Attack on the Soviet Union | World War II: Boundless Inhumanity

The past is not dead; it isn't even past. We separate ourselves from it and make ourselves strangers." Who would have thought that the opening words of Christa Wolf's famous novel "Kindheitsmuster" would still be so explosively relevant to our view of the Second World War and the reception of the Nazi dictatorship 50 years after its publication? Jochen Hellbeck, Professor of Eastern European History at Rutgers University in the USA, has written a book that—due to the contradictory traditions and different socializations—offers much that is new for some readers, while for others it confirms a certainty that has finally been expressed again: "A war like no other."

After the publication of his spectacular "Stalingrad Protocols," I met Jochen Hellbeck in 2018 at an event organized by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. I was amazed and delighted that a West German could write so sensitively, profoundly, insightfully, and critically balanced about this important battle of the Second World War, and especially its subsequent reception. Hellbeck explained to me that this was connected to his experiences during his youth in the GDR. Without his father's work at the Permanent Representation of the Federal Republic of Germany in East Berlin, he would never have come into contact with many topics and, above all, perspectives, and probably would not have studied Slavic studies later.

In the foreword to his new book, he now explicitly admits that the topic is also "personally significant for him... When I was fourteen years old, we moved from Paris to East Berlin... Our garden bordered almost the wall of a huge Soviet war memorial... Many years later, after learning Russian, visiting the Soviet Union, and specializing in its history as a historian, the significance of this memorial became clear to me, and I felt compassion for the Soviet men and women buried there by the thousands."

Hellbeck's new book, richly illustrated and packed with numerous documents, is distinguished by a balanced, yet consistently critical, view of the war against the Soviet Union following the German invasion on June 22, 1941, a view rarely found in historiography. Ideological prejudices, rigged interpretations, or arguments based on pre-selected documents are absent. The author strives to present the whole picture. This clashes with many Western perspectives, but also with some from Soviet or GDR publications. Unlike many (West) German history books, the events are not equated here with a struggle between two dictators. Hellbeck's perspective offers nothing less than an important reassessment of the Second World War, especially in countering new myths today.

The uniqueness of the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the unprecedented brutality it engendered arose from the fact that anti-communism in the form of anti-Bolshevism had characterized the Nazi Party since its founding, as had anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism. These ideological positions were repeatedly conflated, equated, or altered by Nazi propaganda. There were also shifts in meaning with regard to European Jews. What was currently understood by "Jews," "Communists," or "Commissars," and how prisoners of war or "gang members" (partisans) were treated, all derived from the ruthless German warfare and occupation policy. The enemy was also referred to as a "pest," which suggested appropriate associations with extermination by chemical means, i.e., gas. This had repercussions throughout Europe.

It was precisely this brutal action by Germany, and not to forget that of its regional henchmen, that engendered a sense of solidarity in the Soviet Union, beyond state propaganda. The impending fate of the entire population being enslaved by the Germans created a bond. Hellbeck quotes a well-known, bitter joke from Ukraine in 1942: "What couldn't Stalin achieve in 24 years, but Hitler did in one? – That we appreciate Soviet rule."

The author explains: "In Hitler's view, the history of humanity was largely a natural history: a relentless struggle between races, a matter of survival or annihilation. Due to their innate characteristics, the Germans, the Aryans, were destined to be the 'supreme race, the master race.'" Despite all its cruelties, the Polish campaign was only the prelude to Germany's attack on the Soviet Union. There, the mass killings quickly took on a new, previously unknown dimension and quality, as evidenced by the massacre of over 33,000 Jews – men, women, and children – at Babyn Yar on September 29-30, 1941. The aggressors' murderous frenzy affected both the soldiers of the Red Army and the population. The number of civilians murdered in "retaliatory measures" continued to grow.

Anti-communism, anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism caused the particular brutality of the German war against the Soviet Union.

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Hellbeck also addresses the role of the partisans in a factual and differentiated manner and reconstructs, for example, the biography of Soya Kosmodemyanskaya, which is well known to many former GDR students.

The war was also one of propaganda and words. The extent to which Goebbels distorted the "truth" is well known. Regarding the USSR, Hellbeck emphasizes: "The care with which many war correspondents, especially Ehrenburg, cited their sources is remarkable." The writer forbade any "editing" of German texts to make them more propagandistic. "Propagandists on both the German and Soviet sides accused each other of inhumanity. But there was one important difference: In keeping with their racial policy credo, the Germans had viewed Soviet citizens as subhuman from the very beginning. The Soviet citizens, on the other hand, only began to doubt their humanity because of the atrocities of the invaders." Hellbeck writes: "The extent and cruelty of the German acts of violence in the Soviet Union were shocking—even for Ehrenburg, who had believed he knew everything there was to know about the Germans and fascism."

Anyone who wants to know why the German war against the Soviet Union was “a war like no other” must read this book.

Jochen Hellbeck: A War Like No Other. The German War of Annihilation Against the Soviet Union. A Revision. S. Fischer, 688 pp., hardcover, €36.