From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (William L. Shirer, 1960, 2011) p832-4
A second directive of the same date signed by Keitel on behalf of Hitler entrusted Himmler with “special tasks“ for the preparation of the political administration in Russia – “tasks,” it said. “which result from the struggle which has to be carried out between two opposing political systems.” The Nazi secret-police sadist was delegated to act “independently” of the Army, “under his own responsibility.” The generals well knew what the designation of Himmler for “special tasks” meant, though they denied that they did when they took the stand at Nuremberg. Furthermore, the directive said, the occupied areas in Russia were to be sealed off while Himmler went to work. Not even the “highest personalities of the Government and Party,” Hitler stipulated, were to be allowed to have a look. The same directive named Goering for the “exploitation of the country and the securing of its economic assets for use by German industry.” Incidentally, Hitler also declared in this order that as soon as military operations Were concluded Russia would be “divided up into individual states with governments of their own.”
Just how this would be done was to be worked out by Alfred Rosenberg, the befuddled Balt and officially the leading Nazi thinker, who had been, as we have seen, one of Hitler’s early mentors in the Munich days. On April 20 the Fuehrer appointed him “Commissioner for the Central Control of Questions Connected with the East-European Region” and immediately this Nazi dolt, with a positive genius for misunderstanding history, even the history of Russia, where he was born and educated, went to work to build his castles in his once native land. Rosenberg’s voluminous files were captured intact; like his books, they make dreary reading and will not be allowed to impede this narrative, though occasionally they must be referred to because they disclose some of Hitler’s plans for Russia.
By early May, Rosenberg had drawn up his first wordy blueprint for what promised to be the greatest German conquest in history. To begin with, European Russia was to be divided up into so-called Reich Commissariats. Russian Poland would become a German protectorate called Ostland, the Ukraine “an independent state in alliance with Germany,” Caucasia, with its rich oil fields, would be ruled by a German “plenipotentiary,” and the three Baltic States and White Russia would form a German protectorate preparatory to being annexed outright to the Greater German Reich. This last feat, Rosenberg explained in one of the endless memoranda which he showered on Hitler and the generals in order, as he said, to elucidate “the historical and racial conditions” for his decisions, would be accomplished by Germanizing the racially assimilable Balts and “banishing the undesirable elements.” In Latvia and Estonia, he cautioned, “banishment on a large scale will have to be envisaged.” Those driven out would be replaced by Germans, preferably war veterans. “The Baltic Sea.” he ordained, “must become a Germanic inland sea.”
Two days before the troops jumped off, Rosenberg addressed his closest collaborators who were to take over the rule of Russia.
The job of feeding the German people [he said] stands at the top of the list of Germany‘s claims on the East. The southern [Russian] territories will have to serve . . . for the feeding of the German people. We see absolutely no reason for any obligation on our part to feed also the Russian people with the products of that surplus territory. We know that this is a harsh necessity, bare of any feelings . . . The future will hold very hard years in store for the Russians.
Very hard years indeed, since the Germans were deliberately planning to starve to death millions of them!
Goering, who had been placed in charge of the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union, made this even clearer than Rosenberg did. In a long directive of May 23, 1941, his Economic Staff, East, laid it down that the surplus food from Russia’s black-earth belt in the south must not be diverted to the people in the industrial areas, where, in any case, the industries would be destroyed. The workers and their families in these regions would simply be left to starve – or, if they could, to emigrate to Siberia. Russia’s great food production must go to the Germans.
The German Administration in these territories [the directive declared] may well attempt to mitigate the consequences of the famine which undoubtedly will take place and to accelerate the return to primitive agricultural conditions. However, these measures will not avert famine. Any attempt to save the population there from death by starvation by importing surpluses from the black-soil zone would be at the expense of supplies to Europe, it would reduce Germany’s staying power in the war, and would undermine Germany‘s and Europe’s power to resist the blockade. This must be clearly and absolutely understood.“
How many Russian civilians would die as the result of this deliberate German policy? A meeting of state secretaries on May 2 had already given a general answer. “There is no doubt,” a secret memorandum of the conference declared, “that as a result, many millions of persons will be starved to death if we take out of the country the things necessary for us“ And Goering had said, and Rosenberg, that they would be taken out… that much had to be “clearly and absolutely understood.”
Did any German. even one single German, protest against this planned ruthlessness, this well-thought-out scheme to put millions of human beings to death by starvation? In all the memoranda concerning the German directives for the spoliation of Russia, there is no mention of anyone’s objecting – as at least some of the generals did in regard to the Commissar Order. These plans were not merely wild and evil fantasies of distorted minds and souls of men such as Hitler, Goering, Himmler and Rosenberg. For weeks and months, it is evident from the records, hundreds of German officials toiled away at their desks in the cheerful light of the warm spring days, adding up figures and composing memoranda which coldly calculated the massacre of millions. By starvation, in this case. Heinrich Himmler, the mild-faced ex-chicken farmer, also sat at his desk at SS. headquarters in Berlin those days, gazing through his pince-nez at plans for the massacre of other millions in a quicker and more-violent way.
Well pleased with the labors of his busy minions, both military and civilian, in planning the onslaught on the Soviet Union, her destruction, her exploitation and the mass murder of her citizenry, Hitler on April 30 set the date for the attack – June 22 – made his victory speech in the Reichstag on May 4 and then retired to his favorite haunt, the Berghof above Berchtesgaden, where he could gaze at the splendor of the Alpine mountains, their peaks still covered with spring snow, and contemplate his next conquest, the greatest of all, at which, as he had told his generals, the world would hold its breath.
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… on July 23, Keitel had issued another order marked “Top secret”:
On July 22, the Fuehrer after receiving the Commander of the Army [Brauchitsch] issued the following order:
In view of the vast size of the occupied areas in the East, the forces available for establishing security will be sufficient only if all resistance is punished not by legal prosecution of the guilty, but by the spreading of such terror by the occupying forces as is alone appropriate to eradicate every inclination to resist amongst the population.”
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