move along a wide front in the north, between Voronezh and Boguchar, overrunning the Kursk province and penetrating into the North-Eastern Ukraine and the northern Donbas from the east and north-east. Valuiki, Lisychansk, Izyum and the great engineering centre of Kramatorsk (though now reduced to another heap of ruins) were recaptured during the first week of February, and, a few days later, Volchansk, Chuguyev and Lozovaya. On
the 16th, after heavy fighting, Golikov's troops entered Kharkov, the fourth-largest city in the Soviet Union. Meantime, farther south, Vatutin's troops of the South-West Front
liberated the great industrial centre of Voroshilovgrad, while Novocherkassk and Rostov were hberated by the troops of the Southern Front under Malinovsky.
After the capture of Kharkov, Golikov's and Vatutin's troops continued their advance, and, with the capture of Pavlograd on the 17th, the Russians were almost in sight of the Dnieper Line, barely twenty miles to the west. It was at this stage that the Germans began preparing their counter-offensive, their "revenge for Stalingrad". In March, caught on the hop, the Russians were, indeed, going to lose some of the territory gained in the winter offensive, including Kharkov.
Between Stalingrad and the first indications of the coming German counter-offensive the mood in Russia was exuberant, and it was during this period that phrases like "Stalin's military genius" began to be used in the press. The prospect of recapturing the whole of the Donbas and reaching the Dnieper Line before the spring was alluring, and the capture of Kursk and Kharkov seemed to exceed even the rosiest hopes. The Soviet press was full of articles on the importance of recapturing the Donbas—which meant coal and steel. The tone of the press became even more exuberant after the liberation of Kharkov; Red Star wrote on February 16:
The capture of Kharkov is... another triumph of that Stalinist strategy which has already achieved so much during the past winter. Frantically the enemy clung on to Kharkov... The Germans tried to hold us on the Donets river... but all the fortified unes were broken, one after another... Finally, the battle continued inside Kharkov itself, but here also those divisions with arrogant names like Grossdeutschland,
Reich and Adolf Hitler were smashed... And now it is we, and not the Germans, who are going to plan the future course of the war.
Two days later, the same paper exalted the skill of the Red Army: not only had it
liberated immense territories, but in doing so it had been constantly encircling and destroying the enemy; thus, the Italians had been encircled and routed at Millerovo and the Hungarians at Kastornoye, not to mention the Germans at Stalingrad. And again it referred to Cannae, "where Hannibal, with his 50,000 Carthaginians had routed 70,000
Romans." "Cannae" had become part of the Red Army's strategy. Red Star went on to say that all that had happened in the last months had finally shown that "the vaunted superiority of German military thought" had proved a myth, even though it was a myth that had even survived the 1914—18 war. Now "Stalinist strategy" was triumphant. It is significant that it was soon after the capture of Kharkov that Stalin assumed the rank and title of Marshal of the Soviet Union.
During these exuberant weeks of February 1943 more credit began to be given to the
Communist Party than ever before. Here were the first signs of a renewal of the old
tensions between "Party" and "Army", although, right to the end of the war the two continued to be identified with each other, rather than contrasted. The Party was, as it were, now living in the reflected glory of the Army, or was it vice versa, since the official propaganda now went out of its way to point out that all that was best in the Army was
"Party"?
Thus, at the height of the rejoicing over Kharkov, Red Star wrote on February 19: The Party has thrown its best sons into the fray. How many times in moments of
crisis, both at Moscow in 1941 and at Stalingrad in 1942, did the courage and
toughness of Communists save the situation! The Party organisation is the real
backbone of the Army. All the magnificent achievements of our Army are due to the fact that the Red Army's military doctrine is based on the well-tested principles of the wisest doctrine in the world—that of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
In short, "innate Russian virtues" were indispensable, but they were merely the raw material with which the régime was forging victory. More and more, as the war
approached a victorious conclusion, did the concept of "Soviet patriotism" take the place of "Russian patriotism" of the dark days of 1941-2. And Stalin was increasingly built up into the symbol of this Soviet patriotism.
It is, however, significant that Stalin never quite forgot the fearful days of 1941 and 1942, when he had to depend almost exclusively on specifically Russian nationalism to save the situation; and, at the end of the war, he singled out the Russian people as those whose determination to win the war and defend the Soviet State had been greatest of all.
Chapter II THE GERMANS AND THE UKRAINE
Now that the Red Army had begun to drive the Germans out of the Soviet Union and, in particular, out of the Ukraine, we must look at German policy in the occupied areas—if it can be called a policy. For, in reality, this policy was a story of almost unrelieved bestiality, occasionally mixed up with the more farcical aspects of Nazi ideology.
Thus, as early as 16 July, 1941, Hitler had already decided that the Crimea was to
become a purely German colony, from which all "foreigners" were to be deported or evacuated. It was to become the "German Gibraltar" in the Black Sea. To Robert Ley, Chief of the German Labour Front and the Strength Through Joy movement, it was to
become a gigantic spa, a favourite playground for German youth. Later, Hitler also
played with the idea of settling the South-Tyrolean problem with Mussolini by resettling in the Crimea the German-speaking inhabitants of the Italian part of the Tyrol.
After the fall of Sebastopol in July 1942, Manstein, "the Hero of the Crimea", was to be presented with one of the former Imperial palaces on the Crimean "Riviera". One of Rosenberg's more lunatic discoveries was that the Crimea was, "geo-politically", part of the Germanic heritage, since it was in the Crimea that the last Goths had survived as late as the 16th century. In December 1941 he had proposed to Hitler that the Crimea be
renamed "Gotenland":
I told him that I had also worried about the renaming of the cities. I thought of renaming Simferopol Gotenberg, and Sebastopol Theodorichhafen...
[ Dallin, op. cit., pp. 254-5.]
In reality, whatever Hitler's post-war plans were, it was awkward, while the war was still on, to proceed with a total evacuation of all "foreigners" (i.e. non-Germans) from the Crimea, especially as the Crimean Tartars were not only gladly collaborating with the Germans, but were actually supplying the Wehrmacht with a certain number of soldiers.
But the Crimea was still a minor sideshow, compared with the Ukraine. This was an
immense territory with nearly forty million inhabitants before the war, a proverbial
"bread-basket", and a source of coal, iron ore and steel.
It would be idle to deal here in detail with all the conflicting policies that existed amongst the Nazi hierarchy in respect of the Ukraine. Rosenberg clearly tried to distinguish at first between the "evil" Great-Russians and the Ukrainians who could be used as a bulwark against the Russians. Early in 1941 Rosenberg argued, in his usual insane way, that Kiev had been the centre of the Varangian State, which accounted for the strongly Nordic and superior racial features of the Ukrainian people.
Then, in May, he drafted instructions for the future German rule in the Ukraine.
Retreating slightly from his goal of immediate statehood, he now envisaged two stages: during the war, the Ukraine was to provide the Reich with goods and raw materials; after that "a free Ukrainian state in closest alliance with the German Reich" would assure German influence in the east:
To attain these goals, one problem... must be attacked as
rapidly as possible:
Ukrainian writers, scholars and politicians must be put to work to revive an
Ukrainian historical consciousness, so as to overcome what Bolshevik-Jewish
pressure has destroyed in Ukrainian Volkstum in these years.
A new "great University" in Kiev, technical academies, extensive German lecture tours, the elimination of the Russian language and the intensive propagation of German
language and culture were integral parts of this programme. He spoke in terms of
extending the future "Ukrainian State" all the way from Lwow to Saratov on the Volga.
[Dallin, op. cit., pp. 108-9.]
This seemingly "liberal" Rosenberg Plan, as well as all its subsequent variants, met with no favour from Hitler, Goering, Himmler or, for that matter, Erich Koch,
Reichskommissar for the Ukraine, who pointedly set up his headquarters in the provincial town of Rovno, and not in Kiev, which was not to be given even the semblance of a
"capital". The various émigrés, who had been hanging round Rosenberg for years, such as the senile Skoropadsky, who had been the German-appointed Herman of the Ukraine
back in 1918, were not taken seriously by any of the top Nazis—except by Rosenberg
himself. Even Bandera, the ferociously anti-Polish and anti-Jewish Ukrainian
"nationalist" leader in the Western Ukraine, was arrested by the Germans at the beginning of the war, and sent to Berlin, where he was interned till 1944 when the hard-pressed Germans decided that he might still have his uses. Meantime Galicia (i.e. the Western Ukraine) was simply incorporated in the German-ruled Government-General of Poland.
Melnik, another Ukrainian nationalist leader, was no luckier than Bandera.
To Hitler, to Goering, to Himmler and to Erich Koch the Ukrainians were
Untermenschen, just like the Russians. Goering is quoted as having said: "The best thing would be to kill all men in the Ukraine ... and then to send in the SS stallions.
[Dallin, op. cit., p. 123.]
He also cheerfully envisaged the possibility in 1941 of twenty or thirty million people dying of hunger in Russia during the following year. Koch, a representative of the most extreme Untermensch school of thought, was appointed overlord of the Ukraine at Goering's insistence.
For a short time after the German occupation of the Ukraine a small number of Ukrainian
"nationalists" still tried to make their voice heard, especially in parts of the Ukraine, such as Kharkov, still nominally under the jurisdiction of the Army and not of Koch. But they received no serious encouragement from anybody.
The Ukraine was, to the Germans, first and foremost a source of food; secondly, of coal, iron and other minerals; and thirdly, of slave labour.
Yet, the agricultural deliveries from the Ukraine turned out much smaller than the
Germans had budgeted for, while the German attempts to revive the Donbas, Krivoi Rog and other industrial areas, was to prove a complete failure; the Germans actually had to send coal to the Ukraine from Germany! Both in agriculture and industry they met with great passive resistance; moreover, agriculture was short of machinery, and the Germans had to export certain quantities of such machinery to the Ukraine; the industrial plants had largely been evacuated to the east, and in those coal and iron ore mines which had not been put out of action by the retreating Russians, there was both a shortage of skilled labour (many of the miners having been evacuated) and various kinds of passive
resistance from the miners who were still there.
According to German statistics, non-agricultural deliveries from the east (i.e. from all the occupied Soviet territories, and not just the Ukraine) totalled 725 m. marks' worth; these were offset by an export of 535 m. marks' worth of equipment and coal to the east, thus leaving a net profit of 190 m. marks! To this should be added various local deliveries to the German Army, estimated at 500 m. marks; but even so, the total balance remains
unimpressive. According to Dallin's calculations, based on the available German
statistics, and even including the east's agricultural deliveries, "the contributions of the occupied east to the Reich ... amounted to only one-seventh of what the Reich obtained during the war from France! "
[Dallin, op. cit., p. 407.]
Even if the greater part of what the Germans got out of the occupied Soviet territories came from the Ukraine, that enormous and wealthy country cannot have supplied to the Reich more than one-tenth of what the Germans had pumped out of France. The desire
for even plain economic collaboration was lacking.
For two things characterised the German occupation of the Ukraine: the massacre of the Jews, and the deportation of millions of young Ukrainians to Germany as slave labour.
Even assuming that industrial production in the Donbas, Krivoi Rog and Zaporozhie
could be made to work (and the "proletariat", or what was left of it was even more anti-German than the rest of the Ukrainian population) any such possibility was made even more remote by Sauckel's policy of draining all industry in the east of its manpower and deporting it to Germany.
The deportation of slave labour from the Ukraine began in a big way as early as February 1942.
We shall have to return to the topic of German occupation policy and methods in Soviet territories, and in the Ukraine in particular. But here is a sample of what they looked like in purely human terms. It is an account of my visit to the great city of Kharkov after its first—and only brief—liberation by the Russians in February 1943, at the height of the post-Stalingrad offensive.
Chapter III KHARKOV UNDER THE GERMANS
There was some argument before the war whether Kharkov was the third-largest or only the fourth-largest city in the Soviet Union; according to some figures, it had just a few thousand more inhabitants than Kiev. But be that as it may, Kharkov was, in February 1943, the first city with a population of nearly a million to be liberated from the Germans, and this, in itself, was extraordinarily interesting. How had such a city lived under the Germans for a year and a half?
Before the war, it had been a great industrial city, but practically all its heavy industry had been evacuated in the autumn of 1941; ethnically, it was predominantly Ukrainian, but nearly a third of the population were Russians.
When I went there in February 1943 the Russian liberation of Kharkov was still highly precarious; the Red Army's communication lines were long and very bad, and the danger of a German counter-offensive could not be ruled out. The high spirits among the Russian soldiers noticeably declined even during the three days I was there.
The German occupation of Kharkov (which was in the Military Zone, and not under the
authority of Erich Koch) was marked by the following features:
Acute hunger among civilians, especially during the first winter of the occupation;
Terror, especially against suspected Soviet sympathisers;
Extermination of the Jews;
The toleration of a Black Market, in which the German soldiers played a very active part; No encouragement given by the German authorities to any Ukrainian nationalist
movements, but, at the same time, a readiness to sow discord between Ukrainians and
Russians;
The stamping out of Russian and Ukrainian cultural life, and the abolition of all
education, except some elementary schools;
A certain encouragement to the artisans and to shopkeepers, but only the most half-
hearted attempt, by German Big Business, to revive Kharkov as a great industrial centre; A readiness on the part of some of the Ukrainian petite bourgeoisie (artisan and shopkeeper types) to adapt themselves as best they could to a difficult situation, and, above all, to survive;
Acute resentment against the Germans because of the deportation of so many of the
younger people as slave labour to Germany;
The existence of a Soviet underground, and a widespread anti-German feeling in the cit
y, above all among children and adolescents deprived of their education;
What "local government" there was—the Ukrainian Burgomaster and his town council—
was completely under the thumb of the German military authorities. The Burgomaster,
Alexander Semënenko, who followed the Germans when they left, and then returned with them in March 1943, was later, in 1944, to play a minor part in Berlin in the various attempts to set up an Ukrainian National Committee.
That evening, a few days after the Russians had entered Kharkov, the front was still only a very short distance away; and for half-an-hour before landing our plane had been flying under fighter escort. It was thawing. The large blocks of houses near the airfield had all been burned out. A wrecked Heinkel was lying on the airfield; but here also were half-a-dozen Russian fighter planes—not wrecked, but very much alive. Two of them had just
escorted us here. But the airfield was in a mess; all hangars gone, and all the other buildings gone. A young air force sergeant, shaking his head, remarked:
"We're in a real jam here. With this thaw, communications have gone to hell, and we even have to fly the petrol here... Before leaving, they wrecked everything at this airfield.
They also caused great damage to Kharkov with their air-raid the day after they were thrown out..."
It was a long way from the airfield to Kharkov. Most of the larger buildings on the way had been burned out, though the small cottages with their vegetable gardens were
standing. We stopped at one of these cottages which had been turned into an air force officers' mess. Our host was a handsome air force colonel with a fair beard, Neomtevich by name, who had distinguished himself in many battles, and had started fighting back in 1941, in Belorussia.
"What a wollop we got from the Germans then!" he remarked. "They were really expecting us to give up the ghost; and, I can tell you: it was a job keeping the show going. Now we are doing well, but not nearly as well as we should like to. It's all very well talking about 'Kiev next month'. No; we've got to regroup. Our communications are absurdly long, and very bad indeed. Our nearest railway that's functioning is over sixty-five miles away. The Germans have certainly buggered up the railway; and you should
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