Is it true that Germany exported Ukrainian black soil in an organized manner during the Great Patriotic War?

In the spring of 2023, Russian media and officials began to talk about Western countries allegedly exporting black soil from Ukraine to the EU. At the same time, officials and television channels recalled that the Germans did the same thing during the Great Patriotic War. We decided to check if this was true.

Newspaper articles and television stories about the export of black soil from Ukraine began to appear after 2015. For example, she wrote about this “Russian newspaper" Then almost every publication of the official Russian press on this topic was accompanied by a comparison with the behavior of Nazi Germany - in particular, on the website Vesti.ru and on the TV channelStar" March 9, 2023 about this spoke and official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova. And the reason for this was fake video, allegedly indicating the export of Ukrainian black soil to Poland.

The story about the removal of black soil by the German military circulated in Soviet oral history. It is not possible to find evidence of such a practice in authoritative sources. In articles devoted to this issue, two references are most often found. One is quoted with reference to the hero of the Soviet Union, Veniamin Gridin: “In Ukraine, German troops stubbornly held back the advance of our troops on a large railway junction and drove train after train towards Germany, they thought, with bread, since the station had a huge elevator. When they finally captured the last train with difficulty and opened the carriages, they were amazed: the Germans were not exporting bread to starving Germany, but the famous Ukrainian black soil!”

But upon closer examination, it turns out that this memory is not first-hand. Gridin did not leave any memoirs, but the story about black soil is known in interpretations his son-in-law, an agronomist Egor Lukyanov.

The second famous story that is often referenced on the Internet is article Anatoly Evich, author of books about rocket science. At the beginning of the war he was five years old, and he recalls his grandfather’s story: “Grandfather Panteley explained that at the railway station black soil was being loaded into Pullmans for shipment to Germany. "They grab everything cleanly. Cows, pigs, even manure are sent to their fatherland. I knew before: they are greedy, very greedy. But I didn’t suspect that they were so raking." This story can also hardly be considered trustworthy, given the age of the witness and the fact that he did not find out about it himself.

Ukrainian historians called stories about the Germans exporting black soil are a myth. Sergey Gromenko from Ukrainian Institute of National Memory wrote that “digging, loading and transporting soil is an extremely labor-intensive process, and the land itself, even the most fertile, does not provide an immediate economic effect.”

There is a more compelling argument. In 1971, GDR historian Norbert Müller published the monograph “Wehrmacht and occupation (1941-1944)" In it he talks about the plunder of the eastern territories, including Ukraine. Archival documents are provided at the end of the book. Among them there is a table of explored and evacuated raw material reserves as of July 31, 1943.

The table shows that the Germans exported many natural resources, as well as gold, silver and iron, in hundreds of thousands, or even millions of tons. But black soil is not on this list. Provides similar data in his book “Germany and Ukraine in the Second World War” by Ukrainian historian Vladimir Kosyk.

In addition, Nazi Germany had been developing since 1940 "General plan Ost" According to this program a significant part of the indigenous population of Poland, Ukraine and Belarus was to be evicted further to the east, and their place on fertile lands was to be taken by German colonists. There was no practical sense in systematically removing black soil from the occupied territories intended for colonization.

Thus, the story about the systematic export of black soil from Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War is not confirmed.

Cover photo: Bundesarchiv

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

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