German War Research Articles

Making Prussians, Raising Germans: A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866–1935 by Jasper Heinzen

Reviewed by: Making Prussians, Raising Germans: A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866–1935 by Jasper Heinzen Anna Ross Making Prussians, Raising Germans: A Cultural History of Prussian State-Building after Civil War, 1866–1935. By Jasper Heinzen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp 386. Cloth £90.00. ISBN 978-1107198791. It is a commonplace that war is and has been a characteristic element of nation-building. In the case of Germany, this is often examined through recourse to past armed struggles against external "others." But, as Jasper Heinzen argues, war against foreign enemies is not the only form of conflict deserving of our attention. In his work Making Prussians, Raising Germans, Heinzen explores the less-studied role of civil war in nation-state formation. The result is a meticulously researched and thought-provoking look at the relationship between civil war and the processes of contestation and negotiation characteristic of nineteenth-century German nationalism. Heinzen's historical starting point is Prussia's war on the German Confederation in 1866. He argues that this conflict amounted to a civil war, after which the inhabitants of Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Hesse-Kassel, Frankfurt, and the like faced the difficult task of coming to terms with a new sovereign, laws, and customs. In particular, he examines the case of Hanover from its defeat in 1866 through to passage of the Reich Commissar Laws of 1933/1935. Heinzen's look at Hanover includes an examination of military state-building in chapter 1, which encompasses the absorption of Hanoverian officers into the Prussian army, their experiences in fighting as brothers-in-arms alongside Prussian soldiers in 1870–1871, and the development of Prussian military culture in the Kaiserreich. Chapter 2 turns to consider how the legacy of internecine conflict was negotiated in memory culture. It traces the evolution of war memorials and the memory politics of monarchy, as well as the adaptation of municipal architecture, public festivals, and heritage preservation up to World War I. Heinzen then discusses the ways in which the Prussian state negotiated and inculcated loyalty in its deployment of press management and sponsorship of public libraries, and expands upon this theme by looking at education, probing curriculum reform, textbook content, and the elaboration of patriotic school holidays. He also explores Hanoverian nursing institutions to show how women reconciled their private hostility towards the Hohenzollerns with the need for pragmatic cooperation. Heinzen concludes the study by looking at the ways in which these strands of activity were recast after 1918 and before 1935. Heinzen's argument is that state-building after civil war was not a smooth process; rather, it was riddled with "contradictions, fears, rivalries, compromises, and contingencies" on the part of government representatives as well as annexed Prussians (14). This resulted in the integration of Hanover into federal structures being a much more interesting, complex, and longer process than we often recognize. In addition, he argues that the German war should be placed within a broader landscape of state-building after civil war. Heinzen does this in each of his chapters by drawing [End Page 626] parallels to the Swiss Sonderbundskrieg (1847), Piedmont's conquest of southern Italy (1860–1861), and the American Civil War (1861–1865). This comparative anchoring, Heinzen claims, helps to avoid any temptations to overstate the uniqueness of the story he is telling and instead underscores the generalizability of his findings. One can get bogged down in Heinzen's many lines of thought, but overall this is an excellent and informative monograph. In particular, Heinzen's account is notable for the attention it draws to Prussia's surprising flexibility in negotiating the legacy of civil war. This includes many thought-provoking passages about the productive tensions (198) that existed within state-building, and were continually fostered by both annexed populations and the Prussian state. The work also offers many treasures about everyday interactions between Hanoverians and state officials directly after 1866 and during the Kaiserreich. This is particularly striking in chapter 5, where Heinzen examines four Hanoverian nursing organizations: the Sisters of Frederica, the Sisters of Charity in Hildesheim, the Henriettenstift, and the Clementinenhaus. Here questions of female patriotism-cum-piety, confession, and...

The Minister of Ministrations

The Minister of Ministrations Monica Black (bio) Part I: Reading Signs How can we explain Bruno Gröning’s explosive impact in post–World War II Germany, like a bolt out of the blue? People waited in the rain for days to catch a glimpse of him, prostrated themselves in supplication before him, tried to buy his bathwater, and believed he could raise the dead. What freighted his appearance with such intense outpourings of emotion? Had he emerged at any other moment, he might have remained a simple lay healer. He would have developed a local following, treated the sick in his community, and had no wider influence. Instead, he was hailed as a messiah. The secular imagination fails before scenes like those that greeted Gröning. One thing seems certain. His arrival would never have been so dramatic had it not been preceded by years of spiritual insecurity and wave after wave of apocalyptic rumors—an especially fervent round of which was just culminating as he shambled onto history’s stage in the spring of 1949. Suddenly, end-time rumors were [End Page 236] replaced by extraordinary reports of a different variety: a pious man of the people was healing the sick and helping the ailing. According to the rumors, Gröning had been sent by God, the forerunner of some final unveiling. To appreciate the magnitude of the reverberations he unleashed, we have to return to the war, and the kinds of questions it raised in some Germans’ minds—questions that, once posed, would never stop being asked. Click for larger view View full resolution Bruno Gröning, cover of Der Spiegel newsmagazine, summer 1949. [End Page 237] One day in July 1942, townspeople in Lemgo, in Westphalia, gathered to watch their elderly Jewish neighbors report for deportation. Some among the spectators warned that the nation was inviting divine wrath, treating old people that way. It was not a popular point of view, but there it was. At least for some, the way the war was being carried out—a merciless campaign that swept even the elderly into its vortex—presented spiritual dangers: the possibility that God would punish Germany, or that the war itself was a punishment. Though Germans as a group remained largely indifferent to their Jewish fellow citizens’ fate, some worried about retribution, and during the catastrophic latter stages of WWII, many wondered what was coming next. “Germans mixed anxieties about their culpability with a sense of their own victimhood,” writes Nicholas Stargardt. People found themselves listening to available hypotheses, sorting through possible outcomes. Nearly everyone got into the business of predicting the future, and became adept in reading signs. This pattern of mixing anxiety and self-pity, and of engaging in interpretive speculation, emerged after what Stargardt has argued was the turning point of the German war: the firebombing of Hamburg. For more than a week in late summer 1943, British and American bombers assaulted the city from the air. Thirty-four thousand people were killed and many sections of Germany’s second-largest city burned to the ground. The Allies called the campaign Operation Gomorrah, after the impenitent city razed by God in Genesis. Surely the Allies did not intend for the name to telegraph a message about methods or destructive capacity alone: “Gomorrah” was a claim about whose side God was on. It was prophecy. On some level, the Allies understood how to weaponize spiritual anxiety, understood that the war they were fighting was staggering not just in its scope, lethality, and tactics, but existentially and morally staggering, capable of provoking ancient fears of [End Page 238] vengeful gods. “Our hometown is dying,” a pastor told his congregation after Hamburg’s bombing. “Should we accuse the Royal Air Force?” No, he concluded; it was not the enemy’s hand in play now, it was “His hand!” Signs, the pastor clearly knew, have to be read. As barometers of fate, they are oblique, they require interpretation, deciphering. Auguries of every kind began to mount up as the war dragged on, but their meanings never became clear. Some Germans drew explicit connections between Hamburg’s bombing and the persecution of the Jews. The Nazi...

The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad by Alexis Peri

Reviewed by: The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad by Alexis Peri Harry C. Merritt (bio) Alexis Peri. The War Within: Diaries from the Siege of Leningrad. xix + 337 pp. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017. ISBN 9780674971554. In Leningrad during World War II, a ruthless German war of annihilation collided with the Soviet state and its ruling party mobilized for tenacious resistance. The result was a blockade that lasted 872 days—arguably the longest and deadliest siege in modern history. During this period, Leningraders tried to cope with bombardment and deprivation, communicating their thoughts and feelings through diaries and letters. However, since the Red Army relieved the siege of Leningrad in 1944, the history of this siege has been strongly shaped by the official Soviet narrative of the Great Patriotic War. This narrative emphasized the heroic resistance of the city's defenders, military and civilian alike. In typical Soviet and post-Soviet accounts, the deprivations suffered by Leningraders are largely undifferentiated, while their suffering only serves as a backdrop from which heroism arose. Alexis Peri advances our understanding of the Soviet Union in wartime in two key ways. By selecting an interstitial case like Leningrad—"neither front nor rear, neither occupied nor free" (5)—Peri reveals how prewar Soviet social norms were carried forward or transformed in the context of war and blockade, along with strategies by which individual Leningraders attempted to overcome the immense changes and traumas they faced. Furthermore, by returning to unfiltered and largely unedited primary sources—more than 125 unpublished diaries—she channels the conceptions of Leningraders to show they both challenge and reinforce the Great Patriotic War narrative. The book is organized thematically, derived from the content of the diaries themselves. Focusing on the period of 1941 to 1942 when the siege was unbroken, Peri provides a detailed analysis of the questions and themes raised in these diaries while also providing ample space for the voices of the diarists themselves. Making use of the metaphor of "the Ring" that encircled the city, Peri analyzes her subjects' perceptions in concentric circles moving outward from the individual level, later exploring relations at the level of the family, community, and state. Peri maps the "mental landscapes" (25) of the diarists, allowing for exploration of shared perceptions, as well as contrasts with the official discourses propagated by the medical establishment and Communist Party. In the diaries, the German invasion in June 1941 and the closing of the Ring in September of that year dramatically disoriented Leningraders, who tried to adapt to new circumstances of bombardment, hunger, and the breakdown of municipal services like heat, electricity, and water. The lack of sufficient nutrition produced dystrophy (distrofiia), a relatively new and nebulous term [End Page 145] that was the subject of debates as it was adopted in medical discourse and popular vernacular. As a coping mechanism for the dramatic changes their bodies underwent through distrofiia, the diarists sometimes shied away from the traditional first-person singular narrative and instead used the plural form or invented fictionalized versions of themselves. These "experiments in self-representation" (88) are fascinating, though their effectiveness at aiding survival remains inconclusive. In the realm of social relations, the book challenges and complicates existing narratives of patriotic resolve and familial solidarity. As a core social unit and source of material and emotional support, one might assume that familial bonds might be protective in the face of suffering; instead, Peri finds that "the diaries suggest that Leningraders who remained with their families inside Leningrad fared worse … than those who were separated from them" (90). The circumstances of the blockade had reordered family relations based on ration categories and ability to contribute through work and informal practices like queueing in bread lines. The diaries reveal that family members were often suspected of ration card theft or the withholding of rations; while cannibalism was rare, fears thereof reflected concerns of family breakdown. When rationing was introduced, social hierarchies imposed by the state could mean life or death, with the lowest rations—Category III, "dependents"—a veritable death sentence if unsupplemented. Non-family social interactions focalized around food, with workplace canteens and shops where rations could be acquired functioning...

Electoral Participation and Right Wing Authoritarian Success Evidence From the 2017 Federal Elections in Germany

The 2017 federal elections in propelled the far-right party Alternative fur Deutschland (Alternative for Germany – AfD) to become the third largest party in the federal parliament. I argue that this strong result of a party that is at odds with much of the post war German political consensus can be explained by a) the move of the Christian-Democratic CDU/CSU to the political center and the resulting increase in similarity between center-left and center-right political forces; b) a de-politicization of politics, especially in the aftermath of the world financial and economic crisis and during the reign of the grand coalition. Drawing on data from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey and the Party Manifesto Project, I show that the AfD inhabits an otherwise unpopulated region of the policy space where it puts particular emphasis on anti-EU positions. In the next step, drawing on data from the Federal Returning Office, I show that the AfD was able to mobilize the electorate more successfully than other parties and that the party's electoral success was in large part due to this mobilization success with the change in turnout the second strongest predictor of AfD vote shares.

Религиозно­-церковная политика советского режима в отношении Польской автокефальной православной церкви на Волыни в 1939–1941 гг.

В статье раскрывается содержание советской религиозно­‑церковной политики в первый период Второй мировой войны на оккупированных польских землях. Показаны условия жизнедеятельности части Польской автокефальной православной церкви (ПАПЦ), которая оказалась на советской территории. Акцентировано внимание на противоречиях в отношениях советского атеистического режима к православным в Западной Украине и Белоруссии. Изложены факты, которые опровергают концепцию «либерализации» религиозной политики советского партийно­‑государственного руководства в 1939–1941 гг. Анализируется активность Московского патриархата, направленную на переподчинение православных приходов ПАПЦ в Западной Украине и Белоруссии под юрисдикцию РПЦ. В статье доказывается, что инициатором деятельности Московского патриархата по ликвидации автокефалии Польской православной церкви на оккупированных землях были советские спецслужбы. Показано, что мероприятия по переподчинению православных приходов бывшей Польской православной церкви Московскому патриархату осуществлялись под контролем и опекою органов НКВД. Обосновывается вывод о том, что наличие в Западной Украине и Белоруссии полноценной, функциональной, численной и автокефальной православной конфессии вынудило советский режим к взаимодействию с Московским патриархатом. Доказывается, что вновьприобретенный опыт был потом использован партийно­‑государственным руководством СССР в Прибалтике и в годы немецко­‑советской войны.

Monarchical State-building through State Destruction: Hohenzollern Self-legitimization at the Expense of Deposed Dynasties in the Kaiserreich*

The German War of 1866 was a turning point in the consolidation of Prussian hegemony over the emerging German nation-state. This article engages with a neglected aspect of this process by investigating the destabilizing effect of Prussia’s territorial expansion at the expense of fellow monarchies in Hanover, Hessen-Kassel, Nassau and Schleswig-Holstein. It argues that the hostile response of ruling houses related to the deposed dynasties and the disapprobation of legitimists at home placed the Hohenzollerns in a difficult position, as they often found themselves caught between the informal yet palpable pressure of Europe’s ‘Royal International’ and the policies pursued by their chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. To escape this dilemma, King (from 1871 onwards Kaiser) Wilhelm and his successors sought to bring about a reconciliation with the alienated dynasties through treaty settlements, intermarriage and the appropriation of their rivals’ symbolic capital in public speech acts. The way in which the Hohenzollerns courted their detractors betrayed a versatility that scholarship on the Prussian cult of monarchy has yet to fully appreciate. In fact, the Hohenzollern court’s long-term preoccupation with sectional reconciliation reveals much not only about royal diplomacy in the second half of the nineteenth century but also about the workings of Germany’s monarchocentric federal edifice and the role of civic initiative in the promotion of monarchical legitimacy.

The German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939–1945; Citizens and Soldiers. By Nicholas Stargardt.New York: Basic Books, 2015. Pp. xxviii+704. $35.00.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe German War: A Nation under Arms, 1939–1945; Citizens and Soldiers. By Nicholas Stargardt.New York: Basic Books, 2015. Pp. xxviii+704. $35.00.Jörg ArnoldJörg ArnoldUniversity of Nottingham Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 89, Number 3September 2017 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/692890 Views: 126Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Johannes Baader’s Postwar Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama and German War Exhibitions during World War I

Johannes Baader’s Postwar Plasto-Dio-Dada-Drama and German War Exhibitions during World War I

Pulse thermography identification of service insignia in Second World War camouflage German helmets

Abstract The present study aims at detecting and identifying the service insignia possibly present under the camouflage paint of Second World War German helmets, using infrared pulse thermography, a nondestructive IR technique based on the application of a short heat pulse, obtained by a flash lamp. While in most cases, IR thermography allowed to detect the insignia under the paint, in other cases sand, sawdust or woodchip added to the camouflage paint, in order to give it a rough and less reflecting texture, showed to be capable of preventing their detection. In 28.57% of the cases, the one or more layers of camouflage paint showed to be semi-transparent in the infrared waveband 3–5 μm, thus allowing to see not only the decal shape, but also the drawing inside the decal contour.

Good Invaders? The Occupation Policy of the Spanish Blue Division in Northwestern Russia, 1941–1944

Between 1941 and 1944, the Spanish Division of Volunteers took part in the Russian campaign as a unit integrated in the German Wehrmacht. Post-1945 war memoirs and even some historians have suggested that the ‘Blue’ Division was exceptional for their benign treatment of civilians and prisoners, distanced from the German War of Extermination. This image has not been subjected to critical enquiry. To what degree were the Spanish troops different from other Wehrmacht troops? Was the collective behaviour of the Spanish soldiers determined by the circumstances they encountered at the front, or was it related to their prior political socialization?

Majdal Yābā: More Insights on the Site in Medieval and Late Ottoman to Mandatory Times

In 2016 another excavation season was carried out at Majdal Yaba, concentrating on three rooms (02, 03 and 22) in the ground floor of the Ottoman-Mandatory manor house. Rooms 02 and 03 are large, adjacent halls apparently designated as storage and working areas, while Room 22 is a smaller living quarter. Each of the rooms revealed evidence for at least two main construction and utilization phases during the late Ottoman and British Mandate periods. In Room 03 were also unearthed—for the first time in the site—substantial foundations belonging to the Crusader castle of Mirabel, associated with well-dated finds. The analyzing of the present excavation included a first study of the faunal remains found in many of the Ottoman and Mandatory contexts, which shed much light on animal exploitation at the manor house and the (sometimes surprising) diet habits of its residents. Also studied were the rifle cartridges discovered in the excavation, the majority of which represent a homogeneous assemblage of First World War German ammunition. This hitherto largely overlooked class of artifacts was found to be much useful as an archaeological dating tool of early modern remains, alongside their contribution to the knowledge about the site’s history in the early 20th century.

0159 Robert Tischler, Chefarchitekt 1926-1959: Ein Desiderat

Robert Tischler, the chief architect of the German War Graves Commission from 1926 until his death in 1959, decisively shaped the character of German war cemeteries at home and abroad. Interestingly, the size of the oeuvre does not correspond to the very few facts we know about the author. This article explains the biographical and structural reasons for this situation, among them the bias of art and architectural history to focus on progress and innovation. It pleads for a thorough investigation of both the architect and his oeuvre that considers the context of production, distribution, and reception.

0160 "Bollwerk des Deutschtums im Osten": Das Freikorpsehrenmal auf dem Annaberg/Oberschlesien

In 1936, the National Socialist government of the province of Upper Silesia commissioned the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraberfursorge (German War Graves Commission) to build a memorial to the German Freikorps fighters, who had fought in the various post-war conflicts following World War I. The building, completed in 1938, was located on the Annaberg in Upper Silesia, where German troops had defeated Polish insurgents during the third Silesian Uprising in 1921. The article analyzes the composition of this so-called Totenburg and explores the myths and legends behind this – literally – outstanding example of commemorative architecture.

0161 Die Totenburgen von Tobruk und El Alamein – strategische Memorialarchitektur für die Bundesrepublik

The two German memorials in Tobruk, Libya (1954-1955) and in El Alamein, Egypt (1956-1959) were deliberately built close to sites of decisive Second World War battles. At both memorials, commemoration is cultivated in a predominantly de-individualized manner, and the historical-political meaningfulness as well as the fort-like, hermetical design of the structures directly reference concepts of commemoration prevalent during the Third Reich. Analogous to these concepts, the memorials refer back to the Hohenstaufen castles and forts in southern Italy and Sicily, and, thus, to the Holy Roman Empire’s most persistent period of territorial expansion. Robert Tischler, the architect responsible for both of the German War Graves Commission’s monuments in North Africa, had already constructed similar memorials during the National Socialist period. He was able to carry such projects over to the post-war period without further scrutiny. This illustrates once again the oppressive personnel and mental consistencies which continued beyond 1945.

A witness in the landscape: The bombing of the Forêt domaniale des Andaines and the Normandy Campaign, NW France, 1944

An archaeological survey of well-preserved Second World War German supply depots and bomb craters from Allied air raids in the Forêt domaniale des Andaines, Normandy, has prompted an evaluation of the effectiveness of Allied intelligence gathering and tactical bombing of the German logistics network in advance of, and during the Normandy Campaign of June–August 1944. In conjunction with analysis of primary German and Allied archive sources, published historical accounts and aerial photographs, we demonstrate that Allied intelligence knew of the importance of the forest as a major fuel depot and attacked it with at least 46 missions over the period 13 June–4 August. However, landscape evidence demonstrates that only one of three fuel depot sites in the forest was successfully identified and partially destroyed by bombing. Allied intelligence efforts also failed to gather sufficient evidence to target one of the largest Seventh Army munitions depots in Normandy. Supply depots in the forest thus remained operational until late in the campaign and will have supported the German Mortain counter-offensive of 7–14 August. The limited success of Allied bombing in the Forêt domaniale des Andaines testifies to the difficulties in striking well-dispersed and camouflaged woodland facilities and supports the argument that the success of air power against German logistics efforts lay primarily in the degradation of the regional communications infrastructure and the Wehrmacht’s vehicle fleet rather than the destruction of supply dumps.

Domniemane i rzeczywiste kontakty prominentów nazistowskich z polskością przed 1933 rokiem

ALLEGED AND ACTUAL CONTACTS OF PROMINENT NAZIS WITH POLISHNESS BEFORE 1933The article is an attempt to examine the contacts of prominent Nazis with Polishness before 1933. The author looks at these contacts with regard to the place of birth, living in a given place until 1918, living in a given place in the inter-war period 1918–1933, participation in the First World War in Poland, participation in Polish-German fighting in 1918–1921, having a Polish-sounding name and impact of all these factors on the period of the Second World War German occupation of Poland.

Towards an archaeology and geography of Second World War German munitions storage sites in north-west Europe

This paper reviews the signature characteristics of extant Second World War German army munitions storage landscapes in forested areas of north-west Europe with particular reference to sites in north-west France and the Netherlands. Archaeological survey, aerial photographs and documentary archives show the geography of munitions sites exhibit a regulated pattern of bunker disposition and spacing that is adapted to local road configurations and terrain. Non-hardened bunkers form the predominant feature in munitions depots and conform to a five-/six-fold typology defined by non-invasive survey and excavated examples from the Netherlands. The typology reflects an evolution of storage protocols towards all-round protection from the effects of weather and blast, but also reveals variation in size, structural characteristics and function that poses questions for further study. It is anticipated that these results will be of diagnostic value in future Second World War conflict archaeological survey of German military support structures in formerly occupied territories.

A military camp in the middle of nowhere: mobilities, dislocation and the archaeology of a Second World War German military base in Finnish Lapland

This article discusses military mobilities and encampment, and associated themes such as dislocation and displacement of people, through the case of a Second World War German military camp in Finnish Lapland. The article describes the camp and its archaeological research and discusses various aspects of the camp and camp life in its particular subarctic ‘wilderness’ setting, framing the discussion within the themes of mobilities and dislocations, and especially their multiple impacts on the German troops and their multinational prisoners-of-war based in the camp. A particular emphasis is put on how mobilities and dislocation – in effect ‘being stuck’ in a northern wilderness – were intertwined and how the inhabitants of the camp coped with the situation, as well as how this is reflected in the different features of the camp itself and the archaeological material that the fieldwork produced.

Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands: German Occupation, 1940–45 by Gilly Carr, Paul Sanders, Louise Willmot, and: Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I by Jesse Kauffman, and: German Colonialism in a Global Age ed. by Bradley Naranch and Geoff Eley, and: The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945: Citizens and Soldiers by

Protest, Defiance and Resistance in the Channel Islands: German Occupation, 1940–45 by Gilly Carr, Paul Sanders, Louise Willmot, and: Elusive Alliance: The German Occupation of Poland in World War I by Jesse Kauffman, and: German Colonialism in a Global Age ed. by Bradley Naranch and Geoff Eley, and: The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939–1945: Citizens and Soldiers by

Book Review: Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ Undermined the German War Effort by Yaron Pasher

Book Review: <i>Holocaust versus Wehrmacht: How Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ Undermined the German War Effort</i> by Yaron Pasher