NKVD command no.00439

The NKVD order No. 00439 of July 25, 1937 formed the basis for the initiation of the German operation of the NKVD in the period from July 1937 to August 1938. The official name of the order was “Operation to take repression measures against German nationals, which the Espionage against the USSR are suspected ”. The secret order was issued by NKVD boss Nikolai Jeschow at the behest of Josef Stalin in close coordination with the Politburo of the WKP (B) . It was triggered on July 30, 1937 and suspended on August 1, 1938. This political as well as ethnic cleansing operation was the first in a series of so-called " national operations " of the NKVD in the context of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union and was directed first against German and Austrian citizens and, later, against the national minority of Germans in the Soviet Union ( Russian-German ). Of the 55,005 people convicted under this order, 41,898 were shot dead and 13,107 were sentenced to between five and ten years in prison.

Web links

Wikisource: NKVD Order No. 00439  - Sources and Full Texts (Russian)

• http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/DOKUMENT/USSR/370725.htm : Operational Order of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics No. 00439 (Russian)
• http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/deu/Dokument/Dok/370725.htm : Operative Order No. 00439 of the People's Commissar for Internal Affairs of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (German translation)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.memorial.krsk.ru/deu/Dokument/Dok/370725.htm ; Wording of the NKVD order No. 00439 based on a photocopy from the archive of the FSB administration in St. Petersburg (German translation)
2. ↑ Karl Schlögel : Terror and Dream. P. 637; Barry McLoughlin : Destruction of the Stranger. P. 97; Nicolas Werth : Mechanism of Mass Crime. P. 232.