Daniel Naroditsky

02.10.19
History 210
Professor Naimark

Ideology First, Economy Later: A Review of Alexander Dallin’s German Rule

in Russia

In German Rule in Russia, Alexander Dallin offers a comprehensive analysis of the

ideological, economic, political, and moral framework that stood behind the German occupation

of the Soviet Union during World War II. A superficial construal of Hitler’s disdain for the

Slavic race may conjure up the image of a monolithic German leadership governing the occupied

territories according to a predictable set of ideological and economic beliefs. As Dallin

convincingly shows, this image could not be further from the truth. Utter administrative chaos,

an endless parade of contradictory ideologies and policies, destructive personal rivalries, a

poorly-defined and oft-violated chain of command — these were the true hallmarks of the

German occupation. To this morass may be added Hitler’s imposition of his unswerving (yet

delusional) conviction in the surety of success upon his feckless subordinates. Dallin draws on a

massive range of documents, letters, interviews, and scholarly research to produce a richly-

textured analysis that breaks down the outwardly inscrutable occupation into the comprehensible

actions and words of individual men.

A review that does justice to the entire sweep of Dallin’s analysis could itself fill up a

volume. Therefore, I will restrict my review to three parts of the monograph that seem to be at

least somewhat representative of the work as a whole. The first part consists of chapters four and

five, in which Dallin introduces the sources of ideological and political conflict that beleaguered

the German administration of the East even before Operation Barbarossa brought this

administration into existence. The second part consists of chapters six, seven, and eight, in which

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Dallin examines the German occupation of Ukraine. The third part consists of Chapters 15-18, in

which Dallin endeavors to delineate and contextualize German economic policy in the East.

Although I will occasionally quote from other parts of the monograph, these three sections

contain what I believe to be the study’s most compelling aspect, as well as its only

methodological flaw.

At the outset of his study, Dallin clarifies that the atmosphere of enmity and mutual

distrust among high-ranking members of the German leadership was far from the sole progenitor

of administrative chaos. In planning the initial stages of the occupation, the Third Reich faced

two objectively challenging problems. The first was the need to develop an efficient method for

extracting raw materials, food, and labor, a need that became progressively more apparent as

Germany experienced economic difficulties and food shortages. Each personage in the Nazi

leadership, whether bureaucrat, economist, or ideologue, agreed that an extractive economic

policy was a sine qua non of a successful occupation. Yet this necessity raised the concomitant

problem “of establishing a modus vivendi with the population behind the German lines” (Dallin

60), which “even from a strictly egoistic and pragmatic point of view, dictated some adjustments

and certain ‘concessions’ to popular demands” (Dallin 60). The stage was set for a vitriolic

confrontation along two broadly-defined axes: between ideologues who differed in their

conception of the proper way to handle the population under their control, and among leaders

who strove to reconcile the chasm between ideological dogma and economic productivity.

Dallin explicates the first of these conflicts in great detail, taking care to delineate the

dogmas and vendettas that liquefied the ideological component of Generalplan Ost into an

unintelligible broth of contradictory policies and administrative incompetence. According to

Dallin, the man in the middle of this broth was Alfred Rosenberg, a philosopher and Nazi

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ideologue whom Hitler appointed in 1941 to serve as the head of the Reich Ministry for the

Occupied Eastern Territories (Reichministerium). A devoted Nazi on paper, Rosenberg was born

and raised in Tallinn, which at the time of his childhood was part of the Russian Empire. Dallin

observes that Rosenberg “was reared in a German home which fostered an attachment to German

language and traditions; yet, he was also deeply steeped in Russian culture and customs” (Dallin

25). Rosenberg never reconciled these two aspects of his worldview, harboring a begrudging

compassion for the Russian people that manifested itself in his “realization that it was necessary

to win the sympathy of the Eastern population” (Dallin 54). Nor did Rosenberg have any

experience in political and economic administration. These qualities, coupled with his avaricious

unwavering desire to become “Germanic autocrat ruling the East” (Dallin 26), incurred the ire of

both his fellow leaders and of the Führer himself.

Nowhere was this animus as sharply defined as in Ukraine. Dallin aptly observes that

Ukraine was “the most important” (Dallin 107) of the areas under German occupation not only

due its size, but also because of its role as the principal supplier of food and manpower.

Everyone in the German leadership implicitly understood that an effective ideological policy was

necessary to motivate the Ukrainian peasants. Rosenberg, true to his personal beliefs, argued for

“a revival of Ukrainian historical consciousness” (Dallin 109) that would motivate the peasantry

during the war and form the basis for a nominally-independent vassal state to be established

upon the war’s (swift) conclusion. Rosenberg justified his proposal with a memorandum in

which he stressed “the strongly Nordic and superior features of the Ukrainian people” (Dallin

108). To the Nazi hardliners, a fearsome coterie that included SS Reichsführer Heinrich

Himmler, Hitler’s secretary Martin Bormann, and Reichkomissar of Ukraine Erich Koch — a

role in which he was technically subordinate to Rosenberg — drawing distinctions between

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Russians and other Eastern populations constituted ideological anathema. Koch minced no words

on this subject, claiming in a 1942 address that “the very last must be extracted from the civilian

population without regard for their welfare” (Koch in Dallin 143). Implicit in this statement is

the belief, rendered explicit on many other occasions, that Ukrainians are untermenschen who

can only be treated, in the words of Koch’s associate, as “half-monkeys” (Dallin 148).

As Dallin adroitly demonstrates, this rift wrought havoc not only upon relations between

Nazi leaders — the calamitous state of which were put on full display at a May 1943 meeting

that devolved into “Lammers [Chief of the Reich Chancellery] and Bormann trying to get

Rosenberg and Koch to shake hands” (Dallin 161) — but also upon the cohesion and efficacy of

Nazi policy and propaganda in Ukraine. Predictably, Koch succeeded in defining the tenor of

German policy at a grassroots level. As the German leadership realized that a swift conclusion to

the Soviet campaign was anything but certain, the clamor of politicians advocating for “a new

‘enlightened’ policy” (Dallin 166) à la Rosenberg grew deafening. But the point was moot: by

1943, Ukrainian civilians had endured inconceivable brutality at the hands of regional

commanders loyal to Koch, their plight multiplied hundredfold by marauding and murderous

Einsatzgruppen. Dallin concludes his analysis with a bold — but, in my view, well-supported—

assertion that “handled cleverly, a large part of the Ukrainian population might well have made

common cause with the new authorities” (Dallin 166). The people,” Dallin clarifies, “by and

large, thirsted for relief; their demands were modest” (166). To the Ukrainian peasant, the

“relief” to which Dallin refers necessarily involved not only ideological relief, but — perhaps

more importantly — economic relief.

It is in the realm of economic policy analysis that my only critique of Dallin’s study lies.

Dallin devotes a hefty section of the monograph to the task of demarcating German economic

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policy in the East. The sole aim of this policy as it related to agriculture, a goal that is repeated in

various forms and by all manner of Nazis across countless speeches, memoranda, meetings, and

official documents, was “all-out, immediate exploitation” (Dallin 309). The implicit corollary to

this objective, summarized in an official document, is that “efforts to save the population from

starving to death…can be made only at the expense of feeding Europe” (Dallin 311).

Consequently, the only serious task that awaited agricultural policy-makers was to decide the

fate of collective farms.

Dallin meticulously reconstructs the debate that raged on this topic among the German

leadership. Many of the same individuals who had crossed swords on the ideological front were

simultaneously duking it out on the economic arena, even though Hitler promptly established “an

intricate network of agencies and offices...for the exploitation and control of the economy”

(Dallin 313). I will not delve into this debate in any depth, other than to point out, in summary,

that hardliners predictably lobbying for the immediate dissolution of collective farms were

checked by a majority (including Hitler) that preferred to operate within the status quo, tabling

the question of large-scale agricultural reform for a postwar discussion. Ultimately, a kind of

stopgap transformation did take place, whereby collective farms were remade into communes

that allowed certain peasants, generally those who “worked most loyally and strenuously for the

Germans” (Dallin 335), to maintain private plots. Aside from this symbolic distinction, “the

communes were strikingly similar to the Soviet collective farms” (Dallin 335) in that the land

was still communally worked. Perhaps more importantly, the Germans maintained the dreaded

practice of assigning grain delivery quotas to each commune.

Following a trope with which peasants across Ukraine and parts of Belarus were all-too-

intimately acquainted, requisition quotas for grain and other agricultural products became

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increasingly unrealistic as the German food shortage grew increasingly acute. Dallin suggests

that this trend, together with the false promise of substantive agrarian reform and the forcible

recruitment of “millions of able-bodied men and women from the East” (Dallin 355) to labor in

German mines and factories, served as the impetus for erasing any remaining ambivalence that

Soviet peasants may have harbored at the start of the occupation. In Dallin’s eloquent

description, German economic policy was adequate insofar as “the instrument of conquest, the

Army, was fed” (Dallin 369). At the same time, in a kind of grotesque irony, “the people in

whose name the war was waged” (Dallin 369) — as well as the people who were ruthlessly

exploited in the name of the war — went hungry.

As I reviewed Dallin’s analysis of German economic policy in the context of the work as

a whole, two qualms — one minor, one somewhat weightier — took shape in my mind. The first

concerns the role that the Holodomor played in the psyche of Ukrainian peasants as they tilled

and plowed under the pitiless gaze of their new occupiers. Dallin neither discusses nor explicitly

references the Ukrainian famine. This outwardly striking omission bears out when one considers

that the book was published in 1957, a time when the USSR kept — and would continue to keep,

for several decades to come — the gruesome consequences of Stalin’s policies under lock and

key. All the same, I believe that a modern scholar who undertakes to enrich Dallin’s account

would do well to factor the Holodomor into his or her analysis.

My second quibble relates to the somewhat tenuous way in which Dallin connects the

ideological and economic dimensions of Germany policy. To be sure, each component is

assiduously examined in isolation from the other. However, my understanding is that not all

members of German leadership distributed their priorities equally among these two branches. To

this end, throughout the ideological imbroglio in which top members of his staff were engaged,

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Hitler seems to exhibit a degree of apathy that is not commensurate to the zeal and rigidity with

which he continually expressed his ideological beliefs. Indeed, Rosenberg’s views on the proper

treatment of the Soviet populace may well have struck an impassioned Hitler as worthy of

immediate demotion (or worse), yet the greatest display of anger the bumbling ideologue

managed to incur came in the form of a disparaging memorandum and a stern talking-to. On an

economic front, the Führer appeared far less tolerant of dissenting voices. To a reader not

particularly well-versed in the positions that various Nazi leaders held along the economic-

ideological spectrum, a discussion along these lines would have further nuanced his or her

appreciation of the text. Ultimately, these minor points in no way detract from the quality and

comprehensiveness of the study as a whole, which I found to be unimpeachable in its

thoroughness, breadth of research, and quality of writing.

Works Cited

Dallin, Alexander. German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies. Second

ed. London: The Macmillan Press, 1981.