On the eve of the war, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, in which both sides agreed to refrain from attacking the other. A secret protocol divided up Poland and the Baltic States between German and Soviet spheres. The pact gave Adolf Hitler the green light to proceed with his invasion of Poland, and Joseph Stalin the opportunity to expand Soviet hegemony westward. Occupying the eastern parts of Poland and the Baltic States on September 17, 1939, over the next two years he subjected those areas to a process of annexation and Sovietization. During the winter of 1939-1940, the Red Army also attacked Finland. Meeting stiff opposition, Stalin gained only a limited amount of territory before coming to terms with the Finns.
Operation "Barbarossa" - the German Attack on the Soviet Union
On June 22, 1941, the Germans launched Operation "Barbarossa," changing dramatically the Soviet role in the war. Initially, the Wehrmacht made rapid progress. The Red Army's lack of preparedness, the loss of numerous commanders during the Stalinist purges, the breakdown of communications, and the reluctance of the Soviet command to act on its own, without approval at the political level, brought the Soviet military position to the brink of disaster. The civilian administration was in complete disarray, with many members of the establishment seeking above all to save themselves and their families.
Evacuation
A few days after the German invasion, the Supreme Evacuation Council was set up. Its task was to organise the orderly withdrawal to the interior. In the absence of an overall evacuation plan, the frequent changes in the battle zone, and the multiplicity of evacuation authorities, conflicts and delay ensued. The result, most of the time, was a headlong flight. It was only in late July 1941 that the authorities considered the requests for evacuation of the general population. The chances of escaping from places occupied by the Germans early in the invasion were poor; the chances of getting away from larger population centres and from places occupied at a later date, either on one's own or in a more-or-less organised manner, were better. For Jews, escaping into the interior meant a chance of avoiding extermination.
The Draft
When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviet government called up for active service fourteen age groups, consisting of those born between 1905-1918 - adding them to the four age groups, of those born from 1919-1922, who had been on active service from the beginning of the war. During the early months of the fighting, the draft was carried out under chaotic conditions. The chances for a Jew to survive and fight in the Red Army depended, in large measure, on his place of residence and the timing of the Nazi occupation of that place.
The German Administration of Occupied Territories
The Germans divided the territories they occupied in the Soviet Union into four administrative units, whose borders underwent changes resulting from developments at the front. In formal terms, two of these units were under civilian administration: 1) Reichskommissariat Ostland, consisting of the Baltic States and western Belorussia, including the Minsk district; and 2) Reichskommissariat Ukraine (not including Eastern Galicia, which was incorporated into the Generalgouvernement), in which were located the regions of Volhynia, Zhitomir, Kiev, Nikolayev, Tauria, and Dnepropetrovsk. Most of the occupied part of the Russian republic, and part of the occupied Ukraine, were under a military administration. The area lying between the Dniester and Bug rivers, in which Odessa was located, was renamed Transnistria and handed over to Romanian rule. To the Jewish population, this administrative division of the German-occupied area made little difference, since it was mainly the SS and the Einsatzgruppen that dealt with them.
The Successful Soviet Offensive and Its Political Implications
A major turning point for the Soviets, and indeed the entire war, came with their victory in the Battle of Stalingrad during the winter of 1942-1943. From then on, the Red Army began to regain territory taken by the Germans and their allies, moving westward over the course of the next two years. They defeated the Germans in the Caucasus and Ukraine in 1943; in Poland and Bulgaria, in 1944; and in Hungary and part of Germany, in 1945. Soviet pressure also led to the Romanian volte-face, and with Tito's partisans, they liberated Yugoslavia in 1944. The losses incurred by both Soviet soldiers and civilians were tremendous; tens of millions of Soviet nationals perished. Issues of spheres of interest, raised at discussions between the Soviets and the Western Allies, at the Teheran conference (November 28-31, 1943) and at Yalta (February 4-12, 1945), influenced the face of post war Europe for the next forty-five years.
Extermination in the Soviet Union Before World War II
The Soviet Union had a Jewish population of 3,020,000-3,050,000. In 1939 and 1940, the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland, the Baltic States, Bessarabia, and Bukovina, territories with a Jewish population of 1,880,000-1,900,000; in addition, 250,000-300,000 Jewish refugees were living there who had fled from German-occupied Poland after the outbreak of the war. In June 1941, when the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, 5,150,000-5,250,000 Jews were under its rule, more than half the total number of Jews in Europe.
Regions Annexed in 1939 and 1940
During the preparations for Operation "Barbarossa," orders were issued to exterminate all the Jews. One pattern for murder occurred in the areas that had been annexed by the Soviet Union in 1939 and 1940. It was, by and large (once the Einsatzgruppen's mass-murder drive was over), similar to the course followed in the General Government in Poland. In these areas, the total extermination of the Jews was completed within twelve to eighteen months after the occupation.
Regions Taken after 1941
The other, and very different, pattern was applied in the Nazi-occupied areas within the Soviet Union's pre-1939 borders. Here, the murder of the Jews was based on the belief that they were the main support of the Soviet regime. The Nazis acted on orders, mostly oral, to liquidate the Jews and on the basis of the Kommissarbefehl, and the killing of Jews was seen as an integral element in the military operations. The total murder of the Jews in these areas took a few weeks - two to three months, at most - from the day they were occupied.
