Occupied Eastern Territories Research Articles

Krupp in the Occupied Eastern Territories: Frustration, Failures, and the Question of Freedom

This article speaks to a broader debate about the agency and freedom of German business during the Third Reich, on a spectrum from control and coercion to freedom of action. It argues that at least in the occupied eastern territories, Krupp and German business were not unwilling and coerced participants but neither entirely free to act as they wished. Looking at Krupp's experience in the occupied eastern territories during 1941–43, it argues Krupp's involvement in the economic exploitation of the territories was a willing choice and connected to Krupp's own interests and business objectives. At the same time, Krupp's involvement was limited and controlled by the Reich to serve Reich objectives, and the firm's experience of frustration and overall failure was caused by factors out of Krupp's control. Krupp's decision‐making, actions, and behaviours were not truly free, but Krupp had enough freedom to be responsible.

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.

The libraries annihilated by Nazis on the USSR territories under occupation

The author emphasizes that irreparable harm to the national cultural object, primarily the libraries, was the political strategy of the Third Reich; annihilation of the libraries and robbing the collections comprising most valuable and rare books, along with the literature of special interest to Nazi experts, was a key element and result of the occupation policy in the East. The author discusses the role of individual Third Reich departments, including the Ministry for the occupied eastern territories and their top officers in developing and implementing the Nazi library policy. Main goals and tasks in robbing and annihilation library collections of cultural, historical and economical value are characterized. General and individual examples of robbery and annihilation are given. Based on available archival materials, the statistical data are provided to illustrate the losses of national libraries. The author argues that the theme of losses sustained by the Soviet libra­ries during the Great Patriotic War is underexplored.

The activity of police formations in the village during the Nazi occupation of Dnipropetrovsk (1941-1943).

With the capture of the partial territory of the Soviet Union by the troops of the Third Reich, and with the movement of the front line to the East, management in the new territories passed into the hands of civil authorities. Since 01. 09. 1941, in accordance with the order of A. Hitler «On the introduction of civil administration in the occupied Eastern territories», a territorial-administrative area Reichscommissariat «Ukraine» was created. Local authorities were inferior ingredients in the administration of that zone. After the occupation of the city of Dnepropetrovsk in August 1941, the local police appeared in the city. It was created by the actions of nationalist forces, marching groups of the OUN. But when the Nazi civil authority was established in the city in the fall, the police structure was incorporated into the occupying structure and reformed it. After that, were created local police schools, units, new police districts. Local police were created throughout Ukraine, including in the Dnipropetrovsk district. It existed in the countryside. The district was divided into districts, in each of which there were local police units led by Nazi organs. The structure of the local police included several components, so the tasks of the policemen were not the same. Depending on the region, location and composition of units, they could perform different tasks and have different powers. Often, the Nazi leadership adapted to local conditions, with consequences for the local population and the Nazi employees. The article analyses the creation of police structure of Dnipropetrovsk region in rural area and also its functions and the nature of the activity during the Nazi occupation (1941-1943). The article examines the reasons for, conditions and results of attraction of Ukrainians to formation of German police in Reichskommissariat Ukraine, their institutional forms, material basis and everyday conditions of work. The author analyses efficiency of the system of additional police, its role in occupation regime functioning, the organization and composition of the local police, examples of assistance to the police in the crimes of the Nazis. The motivation and reasons for the cooperation of the local population with the Nazis are also considered.

Мовна політика Рейхскомісаріату Україна

The article deals with some issues of language policy in the Reichskommissariat of Ukraine (1941-1944) in the context of competition between different concepts of the Third Reich leadership in relation to the occupied eastern territories. In this regard, along with the problem of attitude of the new authorities to the Ukrainian language, the issue of introduction of Latin script in Ukraine and teaching German to the local population is raised. The language policy implemented in the Reichskommissariat for the first time is the result of an internal struggle between the main forces of the occupation administration: the Ministry of the Eastern Occupied Territories, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine, the Wehrmacht (in its area of responsibility in Ukraine) and branches of the industrial and transport structures of the Reich working in Ukraine. The legislative basis of the language policy in Ukraine was never officially approved until the end of the occupation, so the main source of information about the language regulation was the letter of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories dated January 13, 1942 about the foundations of the language policy, which in its basic provisions supported the trend towards gradual Ukrainianization of the population (excluding Ukrainian Germans). The most noticeable correction of the language policy took place in the sphere of teaching German to the local population. The needs of the military industry forced economic structures to lobby for the elimination of the ban on teaching German to Ukrainians, which in turn was reinforced by the general policy line of the Ministry for the Eastern occupied territories to involve the Ukrainian people in the fight against Bolshevism.

ОРГАНІЗАЦІЯ СІЛЬСЬКОГОСПОДАРСЬКОЇ ДОСЛІДНОЇ СПРАВИ НА ТЕРИТОРІЇ РАЙХСКОМІСАРІАТУ «УКРАЇНА»

Agricultural research as a system of permanent research institutes for agricultural needs during the Second World War on the territory of Ukraine has proved to be a remarkable period in the study of the history of science. Within 6 years it changed its structure several times to meet the needs of the party that captured Ukrainian territories: in Western Ukraine from the Polish model to the Soviet one; under fascist occupation - to meet the needs of the Germans and Romanians; evacuation and re-evacuation, which also required reorganization, re-institutionalization of the institutions to new climatic conditions in the critical situation of the war time. A separate aspect of the research is an analysis of changes in the organizational structure of the agrarian research institutes during the German occupation. This article is aimed at analyzing the organizational structure of agricultural research in the period of the German occupation during World War II on the territory of the Reichskommissariat «Ukraine» on the basis of original sources. The analysis of these issues will allow us to reflect on the events of the World War II more closely, better understand the plans of Nazi Germany on the development of Ukrainian lands meant for the prospective settlement of the Germans, the organizational drawbacks of the Soviet agricultural research and Nazi’s attempts to overcome them. Utilization of the Ukrainian arable farm lands became a major geostrategic and military aspect German invasion plans. For the effective exploitation of this territory, all German scientific forces were united to study the agricultural potential of the occupied lands. With the establishment of new occupation authorities in Ukraine, their primary actions were to collect maximum information from scientific documentation and materials on breeding, to involve the best local scientists to projects aimed at deep study of the occupied territories for the prospective German settlers. The main organization responsible for the collection and export of scientific material from the occupied territories was the Rosenberg Operational Headquarters, which collaborated with the Imperial Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories. The departments of this ministry belonged to the Central Research Service of the East, under supervision of all German scholars who came for scientific work on the territory of the Reichscommissariat «Ukraine». In order to study the scientific potential of the agricultural sector in the autumn of 1941, the Center for Research of Agriculture and Forestry for Northwestern Ukraine was created. During 1942-1943 agricultural scientific institutions accounted to the Institute of Local Lore and Economic Research, and later to the National Research Center with the allocation of a separate Special Group on Agricultural Research. This structure allowed the occupational authorities to control the institutional, financial, personnel and scientific issues of the institutions and integrate domestic agricultural research with the German science management. Despite the presence of the Ukrainian administration representatives in each agricultural research institute, all issues were resolved solely by the German authorities subordinated to the Imperial Ministry of Occupied Eastern Territories The occupation authorities planned to use the scientific potential of these institutions for better development of the invaded territories. This issue was in the center of attention, both for economic, scientific and ideological benefits of the new government. With approaching military actions, German curators were ordered to export scientific records, elite seed funds and valuable literature. At the beginning of 1945, researchers of agricultural research institutes and scientific documentation were scattered among different German institutions in Poland and Germany. Thus, despite numerous difficulties caused on the territory of Ukrainian lands by the Second World War and German interference into the organizational framework of agricultural science, this situation proved to have a positive turn, because Ukrainian scientists never ceased their work, managed to preserve the agricultural potential of Ukraine.

‘Germanje’: Dutch empire-building in Nazi-occupied Europe

ABSTRACTRecent historiography on Nazism has taken what has been coined ‘the imperial turn’. The key issue at stake is to what extent Germany’s expansionist policy between 1939 and 1945 could be considered a variant of the more general historical phenomenon of (modern) imperialism. Over the course of the last two decades, all sorts of continuities and parallels between traditional European colonialism and Nazi imperialism have been analysed. In these studies, a top-down approach is prevalent, concentrating on ‘Berlin’, Nazi politics and leaders. This article chooses a different perspective, bringing actors of a lower level to the fore. The focus is on the Dutch contribution to the Nazi policy of ‘Germanization’ of the occupied East. Between the summers of 1941 and 1944, over five thousand Dutch civilians voluntarily left their homeland to be employed in the so-called German occupied eastern territories. Although their contracts were often temporary, they were seen (and saw themselves) as the first group of ‘pioneers’ of a giant colonizing project. This article investigates the Dutch organizations coordinating their recruitment and employment, and zooms in on the expectations and experiences of individual recruits. With the Dutch case as an example, the article points at the broader historical context of the Dutch efforts. At the same time, it shows that this junior partner of the German had his own colonial agenda. The incompatibility of both agendas inevitably led to false expectations, caused a general sense of disillusionment on both sides and led to many frictions ‘on the spot’.

Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944 by Sarah Gensburger

Reviewed by: Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944 by Sarah Gensburger Michael E. O’Sullivan Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews: A Photographic Album, Paris, 1940–1944. By Sarah Gensburger. Translated by Jonathan Hensher with the collaboration of Elisabeth Fourmont. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Pp. ix + 216. Paper $35.00. ISBN 978-0253017444. Witnessing the Robbing of the Jews artfully examines an album of photographs taken by Germans plundering the property of French Jews. The album was arranged by Allied occupation forces after the war and preserved by the Federal Archives in Koblenz. These pictures document Operation Furniture (Möbel Aktion), the institutionalized robbery of French Jews, directed first by Alfred Rosenberg’s Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR) and then by Colonel Kurt von Behr’s Dienststelle West (of the Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories) from 1942 to 1944. This evidence, likely compiled originally by Rosenberg and von Behr as proof of their productivity, showcases the massive theft of everything from valuable art to the kitchenware, radios, light bulbs, and mattresses from 38,000 homes “abandoned” by Parisian Jews during [End Page 225] the height of their incarceration and deportation. In presenting us with this material, Sarah Gensburger blends analysis of historical photographs with an impressive collection of survivor testimony and displays a sweeping familiarity with both the documentary evidence and historiographical context of Germany’s pillage of Jewish assets during the Holocaust. This book’s most meaningful scholarly intervention is to revise academic work privileging the economic utility of the Holocaust. In opposition especially to Götz Aly’s controversial Hitler’s Beneficiaries (2005), Gensburger interprets these photos as proof that Operation Furniture and other forms of mass pillage never benefitted the Third Reich materially. Rather, systematic looting belonged to the larger process of complete annihilation, eliminating the physical traces of Nazi victims by transforming personal possessions into goods that were frequently destroyed due to their shabby condition and lack of functionality. Instead of propping up the economy of everyday Germans during the war, the ransacking of all Jewish possessions resulted from the overwhelming ideological urge to destroy every remnant of European Jewry. Gensburger supports her interpretative claim in part by critiquing the ways in which textual historians of the Holocaust use archival images. Pointing out mistakes by well-known historians like Martin Dean in Robbing the Jews (2008) and others, she does much more than highlight the errors of colleagues. In one case, she shows how Aly mislabeled photos from the album under review: his captions misrepresented images of packed crates of art as material goods intended for transport to the civilian population of Germany. In this manner, she directly weakens his assertions of a strong economic dimension to the genocide (64–65). Gensburger also strengthens the book’s central point by contextualizing each photo. In one example, she identifies the illusory nature of an image of interned seamstresses turning stolen garments into skirts for German girls of the Reich. She quotes former inmate Erna Herzberg, who suggested that almost no skirts were ever actually produced. Herzberg and others only reused fabric for occasional items made to order by National Socialist elites. What appears to be evidence of targeted plunder was actually a photo staged by von Behr or Rosenberg so that they could maintain autonomy over their economically unproductive action and retain laborers who fulfilled their personal requests (106–107). Such layered analysis unveils the complexity of using photographs as primary sources, illustrating the rigorous scrutiny that such analysis requires. The depiction of Jewish victims frequently excluded from historical narratives constitutes another intriguing element of this book. Gensburger fills a “memory hole” that devalues the Jewish spouses of gentiles and so-called Mischlinge that inhabited the internment camps of Paris and whose conditions were more tolerable than most forced labor facilities. As comparably fortunate Jews who largely escaped both deportation to Auschwitz and the horrors of the notorious Drancy concentration camp, internees at camps like Levitan, Austerlitz, and Bassano formed the primary labor force of Operation Furniture. The gaze of National Socialist photographers frequently [End Page 226] relegated these prisoners to the margins of the images, making plundered goods the...

Stone-Cold Killers or Drunk with Murder? Alcohol and Atrocity during the Holocaust

In many testimonies on mass murders of Jews by SS and German police units in the East, witnesses and perpetrators mention that alcohol was present or that the killers were intoxicated. In fact, it is clear from available evidence that alcohol—normally in the form of vodka or schnapps—was often available at murder sites. Despite the ubiquity of its presence, however, there has been little scholarly analysis concerning the use of alcohol or its role in the process of mass murder. This article examines the ways in which SS and police leaders used alcohol in the occupied Eastern territories, as well as the role played by alcohol in genocide. In offering insights into the use of alcohol by perpetrators during the Shoah, the study may provide insight into the role of alcohol in the conduct of other atrocities.

Nazi Labour Camps in Paris: Austerlitz, Levitan, Bassano, July 1943-August 1944, Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Sarah Gensburger (New York: Berghahn, 2011), 180 pp., hardcover, $70.00/ 40.00

In this fascinating book, Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Sarah Gensburger have rescued from the “memory hole” the intriguing story of three work camps that operated from July 1943 through August 1944 in the heart of Paris. The task of the internees in Austerlitz, Lévitan, and Bassano (technically sub-camps of Drancy) was to unload, sort, and crate for shipment to Germany property the Germans pillaged from Jewish apartments in Paris and (to a lesser extent) other cities in France. As the authors point out, German National Socialism was “in part an immense looting project, carried out on a pan-European scale” (p. 7). Officially designated Möbel Aktion (“Operation Furniture”), this December 1941 effort was supervised by Alfred Rosenberg, Nazism's unofficial “philosopher,” appointed by Hitler as Minster of the Occupied Eastern Territories. Rosenberg had been active in Paris since July 1940 as the head of the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg (ERR), which had looted paintings and other works of art, as well as libraries and musical instruments, from private (mostly Jewish) owners. The most valuable objects were brought to a depot at the Jeu de Paume museum in the Tuileries gardens, where Hermann Göring famously came to select works for his private collection. Rosenberg's activities in France under Operation Furniture flowed directly from precedents in Germany, where in the fall of 1941 the regime began to deport German Jews to ghettos established in Poland and the Baltic. The Nazis amended the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws so that all property belonging to Jews who had left Germany—whether through migration or deportation—now belonged to the Reich. Meanwhile, the Vichy regime established a single organization, the Union Générale des Israélites de France (UGIF) to “represent” all of France's Jews before the French government and the Germans. In December 1941 General Otto von Stülpnagel, head of the occupation forces in France, ordered the UGIF to arrange payment of a one billion franc “fine” by the Jews of France's Occupied Zone in response to the first attacks on German occupation troops that summer and fall. Later the UGIF would be made responsible for provisioning the internees in the three Parisian camps. Stülpnagel also ordered the assignment of 1,000 Jewish “hostages” to a prison at Compiègne, the execution of 100 hostages at Mont-Valérien (including the Communist writer Gabriel Péri and fifty-three Jews), and deportations of Jews and Communists to “work camps” in the East. Some of the arrestees were sent to the Parisian work camps, and their experience illustrates the authors' emphasis on the direct link between expropriation of Jewish property and eventual murder in the Holocaust. It was in this context that Operation Furniture was launched, following an appeal by Rosenberg to Hitler, requesting that his Paris staff be allowed to take furniture in the western occupied countries for use in the eastern territories.

Food and Genocide: Nazi Agrarian Politics in the Occupied Territories of the Soviet Union

AbstractThis article explores the connection between food politics and genocide in the occupied eastern territories. The examination focuses on Herbert Backe, the ‘second man’ in the agricultural administration during the period of Nazi rule. Backe was in charge of food rationing during the war, and was involved in the planning of the economic exploitation of the Soviet Union after the invasion. Under Backe's directive, food policy turned into ‘starvation policy’ for people in the occupied lands of the Soviet Union. The author uses a range of archival sources, including rarely used personal letters and diaries of Backe and his wife, to understand Backe's role and motivations.

ORGANIZED AND UNSOLICITED COLLABORATION IN THE HOLOCAUST

The lethal intentions of the Nazi Final Solution to the Jewish Question through mass murder adds a special dimension to the common and banal phenomenon of collaboration between sections of the popu...

Networks of Nazi persecution: bureaucracy, business, and the organization of the Holocaust

List of Figures List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Holocaust as Division-of-Labor-Based Crime-Evidence and Analytical Challenges Gerald D. Feldman and Wolfgang Seibel PART I: RIVALRY AND COMPETITION Chapter 1. Introduction to Rivalry and Competition Christian Gerlach Chapter 2. The SS Security Service and the Gestapo in the National Socialist Persecution of the Jews 1933-1939 Wolfgang Dierker Chapter 3. Aryanization and the Role of the German Banks, 1933-1938 Dieter Ziegler Chapter 4. The Looting of Jewish Property and Franco-German Rivalry, 1940-1944 Philippe Verheyde Chapter 5. Seizure of Jewish Property and Inter-Agency Rivalry in the Reich and in the Occupied Soviet Territories Martin C. Dean Chapter 6. The Polycratic Nature of Art Looting: The Dynamic Balance of the Third Reich Jonathan Petropoulos Chapter 7. The Holocaust and Corruption Frank Bajohr Part II: SMOOTH COOPERATION Chapter 8. Introduction to Smooth Gerhard Hirschfeld and Wolfgang Seibel Chapter 9. The Looting of Jewish Property and the German Financial Administration Alfons Kenkmann Chapter 10. Organized Looting: The Nazi Seizure of Jewish Property in the Netherlands, 1940-1945 Gerard Aalders Chapter 11. Perpetrator Networks and the Holocaust. The Spoliation of Jewish Property in France, 1940-1944 Marc Olivier Baruch Chapter 12. Ethnic Resettlement and Inter-Agency Cooperation in the Occupied Eastern Territories Isabel Heinemann Chapter 13. Der reibungslose Holocaust? The German Military and Civilian Implementation of the Final Solution in Ukraine, 1941-1944 Wendy Lower PART III: DECENTRAL INITIATIVE AND VERTICAL INTEGRATION Chapter 14. A Bureaucratic Holocaust: Toward a New Consensus Micheal Thad Allen Chapter 15. Local Initiatives, Central Coordination: German Municipal Administration and the Holocaust Wolf Gruner Chapter 16. The Reichskristallnacht and the Insurance Industry: The Politics of Damage Control Gerald D. Feldman PART IV: STRUCTURE, AGENCY, AND THE LOGIC OF RADICALIZATION Chapter 17. More than Just a Metaphor: the Network Concept and Its Potential in Holocaust Research Joerg Raab Chapter 18. Restraining or Radicalizing? Division of Labor and Persecution Effectiveness Wolfgang Seibel Notes on Contributors Index

The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine, and Its North American Legacy

Scholars have recently debated the topic of German academics who directly or indirectly served the Nazi machinery of death and who then went on to successful professional careers after the war. This article examines the activities of two prominent émigré scholars, Drs. Georg Leibbrandt (1899-1982) and Karl Stumpp (1896-1982). These Ukrainian Germans emigrated to Germany after World War 1. In America, most members of the Russian-German ethnic community never knew that Leibbrandt had represented Alfred Rosenberg's Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories, or that under his supervision Stumpp led a Sonderkommando in Ukraine. This unit classified hundreds of villages, indirectly documenting the annihilation of Jews and others. The authors conclude that one consequence of Leibbrandt's and Stumpp's "return to normalcy" after the war was the growing fascination with genealogical research that affected the Russian-German ethnic community in North America-research partly based on 1930s and 1940s Nazi racial record-keeping.