German plan for the colonization of Eastern Europe. General plan "Ost. Causes of the Great Patriotic War

Plan Details

Implementation time:

1939 - 1944

Victims: population of Eastern Europe and the USSR (mostly Slavic)

Location: Eastern Europe, occupied territory of the USSR

Character: racial ethnic

Organizers and performers: the National Socialist Party of Germany, pro-fascist groups and collaborators in the occupied territories “Plan Ost” was a program of mass ethnic cleansing of the population of Eastern Europe and the USSR as part of a more global Nazi plan to “liberate living space” (the so-called Lebensraum) for the Germans and other "Germanic peoples" at the expense of the territories of the "inferior races" such as the Slavs.

The purpose of the plan: Germanization of lands" in Central and Eastern Europe, provided for the movement of the population in the de facto annexed regions of Western and Southern Europe (Alsace, Lorraine, Lower Styria, Upper Carniola) and from countries that were considered German (Holland, Norway, Denmark ).

Excerpt from "General Plan Ost" Edition of June 1942 Part C. Delimitation of settlement areas in the occupied eastern regions and principles of restoration: The penetration of German life into large areas of the East makes it urgent for the Reich to find new forms of settlement in order to bring the size of the territory into line and the number of available German persons. In the General Plan Ost of July 15, 1941, the delimitation of new territories was provided as the basis for development for 30 years.

Description of the plan

Plan "Ost" - the plan of the German government of the Third Reich to "liberate living space"for the Germans and other "Germanic peoples", which provided for mass ethnic cleansing of the population of Eastern Europe. The plan was developed in 1941 by the Main Directorate of Imperial Security and presented on May 28, 1942 by an employee of the Office of the Headquarters of the Imperial Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People, SS Oberführer Meyer-Hetling under the name " General plan Ost - the basis of the legal, economic and territorial structure of the East.

The "Plan Ost" was not preserved in the form of a finished plan. It was extremely secret, apparently existed in a few copies, at the Nuremberg Trials the only evidence of the existence of the plan were "Remarks and proposals. Eastern Ministry" on the general plan "Ost" ", According to prosecutors, written on April 27, 1942 by an employee of the Ministry of Eastern Territories, E. Wetzel, after reading the draft plan prepared by the RSHA, most likely, it was deliberately destroyed.

According to the instructions of Hitler himself, the officials ordered that only a few copies of the “Plan Ost” be made for part of the Gauleiters, two ministers, the “Governor-General” of Poland and two or three senior SS officials. The rest of the SS Fuhrers of the RSHA had to familiarize themselves with the "Plan Ost" in the presence of a courier, sign that the document had been read, and return it. But history shows that all traces of crimes of such a magnitude as the Nazis committed could never be destroyed. Both in the letters and in the speeches of Hitler and other SS officers, references to the plan are found more than once. Two memorandums have also been preserved, from which it is clear that this plan existed and was discussed. From the notes we learn in some detail the contents of the plan.

According to some reports, the "Plan" Ost ""was divided into two - "Small Plan" "Big Plan". The small plan was to be carried out during the war. The German government wanted to focus on the Big Plan after the war. The plan provided different percentage Germanization for various conquered Slavic and other peoples. "Non-Germanized" were to be deported to Western Siberia. The execution of the plan was to ensure that the conquered territories would acquire an irrevocably German character.

According to the plan, the Slavs living in the countries of Eastern Europe and the European part of the USSR were to be partly Germanized, and partly deported beyond the Urals or destroyed. It was supposed to leave a small percentage of the local population for the purpose of using it as a free work force for the German colonists.

According to the calculations of Nazi officials, 50 years after the war, the number of Germans living in these territories should have reached 250 million. The plan applied to all peoples living in the territories subject to colonization: it also spoke about the peoples of the Baltic states, who were also supposed to be partially assimilated , and partially deported (for example, Latvians were considered more suitable for assimilation, unlike Lithuanians, among whom, according to the Nazis, there were too many “Slavic impurities”). As can be assumed from the comments to the plan preserved in some documents, the fate of the Jews living in the territories to be colonized was hardly mentioned in the plan, mainly because at that time the project of the “final solution of the Jewish question” was already activated, according to which the Jews were subject to total destruction. The plan for the colonization of the eastern territories was, in fact, the development of Hitler's plans for the already occupied territories of the USSR - plans that were especially clearly formulated in his statement of July 16, 1941 and then further developed in his dinner conversations. He then announced the settlement of 4 million Germans in the colonized lands within 10 years and at least 10 million Germans and representatives of other "Germanic" peoples within 20 years. Colonization was to be preceded by the construction - by the forces of prisoners of war - of large transport routes. German cities were to appear at the river ports, and peasant settlements along the rivers. In the conquered Slavic territories, it was envisaged to carry out a policy of genocide in its most extreme forms.

Methods for implementing the GPE plan:

1) physical extermination of large masses of the people;

2) population reduction through the deliberate organization of famine;

3) a decrease in the population as a result of an organized decrease in the birth rate and the elimination of medical and sanitary services;

4) extermination of the intelligentsia - the carrier and successor of scientific and technical knowledge and skills of the cultural traditions of each people and the reduction of education to the lowest level;

5) disunity, fragmentation of individual peoples into small ethnic groups;

6) resettlement of masses of the population to Siberia, Africa, South America and other regions of the Earth;

7) agrarianization of the occupied Slavic territories and deprivation of the Slavic peoples of their own industry.

The fate of the Slavs and Jews according to the remarks and suggestions of Wetzel

Wetzel assumed the expulsion of tens of millions of Slavs beyond the Urals. The Poles, according to Wetzel, "were the most hostile to the Germans, the largest and therefore the most dangerous people."

German historians believe the plan included:

· Destruction or expulsion of 80-85% of Poles. Only approximately 3-4 million people were to remain in Poland.

· Destruction or expulsion of 50-75% of Czechs (about 3.5 million people). The rest were to be Germanized.

· The destruction of 50-60% of Russians in the European part of the Soviet Union, another 15-25% were subject to deportation beyond the Urals.

Destruction of 25% of Ukrainians and Belarusians, another 30-50% of Ukrainians and Belarusians were to be used as labor

According to Wetzel's proposals, the Russian people had to be subjected to measures such as assimilation ("Germanization") and reduction in numbers through a reduction in the birth rate - such actions are defined as genocide.

From the directive of A. Hitler to the Minister for Eastern Territories A. Rosenberg on the introduction of the General Plan "Ost" (July 23, 1942)

The Slavs must work for us, and if we no longer need them, let them die. Vaccinations and health care are unnecessary for them. Slavic fertility is undesirable... education is dangerous. It is enough if they can count up to a hundred ... Every educated person is our future enemy. All sentimental objections should be discarded. We need to rule these people with iron determination... In military terms, we must kill three to four million Russians a year.

After the end of the war, out of about 40 million dead Slavic peoples (Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, etc.), more than 30 million lost Soviet Union, more than 6 million Poles and over 2 million inhabitants of Yugoslavia died. "Generalplan Ost", as it should be understood, also meant the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (German: Endlösung der Judenfrage), according to which the Jews were subject to total destruction. In the Baltics, the Latvians were considered more suitable for "Germanization", while the Lithuanians and Latgalians were not, as there were too many "Slavic admixtures" among them. Although the plan was supposed to be launched at full capacity only after the end of the war, within its framework, nevertheless, about 3 million Soviet prisoners of war were destroyed, the population of Belarus, Ukraine and Poland was systematically destroyed and sent to forced labor. In particular, only on the territory of Belarus, the Nazis organized 260 death camps and 170 ghettos. According to modern data, during the years of German occupation, the loss of the civilian population of Belarus amounted to about 2.5 million people, that is, about 25% of the population of the republic.

Almost 1 million Poles and 2 million Ukrainians were - most of them not of their own free will - sent to forced labor in Germany. Another 2 million Poles from the annexed regions of the country were forcibly Germanized. Residents who were declared "unwanted on racial grounds" were subject to resettlement in Western Siberia; some of them were supposed to be used as auxiliary personnel in the management of the regions of enslaved Russia. Fortunately, the plan could not be fully translated into reality, otherwise we would not be here by now.

Rosenberg's predecessor project

The master plan was preceded by a project developed by the Reichsministry of the Occupied Territories, which was headed by Alfred Rosenberg. On May 9, 1941, Rosenberg submitted to the Führer a draft directive on policy issues in the territories to be occupied as a result of the aggression against the USSR.

Rosenberg proposed the creation of five governorships on the territory of the USSR. Hitler opposed the autonomy of Ukraine and replaced the term “governorship” with “Reich Commissariat” for it. As a result, Rosenberg's ideas took the following forms of embodiment.

· The first - the Reichskommissariat Ostland - was to include Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus. Ostland, where, according to Rosenberg, lived a population with Aryan blood, was subject to complete Germanization within two generations.

The second governorship - the Reichskommissariat Ukraine - included Eastern Galicia (known in fascist terminology as District Galicia), Crimea, a number of territories along the Don and Volga, as well as the lands of the abolished Soviet Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans. According to Rosenberg's idea, the governorate was to receive autonomy and become the backbone of the Third Reich in the East.

· The third governorship was called the Reichskommissariat of the Caucasus, and separated Russia from the Black Sea.

· Fourth - Russia to the Urals.

· Turkestan was to become the fifth governorship.

The success of the German campaign in the summer-autumn of 1941 led to a revision and toughening of the German plans for the eastern lands, and as a result, the Ost plan was born.

Recently, NTV once again drew public attention to the topic of the Ost master plan, reporting that for the first time a text of enormous historical value has been posted in the public domain. In fact, the text of the document under discussion had long been “in wide access” on the same site, it was simply added to it with a facsimile from the Bundesarchive (however, this is not the only inaccuracy in this short report). After participating in a couple of regular discussions on the topic of GPO, I realized that I was tired of repeating the same thing over and over, and I decided to systematize the main questions and answers to them. Of course, this text is a "working" version and does not claim to finally close the topic of the "master plan".

The most frequently asked questions are:

1. What is the "General Plan Ost?"
2. What is the history of GPO? What documents are related to it?
3. What is the content of the GPO?
4. In fact, the GPO was developed by a petty official, should it be taken seriously?
5. The plan does not have the signature of Hitler or any other high official of the Reich, which means that it is invalid.
6. The GPO was a purely theoretical concept.
7. Implementing such a plan is unrealistic.
8. When were the Plan Ost documents discovered? Is there any possibility that they are fake?
9. What can I read more about GPO?

1. What is the "General Plan Ost?"

Under the “General Plan Ost” (GPO), modern historians understand a set of plans, draft plans and memorandums devoted to the settlement of the so-called. "eastern territories" (Poland and the Soviet Union) in the event of a German victory in the war. The GPO concept was developed on the basis of the Nazi racial doctrine under the patronage of the Reichskommissariat for the Strengthening of German Statehood (RKF), headed by the Reichsfuehrer SS Himmler, and was supposed to serve as a theoretical foundation for the colonization and Germanization of the occupied territories.

2. What is the history of GPO? What documents are related to it?

A general overview of the documents is given in the following table (with links to materials posted online):

	Name	the date	Volume	Who prepared	Original	Objects of colonization
1	Planungsgrundlagen (Fundamentals of planning)	February 1940	21 pages	RKF planning department	BA, R 49/157, S.1-21	Western regions of Poland
2	Materialien zum Vortrag "Siedlung" (materials for the report "Settlement")	December 1940	5 pages	RKF planning department	facsimile in G. Aly, S. Heim "Bevölkerungsstruktur und Massenmord" (p.29-32)	Poland
3	Generalplan Ost (general plan Ost)	July 1941	?	RKF planning department	lost, dated according to cover letter	?
4	Gesamtplan Ost (cumulative plan Ost)	December 1941	?	planning group III B RSHA	lost; lengthy review by Dr. Wetzel (Stellungnahme und Gedanken zum Generalplan Ost des Reichsführers SS, 04/27/1942, NG-2325; an abbreviated Russian translation allows the content to be reconstructed	Baltic, Ingria; Poland, Belarus, Ukraine (strongholds); Crimea (?)
5	Generalplan Ost (general plan Ost)	May 1942	84 pages	Institute of Agriculture at the University of Berlin BA, R 49/157a, facsimile	BA, R 49/157a, facsimile	Baltic, Ingermanlandia, Gotengau; Poland, Belarus, Ukraine (strongholds)
6	Generalsiedlungsplan (general settlement plan)	October-December 1942	planned 200 pages, a general outline of the plan and key figures have been prepared	RKF planning department	BA, R 49/984	Luxembourg, Alsace, Lorraine, Czech Republic, Lower Styria, Baltic States, Poland

Work on plans for the settlement of the eastern territories began almost immediately after the creation of the Reichskommissariat for the strengthening of German statehood in October 1939. Headed by prof. By Konrad Mayer, the RKF planning department presented the first plan for the settlement of the western regions of Poland annexed to the Reich as early as February 1940. It was under the direction of Mayer that five of the six documents listed above were prepared (The Institute of Agriculture, which appears in document 5, was led by the same Mayer ). It should be noted that the RKF was not the only department that thought about the future of the eastern territories, similar work was carried out in the Rosenberg ministry and in the department responsible for the four-year plan, which was headed by Goering (the so-called "Green Folder"). It is precisely this competitive situation that explains, in particular, the criticality of the recall of the employee of the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Territories, Wetzel, to the version of the plan Ost presented by the RSHA planning group (document 4). Nevertheless, Himmler, not least thanks to the success of the propaganda exhibition "Planning and Building a New Order in the East" in March 1941, gradually managed to achieve a dominant position. Document 5, for example, speaks of "the priority of the Reichskommissar for the strengthening of the German state in matters of settlement (colonized territories) and planning."

To understand the logic of the development of the GPO, two reviews of Himmler on the plans presented by Mayer are important. In the first, dated 12.06.42 (BA, NS 19/1739, Russian translation), Himmler demands that the plan be expanded to include not only the “Eastern”, but also other territories subject to Germanization (West Prussia, the Czech Republic, Alsace-Lorraine, etc.). etc.), shorten the time frame and set as the goal the complete Germanization of Estonia, Latvia and the entire Governor-General.

The consequence of this was the renaming of the GPO into the “master plan of settlement” (document 6), while, however, some of the territories present in document 5 fell out of the plan, to which Himmler immediately draws attention (letter to Mayer dated 12.01.1943, BA, NS 19 /1739): “The eastern territories for settlement should include Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, Ingermanland, as well as the Crimea and Tavria [...] The named territories should be completely Germanized / completely populated.”

Mayer never presented the next version of the plan: the course of the war made further work on it meaningless.

3. What is the content of the GPO?

The following table uses the data systematized by M. Burchard:

	Territory of settlement	Number of migrants	Population subject to eviction / not subject to Germanization	Cost estimate
1.	87600 sq. km.	4.3 million	560,000 Jews, 3.4 million Poles in the first stage	-
2.	130000 sq. km.	480,000 farms	-	-
3.	?	?	?	?
4.	700,000 sq. km.	1-2 million German families and 10 million foreigners with Aryan blood	31 million (80-85% Poles, 75% Belarusians, 65% Ukrainians, 50% Czechs)	-
5.	364231 sq. km.	5.65 million	min. 25 million (90% Poles, 50% Estonians, more than 50% Latvians, 85% Lithuanians)	66 billion RM
6.	330,000 sq. km.	12.21 million	30.8 million (95% Poles, 50% Estonians, 70% Latvians, 85% Lithuanians, 50% French, Czechs and Slovenes)	144 billion RM

Let us dwell in more detail on the fully preserved and most developed document 5: it is supposed to be implemented in stages over 25 years, Germanization quotas for various nationalities are introduced, it is proposed to prohibit the indigenous population from owning property in cities in order to force them out into countryside and use in agriculture. To control territories with a non-predominant German population at first, a form of margraviate is introduced, the first three: Ingermanland (Leningrad region), Gotengau (Crimea, Kherson), and Memel-Narev (Lithuania - Bialystok). In Ingermanland, the population of towns must be reduced from 3 million to 200,000. In Poland, Belarus, the Baltic states, and Ukraine, a network of strongholds is being formed, with a total of 36, providing effective communication between the margraviates with each other and with the metropolis (see reconstruction). In 25–30 years, the margraviates should be Germanized by 50%, and the strongholds by 25–30% (In the review already known to us, Himmler demanded that the period for implementing the plan be reduced to 20 years, that the complete Germanization of Estonia and Latvia and more active Germanization of Poland be considered).

In conclusion, it is emphasized that the success of the settlement program will depend on the will and colonization power of the Germans, and if it survives these tests, then the nextthe generation will be able to close the northern and southern flanks of colonization (i.e., populate Ukraine and central Russia.)

It should be noted that documents 5 and 6 do not contain specific numbers of residents to be evicted, however, they are derived from the difference between the actual number of residents and the planned one (taking into account the German settlers and the local population suitable for Germanization). As territories to which residents unsuitable for Germanization should be evicted, in document 4 is called Western Siberia. The leaders of the Reich have repeatedly spoken about the desire to Germanize the European territory of Russia up to the Urals.

From a racial point of view, Russians were considered the least Germanisi

rumeny people, moreover, poisoned for 25 years by the poison of "Judao-Bolshevism." It is difficult to say unambiguously how the policy of decimation of the Slavic population would be carried out. According to one of the testimonies, Himmler, before the start of Operation Barbarossa, called the goal of the campaign against Russia " reduction of the Slavic population by 30 million.". Wetzel wrote about measures to reduce the birth rate (encouragement of abortion, sterilization, refusal to fight infant mortality, etc.), Hitler himself expressed himself more directly: “ Locals? We will have to deal with their filtering. We will kill destructive Jews rem in general. My impression of the Belarusian territory is better than that of the Ukrainian one. We will not go to Russian cities, they must completely die out. We should not torture ourselves with remorse. We do not need to get used to the role of a nanny, we have no obligations to the local residents. Repairing houses, catching lice, German teachers, newspapers? Not! It’s better that we open a radio station under our control, but otherwise it’s enough for them to know the signs traffic so as not to get in our way! By freedom, these people understand the right to bathe only on holidays. If we come with shampoo, it will not cause sympathy. There you need to relearn. There is only one task: to carry out Germanization by importing Germans, and the former inhabitants must be considered as Indians.»

4. In fact, the GPO was developed by a petty official, it costs whether to take it seriously?

Petty official Prof. Konrad Mayer was not. As mentioned above, he headed the planning department of the RKF, andalso the land department of the same Reichskommissariat and the Institute of Agriculture at the University of Berlin. He was a Standartenführer, and later Oberführer (in the military table of ranks above colonel, but below major general) of the SS. By the way, another popular misconception is that the GPO was allegedly the product of the inflamed imagination of a crazy SS man. This is also not true: agrarians, economists, managers and other specialists from academia worked on the GPO. For example, in the cover letter to Document 5 Mayer writes

t about promoting my closest collaborators in the planning department and the main land office, as well as the financial expert, Dr. Besler (Jena)". Additional funding came through the German Research Society (DFG): from 1941 to 1945, 510 thousand RM were allocated for “scientific and planning work to strengthen the German statehood”, of which 60-70 thousand RM were spent per year on your working group, the rest went as grants to scientists doing research relevant to the RKF. For comparison, the maintenance of a scientist with a scientific degree cost about 6 thousand RM per year (data from the report of I. Heinemann.)

It is important to note that Mayer worked on the GPO on the initiative and on the instructions of the chief of the RKF Himmler and in close connection with him, while the correspondence was conducted both through the head of the headquarters of the RKF Greifelt, and directly. Widely known photographs taken during the exhibition "Planning and building a new order in the East", in which Mayer speaks to Himmler, Hess, Heydrich and Todt.

5. The plan does not have the signature of Hitler or any other Nazi leader, which means it is invalid.

The GPO actually did not advance beyond the design stage, which was largely facilitated by the course of hostilities - from 1943 the plan began to quickly lose relevance. Of course, the GPO was not signed by Hitler or anyone else, since it was a plan for the post-war settlement of the occupied regions. The very first sentence of document 5 states this directly: “ Thanks to German weapons, the eastern territories, which were the object of disputes that had dragged on for many centuries, were finally annexed to the Reich.».

Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to deduce from this the disinterest of Hitler and the leadership of the Reich in the GPO. As already shown above, work on the plan took place on the instructions and under the constant patronage of Himmler, who, in turn, “ would like to convenient time convey this plan also to the Fuhrer"(letter dated 06/12/1942)

Recall that already in "Mein Kampf" Hitler wrote: " We stop the eternal advance of the Germans to the south and west of Europe and direct our gaze to the eastern lands". The concept of "living space in the east" was repeatedly mentioned by the Fuhrer in the 30s (for example, immediately after coming to power, 02/03/1933, he, speaking to the generals of the Reichswehr, spoke about "the need to conquer the living space in the east and its decisive Germanization" ), after the start of the war, it acquired a clear outline. Here is a recording of one of Hitler's monologues dated 10/17/1941:

... the Fuhrer once again in in general terms outlined his thoughts on the development of the eastern regions. The most important thing is the roads. He told Dr. Todt that the original plan prepared by him should be greatly expanded. In the next twenty years, three million prisoners will be at his disposal to solve this problem ... German cities should appear at large river crossings, in which the Wehrmacht, the police, the administrative apparatus and the party will be based.
Along the roads German peasant farms, and the plain Asian-looking steppe will soon take on a completely different look. In 10 years, 4 million Germans will move there, in 20 - 10 million Germans. They will come not only from the Reich, but also from America, as well as Scandinavia, Holland and Flanders. The rest of Europe can also take part in joining the Russian expanses. In Russian cities, those that will survive the war - Moscow and Leningrad should not survive it in any way - the foot of a German should not set foot. They must vegetate in their own shit away from the German roads. The Fuhrer again touched upon the topic that "contrary to the opinion of individual headquarters" neither the education of the local population nor the care of it should be dealt with ...
He, the Fuhrer, will introduce new management with an iron hand, what the Slavs will think about this does not touch him at all. Whoever eats German bread today does not give much thought to the fact that the fields east of the Elbe were reclaimed by the sword in the 12th century.

Of course, his subordinates also echoed him. For example, on October 2, 1941, Heydrich described the future colonization as follows:

D Other lands - eastern lands, partly inhabited by Slavs, these are lands where one must clearly understand that kindness will be perceived as a sign of weakness. These are lands where the Slav himself does not want to have equal rights with the master, where he was accustomed to be in service. These are the lands in the east that we will have to manage and hold. These are lands where, after the solution of the military question, German control should be introduced up to the Urals, and they should serve us as a source of minerals, labor, like helots, roughly speaking. These are lands to be treated, as in the construction of a dam and the draining of the coast: far to the east, a protective wall is being built, enclosing them from Asian storms, and from the west, the gradual annexation of these lands to the Reich begins. From this point of view it is necessary to consider what is happening in the east. The first step would be the creation of a protectorate from the provinces of Danzig-West Prussia and the Warthegau. A year ago, eight million more Poles lived in these provinces, as well as in East Prussia and the Silesian part. These are lands that will gradually be populated by Germans, the Polish element will be squeezed out step by step. These are lands that in due time will become completely German. And then further east, to the Baltic, which will also become completely German in due time, although here it is necessary to consider what part of the blood of Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians is suitable for Germanization. The best racially here are Estonians, they have strong Swedish influences, then Latvians, and the worst are Lithuanians.
Then the turn of the rest of Poland will come, this is the next territory, which should be gradually settled by the Germans, and the Poles should be squeezed further to the east. Then Ukraine, which at first as an intermediate duck solution should be with the application, of course, still dormant in the subconscious national idea, separated from the rest of Russia and used as a source of minerals and provisions under German control. Of course, not allowing the people to strengthen or strengthen there, raising their educational level, since this may later lead to the opposition, which, with the weakening of the central government, will strive for independence ...

A year later, on November 23, 1942, Himmler spoke of the same thing:

The main colony of our Reich lies in the east. Today - a colony, tomorrow - a settlement area, the day after tomorrow - a Reich! [...] If next year or next year Russia is likely to be defeated in a bitter struggle, we will still have a great task before us. After the victory of the Germanic peoples, the space for settlement in the east must be developed, settled and attached to European culture. Over the next 20 years - counting from the end of the war - I have set myself the task (and I hope I can solve it with your help) to move the German border about 500 km to the east. This means that we must resettle farm families there, the best carriers of German blood will begin to be resettled and the millions of Russian people will be ordered to our tasks ... 20 years of struggle for peace lie before us ... Then this east will be cleansed of foreign blood and our families will settle there as legal owners.

As you can see, all three quotations correlate perfectly with the main provisions of the GPO.

6. The GPO was a purely theoretical concept.

AT broad sense this is true: there is no reason to implement a plan for the post-war settlement of the occupied territories until the war is over. This does not mean, however, that measures for the Germanization of individual regions were not carried out at all. First of all, it should be noted here the western regions of Poland (West Prussia and Warthegau) attached to the Reich, the settlement of which was mentioned in document 1. in the ghetto and extermination camps on their own territory: out of 435,000 Jews of the Warthegau, 12,000 survived) by March 1941. more than 280,000 people were deported from the Warthegau alone. The total number of Poles deported from West Prussia and the Warthegau to the General Government is estimated at 365,000. Their yards and apartments were occupied by German settlers, who by March 1942 in these two regions already numbered 287 thousand.

At the end of November 1942, on the initiative of Himmler, the so-called. "Aktion Zamość", the purpose of which was the Germanization of the district of Zamość, which was declared "the first area of German settlement" in the General Government. By August 1943, 110,000 Poles were evicted: about half were deported, the rest fled on their own, many went to the partisans. To protect future settlers, it was decided to use the enmity between Poles and Ukrainians and create a defensive ring of Ukrainian villages around the settlement area. Due to the lack of forces to maintain order, the action was stopped in August 1943. By that time, only about 9,000 out of 60,000 planned settlers had moved to Zamość County.

Finally, in 1943, the German town of Hegewald was created not far from Himmler's headquarters in Zhytomyr: 10,000 Germans took the place of 15,000 Ukrainians expelled from their homes. At the same time, the first settlers went to the Crimea.
All these activities are also quite correlated with the GPO. It is interesting to note that Prof. Mayer visited Western Poland, and Zamosc, and Zhytomyr, and Crimea during business trips, that is, he assessed the feasibility of his concept on the ground.

7. Implementing such a plan is unrealistic.

Of course, one can only guess about the reality of the implementation of the GPO in the form in which it is described in the documents that have come down to us. We are talking about the resettlement of tens of millions (and, apparently, the extermination of millions) of people, the need for migrants is estimated at 5-10 million people. The discontent of the expelled population and, as a result, a new round of armed struggle against the occupiers are practically guaranteed. It is unlikely that the settlers would have rushed to the area where the guerrilla war continues.

On the other hand, we are talking not just about the idea-fix of the leadership of the Reich, but also about scientists (economists, planners, managers) who projected this idea-fix onto reality: no supernatural or impossible obligations were set, the task of Germanizing the Baltic states, Ingermanland, Crimea, Poland, parts of Ukraine and Belarus had to be solved in small steps over 20 years, along the way the details (for example, the percentage of suitability for Germanization) would be corrected and refined. As for the “unreality of the GPO” in terms of scale, we must not forget that, for example, the number of Germans expelled during and after the end of World War II from the territories in which they lived is also described by an eight-digit number. And it took not 20 years, but five times less.

Hopes (expressed today, mainly by adherents of General Vlasov and other collaborators) that some part of the occupied territories would gain independence or at least self-government are not reflected in real Nazi plans (see, for example, Hitler in Bormann's notes, 07/16/41:

... we will again emphasize that we were forced to occupy this or that area, restore order in it and secure it. In the interests of the population, we are forced to take care of peace, food, means of communication, etc., so we introduce our own rules here. No one should recognize that in this way we introduce our orders forever! All the necessary measures - executions, evictions, etc., we, despite this, are implementing and can implement.
We, however, do not at all wish to prematurely turn anyone into our enemies. Therefore, for the time being, we will act as if this area is a mandated territory. But we ourselves must be perfectly clear that we will never leave it. [...]
Most basic:
The formation of a power capable of waging war to the west of the Urals must never be allowed, even if we have to fight for another hundred years. All the Fuhrer's successors must know: the Reich will be safe only if there is no foreign army to the west of the Urals, Germany takes upon itself the protection of this space from all possible threats.
The iron law should read: "No one but the Germans should ever be allowed to carry weapons!" .

At the same time, it makes no sense to compare the situation of 1941–42 with the situation of 1944, when the Nazis made promises much more easily, since they were happy with almost any help: an active conscription began in the ROA, Bandera was released, etc. Like the Nazis belonged to the allies who pursued goals that were not approved in Berlin, including those who stood up for (albeit puppet) independence in 1941–42, the example of the same Bandera clearly shows.

8. When were the documents on the Ost plan discovered? Is there any possibility that they are fake?

Dr. Wetzel's response and a number of accompanying documents figured already at the Nuremberg trials, documents 5 and 6 were found in American archives and published by Czesław Madajczyk (Przeglad Zachodni Nr. 3 1961).
Theoretically, the possibility that a particular document is falsified always exists. In this case, however, it is important that we are dealing not with one or two, but with a whole range of documents, which includes not only the main ones discussed above, but also various accompanying notes, reviews, letters, protocols - in the classic C. Madajczyk's collection contains more than one hundred relevant documents. Therefore, it is absolutely not enough to call one document a falsification, taking it out of the context of the rest. If, for example, Document 6 is a falsification, then what does Himmler write to Maier in his response to it? Or, if Himmler's recall of 06/12/42 is a falsification, then why does document 6 embody the instructions contained in this recall? And most importantly, why do the GPO documents, if they are falsified, correlate so well with the statements of Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, etc.?

Those. here it is necessary to build a whole conspiracy theory, explaining by whose malicious intent the documents and speeches of Nazi bosses found at different times in different archives line up in a whole picture. And to question the reliability of individual documents (as some authors do, counting on the ignorance of the reading public) is rather pointless.

First of all, books in German:

Collection of documents compiled by C. Madajczyk Vom Generalplan Ost zum Generalsiedlungsplan, Saur, München 1994;

Mechthild Rössler, Sabine Schleiermacher (Hrsg.): Der „Generalplan Ost“. Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik, Akademie, Berlin 1993;

Rolf-Dieter Müller: Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik, Frankfurt am Main 1991;

Isabel Heinemann: Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut. Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas, Wallstein: Göttingen 2003 (partially available)

A lot of materials, including those used above, are on the thematic site of M. Burchard.

General plan "Ost"(German Generalplan Ost) - a secret plan of the German government of the Third Reich to carry out ethnic cleansing in Eastern Europe and its German colonization after the victory over the USSR.

A version of the plan was developed in 1941 by the Main Directorate of Imperial Security and presented on May 28, 1942 by an employee of the Office of the Headquarters of the Imperial Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People, SS Oberführer Meyer-Hetling under the name "General Plan Ost - the basis of the legal, economic and territorial structure of the East." The text of this document was found in the German Federal Archives in the late 1980s, some documents from there were presented at an exhibition in 1991, but it was completely digitized and published only in November-December 2009.

At the Nuremberg trials, the only evidence for the existence of the plan was the “Remarks and proposals of the “Eastern Ministry” on the general plan“ Ost ”, according to prosecutors, written on April 27, 1942 by an employee of the Ministry of Eastern Territories E. Wetzel after reading the draft plan prepared by the RSHA.

Rosenberg project

The master plan was preceded by a project developed by the Reichsministry of the Occupied Territories, which was headed by Alfred Rosenberg. On May 9, 1941, Rosenberg submitted to the Fuhrer a draft policy directive on the territories to be occupied as a result of the aggression against the USSR.

Ostland - was to include Belarus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Ostland, where, according to Rosenberg, lived a population with Aryan blood, was subject to complete Germanization within two generations.
Ukraine - would include the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR, Crimea, a number of territories along the Don and Volga, as well as the lands of the abolished Soviet Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans. According to Rosenberg's idea, the governorate was to receive autonomy and become the backbone of the Third Reich in the East.
Caucasus - would include republics North Caucasus and Transcaucasia and would separate Russia from the Black Sea.
Muscovy - Russia to the Urals.
Turkestan was to become the fifth governorate.

The success of the German campaign in the summer-autumn of 1941 led to a revision and toughening of the German plans for the eastern lands, and as a result, the Ost plan was born.

Description of the plan

According to some reports, the "Plan" Ost "" was divided into two - "Small Plan" (German. Kleine Planung) and "Big Plan" (German. Grosse Planung). The small plan was to be carried out during the war. The German government wanted to focus on the Grand Plan after the war. The plan provided for a different percentage of Germanization for various conquered Slavic and other peoples. "Non-Germanized" were to be deported to Western Siberia or subjected to physical destruction. The execution of the plan was to ensure that the conquered territories would acquire an irrevocably German character.

Wetzel's remarks and suggestions

Among historians, a document known as "Remarks and proposals of the Eastern Ministry on the general plan" Ost "" has been circulated. Text this document often presented as Plan Ost itself, although it bears little resemblance to the text of the Plan published at the end of 2009.

"Generalplan Ost", as it should be understood, also meant the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" (German. Endlösung der Judenfrage), according to which the Jews were subject to total destruction:

In the Baltics, the Latvians were considered more suitable for "Germanization", while the Lithuanians and Latgalians were not, as there were too many "Slavic admixtures" among them. According to Wetzel's proposals, the Russian people had to be subjected to measures such as assimilation ("Germanization") and reduction in numbers through a reduction in the birth rate - such actions are defined as genocide.

Developed variants of the "Ost" plan

The following documents were developed by the planning team Gr. lll B planned service of the Main Headquarters of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People Heinrich Himmler (Reichskommissar für die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums (RKFDV) and the Institute agricultural policy Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin:

Document 1: Fundamentals of Planning, created in February 1940 by the planning service of the RKFDV (volume: 21 pages). Contents: Description of the extent of the planned eastern colonization in West Prussia and Wartheland. The colonization area was to be 87,600 km², of which 59,000 km² was agricultural land. About 100,000 settlement farms of 29 hectares each were to be created on this territory. It was planned to resettle in this territory about 4.3 million Germans; of these, 3.15 million in rural areas and 1.15 million in cities. At the same time, 560,000 Jews (100% of the population of the region of this nationality) and 3.4 million Poles (44% of the population of the region of this nationality) were to be gradually eliminated. The costs of implementing these plans have not been estimated.

Document 2: Materials for the report "Colonization", developed in December 1940 by the planning service of the RKFDV (volume 5 pages). Contents: Founding article to "Requirement of Territories for Forced Resettlement from the Old Reich" with a specific requirement for 130,000 km² of land for 480,000 new viable settlement farms of 25 hectares each, plus an additional 40% of the territory for forestry, for the needs of the army and reserve areas in Wartheland and Poland.

Documents created after the attack on the USSR on June 22, 1941

Document 3 (disappeared, exact content unknown): "General Plan Ost", created in July 1941 by the planning service of the RKFDV. Contents: Description of the extent of the planned eastern colonization in the USSR, with the boundaries of specific areas of colonization.

Document 4 (disappeared, exact contents unknown): " Overall plan Ost", created in December 1941 by the planning group Gr. lll B RSHA. Contents: Description of the scale of the planned eastern colonization in the USSR and the Governor-General with specific boundaries of individual areas of settlement.

Document 5: "General Plan Ost", created in May 1942 by the Institute for Agriculture and Politics of the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (volume 68 pages).

Contents: Description of the scale of the planned eastern colonization in the USSR with the specific boundaries of individual areas of settlement. The area of colonization was to cover 364,231 km², including 36 strongholds and three administrative districts in the region of Leningrad, the Kherson-Crimean region and in the region of Bialystok. At the same time, settlement farms with an area of 40-100 hectares, as well as large agricultural enterprises with an area of at least 250 hectares, were supposed to appear. The required number of migrants was estimated at 5.65 million. The areas planned for settlement were to be cleared of approximately 25 million people. The cost of implementing the plan was estimated at 66.6 billion Reichsmarks.

Document 6: "Master Plan of Colonization" (German. Generalsiedlungsplan), created in September 1942 by the planning service of the RKF (volume: 200 pages, including 25 maps and tables).

Content: Description of the scale of the planned colonization of all areas provided for this with specific boundaries of individual areas of settlement. The region was supposed to cover an area of 330,000 km² with 360,100 farms. The required number of migrants was estimated at 12.21 million people (of which 2.859 million were peasants and those employed in forestry). The area planned for settlement was to be cleared of approximately 30.8 million people. The cost of implementing the plan was estimated at 144 billion Reichsmarks.

Many have probably heard of the “Ost” General Plan, according to which Nazi Germany was going to “develop” the lands conquered by it in the East. However, this document was classified by the top leadership of the Third Reich, many of its components and applications were destroyed at the end of the war. And only now, in December 2009, this ominous document is finally published.

Only a six-page excerpt from this plan appeared at the Nuremberg trials. It is known in the historical and scientific community as "Remarks and proposals of the Eastern Ministry on the" General Plan "Ost". As was established at the Nuremberg trials, these "remarks and suggestions" were drawn up on April 27, 1942 by E. Wetzel, an employee of the Ministry of Eastern Territories, after reviewing the draft plan prepared by the RSHA. As a matter of fact, it was on this document until very recently that all research on the Nazi plans for the enslavement of the "eastern territories" was based.

On the other hand, some revisionists could argue that this document was just a draft drawn up by a minor official of one of the ministries, and had nothing to do with real politics. However, at the end of the 1980s, the final text of the Ost plan approved by Hitler was found in the Federal Archives of the Federal Republic of Germany, and individual documents from there were presented at an exhibition in 1991.

However, it was only in November-December 2009 that the “Master Plan “Ost” – the basis of the legal, economic and territorial structure of the East” was fully digitized and published. This is reported by the website of the Historical Memory Foundation.

As a matter of fact, the plan of the German government to "liberate living space" for the Germans and other "Germanic peoples", which provided for the "Germanization" of Eastern Europe and mass ethnic cleansing of the local population, did not arise spontaneously, and not from scratch. The first developments in this direction The German scientific community began to lead even under Kaiser Wilhelm II, when no one had heard of National Socialism, and Hitler himself was just a thin country kid.

As a group of German historians (Isabelle Heinemann, Willy Oberkromé, Sabine Schleiermacher, Patrick Wagner) clarifies in the study "Science, planning, exile: "The Ost master plan of the National Socialists": "From 1900 on racial anthropology and eugenics, or racial hygiene, one can speak of a certain direction in the development of science at the national and international levels. Under National Socialism these sciences rose to the position of leading disciplines, supplying the regime with the methods and principles to justify racial politics. There was no exact and unified definition of "race". Conducted racial studies raised the question of the relationship between "race" and "living space".

At the same time, “the political culture of Germany, already in the Kaiser’s empire, was open to thinking in nationalist concepts. The rapid dynamics of modernization in the early twentieth century. greatly changed the way of life, everyday habits and values and caused concern about the "degeneration" of the "German essence". The "salvation" from this irritating experience of a turning-point epoch lay, it seemed, in a renewed awareness of the "eternal" values of the peasant "nationality."

However, the way in which German society set out to return to these "eternal peasant values" was chosen in a very peculiar way - the seizure of land from other peoples, mainly to the East from Germany. Already in the first world war, after the German troops captured the western lands of the Russian Empire, the occupying authorities began to think about a new state and ethnic order for these lands. In the discussion about the goals of the war, these expectations were concretized. For example, the liberal historian Meinecke said: “Couldn't Courland also ... be useful to us as a land for peasant colonization if the Latvians were expelled to Russia? Previously, this would have been considered fantastic, but it is not so unrealistic.

Not so liberal General Rohrbach put it simply: “The land conquered by the German sword should serve exclusively the good of the German people. The rest can roll away." Such were the plans for creating a new "people's soil" in the East at the beginning of the 20th century.

Around the same time, German scientists began to assert that " appearance, spiritual, psychological and cultural values “allow us to conclude that the Nordic race is superior. Therefore, it is necessary to put an end to the mixing of races in order to prevent degeneration. So Hitler had only to collect these "scientific ingredients", to synthesize both the "racial theory" and the idea of a new "living space". Which he basically did in his book "Mein Kampf" in 1925.

But it was only a pamphlet. The real military seizures of vast territories inhabited by tens of millions of people prompted the Nazi leadership to approach the issue with truly German methodicalness. And so the "General Plan" Ost "was created.

The mentioned group of German researchers reports that “in June 1942, the agronomist Konrad Meyer handed over a memorandum to the Reichsführer SS G. Himmler. This document became known as the “Ost General Plan”. He personifies the criminal nature of the National Socialist policy and the unscrupulousness of the experts involved in it. “The Ost master plan provided for the settlement of 5 million Germans in annexed Poland and in the occupied western lands of the Soviet Union. Millions of Slavic and Jewish inhabitants were to be enslaved, expelled or destroyed.

This map, made in 1993 by Karl Heinz Roth and Klaus Carstens, on the basis of studied documents, speaks about the scope of the “Ost Master Plan”.

At the same time, the Historical Memory Foundation “insists that the plan was developed in 1941 by the General Directorate of Imperial Security. And, accordingly, it was presented on May 28, 1942 by an employee of the Office of the Headquarters of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People, SS Oberführer Meyer-Hetling under the name "General Plan" Ost "- the basis of the legal, economic and territorial structure of the East."

However, this contradiction is apparent, since German authors clarify that “between 1940 and 1943. Himmler ordered the development of a total of five options for the violent reorganization of Eastern Europe. All together they formed comprehensive plan under the title "General plan" Ost ". Four options came from the apparatus of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of the German State (RKF), and one from the main office national security(RSHA).

In approaches to this issue these departments had some "stylistic" disagreements. As the German authors admit, “according to the plans of the RSHA of November 1941, 31 million people of the “foreign population” were to be deported to the East or killed. For 14 million "foreigners" the future of slaves was planned. Konrad Meyer’s “Ost” general plan of June 1942 set the accents differently: now the local population should not be forcibly deported, but “transferred” within the occupied regions to collective farm lands. But this plan also provided for a decrease in the population as a result of large-scale forced labor and forced "liquidation of cities" (Entstädterung). In the future, it was about destroying the vast majority of the population or dooming them to starvation.

However, the “Ost” plan was preceded by the “Rosenberg plan”. It was a project developed by the Reich Ministry of the Occupied Territories, which was headed by Alfred Rosenberg. On May 9, 1941, Rosenberg submitted to the Fuhrer a draft policy directive on the territories to be occupied as a result of the aggression against the USSR.

The first - the Reichskommissariat "Ostland" - was supposed to include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. "Ostland", where, according to Rosenberg, the population with "Aryan" blood lived, was subject to complete Germanization within two generations.

The second governorship - the Reichskommissariat "Ukraine" - included Eastern Galicia (known in fascist terminology as "District Galicia"), Crimea, a number of territories along the Don and Volga, as well as the lands of the abolished Soviet Autonomous Republic of the Volga Germans.

The third governorate was called the Reichskommissariat "Caucasus", and separated Russia from the Black Sea.

Fourth - Russia to the Urals.

Turkestan was to become the fifth governorate.

However, this plan seemed to Hitler "half-hearted", and he demanded more radical solutions. In the context of German military successes, he was replaced by the “General Plan“ Ost ”, which generally suited Hitler.

According to this plan, the Nazis wanted to resettle 10 million Germans to the "eastern lands", and from there to evict 30 million people to Siberia, and not only Russians. Many of those who glorify Hitler's accomplices as freedom fighters would also be subject to deportation in the event of Hitler's victory. Beyond the Urals, it was supposed to evict 85% of Lithuanians, 75% of Belarusians, 65% of Western Ukrainians, 75% of the inhabitants of the rest of Ukraine, and 50% of Latvians and Estonians each. By the way, about the Crimean Tatars, about whom our liberal intelligentsia so loved to lament, and whose leaders continue to pump rights to this day. In the event of the victory of Germany, which most of their ancestors served so faithfully, they would still have to be deported from the Crimea. Crimea was to become a "purely Aryan" territory called Gotengau. The Fuhrer wanted to resettle his beloved Tyroleans there.

The plans of Hitler and his associates, as is well known, failed thanks to the courage and colossal sacrifices of the Soviet people. However, it is worth reading the following paragraphs of the above-mentioned "remarks" to the "Ost" plan - and see that some of his "creative heritage" continues to be implemented, and without any participation of the Nazis.

“In order to avoid an increase in population in the eastern regions, which is undesirable for us ... we must consciously pursue a policy of reducing the population. By means of propaganda, especially through the press, radio, cinema, leaflets, short pamphlets, reports, etc., we must constantly instill in the population the idea that it is harmful to have many children.

It is necessary to show how much money the upbringing of children costs, and what could be purchased with these funds. It is necessary to talk about the great danger to the health of a woman, which she is exposed to when giving birth to children, etc. Along with this, the widest propaganda of contraceptives should be launched. It is necessary to establish a wide production of these funds. The distribution of these drugs and abortion should not be restricted in any way. It is necessary to contribute in every possible way to expanding the network of abortion clinics... The better abortions are performed, the more confidence the population will have in them. Understandably, doctors also need to have permission to perform abortions. And this should not be considered a violation of medical ethics.

It is very reminiscent of what began to happen in our country with the beginning of "market reforms".

The Nazi plan "Ost" is a story of forced resettlement not only of individuals, but of entire nations. This idea is not new, it is as old as humanity itself. But Hitler's program became a new dimension of fear, because it was a thoroughly planned genocide of peoples and entire races, and this was not even in the Middle Ages, but in an era of rapid development of industry and science!

Pursued goals

It is worth noting that the Ost plan does not look like a simple struggle for hunting grounds or vast pastures, as in ancient times. It cannot be compared with the arbitrariness of the Spaniards in relation to the natives of South and Central America, as well as with the extermination of the Indians in the northern part of this mainland. This document dealt with a special misanthropic racial ideology, which was designed to provide super-profits for owners of big capital, even more fertile land for respectable landowners, generals and wealthy peasants.

The essence of the Ost plan and the main goals pursued by the fascist regime and its ruling elite were as follows:

● political and military power over the occupied territories with subsequent eviction, forced assimilation or mass destruction of people who previously lived on it;

● a social-imperialist idea, which consists in consolidating its social base on the conquered lands by resettling economically strong, but dependent on the ruling regime, German large landowners, wealthy peasants and representatives of the middle urban strata;

● the maximum influence of solid capital in the annexed territories in the field of exploitation of the raw material base (metal, oil, ore, cotton, etc.) on the huge markets for the sale of goods and the export of capital, investment opportunities and military construction, German settlements and the acquisition of inexpensive labor.

background

“The Ost General Plan is truly German and imperialist. We can say that the history of its creation began during the First World War. Then the Germans in the “Memorandum on the Aims of the War” in September 1914 put forward such an idea as the expulsion of the local population from the Russian and Polish lands and the settlement of German peasants instead. Also, the unions of entrepreneurs in Germany stood up for ensuring the growth of their own people, which thereby guaranteed the strengthening of military power. There were several more memorandums that spoke of the need for the Germans to oust the so-called East European barbarians.

So, it becomes clear that Hitler's plan has its roots in 1914, but on the eve of World War II, the previous intentions of German capitalism and imperialism began to sound in a new way. These reactionary tendencies for the first time began to unite not only with anti-Semitism, but with truly barbaric racism. It was an officially declared genocide, since the destruction of peoples and entire races was supposed. The Ost plan can be briefly described as a radically racist version of German expansion to the East.

The Holocaust in Hitler's program

This fascist document traces the intention to destroy not only millions of Slavs. It also refers to the creation of an experimental space for the murder of Jews throughout Europe, by creating an unlimited number of ghettos and concentration camps of death. Plan "Ost" provided for the broadest program of measures aimed at direct expansion and robbery.

Justification of genocide

Reinhard Heydrich, who in Nazi Germany held the post of head of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security, justified the military seizure of the eastern territories by the "Bolshevik threat", as well as the need to expand the living space for the German nation. He clearly voiced this deadly ideology, which was quite openly discussed in certain circles: what is needed can only be obtained through military action and violence. From this ideology follows the conclusion that the Germans will receive new territories only if they destroy everyone who lives on it.

Heinrich Himmler, who was one of the organizers of the Holocaust, admitted during the Nuremberg trials that already at the beginning of 1941 he brought to the attention of the leaders of the SS groups subordinate to him the following information: the goal of the military campaign against the Soviet Union was the destruction of 30 million people. He also stated that the brutal repressions against the partisans were only a pretext for the extermination of as many Jewish and Slavic populations as possible.

Historians' assessment

When it became known that there was a certain plan "Ost", many dismissed it as a project that was not carried out and had significance only in the fantasies of Himmler, Heydrich and Hitler. By such behavior, historians showed their biased attitude, but due to deeper research of this document, they came to the conclusion that their view of this problem was completely outdated.

Meanwhile, it turned out that the German plan "Ost" could give work not to hundreds, but to thousands of criminals from among politicians and scientists, soldiers and officers, bureaucrats and SS officials, as well as ordinary murderers. In addition, it led not only to the expulsion, but also to the death of hundreds of thousands, and perhaps even millions of Poles, Ukrainians, Russians, Czechs and Jews.

In early October 1939, Hitler issued a decree "On the Strengthening of the German Nation" and ordered Heinrich Himmler to take over all the powers to implement it. the latter was immediately given the title of "Reich Commissioner", and later he was considered the chief of planning to seize the territories of Eastern Europe. He quickly created additional special institutions and provided jobs for all employees in the SS.

What is the plan "Ost"

It should immediately be noted that this program was by no means separate document. It consisted of a whole chain of successively interconnected plans that were created in the period from 1939 to 1943. as the German troops advanced to the East. The term now includes not only documents drawn up by Himmler's numerous offices, but also papers drawn up in a similar spirit belonging to various Nazi institutions, such as the territorial planning and land management authorities, as well as the German Labor Front.

Start of resettlement

The first documents that were part of the Ost plan date back to 1939-1940. They concerned directly the Polish lands, especially the eastern part of Upper Silesia and West Prussia. The first victims of fascism in these lands were Jews and Poles. According to SS reports, more than 550,000 Jews were "evacuated" and sent abroad to the territory of the General Government. Some of them reached only the city of Lodz, where people were settled in the ghetto or distributed to death camps. According to the plan, 50% of the Poles were to be expelled, and this is about 3.5 million people, and also placed in the general government in order to make room for visiting German townspeople and peasants.

Documents relating to the USSR

“The General Plan “Ost” was thoroughly supplemented with new provisions simultaneously with the attack on the Soviet Union. In 1941, a large number of developments appeared, which were issued in a race either by the headquarters service of the Reichskommissar Heinrich Himmler, or by the Main Directorate of Imperial Security.

According to the works of a professor at the University of Berlin and concurrently holding one of the highest posts in the SS, Konrad Meyer-Hetling, the fascist plan "Ost" was supposed to kill, starve to death or expel at least 35-40 million Slavs, as well as Jews, Gypsies and , of course, the Bolsheviks, whatever nationality they may be. After that, the German colonization of huge land areas was to take place - from Leningrad to the Volga and the Caucasus, as well as to Ukraine, the Donetsk and Kuban regions, and the Crimea. In the future, the Nazis dreamed of reaching the Urals and Lake Baikal.

Main Events

● The murder of Jews (and this is about half a million people), the commissars of the Red Army, all the leaders of the Communist Party and the state apparatus of the USSR, as well as the destruction of any person who will be suspected of resistance. This point of the plan began to be put into practice from the first days of the fascist occupation.

● Termination of the supply of food to the regions located in the "non-chernozem zones", which meant that the northern part of Russia and its middle zone, as well as the whole of Belarus, would be deprived of food supplies.

● Ruthless looting of all areas located in fertile agricultural areas. On this occasion, Hermann Göring, at the beginning of May 1941, calmly suggested that with such a policy, millions of people would die of starvation if all the food needed for Germany's needs was removed from the country.

● Mass "resettlement" of the lower races in favor of large German businessmen and landowners in the territories to be colonized, in special strongholds. So they acted on the territory of annexed Poland, in many areas of occupied Ukraine and Lithuania.

● The complete destruction of large cities of the USSR and, first of all, Stalingrad and Leningrad, which were considered "hotbeds of Bolshevism." This point of the fascist plan, by and large, failed. But still, these cities lost hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants, who died of starvation and numerous bombardments.

Hunting for children

The Ost plan also had another barbaric idea. It consisted in hunting for children "suitable for Germanization." They were literally caught and removed from their families in the conquered eastern lands, and then tested for so-called racial purity. According to the results of the examination, they were placed either in shelters and camps, or taken to Germany. There they were nazified and “Germanized” under the Lebesborn program, which means “Source of Life”, and then given to Nazi families for education. Those who did not pass the test were sent to work in military factories.

Experiments of German doctors

Millions of Polish, Czech and Soviet people became victims of this inhuman Nazi plan. German government officials and population planners in the occupied territories carried out large-scale experiments in forced abortions and sterilizations, while not respecting basic health standards.

Later, these events began to be carried out in relation to the German Germans. Thus, for sexual contacts with workers driven from Eastern Europe, a death sentence was passed or other terrorist measures were used.

Volksdeutsche

At the end of 1942, the SS Reichskommissar Heinrich Himmler, who was engaged in the program of "strengthening the German nation", announced the existence of 629 thousand settlers belonging to the ethnic Germans - "Volksdeutsche", who arrived from Belarus, Yugoslavia, the Baltic States, Romania. He also reported that another 400 thousand people recruited in Ukraine and South Tyrol (Italy) were on their way to Germany. This means that during the Second World War there was a grandiose migration of peoples, during which millions of people moved from place to place, most of them against their will. Presumably, when they left, they left valuables and other property worth approximately 4.5 billion Reichsmarks, since they could take very little luggage with them. Later, all their property partially passed into the hands of German military officials, and the rest was exported to Germany.

The main executors of the plan

How, after the end of the war, were the true culprits and executors of the barbaric plan "Ost" punished? All the killers who were part of numerous Wehrmacht units and SS task forces, as well as holding key positions in the occupation bureaucracy, brought death and destruction with them to the occupied territories. But, despite this, many of them never suffered any punishment. Thousands of them seemed to "disappear", and then, some time after the war, appeared and began to lead a normal life either in West Germany or in other countries. For the most part, they escaped not only prosecution for their crimes, but even public censure.

The main ideologist of the Ost plan, Professor Konrad Meyer-Hetling, was present at the Nuremberg trials along with other war criminals. He was charged and sentenced by a US court to ... minor punishment. He was released in 1948. Since 1956 he has been a professor Technical University in Hannover, where he worked until his retirement. Meyer died in West Germany in 1973. He was 72 years old.

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