History of Kiev - World War II

World War II

During the Second World War, Nazi Germany occupied Kiev on 19 September 1941 (see the Battle of Kiev). Overall, the battle proved disastrous for the Soviet side but it significantly delayed the German advances. The delay also allowed the evacuation of all significant industrial enterprises from Kiev to the central and eastern parts of the Soviet Union, away from the hostilities, where they played a major role in arming the Nazi fighting Red Army (see, for example, Kiev Arsenal).

Before the evacuation, the Red Army planted more than ten thousand mines throughout Kiev, controlled by wireless detonators. On 24 September, when the German invaders had settled into the city, the mines were detonated, causing many of the major buildings to collapse, and setting the city ablaze for five days. More than a thousand Germans were killed.

Babi Yar, a location in Kiev, became a site of one of the most infamous Nazi WWII war crimes. During two days in September 1941, at least 33,771 Jews from Kiev and its suburbs were massacred at Babi Yar by the SS Einsatzgruppen, according to their own reports. Babi Yar was a site of additional mass murders of captured Soviet citizens over the following years, including Ukrainians, Roma, POWs and anyone suspected in aiding the resistance movement, perhaps as many as 60,000 additional people.

In the "Hunger Plan" prepared ahead of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, with the aim of ensuring that that Germans were given priority over food supplies at the expense of everyone else, the inhabitants of Kiev were defined as "superfluous eaters" who were to be "gotten rid of" by the cutting off of all food supplies to the city - the food to be diverted to feeding the Wehrmacht troops and Germany's own population. Luckily for the people of Kiev, this part of the "Hunger Plan" was never fully implemented.

An underground resistance quickly established by local patriots was active until the liberation from Nazi occupation. During the war, Kiev was heavily bombarded, especially in the beginning of the war and the city was largely destroyed including many of its architectural landmarks (only one building remained standing on the Khreschatyk, a main street of Kiev).

While the whole of Ukraine was a ' Reich commissariat', under a Nazi Reichskommissar, the region surrounding Kiew (as the Germans spell its name) was one of the six subordinate 'general districts', February 1942 - 1943 Generalbezirk Kiew, under Generalkommissar Waldemar Magunia (b. 1902 - d. 1974, also NSDAP)

The city was recaptured by the Soviet Army advancing westward on 6 November 1943. For its role during the War, the city was later awarded the title Hero City.