Green folder

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The so-called Green Folder was drawn up on the instructions of the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan , Field Marshal General Hermann Göring , in connection with the preparations for the military attack on the Soviet Union by the Economic Management Staff East (WiFüStabOst; code name "Stab Oldenburg") in the office of Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan . The guidelines contained therein came into force on June 16, 1941. The official title of the publication was: "Guidelines for the Management of the Economy (Green Map), Part I, Tasks and Organization of the Economy" (nickname: "Green Donkey"). Part II appeared later. Both parts were published several times and were widely used.

In addition to the green folder, there was a “red folder” of the economic armaments office of the OKW , a “yellow folder” of the WiFüStabOst for the agricultural leaders, a “blue folder” as a collection of materials for the economic staff east and a “ brown folder ” for the Reich commissioners and authorities of the Civil administration by the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO) was developed.

Planning

Corresponding to the importance accorded to the conquest of the Soviet Union in the Nazi plans for German supremacy on the European continent and the achievement of a position as a world power, the formation of an apparatus for the exploitation of the economic potential of the Soviets to be conquered took place in the summer of 1940 Areas have been started. In the spring of 1941, under the direction of Göring, the WiFStab Ost, the Wirtschaftsstab Ost (WiStab Ost) and the staff of Alfred Rosenberg , the representative for the central processing of the "Questions of Eastern Europe", directly elaborated "Guideline for the management of the economy in the newly occupied eastern areas ”(“ Green Map ”) was available to the WiFüStab Ost in a first draft version on May 2, 1941.

Decisive parts of the apparatus for the plunder and colonization of the Soviet Union were the economic management staff in the east, the economic staff z. b. V. Oldenburg ( Oldenburg Plan ) and the so-called Eastern Companies . In early January 1941, the Defense Management Office (Armament Office) of the High Command , later, for economic staff of the Task Force for Russia. b. V. Oldenburg, who was supposed to process the existing information about the Soviet economic potential.

In March 1941 it was decided to transfer the management of the organization to the WiFStab Ost, headed by Göring and Deputy State Secretary Paul Körner (Office of the Commissioner for the Four-Year Plan) and State Secretary Herbert Backe from the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture , State Secretary Hermann von Hanneken from the Reich Ministry of Economics , State Secretary Friedrich Alpers from the Reich Forestry Office , Robert Ley from the German Labor Front and General Georg Thomas . The practical work of the economic administration on the territory was carried out by the Economic Armaments Office under General Thomas, who was subordinate to an extensive military Wehrmacht organization, the Economic Staff East, under Lieutenant General Wilhelm Schubert .

On May 2, 1941, in a meeting between General Georg Thomas and the State Secretaries, Göring's four-year planning authority wrote a first memorandum in which the planned measures to exploit the areas for the war economy were forecast to starve "tens of millions of people" . The considerations and instructions contained in these minutes of the meeting culminated on May 23, 1941 in the “Economic Policy Guidelines” of the Agriculture Group within the four-year plan authority and finally on June 1, 1941 in the so-called “Green Folder”. The three documents together serve as the basis of a hunger plan to decimate the Soviet population by up to 30 million people.

Concretizations

By the beginning of June 1941, the first draft of the "Green Folder" was revised according to the guidelines of the May 2nd meeting. The “Green Folder” and the “Economic Policy Guidelines for Economic Organization East, Agriculture Group” of May 23, 1941 gave a picture of the economic planning. In the section “The main economic tasks” it said in the “Green Portfolio”: “I. According to the orders given by the Fiihrer, all measures are to be taken that are necessary to bring about the immediate and maximum possible exploitation of the occupied territories in favor of Germany. On the other hand, all measures are to be omitted or postponed that could endanger this goal. II. The areas to be newly occupied must primarily be used in the areas of the food and mineral oil industries. The main economic objective of the campaign is to gain as much food and mineral oil as possible for Germany. The parts of the “Green Folder” relating to the food industry (according to the long-time scientific director at the Military History Research Office , Hans-Erich Volkmann ) were mainly worked out by the Secretary of State for Food Herbert Backe and his ministerial director Hans-Joachim Riecke .

For the "third and possibly further year of the war" the Wehrmacht was to be supplied from the occupied area and Germany to be supplied with food and raw materials. The European parts of the USSR were to be reduced to colony status . It was intended to hermetically seal off the northern areas of the USSR, an agricultural subsidy area, from the southern agricultural surplus areas. "This inevitably leads to the death of both industry and a large part of the people in the previous subsidy areas," was stated with brutal frankness in the documents of May 23, 1941. The “Green Portfolio” differed gradually from these Backes guidelines in that, on the one hand , it wanted the Soviet population to do more forced labor and, on the other hand, it expressed a greater appreciation of industry and its possibilities of exploitation, which was also reflected in the intention "Not to forego the use of the industrial capacities of the north, for example Leningrad, under all circumstances". Overall, however, the Soviet industry, which was unusable for German purposes, had to die off or, as the guidelines of the “Green Map” say: “Only those areas are economically promoted [...] in which significant food and mineral oil reserves are developed for us can."

Grain, livestock, oil and fiber crops were to be requisitioned from the northern areas. It was also intended to transfer the Soviet White Sea fishing fleet to occupied Norway and use it for Germany. For the southern regions of the USSR, including the Baku oil field , the principle applied was to replace the missing “overseas imports with imports from the east”. It was planned to use colonial methods in a kind of plantation economy to operate agriculture and raw material extraction in industry. By a special order of June 29, 1941, Adolf Hitler gave Göring extraordinary powers to manage the apparatus for the plunder and colonization of the USSR.

Legal processing

In the Nuremberg trials , Hermann Göring's responsibility for creating the Green Folder was condemned as a criminal offense in preparation for and carrying out the looting or forced labor as a war crime. Goering's decision recorded there to divert food from the occupied eastern territories for the purposes of the Wehrmacht and the German population, which meant the starvation of millions of people in the occupied territories, was explicitly named as one of the reasons for the death sentence against Goering.

literature

  • Dietrich Eichholtz : History of the German War Economy 1939-1945 . Volume 1. (= reprint of the Berlin edition, Akademie-Verlag, 1969–1996, supplemented by a foreword and general register) KG Saur Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11428-1 .
  • Barbarossa case. Documents for the preparation of the fascist Wehrmacht for the aggression against the Soviet Union (1940/41) . Selected u. initiated v. Erhard Moritz. Military Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic , Berlin 1970, pp. 363–399 (there complete printing of the guidelines for the management of the economy in the newly occupied eastern regions (Green Map), Part I: Tasks and Organization of the Economy. Berlin, June 1941).
  • Rolf-Dieter Müller (ed.): German economic policy in the occupied Soviet territories 1941–1945 . The final report of the East Economic Staff and notes from a member of the Kiev Economic Command. German historical sources of the 19th and 20th centuries, Volume 57.Boppard am Rhein 1991, ISBN 3-7646-1905-8 .
  • The trial of the main war criminals before the International Military Tribunal , Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946, Vol. 28, Nuremberg 1948, pp. 3–26 (= Doc. PS-1743: Guidelines for the management of the economy in the newly occupied eastern areas (Green Map), Part I: Tasks and organization of the economy. Berlin, June 1941; reprint in abridged version).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ..." . The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Vögel, Munich 2006, p. 78, ISBN 3-89650-213-1 . (Source: Rolf-Dieter Müller: German economic policy in the occupied Soviet territories 1941–1945 . Boppard am Rhein 1991, pp. 21 and 35 f.)
  2. ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: "Our administration is driving a catastrophe ..." . The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945. Vögel, Munich 2006, p. 78. (Source: memo on the result of today's meeting with the state secretaries about Barbarossa , May 2, 1941, IMT, vol. 31, p. 84, PS-2718.)
  3. ^ Wigbert Benz : The hunger plan in "Operation Barbarossa" 1941 . wvb, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86573-613-0 , pp. 29-47.
  4. ↑ Doc. PS-1743, in: The Trial of the Major War Criminals before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, November 14, 1945 to October 1, 1946 (IMG), vol. 28, Nuremberg 1948, p. 3 ff.
  5. ↑ Hans-Erich Volkmann: Agriculture and Food in Hitler's Europe 1939-1945 . Economy and Expansion. Basic features of the Nazi economic policy . Selected writings by Hans-Erich Volkmann. On behalf of the Military History Research Office, ed. by Bernhard Chiari (= contributions to military history; vol. 58). Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-56714-4 , pp. 365-442, here p. 411.
  6. ^ Dietrich Eichholtz : History of the German War Economy 1939–1945 . Volume 1, p. 243.
  7. ↑ Quoted from Dietrich Eichholtz: History of the German War Economy 1939–1945 . Volume 1, p. 243.
  8. ^ Wigbert Benz: The hunger plan in "Operation Barbarossa" 1941 . wvb, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-86573-613-0 , p. 54; The trial of the main war criminals before the Nuremberg International Court of Justice . Nürnberg 1947, Vol. 1, pp. 316-318 (online at Zeno.org ), accessed on May 28, 2015.