Pavel Yudin 1941
Author: Pavel Yudin;
Written: 1941;
First published: 28 October 1941 in Krasnaya Zvezda, as Во имя чего фашисты истребляют миллионы людей (In whose name are the fascists exterminating millions of people?);
Source: https://0gnev.livejournal.com/997155.html
Translated: by Anton P.
During eight years of Hitler’s tyranny in Germany, more than one million people were executed. Approximately the same number was imprisoned by the Nazis in concentration camps and prisons, i.e. subjected to a slow death. About one hundred and fifty thousand Germans committed suicide. More than half a million people were expelled and fled from the country, fleeing reprisals. Add to these terrible numbers about four million Germans who died in the wars started by Hitler, and it turns out that the fascist regime has already cost Germany seven million human lives.
But this is only a tiny fraction of all the victims of the fascist executioners and enslavers.
In the countries captured by the Germans, three and a half million people were executed in a short time. At least six million died in the wars with Germany. More than two million were imprisoned by the Nazis in prisons and concentration camps, more than sixty thousand committed suicide. About two million people fled from the Nazis from the countries they had occupied.
The victims of fascist atrocities in other countries, therefore, number more than thirteen million people. And all the sacrifices suffered by the peoples of different countries, including Germany, during the reign of the Hitlerite gang, are expressed in a terrifying figure of twenty million people!
But the suffering that the fascists inflicted on the peoples cannot be expressed in any numbers. The Germans completely robbed the Poles, Czechoslovaks, French, Dutch, Danes, Norwegians, Yugoslavs, Greeks and peoples of many other countries. How many people have they doomed to hunger and poverty, how many homes they have burned down and disgraced, how many women have become widows and children – orphans! You can’t count them. The disasters that the fascists have brought to the peoples enslaved by them have no limit.
What’s the matter? – every honest person will ask. In the name of what, for what purposes are the Nazis committing such atrocities, starting such predatory wars? In the name of what, for what purposes did the German fascists have already conquered several European countries, want to conquer the Soviet Union, England, America, the whole world?
Perhaps Hitler and his hordes of robbery simply set out to enrich the German people – the German peasants and workers – at the expense of all the other peoples of the world? No, that’s not the point at all. The facts tell a different story.
During their rulership in Germany, the Hitlerites also robbed the German workers to the bone, deprived them of any political rights, made them mercilessly oppressed slaves.
Never before have German workers been subjected to such brutal exploitation as under the fascist dictatorship.
From 1932 to 1940, wages in Germany fell dramatically. For example, the earnings of construction workers fell by at least 26 percent. And food prices have gone up incredibly over the same period. In addition, the Nazis imposed unbearable taxes on the workers. These taxes range from 35 to 40 percent of total earnings. And since 30 to 35 percent of a worker’s wages go to pay for the apartment and utilities, while the German proletarian has no more than 25-35 percent of his paltry earnings for food and clothing. With all this, the fascist enslavers have unprecedentedly lengthened the working day, which, since 1938, reaches 16 hours.
The horrors of the fascist regime are complemented by hunger. For the overwhelming mass of the population in Germany there is now no real bread. Instead of bread, a meager norm of all substitutes is issued, instead of butter – an insignificant norm of margarine, instead of sausage – a mixture of soybeans and specially processed sawdust. Meat and dairy products are not given to workers at all.
If the Nazis brought hunger, ruin and political bondage to the German workers, turned the life of the workers into a real hell, then with the arrival of the Nazis, the German bankers, manufacturers and factory owners began to live especially at ease.
Before the seizure of power by the Nazi gang, the biggest capitalists in Germany were Hugo Stinnes, Gustav Krupp, Albert Vögler, Friedrich Flick, Fritz Thyssen, Emil Kirdorf and other predators. These same capitalists have remained the actual masters of Germany even now, but only their capital has grown significantly. Never before have the German capitalists profited as they did under Hitler. The income of the joint-stock company “Dynamit AG” in 1933 amounted to 21 million German marks, in 1939 reached 100 million, and in 1940 – 139 million. Even before the war, 125 thousand people worked in Krupp’s factories, and now the number of Krupp’s slaves has increased significantly. He makes hundreds of millions of marks every year.
Having broken through to power, the bosses of fascism immediately took up personal gain. During the years of their domination, they plundered such fortunes that they themselves turned into the biggest capitalists not only in Germany, but also in the whole world.
Hitler, through dummies, participates as a shareholder in the largest capitalist companies. In his hands is one of the most profitable enterprises in Germany – a fascist publishing house. On this one business alone, he made millions.
The second person in Germany after Hitler is Hermann Goering. Before the fascist domination, this noble bastard had squandered his hereditary fortune and was in debt like silk. And now Goering is the largest capitalist with such power that only few in the world can boast of. Using his power, he bought many factories in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland and other countries. Six hundred thousand people work at the factories of the Hermann Goering company. This company has a capital of eight hundred million marks.
Another prominent fascist ruler, Goebbels, also became terribly rich. Known throughout the world as the greatest swindler and liar, Goebbels trades in all sorts of dirty speculation and blackmail.
The fascists, having enslaved the working class of Germany, enslaved the German peasants as well.
With the coming of Hitler to power, the ruin of small and medium-sized peasant farms intensified, and large landlord estates and kulak farms began to grow rapidly.
In Germany, 54 percent of farms, i.e. more than half of the entire peasantry has no more than 5 hectares of land per yard. This part of the peasantry owns only 8 percent of the land area of Germany. Landowners’ holdings with more than 100 hectares of land each make up one percent of all agriculture in Germany, but this one percent. owns 37 percent. the entire land area. The rest of the land belongs to the kulaks.
The kulak and landowners’ lands were declared by the fascists “hereditary lands” and they were given many privileges. 94 percent of the land-poor peasant farms do not have horses. All tractors belong to kulaks and landowners. The poor and middle peasantry is essentially in serfdom, enslaving dependence on the landlords and kulaks.
The fascists shouldered the entire burden of taxes on the land-poor peasantry. According to Hitler’s law on the “Reichsnährstand” (Reich Nutritional Estate), the peasants are attached to the land and are obliged to work only where they are instructed. The peasant is deprived of the right to free movement, he is deprived of the right to dispose of his property, the harvest. All the products of his labor are still considered requisitioned in the bud. Special officials keep strict records of what the peasants produce and determine what they should be left with for themselves. These officials have the right to impose fines on peasants and put them in jail.
Thus, the fascists brought the grave kulak and landlord bondage to the German peasantry, and reinstated serfdom, which had long been abolished in Germany.
Fascist leaders and their hangmen – murderers and thugs, having seized power, hastened to acquire, along with factories and plants, large land estates, and turned into landowners. It follows, therefore, that the German fascists, the Hitlerite rulers with a huge mass of officials, big and small, are themselves capitalists and landowners, exploiters of the working people.
Hitler’s rule in Germany is the rule of the most frenzied, rabid, greedy for profit and robbery capitalists, factory owners, bankers and landowners. Fascism is the undisguised bloody dictatorship of the invading imperialists, the undivided domination of the financial, industrial and land leaders. The fascist Hitlerite dictatorship is the rule of the most savage, brutal vultures and stranglers of workers and peasants. The fascists want to overwhelm all free peoples with streams of blood, so that, having weakened and intimidated, turn them into wordless slaves of the German manufacturers and landowners. That is why Hitler threw the whole world into the abyss of a war of extermination. That is why the fascist hordes invaded our Soviet land.
During the years of their domination, the Hitlerite cannibals corrupted the consciousness of most of the German people, and above all, of the youth. Through the most utter lies, deception, demagoguery and provocation, as well as through the most brutal terror, the Nazis turned the German people into a submissive instrument of the Hitlerite gang. The Germans became the executioners of the peoples of other countries, murderers of old people, women and children, they became rapists and robbers. Germans are cursed by millions of disadvantaged people.
Fascist soldiers are not representatives of workers and peasants who went to fight only because they were forced. No, these are brutal thugs, these are bloodthirsty killers led by the man-eater Hitler. The soldiers of the Red Army, the Soviet people can have only one conversation with them – with a bullet and a shell. Either we will exterminate them, or they will destroy us – this is the only way the question stands. In battles with fascists, we have only one way – victory or death. The defeat of Hitlerite Germany will free millions of people from fascist oppression and slavery.