Ukrainian Labourers in Nazi Germany, 1939-45 by Stephen C. Telka, B.A. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario, Canada September 2008 ©2008, Stephen C. 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Canada Abstract This study focuses on the experience of ethnic Ukrainian labourers deployed to Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and argues that the Ukrainian case speaks to the flexibility and limits of racial policy, given the realities of waging war and sustaining the war effort. The purpose is to demonstrate the unique situation of Ukrainians, and attempt to untangle the confusing regulations and statuses of an ethnic group who found their treatment in the Reich not based on ethnicity like most other groups, but rather on their citizenship, largely Polish and Soviet. It traces the German use of labourers from Eastern Europe and Nazi Rassenkunde (racial science) to the German experience during the First World War, showing historical precedents to their deployment. n Acknowledgements I would like to thank the many people whose various contributions over the last year have made the writing of this thesis possible. Firstly, I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Jeff Sahadeo for his time and patience. Over the past year, and especially during the past summer, he has spent innumerable hours editing, guiding, advising, encouraging, and motivating, for which I am greatly appreciative. I would also like to thank my examiners Drs. Jennifer Evans and James Casteel. Dr. Evans support was especially appreciated during the final weeks of writing, as I frantically pulled this paper together. I thank the Canadian Institute for Ukrainian Studies at the University of Alberta for granting me the generous Marusia and Michael Dorosh Master's Fellowship, the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko and the State of Baden- Wurttemberg for their financial support with language training in Ukraine and Germany, as well Carleton University's Institute for European, Russian & Eurasian Studies and Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research for their various grants and scholarships that helped make my ambitious research and language training plans reality. To my friends Cecile Moroni and Eti Antonova, in Mannheim, Germany, where this paper came together during a year-long exchange, thank you for spontaneity, creativity, and much-needed coffee and Mensa breaks. To my friends who supported me from afar in Geneva, London, Ottawa and Toronto, thank you for your kind words and thoughts as I saw this project through to end. To Marco Szczesniak, thank you for your unfaltering patience, understanding, all-around support and love. And lastly, to my family, thank you for your unending encouragement, love and support, without which this entire project would not have been possible. I dedicate this paper to my grandparents Stephanie and Elias Makuch, and Rosalie and Fedir Telka for their perseverance and courage in surviving life in Nazi Germany as Ukrainian forced labourers in order to start their lives anew in North America. m Table of Contents Acknowledgements page iii Introduction 1 1. The Background and Foundation of Ukrainian Labour in Germany 19 2. The Twisted Route to Labour Deployment 48 3. The Ukrainian Everyday in Nazi Germany 79 Conclusion 139 Bibliography 144 IV 1 Introduction The Second World War was a war of unprecedented scale and scope. Some of the greatest cities of the western and eastern worlds were reduced to rubble. Millions of lives were obliterated, subjected to violent battle tactics and perverted theories of cultural superiority and racial supremacy. Not only were political boundaries redrawn, and the balance of world power irrevocably altered, the war changed the lives of millions of individuals the world over. Millions perished, and countless others were left without food, shelter and family. At the heart of the eastern European theatre of conflict were the territories inhabited by ethnic Ukrainians, divided largely between the Soviet Union and Poland at the outbreak of war in 1939. By the time the Germans commenced their eastern campaign 'Operation Barbarossa' with the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, the Polish Ukrainian territory of Eastern Galicia had been incorporated into the Soviet Union. Ukraine was thereby (briefly) unified and incorporated into the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin. Nazi Germans infiltrated the cities, towns and villages of Eastern Galicia and Soviet Ukraine, exposing German soldiers and occupation officials to a regime that their government posited as Germany's antithesis. And in a unique process in modern history, Ukrainians were in turn introduced to the heartland of their declared enemies with the commencement of a massive migration scheme that sent over 2.4 million Ukrainians to labour in the German Reich. Ukrainians were transferred from one totalitarian regime to 1 Gelinda Grinchenko, "Oral Histories of Former Ukrainian Ostarbeiter: Preliminary Results of Analysis," (Toiling for the Reich: Life Stories of Former Forced and Slave Laborers under Nazi Rule, 1939-1945, forthcoming 2008), 194. The term German Reich or Third Reich refers to the territory of Germany and period of German history under the rule of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists, between 1933 and 1945. Hitler posited his rule as the third of three great periods in German history, preceded by the Holy Roman Empire as the First Reich and the 1871-1918 monarchy as the Second. 2 another, opening their eyes to the greater European continent and twentieth century modernity while challenging their conceptions of culture, society and identity. These uprooted Ukrainians were forced to navigate a confusing sea of allegiances and concerns, balancing loyalties to family, nation and political system. Whereas for some the initial transfer was voluntary, with Ukrainians registering eagerly for a chance to escape the effects of the conflict and Soviet rule, for most it was done against their will, a forced exile from family, friends and their homeland. In 1945, the process repeated itself as the Allied victors dealt with the millions of Europeans displaced by the war. The end of the conflict inaugurated a period of further deportations and migrations, both east and west, as Ukrainians attempted to make sense of their status in postbellum Europe. This study focuses on the experience of ethnic Ukrainian labourers deployed to Nazi Germany during the Second World War, and argues that the Ukrainian case speaks to the flexibility and limits of racial policy, given the realities of waging war and sustaining the war effort. Race was not the final determinant in shaping the fate and experience of Ukrainian labourers. My goal is to demonstrate the unique situation of Ukrainians, and attempt to untangle the confusing regulations and statuses of an ethnic group who found their treatment in the Reich not based on ethnicity like most other groups, but rather on their citizenship, largely Polish and Soviet. This study places the treatment of ethnic Ukrainians in the Reich within the greater context of German colonial plans in Eastern Europe, which were influenced by imperialist and expansionist social- Darwinist thinking adopted by the Nazi regime. It traces the German use of labourers from Eastern Europe and Nazi Rassenkunde (racial science) to the German experience during the First World War, showing historical precedents to their deployment. 3 The Reichseinsatz, the labour program that found Ukrainians and other foreigners toiling on the farms and in the factories of the Third Reich, was the most import instance of forced labour by foreign workers outside their home country in the twentieth century. The program was a critical aspect of the German war effort, which by autumn 1940 the Germans had become heavily and irreversibly dependent on.2 By the end of the war, foreigners made up half of all agricultural workers, half of all munitions employees, and one third of the workforce in metal, chemical, construction and mining industries.3 Every fourth tank and plane, for example, was built by a foreigner.