"Only the Russians can defeat the Russians!" Why did Hitler refuse to support the opposition in the Soviet Union and provoke a civil war in the Soviet Union? In historical documents, it is generally believed that if Hitler had organized a civil war in the Soviet Union, he would have had a chance of defeating the Soviet Union (and only chance). By rallying the populace against the Soviet Union, Germany was able to weaken the Red Army and gain access to enormous human resources at its disposal. Nor has anyone abolished the "axiom", that is, only the Russians themselves can defeat the Russians.
During the Soviet period, the official position was that only criminals, Kuraks, and the White Guards would side with Hitler, and in very small numbers.
The names of those collaborators are now known, first and foremost Withre Vlasov, Vladimir Gill, Vladimir Barsky, Georgi Zhilenkov and others. The vast majority of them have fairly "clean" biographies, and they have no apparent reason to be dissatisfied with the Soviet authorities. The same can be said for other collaborators.
The reasons why captured Red Army soldiers agreed to side with the Germans are well known. Unfortunately, there are no statistics showing what percentage of people become traitors for one reason or another.
In any case, it can be said that the decisive factor is the poor conditions in the concentration camps. In the concentration camps of prisoners of war of the Red Army, the mortality rate was 60-70%. In this case, even the most powerful people will collapse, and there are many who are ready to escape at all costs.
Arguably, most of those who agreed to serve the Germans intended to flee at the first opportunity. Many also believed that serving the Germans would not include war against their own people. As for the anti-Soviet agitation, this is not the first reason. It is well known that incitement had an impact later on, and many who intended to flee eventually became ideological fighters for the enthusiasm of the opposition to soviet power. It's easy to understand that the people of that generation didn't know about repression and terror from books, and many still remember the horrors of the Civil War. And when they were called against the Bolshevik government, for many it did not look like a betrayal of the motherland.
In Dmitry Zhukov's book "RNNA." The Enemy in Soviet Uniform "quotes S.N. S. Öhmer, founder of the Russian State People's Army (RNNA). Ivanov's words.
"Moscow will not be occupied by the Germans or the Japanese, but we Russians will occupy it with our own hands and restore our own order." Therefore, after the last formation, our army should occupy a section of the front line and fight against the Soviet army."
The success of the Wehrmacht on the front line was also an important factor. Once the Red Army began to triumph, the situation changed and the collaborators began to leave the Germans in droves.
The leadership of the Third Reich was hampered by racial politics in its use of Soviet citizens. This is not to say that they seriously believe in racial theories and consider non-Aryans to be inferior. You know what Goering said: "At my headquarters, I decide who's Jewish and who isn't!" "。 But since states are built on certain principles, it is impossible for officials to change them.
Another important factor was the belief in the military leadership that they had enough power to defeat the Soviet Union without the help of other countries. Therefore, when there were a large number of people willing to serve in the German army and fight the Bolsheviks, the Wehrmacht did not need them.
In 1941-42, none of the cooperative structures were built by the military. Only the intelligence services —whether Abwehr or SD—were interested in them.
By the time the situation had changed radically, and the Third Reich had discovered that it simply did not have enough personnel to fight in the war, it was too late. The German leadership was ready to bury all its racial principles in order to obtain "inferior" Slavs, Baltics, Caucasians, and Central Asians as cannon fodder. However, since large numbers of people continued to flee to the partisans in the troops composed of prisoners of war, the Germans could not trust them. As a result, all formed units had to be sent almost immediately to the Balkans or France, hoping to have nowhere to flee. But they even escaped in full force there.
Some contemporary writers have spoken of the civil war in the Soviet Union of 1941-1945. Of course, this is fundamentally wrong. The claim that some countries (Baltic, Ukrainian, Belarus, etc.) fought for their independence also does not hold true. The existing forms of ownership of the various nationalities of the USSR played only an auxiliary role in the power structure of the Third Reich (wehrmacht, SS, police) and had no independent objectives. No one ever said an independent Ukraine or Latvia, let alone a Russia. The Germans were simply using their collaborators to temporarily believe that their hopes could be fulfilled.
When it is said that Hitler and the entire leadership of the Third Reich would gain a lot by building up an entire army of Soviet citizens and arming them against Stalin, it is strange that it was based on the Soviet concept of collaborators.
The Soviet view was that all those who served the Germans were portrayed as servants, obedient to their new masters, ready to do whatever their masters told them to do. But such an overly comical image was not really believed by the thinking people of the Soviet Union.
Suppose the Germans formed an army of millions of Soviet prisoners of war. This is realistic given the number of people in each unit. Suppose that some "army of the liberated people" managed to crush the Red Army and take Moscow and anything else that had surrendered to the Soviet Union.
It is well known that konstantin Grigorievich Kromiyadi, one of the main thinkers of the Russian collaborators, said the following. "We need to build an army of 2 million and be fully armed. After this war, the Germans will weaken, and then we will fight them. We will take power into our own hands and restore the monarchy in Russia.
Kromiyadi was an immigrant and supporter of the revival of the Russian monarchy. Of course, the collaborators from the Soviet Union had some different views on Russia's future, and they completely disagreed with him. But the "Vlasovists" also aimed for an independent Russian state without the Bolsheviks.
In any case, they did not imagine the future of Russia in the form of territories occupied by Germany.
The leadership of the Third Reich, if they were not sure, was also well aware that something similar would happen as soon as an independent Russian army appeared.