Close Encounters in War Journal (Dec 2022)
Researching Surviving: Agricultural Experimentation in Ukraine under German Occupation during the Second World War
Abstract
Exploiting Ukrainian agriculture was crucial for the German geostrategic and military plans and it was pursued on a large scale, from confiscating raw materials to enhancing the scientific support of the industry. On the threshold of the Second World War, 137 Ukrainian research institutions carried out agricultural research funded with 17 million rubles per year. The lack of elaborate evacuation plans and the rapid advance of the Wehrmacht led to the failure of the Soviet evacuation campaign in 1941. The full fledged evacuation was also impossible for objective reasons: for agrarian scientists, both the object and the result of their research hardly exist but on the land. Agricultural scientists who found themselves under the occupation of the German authorities tried to save from plunder and destruction the technical apparatus, the scientific documentation, and the breeding materials. Given the importance of agricultural research facilities for German food security, Ukrainian agricultural research institutions came under the jurisdiction of the German administrative structures (the Reichsministerium for the Occupied Eastern Territories). Ukrainian agricultural scientists remained in the occupied territories, where the occupants enforced compulsory military service. Thus, they were forced to work for the “new masters”, participate in the export of the intellectual product to Germany, and provide assistance in scientific projects of the German military. The less appalling scenario for those scientists implied the continuity of the research pursued before the war, combined with the attempt to preserve the scientific results, and avoid starvation or deportation to Germany.
