Where the Iron Crosses Grow

The occupied Crimea was reorganized in August 1942 as the Generalbezirk Krim (General District) and subordinated to the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. The Austrian Nazi leader Alfred Frauenfeld was put in charge of the Generalbezirk Krim, which he operated as a semi-independent personal fiefdom. Frauenfeld was less vicious than Alvensleben, but viewed ethnic transformation as vital to German success in the Crimea and sought to import Volksdeutsche settlers into the occupied territory. Since virtually all of the Crimean Germans had been removed to the Urals by the NKVD in August 1941, the colonists would have to come from existing Volksdeutsche settlements in areas such as the Tyrol and Moldava. Frauenfeld had announced that Italians were “in all respects equivalent to Volksdeutsche,” and sought to gather up ethnic Italians from Ukraine.⁸ However, the task of gathering colonists for the Crimea proved far more difficult than expected, and by August 1943 only about 4,000 had been transported to the peninsula. Frauenfeld hoped to get 38,000, but even if he had, they would still have been only a tiny minority.⁹ Efforts to organize economic projects such as “Arbeitsgruppe Krim” sounded great in reports to Berlin, but the reality on the ground was different. In May 1942, Frauenfeld established two small demonstration economic projects in Simferopol – a leather tannery and a textile factory, which together employed 250 workers.¹⁰ Later, small quantities of coal were extracted from the region, as well as some foodstuffs, but the “colonies” remained dependent upon German supplies, draining resources from military projects. Frauenfeld was willing to cooperate with the Tatars, but he was very enamored of introducing or “re-discovering” Gothic culture in the Crimea, which would be renamed Gotengau. He encouraged amateur German archaeologists to come to the Crimea in the hope of discovering ancient Gothic artifacts in the region, which would demonstrate cultural links to the modern Germany and justify the post-war annexation by the Third Reich. While committed to making this fantasy into reality, Frauenfeld was less adept at restoring the region’s agriculture, which had been nearly ruined by collectivization, war, and neglect. Throughout the war, the Crimea barely produced enough food to feed the Axis occupation forces, never mind the local population. One thing that the Crimea did produce in abundance was forced labor, and Frauenfeld provided Robert Ley, the Reich’s labor minister, with over 60,000 forced laborers from the Crimea. Ley openly discussed the possibility of building summer resort camps for German youth groups in the Crimea, in another retreat from wartime reality.

The Wehrmacht established the Befehlshaber Krim under General der Infanterie Franz Mattenklott to control all military forces, exclusive of the SS, in the Crimea. Once AOK 11 left for Leningrad, he was left with a hodgepodge collection of Feldgendarmerie, coastal artillery, flak, pionier, signal, and supply units to act as an occupation force. In Sevastopol, Ortskommandantur 290 (OK 290) was established under the artillery officer Oberstleutnant Haensch. However, it was the SS, SD, and Abwehr who really ran occupied Sevastopol. Only five days after the end of organized Soviet resistance in the SOR, an SD detachment led by SS Obersturmbannführer D.M. Frick arrived and announced that all citizens left in Sevastopol would register within 48 hours or “be shot.” Assisted by AOK 11’s Gruppe Geheime Feldpolizei 647, the SD used the registration process to identify Komsomol members, communists, and Red Army survivors trying to hide among the population. In order to protect the Wehrmacht from Soviet stay-behind espionage networks, an Abwehr unit known as “Darius 305” arrived in Sevastopol to conduct the counterintelligence mission. Approximately 1,500 Jews and communists were identified in Sevastopol by July 12 and turned over to Sonderkommando 11a for liquidation. The SD was also put in charge of 20 POW camps established around Sevastopol and Simferopol and, after filtering out useful collaborators, began eliminating the prisoners in August 1942. SD detachments took small groups of POWs out for labor details to clear rubble, and then shot them.