Figure 1.--The soviets were very skilled ast propaganda, but some of their eftorts were obvious. This is a sahed 1943 effort that was obvious propaganda. But it doies illustrate two all to real real issues: first the destruction in Sovit villages, towns, and cities and second, the number of orphans created by German atrocities against civilians. The Soviet caption for publication in America read, "Come, Little Brother: When the Nazis killed their parents and destroyed their home in Zhizdra, Russia, this little girl [actully a boy] took firm hold of her baby brother's hand, told him she knew of another place they could go. Now at the edge of the village she stops to wonder where that place shall be. The little boy cries."

No country experienced the level of destruction experienced by the Soviet Union. World War II lasted 6 years (1939-45). The Soviet Uniin invaded neighboing countries. Except for the Finns, there was no resistance. No country threatened or struck at the Soviet Union (1939-41). The Germans also achieved great victories, but they were quick victories with only limited actual damage. The Ostkrieg was very different. There was no quick victory, rather there was a long drawn-out struggle between two massive, well-equipped armies. But the damage was not all due to the fighting. There were three major reasons for the destruction: war damage and then the Soviet scorched earth policy as the Red Army was driven back early in the War (1941-42) and the NAZI scorched earth policy (1943-45) as the Wehrmacht retreated back to Germany. The result was not only imenses loss of life but a virtually unfathomable destruction of homes, farms, factories, and public buildings. Relivly little of the damage was due to aerial bombardment. Most of the damage was due the ground fighting and scorched earth destruction. The scorched earh destruction seems more important than the actual war damage.

War Damage

Too often the damage in the Soviet Union is attributed to war damage. Now it is certainly true that there was war damage. The thing is that huge areas of the Soviet Union were occupied with very little Red Army resistance (June-July 1942). This meant large areas of the Western Soviet Union were occupied with very little damage to industry and civilian residential areas of major cities. Thee was some damage due to aerial bombing. Bt the only cuty destroyed by bombing was Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe was primrily used to spport the ground advance. We are accustomed to think of dogged urban fighting between the Germans and Soviets because of Stalingrad (September 1942). But this not what happened at the onset of Barbarossa. It was more like what happened in France (June-July 1940). The occupation occurred occurred so rapidly that little damage was done. In particular there was very little street fighting. The Wehrmacht's strong point was mobility. They surrounded cities and the cut off units quickly surrendered. Only as Red Army resistance began to coalesce did real war damage begin to occur in the cities. By this time. much of th western Soviet Union was in German hands. Miraculously trough an unprecedented feat of desperate logistics, some of the Soviet industrial plant and industrial workers were evacuated east beyond the Urals out of the reach of even the Luftwaffe. It is often over emphasized what had been saved, but it was enough to create a substantial arms industry once in place and functioning.

Soviet Scorched Earth Policy (1941-42)

Stalin was stunned by the NAZI Operation Barbarossa (June 1941). Despite the warnings, he was convinced that with the NAZI-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact that Hitler would never attack, especially as the Germans had not defeated Britain in the West and America was increasingly intervening. The shock appears to have paralyzed the reputed iron-willed Soviet dictator. Stalin was silent for 11 days. Finally Stalin spoke on the radio to the Soviet people (July 3, 1941). He condemned the NAZI invasion and called Hitler and Ribbentrop "fiend". Stalin announced a "scorched earth" policy. This meant destroying land and buildings in the path of advancing NAZI troops so as to leave nothing useful to the enemy. It was not the first time the Russians had used this policy. Stalin instructed the Soviet people, "In case of a forced retreat... all rolling stock must be evacuated, the enemy must not be left a single engine, a single railway car, not a single pound of grain or gallon of fuel. The collective farmers must drive off all their cattle and turn over their grain to the safe keeping of the state authorities for transportation to the rear. All valuable property, including non-ferrous metals, grain and fuel that cannot be withdrawn must be destroyed without fail. In areas occupied by the enemy, guerilla units ... must set fire to forests, stores and transports." The numbers involved in this operation are staggering. The Soviet, drove shipped 6 million head of cattle from Ukraine east to safe areas in Russia. They managed to move 550 large factories and thousands of small factories. The buildings of course could not be moved, but the equipment and tools could be moved. Much of this equipment was set at secure sites in the Urals and beyond and production initiated even before factory buildings could be built. An estimated 300,000 tractors the were shipped east. The Soviets evacuated 3.5 million skilled workers from Ukraine to secure areas in the Russian Republic. Ukrainian partisans attacked nearly 5,000 trains, destroyed 607 railway bridges, 915 warehouses, and damaged over 1,500 tanks and armored vehicles. Soviet authorities destroyed major industrial facilities. The most spectacular was the Dniprohes Dam on the Dnieper River, which was the largest hydro-electric dam in Europe. The Soviet destroyed mines and factories. Hitler had premised Barbarossa on securing the bountiful agricultural and mineral resources of the Soviet Union. Hitler was sure that with Soviet resources in his hands that he could wage war indefinitely. The Soviet scorched earth policy, however, seriously impaired the NAZI efforts to exploit the Soviet potential. The Soviet strategy had other benefits, by withdrawing east into the seemingly endless steppe of Russia, the Red Army bought time and stretched German manpower reserves and supply lines..

NAZI Scorched Earth Policy (1942-45)

The Soviet Winter offensive before Moscow startled the NAZIs. For the first time in World War II, areas conquered by the Germans were liberated. A furious Adolf Hitler issued scorched earth orders of his own to his commanders. The Commander of the Army Group South in the Ukraine issued a "Top Secret" Memorandum (December 22, 1941). "The following concept of the Fuehrer is to be made known ... to all commanders ... Each area that has to be abandoned to the enemy must be made completely unfit for his use. Regardless of its inhabitants every locality must be burned down and destroyed to deprive the enemy of accommodation facilities ... the localities left intact have to be subsequently ruined by the air force." 【Kondufor, p. 172.】 German actions were not limited to the destruction of property. The Germans retreating from villages drove villagers into churches and then burned the churches. These actions were not just the work of the SS, but regular Wehrmacht units. The retreat from the the eastern Ukraine began with the fall of Stalingrad (February 1943). The defeat at Kursk (July-August 1943) meant that the western Ukraine would have to be abandoned. The NAZIs intensified their destruction. SS leader Henrich Reinhard Himmler ordered SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Prutzmann "to leave behind in Ukraine not a single person, no cattle, not a ton of grain, not a railroad track ... The enemy must find a country totally burned and destroyed" (September 7, 1943), 【Bezymenski p. 38.】 The Wehrmacht as it retreated west destroyed 18,414 miles of railroad track. Mines were flooded and otherwise destroyed, factories that the Soviets had left standing were blown up. Efforts were also made to make it impossible for the Soviet people to survive. Wells were poisoned and over two million dwellings and other buildings were burned or destroyed. The Ukraine was devastated. The Germans "razed and burned over 28,000 villages and 714 cities and towns, leaving 10,000,000 people without shelter. More than 16,000 industrial enterprises, more than 200,000 industrial production sites, 27,910 collective and 872 state farms, 1,300 machine and tractor stations, and 32,930 general schools, vocational secondary schools and higher educational institutions of Ukraine had been destroyed. The direct damage to the Ukrainian national economy caused by the fascist [Nazi German] occupation came to 285,000,000,000 rubles..." 【Bazhan, p. 155.】

Sources

Bezymenski

Bazhan, M.P. ed. Soviet Ukraine (Kiev: Editorial Office of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopedia, Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, 1969). 569 p.

Kondufor, Yu. ed. History Teaches a Lesson (Kiev: 1986). Document no. 119.

Created: 2:54 PM 7/26/2025
Last updated: 2:54 PM 7/26/2025