Fascist Pigs: Technoscientific Organisms and the History of Fascism

This was a production system close to the ones established by European colonial powers in the tropics after slavery was abolished, with seeds distributed to indigenous population mobilized to grow a cash crop on their own plots, instead of the traditional plantation scheme in which indigenous people were forced to move to a plantation owned by a white owner. Apparently, there were no plans to distribute kok-sagyz seeds among German settlers in the east, its cultivation deemed too harsh for the master race. As it was typical of such systems, the biggest challenge was to convince the indigenous people of their interest in a cash crop that demanded fertile soils and painstaking care for its growing and that had no nutritional value, thus jeopardizing local food security. As Stahl candidly acknowledged, Ukrainian “rural populations understandably don’t have much enthusiasm for kok-sagyz, since it has no direct use for them.”[54] Not far from the Italian prizes for coffee growers described above, but closer even to the forms of payment of rubber trees tappers in the Amazon or in western Africa, Stahl described the scheme of prizes put in place by the Reich Commissariat of the Ukraine (RKU) to promote kok-sagyz seed reproduction among local peasants.[55] Points could be traded by “textiles, vodka, salt, sugar, etc.”[56] For a kilogram of seeds the peasant got 600 points, with 100 points corresponding to 100 cigarettes, or a liter of schnapps, or a kilogram of sugar. Stahl saw it doubtful that such generosity could be sustained in the future, considering that it was reasonable to think of a productivity of 5 kilograms of seeds per hectares, which translated to 30 liters of schnapps per hectare. More than that, in subsequent years the prize system was to be extended to root production—where the latex content of the plant was located—which demanded less largesse in the distribution of goods to the local peasants.[57] Or as Hitler famously professed, as their land was taken, Ukrainians could be given “scarves, glass beads, and everything that colonial peoples like.”[58]

The natives in question were the local populations of eastern Europe under German occupation that had not been transferred or exterminated to make space for German settlers. The system was built on previous Soviet efforts of kok-sagyz cultivation in the area, replacing collectivist production with a colonial cash crop scheme relying on cheap indigenous labor. If Ukrainian peasants were resentful of Bolshevik previous imposition of kok-sagyz cultivation, they demonstrated the same unwillingness to plant it under the new German imperial rule.[59] After all, the Ukraine areas that Stahl visited in his trip were part of the Bloodlands, the epithet Timothy Snyder gave to the parts of eastern Europe that suffered the successive rule of Nazi and Soviet empires.[60]

While in zones faraway from the front, such as the Warthegau or Danzig-West Prussia, Himmler’s push for rubber production had to be balanced by the interest of the local civil administration as well as the Food and Agriculture Ministry in pursuing food crops, in the Ukraine, problems were even more complicated.[61] According to Stahl’s report to Himmler for the year 1943, much of the lack of enthusiasm for joining kok-sagyz production was explained by the war situation leading to the “passive resistance” of the locals.[62] Also, when peasants were willing to embark in cash crop cultivation, kok-sagyz faced competition from that other profitable colonial crop—tobacco—a commodity in high demand in the Reich.[63] Things tended to get only worst with the labor roundups launched by Fritz Sauckel, who by mid 1943 had already consigned about 2.8 million new workers to German factories.[64] Sauckel’s manhunts in the countryside were especially violent, with Alfred Rosenberg himself, the Reich minister for the east, warning that the roundups fomented partisan-resistance in the eastern territories as peasants fled to the bands. As acknowledged by Stahl, kok-sagyz cultivating areas were specially affected by Sauckel’s initiatives.[65] It shouldn’t be lost that such roundups were part of the repertoire of European colonial administrations, moving natives by force to work in plantation schemes, infrastructure building, or mining compounds.