War Of Annihilation Research Articles

Women’s Daily Life in the Occupation: Sexual Violence in Documents and Soviet Propaganda

The problem of sexual violence in the occupied Soviet territories during the Great Patriotic War is an under-researched and taboo subject in the Russian public sphere. It is viewed either from the perspective of collaboration in prostitution and cohabitation, or from the perspective of gender discrimination and sexual violence. At the same time, it is extremely difficult to differentiate these features of women’s everyday life under the conditions of the “war of annihilation”. Based on the documents of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders, partisan reports, and other documents, as well as articles from the wartime periodical press, the author compares images of sexual violence with the practices of women’s everyday life under occupation. In the propaganda of the warring countries, the image of the abused female body was actively used to incite hatred of the enemy. Rape and the forcing of women under occupation to work in brothels were presented in this light. A comparison of propaganda images and specific facts of violence presented in official and ego-documents shows the existence of discrepancies between images and practices. While rape was fairly accurately portrayed in official texts, the problem of prostitution was less accurately reflected in reality. Individual women used their bodies as a means of survival and received various material benefits in return. The population did not perceive legal prostitution in the categories of propaganda and interpreted it as a betrayal. Although some decrees were passed during the war in both Germany and the USSR that treated violence against women as a crime, women were not recognised as victims in the Soviet public trials or at the Nuremberg Tribunal and did not receive compensation. During the transition to peace, the problem of sexual violence lost its pragmatic propaganda function and was excluded from the collective memory. Nevertheless, the increase in violence against women during the Second World War led to the adoption of the Geneva Convention for the Protection of Victims of War in 1949, which was ratified by the Soviet Union in 1954.

«ДОМА ТЕРПИМОСТИ» В РОСТОВСКОЙ И СТАЛИНСКОЙ ОБЛАСТЯХ В ПЕРИОД НЕМЕЦКОЙ ОККУПАЦИИ В 1942–1943 гг.

The article deals with the organization and functioning of the Nazi brothels in the occupied territory of the Rostov and Stalino (Donetsk) Oblasts during the Great Patriotic War. In the conditions of the “war of annihilation” and the “new order”, Soviet women found themselves in an exceptional situation of double gender discrimination: as “Untermensch” and as “trophies”. One of the forms of sexual collaboration was working in legal “brothel houses”. Formally “girls” were considered one of the most protected groups of the population in the occupation: they received significant income, rations, medical care, and a guarantee from being sent to Germany. In Soviet society, such women became outcasts. The authors analyze the opening of brothels in the Rostov region in and in the city of Stalino, their organizers, main and attendant staff, working conditions and venereal diseases of women. The study is based on the documents from two state archives: the State Archive of the Russian Federation (fund of the Extraordinary State Commission for the Establishment and Investigation of the Atrocities of the German Fascist Invaders and Their Accomplices and the Damage They Caused to Citizens, Collective Farms, Public Organizations, State Enterprises and Institutions of the USSR) and the State Archive of the Rostov Oblast (fund of the Commission for Accounting for Damage and Atrocities inflicted by the German Fascist Occupants on Institutions, Enterprises and Citizens of the City of Rostov-on-Don and the Rostov Oblast). These documents are introduced into scientific circulation for the first time. The authors relied on the approaches of gender history, military daily life and historical anthropology.

Controversies over Austria’s Nazi Past: Generational Changes and Grassroots Awakenings following the Waldheim Affair and the “Wehrmacht Exhibitions”

AbstractIn 1945, the Austrian government constructed a new identity based on having been a “victim” of Nazi Germany. Thus, it had to hush up the fact that a majority of the population had welcomed the Anschluss, hundreds of thousands joined the NSDAP and served in the German Wehrmacht, and many were involved in the crimes of National Socialism. Only in the late 1980s, in the wake of the Waldheim Affair, did the years between 1938 and 1945 have to be re-interpreted. Ten years later, the exhibition “War of Annihilation: Crimes of the Wehrmacht 1941–1944” (short: Wehrmacht exhibition) questioned the myth of the “clean Wehrmacht.” Using the examples of the Waldheim Affair and the Wehrmacht exhibition, the article analyzes the influence of grassroots movements stimulated by these events. Since some members of the second generation defended the Wehrmacht rather than embracing the grassroots movements’ critique of earlier war myths, it will also problematize the category “generation.” Due to the leading role played by prominent Austrian Jews in these grassroots movements, the generational gap within the Jewish community is of further interest. I emphasize that the grassroots movements needed the support of Austrian political parties and from abroad to achieve a modicum of success.

“Not a Structure, but an Event”: the Nazi “War of Annihilation” in the Discourse of Settler Colonialism

“Not a Structure, but an Event”: the Nazi “War of Annihilation” in the Discourse of Settler Colonialism

German Reparation Debts After the Second World War—A Research Summary

Over the past five years, I have been grappling with the fallout from the predatory wars of annihilation waged by the Germans during the Second World War. The history of the Nazi dictatorship and of German-controlled Europe has been one of my most important research topics for decades. But the true extent of the enormous material destruction and humanitarian devastation caused by these wars has only now become apparent to me. Whoever addresses this issue from a contemporary perspective inevitably also comes across the related issue of reparations and compensation that arose from these wars and that still affects Europe today. At the same time, studying this topic involves entering a risky ‘No Go Area’ of historical research, because reparations discourse has certainly not been confined to history: the as-of-yet unpaid debts of the Second World War are grouped together like in a concave mirror. The research findings we have presented so far therefore only represent a beginning. In what follows, I will first present the results of my case studies of Poland and Greece, since they cover the historical framework of German occupation policy during World War II and the current conflicts over reparations. This will be followed by reflections on the economic-historical context of the Cold War and the failure of Allied reparations policy. Finally, I will critically engage with the latest arguments against a final settlement of the reparations problem and present in detail the ambivalence at the heart of the German culture of remembrance.

Notes on the war of annihilation. Eastern front of 1941–1942 in the memoirs of General Heinrici

Notes on the war of annihilation. Eastern front of 1941–1942 in the memoirs of General Heinrici

Instrumentalised, suppressed, ignored

Germany was well informed about the famine in Ukraine in 1932/33. Diplomats sent reports of what was happening, and church organisations began collecting aid for the victims. German engineers and labourers working on installations in the country were eye witnesses to what occurred. The first academic study of the catastrophe was conducted in 1941 under German occupation, and the results were extensively exploited for propaganda purposes. The Germans had quite a large amount of information. Yet the instrumentalisation of the Holodomor by the National Socialists and unease within Germany about the country’s own crimes during the war of annihilation and the Holocaust made it difficult to engage with the issue during the postwar years. The Holodomor in Ukraine was also suppressed, forgotten and ignored as a result of the Russia-centric nature of German historical Eastern European research. Today, those who demand that the Holodomor be recognised as genocide also hope to integrate it into the European and global culture of remembrance.

The View of the Japanese Enemy 75 Years after the End of World War II

The View of the Japanese Enemy 75 Years after the End of World War II Kirsten L. Ziomek (bio) Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio, Implacable Foes: War in the Pacific 1944–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. 711 pp. Maps, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95. After the defeat of Germany in May 1945, the United States wanted to end the war with Japan as quickly as possible. But Waldo Heinrichs and Marc Gallicchio contend that this was impossible as the United States was not in the position to launch a successful invasion of mainland Japan. One of the questions that Implacable Foes sets out to answer is how the conflict arrived at the point that the United States needed to be saved by both the atomic bombs and Hirohito's intervention in favoring surrender, because the prospects of a successful U.S. invasion of Japan did not look good. The book's premise is novel in that it challenges a common narrative that the dominant United States, with all its industrial might, men, and matériel was the certain victor in 1945. The authors depict a United States government and military that still considered themselves the underdog versus the Japanese who had not won a battle since the loss of Midway in 1942. Despite the Japanese fighting a two-front war in China for eight years and for four years in the Pacific theater, with a dwindling amount of supplies, trained pilots, and resources necessary to wage war, the United States still did not like its chances in launching an invasion of the Japanese mainland. Japan had 69 cities that had already been firebombed prior to the atomic bombings, and their military had to resort to kamikaze tactics in 1944 as their primary strategy from the air out of their sheer desperation caused by their lack of skilled pilots and planes. That the Japanese posed such a formidable threat raises questions: was the United States really incapable of launching a successful invasion of Japan or was it that the government and public simply did not have an appetite for further fighting with boots on the ground? The authors argue that both are true. This substantial book is primarily focused on the American order of battle, the personalities of several "great men" like General Douglas MacArthur and George Marshall, and detailing the internal wrangling that U.S. government officials and military leaders went through when confronted with the prospect [End Page 582] of continuing the Pacific war well past the end of fighting on the European front. References to Japanese soldiers, which are relatively rare, often rely on depictions of them as fanatics who fought to the death: "[The Americans] were engaged in a war of annihilation against an enemy resigned to his own death and determined to fight on for the sole purpose of killing as many Americans as possible" (p. 8). Although the authors try to provide balance by pointing out that American soldiers—like the Japanese—also committed brutalities during the war, (pp. 77–80) brief mentions do not obviate the overwhelming sense that pervades the book that the Japanese were an enemy of a sort that American soldiers had never encountered before. Refuting John Dower in War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1987), which argues that the Pacific War was a race war that fueled hatred on both sides, the authors contend that Japanese soldiers were unique and unlike their American counterparts. "That war with the Japanese was a battle for survival, a struggle without sanctuary, came as a shock to the American soldier. Surrender meant barbaric death, to survive meant killing" (p. 79). While it is true that official Japanese military doctrine discouraged soldiers from surrendering, whether this resulted in American soldiers being less willing to fight for their lives than the Japanese is debatable. More groundwork and substantial evidence would help advance their argument against Dower's. Regardless, the book was never intended to be about the foes of America, but instead the focus was meant to be (and is) on how the American government and military officials saw their options to end the war in light of the...

War of Annihilation, Occupation and Legal Reappraisal: Victims’ Perspectives

War of Annihilation, Occupation and Legal Reappraisal: Victims’ Perspectives

Review of <em>War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941</em>

Review of <em>War of Annihilation: Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front, 1941</em>

СОЦІОКУЛЬТУРНІ КОНТЕКСТИ ВІЙСЬКОВОЇ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ

Urgency of the research. The main issue on the agenda of modern mankind is the image of the future development of the world economy and peaceful interaction between different parts of the globe, and the concept of the development of cultural identity and the preservation of the identity of a certain community are replacing the model of a unified world.. Target setting. The main in the process of territorial delimitation of state borders, so modern promotion of the trend to “demilitarize” social life requires the formation of a conceptual approach to replace the violent military form of clarifying intercivilizational relations with acceptable peaceful means. Actual scientific researches and issues analysis. Military activity as a material, objective and potential aspect becomes the object of research of such thinkers as Heraclitus, T. Hobbes, M. Creveld, F. Nietzsche, Z. Freud, J. Huizinga, A. Toynbee, S. Heinington. Uninvestigated parts of general matters defining. The problem of studying modern socio-cultural parameters of the functioning of the sphere of military activity in the context of cardinal changes in the digital era is not sufficiently covered in the scientific literature. The research objective. The purpose of this publication is to analyze the socio-cultural contexts of military activity in the context of the development of intercivilizational dialogue. The statement of basic materials. The war of annihilation is a militaristic activity, which has a destructive character, and each participating country in one form or another receives negative consequences of such confrontation. But the development of the military sphere of activity at a certain stage of human development forms a normative-legal system, which, in turn, creates the basis for the legal regulatory function of culture. From the very beginning, there was a cardinal contradiction that can be resolved only in such socio-cultural contexts as science, education, art, etc., which will help replace the brutal destruction of man by a person on a specific battlefield and help translate hostilities on the "chessboard" competition of intellectual and technical-technological support of the enemy through a preliminary analysis of all components of each other's military capabilities with a potentially calculated winner. Conclusions. Тhe potential aspect of military activity in the system of sociocultural constants is a change in the speech or energy status of objects, and in the digital era of their information resource, thereby ensuring the process of transformational transformations within the existence of the modern world community.

Dismantling the Myths of the Eastern Front: The Role of the Wehrmact in the War of Annihilation

The English-language historiography of the Eastern Front of World War II is notably sparse until the late 1980s and early 1990s. In the first couple of post-war decades, memoirs written by former generals in the Wehrmacht, the armed forces of the Third Reich, dominated the historical conversation. These memoirs created the myth of the clean and apolitical Wehrmacht, where military operations and genocidal policy were separate. According to this narrative, it was the Nazi leadership and the SS that committed large-scale atrocities on the Eastern Front while the Wehrmacht focused only on winning the war. Anglo-American historians largely accepted these accounts, mainly because of Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union. The experiences of German generals were invaluable insights into Soviet doctrine, and therefore the generals’ tendency to downplay their own complicity in Nazi war crimes was largely accepted. Increasing access to German and later Soviet archives in the 1980s and 1990s revealed that this was far from the truth. Recent historical works have demonstrated that genocidal policy and war strategy were inextricably linked. The question of why the Wehrmacht accepted Nazi ideology is more difficult to answer. Historians have applied this question to both the High Command and to the everyday soldiers, with differing conclusions.

From Pearl Harbor to the “Asian Pivot”: Contours of us Imperialism in the Pacific

This article explores the long trajectory of United States imperial strategy in the Pacific, spanning the first conquest of Hawaii in the 1890s through the naval buildup, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the protracted war of annihilation against Japan that followed, American establishment of its postwar hegemony over Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and other parts of Asia, to the present-day “Asian Pivot” (including the Trans-Pacific Partnership) linking 12 nations in trade relations with efforts to contain the Chinese economic juggernaut. I argue that this will become a centerpiece of global politics heading into the future.

Relevance of Gandhian Democracy for Peace and Betterment of Human Being

Man, after all, is the child of the time and prisoner of his experiences. The contemporary stream of thought casts a great impact on the thought process of man. Examination of the contributions of Mahatma Gandhi seems necessary in view of the political and materialistic transformation of the modern world and the prevalence of ethical bankruptcy of the general masses due to growing materialism, progress of education and undue stress on physical well-being. Advance of Science and its sinister daughter technology has brought humanity and human values to stand nearer to the brink of total destruction. Concentration of power in the hands of a small minority whether in the field of Economics or politics leads to increase so many problems, as problems beget further problems. Forces are released that make each war the preamble to another and more devastating wars. The only consequence of war today is to enhance the impulse of revenge and retribution. The processes of change made the world much different from what it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. The explanation for this tragic paradox lies in the contradiction between the ends and means that characterizes the present age. “The wars of Liberation are becoming wars of annihilation”. In this connection, Gandhiji showed us one of the ways of breaking this vicious circle for resolving the mounting tensions.

Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation

Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation

Lauren Faulkner Rossi. Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation

No abstract is available.

Wehrmacht priests: Catholicism and the Nazi war of annihilation

Wehrmacht priests: Catholicism and the Nazi war of annihilation

Taking Nomos: Carl Schmitt's Philology Unbound

Carl Schmitt famously drew a distinction between what he called nomos and what we usually think of as law (Gesetz in German, lex in Latin). The latter, he explained, is a positivist legal order based on normative thinking, where the highest law would still only be a historically contingent norm. In contrast, nomos—though commonly translated from the Greek as “law”—is the total concept of right that precedes and makes possible all such laws, and “comprises a concrete order and community” (Nomos of the Earth, p. 20). One might think that “right” (German Recht) itself could fulfill this conceptual and terminological role; indeed, as Thomas Schestag notes, Schmitt consistently and without comment translated nomos as Recht in his early writings. But for Schmitt the origin of right and laws is inextricably tied to the land and, more specifically, to originary events of land appropriation, which engender first spatial and then political, social, and religious orders. He thus defines nomos as “the measure by which the land in a particular order is divided and situated; it is also the form of political, social, and religious order determined by this process. Here, measure, order, and form constitute a spatially concrete unity.” (NoE, p. 70) Schmitt's terminological turn to nomos in the 1930s, which culminated in his most expansive exposition of the term in his 1950 book Der Nomos der Erde in Völkerrecht des Jus Publicum Europaeum (The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of the jus publicum Europaeum), was prompted by what he saw as not only a political but also as a jurisprudential crisis in the first half of the twentieth century. Though a nomos is, almost by definition, a nomos of the earth (in the sense of land), the first truly global nomos of the earth arose, according to Schmitt, with the European colonialist expansion in the sixteenth century. This world order depended upon the distinction between European and non-European space (which was free for occupation), as well as that between land and sea; it was embodied in a European public law, the jus publicum Europaeum, that guaranteed balanced and stable relations between European colonial powers while also maintaining sharp divisions between the public and the private, and the political and the economic. Its greatest success was the bracketing of war: the conduct of war as a non-discriminatory “regulated contest of forces … in a bracketed space” and the consequent exclusion of wars of annihilation. Already in decline at the end of the nineteenth century, this world order collapsed entirely in the twentieth; believing that attempts to replace it by a vague and abstract “international law” were misguided, Schmitt in The Nomos of the Earth sought to redirect “human thinking to the elemental orders of its terrestrial being here and now” (NoE, p. 39).

Widening the Circle: General Weikersthal and the War of Annihilation, 1941–42

Recent scholarship concerning theWehrmachtleadership in Nazi Germany's war against the Soviet Union (1941–1945) has provided a much more nuanced picture of the motivation and responsibility of the uppermost strata of general for the brutalization of the conflict. The generals just outside this inner military circle, however, continue to be largely ignored. Questions on the mentality of lower-ranking, frontline commanders toward the war of annihilation and what latitude they reserved for themselves in carrying out orders remain, like the war on the front itself, one of the least researched topics of World War II.

Commemorating ‘Heroes of a Special Kind’: Deserter Monuments in Germany

Germany is one of the very few countries in the world with deserter monuments. Sparked by the Filbinger affair of 1978 and the protests of the German peace movement against NATO rearmament in the 1980s, a deserter monument movement emerged in numerous German cities, and by 2010 some 25 deserter monuments had been established across the country. These monuments fall into two main categories: those which specifically commemorate German soldiers who deserted from the Wehrmacht in the Second World War and those which are dedicated to honouring desertion as a matter of principle. Both types of monument qualify as a form of counter-monument, seeking to provoke reflection about traditional soldierly values and to challenge existing war memorials. The deserter monument movement and the monuments which it has spawned have played a significant role in shifting public perceptions about deserters from the Wehrmacht – leading to legal rehabilitation of the deserters in May 2002 – and have also contributed to the broader public debate about the role of the Wehrmacht in Hitler’s ‘war of annihilation’. The monuments occupy an important place in the evolving ‘memory culture’ ( Erinnerungskultur) of contemporary Germany, representing one example of continuing German attempts to rewrite the public narrative of German war experience.