German-occupied Territories Research Articles

The Black Food Market in the General Government, Poland, 1939–1945

ABSTRACT This article examines black-market food activities in the German-occupied territory of the General Government during World War II. Unlike in other areas of occupied Poland (e.g. in areas incorporated into the Reich), in the General Government, and especially in Warsaw, the black market became a specialist discipline, often practiced professionally. The article argues that this professionalized black market thrived in large part due to the corruption of German authorities and their powerlessness to enforce the harsh system of rules and prohibitions around illegal food trade. An analysis of Polish and German archival materials, ego-documents, as well as both the official and underground press shows that this corruption and inability to control characterized the entire supply chain of black-market food, from production in the countryside, transfer to cities, and distribution and consumption in cities.

Unternehmen „Hermann” — pacyfikacja Puszczy Nalibockiej z perspektywy SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger

The participation of the SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger in the pacifications of the partisan movement in occupied Belarus remains a topic that, despite some discussion in Polish, Russian, English and German sources, demands further scholarly attention. The article brings into focus the events taking place in the summer of 1943 in the German-occupied territory of the Nowogródek and Wilno Voivodeships of the prewar Republic of Poland, which were included the German-occupied General District of Belarus (Generalbezirk Weißruthenien/Генеральная акруга Беларусь) during the war. The anti-partisan operation (Unternehmen “Hermann”) carried out by the Germans with the participation of units consisting of Germans, Austrians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Ukrainians was directed against the Soviet and Polish partisans.
 Of course, apart from the extensive use documents of German archives, we drew attention to documents of Polish and Soviet provenance, and in particular to the memories of Polish witnesses inhabiting the area of Naliboki Forest. The aim of this article is to present the latest scope of research on the activities of the SS-Sonderbataillon Dirlewanger in comparison with other counter-insurgency (anti-partisan) units carrying out ruthless pacification measures as part of “Bandenbekämpfung”.

Nazi Conspirator, Russian Patriot: Judging General Andrei Vlasov

Lieutenant General A.A. Vlasov was an infamous, high-ranking Soviet defector during the Second World War. After his capture by German soldiers in 1942, Vlasov featured heavily in anti-Soviet German propaganda and organized anti-Soviet resistance in German-occupied territories. He was recaptured by Soviet forces in May 1945 and executed as a traitor in August 1946. Vlasov’s story challenged crucial Soviet narratives about the war and posed a threat to Soviet solidarity and stability in its aftermath. His case was rarely acknowledged among Soviet historians, only resurfacing after its collapse in a wave of nationalistic works that sympathized with Vlasov as a patriot and martyr of Stalinist repression. In the West, numerous political and practical factors since the 1950s have left scholars split on the truth of Vlasov’s intentions, beliefs, and historical impact. His story remains controversial in Russian academia; attempts to rehabilitate Vlasov have been suppressed by the Putin regime. This paper utilizes German and Soviet primary sources from recently declassified Russian state archives, as well as Western, Soviet, and Russian historiographic works from the 1950s to today. This paper demonstrates that Vlasov was intensely preoccupied with how he would be perceived by history; in this pursuit, he actively curated a vague, inconclusive record of his wartime experience. It also assesses why Vlasov’s case presents a unique challenge to historians and remains highly controversial in academic and political discourse under the Putin regime.

Animal Law in the Third Reich

Animal Law in the Third Reich

The Blister Club: The Extraordinary Story of the Downed American Airmen Who Escaped to Safety in World War II

The Blister Club: The Extraordinary Story of the Downed American Airmen Who Escaped to Safety in World War II

Український театр в умовах німецької окупації 1941–1942 рр.

The article covers the activity of theatrical groups in the German-occupied territory of Ukraine during the Second World War, as well as the place of the theater in the policy of the occupying power,the repertoire component and the use of the occupation administration of acting groups to propagate Nazi ideas among the local population. The author shows the use of the Ukrainian theater's legitimate position to communicate with the civilian population and preserve national artistic traditions. In the atmosphere of destruction of social institutions, narrowed literary and artistic life, lack of domestic cinema, closure of museums, libraries, limited schooling and discontinued activities of higher education, the theater became an artistic, aesthetic and educational institution.

A Hard Sell: The Nazi Film Ohm Krüger in Wartime France

Historians of the Third Reich generally view Ohm Krüger (Hans Steinhoff, 1940), an anti-British historical drama set during the Boer War, as a triumph of Nazi propaganda, yet the film's distribution and reception in German-occupied territories have never been studied in depth. By offering a detailed comparison between the German original and a substantively reedited, French-dubbed version produced in 1941 under the title Le Président Kruger, as well as a politically and economically contextualized analysis of the film's distribution and reception in occupied and Vichy France, this article questions the persuasive power traditionally ascribed to Ohm Krüger to draw broader conclusions about the complexities of exporting Nazi propaganda to foreign markets in the volatile context of the Second World War.

Women’s Antifascist Resistance on German-Occupied Territory Through the Lens of Soviet Leaflets, 1941–5

During the Second World War, approximately 28,500 Soviet women fought in the ranks of the partisans on Soviet territory temporarily occupied by the Wehrmacht. Although Soviet propaganda destined for the home front often spoke about their contributions, they eschewed direct appeals for others to follow in their footsteps. In contrast, partisan leaflets distributed across occupied territory overtly called on local women to join the partisan movement and fight alongside men. This essay explores how Soviet propagandists attempted to engage with local women on occupied territory through partisan leaflets and the kinds of expectations they sought to convey. Partisan leaflets not only exploited the image of the self-sacrificing partizanka to encourage women to sacrifice themselves but also vividly and graphically detailed crimes committed against women and children in order to inspire hatred. Such depictions were meant to steal the resolve of local civilians, while simultaneously discouraging behavior that was thought to aid the enemy. The representations conveyed in partisan leaflets encouraged a duality that saw women portrayed either as Soviet-style amazons or victims of sexual violence and rape. While promoting partisan recruitment, such representations encouraged unrealistic expectations and foreshadowed the violence that awaited women who failed to live up to them.

Spies, Lies, and Disguise: The Daring Tricks and Deeds That Won World War II by Jennifer Swanson

Reviewed by: Spies, Lies, and Disguise: The Daring Tricks and Deeds That Won World War II by Jennifer Swanson Elizabeth Bush Swanson, Jennifer Spies, Lies, and Disguise: The Daring Tricks and Deeds That Won World War II; illus. by Kevin O'Malley and with photographs. Bloomsbury, 2019 [160p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-68119-779-1 $21.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-5476-0343-5 $15.39 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-7 From the Allies' Ghost Army of inflatable tanks, trucks, and boats, to anthrax-infused cow feed pellets to be air-dropped over Germany, high stakes deceptions and strategic longshots were often as crucial as brute force to gaining advantage in World War II. Here Swanson highlights fifteen operations designed to turn the tide in the Allies' favor. Many of the short chapters narrate war stories that have become legendary, such as the Native American code talkers, the diversionary tactics in advance of D-Day, the resistance fighters and spies in German-occupied territory, and the Bletchley circle laboring to keep up with the ever-shifting Enigma Machine code. Swanson also offers lesser-known but equally fascinating tales: a corpse deployed to deliver Germans disinformation, Sir Barnes Wallis's barrel-shaped bouncing bombs that ruptured dams and flooded the Ruhr Valley, and behind-the-scenes efforts of authors Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to draw the United States into the War. Black and white photos, O'Malley's cartoon-style recruitment posters and illustrations, and a narrative tone free of textbook stuffiness combine to create broad appeal. An bibliography (adult books only) is included and an index is forthcoming. Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The ‘Lokot’ Republic’ and the RONA in German-Occupied Russia, 1941–1943

ABSTRACTThis article will address the creation and two-year existence of the so-called ‘Lokot’ Republic’ in Russia between 1941 and 1943. Though fully within German-occupied territory and the rear area of the 2nd Panzer Army, it was afforded a limited degree of self-autonomy that resulted in the creation of a statelet with its own government departments, armed forces, laws, schools, hospitals, and cultural life. The experiment was regarded by its defenders as a preliminary step toward Russian independence in the post-war European ‘New Order’, and today many historians argue that an opportunity existed for the Russian people to overthrow the Stalinist regime with German assistance and replace it with a viable alternative. However, such a view discounts the will of the most important figures in the German political leadership — above all, Adolf Hitler — who were determined to promptly initiate eventual National Socialist aspirations of an empire in the East colonized exclusively by Germans and ‘kindred’ nations. The study findings are based on archival material as well as current Russian and German research on the subject.

Проблемы взаимоотношений командования Белой армии с сепаратистскими правительствами на Юге России в работе А. И. Деникина «Навет на Белое движение»

The article studies some of the more complicated and sensitive issues of the Civil War in the South of Russia – relations of the Armed Forces of South Russia with the Krai governments of the Don and the Kuban and separatist movements as an important factor in the Whites’ defeat in the South of Russia. Both issues are covered in ‘Defamation of the White Movement,’ one of the last works of General A. I. Denikin. Its manuscript has been introduced into scientific use by the authors. Commanders and military authorities of the Volunteer Army with A. I. Denikin at its head were not tied down by regional interests and could pursue national interests in their policy in order to restore an all-Russian unity destroyed by the revolution. Regional concerns of the Don, Kuban, Little Russian, Caucasian independentists were in direct conflict with the national tasks that the Volunteer Army and the Armed Forces of South Russia strove to solve. Unlike the Don Ataman P. N. Krasnov, who was forced to cooperate with the occupation authorities of Imperial Germany, whose troops had occupied the territory of the Great Don Army for the most of 1918, and unlike other regional administrators in the German-occupied territories, the Whites did not cooperate with the occupiers and at times counteracted their anti-Russian policy. Denikin's propaganda successfully used this fact to fall back on traditional patriotic sentiments and to eat away at the Kremlin regime’s support. Centrifugal tendencies in the South of Russia did not allow the Volunteers to consolidate anti-Bolshevik forces and made an armed resistance to the Bolsheviks impossible. Hence A. I. Denikin’s uncompromising stand on separatist aspirations of independentists. In his view, it was the separatists’ activities in different regions of the former Russian Empire that hindered the successful offensive of the armed forces of South Russia, for instance, on the Moscow direction. Internal dissent was exacerbated by intervention of foreign forces – German occupation forces, the Allied Intervention, and active Bolshevik influence on the outskirts of the former Empire. The article compares Denikin’s text with testimonies of contemporaries and writings of historians. Thus, the authors have been able to show that his slender work reliably and accurately recreates the complex and dramatic situation, which led to the defeat of the anti-Bolshevik forces in the Civil War.

Struktura i działalność niemieckiego aparatu wysiedleńczego na Zamojszczyźnie

In October 1939, the Zamośc Region became a German-occupied territory. First displacement of the population from this area was initiated by the Germans in November 1941. But the organized action began a year later. Then the Germans marked the Zamośc Region as “the first settlement area in the Generalgouvernement ”. Apart from the Poles, the Ukrainian population was also displaced. The Germans ended the resettlement of the Zamośc Region in the summer of 1943. This article describes the structure and activities of the German resettlement system. First, this system was created in the Reichsgau Wartheland . Then the activity of this system was extended to the area of the Zamośc Region. Also the German settlement in the Zamośc Region was presented. Particular emphasis was put on the German administration of settled villages.

The Ambivalent State: Determining Guilt in the Post-World War II Soviet Union

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the search for alleged traitors took place in each country that had been under foreign occupation. The most active country in this regard was the Soviet Union. This article analyzes how the Soviet authorities dealt with people who had lived in German-occupied territory during the war. It discusses divergent understandings of guilt, and examines means of punishment, retribution and justice. I argue that inconsistencies in Moscow’s politics of retribution, apart from reflecting tensions between ideology and pragmatism, resulted from contradictions within ideology, namely the belief that the war had uncovered mass enemies in hiding, and the belief that it had been won with the mass support of the Soviet population. The state that emerged from the war, then, was both powerful and insecure, able to quickly reassert its authority in formerly German-occupied areas, but also deeply ambivalent about its politics of retribution.

Milgram, Genocide and Bureaucracy: A Post-Weberian Perspective

The link between Stanley Milgram's experimental study of obedience in 1963 and the explanation of the Holocaust during the Second World War has been the subject of controversy for the past five decades. Russell and Gregory (2015) offer the latest reflections on this relationship. Hannah Arendt's analysis of Eichmann centred on the image of desk murderers mindlessly processing military orders. Milgram invoked pervasive evidence of compliance to morally reprehensible commands in his experimental study of obedience. The joint Arendt–Milgram perspective has recently fallen into disrespect as a result of voluntarism evidenced in recent studies of ordinary Germans in participation in mass murder. Russell and Gregory's contribution advances an essentially Weberian explanation for the behaviour of perpetrators. Their analysis of the obedience experiments concludes that all the participants were constrained by a normative structure that led them to ignore harm to subjects as a result of the larger bureaucratic mindset that allowed Milgram's assistants, his funders and his subjects to suppress acknowledgement of injury. They argue that this recapitulates key features of the Holocaust. The recent historiography of the Holocaust points to a post-Weberian understanding of the bureaucracies at the heart of the genocide – the slave labour program in Germany and German-occupied territory, and the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, where evidence points to a conscious and enthusiastic endorsement of the homicidal objectives of the Nazi regime.

The Ambivalent State: Determining Guilt in the Post-World War II Soviet Union

In the aftermath of the Second World War, the search for alleged traitors took place in each country that had been under foreign occupation. The most active country in this regard was the Soviet Union. This article analyzes how the Soviet authorities dealt with people who had lived in German-occupied territory during the war. It discusses divergent understandings of guilt, and examines means of punishment, retribution and justice. I argue that inconsistencies in Moscow’s politics of retribution, apart from reflecting tensions between ideology and pragmatism, resulted from contradictions within ideology, namely the belief that the war had uncovered mass enemies in hiding, and the belief that it had been won with the mass support of the Soviet population. The state that emerged from the war, then, was both powerful and insecure, able to quickly reassert its authority in formerly German-occupied areas, but also deeply ambivalent about its politics of retribution.

Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization, edited by Alex J. Kay, Jeff Rutherford, and David Stahel (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012), vi + 359 pp., hardcover $85.00, paperback $34.95, electronic version available

Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941 brings together eleven essays by members of an international group of mostly younger scholars with the goal of contributing to our understanding of the “cumulative radicalization” that drove Nazi policy in the Soviet Union to ever greater extremes of barbarism in 1941. Several of the essays are very valuable. Alex Kay examines the evolution of German food policy over the course of 1940–1941 in impressive detail. Even before Barbarossa, German leaders had begun to recognize that the looming economic and agricultural crisis could potentially be solved by territorial gains in Ukraine and other Soviet lands. Herbert Backe, state secretary in the Reich Ministry for Food and Agriculture, developed a plan to solve the food problem; it envisioned the starvation of “tens of millions” (p. 108) of Russians in both German-occupied territories and Soviet areas dependent on imported Ukrainian grain. Kay extensively documents the evolution of Backe's proposal in a way that concretely demonstrates the process of radicalization in this particular area of Nazi policy.

The Second Death of Ilya Pavlovitch Bjuscheff: The Legal Position of Prisoners, Spies and Deserters During World War 1

The article is a legal analysis of Zweig’s fictionalised account, published in 1927, of a true story which occurred in German occupied territory during World War 1. 'The Case of Sergeant Grischa' concerns a Russian prisoner of war who escapes his labour camp, is recaptured wearing the clothes of a dead German soldier, and subsequently tried and executed as a spy by German occupying forces, even though his true identity, status, and purpose in escape were by then known. In this examination, the very limits of law during ideological, industrialised warfare are illustrated by means of the repercussions on one man, who essentially is left alone to struggle against the breach of known, ‘civilised’ rules of warfare regarding the treatment of prisoners, spies and deserters. The article considers Grischa’s case through the lens of the international laws of armed conflict in force at the time. First, the origin and evolution in the 19th and early 20th centuries of what is today known as the International Humanitarian Law of Armed Conflict are introduced, after which specific provisions of the Hague Conventions 1899 and 1907, and Geneva Conventions 1864 and 1906, as they applied to prisoners of war, are outlined. The customs and usages of war found in contemporaneous military manuals supply additional details regarding the acceptable treatment of spies and deserters, while the laws governing enemy occupied territory – on which Grischa was initially imprisoned, escaped, recaptured, tried and executed – form the backdrop. Most troublesome is the human element, as a high degree of ideological and socio-economic rivalry existed not only between the main German officers in charge of Grischa’s case, but between the enemy belligerents.

Political and Humanitarian Messages in a Horse's Tale: MGM's Florian

Before the United States entered World War II, major Hollywood studios had been slow to produce films critical of the Nazi regime. In addition to fearing that such films would alienate the lucrative European market and run counter to the United States’ policy of neutrality, film industry executives were mindful, too, that anti-Nazi films could well worsen the situation of Jews in Germany and German-occupied territories. Attuned to anti-immigrant feelings in the United States, they also appeared reticent to depict the lot of refugees from Hitler. If the studios’ prime objective was to make the most profit while entertaining audiences, those running the studios might have viewed taking a stand on controversial issues as counterproductive. MGM's full-length film, Florian (1940), however, proved something of an exception. In this case, a light-entertainment film doubled as a palimpsest for commentary on some of the most critical events of the day.

“The Diaries of Fritzes and the Letters of Gretchens”: Personal Writings from the German–Soviet War and Their Readers

On 12 June 1941, ten days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Vitalii Stekol'shchikov, a 19-year-old graduate of the Riazan' artillery school, was deployed from Riazan' to western Ukraine. In letters to his girlfriend Anna (Ania, An'ka, Annushka) Panfilova, he reported on his trip, which took him through the capital (Hello, my snub-nose! Ardent lieutenant greetings from Moscow! [12 June]) and Kiev (We are sitting in a restaurant, having a little beer. With nothing to do, we are remembering Riazan', and I'm all with you, my dear [14 June]) to Zhitomir, from where he reported on 18 June that everyone was ready for action. Yet, where, for what purpose, and for how long they were being mobilized, was not clear to him at all. Vitalii also wrote to Anna that he was carrying all her letters to him (presumably from the time of his studies at the artillery school): know them almost entirely by heart. His next, undated letter to her found him in the midst of the horrors of the German invasion that started on 22 June, annihilating entire Red Army divisions and forcing others into retreat: Along the way we were followed all the time by enemy tanks, and the bandits were firing at us. Somehow we were still able to get away, and we saved the colors of the regiment. Several times I was within a hair's-breadth of death. But I managed to survive somehow. Yet all my belongings, which were in two suitcases, I had to leave them behind, including all the photos and the kerchiefs that you had given to me as presents. The lieutenant's description of the losses borne by his unit was terse: Many commanders and soldiers are gone. all in all, we got roughed up quite a bit. Vitalii kept writing to Anna, even though he did not hear back from her (This is already the fourth month that I have had no letters from you). Only in his 1lth letter to her did he report hearing his first news from her. (1) On a basic level, letters from the front of the Soviet-German war reveal the catastrophic impact of the war as it cut into civilian life, tore family members and lovers apart, and sent millions of soldiers and civilians into contexts of extreme violence and destruction. Even the disclaimer that Vitalii, along with countless other correspondents from the front, kept rehearsing in his letters--I am alive, healthy, and safe--bespoke the ubiquitous presence of death in this soldier's life. In later letters he would modulate the phrase in telling ways: am still alive, healthy. (2) Yet these same letters also testify to the self-expressive dynamic induced by the war. On both sides of the front, the war--which Germans referred to as the in the East, while Soviet leaders were quick to call it the Great Patriotic War, in analogy to the Patriotic War of 1812 that ended with the rout of Napoleon's Grande Armee--induced a massive urge to communicate in writing, and it made both regimes invest heavily in the deployment of communication services. An estimated 40 billion pieces of mail circulated between the front and the rear in Germany and German-occupied territory between 1939 and 1945. In 1942, when the flow of mail reached its peak, the German military courier (Feldpost) services shipped an average of 25 million letters, postcards, and parcels per day. (3) For the Soviet Union, the numbers are more difficult to ascertain--they appear to be significantly lower, especially in view of its much larger population, but they are striking nonetheless. (4) In Germany, the Feldpost system formally came into being on 2 September 1939, the day after Germany invaded Poland. In the Soviet Union, the military did not assume institutional patronage of postal services until 1943. During the first months of the war in particular, when the rapidly advancing Germans forced the Red Army into a hasty retreat, marred by losses of life and equipment of the highest magnitude, Soviet postal communication was severely disrupted. …

A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945 (review)

Reviewed by: A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945 Amir Weiner Vasily S. Grossman, A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941–1945, trans. and ed. Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova. 416 pp. New York: Pantheon, 2006. ISBN-13 978-0375424076. $27.95. One would be hard pressed to identify any glimmer of light amid the darkness that befell Soviet society in the summer of 1941. One of the few rays was the rediscovery of self-assertiveness by Soviet servicemen, which had been dulled by more than a decade of terror, indoctrination, and humiliation. Few were more indelible than the famous trio of writers-turned-frontline correspondents: Il′ia Ehrenburg, Konstantin Simonov, and Vasilii Grossman. Their candid and often moving reports from the front were a breath of fresh air for millions of citizens accustomed to the dreary dullness of Soviet reportage. Later, the publication of Ehrenburg’s and Simonov’s memoirs were events whose significance went far beyond their literary tributes.1 Yet it is Grossman, the one who never had the chance to record his memoirs or even witness the publication of his great wartime masterpiece, who towers above them all. Universally recognized as one of the finest writer-philosophers of the 20th century as well as an uncompromising thinker, Grossman today is widely read and well known, in sharp contrast to his two politically savvy fellow writers. Even those who have not read his novels are familiar with the KGB’s confiscation and ban of his epic, Life and Fate, an episode that embittered Grossman’s twilight and was epitomized by Mikhail Suslov’s cynical remark that the book could well be published in the Soviet Union … only in 200 years or so. Grossman died shortly after the encounter; Suslov lived much longer. But the novel saw the light in Suslov’s lifetime, first outside the Soviet Union in 1980 and then inside it in 1989. Grossman, it would seem, would have the last laugh, albeit posthumously. But would he? Although the new publication does not add much new to the large segments of Grossman’s wartime diaries that had already been published during and after the writer’s lifetime, it does offer a cohesive and uncensored narrative, including intimate and often heartbreaking entries that break taboos of Soviet and post-Soviet writing about the war, such as the Red Army’s mass rapes in Germany that were excised from previous publications. Capably [End Page 387] edited and translated by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova, and clear of major errors for the most part,2 the diary is a superb addition to the now growing number of Soviet personal accounts of the great cataclysm of World War II. Grossman was not an ordinary observer or participant in the great crucible. His insights and reflections were only sharpened by some of his distinctive features: a privileged member of the caste of Soviet intelligentsia who had no qualms about actual cohabitation with rank-and-file soldiers; an intellectual who was gradually developing a devastating criticism of the essence and politics of the Soviet enterprise while adhering to some of its foundational strictures; and an assimilated Jew who, unlike so many of his brethren, did not develop antagonistic attitudes toward the people and traditions he had personally left behind. Grossman’s diary does, however, convey human themes and thoughts shared by millions of ordinary men and women who passed through Armageddon and recorded by scores of diarists and memoirists. Grossman was there in person all the way from the initial defeats and retreats, through Stalingrad and onto Berlin, trying his best to adhere to his motto of “[following] the ruthless truth of war” (114), whatever it meant and wherever it would lead him. Anxiety over the fate of loved ones, longing, and the eventual pain upon learning of their deaths were the lot of many Soviet citizens and soldiers, even if only a few could have articulated them with Grossman’s lucid eloquence. Throughout the four-year war and well after it, Grossman was obsessed with the fate of his mother, who remained in German-occupied territory and was murdered by the...