"Kill The Germans" Exhorts ILYA EHRENBERG

Soviet writer and journalist Ilya Ehrenburg , July 24, 1942, at the height of summer during the German advance on the Don, published in the "Red Star" the infamous article "Kill the Germans." Adolf Hitler personally ordered the capture and hanging of Ehrenburg. Nazi propagandists gave Ehrenburg the nickname "Home Jew Stalin." 

Below is the article as published in the "Red Star".


"Here are excerpts from three letters found on dead Germans. Inspector Reinhardt wrote to Lieutenant Otto Schirach: "[...] I have found six Russians in the area. They last far longer than Frenchmen. Only one of them has died. [...] Their upkeep costs nothing and we must not tolerate that these animals, whose children are possibly killing our children right now, get to eat German bread. Yesterday I whipped lightly two Russian beasts who secretly drunk up skim milk meant for pigs [...]" A certain Otto Essmann wrote to Lieutenant Helmut Wiegand: "We now have some Russian prisoners of war. These fellows feed on worms by the airstrip and throw themselves at buckets of dirty water. I have seen them eating weeds. It is hard to believe that these are human beings..." Slavers - they would like to enslave our people. They take some Russians home, mistreat them, make them lose their wits by hunger, to the point that they eat grass and worms, and then a repulsive German with a stinking cigar can philosophise: "Are these perhaps human beings?" We know everything. We remember everything. We have understood: Germans are not human beings. Henceforth the word German means to us the most terrible curse. From now on the word German will trigger your rifle. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you think that instead of you, the man next to you will kill him, you have not understood the threat. If you do not kill the German, he will kill you. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German before combat. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another - there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill."

A little earlier, on 18 July 1942  the "Red Star" published a poem by Konstantin Simonov titled "Kill him", which possibly, inspired Ehrenburg to come up with his subsequent article. Here is the Simonov poem being recited by Mikhail Tsariov, a folk artist


The text of the Simonov poem......

If your house means a thing to you
Where you first dreamed your Russian dreams 
In your swinging cradle, afloat 
Beneath the log ceiling beams. 
If your house means a thing to you 
With its stove, corners, walls and floors
Worn smooth by the footsteps of three 
Generations of ancestors. 

If your small garden means a thing: 
With its May blooms and bees humming low,
With its table your grandfather built 
Neath the linden - a century ago.
If you don't want a German to tread 
The floor in your house and chance
To sit in your ancestors' place 
And destroy your yard's trees and plants

If your mother is dear to you 
And the breast that gave you suck 
Which hasn't had milk for years 
But is now where you put your cheek; 
If you cannot stand the thought 
Of a German's doing her harm. 
Beating her furrowed face 
With her braids wound round his arm. 
And those hands which carried you 
To your cradle washing instead 
A German's dirty clothes
Or making him his bed .

[If you haven't forgotten your father 
Who tossed you and teased your toes, 
Who was a good soldier, who vanished 
In the high Carpathian snows,
Who died for your motherland's fate, 
For each Don and each Volga wave, 
If you don't want him in his sleeping 
To turn over in his grave, 
When a German tears his soldier picture 
With crosses from its place 
And before your own mother's eyes 
Stamps hobnailed boots on his face.]

If you don't want to give away 
Her you walked with and didn't touch,
Her you didn't dare even to kiss 
For a long time - you loved her so much,
And the Germans cornering her 
And taking her alive by force, 
Crucifying her - three of them 
Naked, on the floor; with coarse 
Moans, hate, and blood, - 
Those dogs taking advantage of 
All you sacredly preserved 
With your strong, male love.

If you don't want to give away 
To a German with his black gun 
Your house, your mother, your wife 
All that's yours as a native son 
No: No one will save your land
If you don't save it from the worst.
No: No one will kill this foe, 
If you don't kill him first.

And until you have killed him, don't 
Talk about your love - and 
Call the house where you lived your home 
Or the land where you grew up your land.

If your brother killed a German, 
If your neighbor killed one too, 
It's your brother's and neighbor's vengeance, 
And it's no revenge for you.
You can't sit behind another 
Letting him fire your shot.
If your brother kills a German,
Hes a soldier; you are not.

So kill that German so he 
Will lie on the ground's backbone, 
So the funeral wailing will be 
In his house, not in your own.
He wanted it so It's his guilt 
Let his house burn up, and his life.
Let his woman become a widow; 
Don't let it be your wife. 
Don't let your mother tire from tears; 
Let the one who bore him bear the pain. 
Don't let it be yours, but his
Family who will wait in vain.

So kill at least one of them 
And as soon as you can. Still 
Each one you chance to see! 
Kill him! Kill him! Kill! 


The "Kill The Germans" campaign took many forms. It appeared on billboards and as posters.

Here is a poster in Leningrad in 1943 at the height of the siege









Share this PostPin ThisShare on TumblrShare on Google PlusEmail This

Popular Articles On This Site

PicturesHistory.blogspot.com

PicturesHistory.blogspot.com

Quotes about war....

"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man."
--Napoleon Hill

"We have failed to grasp the fact that mankind is becoming a single unit, and that for a unit to fight against itself is suicide."
--Havelock Ellis

'Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."
--Mao Tse-Tung (1893 - 1976)

"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in."
--George McGovern

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic."
--Joseph Stalin

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
--Voltaire, War

In war, truth is the first casualty.
-- Aeschylus

"The ability and inclination to use physical strength is no indication of bravery or tenacity to life. The greatest cowards are often the greatest bullies. Nothing is cheaper and more common than physical bravery."
--Clarence Darrow, Resist Not Evil

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
--Adolf Hitler

"To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization."
--George Orwell

"Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country."
--Bertrand Russell

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.
--Francis Meehan

Snippets From History

German Soldiers in Russia: Part 1

Hubert Menzel was a major in the General Operations Department of the OKH (the Oberkommando des Heers, the German Army headquarters), and for him the idea of invading the Soviet Union in 1941 had the smack of cold, clear logic to it: 'We knew that in two years' time, that is by the end of 1942, beginning of 1943, the English would be ready, the Americans would be ready, the Russians would be ready too, and then we would have to deal with all three of them at the same time.... We had to try to remove the greatest threat from the East.... At the time it seemed possible.'
==========

Battle for Berlin, 1945

'We started to fire at the masses,' says one former German machine gunner. 'They weren't human beings for us. It was a wall of attacking beasts who were trying to kill us. You yourself were no longer human.'

==========

Berlin after it fell to the Russians, 1945

"Vladlen Anchishkin, a Soviet battery commander on the 1st Ukrainian Front, sums up the horror of the whole event, when he tells how he took personal revenge on German soldiers: 'I can admit it now, I was in such a state, I was in such a frenzy. I said, 'Bring them here for an interrogation' and I had a knife, and I cut him. I cut a lot of them. I thought, 'You wanted to kill me, now it's your turn.'
Read More

========

Dramatic Pictures: Battle For Stalingrad
"...Effective command no longer possible... further defense senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops."
General Paulus' radio message to Hitler on January 24, 1943

"...Capitulation is impossible. The 6th Army will do its historic duty at Stalingrad until the last man, the last bullet..."

Hitler's response to General Friedrich Paulus' request to withdraw from the city

READ MORE>>>

Points To Ponder....

The fall of France was shocking. It reduced France to virtually a non-player in the Second World War. The efforts of Charles de Gualle were more symbolic than material. But the martial instincts of the French must never be doubted. Under Napoleon they were a formidable military power. The French definitely have more iron in their blood then say, the Italians [I do not mean it in a derogatory sense. War never makes sense]

============

Bias Of Western Historians

Soviet resistance made possible a successful Allied invasion of France, and ensured the final Allied victory over Germany.

It can hardly be called mere 'resistance'! If it hadn't been for the Russians, Hitler would have made mincemeat of British forces in Africa and landed on British shores in no time. Hitler attacked Russia first because it had more land and resources than Britain. It is as simple as that.

READ MORE>>>>
Eastern Front: Bias Of Western Historians