German Invaders Research Articles

FORCED DEPORTATION OF PEOPLES TO KAZAKHSTAN

The totalitarian system that dominated during the Soviet period forcibly displaced manynationalities and ethnic groups from their historical homeland, causing great damage to their unity andintegrity, cultural and social development, pursuing a policy of ideological arbitrariness (dictatorship).Soviet leaders forcibly deported to the territory of Central Asia, accusing the Crimean people of activecooperation with the German invaders in order to strengthen the central political power. The CrimeanPeninsula was the main tourist center of the USSR and one of the regions of high political importance.This scientific article, written on this basis, presents historical data on the state of the population onthe Crimean Peninsula before the deportation, on the change of names of cities in Crimea, on how theprocess of forced displacement was carried out, based on archival data. The detrimental consequencesof the forced displacement of peoples to the territory of Kazakhstan and the impact on the nationalcomposition of the Kazakh people are analyzed. In the second half of the 20th century, attempts bythe peoples of Crimea to return to their homeland, the socio-economic situation of the population afterresettlement to the territory of Kazakhstan, and their contribution to the modern development of Kazakhstanisociety were considered.During the actual study of the article, archival data were used. Historical scientific methods of analysisand synthesis of scientific data, historical and comparative analysis, classification, systematization,etc. were also used.

Перерегистрация членов ВКП(б) как форма проверки их лояльности советской власти на примерах Краснодарского края. 1943-1944 гг.

The article is devoted to the disclosure of the activities of party organizations of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in Kuban during the Great Patriotic War, mainly after the liberation of the Krasnodar region from the German invaders from January to autumn 1943. One of the tasks was to resume after the occupation the structure of party organizations of cities and districts. District committees of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b), party organizations at district executive committees, cells in organizations, institutions, enterprises, collective farms, village councils, primary party organizations in district departments of the NKGB and NKVD were being formed. The source base of the article was unpublished archival documents of 1943 - early 1944, stored in the Center for Documentation of Contemporary History of Krasnodar Region (CDCHKR) and representing a top-secret correspondence between the secretaries of the district party committees and the regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (b). The main contents of the correspondence are materials of inspections of communists who, at the end of July and beginning of August 1942, when the unexpected and rapid attack of German troops on the cities and districts of the Kuban began, did not evacuate to the Soviet rear for various reasons. The stay of the Communists in the occupied territory became for them (as well as for the entire population, of which they were a part) a severe ordeal. Many were forced to conceal their affiliation with the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) and destroyed their party cards. Others took jobs in enterprises controlled by the German administration, and some took the path of cooperation with the Germans. Already after the expulsion of the Nazi troops, their allies and collaborators, they were re-registered in the party and were obliged to undergo humiliating inspection procedures. All of them, without exception, wrote explanatory statements about their stay in the occupation and their occupation in the enemy-occupied territory, were massively expelled from the Party for cowardice and loss or deliberate destruction of their Party card. As a rule, most of them had no real guilt. The article uses a micro-historical approach, where the object of study is local historical events, allowing a deeper understanding of the depth of drama in the lives of people of this difficult period, accused undeservedly of collaboration when the Soviet authorities were restoring the former order. In the course of checks on loyalty to the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks) and the country, criminal acts of some Communists, which were not subject to forgiveness, also surfaced.

The ideological world of the trilogy of the Mari writer N. Lekain «Iron Will», «In the Fire of the Great War», «Land of the Ancestors»

An analysis of the themes, issues, ideas and pathos of the trilogy of the Mari writer Nikandr Lekain is the basis of this article. The novels «Iron Will» and «Land of Ancestors» depict the process of social and national revival of the previously oppressed Mari people. The depiction of the events of the beginning of the 20th century (Stolypin’s agrarian reform, the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Civil War, the NEP) takes place through the prism of the author’s worldview. The writer shows the conditions under which the process of formation of Soviet regime, the implementation of a new economic policy, the growth and formation of a new progressive Man, and the overcoming of the vestiges of the past in the minds of the Mari people took place. The novel «In the Fire of the Great War» by the former front-line soldier reveals the patriotism and heroism of the multinational Soviet people, manifested in the fight against the fascist invaders during the Great Patriotic War. This aspect is considered for the first time in Mari literary studies. The structural-semantic research method makes it possible to evaluate both the ideological world, the author’s worldview, and its individual poetic elements. Through the prism of the writer’s attention, the image of a resisting and fighting Soviet soldier is comprehensively depicted; as well as the heroic actions of the Yevsey’s, Ivan Zuev’s guerrilla warrior detachments in the enemy’s rear; the awful life under occupation of the Sosnovka’s village inhabitants; the cruelty of the German invaders; the spiritual squalor of the traitors. N. Lekain’s trilogy epically reveals the historical events of the late 19th – mid-20th centuries.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE BELARUSIAN PARTISANS WITH THE POLISH UNDERGROUND ON THE TERRITORY OF THE BARANOVICHI REGION (1941–1944): ORGANIZATIONAL AND COMBAT ASPECT

The article studies the relationship of the partisan formations of Belarus with the Polish underground on the territory of Baranovichi region in 1941–1944, represented on the one hand by Polish pro–Soviet structures, and on the other handby units that were subordinated to the Polish emigrant government in London. It is concluded that local Soviet underground and partisan structures sought to establish quickinteraction with the emerginggroups of the Polish pro-Soviet underground and direct their activities towards an active fight against the German invaders. Partisan units organized on the basis of such groups were usually included in the Belarusian detachments and brigades. The main factors that influenced the nature of the relationship between the Belarusian partisans and the structures of the Home Army in different periods of the German occupation are shown. The content and forms of the relationship between the Belarusian partisans and the "Akovites" are revealed during two stages: July 1941 – spring 1943 and summer 1943 – July 1944.

THE RESULTS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR AND THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE TRIPOLAR SYSTEM OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS IN THE WORLD

During the 20 months since the beginning of the Second World War, German troops occupied all the small states of North-Western Europe, captured the Balkans, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Bulgaria, Albania, Yugoslavia, and took Hungary, Romania and Finland under their sphere of influence. , forced France to surrender. Economic, territorial, human, etc. of all these countries. resources were in the hands of the German military machine. In 1941, the USSR and England were already waiting for German attacks. Although the United States was protected by oceans and distance from the German threat, it was nevertheless deeply alarmed by Hitler's short-term success. All the progressive humanity, the peoples of the world facing the threat of Hitlerism, stood together to get rid of this scourge of the 20th century. The determination to fight against fascism soon overcame all class and ideological barriers and led to the creation of an anti-fascist coalition and the organization of a joint struggle against the German-Italian-Japanese occupation. Although the main goal during the war was to liberate Europe and the world from the German invaders and their allies, the post-war interstate relations and relations, the restoration of norms of civil coexistence and the creation of a collective security system became the main topic of discussion in the international community. Of course, everything depended on the position of the USSR, England and the United States, which were at the forefront of the fight against Germany, and the relations between them. Keywords: World Second War, Tripolar International Relations, Coalision blocks.

ТЕАТРИ НАДАЗОВ’Я В РОКИ ДРУГОЇ СВІТОВОЇ ВІЙНИ

The article highlights the peculiarities of the theaters of Nadazov during the Second World War. The path of actors who became direct participants in military operations is outlined. The influence of the Mariupol Society «Prosvita» on the development of theatrical art in the region is analyzed. The repertoire, creative searches of the director and the cast during the Nazi occupation are covered. In particular, the activity of the Mariupol Music and Drama Theater named after T. Shevchenko. The repertoire of theaters, which consisted mainly of Ukrainian plays, the activities of the children's puppet theater and the holding of evenings in memory of Ukrainian writers, poets, and composers served to relieve the psychological stress of the residents of the region. If for the occupation regime the theater had a propaganda value, then for the residents of the region it served as a widespread practice of survival, was able to revive Ukrainian culture, and satisfied the basic needs of the population for information and artistic impressions. The dramatic section of the Mariupol «Prosvita» had a considerable influence on the development of theatrical art in the region. Director of the Mariupol Theater named after T. Shevchenko and Sofya Zavyalova, head of the drama section "Prosvity", actively worked on the issue of training professional drama personnel. It is emphasized that theatrical life in the liberated Northern Azov region in 1943–1945 had its own peculiarities. After the liberation of the region from the German invaders, the Mariupol Drama Theater resumed its activities, successfully holding concerts and performances for wounded soldiers, workers of the rebuilt city, and officers who went to the front. Despite the difficult conditions in which the Mariupol Drama Theater worked, the actors, thanks to their rich repertoire, contributed to the preservation of the spiritual and moral values of the audience and carried out active charitable activities for wounded soldiers and officers. The place of the theater in the cultural life of the residents of the region is defined. The scientific novelty of the article is due to the inclusion of new factual material from the history of Ukrainian theater into the scientific circulation. Key words: theater, Nadazovya, German occupation, audience, repertoire, Ukrainian culture, "Enlightenment".

Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway

Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway

Chełm's Unraveling: The Holocaust and Interethnic Violence in Nazi-Occupied Poland

This article explores the myriad ways that Polish and Ukrainian residents engaged in violent and cruel behavior during World War II through a case study of the Chełm region. Under Nazi occupation, this formerly peaceful community exploded into a horrific scene of nationalist and popular violence. Jews were widely assaulted by their Polish and Ukrainian countrymen; Poles and Ukrainians engaged in mutual killings and ethnic cleansing; rural villagers were subjected to countless raids from area partisans; and escaped Soviet POWs were often denounced or otherwise attacked by area residents. Treating this outbreak as a whole, I argue that anti-Jewish violence was embedded in a vicious social transformation that engendered an array of crimes against multiple groups. By interweaving the fates of different ethnicities into a single study, my paper contextualizes Polish complicity during the Holocaust and highlights the sordid interactions between the German invaders, Jewish citizens, and local Christian society.

Investigation of assault flags from the collection of the Military-Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps

In the article author conducts research of the assault flags from the collection of Military Historical Museum of Artillery, Engineer and Signal Corps. They were planted on the liberated by the Soviet Army cities. At the beginning of the article the reader is informed about the meaning of the basic concepts. There aren’t differences between знамя and флаг in vexillology. Therefore, several definitions of Russian researchers were considered. Then in the article are stated that this group are flags, as it symbolizes the whole state — the Soviet Union. The author emphasizes that the tradition of planting assault flags over liberated cities appeared during the radical turn of 1942–1943, and at the same time flags began to be transferred to museums for storage. In the Artillery Historical Museum they began to arrive from 1943. In addition, their appearance wasn’t regulated. Therefore, in the article the problem of similar and different characteristics is raised. At the semiotic level, all flags carry a single code, being a symbol of liberation, victory of the Soviet Union and friendly countries over the German invaders. At the material level, due to the lack of clear regulation of the appearance, each flag has its own individual features: size, shape, presence or absence of images and inscriptions, methods of attachment to the flagpole, the context of their appearance. In conclusion the potential for reflecting the theme of the Great Patriotic War and the memory of the people in exposition and exhibition projects is evaluated.

„Wrzesień trzydziestego dziewiątego roku zdarzył mi się po raz pierwszy”. "Opór" oraz metafory klęski i oporu w twórczości Józefa Hena

This article is devoted to Józef Hen’s novel entitled Resistance, part of the diptych Herod’s Theater, and to the metaphors of defeat and resistance in Józef Hen’s work. Polish prose narrating the 1939 September is dominated by a military perspective, which I refer to as a military-centric narrative. Hen’s novel, on the other hand, takes a different, civilian perspective – it tells the story of the fate and resistance of the civilians of one of Warsaw’s tenements in the Jewish district of Nowolipie against the German invaders during the siege. In the article, I discuss Resistance against the background of other books dealing with the tragedy and defeat of September ‘39, and reconstruct the fate of the novel, also mentioning its press and criticalliterary echoes. In the following part, however, I focus my attention on the novel’s metaphorical echoes, for it is noticeable in Hen’s work that resistance and defeat – or, more precisely, the attempt to resist and the sense of life defeat – are mutually intertwined and constitute the attitude and determine the lives of the protagonists of his several other novels from the 1970s and 1980s, later than Resistance.

The chimerical world in Bertolt Brecht's drama "The Vision of Simona Mashar" and in Leon Feuchtwanger's novel "Simon"

The article analyzes the creation of a "chimerical" world in Bertolt Brecht'sdrama "The Vision of Simon Mashar" and Leon Feuchtwanger's novel "Simon"."Irrational", "improbable", "fictional", "unusual" – there are characteristics thatunderlie the concept of "chimerical".
 Extraordinary metamorphoses with characters who become in a dreamacquire the features of historical characters, who are promised to act this wayand not otherwise, a shift in time and space - the main characteristics of21"chimerical" prose or drama. Bertolt Brecht's play „The Vision of SimoneMashar”and Leon Feithwanger’s novel “Simon” is the story of Jeanne d’Arc, whoprompted the protagonist Simone to perform feats in the name of her nativeFrance, against the German invaders. Brecht created his play in direct contactwith Feuchtwanger, but as a result the authors published two different worksthat have different conceptual meanings, but the main idea of the both works is- the struggle of the French against the German occupiers. The motif of a book andthe motif of a dream are of great importance in two works, which help to connectthe fictional and the real chronotope. It is from the book that Simon learns thestory of Jeanne d’Arc. In the dream, Simon imitates the features of Jeanne d'Arcand fights. Like Jeanne d'Arc, Simon is executed by her compatriots. The workswere written during the Second World War, so the great importance is played byhistorical studies- the idea and prerequisites for the creation of the work. It isresearched how chimericaly is realized in epic drama and realistic psychologicalnovel, and how it is related to the "V-effect" in Brecht's dramas.

Гончаренко О. М. Проблема коллаборационизма на территориях райхскомиссариата «Украина» и военной зоны оккупации в современной отечественной историографии: институциональное определение содержания и форм сотрудничества, основные тенденции исторических реко

The article analyzes from the standpoint of modern domestic historiography, a scientific publication devoted to the complex problem in the history of the last war which is collaborationism, on the territories of the Reich Commissariat «Ukraine» and the military zone of occupation. This allows the researcher and just the reader to delve deeper into the understanding of such a complex historical phenomenon that covers many areas of human life on the territories occupied by the German invaders and their allies. This area was quite large and reached about 479, 3 km. sq. The first included such districts as: «Kyiv», «Dnepropetrovsk», «Zhytomyr», «Volyn and Podillya», «Nikolaev», «Tavria». In the military zone were economically developed areas of the then USSR. In the Donbass before the war about 800 mines mined coal. Therefore, the occupation regime in these lands had its own specifics, and therefore the situation and behavior of the civilian population was somewhat different. Therefore, the author considered this scientific problem taking into account this specifics.

KeesBoterbloemLife in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk).

KeesBoterbloemLife in Stalin's Soviet Union. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. 247 pp. £20.69 (pbk), £63 (hbk).

Prestupleniya nacizma kak faktor partizanskogo dvizheniya v Leningradskoj oblasti

The article deals with the forms of repressive policy of the Nazi invaders in the Leningrad region, including propaganda actions, economic repression, mass arrests and evictions, the use of hostages and blackmail, support for false partisan groups and lone agents, executions, repressions on the basis of belonging to the partisan movement, and others. Such principles of repression as mass character, randomness of victims, disproportionality of punishment, and ruthlessness are highlighted and considered. Based on the analysis of a significant set of archival documents, the authors conclude that the crimes of the German invaders, their allies and accomplices influenced the development of the partisan movement and the strengthening of its support among the local population.

АНАЛІЗ РЕЗУЛЬТАТІВ МІНУВАННЯ КІРОВОГРАДА НІМЕЦЬКИМИ ОКУПАНТАМИ ПІД ЧАС ВІДСТУПУ У СІЧНІ 1944 РОКУ

The objective of the study is to analize the results of the massive saturation of Kirovoghrad area with landmines by the German invaders as they retreated in January 1944. The methodology of the study is based on the principles of historicism, systemic approach, proper academic assessment, verification, author objectivity and moderate narrative constructivism as well as the use of the general scientific methods such as analysis, synthesis and generalization. The scientific novelty is that first in history, to analyze the results of the massive saturation of Kirovoghrad area with landmines by the German invaders as they retreated in January 1944 based on previously unknown archival documents. Conclusions. It is about the scope and type of the massive saturation of the city with landmines by the Hitler troops as they retreated. Also it is told about the demining activities of residential buildings, industrial and infrastructural objects that were conducted by the combat engineers of the 27th Engineer Brigade (the Red Army) and there were described the modalities for the mining that were used for the regional centre planned destruction. It is given, according to the deminers, the brief analysis of the causes of not detonation of explosive devices and explosive ordnance. It is addressed the types of explosive devices, explosive ordnance and landmines that have been hidden into urban infrastructure.

Агентура русской вспомогательной полиции на оккупированной немецкими войсками территории Курской области. По материалам архивно-следственных дел территориальных управлений КГБ СССР

This article addresses one of the least studied issues of the Great Patriotic War — German special services and collaborative security agencies using their agent assets in the occupied territory of the Kursk region. The chronological frameworks of the study cover the period from the seizure of the Kursk region by German troops to its liberation by the Red Army units. The corpus of sources on the subject is extremely limited. The authors draw on the materials of archival investigatory records on former active accomplices of the German occupiers from among Soviet citizens, who throughout the post-war period were actively sought by the Soviet state security organs. Among the defendants in this category of cases were former leaders, their assistants, senior investigators of the city and district departments of the Russian auxiliary police, created under direct supervision of the German occupation authorities in the territory. Analysis of archival investigatory records shows that the vast majority of heads of collaborative repressive bodies (police, gendarmerie, prisons) joined of the German invaders consciously and voluntarily. This circumstance contributed to their zealous service to German invaders. In order to prove their allegiance to the German command and to avoid punishment for failure, these officials actively recruited secret informants — their agents. These agents were mostly recruited from local residents who, for various reasons, agreed to cooperate with the leaders of Russian police agencies. The tasks of the agents included timely information on the anti-Nazi underground, Soviet intelligence, leaders and participants in the partisan movement in the occupied territory of the Kursk region in 1941–43. Quite often, agents were used by the directors of city and district prisons, which were opened by the German occupational commandant's offices in the region. Information about secret agents was carefully guarded. All agents were on allowance from the territorial bodies of the Russian auxiliary police. Due to scope and activity levels of the partisan movement in the occupied territory of the Kursk region, pro-Nazi agents were most active in the Valuyki, Grayvoron, Dmitriev, Rylsk, Sudzha, Shchigry, Shebekino districts.

The Great Patriotic War and the Russian Orthodox Church on the pages of the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” in 1943–1945

The article presents an analysis of the materials in the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” from 1943–1945, devoted to the Great Patriotic War and the position of the Russian Orthodox Church in relation to this terrible event in the history of mankind. There are four main blocks of materials: the official chronicle of the war, coverage of military events and the situation of the Church in the conditions of military operations, messages to the faithful population in the territories embroiled in military operations, and articles on particular issues related to the war. Of great importance is not only the coverage of the chronicle, but also the support in the conditions of the ongoing war, which was provided to believers by bishops Patriarch Sergius (Stragorodsky), Metropolitan Alexy (Simansky, Patriarch since February 1945), and Metropolitan Nikolai (Yarushevich). In the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate”, the struggle against the German invaders was regarded as a struggle against the servants of the devil. Correspondence from the field testified to the damage caused by the Nazis not only to the Church, but also to the civilian population. In the mid-1940s, the “Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate” became the publication where the Russian Orthodox Church could express both its attitude to events and its unity with the people, which was necessary in the conditions of war.

Lembitu: A medieval warlord in Estonian culture

The 13th century was undoubtedly a period of upheaval in Baltic history. From the traditional «Estonian» point of view, between 1208 and 1227 ancient Estonians heroically defended their political and personal freedom and native religion, but unfortunately they had to surrender to German invaders and the Catholic Church. This interpretation was adopted by the Estonian audience by the end of the 19th century. However, there were not many individual historical heroes to find in medieval history who could fit the national narrative. The 13th-century sources mention very few Estonians by their names. There is one exception: Lembitu, the leader of Sakala province. In 1217 he was killed in battle; his head was cut off and taken away by crusaders. Numerous artistic presentations popularised the person of Lembitu in the 19th and 20th century and shaped the public image of Lembitu as a king-like leader of the resistance in the name of freedom and independence. At the same time, in the early 2000s parallelly an ironic or critical attitude towards traditional presentations of the medieval warlord developed. A new turn in the presentations of Lembitu in Estonian media happened in the 2010s. The topic then became connected to the question of the fate of the skull of the medieval warlord. In Estonia in the 1960s, a report began to circulate that somewhere in Poland the head of Lembitu still existed. The Estonian Ministry of Culture initiated in 2014 contact between the Estonian and Polish ministries of culture, which resulted in some investigations in Polish museums with the aim of locating the artefact. The initiative was renewed in 2017, and in 2018–2019 the Estonian Ministry of Culture funded the research of the sources of Estonian history in Poland. Although the aim of the research in Poland was defined broadly and had real scholarly results, for the media and public audience it was definitely the project «searching for the skull of Lembitu». The public need for a historical hero, local patriotism combined with tourism marketing, and at least during the last decades the playful handling of history or historical stereotypes shape in combination the presentations of Lembitu in Estonian media and culture today.

On the Problem of the Czech-German Opposition in the Hussite Wars

Since the time of the historico-political polemics between František Palacký and Constantin von Höfler in the middle of nineteenth century, the term “national” has been used by Czech historians to identify the character of the Hussite wars. The execution of Jan Hus in Constance as well as the proclamations of the crusades against the Hussites in Bohemia are defined as “an insult to national honor” (František Palacký), and they produced the Taborite movement as “a national peasant war of the Czech under the flag of religion against the German nobility and the supremacy of the German Emperor” (Friedrich Engels / Josef Macek), while the military invasion released a “national” which spread among the whole society (František Šmahel). To what extent does the term “nationalism of defense” and its derivates befit the study of the contradictions that existed between the Czechs and the Germans in the Bohemian kingdom of that period? This paper proves that the Prague Hussites did not consider the Bohemian Germans their “natural foes” but did so of the crusaders who came from the German lands along with King Sigismund. The author argues that the Prague Hussites had not a cultural, but a political xenophobia focused on the foreign German invaders.

The Murder of Dmitry Revutsky: to Investigate, or to Ignore?

The relevance of the article is due to the appeal to the complex and controversial period of the German occupation of 1941–1944, which is one of the most mythologized in Ukrainian historiography. It was distorted by both silencing the truth and imposing half-truths or outright lies. The murder of Dmytro Revutsky is a concrete example of myth-making in the history of musical culture, which the proposed article is intended to refute.Main objectives of the article is on the basis of multifaceted elaboration of the collected factual material to verify the available versions of the murder of Dmytro Revutsky, determining the most probable of them.The methodology. In the proposed article — source study — the central place is occupied by scientific criticism of sources, and methodological tools cover analytical, synthetic, logical, retrospective, chronological research methods.Results and conclusions. Reconstruction of events showed that at first the German authorities classified information about the murder of musicologist Dmitry Revutsky, which gave rise to a wave of rumors that the composer Lev Revutsky was allegedly killed. Later, an official German version appeared about the murderers from the group of the Soviet underground fighter Vladimir Kudryashov (destroyed in 1942), which was later supported by Soviet ideology, but at first Moscow transferred responsibility for the crime to the German invaders. Valentina Kuzyk called this GermanSoviet version incorrect and put forward her own version, which we called “conspiratorial”: the real criminal is not Kudryashov, but a secret agent of the NKVD. V. Kuzyk considers the members of V. Kudryashev’s group to be “intelligent student youth”, a priori incapable of murder. In turn, we were able to establish that these people were typical representatives of the Soviet proletariat and did not differ in highly moral behavior. Having verified the available documentary evidence, we believe that the members of Kudryashov’s group could well have been the killers of Dmitry Revutsky.