Skip to main content

"Judeo-Bolshevism" thesis and Mennonites in Ukraine, 1941-44

In 1941 with a young adult population almost fully ignorant of their faith tradition and bitter about their family lot, there is no reason to doubt that many easily adapted their worldviews to the novel Nazi claim that linked Jews as a whole with “anti-Christian Bolshevism,” and complied with the new regime—as others had done under communism.

The first outcome of occupation newspapers in Ukraine was for worldview training. Multiple copies of the German Nazi daily newspaper Deutsch-Ukraine Zeitung were circulated in each Mennonite village beginning early in 1942, complemented by the weekly Ukraine Post which published its first isu on July 18, 1942. In some villages these newspapers were the only German reading materials available (note 1).

The Ukraine Post reported on the German settlements—including Molotschna and Chortitza—and reinforced in almost every issue the foundational message that “Bolshevism equals Judaism,” that the Soviet Union is a “state of Jews,” and wherever Bolshevism arises, it is only as a storm-trooper of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to enslave and exploit (note 2). Lengthy columns by Professor Dr. Johann von Leers, a high-ranking official in the Ministry of Propaganda, were notoriously anti-Semitic.

“If earlier wars were fought between princes and their armies, this war has become a war of the peoples (Völker): … If the Jew wins, then all who are of German blood will be destroyed, sterilized, tortured to death, slaughtered. If we win, then Judaism will—according to the words of the Führer—be eradicated (ausgerottet) from the world.” (Note 3)

“The Jew is the primordial evil in the world, completely satanic and devilish—we are now fighting this fight against him until his ultimate end. That is why this fight has become so hard and so ruthless. The Jew wants our blood and the blood of our children, and we want his destruction (Vernichtung) in Europe. In between, there is no compromise.” (Note 4)

The official propaganda from von Leers alone was inescapable in the Mennonites villages in Ukraine and designed to be compelling. Von Leers tells his readers that “Judaism is the devil in human form, criminality incarnated, and the expulsion of these ‘servants of Satan’ from all countries is an imperative of justice and self-protection of decent peoples” (note 5). The war itself is ultimately explicable by Jews in Washington, Moscow, and London. “There would be no war without Roosevelt—a half-Jew under the influence of world Judaism,” according to von Leers (note 6). The Red Army too “upsets the order of life among other nations in order to bring their property into the hands of the Jews” (note 7).

Many of the anti-Semitic articles were designed to provide ethnic Germans with an explanatory framework for their years of suffering in the Soviet Union. Von Leers tells his readers that “when the half-Jew Lenin and the full-Jew Trotsky together with their Jewish accomplices smelled opportunity and seized the government, their merciless destruction of the people revealed the true Jewish soul as thirst for human blood and diabolical mockery of the human disposition” (note 8). That “most brutal exploitation of workers” which ethnic Germans had endured was “in the interests of the Jewish potentates in Moscow” (note 9). The Ukraine Post published testimonials and photographs of Soviet-era torture chambers with the claim that “such methods” of torture “can only be devised by a Jewish-Oriental mind” (note 10). One columnist twisted a biblical verse into his rationale for the annihilation of Jews: “What did Moses say in Deuteronomy 7:16? ‘You shall consume all the peoples whom the LORD your God gives over to you. Show them no mercy ... !’ However in the end it will be the Jewish people, who will be consumed!” (note 11).

For years already, the Office of the Propaganda Ministry in Germany had issued daily press directives on what may or may not be said on any issue, whose speeches should be reprinted, which themes should be exploited for maximum impact on German readership—e.g., a Jewish connection to anything that is contemptuous—and especially with regard to the Soviet Union. For example, in 1938 German newspapers were not to show anti-Semitism in Soviet-Russia—which in other contexts Germany would exploit—but rather to display the violence of “intra-Jewish cliques” (note 12); international communist rebels in 1935 were not to be referred to as “Russians,” but as “Bolshevik Jews” (note 13) or “Bolshevik hordes” (note 14). Five years later and during war, German occupation newspapers were entirely Party controlled with targeted anti-Semitic propaganda.

Over twenty-five weeks the Ukraine Post outlined and winningly explained the twenty-five planks of the Nazi Party platform to its Volk German readership, with the fourth instalment on the racial unity of the German Volk on October 24, 1942 (note 15). Pseudo-scientific beliefs about blood purity were deemed to be critical for understanding the “why” of German cultural achievement or decline, and it gave a rationale for Germany’s rejection of universal human rights.

“A people can only attain high achievements if it keeps its blood pure. … A mixture of German blood with Jewish blood leads to a reduction in the achievements of our people and thus to racial decline and finally to collapse.” (Note 16)

The article connected this party plank with Hitler’s 1935 Nuremberg Race Laws that sought to “eliminate the influence of Jewry on the racial value of the German people.” This required that “every German must be able to prove that there are no Jews among his ancestors [see the later EWZ naturalization forms filled out by Mennonites from Ukraine in Warthegau]. … Only he who has German blood in his veins can think, feel, and act German. He is free from the bad qualities inherent in the Jewish race” (note 17).

Goebbels’s October 1941 intention to increase anti-Semitic propaganda in the newly occupied eastern territories was an extension of the themes he had repeated since his infamous 1936 address, “Communism with the Mask off”—namely, that a Jewish minority was the terrorist power behind the Russian Revolution and contemporary Bolshevism; that international Bolshevism was nothing less than international Jewry; that both were joined in a satanic battle against human civilization itself to control world politics; and that both must be met with the same ruthless and even brutal means. The address was even reprinted in the Canadian Russian Mennonite paper Der Bote in 1936 (note 18).

While this form of anti-Semitism was not wholly new in Russia, German propaganda offered a new interpretive framework for the cause of Mennonite suffering which as planned fueled latent local Christian anti-Semitism (note 19).

Regime-coherent answers by Mennonites were encouraged and cited in the Ukraine Post: “the Jews tortured us the most,” soldiers were told by one Volksdeutsche woman (note 20). In their 1942 village reports, ethnic German mayors and teachers were asked to give detailed “descriptive reports of arrests, incarcerations, maltreatments, persecutions, and the like.” Where a known Jew was involved, it was highlighted. Twenty-two of thirty-three families in the village of Schöndorf, Borosenko (Rayon Friesendorf) were missing the male head, for example. Their 1942 official village report included a survivor account which repeated three times that the interrogator and torturer of some was a Jew (note 21). In neighbouring Heuboden, it was “a Jewish supervisor” who whipped the women and older men on to dig trenches to thwart the German advance (note 22). In Nikolaidorf, 44-year-old Johann Buller was “discovered and shot dead by a Jewish commissar” when he escaped arrest just outside his village immediately prior to the arrival of German troops (note 23). From Nieder Chortitza, Mennonite village Mayor Redekop reported July 1942 that their Jewish manager “had a brother who came to help” with the evacuation. “They were all armed and because they were Jews everyone was afraid.” The evacuation was accompanied by the “military, GPU [secret police] and Jews” (note 24). Another village report noted that “immediately after the arrival of the German troops there was calm again, and everyone began to breathe easy, even the Ukrainian population was happy to be saved from Jewish yoke” (note 25). And the Schönhorst (Rayon Chortitza) village report noted that until recently they had had “a wind orchestra and sixteen instruments, but these were taken when the Jews fled the village” (note 26). The village reporter for Gnadental (Sofiewka) recalled how they when war was declared: “Either we are now completely lost, or we will finally be freed from Judeo-Bolshevik slavery by Germany” (note 27). It was not unusual for a report to be signed with exuberant praise: “Heil to the Liberator and Führer, Adolf Hitler!,” as Mayor Redekop concluded his report, stamped with an official village swastika seal and the signature of the regional administrator for Special Commando Dr. Stumpp, Gerhard Fast (note 28).

It is estimated that a half-million Jews were murdered in Nazi-occupied Ukraine alone (note 29). How does one begin to understand the inexplicable? Hitler and his propagandists found understanding and some support in Ukraine among Mennonites for the call to cleanse the world of all that is decrepit and to unmask all that is degenerate and evil, in order to purify and perfect the Volk and to inaugurate a joyous new age. James Rhodes likens this to a modern, secular apocalyptic movement (note 30).

Minimally it is possible to say that a majority of Soviet Mennonites were silent, fearful observers as local Jews fled, sought refuge or were gathered to be executed. Some were ideologically convinced or set on finding revenge. The sources certainly show deep prejudice and broad agreement with the tone of official propaganda, though they fall short of documenting actions taken.

            ---Arnold Neufeldt-Fast

---Notes---

Link for newspapers referenced below:

Link for “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp” referenced below:

Note 1: “Hunger nach dem Deutschen Wort,” Ukraine Post, no. 12 (October 3, 1942), 3f.

Note 2: “Bolschewismus = Judentum,” Ukraine Post, no. 14 (October, 17, 1942), 4. Similarly, “Vom Ziel dieses Krieges,” Ukraine Post, no. 21 (December 5, 1943), 1f.

Note 3: “Judas Kriegsziel,” Ukraine Post, no. 15 (October, 24, 1942), 1.

Note 4: “Die dunkle Spur des Judentums: Warum ist unser Kampf so hart und schonungslos?,” Ukraine Post, no. 22 (December 12, 1942), 4; similarly: “Vor dem Angesicht Jahwes,” Ukraine Post, no. 19 (May 15, 1943), 3.

Note 5: Johann von Leers, “Tod der Tausend Qualen,” Ukraine Post, no. 16 (April 24, 1943), 3.

Note 6: Johann von Leers, “Schachfiguren Judas,” Ukraine Post,” no. 11 (March 20, 1943), 8.

Note 7: Johann von Leers, “Kulturträger, Made in USA,” Ukraine Post, no. 21 (May 29, 1943), 4.

Note 8: Rudolf Dammert, “Juden auf Bauernjagd: Ihr Weg aus dem Getto zur Macht,” Ukraine Post, no. 9 (September 12, 1942), 2.

Note 9: “Volksgemeinschaft statt Klassenkampf,” Ukraine Post, no. 7 (February 20, 1943), 4.

Note 10: “Folterkammer 7, 8, 9: Inquisitionen in den Gefängnissen,” Ukraine Post, no. 24 (June 19, 1943), 3.

Note 11: “‘Du wirst alle Völker zehren’: Jüdische Massenmorde in der Geschichte,” Ukraine Post, no. 26 (July 3, 1943), 4; “Trotz schwerer Prüfungen: Volksdeutsche Bauern packen wieder an,” Ukraine Post no. 26 (July 3, 1943), 7.

Note 12: Karen Peter, N-S Presseanweisungen der Vorkriegszeit 6, no. 1, Quellentexte Januar bis April, 1938 (Berlin: Saur, 2013), 207.

Note 13: Gabriele Toepser-Ziegert, ed., N-S Presseanweisungen der Vorkriegszeit 3, no. 2, 1935 (New York: Saur, 1984–2001), 800.

Note 14: Karen Peter, N-S Presseanweisungen der Vorkriegszeit 5, no. 1, Quellentexte Januar bis April, 1937 (Berlin: Saur, 2015), 491; cf. also 394, 509, etc.

Note 15: “Die 25 Punkte: Das Programm der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP),” Ukraine Post, no. 15 (October 24, 1942), 4.

Note 16: “Die 25 Punkte (no. 4),” Ukraine Post, no. 15 (October 24, 1942), 4.

Note 17: “Die 25 Punkte (no. 4),” Ukraine Post, no. 15 (October 24, 1942), 4.

Note 18: Cf. Joseph Goebbels, “Communism with the Mask Off. Speech delivered in Nurnberg on September 13, 1935 at the Seventh National Socialist Party Congress” (Berlin: Müller, 1935), https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm; Jonathan F. Wagner, Brothers Beyond the Sea: National Socialism in Canada (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University, 1981), 108; Der Bote, October and November 1936 issues.

Note 19: Cf. Wendy Lower, “Hitler’s ‘Garden of Eden’ in Ukraine: Nazi Colonialism, Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust, 1941–1944,” in Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and its Aftermath, edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John Roth (New York: Berghahn, 2006), 191f.

Note 20: “‘… daß ihr endlich da seid:’ Volksdeutsche umjubeln unsere Soldaten,” Ukraine Post, no. 24 (Weihnachten 1942), 8; this woman lived in the Caucasus region, were some Mennonite Brethren churches were planted.

Note 21: Schöndorf (Rayon Friesendorf), Dorfbericht, August 1942, Fragebogen Nr. XI.5, 9, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BA R6 GSK file 702b, Mappe 180, 97.

Note 22: Heuboden (Rayon Friesendorf), Dorfbericht, August 1942, Fragebogen Nr. XI.6, 10,” BA R6 GSK file 623, Mappe 170, 156b.

Note 23: Nikolaifeld (Rayon Kronau), Dorfbericht, March 1942, Fragebogen Nr. XI.6, 10, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BA R6 GSK, file 620, Mappe 39, 352b.

Note 24: Nieder Chortitza (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht, July 1942, Fragebogen Nr. XI.6, 10b, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BA R6 GSK, file 705, Mappe 100, 37.

Note 25: Friesendorf (Rayon Friesendorf) Dorfbericht, July 1942, Fragebogen Nr. XI.6, 10, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BA R6 GSK, file 623, Mappe 169, 106b.

Note 26: Schönhorst (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht, June 1942, Fragebogen Nr. VII.e, 4, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BA R6 GSK R6 GSK, file 622, Mappe 92, 160b.

Note 27: “Gnadental (Rayon Sofiewka) Dorfbericht,” May 1942,” Fragebogen XI.6, 10 (469b), “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BArch R6/623, Mappe 182.

Note 28: Nieder Chortitza (Rayon Chortitza) Dorfbericht, July 1942, Fragebogen Nr. XI.6, 10b, “Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp,” BA R6 GSK, file 705, Mappe 100, 37.

Note 29: Cf. Dieter Pohl, “Just How Many? On the Death Toll of Jewish Victims of Nazi Crimes,” in Denial of the Denial, or the Battle of Auschwitz: Debates about the Demography and Geopolitics of the Holocaust, edited by Alfred Kokh and Pavel Polian, (Brighton, MA: Academic Studies, 2011), 139.

Note 30: James M. Rhodes, The Hitler Movement: A Modern Millenarian Revolution (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1980), 198.

---

To cite this post: Arnold Neufeldt-Fast, "The 'Judeo-Bolshevism' thesis and Mennonites in Ukraine, 1941-44," History of the Russian Mennonites (blog), June 11, 2023, https://russianmennonites.blogspot.com/2023/06/judeo-bolshevism-thesis-and-mennonites.html.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons!

Turning Weapons into Waffle Irons:  Heart-Shaped Waffles and a smooth talking General In 1874 with Mennonite immigration to North America in full swing, the Tsar sent General Eduard von Totleben to the colonies to talk the remaining Mennonites out of leaving ( note 1 ). He came with the now legendary offer of alternative service. Totleben made presentations in Mennonite churches and had many conversations in Mennonite homes. Decades later the women still recalled how fond Totleben was of Mennonite heart-shaped waffles. He complemented the women saying, “How beautiful are the hearts of Mennonites!,” and he joked about how “much Mennonites love waffles ( Waffeln ), but not weapons ( Waffen )” ( note 2 )! His visit resulted in an extensive reversal of opinion and the offer was welcomed officially by the Molotschna and Chortitza Colony ministerials. And upon leaving, the general was gifted with a poem by Bernhard Harder ( note 3 ) and a waffle iron ( note 4 ). Harder was an inf...
Post a Comment
Read more

Soviet “Farmer Giesbrecht” and the German Communist Press, 1930

The 1930 booklet  Bauer Giesbrecht was published by the Communist Party press in Germany —some months after most of the 3,885 Mennonite refugees at Moscow had been transported from Germany to Canada, Paraguay and Brazil ( note 1 ). In Fall 1929 Germany set aside an astonishingly large sum of money and flexed its full diplomatic muscle to extract these “German Farmers” (mostly Mennonites) who had fled the Soviet countryside for Moscow in a last ditch attempt to flee the "Soviet Paradise". About 9,000 however were forcibly turned back. Communists in Germany saw their country’s aid operation—which their crushed economy could ill afford—as a blatant propaganda attempt to embarrass Stalin with formerly wealthy ethnic German farmers and preachers willing to tell the world’s press the worst "lies." With Heinrich Kornelius Giesbrecht from the former Mennonite Barnaul Colony in Western Siberia they finally had a poster-boy to make their point: in Germany he had seen an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Snapshots of Danzig Mennonites, late 1600s & early 1700s

A picture can be worth a thousand words. We do not have photographs, but we have a few colour paintings of life in and around Danzig in the late 1600s and early 1700s, as well as maps. We also have a limited number of "textual snapshots" of Mennonites at this time and place, which offer an instructive window into that foreign world. These snapshots of work, worship, health, education, community relationships, smaller repressions, and security can contribute to the creation of a larger collage of Mennonite life in Danzig and Polish Prussia.  Snapshot 1 : In 1681 there were approximately 180 Mennonite families who lived in the “gardens” or villages outside Danzig, with 113 of those families within the jurisdiction of the city. At this time Mennonites were barred from owning houses within the walls of the city. Of these 113 family heads, we know: 43 were retailers of spirits, 24 merchants, 9 lacemakers, 7 dyers, 3 silk dyers, 3 pressers, 2 brokers, 2 treasurers, 2 waitresses, et...
Post a Comment
Read more

Swiss and Palatinate Connections

Sometime after 1850 Andreas Plennert and his family immigrated to South Russia from the Culm Region of West Prussia. Though there was at least one Mennonite “Plehnert” who had already immigrated to Russia in 1793, it is not a very common Prussian-Russian Mennonite name. As such, however, it is easier to trace than many and offers a minority narrative and identity within the longer and broader Russian Mennonite story. The account below is adapted largely from information in Horst Penner, Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten , vol. 1, though I have expanded upon his work to offer a slightly different narrative. In 1724 there was a group of Mennonites forced out of the Memel region in East Prussia for political and religious reasons and were given assistance to resettle back to West Prussia in areas populated by Mennonites. Among the 23 households that went to the Stuhm region there is one Plenert listed, namely Christian Plenert. We know that Mennonites entered the Memel region ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Village Reports Commando Dr. Stumpp, 1942: List and Links

Each of the "Commando Dr. Stumpp" village reports written during German occupation of Ukraine 1942 contains a mountain of demographic data, names, dates, occupations, numbers of untimely deaths (revolution, famines, abductions), narratives of life in the 1930s, of repression and liberation, maps, and much more. The reports are critical for telling the story of Mennonites in the Soviet Union before 1942, albeit written with the dynamics of Nazi German rule at play. Reports for some 56 (predominantly) Mennonite villages from the historic Mennonite settlement areas of Chortitza, Sagradovka, Baratow, Schlachtin, Milorodovka, and Borosenko have survived. Unfortunately no village reports from the Molotschna area (known under occupation as “Halbstadt”) have been found. Dr. Karl Stumpp, a prolific chronicler of “Germans abroad,” became well-known to German Mennonites (Prof. Benjamin Unruh/ Dr. Walter Quiring) before the war as the director of the Research Center for Russian Germans...
Post a Comment
Read more

Catherine the Great’s 1763 Manifesto

“We must swarm our vast wastelands with people. I do not think that in order to achieve this it would be useful to compel our non-Christians to accept our faith--polygamy for example, is even more useful for the multiplication of the population. … "Russia does not have enough inhabitants, …but still possesses a large expanse of land, which is neither inhabited nor cultivated. … The fields that could nourish the whole nation, barely feeds one family..." – Catherine II (Note 1 ) “We perceive, among other things, that a considerable number of regions are still uncultivated which could easily and advantageously be made available for productive use of population and settlement. Most of the lands hold hidden in their depth an inexhaustible wealth of all kinds of precious ores and metals, and because they are well provided with forests, rivers and lakes, and located close to the sea for purpose of trade, they are also most convenient for the development and growth of many kinds ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is the Church to Say? Letter 1 (of 4) to American Mennonite Friends

Irony is used in this post to provoke and invite critical thought; the historical research on the Mennonite experience is accuarte and carefully considered. ~ANF American Mennonite leaders who supported Trump will be responding to the election results in the near future. Sometimes a template or sample conference address helps to formulate one’s own text. To that end I offer the following. When Hitler came to power in 1933, Mennonites in Germany sent official greetings by telegram: “The Conference of the East and West Prussian Mennonites meeting today at Tiegenhagen in the Free City of Danzig are deeply grateful for the tremendous uprising ( Erhebung ) that God has given our people ( Volk ) through the vigor and action of [unclear], and promise our cooperation in the construction of our Fatherland, true to the Gospel motto of [our founder Menno Simons], ‘For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ.’” ( Note 1 ) Hitler responded in a letter...
Post a Comment
Read more

Vaccinations in Chortitza and Molotschna, beginning in 1804

Vaccination lists for Chortitza Mennonite children in 1809 and 1814 were published prior to the COVID-19 pandemic with little curiosity ( note 1 ). However during the 2020-22 pandemic and in a context in which some refused to vaccinate for religious belief, the historic data took on new significance. Ancestors of some of the more conservative Russian Mennonite groups—like the Reinländer or the Bergthalers or the adult children of land delegate Jacob Höppner—were in fact vaccinating their infants and toddlers against small pox over two hundred years ago ( note 2 ). Also before the current pandemic Ukrainian historian Dmytro Myeshkov brought to light other archival materials on Mennonites and vaccination. The material below is my summary and translation of the relevant pages of Myeshkov’s massive 2008 volume on Black Sea German and their Worlds, 1781 to 1871 (German only; note 3 ). Myeshkov confirms that Chortitza was already immunizing its children in 1804 when their District Offic...
Post a Comment
Read more

Easter and Molotschna's First Ethnic German Cavalry Regiment of the Waffen-SS, 1942

For the two years of German occupation, 1941-43, the Molotschna Settlement area—renamed “Halbstadt” after its largest village—was under S.S. ( Schutzstaffel ) control. During this time, new National Socialist ceremonies and liturgies were introduced to the Mennonites in Ukraine, including Easter. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler named Halbstadt with its surrounding 144 villages a district commando. SS-Storm Unit Leader ( Sturmbannführer ) Hermann Roßner was appointed the Special Command R[ussia] leader for Halbstadt. Halbstadt had Waffen-SS doctors, a Waffen-SS pharmacist team and pharmacy, hospital equipment from the medical offices of the Waffen-SS and soon a Waffen-SS cavalry self-defense regiment of some 500-plus Mennonite young men ( note 1 ). Two of my uncles became members of the cavalry unit; a later, long-time lay minister in my home congregation was in the regiment as well. SS-celebrations for “Easter” were deliberately non-religious and anti-Christian, though careful ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Molotschna's 50th Anniversary Celebration Plans, 1854

There is no mention of this celebrative event in Hildebrand’s Chronologischer Zeittafel, no report in the newly launched Prussian church paper Mennonitische Blätter , or in the Unterhaltungsblatt for German colonists in South Russia. But plans to celebrate five decades of Mennonite settlement on the Molotschna River were well underway in 1853; detailed draft notes for the event are found in the Peter J. Braun Russian Mennonite Archive ( note 1 ). Perhaps most importantly the file includes the list of names of the first settlers in each of the first nine Molotschna villages (est. 1804). While each village had been mandated a few years earlier to write its own village history ( note 2; pics ), eight of these nine did not list their first settler families by name. The lists with the male family heads are attached below. By 1854 Molotoschna’s population had increased to about 17,000; more than half of those living in the original nine villages were landless Anwohner ( note 3 ). Celeb...
Post a Comment
Read more