Soviet Occupation Zone Research Articles

Verdrängter Terror: Geschichte und Wahrnehmung sowjetischer Speziallager in Deutschland (review)

Reviewed by: Verdrängter Terror: Geschichte und Wahrnehmung sowjetischer Speziallager in Deutschland Katrin Paehler Verdrängter Terror: Geschichte und Wahrnehmung sowjetischer Speziallager in Deutschland. By Bettina Greiner. Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 2010. Pp. 524. Cloth €35.00. ISBN 978-3868542172. Bettina Greiner’s book on the Soviet “special camps” in postwar Germany masterfully combines extensive primary research with a deep knowledge of the existing scholarship, thereby creating a lengthy monograph of great import that calls into question common assumptions about the nature of these special camps and their prisoners. The book also asks pertinent questions about their place, or lack thereof, in Germany’s contentious historiography. Bracketed by a well-conceived introduction and a short but thoughtful conclusion that strives to locate these special camps in the history of twentieth-century camp systems, the book consists of three lengthy parts. The first deals with internments and Soviet military tribunals (SMT) in the Soviet Occupational Zone. Its focus is on Soviet intent; accordingly, it is based on Soviet documents, where available, or on largely successful attempts to discern Soviet intent from the results of its policies. The second section, which relies on the prisoners’ accounts, deals with the experiences of those interned and those sentenced by SMTs. The last section considers the memories of imprisonment and their place in Germany’s many debates about history and memory, as well as German guilt and victimhood. The last section in particular is persuasive due to the author’s keen eye for detail and a finely tuned ear for discursive nuance. Greiner is most assertive in her argument that internments, trials, and eventual imprisonments in the Soviet Occupation Zone had nothing to do with de-Nazification. Internments and imprisonments after trials were not two separate issues, as many scholars commonly assume, but two separate expressions of the same basic issue: Soviet security concerns. The Soviets prioritized the security of their occupational regime above all other considerations, an approach that included prophylactic security measures and that was driven by short-term political needs and “Chekist logic.” Greiner argues that there was no particular interest in finding and punishing NS perpetrators, even though Nazis were, of course, among the camp inmates. The age structure of those who were interned and those who were sentenced by SMTs is illuminating in this context. The former, who were also released earlier, tended to be older and were thus more likely to have had an official function in Nazi [End Page 213] Germany. Men and women tried and sentenced by the SMTs tended to be younger, and while most of them had been organized in the Hitler Youth or League of German Girls (BDM), very few—if any—had held any positions of responsibility. The Soviet occupational forces nevertheless saw in those youngsters a security threat to the occupation regime. De-Nazification was clearly not the primary purpose of the system. Indeed, the Soviets’ interest in the prisoners ended with their imprisonment. There was also no official interest in putting the prisoners to work or adequately provisioning them, although it should be noted that food was scarce everywhere at this time. It is indeed a cruel joke that life in the camps improved after they came under the jurisdiction of the Gulag in the summer of 1948. Greiner’s attempt to provide a dense description of camp experiences is laudable, but the accounts she uses seem curiously uniform and strangely anecdotal. Yet the uniformity of the accounts, which Greiner relates to the former prisoners’ attempts to find a place to express their experiences and memories, is the focus of the book’s thought-provoking third section. It is a study of ambivalence and of the inability of most of the former prisoners and their putative audiences to negotiate the ambivalent meanings of these crimes, camps, and victims in a meaningful form. Katrin Paehler Illinois State University Copyright © 2012 German Studies Association

Experience and memory: the Second World War in Europe

List of Illustrations Abbreviations Chapter 1. A New Perspective on the War Henry Rousso Chapter 2. Conceptualizing the Occupations of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands (1933-1944) Benoit Majerus Chapter 3. The Role of the War in National Societies: The Examples of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands Chantal Kesteloot Chapter 4. Myths and Realities of the People's WarA in Britain John Ramsden Chapter 5. We Can Take It!A Britain and the Memory of the Home front in the Second World War Mark Connelly Chapter 6. Experience and Memory: The Second World War in Poland Piotr Madajczyk Chapter 7. Remembering and Researching the War: The Soviet and Russian Experience Sergei Kudryashov Chapter 8. Bombing and Land War in Italy: Military Strategy, Reactions, and Collective Memory Gabriella Gribaudi Chapter 9. Italy as Occupier in the Balkans: Remembrances and War Crimes after 1945 Filippo Focardi Chapter 10. Brest under Bombardment (1940-1944): Being in War Pierre Le Goic Chapter 11. Experiences of War, Memories of War, and Political Behavior: The Example of the French Communist Party Philippe Buton Chapter 12. The Air War, the Public, and Cycles of Memory Dietmar SuA Chapter 13. The Long Shadows of the Second World War: The Impact of Experiences and Memories of War on West German Societies Axel Schildt Chapter 14. The War in Postwar Society: The Role of the Second World War in Public and Private Spheres in the Soviet Occupation Zone and Early GDR Dorothee Wierling Chapter 15. Violence and Victimhood: Looking Back at the World Wars in Europe Richard Bessel Chapter 16. The Meanings of the Second World War in Contemporary European History Jorg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens Notes on Contributors Selected Bibliography Index

Enforcement of rehabilitation for politically persecuted persons during the Soviet occupation of Germany in the terms of the international Covenant on civil and political rights

Nineteen authors have filed a communication to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights against Germany and the Russian Federation to enforce rehabilitation of their legal predecessors, who were victims of denazification (Russian: Денацификация) measures in Post-War Germany. They reprimand that they and the persons concerned are discriminated by the current German legislation against all other groups of comparably politically persecuted persons on the territory of the former Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany (Russian: Coвeтcкaя oккyпaциoннaя зoнa Гepмaнии), being excluded from the scope of the existing rehabilitation acts, which have come into force after the German Reunification. Whilst any other persecutees can be rehabilitated according to the existing rehabilitation acts (Criminal Rehabilitation Act and Administrative Rehabilitation Act), and whilst victims of denazification measures in the former Western Occupations Zones had been enabled to enforce their rehabilitation in the terms of German acts in the years between 1951 until 1955 after the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, those persons who were victims of denazification measures in the former Soviet Occupation Zone are excluded from any rehabilitation. This exclusion is justified by the German legislator and the Federal Constitutional Court with the argument that otherwise the former USSR would not have agreed to the German Reunification.

Austausch der wirtschaftlichen Führungskräfte in der SBZ/DDR nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

Abstract After World War II, a major part of the business elite managed to flee from the Soviet Occupation zone. Thus, in the period of trusteeship that followed, the volume of personnel changes remained rather low. In April 1948, when the industrial sector was finally nationalised, the SED reinforced personnel changes again. Key positions which dealt with the workforce were taken over by party members, whereas former engineers often succeeded in keeping their positions. Gradually, a widespread system of political control was introduced in order to survey the choice of cadres and to defend the party’s leading role in the economy.

Austausch der wirtschaftlichen Führungskräfte in der SBZ/DDR nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

After World War II, a major part of the business elite managed to flee from the Soviet Occupation zone. Thus, in the period of trusteeship that followed, the volume of personnel changes remained rather low. In April 1948, when the industrial sector was finally nationalised, the SED reinforced personnel changes again. Key positions which dealt with the workforce were taken over by party members, whereas former engineers often succeeded in keeping their positions. Gradually, a widespread system of political control was introduced in order to survey the choice of cadres and to defend the party’s leading role in the economy.

“As Far as His Army Can Reach”: Military Movements and East–West Discord in Germany, 1945

This article explores the diplomatic implications of United States troop movements in Germany before and after V-E Day. Existing accounts emphasize American good will and Soviet refusal to cooperate, pointing to the example of an American convoy en route to Berlin in June 1945. Citing an “agreement” of which the American convoy commander had never heard, the Russians would allow only one-half of his troops to proceed. The agreement did exist, however, and the episode must be seen against the backdrop of Soviet suspicions regarding Western willingness to withdraw from the Soviet occupation zone. United States President Harry S. Truman did overrule British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill's calls to link withdrawal to concessions from the Soviets, but he waited two months before doing so. Prior accounts have ignored the delay's effects on Soviet perceptions. The article argues that American actions had the unintended consequence of reinforcing Soviet Chairman Joseph V. Stalin's belief in Western bad faith.

Atrocities on trial: historical perspectives on the politics of prosecuting war crimes

Foreword by Michael R. Marrus Introduction: War Crimes Trials and the HistorianPart I. Precedents in PunishmentThe Lessons of Leipzig: Punishing German War Criminals after the First World War / Jurgen Matthaus Early Postwar Justice in the American Zone: Hadamar Murder Factory Trial / Patricia Heberer U.S. Army War Crimes Trials in Germany, 1945-1947 / Lisa YavnaiPart II. Allied Courts and German Crimes in the Context of NurembergLaw and Politics in the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials, 1946-1949 / Jonathan Friedman Nuremberg Doctors' Trial and the Limitations of Context / Michael R. Marrus The Scars of Ravensbruck: Medical Experiments and British War Crimes Policy, 1945-1950 / Ulf Schmidt Sachsenhausen Trials: War Crimes Prosecution in the Soviet Occupation Zone and in West and East Germany / Jonathan FriedmanPart III. Postwar Society and the Nazi PastNo Ordinary Criminal: Georg Heuser, Other Mass Murderers, and West German Justice / Jurgen Matthaus Tainted Law: West German Judiciary and the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals / Rebecca Wittmann Justice in Austrian Courts? Case of Josef W. and Austria's Difficult Relationship with Its Past / Patricia HebererPart IV. Current Aspects and ImplicationsCrimes-against-Humanity Trials in France and Their Historical and Legal Contexts: A Retrospective Look / Richard J. Golsan Milestones and Mythologies: Impact of Nuremberg / Donald Bloxham Prosecution, Condemnation, and Punishment: Ethical Implications of Atrocities on Trial / John K. Roth

Institutionalizing <em>Volkskunde</em> in Early East Germany

The article deals with the institutionalization of the post-war field of Volkskunde in the Soviet Occupation Zone and early East Germany. After a short summary of post-war science policy in the Eastern zone, the main focus is on two primary initiators of the field, Adolf Spamer and Wolfgang Steinitz. The author analyzes the scientific approaches and strategies they used to establish the field in the Eastern part of Germany. Both Spamer and Steinitz are examined with respect to how scholarship abandoned the personnel, institutional, and ideological structures left over from earlier nationalist and National Socialist contexts, while simultaneously accepting the new political circumstances. Thus, the concepts of continuity and change play a particular role.

A Day to Remember: East Germany's Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism

This article examines the initiation and development of the Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Fascism (Gedenktag fur die Opfer des Faschismus) in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and then the GDR. In doing so it is interested in the way in which the annual event, held on the second Sunday of September, was politicized, especially during the onset of the Cold War, which meant that it became a regular feature of official memory in the GDR but was abandoned in the Federal Republic. The theoretical framework is drawn from John Bodnar's distinction between official and vernacular expressions of public memory. The initial observance of the Day of Remembrance is notable for the presence of vernacular elements—the day was initiated by people who had suffered Nazi persecution, it was supported by a broad range of victims, and it contained elements of mourning and contrition. However, a process of political appropriation commenced as early as 1945 and reached a culminating point with the divided rallies of West and East Berlin in 1948. Communist forces—both German and Soviet—played a major role in this, but the hand of other occupying forces is also evident in efforts to restrict the impact of what was conceived as a national event. Over the course of the GDR's history the day became increasingly ritualized, so that its capacity to perform its initial functions was severely compromised. Only with German unification and a modest reinvention of the event has a vernacular form of remembrance been given some scope to re-emerge.

Germany

Germany Andreas Bode Rüdiger Steinlein, Heidi Strobel, and Thomas Kramer (Eds) SBZ/DDR.Von 1945 bis 1990 [Soviet occupation zone/German Democractic Republic. 1945 to 1990] (Series: Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur; 5) Stuttgart: Metzler 2006 xxxiv+1515pp ISBN 9783476021779€299.95 With this volume on the history of children's literature in the GDR from 1945 to 1990 ('Soviet occupation zone' 1945–9), this Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur [Handbook of children's and youth literature] takes its historical survey of German children's literature up to the present. Four previously published volumes cover the period from 1461 to 1850; further volumes are in preparation. Click for larger view View full resolution Due to postwar politics, East German children's literature evolved in a context that deserves to be considered as a distinct historical period. Accordingly, the editors aim to offer a comprehensive survey of GDR literature, its thematic, aesthetic [End Page 54] and ideological spectrum, and to illuminate its function and political significance within the socialist regime. An extensive introduction is followed by fourteen chapters, which present areas such as realistic short stories and novels, literature for girls, poetry for children, historical narratives, anti-fascist literature, adventure and crime novels, fairy tales and others. This is the first volume of the Handbuch series to devote a detailed section to the art of illustration in picturebooks and illustrated children's books. The final section offers bibliographical information, including secondary literature, and an index searchable by name, book title and year of publication. Detailed annotations to 798 titles broaden the scope presented in the main section of this standard work of reference. Copyright © 2007 Bookbird, Inc. Reproduction of articles in Bookbird requires permission in writing from the editor. Items from Focus IBBY may be reprinted freely to disseminate the work of IBBY.

„Ein Glücksfall für die Ostzone …” - Die Synthese des Neo-Salvarsan-Analogons Arsaminol (Neo-Arsoluin) durch Prof. Dr. Ernst Schmitz und dessen Bedeutung für die Eindämmung der Syphilis in der Sowjetischen Besatzungszone Deutschlands

After World War II the number of syphilis infections in Germany increased dramatically. In the Soviet-occupation zone the antisyphiliticum Neo-Salvarsan, originally produced by Farbwerke Hoechst, Frankfurt/M. was not available anymore, because there was a total supply-ban. In this awful situation the chemist Prof. Dr. Ernst Schmitz from the chemical and pharmaceutical factory VEB Fahlberg List, Magdeburg, succeeded to synthesize Arsaminol (Neo-Arsoluin), a Neo-Salvarsan-analogue, within a few months thus making possible the industrial production of this drug.

JOSIE MCLELLAN. Antifascism and Memory in East Germany: Remembering the International Brigades 1945-1989. (Oxford Historical Monographs.) New York: Clarendon Press of Oxford University Press. 2004. Pp. xii, 228. $99.00

To even a casual visitor to the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the centrality of German International Brigade veterans to the officially endorsed national mythology of antifascism was obvious. In the names of streets and parks, in museums and monuments, and on the shelves of bookstores, the heroic resistance of the Spanienkämpfer seemed omnipresent. Moreover, the corridors of power too were strolled by a number of individuals who could point to a stint in Spain on their curriculum vitae, not the least of them the notorious Stasi boss Erich Mielke. The great strength of this study by Josie McLellan, however, is to show how ambivalent the legacy of Spain really was for the veterans themselves and indeed for the entire GDR. That ambivalence is at first surprising, since the grounds for the inclusion of the experience of the Spanish Civil War in the “myth of antifascism” were obvious enough. Like the communist resistance against Adolf Hitler in Germany, Spain connoted the struggle against the universal evil of fascism. Occurring as it did in far-flung Spain, and before World War II, the Spanish Civil War offered German antifascist mythology extra dimensions of selflessness and longevity. Following that logic, International Brigade veterans who chose to live in the Soviet Zone of Occupation and then the GDR had every expectation of claiming positions of moral and political authority in the postwar order.

‘All over the world Jehovah's Witnesses are the touchstone for the existence of true democracy’: Persecution of a religious minority in the German Democratic Republic*

Following the breakdown of the Third Reich and the dividing up of Germany by the Allied forces, the eastern section of Germany, excluding the capital Berlin, became the Soviet Occupation Zone (SOZ)...

Vertriebene und “Umsiedlerpolitik.” Integrationskonflikte in der deutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft und die Assimilationsstrategien in der SBZ/DDR 1945-1961

Among forced population transfers in the twentieth century, the expulsion of the German population from East Central Europe at the end of World War II was remarkable. More than twelve million Germans were expelled from the eastern parts of the German Reich and some eastern European states. These refugees arrived in a defeated, occupied, destroyed, and divided country. Initially, the percentage of expelled persons in the Soviet Occupation Zone was much higher than in the western zones. With almost 4.5 million individuals, the expellees made up twenty-four percent of the total population in the Soviet Occupation Zone in 1949. By contrast, western Germany had eight million expellees, who comprised roughly sixteen percent of the total population.

Was Sovietization Inevitable? U.S. Intelligence Perceptions of Internal Developments in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany

(2005). Was Sovietization Inevitable? U.S. Intelligence Perceptions of Internal Developments in the Soviet Zone of Occupation in Germany. Journal of Intelligence History: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 45-70.

:Vertriebene und “Umsiedlerpolitik”: Integrationskonflikte in den deutschen Nachkriegs‐Gesellschaften und die Assimilationsstrategien in der SBZ/DDR 1945–1961.(Quellen und Darstellungen zur Zeitgeschichte, number 61.)

The mining of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) archives continues to yield riches. Michael Schwartz's massive, detailed study of post-World War II refugees in East Germany rests primarily on research in the repositories of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, and three provincial archives (Mecklenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia). As a result of the war, approximately 15 million people fled, were expelled, or were forcibly resettled from Germany's eastern territories: lands transferred to Poland, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet Union. Of these 15 million, some 4.3 million landed in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SBZ), which, of course, later became the East German state. This is a revisionist work, insofar as it aims to correct the triumphalist West German version of a successful integration of the expellees into postwar society. Schwartz maintains that the expellee situation, like so many other aspects of postwar German history, needs to be considered as a gesamtdeutsch (whole German) development requiring examination of events in the “other” Germany. Historiographically, Schwartz's study is part of an on-going reconsideration and reorientation of postwar German history in light of newly available East German archives.

Hatred after War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany

Hatred after War:Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany Richard Bessel (bio) The massive eruption of deadly violence around the world during the 1940s left as many as 100 million people dead and many more wounded and scarred for life. This was probably the greatest eruption of violence the world has yet seen, and left in its wake a difficult and far-reaching legacy—of loss, of mourning, of disorientation, of bitterness and of hatred. In recent years historians looking at the aftermath of the two world wars in Europe have devoted considerable attention to questions of memory and mourning, questions that have to do with the loss of cherished human beings, in essence with love.1 Historians have seemed somewhat more reluctant to focus on hatred. Yet bitterness and hatred were widespread in the wake of World War II. They motivated the actions of many people who had had terrible experiences in their recent past; they put an indelible stamp on the public and the political life of the postwar period; and overcoming them was one of the greatest challenges facing Europeans after the horrors of the 1940s. Therefore, an appreciation of the importance of hatred seems crucial to understanding the postwar transition, which, as we now can appreciate, was a transition from the violent and bloody first half of Europe's twentieth century to the relatively peaceful second half.2 There are few places where this transition can have been more difficult than in East Germany—in the Soviet Occupation Zone and then the German Democratic Republic (GDR)—after World War II. The political, social and cultural history of postwar East Germany was [End Page 195] framed by profoundly disturbing developments: the occupation by Soviet armed forces, the need somehow to absorb a huge number of uprooted refugees from east of the Oder-Neiße (comprising roughly one quarter of the GDR's population in 1950), the division of Germany, the imposition of a socialist-Stalinist political and economic system against the will of a large proportion of the population, the suppression of free expression and with it of many possibilities for dealing with the personal trauma arising from what had happened in the recent past. Nazism, war, destruction, defeat, suffering, loss of "Heimat," military occupation, mass rape, and political repression created a huge potential reservoir of hatred in postwar East Germany. It seems more than just coincidence, therefore, that the political leadership in the GDR so frequently drew upon hatred as a basis of allegiance. This essay is a brief, admittedly speculative, attempt to suggest that examining hatred after war, and viewing public and political behavior as an expression of that hatred, may offer insights into what occurred in both the public and the private spheres in post-1945 East Germany. The suggestion is that hatred, arising from the violence and brutality of war and Nazism, was a major factor motivating both the leaders and the led in East Germany after World War II. Not just their rational calculations of how to deal with the challenges they faced and the political commitment that framed their actions, but also their emotional responses to what had occurred determined how Germans behaved in the physical and psychological rubble left behind by war and Nazism. This essay, therefore, is a tentative attempt to approach the history of Germany after World War II as a history of sentiments and emotions. When viewed from this angle, it is striking how often hatred seems to have motivated people and how often it surfaced in their utterances in postwar East Germany. By way of introduction, one example of how this figured in the new "antifascist-democratic" postwar order was the continuing practice of denunciation to the police—a practice that, as we know, had become something of a tradition in German dictatorships.3 The new authorities, like their predecessors, received letters of denunciation from members of the public, this time often aimed against people who a few years previously may have been seen in SS uniform or who during the "Third Reich" had taken advantage of positions as local Nazi bosses to bully and terrorize their neighbors.4 The authors of the denunciations...

Paul Konitzer (1894–1947): Hygieniker, Amtsarzt, Sozialmediziner, Gesundheitspolitiker

Paul Konitzer was one of the outstanding and well-known physicians in the years after the World War II in East-Germany. THe paper describes his professional way as hygienist, social medical, municipal physician and last but not least as health politician in the times of four different political regimes: the imperial era in Germany till 1918, the time of "Weimarer Republic" till 1933, the Nazi dictatorship till 1945 and the early years in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany. The life of Konitzer is a typical example of the fate of a German doctor in the first half of the 20th century. Konitzer was arrested in February 1947 by the Soviet Military Government in Berlin in connection with some political troubles and reproach with a typhus epidemic in a German camp for Russian Prisoners of War in the Nazi era. On April 22nd 1947 he died in prison of Dresden by suicide without condemnation.

Forensic medicine in the German Democratic Republic

Forensic medicine services were resumed in the territory of the Soviet occupation zone in early summer 1945. One coherent legal system was established, following the foundation of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), 7 October 1949. Forensic medicine was subject of teaching and examinations from the very outset. Sub-specialisation (fellowship) was introduced in 1955. The Gesellschaft für Gerichtliche Medizin der DDR (GDR Society of Forensic Medicine) was established in 1967 and began to organise with high continuity a wide-ranging variety of scientific events. Almost all administrative districts had their own institute of forensic medicine by 1990.

Extraclinical obstetrics in the GDR? Medicohistorical notes

In 1946 the share of clinic deliveries in the Soviet occupation zone amounted to 27 %, 1970 the given share of clinic deliveries in the GDR come to 99 %. From the beginning of the seventies home deliveries were not listed any more in the official statistics. After that neither the home obstetrics nor the family orientated clinical obstetrics took a larger space in the scientific discussions in the specialist public of the GDR. The following will show the development of the extraclinical obstetrics on the territory of the GDR as well as describe and discuss its medical and social context from the end of the forties until 1989. Usually in the (critical) reflections of the revival of home resp. extraclinical obstetrics in the eighties and nineties only the development in the "old" Federal Republic is taken into consideration. A description of the medicohistorical development in the former GDR in order to complete the all-German way of looking at this phenomenon was still due until now.