Nazi Colonization and Extermination in Ukraine
Making of Modern Ukraine 16
The subject this time is Ukraine as the object of Hitler’s plan to attain Lebensraum. Ukraine was to be the most important colony in the German empire he meant to build. The idea was to exploit the same territory Stalin exploited, but to different ends, and while destroying the Soviet system. As I tried to show here and in Bloodlands, the Nazi aspiration to control Ukraine was one of the necessary conditions of the Holocaust of the European Jews.
This lecture reviews the German factor in Ukraine history broadly before presenting the terrible reality of Nazi occupation. Although Russia tries to claim the suffering and the victory for itself today, inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine were greater risk of death than inhabitants of Soviet Russia. For that matter, more Ukrainians died fighting the Germans than Americans, British, and French taken together.
The video is here and the podcast version is here or here.
Reading:
Snyder, Bloodlands, chapters 4-5.
Plokhy, Gates of Europe, chapters 22, 23
Yekelchyk, Stalin's Empire of Memory, chapters 1-4.
Terms:
Kingdom of the Franks
Holy Roman Empire
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy
Prussia
Frederick the Great 1740-1780
Kant 1724-1804, Königsberg
Hetmanate
Mein Kampf
Operation Barbarossa
final solution, Hunger Plan, Generalplan Ost
Babyn Yar/Babi Yar
Kamianets' Podils'kyi
Operation Typhoon
Zhytomyr, Kharkiv, Stalino (Donetsk)
Can I recommend that followers of Prof. Snyder read Bloodlands in its entirety? I did on someone else’s recommendation, and it is the best history of what WWII was like on the ground in Europe that I have read.
"Although Russia tries to claim the suffering and the victory for itself today, inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine were greater risk of death than inhabitants of Soviet Russia. For that matter, more Ukrainians died fighting the Germans than Americans, British, and French taken together."
Ukrainians are well aware of their losses during the wars and the horrors foisted upon them by the savagery of both Nazis and Russians. They get their resolve to fight the current war knowing what they have already been through and will not suffer again. Dr.Snyder's concerned research and assistance are helping to avoid some of the egregious errors of the past.