Forced Labor of Germans in The Soviet Union - Deportation and Forced Labor of Soviet Germans

Deportation and Forced Labor of Soviet Germans

The ethnic German minority in the USSR was considered a security risk by the Soviet government and they were deported during the war in order to prevent their possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders. In August 1941 the Soviet government ordered ethnic Germans to be deported from the European USSR. By early 1942 1,031,300 Germans had been banished to Central Asia and Siberia. During 1945 the Soviets deported to the special settlements an additional 203,796 Soviet ethnic Germans who had been resettled by Germany in Poland . During the war shortages of food plagued the whole Soviet Union, especially within the special settlements. Life in the special settlements was harsh and severe, food was limited and the deported population was governed by strict regulations. According to data from the Soviet archives, by October 1945 687,300 Germans remained alive in the special settlements, an additional 316,600 Soviet Germans served as labor conscripts during World War II. Soviet Germans were not accepted in the regular armed forces but were employed instead as conscript labor. The labor army members were arranged into worker battalions that followed camp-like regulations and received the GULAG rations. In 1949 the German population in the special settlements was put at 1,035,701 by the NKVD. According to J. Otto Pohl 65,599 Germans perished in the special settlements, he believes that an additional 176,352 unaccounted for persons "probably died in the labor army". During the Stalin era the Soviet Germans continued to be confined to the special settlements under strict supervision, in 1955 they were rehabilitated but were not allowed to return to the European USSR until 1972. The Soviet German population grew despite the deportations and forced labor during the war; in the 1939 Soviet census the German population was 1.427 million by 1959 it had increased to 1.619 million.