The Nazis Regarded the War against the Soviet Union as a War of Extermination - Essay Example

?The Nazis regarded the war against the Soviet Union as a ‘war of extermination’ (Vernichtungskrieg). What does it mean? Introduction. The Nazis regarded the war against the Soviet Union as the war of extermination is actually the practical implementation of Nazis ideology, their pride of Aryan race and nationalism. Hitler termed it as Vernichtungskrieg (war of annihilation), a war whose goal is not the enforcement of limited political goals or the control of a disputed territory but the total destruction of a country, a people or an ethnic group and the extinction of these socio-political entities by the mass murder of the population or the destruction of their livelihoods. In the spring of 1941, as preparations were under way for the invasion of the USSR, Hitler proclaimed that a war of destruction was about to start. He called for the annihilation of the Bolshevik leadership, thus laying the foundation for the extermination of what Hitler considered to be the biological source of Bolshevism: the Jews of the USSR. The application of Nazi ideas and ideology depended on two types of force, one of these took the form of indoctrination and propaganda, the other was based on terror. The initial phase of success on eastern front gave Wehrmacht, the opportunity to implement their policy of extermination (Lee 30). This resulted in the worst genocide of history, in which millions of people were killed brutally by using gassing techniques and starving them to death. Thus, the Nazis considered their war against Soviet Union as war of extermination and application of their policies of persecution. Nazis Ideology A profound understanding of Nazis ideology is essential in order to understand the true spirit of Nazis war of extermination. The official name of Hitler’s movement throughout the period 1920 to 1945 was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Certainly the 25 Point agenda, formulated in 1920, contained principles which could be seen as both nationalist and socialist. However, the crux of the agenda that made it Nazis ideology of master race included: demanding the union of all Germans in a Greater Germany; the acquisition of land and territory to feed our people and settle our surplus population; the nationalist component was given further emphasis by a strong racial slant. Hence, Jews were to be excluded from German nationhood; all non-German immigration must be prevented (Lee 12) There were Nazis who emphasized the socialist element of their ideology, but these did not include Hitler. Instead, Hitler focused more and more on racial rather than economic explanations for major historical trends. He argued in his 1925 book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) that ‘The adulteration of the blood and racial deterioration conditioned thereby are the only causes that account for the decline of ancient civilizations; for it is never by war that nations are ruined, but by the loss of their powers of resistance, which are exclusively a characteristic of pure racial blood’ Lee 13) Hitler has unique importance as the creator of the Nazis programme and ideology; most of his ideas are contained in Mein Kampf and the Zweites Buch (Second Book).(p14) A vital component of Nazism was the ‘Fuehrer principle’ (Fuhrerprinzip). It is true that the cult of leadership is to be found in all fascist movements, but it was of particular importance in the Nazi context since Hitler’s ideas were crucial in defining the nature of Nazi eclecticism. Above all, Hitler provided Nazism with a unique vision of racial purity and anti-Semitism (Lee 14). Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography Mein Kampf for the necessity of Lebensraum, acquiring new territory for German settlement in Eastern Europe. He envisaged settling Germans there as a master race, while exterminating or deporting most of the inhabitants to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labor. The linking of anti-Semitic accusations to race struggle is what made Nazism so genocidal. The Nazis believed the Jews were responsible for what they regarded as the degeneracy of modern society. Hitler viewed modern ideologies that stressed equality and emancipation as a revolt of inferior classes and peoples led by the Jews. The Nazis viewed Bolshevism as the most radical recent form of the ancient Jewish conspiracy that would lead to national dissolution and disintegration. For Hitler, Nazism was thus a doctrine of world salvation to redeem humanity from the Jewish-Bolshevik doctrine. He believed that the German race had to acquire and maintain total supremacy through total war against the Jews. Such a war would be a fight in which the only alternatives, for either side, were victory or extinction.(Lee 18) War of extermination. The ideology of Nazism spearheaded by Hitler was the sole and strongest reason for the war of extermination. Before the launch of operation Barbarossa in 1941, his following account has been mentioned: "The Struggle between two ideologies against each other. Devastating indictment of Bolshevism, is equal to anti-social criminality. Communism immense danger for the future. We have the position of the soldierly comradeship abandon. The Communist is no comrade before and after no mate. It is a war of extermination. If we do not understand the case, then we will indeed beat the enemy, but in 30 years we will again face the communist enemy. We do not lead to war to preserve the enemy. The struggle will differ greatly from the war in the west. In the East, hardness is mild for the future. The leaders need to ask the victim to overcome their concerns. "(Halder 335)  The motives of the Nazis devastating war against the Soviet Union were: the physical extermination of the " Jewish-Bolshevik 'elite of the country and the Jews even as the alleged biological root; the conquest of colonial and habitat for the German Reich and the submission and decimation of the Slavic population.(Gruber 519 ) War on eastern front. The Soviet-German War lasted from 22 June 1941 through 9 May 1945, a period slightly less than four years. On the basis of postwar study and analysis of the war, Soviet (Russian) military theorists and historians have subdivided the overall conflict into three distinct periods, each distinguished from one another by the strategic nature of military operations and the fortunes of war. In turn, the Soviets subdivided each war time period into several campaigns, each of which occurred during one or more seasons of the year. (Glantz 10) The 1st Period of the War lasted from Hitler’s Barbarossa invasion on 22 June 1941 through 18 November 1942, the day German offensive operations toward Stalingrad ended. This period encompasses Hitler’s two most famous and spectacular strategic offensives, Operation Barbarossa in 1941 and Operation Blau [Blue] in 1942. Although the Red Army was able to halt the German advances on Moscow, Leningrad, and Moscow in December 1941 and conduct major offensives of its own during the winter of 1942 and 1943, throughout this period the strategic initiative remained predominantly in German hands. (Glantz 11) The 2nd Period of the War lasted from the commencement of the Red Army’s Stalingrad counteroffensive on 19 November 1942 to the Red Army’s penetration of German defenses along the Dnepr River and invasion of Belorussia and the Ukraine in December 1943. Defined as a transitional period during which the strategic initiative shifted inexorably and irrevocably into the Red Army’s hands. (Glantz 11) During the 3rd Period of the War (1944-1945), the Soviet Union held the strategic initiative. The ensuing campaigns from December 1943 through May 1945 were almost continuous, punctuated only by brief pauses while the Soviet war machine gathered itself for another major offensive. Glantz 11). The 3rd period of war in Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome of World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for Germany's defeat It resulted in the destruction of the Third German Reich.  Methods of extermination. The initial phase of success in Eastern front led Nazis to implement their policies of persecution. The techniques used by Nazis to annihilate the local population were diabolic and brutal. They had starved local population to death; the Jews were killed in specially designed ghettos by using poisonous gases and millions of POWs were massacred brutally just to make Nazis ideology of Lebensraum viable. The fundamental ethos" of German authorities in Ukraine was to prepare the region for eventual German colonization (Berkhoff 306). All policies, including Jewish, urban, and agricultural measures, were designed to turn Ukraine into a German settlement following the war. The ideological quest for Lebensraum was the driving force behind German actions in the occupied Soviet Union; all other motives, including economic determinism, were by-products of this ideology. Berkhoff convincingly details the evolution of German policy from May 1941, the first starvation plan was introduced by Herbert Backe, State Secretary of the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture, up through the "Second Sweep" in late Summer 1942, when Himmler ordered the SS and police units to "clean the territory of Ukraine for the future settlement of Germans" as part of this process (Berkhoff 46).German authorities enacted a total ban on bringing food into the city, closed all city markets, and instituted draconian punishments for anyone caught hoarding. A city that had over 840,000 inhabitants in July 1941 was reduced by evacuations, massacres and starvation to a mere 220,000 by December 1943 (Berkhoff 317). By 1943, the starvation policies, massacres, kidnappings, and general contempt displayed by the Germans towards the Ukrainians led to a resurgent nostalgia for Soviet times. When the Red Army entered villages during their offensives of 1943 and 1944, It was reported to Moscow that they were welcomed by the inhabitants as "our people" (Berkhoff 304). Nazi terror made the hated Soviet system seem relatively benign. The total number of Germans involved in the mass shootings of Jews was around 30,000. In the so-called euthanasia program, which had begun in the fall of 1939, Nazi doctors killed Germans with mental or physical disabilities. Tens of thousands were murdered, mostly by the administration of carbon monoxide gas supplied in large metal bottles. In addition, many were killed in gas vans. Hitler ordered the euthanasia program discontinued in August 1941 because it was causing public disquiet. However, the experience acquired was used in the “final solution,” as the program of killing all the Jews of Nazi-occupied Europe came to be known.(Breitman 211) As the Nazis improved their gassing techniques, they decided to deport all Jews from occupied Europe to their deaths in the east. The countries from which Jews were deported included countries under German occupation such as Norway, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Yugoslavia, and Greece as well as countries allied with Germany such as Italy and Hungary (Breitman 214). On January 20, 1942, a meeting of high-ranking officials chaired by Heydrich was convened in an SS-owned mansion in the Berlin neighborhood of Wannsee. This meeting came to be known as the Wannsee Conference. Attached to the summonses to attend the Wannsee Conference was a directive from Nazi leader Hermann Goring to Heydrich to prepare a European-wide “final solution” to the Jewish question. (Breitman 216). Shortly after the Wannsee Conference the extermination of the European Jews intensified. First in line were the 3 million Polish Jews. In July 1942 Himmler laid down a schedule for their elimination in death camps. For this operation, code-named Operation Reinhard, three main gassing centers were built: Belzec and Sobibor, in southeastern Poland not far from Lublin, and Treblinka, northeast of Warsaw. Gassing commenced at those three camps in the period from March through July 1942. From 750,000 to 950,000 Jews were gassed at Treblinka; from 500,000 to 600,000 at Belzec; and about 200,000 at Sobibor. (Breitman 218) Conclusion Out of 70 million deaths attributed to World War 2, over 30 million died on Eastern front. The Eastern front of the war proved to be decisive in world war 2. The Nazis policies of extermination based on their ideology have almost resulted in the extinction of Jews. The Nazis war against Soviet was truly war of extermination, which differed from the conventional wars fought for the sake of territory or defense. The end result of this war was either victory or extinction. Bibliography Gruber, Andrew Hill. Hitler's strategy. Politics and warfare from 1940 to 1941. Frankfurt, 2 Edition 1982. Halder, Franz. War Diary .Daily recording of the chief of General staff of the Army 1939-1942. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1963 Berkhoff, Karel. Harvest of the Despair: Life and Death in the Ukraine under Nazi Rule. Cambridge / London: Harvard University Press, 2004. Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. Knopf, 1991 Glantz, David. Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay, Clemson, 2001. Lee, Stephen. Hitler and Nazi Germany. pdf Read More