Myth
18
The Nazis took Black Soil from Ukraine in Wagon Trains
Sergii Gromenko
Veniamin Hridin, Hero of the Soviet Union
“In Ukraine, German troops stubbornly resisted the attack of our troops on a big railway junction and pushed wagon after wagon to Germany, with what we thought was grain…we were amazed: the Germans were not taking grain to starving Germany but the famous Ukrainian black earth!”
■ The Essence of the Myth
Whether the Germans were attacking or retreating – it did not matter. In every case, they assembled their guns and took up shovels to remove the fertile black soil layer and sent it to the Reich.
■ Fast Facts
This myth is a stratification of various stories, such as the export of raw materials, products and Ostarbeiter to Germany, along with the plans for the agricultural colonization of Ukraine by the Germans and so on. However, in reality the Nazis were very meticulous in calculating their stolen property – and the soil listed as a resource in any of the documents.
■ Detailed Facts
Given the legendary state of the Soviet roads and sparse network of railways, there is little wonder that the Germans always had problems with supplying their troops with necessary materials. Furthermore, the digging, loading and transporting of soil is a very laborious process and the soil itself, even the most fertile would not translate into any immediate positive economic effect. As such, given the choice between the export of manganese and iron ore or black earth, the Nazis were inclined to favor the ore.
After the war, several researchers focused on the topic of the Nazi plunder of the East. Among them, for example, was N. Muller, an author from the German Democratic Republic, and V. Kosyk, a Ukrainian from France as well as many others. Nowhere in the research based on a thorough search of Nazi archives, find any evidence that the Nazis exported Ukrainian black earth.
Despite the almost total prevalence and almost national status of this myth, it must be noted that it exists in the imagination of “eyewitnesses.”
This simply never happened.
Ostarbeiters being exported en masse to Germany by the Nazis. But no black earth soil
