An antitank pillbox, still with its protective embankments in place, makes the life of a local farmer in the village of Jakać just a little bit more difficult.
But in 1941 there would be no houses, no haystacks and no cornfields. Once the construction was finished the garrisons of the strongpoints, along with additional field troops, would start pouring in into their designted zones and that would be the time to mercilessly drive the local population away.
Locals were needed to dig vast antitank ditches, to bring stone from the fields and to do the initial earthmoving work. But once it was all done there would be no sentiments and no mercy. Besides, these people were inhabitants of “former Poland” (as Soviet propaganda called the state conquered in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union). And they were unreliable, rebellious and infected with capitalist ideas. They were, like all citiziens of the Soviet empire, expendable.
It is some horrible irony that a German-Soviet war of 1941 saved lots of these people from less than pleasant fate. Sure, it was yet another war, which is never good, and the Germans were enemies, too, but at least the Reds were gone.
Horst Slesina, German war correspondent who took part in breaking through the Molotov Line in the area where at least some stiff resistance was offered, noted in his book “Soldaten Gegen Tod Und Teufel. Unser Kampf In Der Sowjetunion”: “Poles are not frineds of ours, that's understandable. But it keeps puzzling me that in many places people greet us like liberators. What, on Earth, Soviets must have done in less than two years to make these people hate them so much?”.
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