Adolf to Azov

Alfred Rosenberg wouldn’t be doing any more work with eastern Europeans until after the Beer Hall Putsch end the Aufbau Vereinigung, until operation Barbarossa was initiated. He had already proven himself as a competent organizer, and now he had a new job, to handle logistics, and other forms of networking in the newly conquered region, Alfred Rosenberg was an appointment to run the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Here Alfred would be working with the population in the newly occupied parts of eastern Europe. Even though he was a Nazi he still did a lot to help out his own people in the newly conquered parts of eastern Europe. One of his most famous deeds was done in February 1942 when he formed an Agrarian Law for the eastern European territories, which was a law that help repatriate farmland back to individual peasants that the Soviet State took away from the people. Rosenberg did a lot of work with many different ethnic groups out of eastern Europe. This made him very popular, and able to organize eastern European partisan groups more easily. He was able to coordinate help to many eastern European partisans who were fighting the Soviets.

Alfred Rosenberg appointed Gerhard von Mende. Mende was a stout anti Soviet, with himself having family that lived in Latvia, who were taken as prisoners by the Soviets to never be seen again, such as his father. Mende also wrote a book about the oppression of Turkish people under Soviet rule, titled “Der nationale Kampf der Russlandtürken.” He was also a university professor.

With his knowledge of Eastern Europe, Mende was appointed to run the Caucasus division at the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territory. As Operation Barabarossa went underway, the Germans caught many prisoners, who were also staunched anti Soviets. Many of these refugees were Tatars, Turks, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Chechens, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Armenians, and other nationalities. Around a million of these ethnic refugees volunteered to fight for the Germans, in order to avoid capture from the Soviets. Mende went ahead and organized these people into their own Wehrmacht unit, known as the Fifth Column. Gerhard von Mende also worked Claus von Stauffenberg, the man who tried to assassinate Hitler at the wolfs lair, in an attempt to provide equal status in receiving care, compensation, quarters, and other measures, for these foreigners fighting for the fascist against the Soviets.

Alfred Rosenberg would be captured by the allies on 19 May 1945 in Flensburg-Mürwik. He was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to death. However, his legacy lived on and would be studied by the American.

Mende’s fate would be different. As the war the Germans started losing the war Gerhard von Mende, goal became to help as many of these eastern European émigrés, from the Fifth Column to move them into western Europe as to escape reprisals from the incoming Soviets. Many of these fighters were sent to Munich, where they were taken in by the allies. After the war, many of these fighters became stranded and unemployed, with Mende being the one to volunteer to take care of these men, without any employment himself.

The allies would later exploit this fact, in order to get Mende to reactivate his network to fight the Soviets. However his new job would be the start of the modern jihad movement, which would Islamic terrorism that we see in the world today.