The Spiral of Terror

Today in class we finished "The Spiral of Terror" worksheet. We left off on Friday with the Germans stealing food from the Ukrainians. Some German people agreed that this policy of treating the Ukrainians like sub-humans and stealing from them was natural and just. Still others thought that it was a mistake to treat the Ukrainians this way and instead the Germans should try to get Ukrainian support and use the people before killing them. We then learned about a Russian group of resistance fighters called the partisans. They would sabotage the German troops, especially at major trade lines. In addition to terrorizing the German army, they also stole food from the Russian citizens. In order to get rid of these partisans the Germans would kill thousands of innocent people assuming all of them were involved. Only an handful of the people killed were actually involved in the fighting. Both Hitler and Stalin believed that people could only be controlled by the use of terror. This meant that both leaders were continuously trying to terrorize the other causing an endless cycle of terror known as the "spiral of terror".