Why were needed deportations. In terms of military logic
To say that the leadership of the USSR were fools is possible. But this is not so
The Stalinist deportations of the peoples of the USSR (the Balts, the Crimean Tatars, etc.) are now customarily explained by the cruelty and vengefulness of the tyrant. And let's try from a logical point of view ...
First, let's decide: the deportations were not invented by Stalin. The removal from the front line of “unreliable” nations is a common thing in the military practice of all countries of the world.
It occurs with varying degrees of rigidity - from gentle administrative expulsions to total destruction.
And here too - not Stalin set a record. Turks at the beginning of the First World War cut out their unreliable Armenians by the roots. The Austrians drove the unreliable Galician Rusyns into the death camps - Talerhof and Terezin, from which very few people returned alive.
The “bloody” Stalin acted differently - he moved the nations over the vast territory of the USSR.
Why did he need it? Let us estimate: the war is beginning (it is already under way, it has just ended). The whole economy works in the maximum degree of tension, every person, every liter of fuel, every railway carriage counts ...
And then the leader makes a decision from some “hangover”: let’s move a couple of hundreds of thousands of some people somewhere for a couple of thousand kilometers ... The national economy stands on its ears: tens of thousands of people are distracted from the needs of the front and the military-industrial complex (military, militia, administrators, transport workers, supplies), hundreds of trains begin to haul unhappy people with their belongings across the country’s floor instead of hauling coal, steel, Tanks and shells ...
Further: the territory from which the whole nation is taken out becomes unproductive for a long time. And the territory, where this people were brought, spends a precious resource on reception and elementary arrangement of those who arrived. How much these migrations of peoples then cost in money is difficult to count. But the blow to the country's economy was definitely strong.
Children in such cases ask the question: "Uncle, are you a fool?"
To say that the leadership of the USSR were fools is possible. But this is not so. Fools don't win wars. Especially the world. So, in the actions of Stalin was the logic. Which one?
I will try to explain it on the most typical example - the deportation of the Crimean Tatars to Uzbekistan in the spring of 1944.
Well, I hope you know that the Crimean Tatars actively supported the German occupation? The commander of the 11 of the German army, Colonel-General von Manstein, with some surprise, wrote: “The Tatars immediately took our side. They saw in us their liberators from the Bolshevik yoke ... "
I will not analyze the reasons right now, I just state: during the German occupation, a small Crimean Tatar folk put Hitler more than 20 thousand fighters - combatant battalions, policemen, punitive ... Number of Crimean Tatars (per capita) who swore to Hitler, made the World War II record . It is a fact.
After the Soviet army beat off Crimea in April 1944, a fair number of Tatars serving the Germans remained on the peninsula. For what? And for the same - for the guerrilla war. The Germans prepared them there for this purpose. And the Crimea for the partisans amazingly adapted.
Huge coveted coastline - to deliver weapon and supplies, landings can be on an industrial scale. Mountains, forests, caves, wild trails - you can easily grab ten thousand militants. And the main thing: Crimean-Tatar population hostile to Soviet power, ready to support its partisans for at least a hundred years - with food, clothing, shelters, intelligence, fighters ...
And now we look: the front went further west, a small garrison and the administration remained on the peninsula. By that time, the southern Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria also belonged to the Germans ... From their coast to the Crimea there is one night crossing. The simplest scenario: the partisan uprising, the landing of the German troops, and the Crimea - again German. In the rear of the Soviet army.
What then should be done? The first option is to leave a few extra divisions on the peninsula and gradually smother the guerrilla movement for many years. Actually, after the war, the struggle against the “forest brothers” in the Baltic States and Bandera in Western Ukraine took place. But where to get these extra divisions in the spring of 1944? At the front, every battalion counts.
The second option is to deprive the partisans of popular support. Without food, they don’t make much of it. The Nazis solved this issue in Belarus simply - they totally destroyed the civilian population in the partisan territories of thousands of square kilometers. As they say - there are no people, no problems.
And what other options could there be? .. Apologize for the trouble and return the Crimea to the Germans? And the Germans will be pleased, and the Crimean Tatars ... And here, guided by military logic, we just come to the obvious need to deport the Crimean Tatars from the peninsula ...
Cruel? Not really. The expulsion of the Tatars is not the most disgusting thing that happened during World War II. Any alternative would be much worse.
I will not talk about the German methods of dealing with the civilian population of the enemy, but let me remind you that already at the end of the war the Americans were burning atomic bombs to the civilian population of Japan, roughly equal to the number of Tatars expelled from Crimea. They did not send the Japanese to sunny Uzbekistan, as Stalin did with the Tatars, but burned them. Such was the military logic of the most democratic country in the world ...
Maybe I am wrong, but the practice of Stalin’s deportations seems to me more humane.
P.S. One thing I can not understand: the Americans in 1942, in the 120 concentration camp, thousands of their citizens of Japanese origin were sent to the concentration camps. All those who had at least 1 / 16 in their blood had a part of Japanese blood ... What was their logic? After all, the Japanese soldier did not go to the American continent, from America to Japan - 8 thousand. Km of the ocean, in America there never was a Japanese partisan ... Maybe, who knows?
Fotochka on top - this is not Auschwitz, this is a concentration camp for the Japs in Arkansas. True, cozy place?
- Yuri Alexeev
- http://www.km.ru/science-tech/2015/09/22/istoriya-khkh-veka/764492-zachem-byli-nuzhny-deportatsii-s-tochki-zreniya-vo
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