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

108 THE SOVIET PARTISAN MOVEMENT
Although volunteers were originally called for, almost immediately
the local administrations were put under considerable pressure to fill
minimum quotas as quickly as possible. This led to numerous abuses
almost from the start. Both male and female workers were literally
pulled from their beds or picked off the streets and assembled without
being allowed time to pack clothing, blankets, or food. Families were
indiscriminately split up. Many were marched long distances in severe
weather and then crowded into cattlecars and locked in without adequate
provision for feeding or sanitation. Many, drafted without regard for
physical qualifications and unfit for labor services from the beginning,
were returned from the Reich in deplorable condition. Such a practice
had a very depressing effect on the morale of both the drafted workers
and the population left behind. 47 This feeling was intensified by the
spectacle of public beatings and the burning of whole villages for failure
to comply with demands for filled labor quotas. 48 Families were held
in ransom for conscripted workers who escaped to the forests. The entire
population became widely stirred up and quickly came to regard
the transports to the Reich as similar to exile by the Soviets to
Siberia. 49 Fear soon gripped large areas of the Ukraine, and numbers
of the natives left their villages for the forest country seeking the protection
of the partisans, greatly increasing and strengthening the bands. 50
Soviet propaganda gave wide play to the whole program and the open
German substantiation had an almost immediately visible effect of cutting
volunteering to near zero and increasing the powers of resistance
of both the Red Army and the irregulars. 51
With this added strength the bands extended their control over larger
and larger areas with the result, in the rear of Army Group Center at
least, of cutting heavily into German attempts to fill their labor quotas
there. Against a monthly quota of 30,000, in February 1942 the labor
draft authorities there obtained 5,588 workers, the volume growing to
high of 25,000 in July, then dropping sharply to 6,034 in September,
and further to 1,191 in January 1943. 52
47 Facharbeitersammellager Charkow un Bfh. Heeresgebiet B., Abt. VII. VII. betreff,
Uebelstaende in der Behandlung ukrainischer Facharbeiter, 15.IX.42.,in I.M.T.,
op. cit., XXV, pp. 103-12. For a comprehensive picture of the abuses in the conscription
and treatment of forced laborers from the occupied easternterritories, see:
"Gegenwaertiger Stand der Ostarbeiter-Frage," Zentralstelle fuer Angehoerige der
Ostvoelker, 30.IX.42., in ibid., pp. 161-79.
48
Der Reichminister fuer die besetzten Ostgebiete [Rosenberg] an den Gauleiter
Fritz Sauckel, 21XII.42., Nr. 02926/42., in ibid., pp. 74-79.
49
Der Generalkommissar, Shitomir, den 30.VI.43., geheim, Muendlicher Lage
bericht des Generalkommissar Leyser ueber den Generalbezirk Shitomir, gehalten in
einer Dienstbesprechung vor dem Herrn Reichsminister Rosenberg in Winniza 17.VI.43.,am
17.VI.43, in ibid., pp. 319-23.
50
Der Reichsminister fuer die besetzten OstgebiedB an Sauckel, 21.XII.42.,
Nr.02926/42., in ibid., pp. 74-79.
51
Gegenwaertiger Stand der Ostarbeiter-Frage, Zentralstelle fuer Angehoerige
Ostvoelker, 30.IX.42., in ibid., pp. 161-79.
52 Anl. 52 z. KTB Wirtschaftsinspektion Mitte, I.IV.-30.VI.43. Wi/ID 2.53.