“Studies on the history of the German-Soviet war all too often ignore the simple fact that (!) the German invasion of the USSR on June 22, 1941, was primarily motivated by economic objectives, namely to conquer ‘living space in the East,’” writes historian Rolf-Dieter Müller. Joseph Goebbels declared that it was a “war for grain and bread, for a fully stocked breakfast, lunch, and dinner”
Victory over Hitler
80 years since victory over Hitler: The West sinks into self-pity
by Harald Neuber
[This article posted on 5/9/2025 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.telepolis.de/features/80-Jahre-Sieg-ueber-Hitler-Der-Westen-versinkt-unsicher-im-Selbstmitleid-10377452.html.]
Europe is celebrating the victory over Nazi Germany 80 years ago.
However, the mood is subdued. What was once considered a triumph now
feels like a funeral. A Telepolis editorial.
Eighty years after the end of World War II in Europe, the continent
celebrates its victory over Nazi Germany on May 8. But the mood is
subdued. Many Europeans are uncertain whether they should still
consider the US under President Donald Trump an ally or rather an
adversary. “It feels more like a funeral,” a former senior NATO
diplomat told the BBC.
Trump’s start to his second term has led to a dramatic estrangement
between the US and Europe. His “America First” policy, his
disparagement of NATO, and his pandering to autocrats such as Russian
President Vladimir Putin have immensely damaged the transatlantic
partnership that has grown over decades. “The West as we knew it no
longer exists,” stated EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Now Trump is causing irritation with his announcement that May 8 will
be celebrated in the US as “Victory Day” for World War II. In a
proclamation, he declared Thursday a day on which the US should
celebrate its victory in World War II – as countries in Europe already
do. He also wants to celebrate November 11 as “Victory Day” for World
War I.
Trump only sees the US
Trump complained in tweets that Americans do not spend enough time
celebrating these achievements, which would not have been possible
without the US. “Many of our allies and friends celebrate May 8 as
‘Victory Day,’ but we did more than any other country to achieve a
victorious outcome in World War II,” he wrote.
Incomprehension in Europe
Trump’s plans have been met with incomprehension in Europe. French
President Emmanuel Macron said in a speech that peace could no longer
be guaranteed on the continent. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and
Macron are now seeking “independence” and “strategic autonomy” from
Washington – a dramatic shift in relations.
Trump’s move is seen primarily as an attempt to distract from domestic
problems and give his supporters something to fuel their national
pride. In fact, May 8 is not a public holiday in the US, and Trump
cannot declare it one – only Congress can do that. The president was
therefore forced to back down and announced that he would instead
declare the day a day of celebration.
The damage is done
But the damage has been done. Trump’s behavior toward Ukraine and his
public humiliation of President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House
on February 28 marked a turning point in Europe. Many heads of state
and government saw it as a declaration of moral bankruptcy. Trump
accused Zelensky of ingratitude and blamed him for risking World War
III with his fight against Russia.
Trump and Ukraine
“This will be great television,” Trump said after the meeting,
referring to Zelensky’s visible annoyance. According to a report in
the New York Times, many Europeans see this as a sign that Trump wants
to establish an autocracy that is made for television.
Bruno Fuchs, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the French
National Assembly, spoke after a visit to Washington of a “police
state” taking shape there.
Macron and Merz
Macron and Merz emphasized in a joint article for Le Figaro that they
would never accept a peace imposed on Ukraine and would continue to
support the country against Russian aggression. According to Le Monde,
they are even considering a joint appearance on the beaches of
Normandy to commemorate the gesture made by François Mitterrand and
Helmut Kohl when they shook hands at the graves of Verdun in 1984.
New unity between Berlin and Paris?
The new unity between Paris and Berlin raises hopes that Europe can
take more responsibility for its own security. Germany, which
committed itself to demilitarization after World War II, faces an
enormous challenge. But the continent is anything but united.
Right-wing populists and EU skeptics such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary
and Giorgia Meloni in Italy feel emboldened by Trump’s nationalism.
What the US has never understood
Nevertheless, there is a fundamental difference between Europe and the
US: many Europeans know from their own experience how fragile freedom
is and that dictatorships and mass murder are possible. On the
anniversary of the attack, the New York Times wrote:
To prevent this descent into brutality, racism, and genocide, the
United States, though far from Europe but knowing that its fate was
that of all humanity, sent its young men to France in 1944 to fight
their way ashore. The 9,389 graves in the American cemetery in
Normandy are a sad testament to their willingness to sacrifice
themselves.
New York Times, May 8, 2025
All this was eleven years before African-American civil rights
activist Rosa Parks challenged “racial segregation” in the US – but
that is another topic, although the New York Times could have included
it.
The lessons of Vichy
Today, I am therefore also writing with thoughts of Vichy, the spa
town in central France from where Marshal Pétain’s authoritarian
regime collaborated with the Nazis and deported more than 70,000 Jews
to Hitler’s extermination camps.
In his book “Vichy France,” US historian Robert Paxton summed up that
there are cruel times when one must refuse to obey the state in order
to save a nation’s deepest values. France after 1940 was such a time.
Conformity or disobedience
Today, eight decades after the return of peace, these words seem
particularly thought-provoking – especially in view of the disturbing
developments across the Atlantic. Paxton wrote his book to help the
French gain a deeper understanding of their darkest hour.
Perhaps it is time for Americans to reflect on their history and values as well.
_________________________________________________________________
27 million dead: The forgotten victims of the German Eastern Campaign
May 8, 2025 Andreas von Westphalen
[This article posted on 5/8/2025 is translated from the German on the
Internet, https://www.telepolis.de/features/27-Millionen-Tote-Die-vergessenen-Opfer-des-deutschen-Ostfeldzugs-10375791.html.]
Germany’s surrender, May 7, 1945. Air Chief Marshall Arthur Tedder,
Deputy Commander-in-Chief, inspects the Russian honor guard upon his
arrival at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin. Image: National Museum of the
U.S. Navy
80 years after the end of the war – remembrance culture put to the
test: commemorative ceremony without Russian and Belarusian
representatives and an assessment of the war of annihilation by
historians.
The Bundestag has decided not to invite the ambassadors of Russia and
Belarus to today’s commemorative ceremony in the Bundestag.
The Foreign Office issued a general warning against the “foreseeable
instrumentalization” of the commemoration by official representatives
of the Russian or Belarusian embassies and, in a memo, called on
districts and municipalities not to issue invitations to Russian and
Belarusian diplomats.
If necessary, house rules should be enforced against uninvited guests
and they should be sent away.
Appeal to the Bundestag
Against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, the commemorations in
Germany are becoming a political issue. The Russian ambassador to
Germany, Sergey Nechayev, emphasized in his statement:
“We firmly reject attempts to accuse us of ‘propagandistic
instrumentalization’ of the commemorative events.”
He also demanded:
The crimes of the Third Reich and its henchmen must be recognized as
genocide against the peoples of the USSR. We call on the new German
Bundestag and the new German federal government to do so as soon as it
is formed.
“Greatest excess of violence in modern human history”
In the old federal states in particular, the Battle of Stalingrad
still dominates memories of the Eastern Campaign, “Operation
Barbarossa.” An attempt to take a sober look at the atrocities of this
campaign, which are beyond human imagination, is necessary not least
with a view to a comprehensive commemoration on this day. But also in
order to better understand the ambassador’s demand.
“27 million. That is how many Soviet citizens died as victims of the
German war between 1941 and 1945. It is a figure that many people in
this country do not know. Or don’t want to know,” remarked historian
Peter Jahn, former director of the German-Russian Museum in
Berlin-Karlshorst, 18 years ago.
He went on to say:
It is to be feared that most people in this country still do not
really understand the monstrous dimensions of the terror that the
Germans brought upon the Soviet Union during those three and a half
years.
No other country in world history has lost as many people as the
Soviet Union did in World War II. One in seven Soviet citizens fell
victim to the war. More than half of them were civilians. In just two
months of war, the Red Army lost almost as many men as the US and
Great Britain did in the entire war.
Never in history have so many prisoners of war died in such a short
period of time. Of the approximately 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of
war, 3.3 million starved to death, froze to death, died of epidemics,
or were shot. Historian Timothy Snyder points out:
On any given day in the fall of 1941, as many Soviet prisoners of war
died as British and American prisoners of war did during the entire
war.
In addition, 2.8 million Soviet citizens were forced to work as slave
laborers in the German Reich. A total of 55 to 65 million Soviet
citizens experienced the German occupation, and around 25 million of
them remained under military administration throughout 1942/43.
Colonial war for living space in the East
“Studies on the history of the German-Soviet war all too often ignore
the simple fact that (!) the German invasion of the USSR on June 22,
1941, was primarily motivated by economic objectives, namely to
conquer ‘living space in the East,’” writes historian Rolf-Dieter
Müller. Joseph Goebbels declared that it was a “war for grain and
bread, for a fully stocked breakfast, lunch, and dinner table, (…)
for raw materials, for rubber, for iron and ore.”
This goal was elaborated in the so-called “General Plan East.” This
was the “genocidal strategy of ‘Germanization’ of the entire ‘Eastern
Territory’” (Dietrich Eichholtz). The plan was to “resettle 31 million
people and leave 14 million as laborers and to be Germanized in the
settlement areas.”
Six months before the war began, Adolf Hitler outlined the goal of the
campaign in one of his table talks: “I would consider it a crime if I
had sacrificed the blood (…) of a quarter of a million dead and
100,000 cripples (…) merely for the sake of being able to exploit
natural resources capitalistically (…) The goal (of) Ostpolitik (is)
– in the long term – to develop a settlement area for about 100
million Germanic people in this region.”
Hunger plan
But it wasn’t just about exploitation. For Rolf Dieter-Müller, the
deliberate starvation caused by the war against the Soviet Union is a
blind spot in German memory. The so-called hunger plan consisted of
various documents, some of which were written before the war even
started.
A memo from a meeting of state secretaries on May 2, 1941, states that
“tens of millions will undoubtedly starve if what we need is taken out
of the country.” The “Economic Policy Guidelines” of May 23, 1941,
state:
Many tens of millions of people will become superfluous in this area
and will have to die or emigrate to Siberia.
Heinrich Himmler described the goal of the planned massive reduction
of the population (in other words, the planned murder or deportation):
“The purpose of the Russian campaign (is) to decimate the Slavic
population by 30 million.”
And in another passage, he explained:
Our task is not to Germanize the East in the old sense, that is, to
teach the people living there the German language and German laws, but
to ensure that only people of truly German, Germanic blood live in the
East.
Heinrich Himmler
Targeted violations of international law
Not only the war aims, but also the warfare of the German army itself
was determined by an extremely high degree of planned destruction. The
“Guidelines for the Conduct of Troops in Russia” set the tone:
“1. Bolshevism is the mortal enemy of the National Socialist German
people. Germany’s struggle is directed against this subversive
worldview and its proponents. 2. This struggle requires ruthless and
energetic action against Bolshevik agitators, guerrilla fighters,
saboteurs, Jews, and the complete elimination of all active or passive
resistance.”
The “Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars” emphasise
this accordingly:
“In this struggle, leniency and consideration for international law
are wrong towards these elements.”
The so-called Martial Law Decree also annulled the most elementary
principles of international humanitarian law and “formed the basis for
the almost complete deprivation of rights of the civilian population”
(Dieter Pohl).
It permitted “collective measures of violence” against entire villages
and authorized every single officer to order summary executions of
‘suspicious’ civilians. And last but not least, the basis for the
treatment of prisoners was as follows:
“In contrast to the provisioning of other prisoners, we are not bound
by any international obligations regarding the provisioning of
Bolshevik prisoners. Their food can therefore only be based on the
work they do for us.“
Based on this brief outline, it is understandable that historian
Christian Hartmann emphasizes that the campaign was ”conceived from
the outset as a racially ideological war of extermination.”
Merciless, complete annihilation
It is therefore hardly surprising that the German military leadership
aimed with boundless cruelty not at victory, but at the destruction of
the USSR. Erich Hoepner, commander-in-chief of Panzer Group 4,
declared weeks before the war began:
“It is the old struggle of the Germanic peoples against the Slavs.
(…) This struggle must have as its goal the destruction of
present-day Russia. (…) Every combat operation must be guided in its
planning and execution by the iron will to mercilessly and completely
destroy the enemy.“
And Field Marshal Erich von Manstein ordered that ”the
Jewish-Bolshevik system must (!) be eradicated once and for all. Never
again must it interfere with our European living space.”
The newly translated book “Fire Villages” by Ales Adamovich, Janka
Bryl, and Uladsimir Kalesnik bears witness to cruelty that defies
imagination. The horror of everyday life under occupation in Kiev was
the subject of an article here on Telepolis.
Hunger as a weapon
A special case of German warfare was the blockade of Leningrad, the
“greatest catastrophe affecting the civilian population in known
history” (Timo Vilhavainen). Around one million people died in the
siege of Leningrad alone.
That is around twice as many civilians as died in Germany during the
entire war, during the 857 days of the blockade of this metropolis
alone.
Contrary to the opinion that prevailed for decades in the old federal
states, this was not a siege as known from the Middle Ages or Hitler’s
desire to spare the Wehrmacht as much as possible, as the tagesthemen
put it.
Nor was the reason for the unimaginable horror Stalin’s stubborn
refusal to surrender, because numerous documents prove that the goal
was not to capture the city, but to destroy its people. The blockade
of Leningrad has already been discussed in detail in a three-part
series on Telepolis.
Therefore, only a few quotes will suffice here: Even before the
campaign against the Soviet Union began, Goebbels had recorded the
planned fate of Leningrad in his diary:
“Nothing must remain of Bolshevism. The Führer intends to wipe out
cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is also necessary. For if
we want to divide Russia into its individual components, then this
huge empire must no longer have a spiritual, political, or economic
center.”
The clear instruction to Army Group North on September 28, 1941, was:
“Surrender is not to be demanded.”
The letter from the Naval War Command was even clearer:
“Requests for surrender arising from the situation in the city will be
rejected, as the problem of the population’s survival and nutrition
cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for survival, we
have no interest in preserving even a part of this metropolitan
population.”
Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Wehrmacht High Command, wrote:
“The Führer has again decided that surrender of Leningrad or later
Moscow is not to be accepted, even if offered by the enemy.”
The newly translated “Blockadebuch: Leningrad 1941-1944” by Ales
Adamovich and Daniil Granin provides information about the unbearable
suffering of the blockade of Leningrad, with numerous diary entries
and interviews. Some reports can also be found here.
Genocide is genocide
The German International Criminal Code states in § 6.1:
“Whoever, with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
racial, religious, or ethnic group as such, 1. kills a member of the
group, 2. causes serious bodily or mental harm, especially of the kind
specified in Section 226 of the Criminal Code, to a member of the
group, 3. subjects the group to living conditions which are likely to
bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part …”
The question may well be justified as to whether the current Russian
demand for German recognition of genocide is politically motivated.
But even if this is not the place for a legal assessment, for which
the author of these lines simply lacks the legal expertise, it
nevertheless appears that the intent to murder a civilian population
or part thereof is more than sufficiently well documented and that the
Russian demand can hardly be dismissed as pure propaganda.
Assessment by historians
While Russia classifies the blockade as genocide, the German
government stated in 2017 only that
the blockade of Leningrad is one of the many terrible German war crimes.
This is an opinion that many historians hardly share. Historian
Susanne Schattenberg emphasized to Deutschlandfunk that it is no
longer disputed among historians that the blockade of Leningrad was
genocide.
A good three months ago, on the 81st anniversary of the liberation of
Leningrad, historian Götz Aly explicitly stated that he considered
Russia’s demand to recognize the blockade of Leningrad as genocide to
be “legitimate.”
He also emphasized that this categorization is not limited to Leningrad:
The war against Poland and later against the Soviet Union was linked
to plans of genocide. Through the blockade and destruction of large
Soviet cities, by cutting off grain supplies from the north to the
grain-surplus regions of Ukraine and the Russian south, the German
Ministry of Food planned to “reduce” the Soviet population by 30 to 50
million people – that is to say: Soviet children, women, and men were
to be cut off from their livelihoods and left to starve and freeze to
death as quickly as possible.
Quite a few German intellectuals, bureaucrats, nutrition experts, and
economists were involved in these plans. They were co-financed by the
German Research Foundation.
Götz Aly
Aly provides detailed evidence of the latter in his book “Vordenker
der Vernichtung” (Pioneers of Extermination). Robert Kindler, an
Eastern European historian at the Free University of Berlin, also
believes that Germany’s hunger policy as a whole should be described
as genocidal:
Particularly relevant here is the “Hunger Plan,” i.e., the calculated
starvation of millions of Soviet citizens in order to feed the
Wehrmacht “out of the country” and export ‘surpluses’ from the
occupied territories. This was therefore not an isolated and targeted
“genocide” of the inhabitants of Leningrad, but was directed against
all Soviet citizens.
Robert Kindler
Remembrance and responsibility
The Russian attack on Ukraine cannot and must not be a pretext for
Germans, as the perpetrators, to avoid confronting their own guilt and
honestly facing the cruelty of the war against the Soviet Union.
Russia’s guilt for the attack on Ukraine is beyond doubt. However, it
does not in any way absolve Germany of its guilt in the Second World
War, nor can it be a reason to deny the victims of German crimes in
the Second World War a memorial.
Guilt on one side cannot and must not cancel out guilt on the other.
Guilt cannot be relativized, because it is not mathematics. Guilt, all
guilt, stands separately and requires a differentiated and sensitive
approach.
The author of this article would therefore like to repeat what he
already called for more than a year ago:
It must be possible to want to acknowledge the true extent of German
guilt. It must be possible to condemn the Russian attack. It must be
possible to do both at the same time.
Precisely because the German government repeatedly invokes morality
and values, the agreement to clarify whether the war against the
Soviet Union was a war crime or genocide cannot depend on who the
victim is.
Therefore, as the perpetrator nation, Germany must face up to its
responsibility and set up a commission of international law experts
and historians to assess whether the war against the Soviet Union in
general and the blockade of Leningrad in particular constituted
genocide.
War of extermination
At a time when Russia’s war against Ukraine is repeatedly described as
a war of annihilation (see also here and here), the people who
themselves deliberately waged a war of annihilation against Russia,
among others, should be very critical in their choice of words and,
after 80 years, finally have the magnanimity to want to clarify
whether they committed genocide.
Andreas von Westphalen is co-author and co-director, together with
Jochen Langner, of the German-Russian two-part radio play “Horchposten
1941 я слышу войну”, produced by Deutschlandfunk, Radio Echo Moskau
and WDR.
Literature
Götz Aly: Vordenker der Vernichtung
Karel Berkhof: Harvest of Despair
Jörg Ganzenmüller: The Besieged Leningrad 1941-1944,
Christian Gerlach: Calculated Murder
Richard Overy: Russia’s War: 1941–1945
Dieter Pohl: The Rule of the Wehrmacht
Timothy Snyder: Bloodlands
Gerd Überschär and Wolfram Wette (eds.): The German Invasion of the Soviet Union