German Occupation Research Articles

The Hungarian Army’s Way into the Vernichtungskrieg - The Hungarian Troops on the Eastern Front, 1941

ABSTRACT On 27 June 1941 Hungary entered the war against the Soviet Union, fielding a 90,000-man strong force (consisting of the ‘Carpathian Group’ and the ‘Rapid Corps’) that was attached to Army Group South. This study examines two issues related to the participation of Hungarian troops in 1941. First it establishes how the subordination to Germany determined the use of Hungarian formations. A close Hungarian-German military cooperation developed prior to Operation Barbarossa, especially during the campaign against Yugoslavia in April 1941. The Rapid Corps and the Carpathian Group were placed under German subordination in July-August 1941. It led to friction as Hungary, which in the interwar period had prepared for a war against small and medium-sized neighbouring powers, was pressured to conduct operations against the much more advanced Red Army. Satisfying German demands provoked constant controversy about the extent of the Hungarian involvement in the operations on the Eastern Front, also within the Hungarian military elite. Due to these differences of opinion, the pro-German general Henrik Werth was relieved as the Chief of the General Staff in September 1941, and Lieutenant General Ferenc Szombathelyi was appointed in his place. The study then examines the first months of the Hungarian occupation of Soviet territories. In the summer of 1941, a unique opportunity presented itself to establish an independent Hungarian occupation administration. The Hungarian government tried to use this opportunity to implement its anti-Semitic plans and to enforce its economic interests. However, the Carpathian Group, which from August 1941 was incorporated into the German military command structure, increasingly became the executor of German occupation policy.

Examining the Dutch Resistance Movement During World War II

This paper is an analysis of the Dutch resistance movement during World War II. During the German occupation of the Netherlands, 102,000 Dutch Jews were deported and killed, which amounted to approximately 75 percent of the pre-war Jewish population in the Netherlands. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Dutch civilians were forced to work in German work camps to fuel the German war machine. Despite this, only 4% of Dutch citizens participated in the resistance movement. This paper will examine the roles of these resistance fighters, as well as several primary sources that demonstrate their importance and significance. It will explain that resistance work was incredibly dangerous work done by many local organizations that when combined formed a national movement. The resistance movement was recognized and encouraged by the Dutch government in exile and was viewed as a threat by the German occupiers. Ultimately, members of the resistance movement should be viewed as heroes who were willing to stand up to the evil of the Nazi regime and risk their lives for freedom.

Analyses and findings of unusual substitute materials in a raincoat from WWII

Due to the coating materials used, historic raincoats are vulnerable to degradation and rarely survive long periods of time. The investigated raincoat dating from 1943 is no exception—the coating is unusually stiff and flaking off in areas around folds and cracks. Study into its material composition can contribute to important knowledge of the availability of materials for waterproof clothing during the time of the German occupation of Denmark (1940–1945) when the usual materials for raincoats, cotton fabric and rubber, were in short supply. Optical microscopy and attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (ATR-FTIR) identified the fabric to consist of rayon staple fibres and paper yarn, and the coating to be based on cellulose nitrate (CN) lacquer and an unknown plasticiser. Though the results are atypical for a raincoat, they are in good accordance with the raw materials available in Denmark in 1943. Analysis by matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionisation mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS), and 1H and 13C nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), identified the plasticiser as poly(1,3-butylene) adipate. Powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) moreover identified the pigment as titanium white of the anatase form. By historical discussion, this study argues that IG Farben is the likely producer of poly(1,3-butylene) adipate, even though the first known marketing of the plasticiser is from 1986 where the Swiss firm Ciba-Geigy introduced poly(1,3-butylene) adipate as a plasticiser for PVC cling films under the tradename Reoplex® 346. The results give an interesting insight into the use of substitution products during WWII and provide new information on polymer science of the time.

Northwards: How Norway became a destination for German car tourism, 1920s–1960s

ABSTRACT The article traces the beginnings of the powerful liaison between automobile technology, tourism, and the ‘Land of the Fjords’. Focusing on the German automobile club ADAC in the period 1920s to 1960s, the article examines how German motorists discovered and embraced Norwegian roads, and what idea of the ‘Norway experience’ was constructed along the way. Tourists, it is argued, were primed for car travel through the narratives of contrasting vistas and sublime nature stemming from the time Norway was experienced by cruise and cariole. During the German occupation of Norway 1940–1945, narratives and pictures of Norwegian landscapes were spread among Germans as never before; now combined with narratives of heroism, conquest, and technology. In the 1950s, when West Germany was experiencing the onset of mass tourism and mass motorization, the concept of the extraordinary car trip on Norway’s roads was ready to be widely communicated and put into praxis. Postwar ‘Grand Tours on wheels’ to Scandinavia were both continuing narratives on Northern remoteness and otherness, and ‘silencing’ historical landscapes of war. By the mid-1960s, Norway had been established as a superb car travellers’ destination, a sanctuary of nature just accessible by a car.

Trauma, anxiety and guilt: Repetition compulsion in Denmark’s military activism?

Military contributions to international operations have been Denmark’s preferred security policy instrument since 9/11. The Danish military activism, thereby, resembles a self-referential identity project originated in the national trauma of 1864 and dominated by defense mechanisms against anxiety and guilt. Anxiety related to the near-annihilation of Denmark and guilt from not having acted politically responsible in the past. Since 9/11, the German occupation and the footnote policy, therefore, emerges as powerful identity markers that drive and enhance Denmark’s military engagement. Consequently, the military activism continues without significantly balancing the advantages and disadvantages of the specific military contributions. The military activism endures because Denmark, through repetition, secures the historical survivals in 1864, 1940 and during the Cold War as its own.
 Keywords: Denmark, military activism, collective identity, chosen trauma, psychoanalysis

Toward an authoritarian and populist monarchy in Belgium: Leopold III and Hendrik de Man during the 1930s crisis

ABSTRACT In historiography, the relationship between the Belgian socialist Hendrik de Man and King Leopold III has been addressed mainly in the context of what became the so-called ‘Royal Question’ after the war, that is, the question of whether Leopold's return to the throne was possible and desirable given his collaborationist attitude during the German occupation. The years before the Second World War have received much less attention, even though this was a period during which both men played no less remarkable a role, De Man as the spiritual father of the Labour Plan and as the protagonist of an authoritarian-led corporate state, and Leopold III as the king who, disillusioned with parliamentary democracy and its political elite, sought more and more support from the people. This paper pays attention to these themes that have faded into the background and to the sympathy that De Man and Leopold shared for a managed economy and an authoritarian populist monarchy. It does so first by outlining the divergent theoretical and ideological backgrounds of their thinking, then by examining their common ground, and finally by outlining the political scope of their alliance.

Whatever Happened to Henri Bergson?

Abstract In the early decades of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) ranked among the world’s most eminent philosophers. His distinction between clock-time and time as subjectively experienced, as well as his invocation of the élan vital as driving humanity to higher planes of creativity and freedom, enabled him to enjoy unparalleled influence among French students as well as international writers. Bergson personified philosophy. He also seemed to justify the gamble of emancipation that France had taken barely a century earlier, in granting talented Jews the opportunity to flourish. In 1927 Bergson was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Yet very soon thereafter, the prominence that he had enjoyed quite precipitously declined, and he drifted into obscurity from which his writings have yet to recover. How can such an eclipse be explained? Part of the reason was an inevitable shift in philosophic fashion. By the 1920s, belles-lettres aimed at an educated public yielded to linguistic analysis in the Anglo-American world and to phenomenology on the continent. Part of the reason was the shock of the First World War. Its carnage led to disillusionment and to pessimism, which made Bergson’s paeans to the intuitive powers of humanity seem tone-deaf. Another part of the reason was an illness that left him virtually speechless—and thus unresponsive—for the last fifteen years of his life, which was cut short by the German invasion and occupation. Registering as a Jew in the dead of winter, Bergson died—a victim of Nazism—of pneumonia.

Life and Death In the shadow of Sobibór: economic dimensions of Jewish-Gentile relations in the town of Włodawa, 1939-1944

ABSTRACT This article considers the changing forms of economic relations between Jewish and Gentile residents of the Eastern Polish town of Włodawa from the 1920s to the immediate postwar years, focusing on their interactions during the German occupation of 1939 to 1944. It adopts a microhistorical approach by revealing how the proximity of the Sobibór extermination camp shaped Jewish survival strategies and dynamics of inter-ethnic relations. Drawing on local court documents and postwar testimonies, I follow the lines of communication between the camp and Włodawa and argue that widespread local knowledge of the murder of Jews at Sobibór drove the plunder and take-over of ‘post-Jewish’ goods and property (‘mienie pożydowskie’) in and around the town. By providing a new perspective on how knowledge of and encounters with mechanisms of extermination determined Jewish-Gentile interactions during the Holocaust, this article illuminates routine forms of collaboration and broadens our understanding of the genocide in rural Poland.

Tramvaj, fijaker i bicikl: saobraćajna svakodnevica u okupiranom Beogradu 1941. godine

The paper discusses the changes in the Belgrade traffic system under the German occupation in 1941, an unavoidable part of everyday life that was radically transformed during the war. By reconstructing and analyzing the standard routines in the city’s traffic system, we perceive the disruption of the pre-war lifestyle and subsequent institution of newly imposed rules of conduct. Unlike the peacetime routine, when individuals could disobey or rearrange many restrictive laws without too much concern, during the occupation everyday traffic became one of the most conspicuous and unavoidable restrictive systems, a prominent symbol of obedience, loss of individuality and identity.

Cultural representation in Luxembourgish street naming practices

Abstract This paper investigates street naming practices in Luxembourg. Starting from a theoretical sketch of how the curation of a given cityscape by dint of cultural artifacts (e.g., street names) establishes complex orders of cultural representation, it discusses three case studies for street naming campaigns from Luxembourg. These case studies represent different types of action modes, ideological motives and linguistic materials involved in street naming. First, the naming process for a newly established neighborhood in Luxembourg City illustrates the default mode of street naming by administrative action. Second, the Germanization of Luxembourg City under German occupation during World War II demonstrates the forced alignment of a given cityscape through political octroi. And third, the recent first naming of preexisting streets in the rural municipality of Wincrange provides an example of a participatory naming process that establishes an order of cultural representation based on local traditions.

L’Afrique du Nord, un nouveau centre littéraire français entre 1940 et 1944 ? L’exemple de « Tunisie française littéraire » au miroir de la traduction

The German Occupation of France (starting in summer 1940) brought about a brutal reclassification of literary values and a redefinition of “center” and “periphery” in the French Republic of Letters. The outcome of this phenomenon is particularly interesting in North Africa between 1940–1944. Indeed, the periodical Fontaine (edited in Algiers by Max Pol Fouchet), as well as Tunisie française littéraire (edited in Tunis under the aegis of Armand Guibert and Jean Amrouche), express a strong desire to take over a Parisian “center” discredited by the Occupation and the Collaboration, and create new “literary capitals” on the fringes of the metropolis. This paper focuses on Tunisie française littéraire (a very influential publication in North Africa during the war, to which A. Camus and G. Stein contributed), analyses the role of cultural mediation played by literary journals geographically “peripheral” and their members in an attempt to redefine the contours of the “center” (Paris) and the “periphery” (the French colonial Empire) — an initiative where translations, particularly of indigenous authors, proved to be an important issue.

Educational policy of the German occupation administration in Reichskommissariat Ukraine according to the documents of German special services

Educational policy of the German occupation administration in Reichskommissariat Ukraine according to the documents of German special services

Jewish Salonica in 1912 and 1943: The Ottoman and Greek/German Practices Consıdered

The Ottoman Salonika was once home to the largest Sephardic Jewish community in the world. They were the undisputed masters in almost all sectors of the city’s economy. The conquest of the city by Greece in 1912, however, deprived the Jews of the Turkish protection they had enjoyed for 482 years. During the war, the Jews had done what they could to resist the Greeks. During the two months following the entry of the Greek army into the city, the Greek population, backed up by the army, carried out pogroms against the Jews. Salonikan Jews were still pro-Turkish in 1913, and regretted the passing of the old order. In 1943 under German occupation more than 95 percent of the Jewish population at that time, were deported, 2,000–2,500, at a time in closed cars in nineteen convoys from Salonika to Auschwitz where they were gassed in extermination camps.

Janina Kostkiewicz (Ed.), Crime without Punishment… The Extermination and Suffering of Polish Children during the German Occupation 1939–1945, Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków 2020, pp. 272

Janina Kostkiewicz (Ed.), Crime without Punishment… The Extermination and Suffering of Polish Children during the German Occupation 1939–1945, Jagiellonian University Press, Kraków 2020, pp. 272

Okupační politika v průmyslu protektorátu Čechy a Morava na příkladu Škodových závodů

Occupation Policy in Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia Industry: An Example of Ĺ koda Works The study describes occupation policy and administration, including goals in the Pro-tectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. It analyses measures carried out by the occupation administration in the manufacturing, more specifically in the armament industry, and presents selected specific measures and their impacts on the industrial sector and arms production. In this regard, the company Ĺ koda Works, the largest arms manufacturer, serves as an illustrative case study. The measures affected the Protectorate industry, which was completely restructured based on the needs of the German war economy. By analysing selected principles of the administration's operation, specific measures and their real effects on the arms industry, the study shows the potential and real economic significance of the German occupation of the Czech lands.

“A New Historic Youth”: Lettrism, Delinquency, and the Fait Divers in Postwar France

This essay seeks to historicize Lettrist activity in France and to situate Lettrist aesthetic productions and destructions in relation to the memory of German Occupation of France during World War II, and to the violent outbursts and acting out of the Lettrists’ contemporaries. Isidore Isou and others belonged to a rather unique generation in the history of France—a generation that caused adults a great deal of concern as young men and women committed crimes and acts of violence at unprecedented rates. Attending to the cultural historical specificities of the Lettrists and other young troublemakers in postwar France, I argue that Lettrism, as an aesthetic idea, could never have gained or sustained momentum without the mid-century fait divers, a specific genre of miscellaneous news story. In the years immediately following the end of World War II, the raison d’être of the young Lettrists in France could perhaps be defined as the construction of situations that would generate banal news items of a very specific nature. Reframing Lettrist activity as essentially compatible with the raw material for faits divers, as defined by Roland Barthes, helps us to appreciate the somewhat-surprising interest the group generated at a historic moment when France had never been more concerned with the gratuitous misdeeds of young men.

ЛАННИК Л.В. ПОСЛЕ РОССИЙСКОЙ ИМПЕРИИ. ГЕРМАНСКАЯ ОККУПАЦИЯ 1918 Г. – СПБ.: ЕВРАЗИЯ, 2020. – 528 С.

The review presents an analysis of the monograph by L.V. Lannik dedicated to the history of the German occupation of the territory of the former Russian Empire. It analyzes the features of German policy, the clash of interests of the members of the bloc of the Central Powers in its implementation. Research by L.V. Lannika is compared with the trends of modern Russian historiography of the Civil War and Revolution.

Organization of Work of Vocational Education Institutions in the German Occupation Zones of Ukraine in 1941-1944: Historical and Pedagogical Aspects

The article considers the historical and pedagogical aspects of the creation of vocational education institutions system in the German occupation zones of Ukraine during the Second World War. The purpose of the article is to theoretically reconstruct and disclose the main foundations of Nazi policy in the field of vocational education, which was carried out in the occupation zones of Ukraine, to distinguish and compare the effectiveness of relevant measures in the «Galicia» district, the area of responsibility of the Temporary military administration, the Military zone and the Raichskommissariat «Ukraine». The authors of the article use methods of retrospective, historical-comparative, relatively comparable and chronological analysis of the identified sources, as well as classification and systematization of statistical data on vocational education institutions restored by the German occupation authorities. The results. As a result, it was found out that the urgent need of the German occupation authorities for personnel support in many industries, agriculture, medicine and the service sector led to the need to resume the work of vocational education institutions, although this contradicted the strategic goal of the occupation of Ukraine. This is confirmed by the historical, comparative and structural-functional analysis of the regulatory documents of the Reich Ministry of the Eastern occupied territories, reports in the local press of the occupation zones of Ukraine. The types of vocational education institutions that worked in the occupation zones of Ukraine are revealed. The separate faculties of technical universities, as well as medical, agricultural and teacher institutes worked In Ukraine. In the most systematic dimension, these trends can be traced in the Galicia district and the area of responsibility of the Temporary military administration. In a similar vein, the work of secondary vocational education institutions is reconstructed. In the worst condition, the work of vocational education institutions was carried out on the territory of the Reichskommissariat «Ukraine», since its head E. Koch opposed the rational measures of A. Rosenberg as the head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. It is stated that some of the German regional managers, organizing the broad exploitation of the captured territorial array, needed personnel, and therefore, in this area, they actually acted at their own discretion. Conclusions. It was concluded that the part of the educational institutions of the vocational education system of the German occupation zones of Ukraine managed to train qualified specialists and send them to work. Most of their graduates were students and pupils of former Soviet educational institutions, as well as Ukrainian youth who received initial vocational training.

Dėmėtosios šiltinės epidemija Lietuvoje Antrojo pasaulinio karo metais (1941–1944 m.)

ANNOTATION. The article dwells on cases of typhus in Lithuania in 1941–1944, offers an analysis of the spread of the disease, the number of cases, and the preventive measures applied by German and Lithuanian officials. It was established that during the German occupation, typhus spread in Lithuania in two ways. The disease was first spread by Soviet prisoners of war, and later by civilians who were evacuated from the Soviet Union. The largest number of cases was recorded in parts of Lithuania where typhus was most often detected before the Second World War. KEYWORDS: typhus, epidemic, prisoners of war, evacuated civilians, sanitation, prevention.

“To hell with everything”: Post-war nationalism and the “Old Slavic Sanctuary” at Ptuj Castle, Slovenia

The large post-war archaeological excavations at Ptuj Castle in Yugoslavia were responsible for what seemed at the time to be one of the most intriguing discoveries in Eastern Europe. Excavated after the German occupation, the archaeologists and anthropologists had a mission to prove the existence of early medieval Slavic settlement of the disputed border areas in response to the Germanization policy and its supporting archaeological theories during World War II. Conscious of their role, archaeologists and anthropologists argued for the Slavic nature of artefacts and skeletons against the former German claims. Thus, the excavated structure, the robber trenches of a tower, notoriously (mis)interpreted as an ‘old Slavic sanctuary’, can only be understood in its post-war state- and nation-building context. Working with the same artefacts, archaeological research techniques under the veil of Fascism, Nazism and Communism were strikingly similar, but the interpretations of results were diametrically opposed. As has been pointed out, archaeology and anthropology served the prevailing political ideology. Political transitions, mixed with opportunistic behavior and personal animosities among archaeologists, influenced archaeological analyses and interpretations. Many archaeologists and anthropologists compensated for their mid-war activities by closely following the post-war nationalist agenda. This generally happened without any direct pressure from above.