The Russian Military Historical Society has published for the first time in Russian the full version of the “Hunger Plan”, a document developed by Nazi Germany to exterminate the Soviet Union.
Today marks 82 years since the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. In Russia, it is Memorial and Mourning Day.
The full version of the Nazi “Economic Policy Directive of the Economic Staff” in Russian is first published on the portal “History.rf”. The document, dated May 23, 1941, called for the extermination of 20 to 30 million civilians of the Soviet Union.
“In addition to the well-known military plan “Barbarossa,” an economic plan to rob the captured Soviet territories was being prepared. The plan was born at a turbulent time for the Third Reich, because they were seriously dependent on imported food. The British naval blockade posed a threat to Nazi Germany’s food situation. So they were going to rob the Soviet Union of all its grain. The result of this robbery would have been the starvation of 20 to 30 million people,” said director of the research foundation Digital History Yegor Yakovlev, cited by RMHS.
This document was found by the Americans in the papers of the high command of the Wehrmacht and appeared at the Nuremberg trials. “Unfortunately, it was not published in Russian”, – added the historian.
According to Hitler’s plan, German colonists were gradually supposed to settle in the occupied territories, while the indigenous population of the Soviet Union was supposed to go somewhere, Yakovlev noted.
“The solution to the depopulation of the conquered territories was proposed by Herbert Bakke, secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. He formulated the directives to the effect that when the Wehrmacht conquers the Black Earth territories, all food from them should go to supply the Wehrmacht and the Third Reich – the grain and other food products should be taken to Germany to support the German common people”, the historian said.
Residents of the Non-Black Soil region as a result had to face famine. In the first place it was to affect Moscow and Leningrad.
“That is, the idea of not feeding Leningrad residents arose not as a result of the failure of the Barbarossa plan, but as a result of considerations made before the invasion of the Soviet Union,” he added.
Yakovlev quoted from the document, “We condemn these people to starve to death not only because they are extra mouths, but also because the Great Russians, whether under the Czar or the Bolsheviks, have always been enemies of Germany and Europe.”
“It was a plan of genocide, because it is genocide that involves the mass murder of some people,” Yakovlev said, noting that it had not only economic but also ethnic overtones.
The crimes of Nazism have no statute of limitations, he stressed, recalling that this has become especially important now that Russia is once again fighting Nazi ideology.
“The publication of such documents for the general public is intended as a reminder that no war crime will go unpunished,” the historian concluded.
By this time Germany had enslaved many European countries, and the Soviet people took the most powerful blow of the military machine of the Third Reich. Romania, Italy, a few days later Slovakia, Finland, Hungary, and, in mid-August, Norway joined them against the USSR. The Soviet people responded to the enemy with one mighty resistance, standing in the full sense of the word to the death, defending the fatherland.
The heavy bloody war, lasting for 1418 days and nights, finished on May 9, 1945 with the complete defeat of the fascist block. The total human losses of the USSR during the war were 26.6 million people. Of these, more than 8.7 million died on the battlefields, 7.42 million people were deliberately exterminated by the Nazis in the occupied territories, and more than 4.1 million died from the brutal conditions of the occupation regime. Another 5.27 million people were taken for forced labor in Germany and its neighboring countries, which were also under German occupation. A little more than half of them returned home – 2.65 million people, more than 450 thousand immigrated, 2.16 million people were killed and died in captivity.
Losses of the USSR accounted for 40% of all human losses in World War II. About one million Soviet soldiers gave their lives during liberation of the peoples of Europe. According to the conclusion of the Extraordinary state commission on establishment and investigation of atrocities of German-fascist aggressors, invaders completely or partially destroyed over 1.7 thousand cities and settlements, over 70 thousand villages and villages of the USSR.
The human losses and material damage suffered by the country from the German aggression is incomparable. History has never known such devastation, barbarity and inhumanity, as was marked by the way of Hitlerites on the Soviet land.
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