German Population Local Evacuations from the USSR Occupied Regions in winter-spring 1943

Abstract

One of the elements of the “total war” declared by the Nazi leadership in February 1943 was the massive displacement of the civilian population of the occupied Soviet territories to the deep rear. As a rule, these movements were voluntary compulsory. Among those who were also subjected to mandatory evacuation were ethnic Germans, who, as a rule, enjoyed the special patronage of the occupation authorities. Most of them, of course, could not help fearing reprisals after the return of Soviet power and therefore preferred to retreat with the Wehrmacht. As a result, during the first few months of 1943, thousands of refugees of German nationality were quickly evacuated from several occupied regions of the RSFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the BSSR. Some of them, by decision of the SS leadership, remained on the territory of the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine”, while others left for the imperial region of Warthegau and the General Government. Despite their very modest scale, these evacuations had at least two main outcomes. First, they became, in a sense, a prototype (especially at the organizational level) of administrative relocations that unfolded in the autumn of the same year on the territory of Ukraine. Some considerations (such as the idea of the concentration of German refugees on the right bank of the Dnieper or in Galicia) would later form the basis for further plans of the Nazi leadership. Secondly, the arrival of a fairly large contingent of Soviet Germans in the Reich required several changes to the legal framework governing the procedure for their naturalization. A significant part of these innovations will determine the fate of the majority of German immigrants from the USSR practically until the end of the war.

In the presented article, based on the involvement of a significant array of documents from the archival funds of Germany, the characteristic features of the evacuation of ethnic Germans from the occupied regions of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in winter-spring 1943 are considered.