2 THE REICHSKOMMISSARIAT UKRAINE. a different idea. Koch was greatly angered by Fraunfeld's insubordination (a comparable situation also existed in the administrative relationship between the Estonian general commissariat and Reichskommissariat Ostland). Other members of the German administration in Ukraine were Generalkommissar Leyser and Gebietkommissar Steudel. there was a demand for one million men and women in four
Peenemunde. During the occupation a very small number of cities and their accompanying districts maintained German names. More important, the destructive policies of Koch and Heinrich Himmler were not subject to the RKUs official norms (see Nazi war crimes in Ukraine). depopulated by starvation and deportation. During a visit to Ukraine in 1942 Hitler said The town of Rivne in Volhynia, not Kyiv, was made the capital of the RKU. The RKU, officially established on 1 September 1941, was made up of Volhynia, Polisia, Right-Bank Ukraine, and part of the Poltava region. (slave laborers), armaments minister Albert Speer complained that his work A German colony, the RKU constituted an important part of Adolf Hitler's Lebensraum and was completely deprived of autonomy or international status. I require that no school except four-grade elementary men Ostarbeiter employed in agrilculture, mining, The Reichskommissariat's administrative capital was at Rivne, and it was divided into six Generalbezirke (general districts), called Generalkommissariate (general commissariats) in the pre-Barbarossa planning. Conquered territories further to the east, including the rest of Ukraine (the Crimea, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, and the Donbas/Donets Basin), were under military governance for the entirety of the war, until 194344. [4] Its administrator, Frauenfeld, played off the military and civil authorities against each other and gained the freedom to run the territory as he saw fit. Repatriation almost The Wehrmacht introduced reforms in Ukraine allowing limited religious liberty. The territory of the RKU comprised 339,275 sq km, with a population of approximately 17 million. During World War II, Reichskommissariat Ukraine was the civilian occupation regime of much of Nazi German-occupied Ukraine. In other respects the Nazis weakened and retarded elements of national consciousness that might have led Ukrainians to demand independence. Learn more, 2022 University of Toronto. Among the RKUs most prominent officials were Koch's deputy and follower, P. Dargel, and their opponent A. Frauenfeld, Generalkommissar of Tavriia. The German Administration gave the role of "Chief of Ukrainian Principal Commission" to Professor Wolodomyr Kubijowytsch, an early local supporter.
Die Jahrbcher fr Geschichte Osteuropas reprsentieren das Fach in seiner ganzen Breite; fr thematisch enger begrenzte Beitrge liegt der Fokus auf dem Gebiet des ehemaligen Russischen Reiches und der ehemaligen Sowjetunion. in Ukraine. He condemned Kiev to a slow Resettlement was also prevented by the German retreat and then by the formal liquidation of the RKU on 10 November 1944. In practice the administration of the RKU was directed not by Alfred Rosenberg but by Erich Koch, whom Adolf Hitler appointed Reichskommissar of Ukraine without consulting Rosenberg. In the most important areas, or where a German Army detachment remained, the local administration was always led by a German; in less significant areas local personnel was in charge. Attorney Advertising. This move had been bitterly resisted by Rosenberg who rightly feared that the transformation of the administration of the eastern territories from a state to a party bureaucracy would spell the effective end of his ministry (a state organ)'s authority and Heinrich Himmler, who rightly feared that an arbeitsbereich's establishment would be accompanied by the commissars becoming RVKs (Kommissars for war) and thus enormously empowered at the expense of the SS, that had already been steadily losing ground since late September, when the commissariat government began establishing itself, with local commissars asserting control over the police in their territories, hitherto controlled by the SS. Koch often said that the Ukrainian people were Attached to every German court was a so-called special court consisting of a judge and two jurors (who did not necessarily have legal training), which adjudicated cases that threatened the interests of the Reich, such as attacks on German administrators and murders of Reichsdeutsche. Himmler and Rosenberg's rearguard resistance soon collapsed in the face of pressure from Martin Bormann in Berlin and Koch and Lohse in the field. The six general districts were (English names and administrative centres in parentheses): The administrative position of the Krim Generalbezirk remained ambiguous. Ein doppelt-blindes Begutachtungsverfahren mit internationalen Fachleuten sorgt fr anerkannte Qualitt. It extended, in the west, from the Volhynian region around Lutsk, to a line from Vinnytsia to Mykolaiv along the Southern Bug River in the south, to the areas surrounding Kiev, Poltava and Zaporizhia in the east. Erich Koch and the officials of the German food and agriculture ministry believed that collective farms facilitated the exploitation of Ukrainian peasants for Germanys benefit. The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police, recruited by raion heads and mayors of larger towns, was subordinate to the German police and civil administration of the RKU. Berkhoff, K. (2021). Nevertheless the system remained basically unaltered in the RKU. Sentences imposed by the German Supreme Court and special courts could not be appealed. Oktober 1932) Reichskommissariat Papen II (Oktober bis Deutsch Wikipedia, Reichskommissariat Ostland Administrative Gliederung des Reichskommissariats Ostland Das Reichskommissariat Ostland entstand nach dem Angriff der Wehrmacht auf die Sowjetunion im Juni 1941 im Baltikum und Teilen Weirusslands whrend des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Koch, who described himself as a brutal dog, represented Nazi policy at its most ruthless. Goering, Bormann, Sauckel and Himmler. Adolf Hitler issued a Fhrer Decree defining the administration of the newly-occupied Eastern territories on 17 July 1941.[1]. Among them were the police, under Heinrich Himmler; Hermann Grings Four-Year Plan and Economic Executive Staff East, which managed heavy industry and resource extraction; the mobilization of labor for work in Germany, under the direction of F. Sauckel; propaganda, under J. Goebbels; and transport and communications, directed by ministries in Berlin. Juli 1932 bis 29. Ostarbeiter would be "worked to death." The German Supreme Court (Deutsches Obergericht) had its seat in Rivne. Please login or register with De Gruyter to order this product. The Reichsfhrer-SS and chief of German Police, Heinrich Himmler initially had direct authority over any SS formations in Ukraine to order "Security Operations", but soon lost it. small town of 40,000 about 200 miles west of Kiev. [9] Hegewald (Himmler's field headquarters and the location of a small, experimental German colony),[10] Frsterstadt (also a Volksdeutsche colony),[11] Halbstadt (a German Mennonite settlement),[9] Alexanderstadt,[12] and Kronau[9] were some of these. German administration Ukrainian cities were to be permanently Hitler's Clean Slate: Everyday Life in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, 19411944, Ph D diss, University of Toronto, 1998, [This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. shipped them to Germany as virtual slave laborers to work in Access supplemental materials and multimedia. district] area" was led by a "Gebietskommissar" and each Partei "party" was governed by a Ukrainian or German "Parteien Chef" (Party Chief). A move which in theory would give Rosenberg control over SS forces in the occupied Soviet territories under civil administration in return for Rosenberg's support for the SS in its power struggles. On 20 April 1941 Adolf Hitler instructed him to prepare a plan for the political restructuring of the European portion of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics following its occupation. Larger towns were administered by Stadtkommissre, and raion centers had German police stations and Landwirtschaftsfhrer, who were in charge of agriculture. Cap. Our focal point is ancient history, but also social and economic history, as well as history of science; furthermore regional studies, Eastern European history and transatlantic studies. The material and information contained on these pages and on any pages linked from these pages are intended to provide general information only and not legal advice. On 14 December 1941, Rosenberg discussed with Hitler various issues regarding the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In. Formerly, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. District Chiefs) (similar to Polish "Wojts" in the General Government). In January 1942, Bishop Polikarp Sikorsky of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church became the temporary administrator of church lands in the German-occupied Ukraine and he was granted the title of Archbishop of Lutsk and Kovel. Following the advance of German forces the remainder of the Poltava region and Dnipropetrovsk oblast, Zaporizhia oblast, and Kherson oblast were annexed to the RKU on 2 September 1942, and the rest of Left-Bank Ukraine remained under military rule. twenty Ukrainians were whipped by the police because they : The Reich's Commissioners are subordinated under the Reich's minister for the occupied eastern territories and receive only orders from him) was the "Fhrer" decree for the administration of the new eastern territories, the Reichskommissars reported to the Eastern Affairs Ministry. The Chase Law Group, LLC | 1447 York Road, Suite 505 | Lutherville, MD 21093 | (410) 928-7991, Easements and Related Real Property Agreements. Koch, March 13, 1943 (Dallin p. 157). In order to weaken Ukrainian aspirations to independence he excluded several territories from the proposed Reichskommissariat. Reprinted from FORUM Ukrainian Review No. For example, on September 3, 1942 Hitler demanded that half Nazi Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, seeking to destroy its ideological opponent. This and subsequent 'worker registration' drives in Ukraine would eventually backfire after the Battle of Kursk when the Germans would attempt to build a defensive line along the Dnieper only to discover that the necessary manpower had been either recruited to forced labour in Germany or had gone underground to forestall such "recruitment".
The most important cases or situations which affected "natural rights" of any "Aryan" subject, were managed in Rivne or Berlin. [2] These included a dispute over Koch's status and access to Hitler, manpower shortages over gathering the harvest, Hitler's insistence that the Crimea and much of Southern Ukraine was to be "cleaned out" (i.e., unwanted nationalities to be removed), and directly attached to the Reich as a district called Gotenland ("Land of the Goths") the renaming of cities such as Simferopol to "Gotenburg" and Sevastopol to "Theodorichshafen" (after the ancient Gothic King Theodoric the Great) and an adjustment to the border with Romanian-controlled Transnistria to remove overlooking of the shipyards at Mykolaiv. a million Ukrainian women be brought to Germany to free German At the end of the war some 120,000 Ukrainians registered The Reichskommissariat Ukraine excluded several parts of present-day Ukraine, as well as included some territories outside of its modern borders. Koch, as a member of the superior German Herrenvolk Both also made a point of establishing strong SA organisations in their jurisdiction as a counterbalance to the SS. The position of the Eastern Affairs Ministry was weak because its department chiefs: (Economy, Work, Foods & Crops and Forest & Woods) held similar posts in other government departments (The Four-Year Plan, Eastern Economic Office, Foods and Farming Ministry, etc.) brutality towards Ukrainians was approved by Hitler, First transfer of Ukrainian territory from military to civil administration took place on September 1, 1941. A referral to this page is found in 22 entries. General education was limited to four grades of elementary schools, and higher education was restricted to narrowly specialized vocational courses. Koch finally banned the use of the whip on Ukrainians, Koch's He thereby enjoyed complete autonomy, verging on independence, from Koch's authority. The Soviets counted ethnic Germans in all Russia at 1,423,534, or 1% of the total population in 1939. Many cases were adjudicated by Gebietskommissre, who handed down administrative decisions. However, Hitler had who called himself "a brutal dog," once said "If I On the orders of the Frauenfeld's administration was much more moderate than Koch's and consequentially more economically successful. Alfred Rosenberg implemented an "Agrarian New Order" in Ukraine, ordering the confiscation of Soviet state properties to establish German state properties. Koch was ordered to provide 450,000 workers a year from themselves as displaced persons (DPs). In Ukraine the Germans published a "local" journal in the German language, the Deutsche Ukrainezeitung. km). Your documents are now available to view. 92, Spring 1995. Barely 10 percent of the land intended for distribution was actually allotted to the peasants. Another statistic puts the total at 2,196,166 The new twosome achieved nothing other than to exasperate each other beyond endurance. Berkhoff, K. 2021. HXhx9IYiy*:JZjz ? inferior to the Germans, that Ukrainians were half-monkeys, All structured data from the main, Property, Lexeme, and EntitySchema namespaces is available under the. Reichskommissariat Ukraine (abbreviated as RKU), literally "Reich Commissariat of Ukraine", was the civilian occupation regime of much of German-occupied Ukraine (which included adjacent areas of modern Belarus and pre-war Poland) during World War II. Between September 1941 and March 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Reichskommissar Erich Koch as a colony. Between September 1941 and August 1944, the Reichskommissariat was administered by Erich Koch as the Reichskommissar. World War II. The administration's tasks included the pacification of the region and the exploitation, for German benefit, of its resources and people. The civil and criminal justice local administration, apart from the local SS and Wehrmacht military justice branches, was staffed by "Parteien Chef", "Bailiffs", "Mayors", with supervision of German "Schoffen" (Advisers) and "Schlichten" (Arbiters) with ample legal powers. peasant virtues of Ukrainian women" appealed to him. "In November 1942 about A particular measure taken for the purpose of fanning anti-Soviet sentiment was the investigation of the Vinnytsia massacre. It was a key subject of Nazi planning for the post-war expansion of the German state and civilization. On April 18, 1942 With a personal account, you can read up to 100 articles each month for free. Economic affairs remained under the direct management of Hermann Gring the Plenipotentiary of Four-Years Plan and Oldenburg State Major, and Fritz Saukel was charged with working with the General Plenipotentiary of Manpower recruitment, though in Ukraine Koch insisted that Saukel confine himself to setting requirements leaving the actual "recruitment" to Koch and his brutes. taking territory from Western Russia. find a Ukrainian who is worthy of sitting at the same table Galicia was annexed to the Generalgouvernement, and northern Bukovyna and Transnistria were given to Romania. manufacturing armaments, metal production and railroads. preferential treatment and personally appointed Erich Koch to Especially after the summer of 1942 when he tried to regain control over policing in Ukraine by gaining authority for the collection of the harvest and failed miserably, in large part because Koch withheld cooperation. In the civil administration of the East Affair ministry worked numerous technical staff Slavs under Georg Leibbrandt, former chief of the east section of overseas political office in the Party, now chief of the political section in the East Ministry, and his deputy Otto Brutigam, previously consul with experience in the Soviet Union. Those experiments were profoundly resented by the local population, which saw them as portents of German postwar intentions. Before the armaments factories including the V-2 rocket factory at always meant death or exile in Siberia. A poisoning of relations was guaranteed. [13], Albania Austria (Anschluss) Belarus Belgium Channel Islands Czechoslovakia Denmark Estonia France Greece Hungary Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Monaco The Netherlands Norway Poland San Marino Ukraine Yugoslavia, Individuals: Volodymyr Bahaziy Petro Voinovsky Petro Zakhvalynsky, Reichskommissariat Ukraine bersichtskarte der Generalbezirke und Kreisgebiete Das Reichskommissariat Ukraine bestand whrend der deutschen Besatzungszeit zwischen 1941 und 1945 in den westlichen und zentralen Teilen der Ukraine. To access this article, please, Access everything in the JPASS collection, Download up to 10 article PDFs to save and keep, Download up to 120 article PDFs to save and keep. [3] This was done by the Germans in order to secure a steady wood supply and efficient railroad and water transportation.[3]. Prof. Kondufor's statistic is that 2,244,000 We oversee more than 150 serial publications as well as 28 periodicals and publish such renowned series as Historia, Hermes and Archiv fr Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie. A law regulating commercial and industrial property ownership was to be enacted after the war; for the duration, property was considered basically nationalized. Ukrainians "should be given only the crudest kind of At the same time at a smaller scale, the local Municipalities were administered by native "Bailiffs" and "Mayors", accompanied by respective German political advisers if needed. The sending of Dutch settlers was charged to the "Nederlandsche Oost-Compagnie", a Dutch-German Company dedicated to encourage the colonization of the east by Dutch citizens. Ukraine for German industry by "ruthless" means, according Once confirmed by the Generalkommissar, their verdicts were not subject to appeal. The Ukrainian Soviets counted 17% of total Soviet population. option. Like Bormann and Goering, SS leader Heinrich I probably Berkhoff K. 2 THE REICHSKOMMISSARIAT UKRAINE. Hoping that by joining forces they might regain some influence, Himmler and Rosenberg decided upon the appointment of Gottlob Berger, Himmler power-political hatchet man and the SS's head of personnel as Rosenberg's deputy. In all the major Ukrainian cities Rosenberg and Goebbels did not approve of his methods. The German Administration also allowed Archbishop Alexander of Pinsk and Polesia to maintain the religious authority he wielded before the war and the same permission was granted to Archbishop Alexander of Volhynia. All rights reserved.tspace@library.utoronto.caUniversity of Toronto Libraries, 130 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5 Canada, About web accessibility and requesting alternate formats, Tell us about a web accessibility problem, Doctoral and Master theses prior to ETD mandate (pre-2009), https://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk1/tape11/PQDD_0016/NQ53909.pdf, University of Toronto Libraries, 130 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 1A5 Canada. the worst and most dangerous conditions. Hitler said "Ukraine and the East lands would produce 7 Million, or more likely 10 or 12 Million of Metric tonnes of Grain to provide Germany's food needs". This item is part of a JSTOR Collection. In the mind of Adolf Hitler and other German expansionists, the destruction of the "Judeo-Bolshevist" state would remove a threat from Germany's eastern borders and allow Germany to use the vast spaces of the western Soviet Union, which included the fertile Ukraine, as a source for the fulfillment of the material needs of the German people. Former Soviet territory between the Southern Bug and Dniester rivers was also excluded from the Reichskommissariat Ukraine; this was given to Romania and named "Transnistria" or "Transniestra", governed from Odessa by Dr. Alexeanu, the Romanian Governor. On July 16, 1941, Hitler appointed the fervent Nazi Erich Koch as Reichskommissar for the planned Reichskommissariat Ukraine, created by a Fhrer decree on August 20, 1941. Berkhoff, Karel C.. "2 THE REICHSKOMMISSARIAT UKRAINE" In.
In 1939 a new census reported the Ukrainian urban population as 11,195,620 and rural population as 19,764,601; a total of 30,960,221. Franz Steiner is one of Germany's most prominent academic publishing houses. : Kiev. Secret Nazi Plans for Eastern Europe: A Study of Lebensraum Policies (New York 1961)Dallin, A. German Rule in Russia, 19411945: A Study of Occupation Policies, 2nd edn (Boulder, Colo 1981)Mulligan, T. The Politics of Illusion and Empire: German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 19421943 (New York 1988)Berkhoff, Karel. The German invasion resulted in the collapse of the western elements of the Soviet Red Army, and Nazi plans for Ukraine became reality. Russian, Ukraina. The insignificant number of tribunals accessible to the non-German inhabitants of the RKU did not provide sufficient legal protection, especially to the rural population. The region would also provide "living space" for future German colonists. an iron fist. weak to control Koch and Rosenberg's pro-Ukrainian plans BIBLIOGRAPHYForostivskyi, L. Kyv pid vorozhymy okupatsiiamy (Buenos Aires 1952)Brutigam, O. berblick ber die Besetzten Ostgebiete whrend des zweiten Weltkrieges (Tbingen 1954)Herzog, R. Grundzge der deutschen Besatzungsverwaltung in der Ost- und Sdeuropischen Lndern whrend des zweiten Weltkrieges (Tbingen 1955)Moritz, G. Gerichtsbarkeit in den von Deutschland besetzten Gebieten, 19391945 (Tbingen 1955)Ilnytzkyj, R. Deutschland und die Ukraine 19341945, 2 vols (Munich 19556)Kamenetsky, I. Hitler's Occupation of Ukraine (19411944): A Study of Totalitarian Imperialism (Milwaukee 1956). At the level below were German or Ukrainian "Akademiker" ('Academics', i.e. According to the original German plan it was to correspond approximately to the old Taurida Governorate (therefore including also mainland portions of Ukraine), and was to consist of two Teilbezirke (sub-districts): Only the first of these saw transfer to civil administration in September 1942, with the peninsula remaining under military control for the duration of the war.