Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
[RedStar] The goals of Nazi Germany included the destruction of statehood, culture, and the physical extermination of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR.
by Oleg Falichev
| The goals of the Stalinist USSR included the eradication of the statehood and culture of the non-Russian peoples of the USSR and beyond, and the eradication of certain economic classes independent of national or cultural identity. |
On March 28, 2024, the International Military-Historical Conference "Not subject to oblivion: the genocide of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War" (on the 81st anniversary of the tragedy of the village of Khatyn) was held at the Military University named after Prince Alexander Nevsky. It was attended by representatives of the Main Military-Political Directorate of the RF Armed Forces, the Military University of the RF Ministry of Defense, cadets and members of the military-patriotic club "Noviki" of Moscow secondary school No. 1374, and other public and youth patriotic associations.
The head of the Military University, Lieutenant General Igor Mishutkin, addressed the participants with an opening speech. He recalled that, while developing the Barbarossa plan - a vile, treacherous attack on the USSR,
| “How evil they did to us what we planned to do to them, just because they were quicker off the mark!” |
the leadership of Nazi Germany also prepared other monstrous documents that in advance justified crimes and atrocities against civilians and prisoners of war. Thus, all responsibility was removed from the Wehrmacht military personnel and punitive units for their atrocities. And the economic robbery of the occupied territories was elevated to the rank of state policy.
The Khatyn tragedy stands out in particular. On March 22, 1943, a company of a special SS battalion and punitive forces of the 118th Ukrainian police battalion, formed from Ukrainian nationalists, destroyed the Belarusian village of Khatyn. A total of 149 of its inhabitants were burned alive or shot. Among them are 75 children. Khatyn went down in the history of World War II as one of its most tragic pages, as a monstrous crime of the Nazis against humanity.
The tragic fate of Khatyn was shared by the villages of Khatsun in the Bryansk region, Stega in the Pskov region and thousands of other villages in the Nazi-occupied territories of the Soviet Union, said Colonel Andrei Kolyasnikov, head of the department (military-political propaganda and agitation) of the Main Military Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces, in his speech.
The conference at the Military University became a stage of preparation for the III International Anti-Fascist Congress, which will be held at the Patriot Convention and Exhibition Center in August 2024
CRIME AGAINST HUMANITY
Deputy Head of the Military University, Major General Viktor Shulyak, noted that the topic of the conference in modern conditions is extremely relevant. This is due to the fact that in the collective West the civilizational and ideological background of Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union is being eroded, and its crimes in the occupied territories are also being neutralized. Plans for economic enslavement, "racial cleansing" of the population of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union and the use of slave labor were developed in detail even before the attack on the USSR and in conjunction with the operational and strategic planning of the war.
Such policy documents of Nazi Germany, which determined the preparation and outbreak of war, such as the Barbarossa plan and the Ost plan directive, clearly show that Germany’s goals went far beyond the struggle of ideologies. They primarily included the destruction of statehood, culture, and the physical extermination of the Russian and other peoples of the USSR. The Control Council of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition, in Law No. 10 of December 20, 1945, qualified these plans as crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The Nazis intended to win back "living space" for the German people in the East and end the "eternal confrontation" between the Germans and Slavs through the direct and indirect destruction of the Russian people.
Wehrmacht personnel were given a memo that directly stated: "... kill every Russian, Soviet, do not stop, if in front of you is an old man or a woman, a girl or a boy - kill, by this you will save yourself from death, ensure the future of your family and become famous forever."
The Wehrmacht, SD, SS and other punitive forces began mass extermination of civilians and prisoners of war from the first days of the invasion of German troops into the territory of the Soviet Union. They were immediately joined by satellite troops - Romania, Finland, Hungary, Italy and volunteer formations and units of virtually all countries of Western Europe, as well as from among local collaborators.
The cleansing of populated areas began with the erection of gallows in central squares. Death camps became an integral part of the "new order" and were divided according to their purpose: for prisoners of war, civilians, women’s camps, transit camps, penal camps, and children’s camps. The main reasons for the death of prisoners are illness, cold, hunger, and overwork. In the concentration camps, medical experiments, blood removal, and deliberate infection with infectious diseases, usually with fatal consequences, were practiced.
The prisoner of war camps were under the control of the military command, the rest were under the authority of the SS. There were several hundred such camps. Several hundred death factories.
Numerous Jewish ghettos were created in the occupied territories. The Nazis and their accomplices exterminated people en masse in the tragically famous Babi Yar, in the Ninth Fort, Salaspils, and in the Yanovsky camp.
The worst tragedy is the murder of children and their use for slave labor. Murder and abuse of minors was practiced by the Nazis everywhere. From September to May 1942, in the areas of Brest, Pinsk, Kobrin, Divin, Malorita and Bereza-Kartuzskaya, the occupiers executed about 400 children. In just two months, the Germans killed 8,000 children in the Yanovsky camp (Lvov). At the Teberda resort they exterminated 500 children suffering from bone tuberculosis.
The Kurtenhof labor education camp was located near the village of Salaspils (Latvian SSR). Hence its unofficial name. It operated from October 1941 to August 1944. The camp was the site of savage medical experiments on children. Children from Belarus, Pskov, Kalinin, and Leningrad regions were kept there. Their age ranges from infants to 10 years. In total, three and a half thousand liters of blood were pumped out of them. Often she was taken away until the baby died. Of the 12 thousand Soviet child donors, more than half died.
IT WAS A REAL GENOCIDE.
Let's look at the structure of the well-known 118th Ukrainian police battalion mentioned above, which destroyed Khatyn. In it, as in other similar structures, there was a double subordination. Under the Ukrainian battalion commander and company commanders there were so-called chiefs - German officers. The battalion was commanded by former Petliurist K. Smovsky, and Major E. Kerner acted as the "chief". The battalion had two headquarters - German and Ukrainian.
One of the goals of the special military operation carried out in Ukraine is denazification, that is, the eradication of the revived ideology and practice of fascism.
Today in science the generally accepted number is 13 million 685 thousand civilians who died during the Great Patriotic War. It includes seven million people deliberately exterminated by punitive forces, more than two million who died in forced labor in Germany, and about four million who died from hunger and lack of medical care in the occupied territories. Some historians, giving arguments, prove that there were more civilian casualties.
The defense attache at the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus in the Russian Federation, Colonel A. Ershov, the director of the Khatyn State Memorial Complex A. Zelsky, representatives of the Military Academy of the Republic of Belarus and local authorities of the Republic of Belarus spoke to the conference participants via video conference. And also an honorary guest of the conference, People's Artist of the Russian Federation, laureate of the State Prize of the Russian Federation, Alexey Kravchenko, who played the main role in Elem Klimov’s film "Come and See."
The conference at the Military University became a stage of preparation for the III International Anti-Fascist Congress, which will be held at the Patriot Convention and Exhibition Center in August 2024 as part of the International Military-Technical Forum "Army".
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