Chapter 9.5: The German Occupation (1941-1944)
On the 5th of December 1941 Estonia was placed under the rule of the Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories. That was by the way led by Alfred Rosenberg, a Baltic-German from Tallinn, who migrated to Germany in 1919. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belarus were bundled together into Reichskomissariat Ostland. Estonia was turned into Generalbezirk Estland, and ruled by Karl Siegmund Litzmann. He was friendly to Estonians and for this occasionally got into conflict with his superiors, however he mostly just followed orders from Berlin. The civil servants under him were all Germans, and the same was for regional commissars, who checked the work of Estonian administered country, city and rural councils and governments.
The Germans also organised an institution of Estonian collaborants to rule beside them. It was called the Eesti Omavalitsus (Estonian Self-Administration) and ruled by the former propaganda leader of the Vapsid movement, Hjalmar Mäe. The administration did try to expand its rights and to achieve autonomy for Estonia, if not full independence, however these attempts were blocked by Berlin and in reality it just stayed as a collaborationist extension of the occupying power.
Hjalmar Mäe (1901-1978, died in exile).
It was planned that after the war the border of Estonia would be extended to Ladoga lake. The locals in the new eastern territories were to be deported further East. About half of the Estonian population would inhibit the new areas, the other half which would be of “racially better quality” would stay in Estonia, where they would be joined by German colonists and germanized. All these plans however were postponed to the post war era and the contemporary Estonians would not learn about their planned assimilation.
The regime was very lenient on the showcase of Estonian national symbols like the flag. The independence day celebrations returned, some destroyed statues were rebuilt and many institutions returned to their pre-war names and structures. The German occupation resembled the lost republic much more than the Soviet occupation.
The Estonian and Nazi flags flying side-by-side.
The calendar for 1942 by the reopened Postimees newspaper, including a German eagle (without the swastika) together with Estonian folk motifs.
The German economic policy in Estonia was controversial. On the one hand the Estonian economy was subjugated for the interests of Germany and its main purpose became supplying the German army and German civilian population. On the other hand that subjugation was not predatory, as Estonia was to become a part of Greater Germany and therefore kept intact. As a result of this the German regime helped to alleviate the economic losses and mismanagement caused by the Soviet occupation.
Farmers were handed mandatory selling norms, meaning they had to sell some portion of their produce at a fixed price. Although it was regarded as an extortion by the farmers themselves, the goal was not to make the farms go bankrupt and did not destroy the ability of the farmers to expand their farms. The agricultural sector managed to bounce back from the chaos of the Soviet occupation, despite the years of war. Although the area made up by farmland as well as yearly yields were still below the 1940 levels in 1944, the number of farm animals however had surpassed it.
A big disappointment for Estonians was the decision by the Germans to not return the nationalised property to the rightful owners. Instead it was essentially kept as war loot. The land reform was cancelled however, but despite this the return of ownership of farms went slowly.
General standards of living kept falling due to the war. People in the cities were put under the rationing system, and people had to use buying licences to get a certain amount of food. However this was not enough to satisfy the average needs of the people and thus a black market appeared. The antagonism against the occupation was not driven by the lack of consumer goods, but rather the fact that Germans had higher norms than Estonians.
The first repressions began already in the summer of 1941 and were mostly directed against the hated communists and other collaborants of the Soviet occupation, who were regarded as traitors by the wider public. Later however the persecution of nationalists, anglophiles and pacifists began as well. The prisons and fresh concentration camps filled up quickly with political prisoners.
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Mini Chapter: The Holocaust of Estonian Jews
In pre-war times Estonia had had a population of roughly 4000 Jews.
The persecution of Estonian Jews already began during the Soviet occupation. Their societies were closed down and cultural autonomy was disbanded. About 10% of the Jewish population was deported in the June deportations.
The majority of Jews retreated with the Soviet army, about a 1000 men, women and children stayed. They were sure about having done nothing wrong and too in love with their homeland to leave.
They were quickly arrested by the authorities. The German “cleansing squads” also utilised Estonian collaborants, although as Estonians were not anti-Jewish on any level, those operations were not portrayed as an anti-Jewish action but rather as an anti-Communist action. Estonians believed they were capturing communist for being traitors rather than Jews on the basis of their race.
Many Estonians would go to precincts to defend their arrested Jewish co-workers or friends, telling stories of their good character and how they had done nothing wrong, providing proof of pro-Estonian conduct in the hopes of the suspects being released. As a result the head of the German secret police in Estonia complained to Berlin at the end of 1941 that “racist tendencies amongst Estonians are very underdeveloped”.
Roughly 1000 Estonian Jews were murdered by the Germans. The same happened to the Estonian Roma population, which numbered around 800 before the war.
On the 1st of June 1942 Estonia was proudly declared “Judenfrei”, free of Jews.
Martin Sandberger (1911-2010), head of the German secret police in Estonia, the main organisor of the holocaust here.
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Altogether during the three years of German occupation about 7800 Estonian people were killed. The majority of victims were Estonians.
After the Estonian Jewish population had been eliminated, the Germans started importing Jews from other parts of Europe. Roughly 20 concentration camps were established on Estonian soil, where about 10 thousand Jews were murdered. In addition about 15 thousand Soviet war prisoners died in Estonia as well, mostly due to starvation and bad living conditions.
The gate of the Klooga concentration camp.
A map showcasing the locations of concentration camps during the German occupation. The locations marked with a cross are where Estonian Jews were executed, the spots marked with a dot are where foreign Jews were executed.
In the summer of 1942 the formation of the Estonian SS-Legion began. However by that time Estonians had become disillusioned and disgruntled with the German occupation and only about 1200 volunteers joined by the end of the year. After that the Germans started to forcefully mobilise men to the legion.
Although Estonians were keen on fighting against communists, many did not want to do that in the German uniform. Several thousand Estonians fled over the gulf to Finland to fight in the Finnish army. In 1941 Finland had begun its Continuation War to regain the lost territory from the Soviets. Out of the Estonians in the Finnish army the Infantry Regiment 200 was formed, which was referred to as the “soomepoiste rügement” (Finnish boys regiment). Overall about 3500 Estonians fought in the Finnish army, in essence paying back for the help Estonia had received in the War of Independence. Most of them would return to Estonia in 1944.
The Estonian unit in the Finnish army lined up.
A couple of German Era military posters.
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