Ukrainian urban centers were basically useless. In the long run, the Nazis
intended to transform Ukraine into a totally agrarian country and, in the short
run, Germany needed the food that Ukrainian urban dwellers consumed. As a
result, starvation became commonplace and many urban dwellers were forced to
move to the countryside. Kiev, for example, lost about 60% of its population.
Kharkiv, which had a population of 700,000 when the Germans arrived, saw
120,000 of its inhabitants shipped to Germany as laborers; 30,000 were executed
and about 80,000 starved to death.... (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History,
1994, p. 469)
Among the first actions of the Nazis upon occupying a new city was to plunder it of its
intellectual and cultural treasures, material as well as human, and yet somehow - if we are to
believe Morley Safer - being so plundered failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the Ukrainians for
Naziism:
Co. 4 in which I was employed seized in Kiev the library of the medical
research institute. All equipment, scientific staff, documentation and books
were shipped out to Germany.
We appropriated rich trophies in the library of the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences which possessed singular manuscripts of Persian, Abyssinian and
Chinese writings, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles, incunabula by the first
printer Ivan Fedorov, and rare editions of Shevchenko, Mickiewicz, and Ivan
Franko.
Expropriated and sent to Berlin were many exhibits from Kiev's Museums of
Ukrainian Art, Russian Art, Western and Oriental Art and the Taras Shevchenko
Museum.
As soon as the troops seize a big city, there arrive in their wake team
leaders with all kinds of specialists to scan museums, art galleries,
exhibitions, cultural and art institutions, evaluate their state and
expropriate everything of value. (Report by SS-Oberstrumfuehrer Ferster,
November 10, 1942, in Kondufor, History Teaches a Lesson, p. 176, in Andrew
Gregorovich, World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring, 1995, p. 23)
Only genetic programming could explain how - according to Morley Safer anyway - Ukrainians could
have been among the most loyal of Nazis when their intelligentsia were being decimated and they
were being treated as Untermenschen:
Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, proposed that "the entire Ukrainian
intelligentsia should be decimated." Koch believed that three years of grade
school was more than enough education for Ukrainians. He even went so far as
to curtail medical services in order to undermine "the biological power of the
Ukrainians." German-only shops, restaurants, and sections of trolley cars were
established to emphasize the superiority of the Germans and the racial
inferiority of the Ukrainian Untermenschen. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A
History, 1994, p. 469)
There must not be a more advanced education for the non-German population
of the east than four years of primary school.
This primary education has the following objective only: doing simple
arithmetic up to 500, writing one's name, learning that it was God's command
that the Germans must be obeyed, and that one had to be honest, diligent, and
obedient. I don't consider reading skills necessary. Except for this school,
no other kind of school must be allowed in the east....
The [remaining inferior] population will be at our call as a slave people