German operation of the NKVD

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A German operation of the NKVD is an action to arrest and murder Germans and citizens of German descent from the Soviet Union by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) . The German operation was the first NKVD operation as part of the so-called " national operations " during the time of the Great Terror of 1937/38 in the Soviet Union . This wave of purges initially affected foreigners of German origin and political emigrants from Germany and Austria . It also affected German and Austrian citizens ( Reichsdeutsche ) and stateless persons (Germans without passports) who were staying in the USSR for various reasons . State repression measures were carried out on the basis of NKVD operational order No. 00439 of July 25, 1937. This secret order had the official title: "Operation to take repression measures against German nationals suspected of espionage against the USSR".

Basis for the repression measures

The “legal” basis for the persecution and conviction in the course of the “German Operation” was the notorious Article 58 of the RSFSR Criminal Code , which contained 14 paragraphs for the persecution of enemies of the Soviet power . In many cases, however, the conviction did not take place through “ordinary” courts of justice, but through so-called dwoikas or troikas , military tribunals , special commissions or the so-called special advice (OSO; Russian abbreviation for Ossoboe Sowestschanie ) of the NKVD, all of which were authorized extrajudicial Deliver judgments and impose administrative penalties ranging from banishment to the death penalty . The order, which was originally limited to the target group of Germans living abroad in the Soviet Union, was extended to Soviet Germans a little later ; The only decisive factor now was nationality . Strictly speaking, in the course of the action, a distinction must be made between a German operation in the narrower sense (against German citizens) and in the broader sense (against Germans in terms of nationality or ethnicity - Soviet Germans and people of German origin ). However, the transition from the first to the second phase was fluid. Like all national operations , the German operation was extended several times - from January 1938 to May, and from May to August 1, 1938.

With the decision of the Politburo of November 16, 1938, the activities of the “extrajudicial organs” were discontinued, whereby the “Great Purge” was officially declared over (at the same time as the “resignation” of Nikolai Yezhov as People's Commissar for Home Affairs ). In reality, until the end of 1938 , death sentences were still imposed on Germans in the special camps of the Gulag .

Extract from the NKVD order no.00439

"Through agency and specimens of late has been proven that the German General Staff and the Gestapo widely espionage and diversionary activities in the most important industrial companies, primarily in the defense industry organized, and to this end the nested there squad that German citizens are served. The agency, which consists of German citizens, has already carried out pest and diversion acts and focuses its main attention on the organization of diversion activities for the period of war and is preparing diversion cadres for this purpose. "

- From the NKVD order no.00439

Goals and target groups

The primary task of the German operation was to cleanse the armaments industry and the transport sector from politically "unreliable elements". Josef Stalin and the Soviet leadership anticipated an imminent war against Germany around 1937/38, which is why Germans in the Soviet Union were potentially viewed as the “ fifth column ” of Hitler's Germany and thus as internal enemies. (At the beginning of the war, this also served as a justification for the deportation of the Volga Germans and the dissolution of the Volga Germans ASSR .) Germans - as well as other citizens of potential enemy states - were viewed by the NKVD as disguised enemies and spies who crept into the country and attacked strategically important ones Business and administrative bodies have "nested". They continuously do their "pest activity " (Russian: Wreditelstwo ), which is why there would be economic mishaps and failures. The German operation should prevent their use in the event of war as spies, vermin, saboteurs and divers.

Accordingly, the state terror of this operation was initially directed against German and Austrian citizens who had moved to the Soviet Union for various reasons in the 1920s to the mid-1930s . At times there were around 15,000 German economic emigrants in the Soviet Union, the majority of which returned to the German Reich after the global economic crisis subsided in the mid-1930s. A smaller part stayed in the "homeland of the working people". (Since 1933 there was a renewed influx of emigrants due to the political persecution in Nazi Germany and from 1934 also in Austria.) Most of them were political emigrants of the KPD and KPÖ , functionaries or employees of the Comintern . At the beginning of 1936 there were about 4,600 in the entire country. In addition, there were a few thousand skilled workers who had previously been recruited in Germany as contract workers for the forced industrialization of the Soviet Union . Regardless of the fact that these were staunch communists and specialists who were benevolent or at least neutral towards the Soviet Union (above all miners , skilled workers , mechanical engineers , technicians , engineers , architects , doctors and scientists ), they were now subject to state repression . In addition to Germans, this also affected Austrians (e.g. former Schutzbündler ) - no major national difference was made (especially after the Anschluss of Austria in March 1938).

Although there is no mention of this in the text of NKVD Order No. 00439, during the course of the operation the clean-up operation was extended to the large domestic population group of the Russian- German national minority (Soviet citizens of German nationality) without a special order being issued. The expansion to all Germans in the Soviet Union fell within a year of a far greater number of people than the originally planned (limited) action against German citizens in the Soviet Union. This is explained by the size of the target groups affected. While the number of Germans abroad was estimated to be less than 10,000 in 1937, the Autonomous Socialist Soviet Republic of the Volga Germans (ASSRdWG) alone had almost 400,000 inhabitants of German nationality. In addition, there were residents of German settlement areas and colonies in the Ukraine , the Ural region and Western Siberia , who were also cleaned according to ethnic criteria in the course of the operation . This particularly affected their elites and leadership cadres from the party and state apparatus, the so-called nomenclature cadres , but also the religious communities of the Mennonites and Baptists , who had been firmly anchored in the Russian-German population since the time of Catherine II .

Course and balance

On July 20, 1937, Vyacheslav Molotov (then Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars ; i.e. head of government) and Nikolai Yezhov held a brief meeting in the Kremlin with Josef Stalin ( General Secretary of the CPSU ). The same group of people then met again in a Politburo meeting . In the course of this, Stalin proposed that the NKVD arrest all Germans who were active in the armaments and chemical industries. Jeschow was given the task of drafting the order for the German operation. Days after the meeting in the Kremlin, on July 25, 1937, the secret NKVD order No. 00439 was available. Alexander Gorkin, secretary of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee, later Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR , was called in as a representative of state authorities (the same person who was to be a co-signatory of the decree on the deportation of the population of the Republic of the Volga Germans in August 1941 ) .

The order of July 25 finally stated that the aforementioned group of people should be arrested in the entire defense industry and in the transport sector and that "particularly careful" investigations should be initiated by the military college of the Supreme Court or the Special Advisory Service (OSO) of the NKVD. The arrests were to take place by July 29, 1937. Shortly after the order was telegraphed to the subordinate NKVD services, the operation began on the evening of July 30th. The first arrests followed immediately. On August 6, 1937, Yezhov reported to Stalin that 19 “spy nests” had been excavated. At the end of August 1937, 472 German citizens were arrested, 130 of them in Moscow and the Moscow region . Some numbers of those arrested outside the capital: Leningrad and Leningrad Region - 79, Ukrainian SSR - 106, Azov Black Sea Region - 54, Sverdlovsk - 26, and in other areas of the USSR - 77. This first wave of arrests mainly affected the large ones urban centers such as Moscow and Leningrad, as the majority of Germans abroad stayed there. In addition, the clean-up operation also took place in important industrial areas of the USSR such as Donbass ( Ukraine ) and the Urals . Here, in the new centers of the Soviet mining and armaments industry that emerged in the 1930s , a large part of the German skilled workers were employed and thus declared potential spies, pests and divers.

The accused were mostly charged and convicted of counterrevolutionary (often also: Trotskyist , terrorist) activity (Section 58.1), espionage (Section 58.6), economic counterrevolution, pest activity or diversion (Section 58.7), sabotage (Section 58.14), and the formation of anti-Soviet activities Organizations (§ 58.11) - such as an allegedly existing Hitler Youth organization in Moscow - or simply because of anti-Soviet agitation (§ 58.10). Anti-Soviet Agitation (ASA) was particularly flexible and could be interpreted widely by state organs. The establishment of contact between Soviet citizens (including German exiles ) and foreign embassies was a special case of treason and espionage . This was all the more true after the NKVD order No. 00698 of October 28, 1937, the condemnation for connections to the embassies of Germany, Japan , Italy and Poland offered. It should be taken into account that such fictitious charges were in most cases constructed in accordance with the specifications ( quotas ) of the NKVD headquarters, combined in a variety of ways and not specified in more detail.

For the sake of simplicity, the NKVD also used so-called letter paragraphs, which, although they were not to be found in the Soviet penal code , were sufficient for a conviction by the "extrajudicial organs". Such letter paragraphs were, for example, ASA (anti-Soviet agitation), NSch (Russian abbreviation for unproven espionage) or TschS (i.e. family member). The latter was applied to family members of the accused in the form of kin liability . For the “proper” criminal prosecution of family members of the “ enemies of the people ” and “traitors of the fatherland”, however, there was already a corresponding passage in Article 58 from July 20, 1934 (§ 58.1c). As a result of all this, not only the accused got caught in the maelstrom of the wave of cleansing of the German operation, but also their spouses, children, relatives and even distant acquaintances. During the investigation, collective and contact guilt (i.e. knowledge and participation) was assumed; and that was sufficient to impose draconian sentences up to and including execution. A particularly dark chapter in the course of the operation are the hundreds of cases of expulsion is of German Hitler opponents to Nazi Germany. According to the German Embassy in Moscow about 620 German from the USSR were recognized in the period 1937-1938. The people who were arrested by the NKVD and sentenced to deportation were caught by the Gestapo and sent to German concentration camps . A prime example of this is the fate of Margarete Buber-Neumann .

The scope of the mass arrests of German Communists illustrates a highly confidential report of the KPD - functionary Paul Jäkel (1890-1943) to the Central Committee in 1938. the KPD on 29 April the report:

“By April 1938, 842 arrested Germans were reported to the German representation at the EKKI . But these are only those arrested who are registered with the German representation at the EKKI. The real number of Germans arrested is of course higher. From October 1937 to the end of March 1938 the number of those arrested was 470. In March 1938 alone, around 100 were arrested. On March 9, 1938, 13 political emigrants were arrested from the political émigré hostel in Moscow, on March 11, 17, and on March 12, 12 political émigrés were arrested. On March 23, the last four male political emigrants [PE] from the PE home were arrested. [...] In the provinces, for example in Engels , not a single German comrade is left free. In Leningrad the group of German party comrades at the beginning of 1937 amounted to around 103 comrades, in February 1938 there were only 12 comrades. [...] One can say that over 70% of the members of the KPD have been arrested. If the arrests continue on the same scale as in March, there will not be a single German party member left in three months. Of the 847 arrested, 8 comrades were released from custody. "

A separate balance sheet for the first phase (against German foreigners) of the German operation for all regions of the USSR will be difficult to produce, since it flowed over into the second phase. The casualty figures for the entire German operation are the second highest of all national NKVD operations after the “ Polish Operation ”. The rate of repression in this group has been very high, which is evident from the large number of death sentences, prison sentences and exile.

Balance sheet of the German operation after its completion in 1938:

  • 55,005 convictions
  • 41,898 shootings
  • 13,107 sentences between five and ten years (i.e. forced labor in the Gulag)

Some known victims

Here are just a few well-known names as representative of the number of thousands of victims. More extensive but still incomplete lists of German victims can be found in Hedeler / Münz-Koenen and Plener / Mussienko. The latter publication names 567 names of Germans or people of German origin in the Soviet Union who were shot, sentenced to camp detention or deported. Another source is the directory The Victims of the German Operation of the Moscow Territorial Administration of the NKVD in the book by Alexander Vatlin, which lists over 700 victims in Moscow and the Moscow region. The names and details of the people from this directory have been revised and supplemented by Wilhelm Mensing . Most of the victims were executed either in Moscow's Donskoy cemetery , in Butowo or in Levaschowo near Leningrad .

  • Alfred Abramowski (1913–1949)
  • Fritz Abramowski (1887–1938)
  • Kurt Ahrend (1908–1938)
  • Fritz Beek (1900-1942)
  • Otto Beil (1895–1937)
  • Erich Birkenhauer (1903–1941)
  • Adolf Boss (1903-1942)
  • Gertrud Braun (1907–1976)
  • Wolf Bronner (1876-1939)
  • Margarete Buber-Neumann (1901–1989)
  • Helmut Damerius (1905–1985)
  • Berta Daniel (1896–1981)
  • Richard Daniel (1891-1942)
  • Hans Walter David (1893–1942)
  • Paul Dietrich (1889–1937)
  • Walter Dittbender (1891–1939)
  • Walter Domke (1901–1938)
  • Hans Drach (1914–1941)
  • Wolfgang Duncker (1909–1942)
  • Ludwig Ebner (1894–?)
  • Christian Endter (1891–?)
  • Waldemar Faber (1891-1938)
  • Anna Fehler (1905-1959)
  • Leo Flieg (1893–1939)
  • Leo Friedlaender (1895–1937)
  • Max Fuchs (1904–1937)
  • Samuel Glesel (1910-1937)
  • Marta Globig (1901–1991)
  • Artur Golke (1886–1938)
  • Alexander Granach (1890–1945)
  • Martin Grothe (1896–1937)
  • Franziska Günther (1900–1986)
  • Johannes Günther (1899–1937)
  • Walter Haenisch (1906–1938)
  • Karl Hager (1882–1957)
  • Paul Hager (1912-1942)
  • Felix Halle (1884–1937)
  • Otto Handwerg (1905–1937)
  • Willy Harzheim (1904–1937)
  • Marie Hasselbring (1906–1988)
  • Hans Hauska (1901–1965)
  • Hans Hausladen (1901–1938)
  • Hans Hellmann (1903-1938)
  • Frieda Holland (1893–1980)
  • Robert Holland (1916–1966)
  • Willy Holland (1918–?)
  • Artur Huebner (1899–1962)
  • Hans Kippenberger (1898–1937)
  • Hans Knodt (1900–?)
  • Wilhelm Knorin (1890–1938)
  • Bernard Koenen (1889–1964)
  • Paul Koschwitz (1903-1938)
  • Hugo Kruppa (1899–1984)
  • Willi Kühne (1909–1938)
  • Heinrich Kurella (1905–1937)
  • Willy Leow (1887–1937)
  • Max Levien (1885-1937)
  • James Lewin (1887-1937)
  • Kurt Liebknecht (1905–1994)
  • Max Maddalena jun. (1917-1942); Son of Max Maddalena senior (1895–1943)
  • Erwin Marcusson (1899–1976)
  • Kurt Meyer (1888-1944); Husband of Gertrud Meyer (1898–1975)
  • Hermann Möller (1902–?)
  • Otto Möller (1887–?)
  • Heinrich Most (1904–1938)
  • Rudolf Mühlberg (1898–?)
  • Zenzl Mühsam (1884–1962)
  • August Müller (1880–?)
  • Heinz Neumann (1902–1937)
  • Karl Oefelein (1909–1938)
  • Max Pfeiffer (1896–?)
  • Louis Rautenberg (1901–1981)
  • Horst Reiter (1915–1938)
  • Walter Reiter (1914–1938)
  • Hermann Remmele (1880–1939) and family members
  • Ewald Ripperger (1902–1938)
  • Paul Ritzmann (1901–1981)
  • Alfred Rohde (1899–1937)
  • Walter Rosenke (1902–1966)
  • Martha Ruben-Wolf (1887–1939)
  • Otto Sannek (1894–1937)
  • Fritz Sauer (1904–1938) and family members
  • Kurt Sauerland (1905–1938)
  • Paul Schäfer (1894–1938)
  • Bruno Schmidtsdorf (1908–1938)
  • Karl Schmückle (1898–1938)
  • Oswald Schneidratus (1881–1937) and his son Werner Schneidratus (1908–2001)
  • Paul Scholze (1886–1938)
  • Paul Schreier (1880-1937)
  • Arno Schrickel (1909–1938)
  • Fritz Schulte-Schweitzer (1890–1943)
  • Nikolaus Seeholzer (1908–1938)
  • Joseph Selbiger (1910–1941)
  • Rudolf Senglaub (1911–1938)
  • Horst Seydewitz (1915-1997); Son of Max Seydewitz (1892–1987)
  • Frieda Siebeneicher (1908–2000)
  • Hertmann Siebler (1901–1994)
  • Gustav Sobottka jun. (1915-1940); Son of Gustav Sobottka sen. (1886-1953)
  • Josef Stromtschinski (1889–1938)
  • Heinrich Süßkind (1895–1937)
  • Anna Tieke (1898–1938) and family members
  • Otto Unger (1893–1938)
  • Ernst Weißenberg (1912–?)
  • Lothar Wolf (1882–1938)
  • Walter Zobel (1896–1937)

See also

literature

Web links

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

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 212.
  2. ↑ ochotin; Roginsky: 2000/2001
  3. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 243 f.
  4. ↑ On grounds for arrest under Article 58 see In the Fangs of the NKVD: German Victims of the Stalinist Terror in the USSR , p. 14.
  5. ↑ On the convicting organs see In the Fangs des NKVD: German victims of the Stalinist terror in the USSR , p. 14 f.
  6. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 212.
  7. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 212.
  8. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 213.
  9. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 221.
  10. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 244.
  11. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 8.
  12. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 220 ff.
  13. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 212.
  14. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 9.
  15. ↑ "The Great Terror": 1937–1938. Short chronicle. In: Memorial Russia website, Krasnoyarsk region. Retrieved February 9, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 225.
  17. ↑ Plener; Mussienko (Ed.): 2006, p. 147 ff.
  18. ↑ See list of abbreviations in Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The GULAG Archipelago. Vol. 3, 1990, ISBN 3-499-14198-1 , p. 546 ff.
  19. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 244.
  20. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, p. 195 f.
  21. ↑ Schlögel: Terror and Dream. P. 637; McLoughlin: Destruction of the stranger. P. 97; Werth: Mechanism of Mass Crime. P. 232.
  22. ↑ Hedeler; Münz-Koenen (Ed.): 2013, pp. 222–242.
  23. ↑ Plener; Mussienko (Ed.): 2006, pp. 18–143.
  24. ↑ Vatlin: 2013, pp. 299–327.
  25. ^ Wilhelm Mensing: The victims of the German operation of the Moscow regional administration of the NKVD, directory from Alexander Vatlin, "Was für ein Teufelspack", Berlin 2013, edited and supplemented version. In: Website: NKVD and Gestapo. Retrieved February 6, 2016 .
  26. ↑ Ewald Ripperger (Москва, ул. Орджоникидзе, дом 5, корпус 3). In: Мемориальный проект «Последний адрес» (project “ Last Address ”). Retrieved November 1, 2016 (Russian).
  27. ↑ Short biography Schneidratus, Oswald in: Institute for the History of the Labor Movement (ed.): In the Fangs of the NKVD: German Victims of the Stalinist Terror in the USSR . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-320-01632-6 , p. 207.
  28. ↑ Short biography of Schneidratus, Werner in: Institute for the History of the Labor Movement (Ed.): In the Fangs of the NKVD: German victims of the Stalinist terror in the USSR . Dietz Verlag, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-320-01632-6 , p. 208.