, and attempted to incite different nationalities against each other. In one of the documents related to the Ost plan, it was emphasized that "the great political goal of the war against the Soviet Union is to defeat the Russians as a people, to divide them." 52 Goering's" Green Folder " noted that in the Baltic republics, "it is most appropriate for German authorities to rely on the remaining Germans, as well as on Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. The contradictions between these national groups and the remaining Russians should be used in the interests of Germany. " 53 At a meeting in the Ministry of Propaganda on July 21, 1941, Goebbels recalled Clausewitz's words that a country like Russia could only be defeated if discord was sown among its peoples. This thesis was echoed by the ideas set forth in the memorandum of the Austrian Nazi, a trustee of the concern I.-G. Farbenindustri, formerly the Austrian Ambassador in Berlin R. Riedl entitled "The Russian Question" (it was sent in April 1943 to the head of the Reich Chancellery for transmission to Hitler). Based on his "Russian experience" during the First World War, the author of the note argued that Russia cannot be defeated by military means, and it can only be blown up by dividing it into national components and joining them to the "new Europe" 54. In an effort to destroy the centuries-old fraternal friendship between Ukraine and Russia, the Nazis, through propaganda agencies, promised to create an "independent Ukraine" under a German protectorate. At the same time, the secret instructions of the Eastern Ministry intended the fate of the German colony 55 for Ukraine .

In the first half of 1942, when an enemy offensive was being prepared in the south of the Soviet-German front, the German High Command set the task of sowing ethnic hatred among the peoples of Dagestan and other republics of the Caucasus for the operational teams of Army Group South .56
The Nazis enlisted in various legions and police formations a certain number of people who were class-hostile to the Soviet government (bourgeois-nationalist, criminal elements), but they failed to create a "fifth column" on the territory of the USSR .57 The friendship of peoples, the greatest achievement of socialism, withstood the test of the war and became one of the factors in the victory over fascism. Representatives of all nations and nationalities of the Soviet Union, including in the

50 Muller N. Uk. soch., p. 132.

51 Суспільно-політичне життя трудящих Української РСР. Т. 1, с. 286.

52 Cit. by: Criminal goals - criminal means, p. 72.

53 Zagorulko M. M., Yudenkov A. F. Uk. soch., p. 90.

54 BA. R. 58/214, B1. 91 - 92.

55 Deutschland im zweiten Weltkrieg. Bd. 3, S. 341 - 345.

56 Hitlerslagebesprechungen. Die Protokollfragmente seiner militarischen Konferenzen. 1942 - 1945. Stuttgart. 1962, S. 73 - 74.

57 For details on this, see: Narodny podvig v bitve za Kavkaz, Moscow, 1981; Kondakova N. I. Ideologicheskaya pobeda nad fascizmom [Ideological Victory over Fascism]. 1941-1945. M. 1982.

page 14

in the occupied territories, they courageously defended their Homeland, showing perseverance and mass heroism; they were equipped with hundreds of formations / units of the Red Army; patriots representing almost 40 nationalities fought in partisan formations .58 Among the 11,000 people awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union are representatives of 100 nations and nationalities of the USSR .59
40 years have passed since the German occupiers were expelled from Soviet soil, and Nazi Germany was defeated by the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. The Soviet Union made a decisive contribution to the victory. Another attempt by imperialism to destroy the socialist system and enslave the peoples of the U.S.S.R. has completely failed. "The victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War," the CPSU Central Committee resolution on the 40th anniversary of the Victory emphasizes,"fully revealed the advantages of socialism, its enormous economic, socio-political and spiritual possibilities." 60
The end of Hitler's Germany was natural - the aggressor, who undertook an all-out war, always ended it with a total defeat, this has been repeatedly confirmed by the experience of history. But before fascism came to its inglorious end, it brought immense suffering and grief to the peoples, and especially to the Soviet people.

The German-Fascist occupation regime in the occupied territories of the Soviet Union was a denial of international norms and customs of warfare, obliging to protect the life of the civilian population, human rights and freedoms. The Nazi invaders not only grossly violated the norms of international law contained in a number of conventions, but also committed new, unknown in the past and therefore not provided for in international documents, serious crimes.

Central to Hitler's plans for the destruction of the Soviet social and state system and the conquest of world domination was the economic use of the occupied territories of the USSR. During the years of occupation, due to the plunder of these territories, Germany managed to significantly replenish its military-industrial potential, which put the Senate Union in an extremely difficult position. But numerous facts irrefutably confirm that the Nazis were not able to use the captured production resources to the intended extent. This was prevented by the Soviet people. The Nazi invaders sought to impose fascist orders in all spheres of life of the population of the occupied Soviet territories. They carried out massive ideological sabotage, tried to sow the seeds of anti-Sovietism and bourgeois nationalism among the population. The Soviet people rejected the misanthropic ideology and policy of fascism, fought against it and won. The moral and political unity of the Soviet people achieved by the party's efforts made it immune to the ideological sabotage of the Nazi occupiers.

58 History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945. Vol. 6, p. 100.

59 History of the Second World War of 1939-1945, vol. 12, p. 49; History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945, Vol. 6, p. 155.

60 Pravda, 17. VI. 1984.

page 15


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