Life in German-Occupied Soviet CITIES during World War II - What was it like?
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 7 фев 2025
- Life in German-occupied Soviet cities during World War II was marked by brutality, deprivation, and oppression. The Germans ruled these cities through harsh military and civil administrations, guided by the ideology of superiority and economic exploitation. The occupiers implemented policies aimed at stripping resources for the war effort and systematically eradicating perceived threats, including Jewish people, communists, and partisans.
The German plans for the occupied territories, outlined in the Generalplan Ost, envisioned the decimation or enslavement of local populations to make way for German settlers. Cities were often turned into hubs for resource extraction and supply lines. Food, industry, and manpower were requisitioned, leaving local populations to face famine, forced labor, and displacement.
Life for civilians was harsh. Basic services collapsed, food was scarce, and those not immediately targeted for execution often lived in constant fear of deportation or reprisals. Resistance activities, such as partisan movements, were met with brutal crackdowns, including collective punishment and massacres.
Some Soviet citizens collaborated with the Germans, either out of ideological alignment or survival necessity, while others resisted. Overall, German-occupied Soviet cities were scenes of immense suffering, with life dominated by violence, exploitation, and fear.
Russian Collaboration in World War II: • Russia's Axis Voluntee...
Belarusian Collaboration in World War II: • Belarusian Collaborati...
Ukrainian Collaboration in World War II: • Ukrainian Collaboratio...
SUPPORT ME ON PATREON ► / historyhustler
SUPPORT ME ON PAYPAL ► www.paypal.com...
BUY ME A COFFEE ► buymeacoffee.c...
SUBSCRIBE ► / @historyhustle
INSTAGRAM ► / historyhustle
FACEBOOK ► / historyhustler
TWITTER ► / hustlehistory
SOURCES
- Harvest of Despair. Life and Death in Ukraine Under Nazi Rule (Karel C. Berkhoff).
- Ostkrieg (Stephen G. Fritz).
- Russia's War (Richard Overy).
- German Occupation of Kiev in 1941-1943 (Documents of the Nazi-Controlled City Administration): www.bsb-muench...
- encyclopedia.u... (11-01-2025).
IMAGES
Images from commons.wikimedia.org.
VIDEO
Video material from:
• German occupation of K...
German occupation of Kharkov, Soviet Union 1942 | (WW2 Color Footage)
• German Newsweek No. 56...
German Newsweek No. 567- 17 July 1941 [Full HD] (Eastern Front: Finland, Ukraine, Bialystok-Minsk)
"Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use."
MUSIC
"Division" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons...
"The Descent" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons...
"Midnight Tale" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons...
SOUNDS
Freesound.org.
E-MAIL
historyhustle[at]gmail.com
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
SUPPORT ME ON PATREON ► www.patreon.com/historyhustler
SUPPORT ME ON PAYPAL ► www.paypal.com/paypalme/HistoryHustle
BUY ME A COFFEE ► buymeacoffee.com/historyhustle
The Germans were treated as Liberators by those peoples. The Bolsheviks took their revenge on the public again later
A few years back, I met a woman from Belarus. She had her parents. No grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, no cousins. All were dead by 1945.
murdered by nkvd
@@zurgesmiecalBelarus was occupied by the nazi's then.
@@zurgesmiecal prob both the germans and the soviets killed them off
By Nazis @@zurgesmiecal
@@zurgesmiecal Your braincells seem to have been the only thing murdered.
I recall reading about a young Russian man working for the Germans as an interpreter. The Germans ignored him unless they needed his services but one day he was surprised to be asked by a German officer what he intended to do after the war. The Russian said that he hoped to return to his medical studies. The officer replied 'but you don't understand, there will be no Russian universities and no Russian doctors, your best hope is to remain useful to Germany in order to survive'.
Very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing.
Sounds a little like one of these stories spread by the Soviets in the 1950s to excuse their crimes? 😮
That did not happen
@@Bpg1111haha totally did the Germans were very ruthless I've met many people in Ukraine and Russia who lived in those times.. and even had German relatives on the other side. The slaves were considered similar to animals
@@Bpg1111 yeah it is funny how people love to make stuff up on the internet
the romanians were absolutely brutal in Odessa by all accounts.
My grandmother and aunt and her 5 children and husband, thought it wouldn't be too bad under Hitler (remembering 1922 when the allies controlled Odessa with Austrian police), the other aunt believed Soviet warnings about Hitler and evacuated to the Urals. The Germans first moved them to Dominiek? by saying they would be helping the German war effort, in the sewing factory. They got to break big rocks into small rocks for gravel on a very small food ration, the aunt and her family volunteered for work in Europe, unfortunately women and children were not needed and they were shot outside the gates with about eighty others the men were taken away, we don't know about what happened to her husband. As the Rumanians stopped feeding most of the camp residents, they started dying, when you couldn't move they were moved to an outside camp to die. When their skin turned grey/blakish they were usually thrown out into a pit outside, were majority died if they weren't dead already. My grandmother and another lady crawled out of the pit and lived in the field eating roots for about a week before some Russian/Ukranian lady found them and took them to a cellar were another 5 ladies were already knitting socks, which the lady sold on the markets which provided food for them.
@@vladislavfeldman6562 incredible story. What an ordeal. Thanks for sharing.
@@vladislavfeldman6562oh come on, Spielberg!!!
While they were killing Romanians and Spanish since 1936. In Spain
@@vladislavfeldman6562 Thanks again for sharing this story. People need to know that this sort of thing happened to innocent people.
The father of a friend of mine was a partisan in Kiev. He lived in the sewers. They had a printing press of sorts, probably a crude mimeograph. He was caught and sent to Auswchitz, even though he wasn't Jewish. Needless to say, he survived, or my friend wouldn't have been born. He used to talk to school classes and show then his ID numbers tattooed on his arm.
One didn't have to be a Jew to be sent to Auschwitz.
Incredible to read. Thanks for sharing.
So many survivors
How many digits in the number i wonder? Has to be at least seven!
You’re simply the best historian on RUclips. Thanks so much for putting so much effort in each video. Every single one is a must-see!
Thanks, feel free to share!
My grandfather lived under German occupation in Belarus 1941-44. He used to say that initially it wasn’t bad at all. He wasn’t Jewish, of course.
It depends what kind of things he was doing.
@ working in a glass factory just like he did prior the war. He really did admire the skill of Germans and their tools. He actually stole some tools from them:) we still have those tools:)
@@Stakan79 Victim Support- Sean O'Dwyer- number 136- 140 hobson Street.- Auckland 1010. new zealand.- South pacific.''
Well not bad compared to what 😅? Everyone I've spoken to said it was terrible and the Germans were exceptionally ruthless .. anything that bothered them was ... Solved . Where as the communists were more unpredictable.. the Germans.. you always knew the outcome would be a bullet..
@ not quite. 1941/42 wasn’t all that bad. In many places Germans sometimes were considered as liberators. From bolshevism. Even if not as liberators, but at least like the ones that take less from the workers than bolshevik’s. That’s why the initial, “1941” version of “partisans” movement was completely destroyed in just two months. Despite two decades of preparation. Local population simply gave up all of imbeded Soviet agents, “partisans”. I mean, there was the whole Lokot Republic, with its own government system, taxation, healthcare, education etc. And not a single German regiment, outpost, base, Reichcommmisariat… Nothing German. They had their own army, too. Shit, people probably saw more food than in a lath decade and a half. (Same forward, too. And no passport’s. ). Things have changed by 1943ish, I would say. Germans started to experience more casualties, deaths, defeats, their attitude towards locals have changed, they started to take people to work in Germany.
Thanks! The sheer damn savagery of the occupation, when they had a chance to win over the locals by the simple task of being better than the Soviets.
Many thanks for your donation.
no
@@BigBossSherlock No what?
@ He is wrong.
@ about?
Been watching your content on and off for years, always appreciate your insight.
Many thanks for your donation!
Belarus suffered by percentage the worse civilian deaths in the war. Around 25% of the entire population was killed in the war fighting Nazism.
it’s such an inconceivable number. i try and imagine what it would be like for the US to lose 25% of our population and it is impossible to picture
Watch "Come and See."
What is now western Belarus in particular had a rough time. In 1939 it was still eastern Poland and was occupied by the soviets when they invaded (followed by deportations, repressions etc). In 1941 they get steamrolled and occupied by the nazis (followed by deportations, mass killings etc.), only to again be washed over by a conquering army in 1944 (followed by deportations, repressions etc.)
It's an absolute lie which was coined by USSR propaganda, and only one source which we can be relied is results of ESC (Emergency State Commission), but these results are still in secret for society and for everyone and even these numbers can be too high. So real nubers are significantly lesse than 25 % of population in Belarus. Data of birth rate in belarus between 1941 and 1945 (These numbers were calculated with help of general census of 1959) tell us that it higher than in uzbekistan, which never was under occupation, and more than in Russia majorty of it's land never even saw occupation, amount of children which born in 1943 per 1000 men are - around 12 in Belarus, around 9 in Uzbekistan, and around 7 in Russia or RSFSR. So people lived better under German occupation than under Stalin's regime, which basically slaughtered it's people. Majority of deaths and sometimes only deaths were jewish, especially in Blatic sates which cheered Germans with flowers. Often soviet propaganda include combatants deaths in such statistic but let's be clear in 1941 Germany got in captivity 3.8 millions of Soviet soldiers, that number is highter than quantity of German soldiers so of course Germany didn't much cared about these prisioners, and they especially didn't cared because Soviet state didn't. According to order no.270 (which is may be discribed by Stalin's - "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors.") all presioners were considered as traitors, thus Soviet Union didn't support prisioners through red cross, so Germans were forced to abandon these prisioners and sometimes even liberate them because there was no place for them in camps, though in 1941 were significant deaths of prisioners (343k per month), it was fixed in the next year so between 1942 and 1945 there were 10x lesser deaths of prisioners (33k per month). So final eavluation of civilian deaths including jewish population is around 3.5m people, and to be clear 80% of 3.5 m were jews and 20% were partisans. So "Around 25% of the entire population was killed in the war fighting Nazism" is lie and have nothing in touch with reality. And btw why no one even pay attention to atrocities of Soviet horde against it's population and especially against German population, which were way more horrible, and no one pay attention that Soviets killed way more prisioners of war in a percentage, and majorty of these deaths were on the way to camp, and these deaths Soviet horde counted as "unknown", like they didn't know where they are.
@@pashkevich0218 Byelorussian SSR population in 1940 was estimated at 9,050,000. Military losses 620,000,civilian losses 1,670,000. Total losses 2,290,000, or 25.3% of the 1940 population.
I like your niche ww2/historical topics. Always interesting 👍
Great to read.
Thanks!
Cheers!
@ Awesome work
The story of Odessa during WW2 is very interesting, since it was the only major city in the USSR administred by an axis satellite state, the Kingdom of Romania. Although the jewish population was practically exterminated, Odessa enjoyed a quite peacefull existence, having functioning theatres, cinemas and even the university was reopened. Also, the capitalistic economic system was introduced
Not true the Romanians were terrible thieves. Far worse than the Germans but with less ideology behind it
Capitalism was obviously hated by the local people
Odesa has the name of the capital of the thieves
@eedragonr And rightly so.
@eedragonrWrong, they preferred it.
Loved your sensitive thoughts on the outdoor market sellers. ❤️👍
Thanks for your reply!
It might be called niche, but clips like this one shows life beyond the front-lines.
Glad you liked it.
Yeah, I never really thought it through. We can conceptualize it was bad. But this bad. The "clean wehrmacht" myth busting has new ammo. The area directly behind the frontline, and all the way back to civil authority (if you can call it that much) was controlled by the wehrmacht.
Thanks so much for these types of videos!!! This topic has always been a question in the back of my mind.
that dude is such a putintroll lol
When it was alwqays a question in the back of your mind 🤭 Why you never start researching on your own?
I met a Belarusian recently with the roots in the Countryside outside Vitebsk. She told me the city had 200000 before the war. When the red army liberated the city 200 came out of the ruins. Belarus is by far the country with he highest number of inhabitants kille during the war. Every fourth person died. But that is maybe not the worst part of the story. The worst part I was told that nobody ever spoke about the war with next generation. It is har to belive for people like myself who are well protected.
A Soviet geography book published in 1975 noted that Belorussia only reached its pre-war population level in 1966
My grandfather was from Minsk, Belarus from a Jewish family. He went to the front at 17, when he came back after the war, all of his family was gone. He survived Stalingrad.
Каждый третий. И ,да ,говорить о войне не любили
Excellent video. There is so much unknown history of what happened in the Soviet Union from 1941-45. The scale of death and destruction and suffering everywhere in such a vast country, is beyond our comprehension. Historians in the West can only scratch the surface. You would have to speak Russian and spend a lifetime of research in their archives to begin to know the details. So much history was suppressed and made unavailable to us because of the Cold War, and even today there is still much more to be learned. The Russian people had already suffered many years of brutal oppression under Stalin, then the Germans arrived to make life even worse. 'Hell on earth" was the Soviet Union from 1941-45.
Stefan and other youtubers from the west tend to ignore the sufferings of the Russians, and for them, the entire subject of 'german atrocity is centered around the murder of the jews, the Slavs, including the Poles, the Ukrainians and the Russians suffered a whole lot more. Of course, had there been NO Stalin(a jewish georgian tyrant) or no red terror(mostly perpetrated by the jewish extremists like Bela Kun, Rosalia Zemlyachka) or the purgists like Lev Mekhlis, there probably would never have been a war as violent as it happened on the Eastern Front.
37: Look at some of the RUclipss today of German Army in Russia. Most Russians look at Germans as liberators. Hitler/Himmler has GR8 (great) photographers and these RUclipss are showing the truth of WWII.
The reason we couldn't get into the archives was because the Communists kept them closed. They were opened for a while and there were Western historians who researched them but it wasn't like a flood of people came from the West to read what was in them. When it comes to Russian history, Western historians are much more comfortable repeating what some other historian said than listening to anything a Russian says.
What an idiotic comment. Are you some mouth breathing anti semite? Stalin was Jewish? You’re a misinformed fool. Stalin attended a ruSSian orthodox seminary.
One correction: Russian-Muscovite Empire - not country. The nation/country of Ukraine suffered the most under the German Nazis. And before that under the Russians. And now again.
Thanks
😁👍
No surprise that the Red Army took such bloody revenge on the Berliners , and were complicit in the destruction of Dresden.
Actually Dresden was destroyed mostly by the Royal Air Force
Thank you Stefan for once again an excellent, informative video with an unusual story being told.
Best wishes to you and yours my friend.
Thanks for the post. It was very interesting and a perspective I hadn’t really thought much about in the past.
I've seen hundreds of videos on the eastern front. But this is the first one I've seen about the actual occupations of the cities, so good job for that! I'll always be here to give you a view!
lol bolshevik propaganda
Thank you Stefan, fascinating content ✌🏻💪🏻❤ have a fabulous weekend!
Another fascinating, illuminating video-thank you.
@@anthonyanderson2405 👍👍👍
Happy to stick with your videos Stefan, superb work to go into so much detail.
👍
Excellent video. Keep exploring non mainstream topics.
🫡
Great video. Thank you for sharing.
Stephen your video lecture on German/Axis occupation of Soviet cities is on point. Your research near flawless. We need to be reminded of the semi forgotten facts of WWII. Once again thank you and God bless you and family.
Great video as always mate.
Many thanks!
Great video. Thank you for this.
Thanks for your reply!
I love your work Stefan! You choose great topics to cover!
Thank you for the video, as I found it informative and helpful. Just a small correction. You mention that Kyiv's pre-war population was 850,000 and say there were only 300,000 people left, and then provide a list of German atrocities as the reason. You didn't mention the huge number of civilians who had fled the city before the German occupation. For example, of the 160,000 Jews in the city, over 100,000 of them had fled before the German occupation. And there were also huge numbers of Orthodox Ukrainians who similarly left before the Germans seized the city. Your narration incorrectly suggests the Germans were responsible for the entire 550,000 population deficit.
True.
Interesting topic, which I had not seen on RUclips before. Well done!
Informative as always. Keep up the great work!
Cheers!
Great topic Stefan ...I believe you are the first one on yu tube covering this
🫡
I wonder what would think the german leadership prior Barbarossa if someone would told them: Listen guys if you treat the soviet population the way you plan, you lose the war 100% surely. But if you treat them reasonably, even as allies you have a chance against the Stalin!
Would've they done anything differently?
Imo the germans couldn't hope to fight the Soviet army many times larger than them plus also occupy a hostile country of hundreds of thousand of km² with tens of millions of inhabitants.
Europe with 2 open fronts as usual. Not like Russia ever.
Many things are apparent once the game has been lost.
Great video and thanks for posting this.
Glad you enjoyed it.
Great! Thank you for the video content. I love the older films to see how life was on the street, so interpretation like this is helpful.
Great research.Thank you i appreciate your efforts
👍👍👍
Excellent video. Thank you!
👍
Many thanks my friend. You are doing amazing and valuable work.
As always, a very interesting video.
Stefan, you could also invite specialists for short (30') interviews. I suppose that would generate interest.
As an extra: at 14' 22", in the foreground, a Mark V tank, a leftover of the foreign intervention in the Russian Civil War.
You could have edited the video to include this note 😉
These are topics never covered in any of my history classes. Thank you for sharing and for your great work
Thank you for your hard work.
🫡
Thanks for another great video
Thanks for your reply!
Great content ! I wish you all the best !
Thank you! You too!
Thanks again for presenting great little know and less covered subjects. 👍👍👍
Watching from near Detroit Michigan I love your videos man keep up the great work! 👍👌
Cheers!
Great video Stefan ...You do choose very interesting topics but i can understand how hard it would be to make great money from it. Hopefully your subscription base will steadily increase. 👍
Many thanks for your reply.
Hartelijk dank voor deze fascinerende studie, mijn beste leraar! People should be able to live in peace. My mother was a young girl in Europe during the war... Their numbers are fewer now as they grow old and pass on. I will always recall listening to the older women at gatherings, laughing as they remembered the good times - the mood would turn very somber when the subject of when the Germans came to their villages or cities. Sad, but fascinating study - thank you for yet another well-crafted educational presentation.
Thanks for your reply.
Do you believe that bandits can live in peace?
Another excellent video. Thank you for uploading this content .
Excellent content!
😃
Always appreciate your videos!
Great!
Great video!
Thanks for your reply!
Great video that covers an interesting topic of World War Two that is usually not included in the history books. Well done.
@@timman19 cheers!
Excellent content again,so much better than our mainstream tv channels in the UK, history as it should be,so interesting and informative, your videos are full of items I've never come across 👍👍👍
Please don't stop making these videos. Love your work.
🫡
Interesting topic! Great video 👏🏻
😃
Thanks for covering this part of history!
Great and interesting video as always. Greetings from Norway 😃
Takk.
Heel interessant onderwerp, Stefan. Bedankt.
😃👍
I dated a girl in highschool whose grandparents were Ukrainian. They were taken to Austria as forced labor on a farm where they met. After the war, they married and moved to the United States.
This is closer to the truth. Germans sent many workers to Austria border area to keep the Russians away from them. It was Russian who took anyone they could get to the gulags
Enjoyed this video. Appreciate content like this. Keep it up.
great video on an overlooked topic
Thanks for watching.
@@HistoryHustle always my pleasure Stephan 🫡
Such interesting videos, made with great quality. Have a sub👍🏼
Welcome to the channel.
Thanks for doing this video. My grand-uncle was in the Royal Hungarian army and was stationed in Ukraine. He didn't witness much war crimes and in fact, there was several instances where the Germans reprimanded the Hungarians for interacting with the local population and being overly friendly. He did recall that one of EinSatz death squads hunting for Jews and partisans or whatever, his platoon sergeant misdirected some German units. In return, some of the partisans warned his unit when some major Soviet counter-offensives were coming.
Very interesting to read. Thanks for sharing.
Great topic, thanks!
I recall seeing photos of streetcars in German- occupied Russian cities with signs " For Germans Only."
I would not be surprised.
It was a very interesting video. Thank you for the hard work.
This is an interesting topic and presentation. Good topic that rounds out our understanding of this historical period.
Fascinating although chilling, thanks for sharing your expertise and knowledge.
geweldige inhoud stefan. Ik kijk al 2 maanden naar dit kanaal en heb er nu niets meer aan toe te voegen ik hield van die video's over de betrokkenheid van Latijns-Amerikaanse provincies in de Tweede Wereldoorlog en je video's over de holocaust, dit hele kanaal is sowieso een goudmijn, ook in je Britse Raj-video had je Maratha Empire ook moeten noemen het zou geweldig zijn als je een video zou kunnen maken over de ontbinding van de Sovjet-strijdkrachten na 1991 en ja ik kom uit lucknow maar ik woon in amsterdam ik studeer aan het amsterdam lyceum🇳🇱🇮🇳🪷🙂
I would love to see more content like this. Fascinating!
You're a fantastic teacher. Thanks
Thanks for your reply!
He is not, he only telling the propaganda lies as so many. Look up William Toel and zoomer historian.
I like the niche topic that you cover 👍
😁
It is good to see you making these videos again, that place us in the midst of WWII as if we were there. British journalist Alexander Werth entered Soviet cities like Kharkov, Orel, and Kotelnikovo soon after they were liberated by Soviets and talked to those who'd survived German occupation. In Ukraine, the Germans deported the young to German as slave labor. The older residents left behind either found menial work for the Germans or starved if they had no skills the Germans wanted. Many were rounded up for no reason and executed and of course the fate of the Jews was instant death. Werth tells how the few survivors managed to stay alive in his book RUSSIA AT WAR.
Everybody says about jews... cuz america praise them.
But nobody talk about communists... Their fate was much and much worse if they was caught by germans. But it's maybe cuz cold war propaganda is still alive and whatever is happens on the earth for capitalists communists is a biggest devil. So it's should been demonized for common folk without any stopping if even there is no great "red" power in our world.
Thank you for telling the story!
👍
I really enjoy History Hustle. Thanks for your always interesting scope of study.
Glad you enjoy it!
Great video. Very enlightening
Thank you for this very interesting video.
You're welcome.
I like and noticed that Felton call out with the Himmler helmet! Your material is much more enjoyable and easier to mentally digest. Keep up the stellar work!
😎
“… discuss in comments below” as a Dr Felton viewer
@@mrtrailesafety Or maybe Dr. Felton behind a fake profile..........
This is a niche topic, but I enjoyed watching it and learned something. One teacher to another-that's the key.
Thanks for the interesting topic and video. A small German garrison has been stationed in the Belarusian village where one of my grandmothers lived. The Germans and the local population lived side by side and went about their business for two years until the Germans packed and left. German soldiers shared food with the local kids, one of them was my father. It was a completely different story, just a 100 km away, where my other grandmother resided. There were shootings and killings and retaliation. My grandmother witnessed when the partisans shot dead two Hungarian soldiers. Germans wanted to burn the closest village but the local priest reasoned and the village was spared. Ether because of the priest or the Germans decided that Hungarian lives were not worth the trouble.
My grandfather lived in a Polish village during nazi occupation. Germans burnt the village twice during the war as a punishment. They almost executed his dad to set an example since he was the Earl. There was a whole story behind it. German plane crashed, and someone stole a watch from the pilots wrist. Germans said that if the watch won't come back , they will kill the Earl and burn the village. My grandfather saw that it was a German soldier who stole the watch... he went to another village where they felt his dad captive and told to the commander officer who stole the watch. Initially Germans wanted to execute them but then a little girl came and said the same story. The commander ordered to search that soldiers belongings and found multiple watches. They executed him and let my grandfather and his father go. Adults also sad that the German stole the watch but only children had the courage to go to the Germans and say that it was one of them who took it.
Hey Stefan, prachtige video! Ik heb even chatgpt naar "Are there any internet sources on the german occupation of Smolensk" en ik zie wel enkele betrouwbare bronnen. Geen idee of je daar wat aan hebt, maar het is een angle die je wel vaker kunt gebruiken.
Dank, ik zal er eens een blik op werpen.
I had a neighbour who had worked in Germany during the war (voluntary or forced, he was never specific). As he was trained as an electrician he got to work in a Luftwaffe aircraft repair facility (could have been ERLA but I’m not sure). He must have been a loyal and capable worker because after some time he was granted a certain degree of freedom. Including, and this surprised me, spending off-duty time with a Russian girl who was a forced laborer in another facility in the same area. They became lovers and were apparently allowed to see each other on a semi-regular basis until the tide turned for the Germans and they were separated again. If his story was true, a couple Russian girls may have been granted a somewhat less terrible life in Germany than what their compatriots in Ukraine or Russia had to endure under German occupation.
Love the photo at 12:50... The script is in Ukranian, I understand it says: "Long live the military union of the peoples of the USSR, England, and the USA" Thank you professor for all your great videos (especially for the Yugoslav ones) and greetings from Slovenia!
Thanks for sharing.
The images in colour are amazing, thanks.
I agree!
Great video, thanks! It would be great if you could also do a video on the topic of the German occupation of eastern Poland in the same years.
Were the Hungarians as brutal as the Germans?
I've read that in places (such as Voronezh) they were worse.
They were.
Even soviet general Vatutin I guess ordered something like "Don't take in prison Magyars"(Self name of hungarians which I probably write in wrong way, I am sorry for that) when he was heared about what they done to local people.
I guess you could easily google it.
The Balkans were in general lol, the Croatian's actions throughout the war even shocked the Waffen SS
@realrandieeAnd Croatian partisans cleaned black shirt garbage by mid 1945.
Extremely interesting video!
👍👍👍
Nice video
😃
Fascinating presentation - thank you
Thanks for watching.
My maternal grandfather was a teenager when the Germans occupied his native city of Krasnodar in Southern Russia. My mother told me that, according to him, the older Germans were not as brainwashed as the younger ones. The only thing I remember hearing from him personally is that he saw corpses of people who had been hanged by the Germans hanging from the trees in the city's main street (Krasnaya street).
Interesting to read. Harsh times. Thanks for sharing.
There is a video on RUclips with a Soviet report on the public execution of collaborators in Krasnodar after the liberation of the city.ruclips.net/video/YfyWOOg0TNI/видео.htmlsi=nfy44EFcy7gX1D9Z
Thank you for recommendation. The fact that in 4 years 25 Million people died and we dont know much about the civilian site is absoluty horrific. These are about 17.123 people per day. 713 per hour. 11 per Minute. Imagine 9/11 every three hours and you heard nearly zero about that. So thank you for recommendation.
Thanks for watching!
Leningrad did not fall because the Finns didn't go in even though they were allied with Germany. The Finns stayed out because they only wanted to regain the land they believed belonged to them and Leningrad was not part of that.
Are you sure about the crucial role of the Finnish troops regarding the siege of Leningrad?
In other words they were an opurtunist and that is why they paid in blod and loss of all the land recovery thanks to germans .
Karma
That was a war throwing decision from the finns
I know, but I strongly believe that it has almost no influence at the siege of Leningrad in terms of falling or not of the city. The Finnish troops just had not enough man to carry out an offencive operation. Finnish troops were just watching the battle in hope that Germans would win. In the meantime Rkka was trying to stop wermacht and break through the front line in order begin supply the population of Leningrad as first priority.
Wrong, Petersburg didn't fall because Russians heroically held it, it was one of the most impressive and heroic defenses in history. Finns participated in the siege and are as Germans responsible for it.
Great informative video. The Russian people suffered so much as a result of that invasion
Thanks for watching.
I'd say the entire Soviet people, even though the Russian people had the most victims to mourn, at least in absolute numbers.
10:03 no mark felton was harmed here😂
😅
@@HistoryHustle😂
I like your approach toward history. Thumbs up!
👍👍👍
Thanks Mr Hustler. These sort of topics are of great interest. I am British but my german grandfather was in the wehrmacht and survived the russian front and the gulags afterwards. (i have no political bias to either side)