German Federal Archive Research Articles

The enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen and covert Propaganda of Weimar Germany abroad, 1923-1932

The subject of the study is the activity of the enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen, an organization created after the outbreak of the Ruhr crisis in 1923 by the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce to conduct export propaganda abroad. The article analyzes documents from the funds of the Russian State Military Archive and the German Federal Archives related to the functioning of this structure in 1923-1932. The purpose of the study is to determine how the Hamburg organization managed to deploy large—scale propaganda activity that spread to almost all countries of the world and acquired national significance in Weimar Germany. Special attention is paid to the characteristics of various areas of work, interaction with official departments and the impact of the world economic crisis of 1929-1933 on the activities of the enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen. Based on the study, it was revealed that the organization formed in Hamburg published various printed products, an information service was created abroad, and the key direction was covert penetration into the foreign press. The article shows that the reason for such activity lay in the interest of the economic circles of the region in improving the image of the country abroad in order to normalize foreign trade relations, and the possibility of its implementation — in the presence of the necessary connections for propaganda in foreign countries. One of the results of the study is the conclusion that the activities of the enlightenment committee Hamburg-Bremen affected not only export, but also cultural and political propaganda and was supported by the government interested in carrying out propaganda activities in a hidden form and through private structures. Over the years, the Hamburg-based organization has increasingly come under the influence of the state, whose assistance has become especially urgent after the global economic crisis of 1929-1933.

“The Ice Mother”: Figure Skating Coach Jutta Müller as Contributor and Profiteer of the East German’s Sport Performance System

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the roles, responsibilities, struggles, constraints, and freedoms of coaches within the German Democratic Republic’s (GDR) hierarchical, performance-focused sport system. The paper focuses on Jutta Müller, one of the most successful figure skating coaches of all time. We show how Müller had to become an actor in political power games within the GDR’s sport system, therewith reproducing existing power relations, shaping them, and using them to her advantage. Based on archival sources collected from the German federal archive, we concentrate on the time period between the late 1960s and mid-1980s, when Müller’s athletes achieved great international success. In revealing how Müller dealt with the challenges of the GDR’s sport system, our results are insightful for current elite coaches, who work within the constraint of national systems.

Women education in the Soviet prophylactoria and the care homes for sexually transmitted disease patients in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany.

In the 1920s, so-called prophylactoria were established in the USSR. In these institutions, sex workers with sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) were treated. After the end of World War II, care homes for patients with STDs were established in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany (SOZ). These institutions were also intended to treat people suffering from STDs. This article compares these two types of medical institutions. Sources from the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, the German Federal Archives in Berlin and the City Archive Zwickau were used. The analysed sources were evaluated by using the historical-critical method. The prophylactoria were novel institutions that combined education and medical treatment of people with STDs. Similar strategies were followed in the care homes for STD patients. In both institutions, the sick persons had to follow a regular daily routine and work every day. The political indoctrination served to educate 'socialist personalities'. Nevertheless, various differences can be found between the facilities: the length of stay was different. The women in Soviet prophylactoria were cared for there for up to 2 years. However, the standard duration of stay in the care homes for STD patients was 3-6 months. The prophylactoria had a long-term programme not only to treat sick women but also to reeducate them. The aim was to enlighten and integrate them into the new Soviet society. The care homes for STD patients had a short-term programme of combating venereal diseases. Their main goal was to treat patients with STDs as quickly as possible, while education was an additional measure. Whether both institutions were successful in educating and treating these patients can hardly be assessed from today's perspective.

Medical Treatment, Duty to Work, and Political Education. Functions of Soviet “Prophylactoria” and “Care Homes for STD Patients” in Germany

After the end of World War II, “care homes for sexually transmitted disease patients” were established in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany (SOZ). The legal basis was established by the order of the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) No 30. Care homes for sexually transmitted disease patients are institutions that combine education and treatment of illnesses for individuals with an STD. The sick individuals had to follow a regular daily routine and work every day. Political indoctrination served to educate “socialist personalities”. Similar institutions already existed in the USSR. In the 1920s, the so-called “prophylactoria” were established in the USSR. This article compares these two types of medical institutions. Sources from the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, the German Federal Archives in Berlin, and the City Archive Zwickau were used.

Selected Formal and Casual Correspondence between sociologists P.A. Sorokin and L. von Wiese (1950–1966). Transl. from Eng. and publication by N.A. Golovin

The postwar correspondence between P.A. Sorokin, head of the Harvard Centre for the Study of Creative Altruism, and L. von Wiese, President of the German Society for Sociology and publisher of a respected sociological journal from 1950 to 1966, describes their cooperation on issues of general sociology and in the search for practical ways of humanizing the postwar world. It covers notable events in P.A. Sorokin's scientific biography: his conflict with T. Parsons, L. von Wiese's role in its alleviation, Sorokin's creative plans and their implementation, the work of the Research Center for the Study of Creative Altruism, and evidence of recognition of Sorokin's work in West German society. This publication was prepared with support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project №20-011-00451, CGES Saint Petersburg and Bielefeld Universities, Grant №1 from 05.02.2021, on permission from The Pitirim Sorokin Foundation, the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv, BAarch B 320/39) and the Pitirim A. Sorokin Collection, University Archives & Special Collections, the University Library at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Letters written by L.vonWiese as a response to P.A.Sorokin are quoted in footnotes with numbering in Latin numerals. Footnote icons written in Arabic numerals refer to notes that supplement the main text.

Selected Formal and Casual Correspondence between sociologists P.A. Sorokin and L. von Wiese (1945–1949). Transl. from Eng. and publication by N.A. Golovin

The correspondence between P.A. Sorokin, head of the Harvard Centre for the Study of Creative Altruism, and L. von Wiese, president of the German Society for Sociology and publisher of a respected sociological journal, from 1945–1949 is instilled with worldview reflections and a search for a way out of the post-war moral dead-end for European civilization. This publication was prepared with support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 20-011-00451, CGES Saint Petersburg and Bielefeld Universities, Grant No. 1 from 5.02.2021, on authorization from the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv, BAarch B320/39) and the Pitirim A. Sorokin Collection, University Archives & Special Collections, University Library at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Response letters from L. von Wiese to P.A. Sorokin are quoted in footnotes with numbering in Latin numerals. Footnote icons written in Arabic numerals refer to off-text notes.

P.A. Sorokin and L. von Wiese: on the Publication of Selected Formal and Casual Correspondence between Sociologists (1945–1966)

The correspondence between P.A. Sorokin, head of the Harvard Centre for the Study of Creative Altruism, and L. von Wiese, president of the German Society for Sociology and publisher of a respected sociological journal, from 1945–1949 is instilled with worldview reflections and a search for a way out of the post-war moral dead-end for European civilization. This publication was prepared with support from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project No. 20-011-00451, CGES Saint Petersburg and Bielefeld Universities, Grant No. 1 from 5.02.2021, on authorization from the German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv, BAarch B320/39) and the Pitirim A. Sorokin Collection, University Archives & Special Collections, University Library at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada. Response letters from L. von Wiese to P.A. Sorokin are quoted in footnotes with numbering in Latin numerals. Footnote icons written in Arabic numerals refer to off-text notes.

Причины блиц-успехов СССР в импортозамещении и технологизации производств (1965–1975 гг.)

Based on archival documents of RSAE and the German Federal Archive, never used before in Russian historiography the article examines the reasons for the success of the USSR in organizing import substitution and tecnification of industry in the period of 1965–1975. The author shows that the authorities of the German Democratic Republic led by V. Ulbricht played the decisive role in adoption of the new mechanism of Soviet reforms in the state economy by the head of government of the USSR A. Kosygin.

Троцкисты в Восточной Пруссии: «история в осколках»

Based on little-known and unpublished sources from the “Trotsky Archive” at the Harvard University’s Hogton Library, the German Federal Archives (Berlin) and the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History (Moscow), the article for the first time reconstructs the history of the United Left Opposition groups of the German Communist Party (Bolshevik-Leninists) in East Prussia in 1930-1933. The research highlights the figures of the Königsberg group, some of whom (e. g. Gustav Plep and Oskar Seipold) were active not only regionally, but also at the all-German level. The author describes the political activities of the leftist opposition (holding discussion evenings, sending circular letters to small towns in East Prussia, distributing leaflets at workers’ gatherings, etc.), and shows how local Trotskyists were influenced by conflicts between the leaders of the United Left Opposition - Roman Well, Anton Grylewicz, Kurt Landau and Oskar Seipold. The article considers some cross-border links of Trotskyists with groups in Poland. The study of this topic makes it possible to broaden the understanding of the development of the German Trotskyist movement in its regional perspective and to look differently at the political landscape of East Prussia, in which various opposition groups existed alongside the official parties.

Електронні архівні ресурси як джерело вивчення процесу репатріації полонених українців після Першої світової війни

The aim of this article is to determine and systematize digital archival resources on the topic of Ukrainian prisoners’ of war (POWs) repatriation after the First World War; to analyze the content of Ukrainian and foreign databases as well as digitized archival collections where scholars can fi nd documents on this research problem. The methodology of the research includes the principles of historicism, comprehensiveness, continuity; the article uses methods of comparative analysis and synthesis, systemic and interdisciplinary approaches. The archival resources study was maintained from the perspective of digital humanities approaches. Scientifi c novelty. The author defi ned the body of digitized documents at Ukrainian and foreign archives that highlight the process of POWs’ repatriation after WWI. Particular attention was paid to expanding access for scientists to digitized archival resources. The importance of digital humanities and its impact on modern research practices was highlighted. The author observed common trends in the representation of fonds and collections on websites of Ukrainian and foreign archives, libraries, and other institutions. Conclusions and future research prospects. It was determined that the issue of prisoners’ of war repatriation after the First World War, including Ukrainian POWs, has gradually become more represented in digital space. The author defi ned the role and place of digital archival resources in researching the process of repatriation; systematized the main source groups that are highlighted in Ukrainian and foreign archival databases and exhibition projects (i. e., the Central State Archives of Supreme Bodies of Power and Government of Ukraine, Central State Archives of Foreign Archival Ucrainica, the German Federal Archives, Europeana web portal etc.). The article emphasizes that deep study of Ukrainian and foreign archives’ and libraries’ digital content is a prospective scientifi c focus area in order to uncover valuable sources of Ukrainian history.

Renaming of Hallervorden\u2013Spatz disease: the second man behind the name of the disease

Hallervorden–Spatz disease (HSD) has been recently renamed to pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) and neurodegeneration with brain iron accumulation (NBIA), mainly due to the unethical behavior of Julius Hallervorden in the National Socialist (NS) euthanasia program of the Nazi Third Reich. The role of the second name giver in the NS euthanasia program is less clear. Hugo Spatz was the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch during World War II (WWII), renamed to Max Planck Institute after 1945. After the war, he headed the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main. The present study investigates the potential involvement of Hugo Spatz in the NS euthanasia program. In the present study, we compared a list of euthanasia victims from the German Federal Archive Berlin (30.146 cases published after the reunification of Germany, BArch R179) with the files of the collection of specimens from 1940 until 1945 of Hugo Spatz as listed in the Archive of the Max Planck Society Berlin-Dahlem (n = 305). Furthermore, the old term HSD and the new terms PKAN and NBIA were systematically searched in PubMed from 1946, through January 2019 to evaluate the renaming process from HSD to PKAN/NBIA. Following Hugo Spatz’s death in 1969 growing evidence indicated that he may have taken part in the NS euthanasia program. This study identifies 4 euthanized victims in the patient files of Hugo Spatz from 1940 to 1945, suggesting involvement of Hugo Spatz in the NS euthanasia program. This further strengthens the argument that the former HSD should be exclusively referred to as PKAN or NBIA.

Recalling and/or Repressing German Marxism? The Case of Ernst Fraenkel

I spent a few unseasonably hot summer days in 1996 digging around in the German Federal Archives in Koblenz for what later became a lengthy essay on Ernst Fraenkel (1898–1975), the neglected German socialist political and legal thinker. I still recall struggling to justify my efforts not simply as an historian of ideas but also as a political theorist who, at least in principle, was expected to make systematic contributions to contemporary debates. The problem was that Fraenkel had focused his acumen on investigating liberal democratic instability and German fascism, matters that did not seem directly pertinent to a political and intellectual constellation in which political scientists were celebrating democracy's “third wave.” With Tony Blair and Bill Clinton touting Third Way politics, and many former dictatorships seemingly on a secure path to liberal democracy, Fraenkel's preoccupations seemed dated. Even though Judith Shklar had noted, as late as 1989, that “anyone who thinks that fascism in one guise or another is dead and gone ought to think again,” political pundits and scholars in the mid-1990s typically assumed that capitalist liberal democracy's future was secure. When I returned to the US and described my research to colleagues, they responded, unsurprisingly, politely but without much enthusiasm.

Trecker , Max Red Money for the Global South: East-South Economic Relations in the Cold War (review)

REVIEWS 191 Trecker, Max. Red Money for the Global South: East-South Economic Relations in the Cold War. Routledge Studies in Modern History. Routledge, Abingdon and New York, 2020. x + 244 pp. Notes. Sources. Bibliography. Index. £120.00. The study of relations between the socialist bloc and the extra-European world, variously described as the Third World or, in this case, the Global South, has grown extensively in recent years. By focusing on these connections via the bloc’s trade and development organization, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA, commonly referred to as Comecon), this ambitious monograph seeks to fill a number of lacunae and address some of the key questions within this emerging body of literature. First, it seeks to uncover the motives that drove cooperation between the two parties, arguing for a complex intertwining of both political and economic motives. Secondly, the book seeks to contribute to the sparse existing literature on Comecon by making the case for the agency of its smaller members, drawing similar conclusions to Laurien Crump’s work on the Warsaw Pact. Third, Trecker charts the process of change over time in East-South relations, situating this relationship within the broader story of the global economy. This is an ambitious work, making use of the archival record of the CMEA in the RGAE in Moscow, the German Federal Archives and the Hungarian National Archives, as well as the National Archives of India. While occasionally falling short of its aspirations, it represents an important contribution to the literature. In ten chapters divided into four parts, Trecker charts the story on a largely chronological basis. The first chapter deals with Comecon’s dysfunctional early years during the period of late Stalinism. Comecon is often held up as a counterpart to Western European integration, although as Trecker notes, unlike the EU, political union preceded economic integration in the Eastern bloc and the founding aim of the Comecon — wholesale economic coordination — never fully trumped national interest. For the nations of the Global South, the benefits of cooperation with the socialist world — as opposed to the former colonial metropole — were obvious. But as Trecker shows, Comecon-South trade was mired in difficulty from the very beginning, hampered by dollar hegemony and the inequities of global trade. In the 1960s and 1970s, newly independent states were often committed to import substitution industrialization, and shared socialist concerns regarding the potential for US and European neo-colonial economic domination. By offering the nations of the Global South the construction of turnkey plants in return for raw materials, Comecon members hoped to prevent such domination, while benefiting economically in the process. As Trecker shows, the Soviets hoped to use Comecon to promote intra-bloc cooperation in this regard, weaning the SEER, 99, 1, JANUARY 2021 192 Eastern Bloc states off Soviet resource dependency in the process. Although all of this is not necessarily new information for scholars familiar with the burgeoning literature on development in the Cold War, Trecker’s work reveals valuable insights into why it failed so spectacularly, using the archival record to highlight dysfunction between Comecon member states and Soviet weakness. At points, this text feels like it is attempting to answer too many questions and would have benefited from a reduction in scope: a largely superfluous chapter devoted to the question of whether or not Comecon was an instrument of Soviet empire is an example of this. Retaining focus on East-South relations would have been preferable, for it is here that the book is most original and insightful. In particular, Trecker provides important evidence regarding the effect that the early 1970s oil price shock had on East-South relations: scholars have long wondered why both sides — who often found themselves in a similar situation as rising inflation and fuel costs triggered crises of liquidity in the 1970s and 1980s — were not able to forge a common response. In highlighting the effects of the crisis, Trecker shows that East-South relations were severely hampered by the supremacy of the dollar: the debt crisis increased the thirst for hard currency across the globe, damaging the socialist world’s prospects for trade, which relied upon barter agreements. As Trecker notes...

Hans Frederick Bettinger (1897–1975) – “Father of Australian obstetrical and gynecological pathology” and victim of Nazism

The German-Australian Hans Bettinger is regarded as one of the most important and influential pathologists of his time. Bettinger’s research focused on gynecological pathology, with a particular interest in intersexuality, ovarian and cervical cancer. He received global recognition for his achievements: among others, he was a Honorary Fellow at the International Academy of Cytology, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, the Royal College of Pathologists of Australia, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and a Fellow of the Royal College of Pathologists, London.Far less well-known is German-born Bettinger’s role as a victim of Nazism. This significant yet hitherto “blind spot” in Bettinger's life is the focus of this paper. Previously undiscovered archival material from the German Federal Archives in Koblenz, supplemented by documents from the Public Record Office Victoria, Australia, and the University of Melbourne Archives, served as the central sources for this study.This paper reveals that Bettinger, as the husband of a Jewish woman in Nazi Germany, was disenfranchised, and subsequently forced to emigrate. After considerable efforts, he succeeded in building a new life in Australia, where he became the “father of obstetrical and gynecological pathology”. In the 1950s Bettinger submitted an application for “reparations” to the Federal Republic of Germany. The legal claim was successful: From April 1951 onwards, Bettinger received a substantial pension and was thus officially recognized as a victim of Nazism. He was, however, never able to bring himself to return to Germany, and spent the rest of his life in Australia.

Multi-modal page stream segmentation with convolutional neural networks

In recent years, (retro-)digitizing paper-based files became a major undertaking for private and public archives as well as an important task in electronic mailroom applications. As first steps, the workflow usually involves batch scanning and optical character recognition (OCR) of documents. In the case of multi-page documents, the preservation of document contexts is a major requirement. To facilitate workflows involving very large amounts of paper scans, page stream segmentation (PSS) is the task to automatically separate a stream of scanned images into coherent multi-page documents. In a digitization project together with a German federal archive, we developed a novel approach for PSS based on convolutional neural networks (CNN). As a first project, we combine visual information from scanned images with semantic information from OCR-ed texts for this task. The multi-modal combination of features in a single classification architecture allows for major improvements towards optimal document separation. Further to multimodality, our PSS approach profits from transfer-learning and sequential page modeling. We achieve accuracy up to 95% on multi-page documents on our in-house dataset and up to 93% on a publicly available dataset.

Constructing the State: Macro Strategies, Micro Incentives, and the Creation of Police Forces in Colonial Namibia

How do states build a security apparatus after violent resistance against state rule? This article argues that in early periods of state building two main factors shape the process: the macro-strategic goals of the state and administrative challenges of personnel management. These dynamics are studied in the context of the establishment of police forces in the settler colony of German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia. The empirical analysis relies on information about the location of police stations and a near full census of police forces, compiled from the German Federal Archives. A mismatch is found between the allocation of police presence and the allocation of police personnel. The first was driven by the strategic value of locations in terms of extractive potential, political importance, and the presence of critical infrastructure, whereas the allocation of individual officers was likely affected by adverse selection, which led to the assignment of low-quality recruits to strategically important locations.

Zur Bedeutung nationalsozialistischer Statistiken und Statistiker nach dem Krieg

Abstract After the war, NS-statistics were put to manifold uses. Indeed, the industrial census of 1936 served both as a benchmark for the restrictions on German production imposed by the allied powers and as an indispensable input for the introduction of the planned economy in East Germany. In addition the NS-statisticians involved were also considered indispensable for interpreting and implementing these statistics. In order to assess the economic effects of allied bombing during the war, John Kenneth Galbraith oversaw the Overall Economic Effects Division of the United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Wagenführ and other German statisticians were interrogated in order to elucidate the statistical files of Speer’s Planning Office (Planungsamt), the command centre of the German war economy. As the chief statistician in Speer’s Ministry for Armaments, Wagenführ had been in charge of the statistical information system for running the war economy. The article focuses on a recently detected file on the kidnapping of Rolf Wagenführ by US-officers from Berlin to Bad Homburg in the summer of 1945. At that time, Wagenführ was working for the central command of the Soviet military administration of Germany. I found the report on the kidnapping and the ensuing interrogation which Wagenführ wrote for his Soviet command officer. It is part of the archival files of the German Democratic Republic hosted by the German Federal Archive (Bundesarchiv) in Berlin-Lichterfelde. The article here concludes with both a brief presentation of those German production statistics (Statistische Schnellberichte) which had been compiled on a monthly basis for the inner political circle around Hitler during the war, and with some results from the USSBS.

Project: The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany, 1933–1945

Susanne Heim Project: The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany, 1933–1945 In 2008 the first volume of the source edition Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der euro­ päischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933–1945 (The Persecution and Murder of the European Jews by National Socialist Germany, 1933–1945) was published. Since then, eight additional volumes have appeared, and seven further volumes are in preparation. The aim of the edition is to present a thematically com­ prehensive and acade­ mically annotated selection of sources on the Holocaust. The edition is structured chrono­ logically and geographically. Each of the sixteen volumes contains between 300 and 330 docu­ ments, as well as an extensive introduction that describes the relevant events on the basis of the current state of research. In the following list of all the volumes, those already published are set in boldface, and the individual compilers are named in parentheses: 1. German Reich, 1933–1937 (Wolf Gruner) 2. German Reich, 1938 – August 1939 (Susanne Heim) 3. German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, September 1939 – Sep­ tember 1941 (Andrea Löw) 4. Poland, September 1939 – July 1941 (Klaus-Peter Friedrich) 5. Western and Northern Europe, 1940 – June 1942 (Katja Happe, Michael Mayer, Maja Peers) 6. German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, October 1941 – spring 1943 (Su­ sanne Heim) 7. Soviet Union and Annexed Territories I (Bert Hoppe, Hildrun Glass) 8. Soviet Union and Annexed Territories II (Bert Hoppe) 9. Poland: General Government, August 1941–1945 (Klaus-Peter Friedrich) 10. Poland: Incorporated Territories, August 1941–1945 (Ingo Loose) 11. German Reich and Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, spring 1943–1945 (Lisa Hauff) 12. Western and Northern Europe, July 1942–1945 (Katja Happe, Barbara Lambauer , Cle­ mens Maier-Wolthausen) 13. Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria, 1939–1945 (Barbara Hutzelmann, Mariana Hausleitner, Souzana Hazan) 14. South-Eastern and Southern Europe, 1941–1945: Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania and Italy (Sanela Schmid, Maria Vassilikou, Erwin Lewin, Sara Berger) 192 Susanne Heim 15. Hungary (Regina Fritz) 16. Auschwitz, 1942–1945, and the Death Marches (Andrea Rudorff) The series is scheduled for completion in 2019, at which point it is expected that around 5,000 annotated documents will have been published, a substantial proportion of which will be gathered in the project’s digital database. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation and is being published under the auspices of the Institute for Contemporary History, the Department of Modern and Contemporary History at the Albert-Ludwig-University Freiburg, and the German Federal Archives. The editorial board comprises the directors of the three responsible institutions – Andreas Wirsching, Ulrich Herbert,andMichaelHollmann–inadditiontoHorstMöller,DieterPohl,Susanne Heim, and Sybille Steinbacher. The volumes are being prepared for publication in the Berlin editorial offices and are being published by De Gruyter – Oldenbourg. Initial discussions regarding such a collection date back to the turn of the century. The initiators, who subsequently became members of the editorial board, believed for various reasons that the time was right for such an undertaking . After the expansion of Holocaust research in the 1990s and the improvement in archival conditions after the end of the Cold War, our knowledge of the history of the persecution of the Jews had become considerably more nuanced. The traditional scholarly focus on Hitler and his narrow leadership circle had been replaced by a critical view of the co-responsibility of social elites, state institutions , the non-Jewish populace, and non-German perpetrators. Thus, the wide scope of action for those involved in the Holocaust has become clearer, and it has been established that ideas and initiatives “from below” often solidified and radicalized the policies of the Nazi leadership. As a result, a number of academic controversies of the previous period were rendered obsolete. Against the backdrop of the internationalization of Holocaust research, a degree of consensus has been established regarding the key events and factors that led to the murder of the European Jews. Finally, the inevitable passing of the witness generation has made it imperative to offer a collection of sources documenting the persecution of the Jews to a wider public in a scholarly format. The editors agreed on the following principles...

Дело „О военно-фашистском заговоре в РККА”: резонанс и последствия в СССР и за его пределами

The article is dedicated to one of the most painful and insufficiently explored topics – to the resonance, which was produced by the affair of “The military-fascist conspiracy in the RKKA”. It was inspired by party-and-state elite headed by Joseph Stalin. The Red Army’s high command and then tens of thousands commanders and soldiers were victims of that affair. Dr Julia Kantor analyzes the Nazi leadership’s response to “shooting in Moscow” in June 1937 and also home political situation in the Soviet Union after that affair. The article is based on the previously unknown archive sources, including the materials of the German Federal Archives in Koblenz and the Central Archive of the Federal Security Service in Moscow. The author devotes a lot of attention to the issue of moral and psychological condition of the Red Army (citing reports about “decadent” mood among commanders and soldiers) and, more importantly, to the problem of a sharp decline in the professionalism of the RKKA, which was inducted by the human resources crisis in military schools. Also, the author presents data on the number of the repressed commanders in 1937–1938 and the materials about Stalin’s political guideline, which was given to the Red Army in 1938.

「1956年から1960年までの東ドイツにおける身体文化・スポーツ促進に関する訓令」に関する研究：ドイツ連邦公文書館所蔵文書 DR5/561 を手懸りにして

One of the characteristics of the German Democratic Republic's (GDR) sports policy was the large volume and variety of sports-related regulations. In this study, I investigated the time of creation, nature, content, and characteristics of the “Directive Regarding the Promotion of Physical Culture and Sports in the German Democratic Republic from 1956 to 1960” (“Direktive zur Entwicklung der Körperkultur und des Sports in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik vom 1956 bis 1960”) —all of which have been unclear up until now— using DR5/561, a document maintained in the German Federal Archives. I considered the characteristics primarily through a comparison with earlier sports-related regulations. In summary, a number of points were clarified. First, there is a possibility that the directive was a top-secret document created sometime during or after September 1956. Furthermore, the State Committee for Physical Culture and Sport decided to forward the directive to the German Gymnastics and Sports Federation (DTSB) on February 4, 1957. Second, the directive comprised 7 sections (infant and youth sports; workers' popular sports; improvement of sports performance; science and the cultivation of experts; investment and construction work; sports instruments and materials/development; and financial affairs), the final 3 sections having been absent in previous regulations. Third, one of the characteristics of this directive was the establishment of mid- to long-term objectives, as in the GDR's Second Five-Year Economic Plan (1956—1960) with which it was issued in conjunction. Here, one can see the GDR's approach of trying to promote sports more systematically than in the past. Fourth, while the directive does not clearly specify the role of certain groups that had been leaders in the GDR sports world —such as the Free German Youth— it does specify the role of the DTSB, which was established in April of the following year. This suggests that the directive was a change in direction from a Soviet sports-system model. In other words, it was something created with the construction of a sports system unique to the GDR. It still cannot be determined whether the directive that is included in DR5/561 is the same as any of the documents found in GDR sports history books. This is because some points regarding the directive are still unclear, such as the exact time and date it was created, and which organizations other than the DTSB to which it was forwarded.