Reichskommissariat Ostland


The Reichskommissariat Ostland was an administrative entity of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories of Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945. It served as the German civilian occupation regime in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and the western part of the Byelorussian SSR during the Eastern Front of World War II.
Ostland was established after the success of the Wehrmachts Baltic operation and an initial period of military administration by Army Group North Rear Area based on the equivalent Reichskommissariat Baltenland in German planning documents. It was divided into Generalbezirk Estland, Generalbezirk Lettland, Generalbezirk Litauen, and Generalbezirk Weißruthenien each with its own Nazi collaborationist government and Auxiliary Police under the control of a German Generalkommissar. Hinrich Lohse served as the Reichskommissar from 1941 to 1944 and Erich Koch from 1944 to 1945.
Ostland was part of the Generalplan Ost which included the genocide of the Jewish population, the deportation and murder of Jews from Central Europe, the expulsion and murder of some of the native non-Jewish population, the settlement of Germanic peoples, and the Germanization of the rest. The SS and their Einsatzgruppen A and B, with active participation of the Order Police battalions and local Auxiliary Police forces, killed over a million Jews and others in the territory.
In the course of 1943 and 1944, the Red Army recaptured most of Ostland in their advance westwards, and many of its institutions were dissolved in late 1944 and early 1945. German forces including the rump administration of Ostland held out in the Courland Pocket until 10 May 1945, two days after the German surrender.

History

Planning before the attack on the Soviet Union

Originally the Reichsminister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg envisioned usage of the term Baltenland before the summer of 1941 for the area that would eventually be known as Ostland. Otto Bräutigam, a major colleague of Rosenberg at the time, opposed this idea. In a later declaration he alleged that Rosenberg, was influenced by his "Baltic friends" in forwarding this initiative, in which a "Baltic Reichskommissariat" with the addition of Belarus would be formed, "and with this the White Ruthenians would also be regarded as Balts". A more important additional colleague of Rosenberg, Georg Leibbrandt, spoke out against this. He argued that the sympathy of the Baltic peoples, who would naturally want the use of their own terminology, could be lost entirely. They would therefore not be won over either as supporters of the German war effort, nor as racially valuable settlers for the region.

After Operation Barbarossa

After the German invasion of the Soviet Union, vast areas were conquered to Germany's east. At first these areas would remain under military occupation by Wehrmacht authorities, but as soon as the military situation allowed it, a more permanent form of administration under German rule for these territories would be instituted.
Führer Decree of 17 July 1941 provided for this move. It established "Reichskommissariats" in the east, as administrative units of the Greater German Reich. The structure of each Reichskommissariat was defined by the same decree. Each of these territories would be led by a German civil governor known as a Reichskommissar appointed by Hitler and answerable only to him. The official appointed for Ostland was Hinrich Lohse, the Oberpräsident and Gauleiter of Schleswig-Holstein. Local government in the Reichskommissariat was to be organized under a "National Director" in Estonia, a "General Director" in Latvia, and a "General Adviser" in Lithuania.
Rosenberg's ministerial authority was, in practice, severely limited. The first reason was that many of the practicalities were determined elsewhere: the Wehrmacht and the Schutzstaffel managed the military and security aspects, Fritz Sauckel as Reich Director of Labour had control over manpower and working areas, Hermann Göring and Albert Speer had total management of economic aspects in the territories and the Reich Postal Service administered the Eastern territories' postal services. These German central government interventions in the affairs of Ostland overriding the appropriate ministries were known as "special administrations". Later, from September 1941, the civil administration that had been decreed in the previous July was actually set up. Lohse and Erich Koch objected to these breaches of their supposed responsibilities, seeking to administer their territories with the independence and authority of Gauleiters. On 1 April 1942, an arbeitsbereich was established in the civilian-administered parts of the occupied Soviet territories, whereupon Koch and Lohse gradually ceased communication with Rosenberg, preferring to deal directly with Adolf Hitler through Martin Bormann and the Party Chancellery. In the process they also displaced all other actors including notably the SS, except in Central Belarus where HSSPF Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski had a special command encompassing both military and civil administration territories and engaged in Nazi security warfare.
In July 1941, the civil administration was declared in much of the occupied Soviet territories before one had materialized in the field. A power vacuum emerged which the SS filled with its SS and Police Leadership Structure, exercising unlimited power over security and policing which it gave up only grudgingly in the autumn when civil administration came into being; indeed Heinrich Himmler would use various tactics until as late as 1943 in unsuccessful efforts to regain this power. This partly explains the strained relations between the SS and the civil administration. In Ostland, matters were further complicated by the personality of the local superior SS officer Friedrich Jeckeln, attacked by the SS's opponents for his alleged corruption, brutality and mindless foolhardiness.

German plans

The short-term political objectives for Ostland differed from those for the Ukraine, the Caucasus or the Moscow regions. The Baltic lands, which were to be joined together with Belarus, would be organized as one Germanized protectorate prior to union with Germany itself in the near future. Rosenberg said that these lands had a fundamentally "European" character, resulting from 700 years of history under Swedish, Danish, and German rule, and should therefore provide Germany with "Lebensraum", an opinion shared by Hitler and other leading Nazis. The Belarusians, however, were considered by the scholars of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories as "little and weak peasant people" dwelling in "folkish indifference", but also "the most harmless and because of this the least dangerous for us of all the peoples in the Eastern Space" and an ideal object of exploitation. Rosenberg suggested that Belarus would be in the future an appropriate reception area of various undesirable population elements from the Baltic part of Ostland and German-occupied Poland. He also toyed with the idea of turning the country into a huge nature reserve.
The regime planned to encourage the post-war settlement of Germans to the region, seeing it as a region traditionally inhabited by Germans that had been overrun by Slavs. This was tried in practice in the province of Pskov during World War II, when ethnically German and Dutch people were resettled from Romania. This settlement of Dutch settlers was encouraged by the Dutch East Company, a Dutch-German organization.
Historical German and Germanic-sounding placenames were also retained for many Baltic cities, such as Reval, Kauen, and Dünaburg, among many others. To underscore the region's planned incorporation into Germany some Nazi ideologists further suggested the future use of the names Peipusland for Estonia and Dünaland for Latvia once they had become part of Germany. The ancient Russian city of Novgorod, the easternmost foreign trading post of the Hanseatic League, was to be renamed Holmgard. During the occupation, the Germans also published a "local" German-language newspaper, the Deutsche Zeitung im Ostland.

Administrative and territorial organization

The Reichskommissariat Ostland was sub-divided into four "General Regions", namely Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and White Ruthenia, headed by a Generalkommissar. The regions were further divided into "Districts". In the three Baltic states their previous counties were also retained as a further sub-division. The conquered territories further to the east were under military control for the entirety of the war. The intention was to include these territories in the anticipated future extension of Ostland. This would have incorporated Ingria, as well as the Novgorod, Pskov and Smolensk areas into the Reichskommissariat. Estonia's new eastern border was to reach somewhere beyond the Volkhov River forming the new eastern border of the Baltic country, while Latvia was to reach the Velikiye Luki region. Belarus was to extend east to include the Smolensk region.
The local administration of the Reichskommissariat Ostland was headed by Reichskommissar Hinrich Lohse. Below him there was an administrative hierarchy: a Generalkomissar led each Generalbezirk, while Gebietskommissars administered Kreisgebiete, respectively. The German administrative center for the entire region, as well as the seat of the Reichskommissar, was in Riga, Latvia.

''[Generalbezirk Estland]'' (Estonia)

District seat: Reval
Generalkommissar: Karl-Siegmund Litzmann

SS and Police Leader: ; Walther Schröder
Subdivided into seven Kreisgebiete:
  • Arensburg
  • Narwa
  • Dorpat
  • Pernau
  • Petschur
  • Reval-Land
  • Reval-Stadt