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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.

Partisan presence in the occupied regions significantly hindered cultivation activities. Quoting agriculture officials of the local Nazi civilian administration, Stahl estimated that 15 percent of farmland in the Ukraine was situated in areas menaced by partisans, compromising production predictions for the year 1944.[66] Such comments were of course made before Germany’s evacuation of much of the region in autumn 1943. As is well known, Himmler responded with a heavy hand. Immediately after Hermann Göring—the head of the Four-Year Plan—confirmed Himmler as Plenipotentiary for Plant Rubber on 9 July, 1943, he ordered the entire population of the partisan-infested areas of northern Ukraine and Byelorussia to be cleared out.[67] The depopulated lands were now a tabula rasa to be occupied by state-owned plantations for the cultivation of kok-sagyz. Himmler was also convinced that the destruction of a field of kok-sagyz—a tuber that had to be uprooted- was much more difficult for partisans than to sabotage grain fields. Instead of the previous system of “natives” working their own plots, the plan for these areas along the Ukraine/Byelorussia border was to establish labor camps for women and children, adjacent to kok-sagyz plantations managed by the SS. Women and children’s hands were considered more suited to the weeding and harvesting associated with cultivation of kok-sagyz. Insofar as this was a plant exotic to eastern Europe and that only recently had been domesticated, it is no surprise to find out the need of painstaking work involved in its cultivation. The colonial repertoire invoked in this case is that of the traditional plantation, with forced labor living in communal barracks working for the colonial master. The incentive system for these laborers was substantially different from the one used to lure local peasants to cultivate their own land. The best collectors were to be awarded used shoes, suitcases, and razors by the local SS supervisor. Himmler even asked Oswald Pohl, the responsible for the economic administration of the SS, about the possibility of offering watches as prizes to the best collectors.[68]

Either in SS-managed monocrop plantations or in areas in which kok-sagyz divided space with other crops in local peasants’ plots, the first targets for partisan activities were the Landwirtschaftsführer (agricultural leaders) in charge of controlling cultivation. According to Stahl’s account, from November 1942 to May 1943 one of the economic commandos operating in northern Ukraine had already lost 18 of its Landwirtschaftsführer. Higher in the hierarchy were the Sondernführer, agriculture experts responsible for technical advice, propaganda, and overseeing the distribution and collection of seed and roots in each of the 66 cultivation districts (Bezirk). Crucially enough, they controlled the recollection of seeds and the storage of roots and produced maps detailing production and areas under cultivation. Overseeing the entire system for each of the four cultivation regions into which conquered eastern Europe had been divided—Warthegau, Danzig, Westpreussen (I); Mitte (II); Ukraine West (III); Ukraine East (IV)—were the regional directors (Leiter der Anbaubereiche).[69] Typical of Nazi colonial administration in the east, this rigid hierarchy built around rubber production was oiled with personal gifts of liquor and cigars.[70]