Reichskommissariat Ukraine
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The Reichskommissariat Ukraine ( RKU ) existed during the German occupation between 1941 and 1944 in the western and central parts of Ukraine .
The Reichskommissariat Ukraine and Reichskommissariat Ostland were administered by the civil Berlin Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories (RMfdbO), which was led by the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg . The main political goals pursued by this ministry were the complete annihilation of the Jewish population and the Germanization of large parts of the population. The Germanization policy was carried out on the basis of the General Plan East and special decrees and guidelines in the East. According to the racial ideology of Rosenberg and other leading National Socialists, hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, above all by Einsatzgruppen C and D of the Security Police and the SD .
history
Two months after the beginning of the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 , the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was formed on September 1, 1941, 12:00 noon . It was created from parts of the rear military area south and center and the security area Brest , which had been under the military commander in the Generalgouvernement since July 18, 1941 . A Reich Commissioner was appointed to head it. The first administrative seat was the city of Rovno .
The provisional boundaries of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine were set as follows:
- West: Eastern border of the General Government,
- South: Course of the Dniester in an easterly direction to Mogilew Podolskij .
- East: Bar / Letitschew / Ljubar am Slutsch / course of the Slutsch up to the confluence with the Horyn / course of the Horyn up to its confluence with the Pripjet / Senkewitschi (20 km north of Dawid-Gorodok) (places and places on the rivers including),
- North: border to the Reichskommissariat Ostland.
The Upper President and Gauleiter of the NSDAP Erich Koch from Königsberg was appointed Reich Commissioner. Since he also held the position of head of civil administration in the Bialystok district from August 1, 1941 , he now ruled from the Baltic Sea to the Ukraine.
On October 20, 1941, 12:00 p.m. , the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was spatially expanded to the east, its new borders were now as follows:
- West: Previous eastern border of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine,
- South: from Row to Bar to the confluence of the river of the same name in the Bug / course of the Bug to Pervomajsk / Novo Ukrainka / Novomirgorod / Smela / Cherkassy (places and railway line Pervomajsk-Cherkassy only),
- East: course of the Dnieper to Rechitsa ( including Kiev , Rechitsa and Dnepr bridges),
- North: Railway line Retschiza- Luninez (including railway line) to the previous eastern border of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine.
The next change followed as the fighting continued on November 15, 1941, 12:00 noon . At this time, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was expanded from the rear Army Area South, as far as it was within the following limits:
- Northwest: Previous eastern border of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine,
- Southwest: Course of the Bug from Pervomajsk to the confluence with the Black Sea / Black Sea coast to the mouth of the Dnieper,
- South, east and northeast: course of the Dnepr to Cherkassy (place inclusive).
The last extension was from 1 September 1942 12:00 . Then the following parts of Ukraine east of the Dnieper came from the rear Army Area South:
- to the general district of Kiev: the part of the former Kiev region and the former Poltava Oblast east of the Dnieper ,
- to the Dnepropetrovsk General District : the part of the former Dnepropetrovsk Oblast east of the Dnieper and the part of the former Zaporozhye Oblast that does not belong to the Crimean General District ,
- to the general district of Crimea (sub-district of Tauria): the part of the former Nikolayev Oblast located south of the lower Dnieper and the districts of Melitopol , Nizhniy Sjegorosy, Novovassilewka, Priasovskoye, Weseloye and the districts to the south of the former Zaporozhye Oblast .
This was the greatest expansion.
In the course of 1943, the Reichskommissariat was gradually recaptured by the Red Army . At the beginning of 1944, when the districts of Brest, Kobryn and Pinsk , which had not yet been recaptured, no longer allowed independent administration, this marginal strip of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was subordinated to the administration of the general district of Belarus in the Reichskommissariat Ostland .
collaboration
During the German rule, the relationship with the Ukrainians was initially ambivalent. On the one hand, they presented themselves as liberators who redeemed the Ukrainians from Stalinism and Holodomor . Thus, Ukrainians were recruited for the Wehrmacht battalion " Bataillon Nachtigall " under the leadership of Roman Schuchewytsch and initially a fragile alliance of purpose was created with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the leaders of which hoped for a Ukrainian nation state approved by Hitler.
However, they did not receive any political participation in the Reichskommissariat. The leaders Stepan Bandera and Jaroslaw Stezko were taken into "protective custody" as early as 1941, but were later released. The Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler made no distinction between Ukrainians and other Slavs in his racial contempt, and Hitler considered them "just as lazy, disorganized and nihilistic-Asian ... as the Great Russians ". The General Plan East provided for the Germanization of Ukraine and the annihilation of 25% of the Ukrainians and expulsion of another 30–40% to the east. German settlements, e.g. B. Hegewald , were created.
Reichskommissar Koch and his subordinates, but also Wehrmacht agencies, pursued a brutal policy of exploitation. The kolkhozes from the Soviet era were retained and their delivery quotas increased, and over 1 million Ukrainians were deported to Germany as forced laborers. Many Ukrainians fled to the forests from being forced to work on collective farms and recruiting “foreign workers”. From 1943 the OUN and UPA fought against both the Wehrmacht and the Soviet Union.
Place names
In general, the (Russian) place names that were common up to now remained, which were transcribed into Latin script according to uniform principles. However, places with Bolshevik names got their previous names back. Some cities were given German names, such as Alexanderstadt , Halbstadt , Hegewald , etc.
Administrative division
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The Reichskommissariat Ukraine divided into six general districts with the corresponding number of German district areas to which the Ukrainian Rajons were subordinate. The German divisions largely followed the earlier Ukrainian delimitations. The general districts combined several oblasts , the district districts several Rajons.
The city of Lutsk was designated as the seat of the General Commissioner for Volhynia-Podolia (previously Brest-Litovsk) . The general commissioner for the general district of Crimea (sub-district Tauria) had his seat in Melitopol.
Although the Reichskommissariat Ukraine was formally subordinate to the RMfdbO, the Reichskommissar Erich Koch acted almost independently.
On April 7, 1941, Alfred Rosenberg proposed to set up a Reichskommissariat Don - Volga in addition to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and to use there as Reichskommissar Dietrich Klagges . In May / June he changed this proposal so that he now assigned the area there to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The planned expansion of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine up to the Volga was not realized due to the course of the war.
District areas in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine 1943
The subordinate administrative units were called general districts. The following table shows the allocation of cities and areas to the respective general districts.
people
Civil administration
- Alfred Rosenberg , Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Berlin
- Reich Commissioner
- Erich Koch , Reich Commissioner Ukraine, official seat in Königsberg and Rowno
- General commissioners
- Alfred Eduard Frauenfeld , General Commissioner for the General District of Crimea (Sub-District Tauria)
- Kurt Klemm , General Commissioner for the Zhitomir General District
- Helmut Quitzrau , General Commissioner for the General District of Kiev (September 1941 to February 1942)
- Waldemar Magunia , General Commissioner for the Kiev General District (since February 14, 1942)
- Ewald Oppermann , General Commissioner for the General District of Nikolayev
- Heinrich Schoene , General Commissioner for the General District of Volhynia-Podolia
- Nikolaus Selzner , General Commissioner for the General District of Dnepropetrovsk (September 1, 1941 to June 21, 1944)
- Others
- Karl Stumpp , 1942 Head of the "Sonderkommando clan customer and folk biology " at the Reich Commissioner for the Ukraine
Military administration
- Wehrmacht Commander-in-Chief Ukraine (WBU)
- Lieutenant General dR Waldemar Henrici (until October 1942)
- General der Flieger Karl Kitzinger (from October 1942)
- Higher SS and Police Leader Russia South
- SS-Obergruppenführer Friedrich Jeckeln (June to October 1941)
- SS-Obergruppenführer Hans-Adolf Prützmann (October 1941 to 1944; from October 1943 also "Highest SS and Police Leader Ukraine")
- Higher SS and Police Leader Black Sea
- SS group leader Ludolf-Hermann von Alvensleben (October to December 1943)
- SS-Obergruppenführer Richard Hildebrandt (December 1943 to August 1944)
For other SS and police leaders see the list of SS and police leaders
literature
- swell
- Heinz Boberach (Ed.): Regime criticism, resistance and persecution in Germany and the occupied territories . Reports and reports from the Secret State Police Office, the SD Main Office of the SS and the Reich Security Main Office 1933–1945. Index tape for the microfiche edition. KG Saur, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-598-34418-X . (Documents.)
- research
- Blanka Jerabek: The school system and school policy in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine 1941-1944 in the light of German documents . Munich 1991, DNB
- Anja Heuss : Art and cultural property theft. Study on the occupation policy of the National Socialists in France and the Soviet Union, Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-8253-0994-0 .
- Stefan Lehr: An almost forgotten 'eastern insert'. German archivists in the Generalgouvernement and in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 3-7700-1624-6 .
Web links
- Literature about the Reichskommissariat Ukraine in the catalog of the German National Library
Individual evidence
- ^ Andreas Kappeler : Brief history of the Ukraine. 2nd, updated edition, CH Beck, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-45971-4 , p. 218.
- ↑ Andreas Zellhuber: Our administration is heading for a catastrophe…. The Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories and German Occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1945 , Munich 2006, p. 87. (Fig. 6: Proposals for the occupation of the Reich Commissariats, April to July 1941.)