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University of Alberta "The Biggest Calamity that Overshadowed All Other Calamities": Recruitment of Ukrainian "Eastern Workers" for the War Economy of the Third Reich, 1941-1944 by / ^.-.> S Taras Kurylo A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History and Classics Edmonton, Alberta Spring 2009 Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-55416-6 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-55416-6 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. •+• Canada Abstract The thesis examines the recruitment of "Eastern workers" in Ukraine from the last months of 1941, when it began, to the very end of the Nazi occupation in 1943-44. Chapter I approaches the recruitment as a process. It examines the bureaucratic mechanism of the recruitment of forced labor, its planning and execution on the local level as well as various regulations, ranging from registration and restriction of movement, which were supposed to limit the evasion of the labor duty and shipment of workers to Germany, to the all-out age- based draft in 1943. Chapter II explores the recruitment more as a part of the history of mentality. It analyzes the German propaganda campaign to entice volunteers or, in the latter period, to dissuade the evasion, as well as the Ukrainians' responses to the recruitment. And Chapter III examines the brutalization of the recruitment and the practices of popular evasion. The thesis demonstrates that the recruitment became the single most important event that turned the population against German rule. It became one of the chief factors leading to the growing perception of the Soviet regime by pre- 1939 Soviet Ukrainians as the "lesser evil." In the long run it led to popular identification with the Soviet regime and acceptance of its narrative of the war. It facilitated the overshadowing of earlier Soviet brutalities in collective memory. Acknowledgements The completion of this thesis would not have been possible without the help of various individuals and institutions. Drs. John-Paul Himka and Dennis Sweeney offered many valuable comments during my work on the thesis. I worked as a research-assistant to Dr. Himka during my trip to Ukraine in the fall of 2003, which provided me with funds to visit various Ukrainian archives. The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute granted me stipends to attend its 2004 and 2005 summer schools, which gave me the opportunity to study the rich archival and library collections at Widener Library of Harvard University pertinent to my research. The Department of History and Classics at the University of Alberta awarded me the Ivan Lysyak Rudnytsky Memorial Doctoral Fellowship for the » 2005-06 academic year, which covered my tuition fees and enabled another research trip to Ukraine. And what was of the crucial importance to me, Dr. Zenon E. Kohut, the director of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, offered me the employment at the Institute since the fall of 2002, which allowed me to meet my living expenses and pay tuition fees. I therefore extend my sincerest gratitude to the above-mentioned individuals and institutes. Table of Contents: Introduction 1 Chapter I: The Werbung Mechanism 22 Chapter II: "Like in the Old Days in Shanghai": German Propaganda and Popular Response to the Werbung 96 Chapter III: The Brutalization of the Werbung: Resistance, Avoidance and Accommodation 164 Epilogue and Conclusions 228 Bibliography 237 Introduction The Nazi use of foreign forced labor represents the biggest case of this kind since the ban on the intercontinental slave trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century. In August 1944, near the end of the war, there were officially over 7.6 million foreign laborers in Germany, representing about one-fourth of the total labor force —1.9 million POWs and 5.7 million civilian workers, half of whom (2.7 million) were Soviet citizens, Ostarbeiter - "Eastern workers" in the official Nazi discourse. Of this number, according to Alexander Dallin, Ukrainians constituted around three-quarters -2.2 million.1 The Ukrainian Ostarbeiter, like other eastern Slavs, found themselves on the next to lowest rank of the National-Socialist racial hierarchy, only higher than Jews, Gypsies and asocials, and they were treated worse than Western European POWs. The deportations for the forced labor in Germany became one of the most important episodes of the German occupation of Ukraine. The sheer scale and brutality of the deportation, together with the rough treatment of the forced laborers in "Greater Germany," epitomized Nazi rule in the popular perception. 1 I excluded from this number 78,000 residents of the Baltic states, who were not categorized as the Ostarbeiter. Ulrich Herbert, Hitler's Foreign Workers: Enforced Foreign Labor in Germany under the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1997), p. 1; Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia (1941-1945): A Study of Occupation Policies (Boulder, Co., 1981), p. 452 (table). 1 Dubbed Werbung ('recruitment') in the official discourse, it was one of the most important reasons for the growth of hostility towards the new rulers. The Germans' "recruitment" efforts graphically and continuously underlined the brutality of the Nazi occupation regime and the degraded status of Untermenschen (sub-humans), a racial category assigned to the "Eastern nations" in the "new Europe." In this thesis I will examine the Werbung campaign in Ukraine from the last months of 1941, when it began, to the very end of the Nazi occupation in 1943-44. Initially, it was characterized by a certain degree of voluntarity. The flow of volunteers decreased once information about the conditions of the lives of Ostarbeiter leaked to Ukraine. In late March 1942 the Nazis embarked on a program of coercive recruitment to meet the ever-increasing quotas. The forced recruitment lasted to the very end of the German occupation and affected almost everyone - someone from almost every family, was either deported to Germany or lived with the fear of being deported. It came to define people's everyday lives during the occupation. The Werbung became the only measure of the German authorities that brought about mass evasion and resistance for a protracted period of time, fostering the feeling of collective solidarity. Thus the Werbung became the single most important event turning the population against German rule. It became one of the chief factors leading to the growing perception of the Soviet regime by pre-193 9 Soviet Ukrainians as the "lesser evil." In the long run it led to popular identification with the Soviet regime and 2 acceptance of its narrative of the war. It facilitated the overshadowing of earlier Soviet brutalities in collective memory. Chapter I approaches the Werbung as a process. It examines the bureaucratic mechanism of the recruitment of forced labor, its planning and execution on the local level as well as various regulations, ranging from registration and restriction of movement, which were supposed to limit the evasion of the labor duty and shipment of workers to Germany, to the all-out age- based draft in 1943. The western part of the Soviet Union was the last territory seized by the Third Reich and therefore staffed by the 'worst of the worst' of the German bureaucracy. Despite being riddled with corruption, inefficiency, incompetence, institutional in-fighting, lack of knowledge of the Ukrainian or Russian languages, and a shortage of personnel, the German bureaucratic machinery proved its efficiency in those matters that it perceived as central to the Nazis' ideological tenets (the Holocaust) or the conduct of the war. The latter was the case with the Werbung after the appointment of Sauckel in March 1942. Chapter II explores the Werbung more as a part of the history of mentality. It analyzes the German propaganda campaign to entice volunteers or, in the latter period, to dissuade the evasion, as well as the Ukrainians' responses to the recruitment. At first, German propagandists achieved a certain success, but very soon their efforts were ridiculed. Rumors true and false became a main source of information, which originated from Ostarbeiter letters or stories recounted by sick returnees and were often exacerbated by the growing distrust of and antagonism towards the Nazi rulers.