投稿類別:史地類 篇名: the Nazi Holocaust on Slavs 作者: 高藝展
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投稿類別:史地類 篇名: The Nazi Holocaust on Slavs 作者: 高藝展。國立臺灣師範大學附屬高級中學。高二 1472 班。 指導老師: 楊慧媛老師 The Nazi Holocaust on Slavs Table of Contents I. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 II. Thesis ...................................................................................................................................... 1 A. The Cause: Nazi Aryan Racial Ideology ............................................................................... 1 B. The Elimination: Operation Barbarossa ................................................................................ 2 C. Internal Cause: USSR Legislations and Camps ...................................................................... 3 1. Order No. 227 - The "No One Step Back!" Order ........................................................... 3 2. Gulags - Starvation Sites on the Motherland .................................................................. 4 D. Brutal German Starvation Campaigns ................................................................................... 4 E. German POW Camps for Slavs ............................................................................................ 4 1. Deadly Transportation – Dulags ................................................................................... 4 2. Brutal Camps – Stalags ............................................................................................... 5 F. German Civilian Starvation Program .................................................................................... 6 III. Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 7 IV. References ................................................................................................................................ 7 i The Nazi Holocaust on Slavs I. Introduction Current Nazi Holocaust research and documentaries focused on the Jews. Upon reading documentaries about Operation Barbarossa1, a surprising discovery was made - there might have been more Slavs killed by the German Army than the Jews. These crimes went unnoticed. Google search results for "Nazi Holocaust on Jews" showed 61.6 million hits. Only 331 thousand Google search results were found for "Nazi Holocaust on Slavs"(estimated till March 7th, 2018). This obvious disparity caught my eye, so I decided to dig deep into the truth. In the initial stages of research, the USSR (former Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic or the Soviet Union) was also found to be one of the major criminals. Joseph Stalin, one of its best- known tyrants in history, starved its own citizens. Since the cold war started, this case was quickly forgotten by their government. There were no official record or relevant statistics. We could only trace those brutal days through victims' diaries, or researches of war crimes cases, such as the Nuremberg trials, done by western countries. Another reason for this significant difference is that most of the Nazi massacre on Slavs were unregistered, and were often considered as a part of the battle. We often consider the Jews as the major victims of the Nazi Holocaust, but this is according to official records. The Holocaust on Slavs is a completely different case. Most of the killings were unregistered or executed without witnesses. But the USSR, under the Joseph Stalin regime, also used starvation as a policy, such policies will be mentioned in the following clauses. This article is going to discuss what political factors were on both Germany and the USSR, and also how the Slavs suffered in those camps. II. Thesis A. The Cause: Nazi Aryan Racial Ideology The Nazi was perhaps the greatest believer on Social Darwinist and was also the only one that put it into practice, and even national law. Hitler blamed the loss of World War I not on the war tactics used by the German Empire, which was led by Kaiser Wilhelm II, 1 Operation Barbarossa was the codename of Germany's USSR invasion plan, this was named after the Holy Roman Empire Emperor Frederick I, or Frederick Barbarossa, who led the Third Crusade 1 The Nazi Holocaust on Slavs but on the Communists and the Jews, whom he declared turned the German society into chaos. Not only Hitler but also a large portion of German citizens thought the same. Hitler greatly used the hatred of Germans to gradually lead to his total power. After Hitler established the Third Reich, he was thrilled to start the extermination campaigns on Jews and communists. But Hitler has greater concerns, as Germany had become far weaker than she was before World War I, she had to maintain peace with other great European powers that was ruled by governments with appeasement diplomatic policies. This led to the great success of the Blitzkrieg on Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and Western Europe. Hitler before would like to purge his remaining enemy on the West Front, Great Britain, but he failed, under the persisting and encouraging government led by a former World War I hero Sir Winston Churchill. He then turned the Nazi War machine on the USSR, one of his greatest mortal enemies. This "Enemy" wasn't just a matter of purification of human species, but also an obstacle standing between Germans and their "living space" His plan was to wipe out all Slavs and replace their territory with Germans, whom he so-called Aryans. So Germany's assault on Russia was not like any ordinary war. It was the war of elimination—eradicating lower races to purify the human species. B. The Elimination: Operation Barbarossa After Operation Barbarossa started on May 22nd, 1941, the Luftwaffe2 stormed the naval bases and the airfields of the USSR and destroyed a quarter of USSR naval and air force. Before the Soviet Army could react to the ambush on the 3000-mile Molotov- Ribbentrop Line3, the German Army had occupied what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic States. Under the extreme Nazi racial discrimination policy, the Slavs were recognized as "subhuman." To the Nazis, the Soviet campaign was no ordinary war, but a war of German "Aryans" versus" subhuman" Slavs and Jews. German pushed into the great Russian Wilderness and starved people in the major cities such as Kharkov, Leningrad, and Kiev. The Nazis also mistreated the Soviet POWs (prisoners of war). Figure 1 shows the major Soviet POW camps established in the occupied Soviet territory. Prisoners in those camps could barely get any food, the Soviet soldiers thought the Germans were teaching them to be like comrades, but the Germans wanted them to starve to death. Those who survived the camps were fortunate. 2 Luftwaffe is the German Air Force; the name is still being used today 3 Border between Germany and the USSR according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact issued by the Soviet Union and Germany after Poland's defeat 2 The Nazi Holocaust on Slavs Picture 1. Major German Starvation Camps on USSR Territory (Snyder, T. (2010), Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin(p.171), New York: Basic Books) C. Internal Cause: USSR Legislations and Camps 1. Order No. 227 - The "No One Step Back!" Order Order No. 227 by the People’s Commissar of the USSR4, issued by Joseph Stalin in 1942, was the main cause of the rising rate of Slav POWs. Stalin(1942) declared in the order that, "Some stupid people at the front calm themselves with talk that we can retreat further to the east, as we have a lot of territory, a lot of ground, a lot of population and that there will always be much bread for us. They want to justify the infamous behaviour at the front. But such talk is a falsehood, helpful only to our enemies." In fact, that is not a falsehood at all. As Operation Barbarossa started, the German Luftwaffe stormed military facilities in Eastern Europe. With nearly 25% of naval and air forces of the USSR destroyed, they could barely combat with the mighty German Panzer and Luftwaffe. The USSR luckily had the harsh climate and the vast land as the greatest defender during the war. Instead of utilizing them, Joseph Stalin decided to take action, which is the same action the Russian Empire took in World War I, sending a massive amount of troops to outnumber the enemy. According to the last clauses of the order, defensive squads were even placed behind the unstable units, or units that might retreat. If they ever were to retreat, the defensive squad would kill them all. As for the generals who ordered the retreat, the Soviet government had them jailed, executed or exiled to the vast wilderness of Siberia. Under those circumstances, the order to retreat was unfeasible. The Soviet commanders eventually stopped ordering retreats, which led to more captivations by the dreadful Nazi army. 4 the highest government authority of executive power in the USSR, the chairman of the council was eventually the head of government 3 The Nazi Holocaust on Slavs 2. Gulags5 - Starvation Sites on the Motherland The USSR had starved her citizens since the establishment of the nation. The major campaigns, like the Nazis, were in camps. Such camps in the USSR were called "Gulags". After Vladimir Lenin passed away, Joseph Stalin was nominated as the General Secretary, or the leader, after a bloody coup against Leon Trotsky. In order to get rid of his political enemies, he established camps called Gulags. At first, the camps were in small scales, only for Stalin's political enemies. Later, Soviet authorities, found the camp useful for controlling her citizens, so