The draft general plan “East” (Ost) was prepared by SS Oberfuhrer Konrad Meyer on the instructions of Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler. The final version of the document on the enslavement and destruction of the peoples of the USSR is dated May 28, 1942. Even before the attack on the Soviet Union in early 1941, Hitler spoke in his speech to the Wehrmacht command about the need for “total destruction of the USSR.” In April of the same year, the commander of the ground forces of the Third Reich, W. Brauchitsch, issued an order for the immediate liquidation of anyone who offered any resistance in the territory occupied by the Germans.
“Rechskommissar for the Strengthening of the German Race,” Heinrich Himmler, received instructions from Hitler to create new settlements that should appear as Nazi Germany expands its living space in the east. In July 1940, Hitler, before the high command of the Wehrmacht, outlined his concept of dividing the territories of the USSR as follows: Germany retains Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states, and the north-west of Russia, including the Arkhangelsk region, goes to the Finns.
Plan Ost, prepared by Himmler’s services, envisaged the deportation or extermination of over 80% of the population of Lithuania, more than 60% of the inhabitants of Western Ukraine, 75% of Belarusians, half of the Latvians and Estonians. The Nazis were going to raze Moscow and Leningrad to the ground, and completely destroy the entire population of these cities. Part of the plan was to separate the peoples of the occupied territories, so in Western Ukraine, Western Belarus and the Baltic states, the Nazis encouraged nationalist sentiments in every possible way.
In March 1941, a special structure was created in Germany to control the exploited population of the USSR. It received a name similar to the Ost plan. One of the main tasks of this “economic leadership headquarters” was to develop a scheme according to which the USSR would quickly turn into a raw material appendage of the Third Reich.
Nazi collaborators were promised certain territorial concessions: Romania could lay claim to the lands of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, the Hungarians were promised the former Eastern Galicia (territory of Western Ukraine).
When planning to colonize the Soviet Union, the Nazis, according to the Ost general plan, intended to populate “ true Aryans» over 700 square kilometers of the USSR. They divided the farmland in advance and outlined administrative districts (regions of Leningrad, Crimea and Bialystok). The Leningrad district was called Ingeromlandia, the Crimean district was called the Gothic district, and the Bialystok district was called Memel-Narev. These territories were supposed to be “cleared” of more than 30 million people – the indigenous inhabitants of these areas.
The Nazis intended to move mostly “racially inferior” people to Western Siberia, with the exception of Jews - the Nazis planned to destroy them. According to the Second General Settlement Plan, ready by December 1942, only the Baltic peoples were suitable for “Germanization,” according to the Nazis. The fascists wanted to make Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians bosses over the rest of the slaves.
Some projectors of the Ost plan, in particular Wolfgang Abel, spoke out for the complete destruction of the Russians in the territory of the occupied USSR. Opponents objected: they say it is politically and economically inexpedient.

Victory in the war against the USSR was supposed, according to the plans of the Nazis, to provide them with undivided dominance on the European continent and fully satisfy Germany’s needs for food, raw materials and labor. Plans for the exploitation of the territory of the USSR in general outline were planned by the German fascists even before they came to power, in the 20s. During the preparations for the attack on the USSR and immediately after the start of the Soviet-German war, these plans were concretized.

On May 25, 1940, Reichsführer SS Himmler presented Hitler with written considerations regarding the treatment of the local population of the eastern regions. "Considerations" were approved by Hitler and approved by him as a directive. This strictly secret document was given for reading against signature to the narrowest circle of people directly related to the implementation of German policy in the occupied lands of Poland, as well as to several senior officials of the Reich, including Hess, Darre, Lammers and Bormann. As is clear from other documents of a later time, it was a question of a master plan for the Germanization of the population of Poland and the Soviet Union, the so-called “Plan Ost”. His cruelty was limitless. From the documents found, it is clear that they were talking about the eviction of 31 million people from Poland and the Soviet Union over 30 years and the settlement of German colonists in their place.

At the end of 1940, the Department of Economics and Armaments of the High Command of the Armed Forces, headed by General Thomas, began intensive work to collect and summarize information regarding the national economy of the USSR. A special card index was compiled in which all the most important Soviet enterprises were registered. At the beginning of 1941, the special headquarters “Russia” created for this purpose began to summarize all kinds of data on the Soviet economy.

Since April 1941, all activities related to the preparation of measures to rob the Soviet Union took place under the leadership of Goering. On April 29, 1941, at a special meeting with the participation of representatives of the armed forces, it was decided, in order to ensure the most complete economic exploitation of the occupied territories of the Soviet Union, to establish the “Economic Headquarters of the East” with special economic inspections and teams in the largest cities of the European part of the Soviet Union. Team employees had to act in accordance with the “12 commandments” developed for them. These “commandments” ordered them to be cruel and merciless with the Soviet people, to use all the country’s resources extortionately.

One of these "commandments" read: "The more persistent you are, the more inventive your methods of achieving this goal can be. The choice of methods is left to the discretion of each of you..." "Only your will must be decisive, but this will can be directed to carry out big tasks. Only in this case will she be moral in her cruelty. Stay away from the Russians, they are not Germans, but Slavs,” was written in another “commandment.”

As one of the Soviet prosecutors, L.R. Sheinin, said at the Nuremberg trials, “...under the direct leadership of the defendant Goering, an entire army of robbers of all ranks and specialties was pre-arranged, prepared, trained and drilled for the organized theft and plunder of the national property of the USSR.”

Goering, as the Reich's authorized representative for the implementation of the four-year plan, drew up an extensive program for the economic exploitation of the territories of the Soviet Union and the peoples inhabiting it, which is recorded in the so-called “Green Folder” of Goering.

The “Green Folder” contained a carefully and detailed plan for the exploitation and plunder of the national economy of the USSR. Not a single sector of the Soviet economy escaped the attention of the Nazis. For each economic area, appropriate "recommendations" were made. All of them were imbued with one common thought: to rob more, to rob more efficiently, without regard for anyone or anything. To export as much food and oil as possible to Germany - this was the main economic task set by the Nazi leadership.

“It is completely inappropriate,” the document said, “that the occupied areas should be put in order as quickly as possible, and their economy restored. On the contrary, the attitude towards separate parts countries must be extremely diverse. The restoration of order should be carried out only in those areas in which we can extract significant reserves of agricultural products and oil."

In accordance with Hitler's directive to inflict the greatest possible damage on Russia itself, measures were taken whose purpose was to destroy the productive forces, primarily industrial production in the main industrial regions of Russia, primarily in Moscow and Leningrad, as well as in the adjacent areas. At the same time, it was planned to cut off the supply of food and essential goods to the population of these regions, which meant starvation for tens of millions of people. The document cynically stated: “Many tens of millions of people in this area will find themselves redundant and will be forced to either die or go to Siberia. Any attempts to save the population from starvation by importing surplus products from the black earth regions would come at the expense of exporting food to Europe. Such an export of products would reduce Germany's military power and undermine the strength of resistance to the blockade in Europe and Germany" (154).

On July 16, 1941, Keitel ordered all units of the German army to strictly implement these directives. Thus, the German army became a direct accomplice in fascist crimes.

Later, in August 1942, at a meeting of the Reich Commissioners of the occupied regions and representatives of the military command, Goering said with emphasized frankness: “Once upon a time this was called robbery. It corresponded to the formula of taking away what was won. Now the forms have become more humane. Despite this, I I intend to rob and rob effectively."

Hitler assigned one of the theoreticians of National Socialism, Rosenberg, to deal with the political problems of the future occupied territories of the Soviet Union. Back in 1933, the Baltic baron Alfred Rosenberg published the book “The Myth of the 20th Century,” which became the most important manual for fascist racists. In this book, Rosenberg, with a pretense of being scientific, analyzed the characteristic features of various civilizations and cultures and came to the conclusion that only Aryan race retained the ability for further development. The fascist “theorist” taught: “a dictatorship of people of a higher order must be established over people of a lower order.” Rosenberg included the “Nordic race”, primarily the Germans, among the former, and all other peoples, primarily the Slavs, among the latter.

Like Hitler, Rosenberg insisted that culture was brought to Russia by the Germans. “The Russians have always had a dormant desire for limitless expansion, an unbridled will to destroy all forms of life, felt only as a naked limitation. Mixed Mongolian blood, even greatly diluted, boiled over with every shock in Russian life and carried people away to deeds that were often incomprehensible even to oneself participant." These and similar primitive ideas about the Russian people were repeated by Nazi propaganda day after day. The idea was inculcated about the supposedly special purpose of the Germans “in this barbaric east.” Rosenberg demanded the expulsion of the Russian people from Europe, their displacement to Asia, because “there is no place for them in the West.” He was entrusted with the development of political plans regarding the Soviet territories that Germany intended to seize.

In one of the secret documents he prepared in early April 1941, Rosenberg proposed dividing the Soviet Union into a number of regions. He considered it necessary to apply the most stringent measures against Russia - “Great Russia with Moscow as the center,” which he intended to weaken as much as possible and turn into an area of ​​exile for undesirable elements, i.e. create a giant concentration camp on this territory. He wanted to separate the Baltic republics - Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia - from the USSR. They were supposed to be populated by representatives of the “Nordic race” - Scandinavians, Dutch, and later, after the inevitable, in the opinion of the Nazis, capitulation of England, and the British. “Independent” Ukraine and the “Don Region” and the Caucasus annexed to it formed the “Black Sea Union”, which was supposed to serve as a “living space” for the Germans, from which the people of the masters would draw food and raw materials. However, all these projects, outlined by Rosenberg in a memo dated April 2, 1941, were only a more detailed repetition of the old crazy ideas of the German fascists dating back to the 20s. But now all these plans suddenly took on a particularly ominous sound.

On April 20, Rosenberg was tasked with leading the effort to clarify German occupation policy in the east. In April-May 1941, from the depths of the departments subordinate to him, a series of instructions was issued to the imperial commissioners of the future occupied lands in the east. From these instructions it was clear that Germany intended to dismember the Soviet Union, bleed it, turn Soviet territories into German colonies, and enslave their population.

Three days before the attack on the USSR, Rosenberg told his closest collaborators: “The task of feeding the German people is first on the list of German demands in the east. The southern (Russian) territories will have to serve to feed the German people. We see absolutely no reason for commitment with our sides to also feed the Russian people with the products of this additional territory... The future has very difficult years in store for the Russians.”

The implementation of the program of enslavement of Soviet people began immediately after the attack on the USSR. On July 16, 1941, Hitler convened a meeting of senior officials of the “Third Reich”, at which he outlined a detailed program for the division of the USSR. The minutes of the meeting, compiled by Martin Bormann, one of the most influential persons of the fascist state, record that Hitler declared the goal of the war to be the seizure of USSR territories up to the Urals. It was planned to annex to Germany, i.e. turn into areas of the fascist empire, the Baltic states, Crimea with adjacent areas, and the Volga regions. The Baku region became a German concession, a “military colony”. Ukraine, Belarus and other regions of the Soviet Union were preparing to become colonies of the German Empire, despite the various forms of administrative structure that the German conquerors were going to give them.

It was planned to create a German protectorate headed by an imperial commissioner in the territories of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus. In these territories, “the Germanization of racially suitable elements, colonization by representatives of the Germanic race and the destruction of undesirable elements” were to be carried out. Thus, the Baltic peoples were also threatened with Germanization.

The country's largest centers, primarily Leningrad, were doomed to destruction. The document from the meeting on July 16 said: “The Fuhrer wants to raze Leningrad to the ground in order to then give it to the Finns.”

Hitler did not hide that the goal of the Nazi leaders was the permanent annexation of Soviet lands to Germany. “...We,” Hitler said at a meeting on July 16, 1941, “must be absolutely clear that we will never leave these countries.” Hitler proposed to be guided by the following principle: “No military force should ever be created west of the Urals, even if we have to wage war for another 100 years for this purpose. Any successor to the Fuhrer must know that the security of the Reich exists only if to the west there will be no foreign armies from the Urals. Germany itself will defend these areas from all possible dangers. Our iron principle boils down and will boil down to the following goals: we must not allow anyone other than the Germans to carry weapons."

On March 13, 1941, the High Command of the German Armed Forces issued a secret order - an addition to Directive No. 21 (Plan Barbarossa) - on the activities to be carried out in the zones declared operational. Here the Reichsführer SS received special powers and, on his own responsibility, carried out measures to eliminate the political structure of these areas. But, the directive emphasized, the commander-in-chief of the troops in each region (there were three: Northern - Baltic, Central - Belarus, Southern - Ukraine) is the highest commander, and he must administer justice in close cooperation with the appointed Reich Commissioners of the occupied Soviet regions. Consequently, we were talking about close cooperation between the military command and the SS in implementing German policy in the occupied Soviet territories. The German generals who took part in this cooperation thus bear their share of responsibility for the atrocities committed.

Hitler's directive on attitude towards Soviet commissars and political workers

In March 1941, the high command convened a secret meeting of the heads of departments of military districts for prisoners of war affairs and officers of the main command. The head of the Prisoners of War Affairs Department, Lieutenant General Reinecke, said that in connection with the preparations for war against the USSR, it is necessary to take care of preparing camps for future prisoners. The camps were supposed to be open spaces surrounded by barbed wire. The meeting participants received direct instructions on the treatment of Soviet prisoners of war, “providing for execution without any warning if they attempt to escape.”

On March 30, the high command gathered senior officers who were to command troops in the war against the USSR. It was a meeting similar to those that Hitler convened on the eve of the war against Poland (August 22, 1939) and before the attack on Western Front(November 23, 1939). In a long speech, Hitler emphasized the peculiarity new war, which he had long dreamed of realizing - a war of two different worldviews. In this speech, Hitler announced special jurisdiction in the occupied regions, or rather, the elimination of all justice, the extermination of Soviet “commissars and functionaries.” Soviet party workers and political leaders of the Red Army were prohibited from being treated as prisoners of war. Once captured, they were to be immediately handed over to special detachments of the SD (security service), and if this was impossible, they were to be shot on the spot. Hitler justified in advance the violence and murder that German soldiers might commit in occupied territories, and insisted that military courts should not impose harsh punishments on soldiers in these cases. In practice, it was a call for the murder of Soviet citizens. Hitler said that in the war against the Soviet Union we must discard all soldier’s ethics and laws of war and be merciless, because we are talking about defeating not only the Red Army, but also “eradicating communism for all time.”

On May 12, 1941, the high command of the German ground forces issued a directive on the attitude towards Soviet commissars and political workers who were captured by Germans. It proposed that prisoners of these categories be transferred to the security services and police for subsequent destruction.

Paragraph 3 of the directive read: “Political leaders in the troops are not considered prisoners and must be destroyed at the latest in transit camps. They are not evacuated to the rear.” Jodl made the following note to the draft directive: “The possibility of reprisals against German pilots must be taken into account. It is best, therefore, to present these measures as retribution.” This postscript best characterizes the treachery of the highest German generals, who deny their participation in the crimes of the Nazis. But also in relation to prisoners of war of other categories, a directive from the high command of the armed forces was in effect, which, in particular, stated that the use of weapons against Soviet prisoners of war was considered legal and relieved the guards of “the responsibility to understand the formalities.” The guards were ordered to open fire on prisoners trying to escape without warning. This document, published before the start of the war, contained an almost open call for the killing of prisoners of war. The murderers were freed from all responsibility in advance. It should be emphasized that the German high command, primarily its leaders Keitel, Jodl and Heusinger, bore direct responsibility for this order.

At the Nuremberg trials, the Soviet prosecutor General Rudenko asked Keitel:

“So you don’t deny that back in May, more than a month before the war, a document was already drafted on the extermination of Russian political and military workers. You don’t deny this?

Keitel: No, I do not deny this, this was the result of those orders that were brought to the attention and developed in writing by the generals and in this document."

The German fascists, together with their generals, with their characteristic pedantry, four weeks before the war with the USSR, also provided for the possibility of reprisals against civilians in the occupied territory without trial. The relevant directive stated that arrested suspicious persons should be immediately brought before an officer, who would immediately decide whether they should be shot. Regarding the Soviet civilians complete arbitrariness of the military was established.

The directives of the German military command, issued on the eve of the attack on the USSR, reflected the villainous plans that the political leadership had developed. In the further course of the war, the Nazis carried out a policy of genocide developed in detail: millions of people were killed, including 6 million Jews.

Among all the alternative history scenarios, the one most often discussed is: what if Hitler had won? What if the Nazis had defeated the Allied forces? What fate would they have prepared for the enslaved peoples?

Today, May 9, is the most suitable day to remember what “alternative future” our great-grandfathers saved us from in 1941-1945.

Very specific documents and evidence have survived to our time, allowing us to get an idea of ​​what plans Hitler and his entourage had for the transformation of the defeated states and the Reich itself. These are the projects of Heinrich Himmler and the plans of Adolf Hitler, set out in their letters and speeches, fragments of the Ost plan in different editions and the notes of Alfred Rosenberg.

Based on these materials, we will try to reconstruct the image of the future that threatened the world in the event of a Nazi victory. And then we’ll talk about how science fiction writers imagined it.

Real projects of the Nazis

Project of a memorial to those who fell on the Eastern Front, which the Nazis intended to erect on the banks of the Dnieper

According to Plan Barbarossa, the war with Soviet Russia was supposed to end two months after it began with the entry of advanced German units to the “AA” line (Astrakhan-Arkhangelsk). Since it was believed that a certain amount of manpower and military equipment Soviet army will still remain, a defensive rampart should have been erected on the “A-A” line, which over time will turn into a powerful defensive line.

Geographic map of the aggressor: Hitler’s plan for the occupation and dismemberment of the USSR

The national republics and some regions that were part of the Soviet Union were separated from occupied European Russia, after which the Nazi leadership intended to unite them into four Reichskommissariats.

At the expense of the former Soviet territories, a project of phased colonization of the “eastern lands” was also carried out in order to expand the “living space” of the Germans. Within 30 years, 8 to 10 million purebred Germans from Germany and the Volga region should settle in the territories allocated for colonization. At the same time, the local population was supposed to be reduced to 14 million people, destroying Jews and other “inferior” people, including the majority of Slavs, even before the start of colonization.

But nothing good awaited that part of the Soviet citizens that would have escaped destruction. More than 30 million Slavs were to be evicted from the European part of the USSR to Siberia. Hitler planned to turn those who remained into slaves, prohibit them from receiving education and deprive them of their culture.

The victory over the USSR led to the transformation of Europe. First of all, the Nazis were going to rebuild Munich, Berlin and Hamburg. Munich became the museum of the National Socialist movement, Berlin became the capital of the Thousand-Year Empire, which subjugated the whole world, and Hamburg was to become a single shopping mall, to a city of skyscrapers similar to New York.

Model of the new Wagner building opera house. After the war, Hitler intended to completely redesign Wagner's concert hall in Bayreuth

The occupied countries of Europe also expected the most extensive “reforms”. The regions of France, which ceased to exist as a single state, expected different fate. Some of them went to Germany’s allies: fascist Italy and Franco’s Spain. And the entire southwest was supposed to turn into a completely new country - the Burgundian Free State, which was supposed to be an “advertising showcase” for the Reich. The official languages ​​in this state would be German and French. The social structure of Burgundy was planned in such a way as to completely eliminate the contradictions between classes, which “are used by Marxists to foment revolutions.”

Some peoples of Europe faced complete resettlement. Most of the Poles, half of the Czechs and three-quarters of the Belarusians were planned to be evicted to Western Siberia, laying the foundation for centuries of confrontation between them and the Siberians. On the other hand, all the Dutch were going to be transported to Eastern Poland.

“Vatican” of the Nazis, a model of the architectural complex that was planned to be built around Wewelsburg Castle

Finland, as a loyal ally of the Reich, became Greater Finland after the war, receiving the northern half of Sweden and areas with a Finnish population. The central and southern territories of Sweden were part of the Great Reich. Norway was losing its independence and, thanks to developed system hydroelectric power plants, became a source of cheap energy for Northern Europe

Next in line is England. The Nazis believed that, having lost their last hope for help from the Continent, England would make concessions, conclude an honorable peace with Germany and, sooner or later, join the Greater Reich. If this did not happen and the British continued to fight, preparations for the invasion of the British Isles should have been resumed, ending this threat before the beginning of 1944.

In addition, Hitler was going to establish full Reich control over Gibraltar. If dictator Franco tried to prevent this intention, then he should have occupied Spain and Portugal within 10 days, regardless of their status as “allies” in the Axis.

The Nazis suffered from gigantomania: sculptor J. Thorak is working on a monument to the autobahn builders. The original statue was supposed to be three times larger

After the final victory in Europe, Hitler was going to sign a friendship treaty with Turkey, based on the fact that it would be entrusted with the defense of the Dardanelles. Turkey was also offered participation in the creation of a single European economy.

Having conquered Europe and Russia, Hitler intended to move into the colonial possessions of Britain. The headquarters planned the capture and long-term occupation of Egypt and the Suez Canal, Syria and Palestine, Iraq and Iran, Afghanistan and Western India. After establishing control over North Africa and over the Middle East the dream of Chancellor Bismarck about the construction of the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra railway was to come true. The Nazis were not going to give up the idea of ​​returning African colonies, belonged to Germany before the First World War. Moreover, there was talk of creating the core of a future colonial empire on the “dark continent”. In the Pacific Ocean, it was planned to capture New Guinea with its oil fields and the island of Nauru.

Fascist plans to conquer Africa and America

The United States of America was considered by the leaders of the Third Reich as “the last stronghold of world Jewry,” and they had to be “pressed” in several directions at once. First of all, an economic blockade would be declared on the United States. Secondly, a fortified military area was being built in North-West Africa, from where long-range seaplane bombers and A-9/A-10 intercontinental missiles were to launch to strike America.

Thirdly, the Third Reich had to conclude long-term trade agreements with Latin American countries, supplying them with weapons and pitting them against their northern neighbor. If the United States did not surrender to the mercy of the winner, then Iceland and the Azores should have been captured as springboards for the future landing of European (German and English) troops on US territory.

Das ist fantastic!

In the Third Reich, science fiction existed as a genre, although, of course, German science fiction writers of that time could not compete in popularity with the authors of historical and military prose. Nevertheless, Nazi science fiction writers found their readers, and some of their opuses were published in millions of copies.

The most famous was Hans Dominik, the author of “novels about the future.” In his books, the German engineer triumphed, constructing fantastic superweapons or coming into contact with alien beings - “uranids”. In addition, Dominic was an ardent supporter of racial theory, and many of his works are a direct illustration of the theses about the superiority of some races over others.

Another popular science fiction writer, Edmund Kiss, devoted his work to describing ancient peoples and civilizations. From his novels, the German reader could learn about the lost continents of Thule and Atlantis, on whose territory the ancestors of the Aryan race allegedly lived.

This is what representatives of the “master race” - “true Aryans” - should have looked like

Alternative history from science fiction writers

An alternative version of history, in which Germany defeated the Allies, has been described by science fiction writers many times. The overwhelming majority of authors believe that the Nazis would have brought the world totalitarianism of the worst type - they would have destroyed entire nations and built a society where there is no place for kindness and compassion.

The first work on this topic - “Night of the Swastika” by Catherine Burdekin - was published in Britain before the Second World War. This is not an alternative history, but rather a warning novel. An English writer, publishing under the pseudonym Murray Constantine, tried to look seven hundred years into the future - into the future built by the Nazis.

Even then she predicted that the Nazis would not bring anything good to the world. After victory in the Twenty Years' War, the Third Reich rules the world. Major cities destroyed, medieval castles were erected on their ruins. The Jews were exterminated without exception. Christians are banned and gather in caves. The cult of Saint Adolphus is being established. Women are considered second-class creatures, animals without a soul - they spend their entire lives in cages, subjected to continuous violence.

During World War II, the dark theme developed. Apart from dozens of stories about what will happen to Europe after the Nazi victory, we can recall at least two major works: the novels “If We Lose” by Marion West and “Illusory Victory” by Erwin Lessner. The second one is especially interesting - it considers the option post-war history, where Germany achieved a truce on the Western Front and, after a respite, gathered forces and started a new war.

The first alternative fantasy reconstruction depicting the world of victorious Nazism appeared in 1952. In the novel The Sound of the Hunting Horn, the English writer John Wall, writing under the pseudonym Sarban, showed Britain turned by the Nazis into a huge hunting reserve. Guests from the continent, dressed as Wagnerian characters, hunt here for racially inferior people and genetically modified monsters.

Cyril Kornblatt’s story “Two Fates” is also considered a classic. The famous science fiction writer showed America defeated in 1955 and divided into occupation zones by two powers: Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. The peoples of the United States are subjugated, deprived of the right to education, partially destroyed and driven into “labor camps.” Progress is stopped, science is prohibited and complete feudalism is being imposed.

A similar picture was painted by Philip K. Dick in his novel The Man in the High Castle. Europe is conquered by the Nazis, the United States is divided and given to Japan, the Jews are exterminated, and a new global war is brewing in the Pacific region. However, unlike his predecessors, Dick did not believe that Hitler's victory would lead to the degradation of humanity. On the contrary, his Third Reich stimulates scientific and technological progress and prepares for the colonization of the planets of the solar system. At the same time, the cruelty and treachery of the Nazis is the norm in this alternative world, and therefore the Japanese will soon face the fate of the perished Jews.

American Nazis from the film adaptation of The Man in the High Castle

A unique version of the history of the Third Reich was considered by Sever Gansovsky in the story “The Demon of History.” In his alternative world, there is no Adolf Hitler, but there is a charismatic leader, Jurgen Aster - and he, too, starts a war in Europe in order to throw the conquered world at the feet of the Germans. The Soviet writer illustrated the Marxist thesis about predestination historical process: an individual does not decide anything, the atrocities of World War II are a consequence of the laws of history.

The German writer Otto Basil, in his novel If the Fuhrer Knew It, arms Hitler with an atomic bomb. And Frederick Mullaly in his novel “Hitler Wins” describes how the Wehrmacht conquers the Vatican. The famous collection of English-language authors, “Hitler the Victorious,” presents the most incredible outcomes of the war: in one story, the Third Reich and the USSR divide Europe after defeating democratic countries, in another, the Third Reich loses its victory due to a gypsy curse.

The most ambitious work about another war was created by Harry Turtledove. In the tetralogy " World War” and the “Colonization” trilogy, he describes how, in the midst of the battle for Moscow, invaders fly to our planet - lizard-like aliens who have more advanced technologies than earthlings. The war against aliens forces the warring parties to unite and ultimately leads to a scientific and technological breakthrough. IN final novel The first spaceship built by humans launches into space.

However, the topic is not limited to discussing the results of the war in alternative realities. Many authors use a related idea: what if the Nazis or their opponents learned to travel through time and decided to use future technologies to achieve victory? This twist on the old plot was played out in James Hogan’s novel “Operation Proteus” and in Dean Koontz’s novel “Lightning.”

Poster for the film “It Happened Here”

Cinema did not remain indifferent to the alternative Reich. In a rare pseudo-documentary style for science fiction, the film “It Happened Here” by English directors Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo tells about the consequences of the Nazi occupation of the British Isles. The plot with a time machine and the theft of technology is played out in Stephen Cornwell's action film The Philadelphia Experiment 2. A classic alternative history is presented in the thriller “Fatherland” by Christopher Menall, based on the novel of the same name by Robert Harris.

For example, we can cite Sergei Abramov’s story “A Quiet Angel Flew” and Andrei Lazarchuk’s novel “Another Sky.” In the first case, the Nazis, for no apparent reason, establish European-style democracy in the conquered Soviet Union, after which we suddenly have order and abundance. In Lazarchuk’s novel, the Third Reich also provides fairly comfortable conditions for the conquered peoples, but comes to stagnation and is defeated by the dynamically developing Siberian Republic.

Such ideas are not only harmful, but also dangerous. They contribute to the illusion that the enemy should not have been resisted, that submission to the invaders could change the world for the better. It should be remembered: the Nazi regime carried a colossal charge of hatred, and therefore war with it was inevitable. Even if the Third Reich had won in Europe and Russia, the war would not have stopped, but would have continued.

Fortunately, the majority of Russian science fiction writers do not believe that the Nazis could have brought peace and democracy to the USSR. In response to novels that portrayed the Third Reich as harmless, works appeared that gave it a sober assessment. Thus, in Sergei Sinyakin’s story “Half-Breed” all the known plans of the top of the Reich to transform Europe and the world are reconstructed. The writer recalls that the basis of Nazi ideology was the division of peoples into full-fledged and inferior, and no reforms could change the Reich’s movement towards the destruction and enslavement of hundreds of millions of people.

Dmitry Kazakov sums up this topic in his novel “The Highest Race.” A detachment of Soviet front-line intelligence officers encounters a group of Aryan “supermen” created in occult laboratories. And our people emerge victorious from the bloody battle.

* * *

Let's remember that in reality, our great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers defeated Hitler's “superman”. And it would be the greatest disrespect for their memory and for the truth itself to claim that they did it in vain...

But this is the real story. Not alternative

About the Nazi program of extermination of entire nations

Alexander Pronin

A truly cannibalistic document of Nazi Germany was the Ost general plan - a plan for the enslavement and destruction of the peoples of the USSR, the Jewish and Slavic population of the conquered territories.

An idea of ​​how the Nazi elite saw the waging of a war of destruction can be gained from Hitler’s speeches to the highest command of the Wehrmacht on January 9, March 17 and 30, 1941. The Fuhrer stated that a war against the USSR would be “the complete opposite of normal war in the West and Northern Europe,” it provides for “total destruction,” “the destruction of Russia as a state.” Trying to provide an ideological basis for these criminal plans, Hitler announced that the upcoming war against the USSR would be a “struggle of two ideologies” with “the use of brutal violence”, that in this war it would be necessary to defeat not only the Red Army, but also the “control mechanism” of the USSR, “ destroy the commissars and communist intelligentsia,” functionaries, and in this way destroy the “worldview bonds” of the Russian people.

On April 28, 1941, Brauchitsch issued a special order “Procedure for the use of security police and SD in ground forces formations.” According to it, Wehrmacht soldiers and officers were relieved of responsibility for future crimes in the occupied territory of the USSR. They were ordered to be ruthless, to shoot on the spot without trial or investigation anyone who offered even the slightest resistance or showed sympathy for the partisans.

Citizens were destined for either exile to Siberia without means of subsistence, or the fate of slaves of the Aryan masters. The justification for these goals was the racist views of the Nazi leadership, contempt for the Slavs and other “subhuman” peoples who interfere with ensuring the “existence and reproduction of the superior race” allegedly due to its catastrophic lack of “living space”.

“Racial theory” and “theory of living space” originated in Germany long before the Nazis came to power, but only under them acquired the status of a state ideology that covered large sections of the population.

The war against the USSR was considered by the Nazi elite primarily as a war against Slavic peoples. In a conversation with the President of the Danzig Senate, H. Rauschning, Hitler explained: “One of the main tasks of the German government is to forever prevent by all possible means the development of the Slavic races. The natural instincts of all living beings tell us not only the need to defeat our enemies, but also to destroy them.” Other leaders of Nazi Germany adhered to a similar attitude, primarily one of Hitler’s closest accomplices, Reichsführer SS G. Himmler, who on October 7, 1939 simultaneously took the post of “Reich Commissioner for Strengthening the German Race.” Hitler instructed him to deal with the issues of “returning” Imperial Germans and Volksdeutsche from other countries and creating new settlements as the German “living space in the East” expanded during the war. Himmler played a leading role in deciding the future that the population in Soviet territory up to the Urals should expect after the German victory.

Hitler, throughout his entire life political career who advocated the dismemberment of the USSR, on July 16, at a meeting at his headquarters with the participation of Goering, Rosenberg, Lammers, Bormann and Keitel, he defined the tasks of National Socialist policy in Russia: “The main principle is to divide this pie in the most convenient way , so that we can: firstly, own it, secondly, manage it and, thirdly, exploit it.” At the same meeting, Hitler announced that after the defeat of the USSR, the territory of the Third Reich should be expanded in the east at least to the Urals. He stated: “The entire Baltic region should become a region of the empire, Crimea with the adjacent regions, the Volga regions should become a region of the empire in the same way as the Baku region.”

At a meeting of the Wehrmacht high command held on July 31, 1940, dedicated to preparing an attack on the USSR, Hitler again stated: “Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states are for us.” He then intended to transfer the northwestern regions of Russia up to Arkhangelsk to Finland.

On May 25, 1940, Himmler prepared and presented to Hitler his “Some Considerations on the Treatment of the Local Population of the Eastern Regions.” He wrote: “We are extremely interested in under no circumstances uniting the peoples of the eastern regions, but, on the contrary, splitting them into the smallest possible branches and groups.”

A secret document initiated by Himmler called General Plan Ost was presented to him on July 15. The plan provided for the destruction and deportation of 80-85% of the population from Poland, 85% from Lithuania, 65% from Western Ukraine, 75% from Belarus and 50% of residents from Latvia, Estonia and the Czech Republic within 25-30 years.

45 million people lived in the area subject to German colonization. At least 31 million of them who would be declared “undesirable by racial indicators” were supposed to be evicted to Siberia, and immediately after the defeat of the USSR, up to 840 thousand Germans were to be resettled in the liberated territories. Over the next two to three decades, two more waves of settlers were planned, numbering 1.1 and 2.6 million people. In September 1941, Hitler declared that in the Soviet lands, which should become “provinces of the Reich,” it is necessary to pursue a “planned racial policy,” sending there and allocating lands not only to the Germans, but also to “Norwegians related to them by language and blood.” , Swedes, Danes and Dutch." “When settling the Russian space,” he said, “we must provide the imperial peasants with unusually luxurious housing. German institutions should be housed in magnificent buildings - governor's palaces. Around them they will grow everything necessary for the life of the Germans. Around the cities, within a radius of 30-40 km, there will be German villages that are striking in their beauty, connected by the best roads. There will be another world in which Russians will be allowed to live as they please. But on one condition: we will be masters. In the event of a rebellion, all we have to do is drop a couple of bombs on their cities, and the job is done. And once a year we will take a group of Kyrgyz people through the capital of the Reich, so that they become aware of the power and grandeur of its architectural monuments. The eastern spaces will become for us what India was for England.” After the defeat near Moscow, Hitler consoled his interlocutors: “Losses will be restored to a volume many times greater than theirs in the settlements for purebred Germans that I will create in the East... The right to land, according to the eternal law of nature, belongs to the one who conquered it, based on the fact that the old borders are holding back the growth of the population. And the fact that we have children who want to live justifies our claims to the newly conquered eastern territories.” Continuing this thought, Hitler said: “In the East there is iron, coal, wheat, wood. We will build luxurious houses and roads, and those who grow up there will love their homeland and one day, like the Volga Germans, will forever link their destiny with it.”

The Nazis had special plans for the Russian people. One of the developers of the Ost master plan, Dr. E. Vetzel, a referent on racial issues in the Eastern Ministry of Rosenberg, prepared a document for Himmler in which it was stated that “without complete destruction” or weakening by any means “the biological strength of the Russian people” to establish “German domination in Europe” will not succeed.

“This is not only about the defeat of a state centered in Moscow,” he wrote. - Achieving this historical goal would never mean a complete solution to the problem. The point, most likely, is to defeat the Russians as a people, to divide them.”

Hitler's deep hostility towards the Slavs is evidenced by the recordings of his table conversations, which from June 21, 1941 to July 1942 were conducted first by ministerial adviser G. Geim, and then by Dr. G. Picker; as well as notes on the goals and methods of occupation policy on the territory of the USSR, made by the representative of the Eastern Ministry at Hitler’s headquarters, W. Keppen, from September 6 to November 7, 1941. After Hitler’s trip to Ukraine in September 1941, Keppen records conversations at Headquarters: “At An entire block of Kyiv burned down, but there are still quite a few people living in the city. large number Human. They make a very bad impression, outwardly they resemble proletarians, and therefore their numbers should be reduced by 80-90%. The Fuhrer immediately supported the proposal of the Reichsfuehrer (H. Himmler) to confiscate the ancient Russian monastery located near Kyiv, so that it would not turn into a center for the revival of the Orthodox faith and national spirit.” Both Russians, Ukrainians, and Slavs in general, according to Hitler, belonged to a race unworthy of humane treatment and the expense of education.

After a conversation with Hitler on July 8, 1941, the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Colonel General F. Halder, writes in his diary: “The Fuhrer’s decision to raze Moscow and Leningrad to the ground is unshakable in order to completely get rid of the population of these cities, which otherwise we will then forced to feed during the winter. The task of destroying these cities must be carried out by aviation. Tanks should not be used for this. This will be a national disaster that will deprive not only Bolshevism of centers, but also Muscovites (Russians) in general.” Köppen specifies Halder’s conversation with Hitler, dedicated to the destruction of the population of Leningrad, as follows: “The city will only need to be encircled, subjected to artillery fire and starved to death...”.

Assessing the situation at the front, on October 9, Koeppen writes: “The Fuhrer gave an order to prohibit German soldiers from entering the territory of Moscow. The city will be surrounded and wiped off the face of the earth.” The corresponding order was signed on October 7 and confirmed by the main command of the ground forces in the “Instruction on the procedure for the capture of Moscow and the treatment of its population” dated October 12, 1941.

The instructions emphasized that “it would be completely irresponsible to risk the lives of German soldiers to save Russian cities from fires or to feed their population at the expense of Germany.” German troops were ordered to apply similar tactics to all Soviet cities, while it was explained that “the more the population of Soviet cities rushes into internal Russia, the more chaos in Russia will increase and the easier it will be to control and use the occupied eastern regions.” In an entry dated October 17, Koeppen also notes that Hitler made it clear to the generals that after the victory he intended to save only a few Russian cities.

Trying to divide the population of the occupied territories in areas where Soviet power was established only in 1939-1940. (Western Ukraine, Western Belarus, Baltic states), the fascists established close contacts with the nationalists.

To stimulate them, it was decided to allow “local self-government”. However, the restoration of their own statehood to the peoples of the Baltic states and Belarus was denied. When, following the entry of German troops into Lithuania, nationalists, without the sanction of Berlin, created a government headed by Colonel K. Skirpa, the German leadership refused to recognize it, declaring that the issue of forming a government in Vilna would be decided only after victory in the war. Berlin did not allow the idea of ​​restoring statehood in the Baltic republics and Belarus, resolutely rejecting requests from “racially inferior” collaborators to create their own armed forces and other attributes of power. At the same time, the Wehrmacht leadership willingly used them to form volunteer foreign units, which, under the command of German officers, participated in combat operations against partisans and at the front. They also served as burgomasters, village elders, in auxiliary police units, etc.

In the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”, from which a significant part of the territory was torn away, included in Transnistria and the General Government in Poland, any attempts by nationalists not only to revive statehood, but also to create “Ukrainian self-government in a politically expedient form” were suppressed "

When preparing an attack on the USSR, the Nazi leadership attached paramount importance to the development of plans for using the Soviet economic potential in the interests of ensuring the conquest of world domination. At a meeting with the Wehrmacht command on January 9, 1941, Hitler said that if Germany “gets into its hands the incalculable riches of the vast Russian territories,” then “in the future it will be able to fight against any continents.”

In March 1941, for the exploitation of the occupied territory of the USSR, a paramilitary state-monopoly organization was created in Berlin - the Headquarters of the Economic Management “Vostok”. It was headed by two old associates of Hitler: Deputy G. Goering, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Hermann Goering concern, State Secretary P. Kerner and Head of the Department of War Industry and Armament of the OKW, Lieutenant General G. Thomas. In addition to the “leadership group”, which also dealt with the workforce, the headquarters included groups of industry, agriculture, organization of enterprises and forestry. From the very beginning, it was dominated by representatives of German concerns: Mansfeld, Krupp, Zeiss, Flick, I. G. Farben." On October 15, 1941, excluding the economic commands in the Baltic states and the corresponding specialists in the army, the headquarters numbered about 10, and by the end of the year - 11 thousand people.

The plans of the German leadership for the exploitation of Soviet industry were set out in the “Directives for Management in the Newly Occupied Areas,” which received the name Goering’s “Green Folder” based on the color of the binding.

The directives provided for organizing on the territory of the USSR the extraction and export to Germany of those types of raw materials that were important for the functioning of the German military economy, and for restoring a number of factories for the purpose of repairing Wehrmacht equipment and producing certain types of weapons.

Most of the Soviet enterprises producing civilian products were planned to be destroyed. Goering and representatives of military-industrial concerns showed particular interest in the seizure of Soviet oil-bearing regions. In March 1941, an oil company called Continental A.G. was founded, the chairman of the board of which was E. Fischer from the IG Farben concern and K. Blessing, former director Imperial Bank.

The general instructions of the Vostok organization dated May 23, 1941 on economic policy in the field of agriculture stated that the purpose of the military campaign against the USSR was “supplying the German armed forces, as well as ensuring for many years food supply for the German civilian population." It was planned to realize this goal by “reducing Russia’s own consumption” by cutting off the supply of products from the southern black earth regions to the northern non-black earth zone, including to such industrial centers as Moscow and Leningrad. Those who prepared these instructions were well aware that this would lead to the starvation of millions of Soviet citizens. At one of the meetings of the Vostok headquarters it was said: “If we manage to pump everything we need out of the country, then tens of millions of people will be doomed to starvation.”

Economic inspectorates operating in the operational rear of German troops on the Eastern Front, economic departments in the rear of armies, including technical battalions of specialists in the mining and oil industries, units engaged in the seizure of raw materials, agricultural products and tools of production. Economic teams were created in divisions, economic groups - in field commandant's offices. In the units that exported raw materials and controlled the work of captured enterprises, specialists from German concerns were advisors. To the Commissioner for Scrap Metal, Captain B.-G. Shu and the inspector general for the seizure of raw materials, V. Witting, were ordered to hand over the trophies to the military concerns of Flick and I. G. Farben."

Germany's satellites also counted on rich booty for complicity in aggression.

The ruling elite of Romania, led by dictator I. Antonescu, intended not only to return Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, which it had to cede to the USSR in the summer of 1940, but also to obtain a significant part of the territory of Ukraine.

In Budapest, for participation in the attack on the USSR, they dreamed of getting the former Eastern Galicia, including the oil-bearing areas in Drohobych, as well as all of Transylvania.

In a keynote speech at a meeting of SS leaders on October 2, 1941, the head of the Main Directorate of Imperial Security, R. Heydrich, stated that after the war, Europe would be divided into a “German great space”, where the German population would live - Germans, Dutch, Flemings, Norwegians, Danes and the Swedes, and to the “eastern space”, which will become a raw material base for the German state and where “German upper layer“will use the conquered local population as “helots,” that is, slaves. G. Himmler had a different opinion on this matter. He was not satisfied with the policy of Germanization of the population of the occupied territories pursued by Kaiser Germany. He considered the desire of the old authorities to force the conquered peoples to renounce only their native language as erroneous. national culture, lead a German way of life and obey German laws.

In the SS newspaper “Das Schwarze Kor” dated August 20, 1942, in the article “Should we Germanize?”, Himmler wrote: “Our task is not to Germanize the East in the old sense of the word, that is, to instill in the population the German language and German laws , but to ensure that only people of truly German, Germanic blood live in the East.”

The achievement of this goal was served by the mass extermination of civilians and prisoners of war, which occurred from the very beginning of the invasion of German troops into the territory of the USSR. Simultaneously with the Barbarossa plan, the OKH order of April 28, 1941 “Procedure for the use of security police and SD in ground forces formations” came into force. In accordance with this order, the main role in the mass extermination of communists, Komsomol members, deputies of regional, city, district and village councils, Soviet intelligentsia and Jews in the occupied territory was played by four punitive units, the so-called Einsatzgruppen, designated by letters of the Latin alphabet A, B, C, D. Einsatzgruppe A was assigned to Army Group North and operated in the Baltic republics (led by SS Brigade-Denführer W. Stahlecker). Einsatzgruppe B in Belarus (headed by the head of the 5th Directorate of the RSHA, SS Gruppenführer A. Nebe) was assigned to Army Group Center. Einsatzgruppe C (Ukraine, chief - SS Brigadeführer O. Rasch, inspector of the Security Police and SD in Königsberg) “served” Army Group “South”. Einsatzgruppe D, attached to the 2nd Army, operated in the southern part of Ukraine and Crimea. It was commanded by O. Ohlendorf, head of the 3rd Directorate of the RSHA (domestic security service) and at the same time the chief manager of the Imperial Trade Group. In addition, in the operational rear of the German formations advancing on Moscow, the punitive team “Moscow”, led by SS-Brigadeführer F.-A., operated. Zix, head of the 7th Directorate of the RSHA (worldview research and its use). Each Einsatzgruppen consisted of 800 to 1,200 personnel (SS, SD, criminal police, Gestapo and order police) under the jurisdiction of the SS. Following on the heels of the advancing German troops, by mid-November 1941, the Einsatzgroups of armies “North”, “Center” and “South” exterminated more than 300 thousand civilians in the Baltic states, Belarus and Ukraine. They were engaged in mass murders and robbery until the end of 1942. According to the most conservative estimates, they accounted for over a million victims. Then the Einsatzgruppen were formally liquidated, becoming part of the rear forces.

In development of the “Order on Commissars”, the Wehrmacht High Command entered into an agreement on July 16, 1941 with the Main Directorate of Reich Security, according to which special teams of the Security Police and SD under the auspices of the head of the 4th Main Directorate of the Secret State Police (Gestapo) G Müller were obliged to identify politically and racially “unacceptable” “elements” among Soviet prisoners of war delivered from the front to stationary camps.

Not only party workers of all ranks, but also “all representatives of the intelligentsia, all fanatical communists and all Jews” were considered “unacceptable.”

It was emphasized that the use of weapons against Soviet prisoners of war is considered “as a rule, legal.” Such a phrase meant official permission to kill. In May 1942, the OKW was forced to cancel this order at the request of some high-ranking front-line soldiers, who reported that the publication of the facts of the execution of the lieutenants led to a sharp increase in the strength of resistance from the Red Army. Henceforth, political commissars began to be destroyed not immediately after captivity, but in the Mauthausen concentration camp.

After the defeat of the USSR, it was planned “within the shortest possible time” to create and populate three imperial districts: the Ingria district (Leningrad, Pskov and Novgorod regions), the Gothic district (Crimea and Kherson region) and the Memel-Narev district (Bialystok region and Western Lithuania). To ensure connections between Germany and the Ingermanland and Gotha districts, it was planned to build two highways, each with a length of up to 2 thousand km. One would reach Leningrad, the other would reach the Crimean Peninsula. To secure the highways, it was planned to create 36 paramilitary German settlements (strong points) along them: 14 in Poland, 8 in Ukraine and 14 in the Baltic states. It was proposed to declare the entire territory in the East that would be captured by the Wehrmach as state property, transferring power over it to the SS administrative apparatus headed by Himmler, who would personally resolve issues related to granting German settlers the rights to own land. According to Nazi scientists, it would have taken 25 years and up to 66.6 billion Reichsmarks to build highways, accommodate 4.85 million Germans in three districts and settle them down.

Having approved this project in principle, Himmler demanded that it provide for the “total Germanization of Estonia, Latvia and the General Government”: their settlement by Germans within about 20 years. In September 1942, when German troops reached Stalingrad and the foothills of the Caucasus, at a meeting with SS commanders in Zhitomir, Himmler announced that the network of German strongholds (military settlements) would be expanded to the Don and Volga.

Second " Master plan settlements,” taking into account Himmler’s wishes to finalize the April version, was ready on December 23, 1942. The main directions of colonization in it were named northern (East Prussia - Baltic countries) and southern (Krakow - Lviv - Black Sea region). It was assumed that the territory of German settlements would be 700 thousand square meters. km, of which 350 thousand are arable lands (the entire territory of the Reich in 1938 was less than 600 thousand sq. km).

The “General Plan Ost” provided for the physical extermination of the entire Jewish population of Europe, the mass murder of Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, Hungarians, and the physical extermination of 25-30 million Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians.

L. Bezymensky, calling the Ost plan a “cannibal document”, “a plan for the liquidation of the Slavs in Russia,” argued: “One should not be deceived by the term “eviction”: this was a familiar designation for the Nazis for killing people.”

“The General Plan Ost” belongs to history - the history of the forced relocation of individuals and entire nations,” said the report of the modern German researcher Dietrich Achholz at a joint meeting of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Christian Peace Conference “Munich Agreements - General Plan Ost - Benes Decrees. Causes of flight and forced relocation in Eastern Europe” in Berlin on May 15, 2004 - This story is as old as the history of humanity itself. But Plan Ost opened up a new dimension of fear. It represented a carefully planned genocide of races and peoples, and this in the industrialized era of the mid-20th century!” We are not talking here about the struggle for pastures and hunting grounds, for livestock and women, as in ancient times. The Ost master plan, under the guise of a misanthropic, atavistic racial ideology, was about profits for big capital, fertile lands for large landowners, wealthy peasants and generals, and profits for countless petty Nazi criminals and hangers-on. “The murderers themselves, who are part of the SS task forces, in countless Wehrmacht units and key positions The occupation bureaucracy brought death and fires to the occupied territories, and only a small part of them were punished for their actions,” stated D. Achholz. “Tens of thousands of them “dissolved” and could some time later, after the war, lead a “normal” life in West Germany or somewhere else, for the most part avoiding persecution or at least censure.”

As an example, the researcher cited the fate of the leading SS scientist and expert Himmler, who developed the most important versions of the Ost master plan.” He stood out among those dozens, even hundreds of scientists - Earth researchers of various specializations, specialists in territorial and demographic planners, racial ideologists and eugenics specialists, ethnologists and anthropologists, biologists and doctors, economists and historians - who supplied data to the killers of entire nations for their bloody work. “It was this “master plan Ost” of May 28, 1942 that was one of the high-quality products of such killers at their desks,” the speaker notes. It really was, as the Czech historian Miroslav Karni wrote, a plan “in which scholarship and advanced technical techniques were invested scientific work, the ingenuity and vanity of the leading scientists of Nazi Germany,” a plan “that transformed the criminal phantasmagoria of Hitler and Himmler into a fully developed system, thought out to the smallest detail, calculated to the last mark.”

The author responsible for this plan, full professor and head of the Institute of Agronomy and Agrarian Policy at the University of Berlin, Konrad Meyer, called Meyer-Hetling, was an exemplary example of such a scientist. Himmler made him head of the "main staff service for planning and land holdings" in his "Imperial Commissariat for the Strengthening of the Spirit of the German Nation" and first as a Standarten and later as an SS Oberführer (corresponding to the rank of colonel). In addition, as a leading land planner in the Reich Ministry of Food and Agriculture, who was recognized by the Reichsfuehrer of Agriculture and the Ministry of the Occupied Eastern Regions, in 1942 Meyer was promoted to the position of chief planner for the development of all areas subject to Germany.

From the beginning of the war, Meyer knew in every detail about all the planned abominations; Moreover, he himself drew up decisive conclusions and plans for this. In the annexed Polish regions, as he officially announced already in 1940, it was assumed “that the entire Jewish population of this region, numbering 560 thousand people, had already been evacuated and, accordingly, would leave the region during this winter” (that is, they would be imprisoned in concentration camps, where will undergo systematic destruction).

In order to populate the annexed areas with at least 4.5 million Germans (until now 1.1 million people had permanently lived there), it was necessary to “expel 3.4 million Poles train by train.”

Meyer died peacefully in 1973 at the age of 72 as a retired West German professor. The scandal surrounding this Nazi killer began after the war with his participation in the Nuremberg war crimes trials. He was indicted along with other SS ranks in the case of the so-called General Office for Race and Resettlement, sentenced by a United States court to a minor punishment only for membership in the SS and released in 1948. Although in the verdict the American judges agreed that he, as a senior SS officer and a person who worked closely with Himmler, should have “known” about the criminal activities of the SS, they confirmed that there was “nothing aggravating” for him under the “Ost General Plan” it cannot be argued that he “knew nothing about evacuations and other radical measures”, and that this plan “was never put into practice” anyway. “The prosecution representative really could not present undeniable evidence at that time, since the sources, especially the “master plan” of 1942, had not yet been discovered,” D. Achholz notes bitterly.

And the court even then made decisions in the spirit of the Cold War, which meant the release of “honest” Nazi criminals and potential future allies, and did not think at all about attracting Polish and Soviet experts as witnesses.”

As for the extent to which the Ost master plan was implemented or not, the example of Belarus clearly demonstrates. The Extraordinary State Commission to reveal the crimes of the invaders determined that only the direct losses of this republic during the war years amounted to 75 billion rubles. in 1941 prices. The most painful and severe loss for Belarus was the extermination of over 2.2 million people. Hundreds of villages and hamlets were deserted, and the urban population sharply decreased. In Minsk at the time of liberation, less than 40% of the population remained, in the Mogilev region - only 35% of the urban population, Polesie - 29, Vitebsk - 27, Gomel - 18%. The occupiers burned and destroyed 209 of 270 cities and regional centers, 9,200 villages and hamlets. 100,465 enterprises were destroyed, more than 6 thousand km of railway, 10 thousand collective farms, 92 state farms and MTS were plundered, 420,996 collective farmers' houses, almost all power plants were destroyed. 90% of machine tools and technical equipment, about 96% of energy capacity, about 18.5 thousand vehicles, more than 9 thousand tractors and tractors, thousands of cubic meters of wood, lumber were exported to Germany, hundreds of hectares of forests, gardens, etc. were cut down. By the summer of 1944, only 39% of the pre-war number of horses, 31% of cattle, 11% of pigs, 22% of sheep and goats remained in Belarus. The enemy destroyed thousands of educational, health, scientific and cultural institutions, including 8,825 schools, the Academy of Sciences of the BSSR, 219 libraries, 5,425 museums, theaters and clubs, 2,187 hospitals and outpatient clinics, 2,651 children's institutions.

Thus, the cannibalistic plan for the extermination of millions of people, the destruction of the entire material and spiritual potential of the conquered Slavic states, which in fact was the Ost master plan, was carried out by the Nazis consistently and persistently. And all the more majestic, grandiose is the immortal feat of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, partisans and underground fighters, who did not spare their lives to rid Europe and the world of the brown plague.

Master plan "Ost"(German) Generalplan Ost) - secret plan of the German government of the Third Reich to carry out ethnic cleansing in the territory 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 Reich Security and 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 title “General Plan Ost - the foundations 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 was completely digitized and published only in November-December 2009.

At the Nuremberg trials, the only evidence of the existence of the plan was the “Observations and Suggestions of the “Eastern Ministry” on the Ost General Plan,” according to prosecutors, written on April 27, 1942 by a ministry employee eastern territories E. Wetzel after familiarizing himself with the draft plan prepared by RSHA.

Rosenberg Project

The master plan was preceded by a project developed by the Reich Ministry for Occupied Territories, headed by Alfred Rosenberg. On May 9, 1941, Rosenberg presented the Fuhrer with draft directives on policy issues in the territories that were to be occupied as a result of aggression against the USSR.

Rosenberg proposed creating five governorates on the territory of the USSR. Hitler opposed the autonomy of Ukraine and replaced the term “governorate” with “Reichskommissariat” for it. As a result, Rosenberg’s ideas took the following forms of implementation.

• Ostland - was supposed to include Belarus, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Ostland, where, according to Rosenberg, a population with Aryan blood lived, 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 lands of the abolished Soviet Autonomous Republic Germans of the Volga region. According to Rosenberg's idea, the governorate was supposed to gain autonomy and become the support 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.
• The fifth governorate was to be Turkestan.

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

Plan Description

According to some reports, the “Plan Ost” was divided into two - the “Small Plan” (German. Kleine Planung) and "Big Plan" (German) Große Planung). The small plan was to be carried out during the war. The Big Plan was what the German government wanted to focus on after the war. The plan provided for different percentages of Germanization for the various conquered Slavic and other peoples. The “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 comments and suggestions

A document known as “Comments and proposals of the “Eastern Ministry” on the “Ost” master plan” has become widespread among historians. The text of this document has often been presented as Plan Ost itself, although it has little in common with the text of the Plan published at the end of 2009.

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

"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, Latvians were considered more suitable for "Germanization", but Lithuanians and Latgalians were not, since there were too many "Slavic admixtures" among them. According to Wetzel's proposals, the Russian people were to be subjected to measures such as assimilation (“Germanization”) and population reduction 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 planning service of the Main Staff Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Consolidation of the German People Heinrich Himmler (Reichskommissar für die Festigung Deutschen Volkstums (RKFDV) and the Institute of Agrarian Policy of the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin:

• Document 1: “Planning Fundamentals” was created in February 1940 by the RKFDV planning service (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 about 4.3 million Germans into this territory; of which 3.15 million are 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 RKFDV planning service (volume 5 pages). Contents: Fundamental article to the “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, as well as in addition 40% of the territory for forest, 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 (missing, exact contents unknown): “General Plan Ost”, created in July 1941 by the RKFDV planning service. Contents: Description of the extent of the planned eastern colonization in the USSR with the boundaries of specific areas of colonization.

• Document 4 (missing, exact contents unknown): “ General 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 General Government with specific boundaries of individual areas of settlement.

• Document 5: “General Plan Ost”, created in May 1942 by the Institute of Agriculture and Politics of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University of Berlin (volume 68 pages).

Contents: Description of the scale of the planned eastern colonization in the USSR with specific boundaries of individual areas of settlement. The colonization area was supposed to cover 364,231 km², including 36 strong points and three administrative districts in the Leningrad region, the Kherson-Crimean region and in the Bialystok region. 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, should have appeared. The required number of resettlers 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 for Colonization” (German) Generalsiedlungsplan), created in September 1942 by the RKF planning service (volume: 200 pages, including 25 maps and tables).

Contents: Description of the scale of the planned colonization of all areas envisaged for this with specific boundaries of individual settlement areas. The region was supposed to cover an area of ​​330,000 km² with 360,100 rural households. 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.