the soviet partisan movement 1941-1944 by edgar m. howell

THE OCCUPATION FALTERS 105
was the steady deterioration of the food situation. Nowhere during
1942 was there an adequate food supply: while the shortage was more
acutely felt in the cities than in the rural districts there was a general
retrogression of morale in all areas because of it. Even in the Baltic
States and me Ukraine, where popular discontent was not as evident as
in the central sector, the short supply of basic food stuffs and the
continuous German requisitions steadily deepened the general disappointment
of the workers in the occupation administration.
In the urban areas the shortage was most acutely felt. In Stalino,
which had a population of 248,000, with all food under a strict rationing
system, some 70,000 people had no ration cards. 34 In another large
city, Rostov, the ration distribution was so uneven that some two-thirds
of the people received no food through the German administration. 35
Black market prices were impassibly high and the wide differential between
all prices and the wages paid by the occupation soon robbed money
of the little value it had and forced the urban dwellers into a barter system,
carting their household furnishings into the countryside to trade with the
peasants for enough food to survive. Even in the farm districts the heavy
forced requisitions of cattle and grain lowered agri-cultural stocks far
below the existence minimum and went far toward demoralizing the very
peasants who had been promised so much. 36
Suppression of Indigenous Administrations
In the border areas of western Russia there was one factor affecting
morale which was peculiar to that part of the USSR. The natives in
the western Ukraine, White Russia, and the Baltic States were in large
measure of non-Russian extraction and generally anti-Soviet in feeling,
and the cold and suppressive German attitude toward the numerous
anti-Bolshevik separatist group created widespread disappointment in
the many circles that had hoped for national expression. As the months
passed following the opening of the campaign, the obvious lack of any
positive German policy for the future led the people to ask the question:
"What is to be our political future? What do you really want
with us, if not slavery? What will our people get out of this? 37
34
Bericht, Oberfeldkommandantur Donets, 20.XI.42., Anl. I. KTB,H. Geb. Sued,
16.V.42.-18.1.43. 27089.
35
Ibid.
36
Ltr, Von Homeyer to Rosenberi, 30 Dec 42. EAP 99/40, in Rosenberg Collection,
OKW/WPr., Lageberichte, l!VIII.-15.VIII.42., KTB, OKW/WPr., 12.II.-
12.XII.42. OKW/793.
37 Ltr, Soviet defector [sic] to Ch, Nnahrmacht Propaganda Division, 1 Nov 41, in
Propaganda-Angelegenheiten aller Art. Okt-Dez 41. OKW/634; "Urgent Questions
of Partisan Warfare and Recruitment of Local Volunteers," in OKH/Fde, H. Ost,
Nr. 3220/42, 25.XI.42. H 3/468.2; op cit rpt # 178,9 Mar 42 (doc. 3241) prosecution
document book in N. M. T., ofi. cit. (Case 9).