The story of Heinrich Himmler:
how the Aryan SS colonies arose in the USSR
At the beginning of 1942, Adolf Hitler approved the SS’s plan to breed a pure Aryan race in the occupied living space of the USSR. The Reichsführer SS, a great lover of Roman history and ancient German origins, calls this day the best in his life and orders the implementation of the plan for the colonization of the East. And the link to the beginning of this story is at the end.
Of course, the large-scale plan to clear the Soviet lands of Untermensch – subhumans – could not be implemented during the war, since it required a large-scale resettlement of Germans with all their property, and the owners of Russian estates and future farmers – SS men were busy exterminating Jews and Slavs, fighting at the front.
Map of the Reichskommissariat “Ukraine” with the place of the first Aryan SS colonization
But Heinrich Himmler was impatient and started in Ukraine, where he was at that time with his headquarters in Kiev and controlled the situation with the help of waffen-CC divisions. The project of the first colonization of the East, called Sondergebiet Hegewald, began in the Zhytomyr region, with its usual cruelty.
On October 11, 1942, the SS loaded 16,000 Ukrainians and Russians into freight cars over a vast area of hundreds of kilometers, sent them to concentration camps, and began to build houses, boiler houses, and roads. Under the guidance of German architects in picturesque forests and flowering fields.
Reichsführer-SS Himmler congratulates German women on their arrival at the Sondergebiet Hegewald
Himmler demanded everything at the highest level, demanded that the Aryan colonies should not know any deprivation and should receive everything they needed even in conditions of war. He demanded that there were no partisans. In essence, the Reichsführer-SS demanded the creation of a little German paradise.
And in the deserted Ukrainian stations, dirty freight cars, full of screams and pain, disappeared on the horizon. And in their place came elegant German trains, filling the emptiness with the cheerful hubbub of blond children and women.
And this is the parade of male colonists in front of Himmler in the same place in the Ukraine
Himmler ordered the Aryan district of Hegelwald to be settled by “Volksdeutsche” – ethnic Germans from the Volga region and Ukraine, who arrived here in the 18th century thanks to the mercy of the Russian tsars. Happy families were waiting for someone else’s beds, someone else’s bed linen and dishes standing on someone else’s tables – not everyone was lucky enough to get a new house and the colonists settled in a Ukrainian one.
The SS immediately took control of the colonies. An SS regiment guarded the Aryan district against partisans, and SS-Oberführer Otto Jungkunz was the governor. To all colonists, SS agronomists distributed plots of land for crops and a plan of meat, bread and milk, which was to be surrendered to the Waffen-SS until the end of the war. And the SS breeders gave a plan for the production of Aryan children for the next five years.
Only this German house in an unnamed village reminds us of this history today
Of course, the district of Hegelwald was not Himmler’s pure plan, there were no SS families of pure blood. But for the Reichsführer-SS, the Ukrainian colonies were the first sign. And a scientific experiment to prove to the skeptics in Berlin the viability of the great German idea.
The Aryan paradise in Ukraine lasted until 1944, when the thunder of heavy guns heralded the approach of retribution. After the surrender of Germany in May 1945, Heinrich Himmler committed suicide. Its highest flock for colonization and reproduction – SS soldiers rotted in the ground, hid or sat in prisons instead of a happy old age on Russian estates.