The Goebbels-Vlasov-Irving Question, Part 2

by Carolyn Yeager

Above: General Andrei Vlasov speaks to Soviet collaborators wearing the uniform of the German Wehrmacht, after completion of field service training.

Right: ROA (Russian Liberation Army) Chevron Identification insignia.

Go to Part 1

What David Irving wrote about Vlasov in his book about Joseph Goebbels

Guess what? It all fits on one page, 770, of the Pdf version of Goebbels: Mastermind of the Third Reich. It reads as follows:

Their unsettled policies toward the captive lieutenant-general Andrei Vlasov further illustrated this rift at the top. This renegade Russian offered to raise an army of fellow prisoners to overthrow bolshevism in Russia. Goebbels backed him; again Himmler and Hitler did not.43 Note 43: Himmler to Stuckart, Jul 16, 1943 (NA film T175, roll 33,2113)

Recall that WWS said that Vlasov had an army of 200,000 trained troops ready to go!

When Hitler did grudgingly allow the project to go ahead, it was purely as a dishonest propaganda ploy.

Goebbels’ radio stations thereupon took up Vlasov’s cause. After hearing one such broadcast on his automobile radio in July, Himmler wrote, ‘I forbid the SS once and for all to fall in, in any way whatsoever, with the entire bolshevik-Vlasov act which the Wehrmacht are staging and which the Führer has so clearly rejected.45  Note 45: Himmler to Gunter d'Alquen, July 11, 1943 (BDC file, d'Alquen).

On the very next day the Soviet government established near Moscow the mirror-image of the Vlasov movement—a Free Germany Committee under the communist writer Erich Weinert.46 Note 46: On this committee, see Gutterer's Files in ZstA Potsdam, Rep 50.01, vol 799 and Yivo files Occ E FD.1 and 4.

Its members were a ragbag of captured German officers, Jews, and other emigrés; its first manifesto was signed by Goebbels’ old sparring partners in the Battle for Berlin, Walter Ulbricht and Wilhelm Pieck. Two months later the Russians formed a renegade League of German Officers—primarily those captured at Stalingrad like General Walter von Seydlitz.47 Note 47: On whom see JG's diary,Sep 23-24, 1943 and Feb 5, 1944 ('a swine without a fatherland'. Yivo also has good files of the League's publications (Occ E FD 9, 10 and 13)

That is it – only these four mentions of Vlasov on one page in an almost 800 page book. That does not argue for great importance of this alleged conflict for Goebbels. After all, Goebbels as Minister of Propaganda wanted to be involved with, and in charge of, all propaganda campaigns directed at winning the war, and most of all, for Goebbels, bolstering the morale of the home front. 

Some thoughts about the reliability of David Irving:

Irving needed money at the time he wrote the Goebbels book. St. Martin's Press cancelled its publication in 1995, forcing Irving to self-publish it. Irving is a story-teller who likes to be amusing and entertaining. As a historian, he has been both brilliant and innovative, as well as shallow and not above dealing in gossip. He has been accused of falsification; in one exceptionally harsh instance mainstream British historian Richard J. Evans, in giving “expert testimony” at the Irving-Lipstadt trial, said:

Not one of [Irving's] books, speeches or articles, not one paragraph, not one sentence in any of them, can be taken on trust as an accurate representation of its historical subject. All of them are completely worthless as history, because Irving cannot be trusted anywhere, in any of them, to give a reliable account of what he is talking or writing about. ... if we mean by historian someone who is concerned to discover the truth about the past, and to give as accurate a representation of it as possible, then Irving is not a historian.

The BBC further quoted Evans as saying:

“Irving, (...) had deliberately distorted and wilfully mistranslated documents, consciously used discredited testimony and falsified historical statistics. (...) Irving has fallen so far short of the standards of scholarship customary amongst historians that he does not deserve to be called a historian at all."

His twin brother Nicholas has said that Irving has been a provacateur and prankster since his youth.

Thus for WWS to read this page in Irving's book on Goebbels and say he saw it and thought it was good enough to use and ran with it -- is strikingly like the “faulty methodology” he has attributed to me when he said that I find something that “works” or that answers my immediate question and look no further. This seems more like WWS's method than mine.

On the Russian soldier, from Wikipedia

ROA (Russian Liberation Army) troops with soldier patches visible, 1944

Irrespective of the political wrangling over Vlasov and the status of the ROA, the reality by mid-1943 was several hundred thousand ex-Soviet volunteers were serving in the German forces, either as Hiwis or in Eastern volunteer units (referred to as Osteinheiten or landeseigene Verbände). These latter were generally deployed in a security role in the rear areas of the armies and army groups in the East, where they constituted a major part of the German capacity to counter the activity of Soviet partisan forces, dating as far back as early 1942. The Germans were, however, always concerned about their reliability, and with the German setbacks in the summer of 1943 this situation took a turn for the worse. On 12 September for example, 2nd Army had to withdraw Sturm-Btl. AOK 2 in order to deal with what is described as “several mutinies and desertions of Eastern units". A 14 September communication from the army states that in the recent period, HiWi absenteeism had risen strongly. Following a series of mutinies attempted or successful and a surge in desertions, they decided in September 1942 that the reliability of these units had fallen to levels where they were more a liability than an asset. In an October 1943 report, 8th Army concluded grimly: "All local volunteers are unreliable during enemy contact. Principal reason of unreliability is the employment of these volunteers in the East."

Since it was considered that it would improve their reliability if they were removed from contact with the local population, it was decided to send them to the West, which the majority of them were in late 1943 and early 1944.

A large number of these battalions were hence integrated into the Divisions in the West. A number of such soldiers were on guard in Normandy on D-Day, and without the equipment or the motivation to fight the Allies, most promptly surrendered.

Another source of information

The only other information I found about this comes from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a report titled Anti-Jewish Propaganda in the Orel Region of Great Russia, 1942-1943: The German Army and its Russian Collaborators by Robert Edwin Herzstein.

Yes, I know it's Jewish propaganda, but that is all there is and it does give us a picture of the efforts that were carried out to get the support of the Russian people without promising them full liberation. It was pretty much all the usual type of wartime propaganda aimed at getting the citizens to collaborate and the soldiers to desert. The purpose of this report by Jews is to convince readers that the “Nazi's” blamed the Jews for everything wrong, in order to deflect blame from themselves for the conditions the Russians found themselves in.

This article is very long. I have only picked out a few excerpts to give an idea of what was going on but it is far from the whole story. One thing we can always be sure of: Nothing is as simple as WWS makes it out to be.

It was essential that qualified PK (Propaganda Company) men be found. Goebbels was anxious to be a part of that process. The Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, played a major role in finding and vetting these men.

PK unit commanders received the "Confidential Information" distributed by the propaganda ministry, but they were in no sense under the control of Goebbels.4 PK materials sent to the Reich for use at home were subjected to both military and political censorship. However, the situation was different for material used by the army in the zones of operation; the army decided what to use and what to discard. The PK unit head worked closely with, but was not subordinate to, the Ic, or "third general staff officer" of the army Oberkommando. He was accountable in a disciplinary sense to the Wehrmacht Propaganda Branch (WPr) of the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht (OKW).5 In the case of PK 693, this arrangement meant collaboration with the Ic of the Second Panzer Army and subordination to the Smolensk office "W" of the Wehrmacht Propaganda Branch. Much of the material used by PK 693 came from this office as well as from Goebbels's various propaganda outlets.6

Goebbels had taught for years that the masses were primitive. Presumably, this was even more the case when one dealt with Slavic hordes, barbarized Untermenschen like the Russians. "The rank and file," Goebbels argued, "are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitious." He believed that "what matters is not that propaganda should have class, but rather, that it should lead to the goal," which was "the conquest of the masses." In this pragmatic sense, propaganda emerged "in a causal sense out of the daily struggle.”7 For Goebbels and Hitler, that daily struggle now consisted of a life-or-death war against an enemy coalition crafted by the Jews, and held together at their behest.

Reichsleiter Alfred Rosenberg's Weltdienst, or World Service, an organ of the Foreign Policy Office of the NSDAP, published fortnightly editions in eighteen languages, including Russian. It specialized in anti-Jewish materials; and figures like Roosevelt, LaGuardia, Bernard Baruch, and Henry Morgenthau, Jr., appeared frequently in its pages. Nazi officials often received similar materials from Reichsleiter Dr. Robert Ley's Central Education Office of the NSDAP.

[…]

The OKW worked with the propaganda ministry in crafting propaganda themes that could be useful to units in occupied territories and zones of operation. General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff of the OKW, approved propaganda pamphlets aimed at turning Red Army soldiers into deserters (Uberlaufer). The leaflets informed the Soviets that Stalin was in league with, and a tool of, the Jews. The army made massive use of the theme of "JewBolshevism," arguing that Hitler was liberating Europe from the Jews.8

[…]

In the view of the German military propagandists, the Russian peasant and small townsman would also respond well to their attacks on British, American, and Russian-Jewish rapacious capitalism. This line was a staple of the propaganda materials that reached Smolensk and Orel.9

Since literacy had made great strides in Russia since 1918, the PK could rely in part upon the written word. One publication played a crucial role in bringing the Nazi message to the people of the Orel region. The newspaper Rech (The Speech) became a major weapon in the arsenal of PK 693. In early 1942, Rech was still an unimpressive tabloid, with a circulation limited mainly to the city of Orel. It consisted of little more than translations of German army communiques. Even so, Rech was in demand, since people were starved for news, for something to read.

Starting in the spring of 1942, Lieutenant Dierich and an assistant, Sonderfuhrer Artur Bay, revamped the newspaper. In May, Bay traveled to Briansk and other towns in order to build up Rech's distribution network. He also hired local stringers, and the paper began to look more Russian. A special edition appeared in time for the May Day holiday.

By the end of July, circulation was on the rise; a month later Rech had 6,000 subscribers in Orel alone, about one for each household. German observers reported that the Russian populace was receptive.

News distorted by propaganda was nothing new to the people of Orel; the paper was in great demand. Reports soon came in about peasants exchanging bread and potatoes for copies of Rech. People craved news about the war, about crops, the weather, and human interest topics. For example, Rech, No. 70 consisted of a combination of Wehrmacht military communiques, agricultural information, notices of forthcoming radio broadcasts, new documentation requirements, and antisemitism.

[…]

Goebbels was disturbed by the reports of growing resistance to the German labor deportation measures in the occupied territories. In February 1943 he declared that the Germans would have to mobilize the Ostvolker (Eastern folk) in order to win the war. Talk about their subjugation would have to yield to promises (albeit vague) of social justice and liberation.43 Rech followed the new line. It often portrayed Germany as a country where social justice prevailed, an ideal place in which to work. PK 693 used this theme as a weapon against disquieting rumors concerning the Arbeitseinsatz (compulsory labor) program.44 At the same time, Rech began to speak more openly of the Russian Liberation Army of General Andrei Vlasov, a turncoat officer who was engaging in a unrequited affair with the German Reich. Because of Hitler's refusal to promise much of a future to the Russian people, however, Ic and PK 693 propagandists had to rely upon generalizations about the future of liberated Russia, or glorified pictures of the New Germany.45

[…]

The failure of the Germans' "Operation Citadel" in the middle of July 1943 was a prelude to the massive Soviet offensive against the Orel salient. Even as the Red Army approached Orel, the Germans kept publishing Rech. During these last hectic weeks the citizens of the town could hear the roar of artillery coming closer. Long columns of German troops, Russian collaborators, and civilians streamed through Orel on their way west, to the safety of the new HagenStellung, a line of German fortifications. Hitler belatedly consented to the evacuation of Orel, and in early August the Soviets entered the town.

Rech had suspended publication, but Ic valued its work and quickly reassembled much of the newspaper's staff in nearby Briansk. Soon there were further moves to the west, to places like Bobruisk. However, men like Samarin no longer worked for PK 693. Hitler had ordered the transfer of the Second Panzer Army to the northern Balkan theater, and the PK moved with it.

Rech now appeared under the supervision of PK 612, which worked with the Ninth Army in White Russia. Rech was not new to this PK, for the company had distributed over 230,000 copies of the newspaper between late March and the middle of August. During the last months of 1943, PK 612 printed Rech twice a week, in editions of 60,000 copies each. The newspaper seems to have ceased publication in 1944, perhaps at the time of the disintegration of Army Group Center in the middle of the year.

How did German experts evaluate the efficacy of Rech? Personnel from the German army and the Reich Security Main Office were convinced that Rech was an effective weapon in the morale war against the Red Army. One report noted that:

the newspaper Rech makes a great impression on the prisoners [of war] and is almost preferred to the leaflets. The [Seventeenth Panzer] division suggests that this Russian newspaper be dropped over advanced enemy lines when possible, since the Red Army soldiers deployed at the front receive no news at all, and have no opportunity to listen to German radio broadcasts.