Reichskommissariat Ukraine

Reichskommissariat Ukraine is a colony of the Greater German Reich situated in eastern Europe, on the lands formerly belonging to the Ukrainian SSR.

In-Game Description

Ostland may strut itself as the "Crown Jewel", Moskowien as the problem child and Poland as the Reich's laboratory, but it is Ukraine that keeps Germany alive. Without its vital source of wheat and grain to the hundred million souls inside the Empire, all of the blood spilled during the Second World War we be for naught.

Crimea, occupying the vital position as the protector of the Black sea, has been formally incorporated into the Reich, with the rest of the region under an occupation government, simply known as "Reichskommissariat Ukraine". Ruled under an iron fist by Reichskommissar, Erich Koch, anyone even suspected of hiding sympathies with the kaleidoscope of partisan movements that haunt the Germans is dealt with, in the only way Koch knows how. A bullet. Yet, in the darkness, something lurks. In the heart of every Ukrainian and every German, the wind has shifted.

Hell will descend over the wheatfields of Ukraine. Whoever survives, wins.

History

Background

Before the German invasion, Ukraine was a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, inhabited by Ukrainians, Russians, Jewish, Belarusian, Romanian, Polish and Roma/Gypsy minorities. It was a key subject of Nazi planning for the post-war expansion of the German state. The Nazi extermination policy in Ukraine, with the help of local Ukrainian collaborators, ended the lives of millions of people in The Holocaust and other mass killings.

In the mind of Adolf Hitler and other German expansionists, the destruction of the USSR, dubbed a "Judeo-Bolshevist" state, was necessary in order to remove a threat from Germany's eastern borders and allow for the colonization of the vast territories of Eastern Europe under the banner of "Lebensraum" (living space) for the fulfillment of the material needs of the Germanic people. Ideological declarations about the German Herrenvolk (master race) having a right to expand their territory especially in the East were and still are widely spread among the German public.

Establishment & Rosenberg's Power Struggle

Hitler decreed the creation of the Nazi Party organization Arbeitsbereich Osten der NSDAP for the new eastern occupied territories in 1942. This move had been bitterly resisted by both Rosenberg, who rightly feared that the transformation of the administration of the eastern territories from a state to a party bureaucracy would spell the effective end of the authority of his ministry (which was a state organ), and Heinrich Himmler, who rightly feared that an arbeitsbereich's establishment would be accompanied by the commissars becoming RVKs (commissars for war) and thus enormously empowered at the expense of the SS, which had already been steadily losing ground since late September the previous year, when the commissariat government began establishing itself with local commissars asserting control over the police in their territories, hitherto controlled by the SS. Himmler and Rosenberg's rearguard resistance soon collapsed in the face of pressure from Martin Bormann in Berlin, and Koch and Lohse in the field. Rosenberg at least managed to be appointed Reichsleiter ("Reich leader") of the new arbeitsbereich. Rosenberg later attempted to take such political power into the political section of the ministry to keep all party issues in his control, and prohibited the creation of organizations and any political activity in the East without his express authorization. Needless to say, he was entirely disobeyed.

Hoping that by joining forces they might regain some influence, Himmler and Rosenberg decided upon the appointment of Gottlob Berger, Himmler's political hatchet man and the SS's head of personnel, as Rosenberg's deputy, a move which in theory would give Rosenberg control over SS forces in the occupied Soviet territories under civil administration in return for his support for the SS in its power struggles. The partnership between Rosenberg and Himmler achieved nothing other than the exasperation of each other beyond endurance and Berger soon withdrew all cooperation. Koch and Lohse thereafter gradually reduced communication with Rosenberg, liaising with Hitler through Bormann and the party chancellery. Both also made a point of establishing strong SA organisations in their jurisdiction as a counterbalance to the SS. Given that many of the commissariat officials were active or reserve SA officers, the pre-existing grudge against the SS was resurrected by these measures and a poisoning of relations was guaranteed. As a last resort, the Höherer SS- und Polizeiführer (HSSPF) in Ukraine, Hans-Adolf Prutzmann, attempted to approach Koch directly only to be contemptuously abused and dismissed.

Post War & Present

Foreign Relations

Economy

In-Game Paths