Organizing the ‘people’s community’: the NSDAP and the ‘ethnic Germans’ in Nazi-occupied territories

ABSTRACT

This article refers to recent scholarly debates on the term ‘people’s community’ (Volksgemeinschaft), which throughout the Third Reich remained rather vague and encompassed often contradictory purposes. It deals with the relations between the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP) and some of the ‘ethnic German’ (volksdeutsche) organizations to exemplify how German society should be transformed into a ‘people’s community’ after 1933. Thus, it is necessary to analyse the ‘people’s community’ not by asking whether or not its different purposes were realized, but by examining its functions in the Nazi regime. This functional analysis of the ‘people’s community’ focuses on the NSDAP and its relations with ‘ethnic German’ organizations after 1933, primarily in Nazi-occupied territories during the Second World War. First, the article describes the NSDAP’s efforts to align the ‘Germans abroad’ (Auslandsdeutsche) after the seizure of power and to organize the German Front (Deutsche Front) in the Saar territories in 1934/35—an experience serving as a blueprint for the relations between the NSDAP and ‘ethnic German’ organizations during the Second World War. Second, it evaluates the creation of the Ethnic German Community (Volksdeutsche Gemeinschaft) in the General Government and its efforts to organize ‘ethnic Germans’. Third, it interprets the foundation of the German People’s Community (Deutsche Volksgemeinschaft) in Lorraine and its ongoing attempts to establish a racial hierarchy of ‘ethnic Germans’ over the autochthonous French population. Fourth, it looks at the connection between the Germanization of Lower Styria and the launch of the Styrian Homeland Union (Steirischer Heimatbund) as an ‘ethnic German’ movement. The article argues that the NSDAP’s operational routines regarding both the German population and the ‘ethnic Germans’ living in the occupied territories shaped the ‘people’s community’.     

Proceedings at Monthly Meetings of the Royal Archaeological Institute

The importance of training areas to the militarization of the landscape in the twentieth century is well recognized, but many sites remain unexplored and unrecorded. This article discusses the archaeology of a Second World War landscape at Westleton Walks, near Dunwich in Suffolk. The principal remains are those of a mock German ‘Hedgehog’ defensive position built in the spring of 1943 for use in Exercise ‘Kruschen’, an extended trial of techniques and equipment that went on to inform the successful Allied campaign in north-west Europe the following year. The archaeology of the site is significant both as a case study of a Second World War training landscape and also because the remains can be given a precise historical context.     

Nazi Leaks and Intrigues in Second World War Ankara: the Plot to Send Herbert Melzig to a Concentration Camp

This article excavates one of the stranger episodes that took place in the transnational microcosm of the German expatriate world in Ankara and Istanbul during the Second World War. ‘Professor’ Herbert Melzig's story, the ‘Melzig affair’, illustrates how this microcosm, with its very different constituent members - Jewish and non-Jewish refugees from Nazism, German pro-Nazi expatriates, and an extensive embassy and Nazi Party network - acted as a conduit in German–Turkish relations, albeit one that produced unexpected results. This ‘Melzig affair’ sheds new light on the German presence in Second World War Turkey as well as the so-called German ‘exile on the Bosporus’ as it has been (re-)constructed and used in recent years; it also contributes to our understanding of Turkish foreign policy during the Second World War, especially regarding Turkey's reluctance to join the war on Hitler's side. At the end of the Melzig affair stood the ‘leaking’ of an internal Ministry of Propaganda memorandum. It prepared the ground for further leaks of this nature and was one of the turning points of public opinion in Turkey against the Third Reich.     

Gorgobad: reflections on a German-Australian family biography

This article continues the focus on German-Australian militarised modernities through the Second World War to the present day. It draws on the author’s own family history, beginning with the memories evoked by her grandparents’ house in northern Sydney, built between 1950 and 1953. Named ‘Gorgobad’, Persian for ‘place of the wolves’, it resonates with a family history that involves German colonial investments in post-First World War Iran, the global geopolitical upheavals of the Second World War, which drew her family into separate histories of refuge, British imprisonment and deportation and, finally, building a new home in Australia. The essay asks pertinent questions about the entanglement of hegemonic racialised orders in Europe with the very racialised orders of the grounds on which Gorgobad was built.     

Home-rule versus non-territorial autonomy? Western European national movements and their views on the minority question, 1919–1939

The leading elites of the ethnonationalist movements that developed in the aftermath of World War I in Western Europe usually refused to see their nations and territories as ‘national minorities’. In their view, they were stateless nations or nationalities. However, in the aftermath of World War I, the prior international discussion on the nationality principle was increasingly replaced with the notion of ‘minority rights’, enhanced by the implementation of the Minorities Treaties by the League of Nations. Thus, the term ‘national minority’ emerged as a label that permitted ethnonationalist activist to present their claims on the international stage. This became evident in the participation of some Western European national movements in the activities of some transnational non-governmental organisations, such as the Congress of European Nationalities (1925–1939). However, the general programme advocated by the most influential leaders of East-Central ethnic minorities, based on the extension of the personal principle and the implementation of non-territorial autonomy all over Europe, was hard to accept for ethnonationalist elites from Western Europe, which were interested in territorial home-rule and believed that their homelands did not fit in the category of ‘minority’. This article explores the modalities and limits of that cultural and political dialogue.     

Prostitution and infection: transnational and comparative perspectives on Italian health policy (1922–1958)

ABSTRACT

In 1958 the Italian parliament abolished controlled prostitution and closed the case di tolleranza – brothels licensed and supervised by the state. Justified in the nineteenth century as a means to combat venereal diseases, discussions surrounding the state-regulated prostitution became increasingly complex after the Second World War. This article will focus on the presumptive chief argument, the brothels’ benefit to public health. Using a historical comparison, it will identify this factor’s role in the continuation or abolition of the regulated system and any aspects unique to the Italian case. To take full advantage of the comparative approach, countries have been selected that permit an entangled historical comparison that is both synchronic and diachronic: Whereas the change in prostitution regulations occurred after the Second World War in France and Italy – the same era – we must jump back to a different period, the pre-war years, for the German case.     

From ‘flight and expulsion’ to migration: contextualizing German victims of forced migration

Abstract

The forced migration of twelve million Germans was central to German memory after 1945, and reflects fundamental changes in remembering the Second World War, that is, refocusing from German victims, such as expellees, to the victims of Germany in the Holocaust. Within this discourse, ‘flight and expulsion’ demonstrates Germany’s entangledness with her eastern neighbours and is turned into a European and transnational mnemonic discourse with the debates over a ‘Centre against Expulsions’ in the 2000s. This article studies ‘flight and expulsion’ between two mnemonic patterns, that is, the loss of the homeland against migration. After the collective imagination of a lost homeland in the east, the emerging Holocaust memory both marginalized ‘flight and expulsion’ in the late 1970s and introduced new patterns of commemoration. These patterns enabled a turn toward individual victimhood and the decontextualization of ‘flight and expulsion’ from the Second World War. The ‘Centre against Expulsions’ project demonstrates the coordination of the German example with other cases of forced migration and the claim for a universal commemoration of past expulsion and the condemnation of any future attempts. The case of Syrian civil-war refugees, however, reveals that such forms of decontextualization only in part transfer into humanitarian imperatives.     

Seeking labour's aristocracy? The ‘Westphalian incident’ and Polish nationality policy in the immediate aftermath of war*

ABSTRACT. In the immediate aftermath of World War II the Polish state placed a high value on national homogeneity. The Polish Committee of National Liberation signed population exchange agreements with its socialist neighbours in September 1944 and expelled the German population who remained within the new Polish borders. Far less frequently discussed are the Polish state's efforts to persuade ‘Poles’ in Western Europe to move to Poland. This paper analyses how Polish policy towards ‘Westphalian Poles’ and the British reaction to Polish claims offer insight into both Polish and British nationality and citizenship policy in the immediate post‐war period. I argue that the quality of potential labour played an important role in both British and Polish thinking. The paper also contends that the ‘Westphalian incident’ gives useful insights into the emergence of the Cold War.     

The ‘return to Europe’: intellectual debates on the global place of Czechoslovakia in the interwar period

In the East Central European context, the phrase ‘return to Europe’ has been used mainly in the period after 1989, referring to political, economic and social changes as well as mental relocations towards a ‘Western’ system. However, debates about the national whereabouts on a mental map – whether one was part of Eastern, Central or Western Europe – also abounded in the years following the founding of the nation-states after the First World War. Concentrating on Czech discourses on the national whereabouts both in a European and a global perspective in the years preceding and following the great upheaval of 1918, this article traces the changing Czech national identity, ranging from a self-perception as a ‘small nation’ in the Habsburg Empire to a European power with colonial ambitions after the foundation of the Czechoslovak republic, and finally to the acknowledgement in the 1930s that these ambitions could not be met. The study is based on sources ranging from Czech travelogues mainly to Africa and Asia, but also South America, to economic writings and colonial brochures, which offer a broad range of debates on the role and location of both the Czech nation and the Czechoslovak state both in Europe and the world.     

Europe at the crossroads of three worlds: alternative histories and connections of European solidarity with the Third World, 1950s–80s

Abstract

Over the past few years, there has been growing interdisciplinary interest in the history of European solidarity movements that mobilized on behalf of the ‘Third World’ in the wake of the post-war decolonization process. Focusing on European campaigns against the Vietnam War and Pinochet’s Chile, this article aims at positioning these international solidarity movements in the broader history of North–South and East–West exchanges and connections in Europe during the Cold War. It explores some key ideas, actors and alternative networks that have remained little studied in mainstream accounts and public memories, but which are key to understanding the development of transnational activism in Europe and its relevance to broader fields of research, such as the history of Communism, decolonization, human rights, the Cold War and European identity. It delves into the impact of East–West networks and the Communist ‘First World’ in the discovery of the Third World in Western Europe, analyses the role of Third World diplomacy in this process, and argues how East–West and North–South networks invested international solidarity campaigns on ‘global’ issues with ideas about Europe’s past and present. Together, these networks turned resistance against the Vietnam War, human-rights violations in Pinochet’s Chile, and other causes in the Third World into themes for détente and pan-European cooperation across the borders of the Iron Curtain, and made them a symbol to build a common identity between the decolonized world and Europe. What emerges from this analysis is both a critique of West-centred narratives, which are focused on anti-totalitarianism, as well as an invitation to take North–South and East–West contacts, as well as the role of European identities, more seriously in the international history of human rights and international solidarity.     

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.     

Collaboration in Print: the ‘Aktion Ritterbusch’ and the failure of German intellectual propaganda in occupied Denmark, 1940–1942

During the Second World War, Germany's National Socialist regime mobilized German universities in order to support the war efforts through academic collaboration and a number of publications that were meant to legitimize Germany's territorial ambitions. The rector of the University of Kiel, Dr Paul Ritterbusch, was put in charge of the operation, which became known as the Aktion Ritterbusch. While earlier accounts have focussed on the Aktion Ritterbusch's endeavours in Germany itself and its ambitions in Western and Eastern Europe, this article shows how Ritterbusch also extended his efforts to Denmark.     

Mephisto

This article explores the resonances of objects that travelled between continents and the entangled imaginaries tied to them – here a 30-tonne German military tank captured by Australian soldiers during the First World War in France and shipped to Brisbane to be exhibited at the Queensland Museum. The author ‘reads’ the tank, intriguingly named ‘Mephisto’, as the apotheosis of nature/culture divide entrenched in nineteenth-century colonialism, which exported the taxonomies of the Enlightenment to the antipodes and in return repatriated objects of flora and fauna all over Europe. Mephisto thus also marks the manifestation of a German–Australian modernity: developed from the agricultural tractor, the tank remains a brutal and clumsy device designed purely to subdue and conquer territory.     

Positioning in the Cold War – Swedish and Danish History Textbooks and the Totalitarianism Doctrine. Historical Cultures in Comparison

The Nordic countries Sweden and Denmark have a long and intertwined history. The Second World War, though, formed different experiences in the two countries that led to diverging paths in the Cold War. Denmark became a member of North Atlantic Treaty Organization, while Sweden stayed non-aligned. Thus, it can be assumed that Denmark was more likely to adopt Western foreign policies and doctrines than Sweden. Or was it? On a programmatic political level this may have been the case, but what about cultural perceptions developed in Swedish and Danish ‘minds of men’? Is there a tension between les évenéments and les longues durées?

The underlying assumption in this article is that there is a contradiction and a tension between the programmatic political level and historically-inherited enemy images, and that this tension may be studied through the concept of totalitarianism and its position in the historical cultures of Sweden and Denmark in the post-war era. The totalitarianism doctrine was one of the main ideological weapons during the Cold War, serving as a basis for the Truman doctrine. It implies that Nazism and Soviet communism shared common features and may be subsumed under the same label. But would a Dane find it reasonable to view the Red Army, which belonged to the Allies which liberated his or her country, as of ‘the same kind’ as the German occupants? And would it make sense to a Swede to stay neutral to Soviet Russia, the historical enemy? The one who for a Swede is ‘the other’ might for a Dane appear as a historical ally.

The empirical sources are history textbooks for senior secondary school students, studied as artefacts of national historical cultures.     

Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War: European perspectives

In this Special Issue, the authors explore the various ways in which the Second World War shaped children's experiences in the post-war period. They map the multifaceted interest or non-interest of states all over Europe for children in the years after the war, filter out groups of children who recall that the consequences of the Second World War significantly influenced their childhood, and investigate the childhood policies directed towards them, as well as their childhood experiences and the memories they foster about their childhood. In addition, they have included case studies from Western, Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of sparking a debate as to whether it was only a similar lifecycle that war children in early post-war Europe shared, or if they also had some life experiences in common.     

Female domestic servants as desirable refugees: gender, labour needs and immigration policy in Belgium, The Netherlands and Great Britain

The immigration policies adopted by Western European states during the interwar period were marked by increasing restriction, especially after 1933. One notable exception to this was the relatively generous treatment afforded to women who were prepared to take up employment as domestic servants. This article looks at the reasons behind this anomaly and compares the responses of three states that were in the front line of the refugee efflux from Germany and Eastern Europe in the years leading up to the Second World War.     

Between National Socialism and expert internationalism: Karl Strölin and transnationalism in urban planning, 1938–45

This essay examines the transnational activities of National Socialist experts, focusing on the endeavours of the burgomaster of Stuttgart, Karl Strölin. In 1938, Strölin became president of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP), one of the most distinguished international expert institutions for European and North American urban planning. The article discusses his belief that promoting an international convention on the protection of urban populations would contribute to German diplomacy in the initial period of the Second World War. Then it investigates the IFHTP president’s efforts to transform his institution into an outlet for National Socialist ideas against the background of the German advance through Europe. A final section deals with Strölin’s attempts to transform the IFHTP into a forum for evaluating urban reconstruction policies in the last year of the war. This biographical study shows how it was possible to juggle the logics and expectations of seemingly contradictory spatial and political realms during and after World War II. National socialist politics and ideology exacerbated the tensions between local, national and international affiliations, but at the same time never fully permeated the mechanisms of expert internationalism. By revealing how Strölin navigated between local ambitions, the demands of domestic foreign policy and the ethics of expert internationalism in three markedly different projects, this essay contributes to a growing body of scholarship on the cross-border activities of National Socialist professionals in (occupied) Europe.     

The German question in Jakarta Indonesia in West Germany’s foreign policy, 1955–65

This article explores a hitherto unexamined chapter of German Cold War politics: West Germany’s relations with Indonesia between 1955 and 1965. Indonesia was a peculiar case, as in the late 1950s and early 1960s, President Sukarno turned his country into a radical champion of ‘anti-imperialism’. This included actions directed against the Netherlands, Britain, Malaysia, and the United States. As part of a comprehensive strategy to isolate East Germany in the ‘Third World’, West German diplomacy nevertheless tried to maintain solid relations with Sukarno’s increasingly unpredictable Indonesia, even if that meant undermining the position of Western allies.     

The Dog and Cat Massacre of September 1939 and the People's War

During the first week of the Second World War around 400,000 companion animals in London alone were killed at their owner's behest. This was not a state directive. Little is known of this event although details of what was called at the time the pet ‘Holocaust’ or ‘Cat and Dog Massacre’ were not suppressed. Far from the Home Front of the Second World War in Britain being a ‘People's War’, as popularly described, in different ways the animal–human relationship was prominent. The massacre – and subsequent animal–human relationships – tends to undermine the notion of both a positive and exclusively human ‘People's War’.     

Jewish Refugees in Cyprus and British Imperial Sovereignty in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1933–1949

This paper focuses on the use of the British Colony of Cyprus as a clearing ground for Jewish refugees on route to Palestine before, during, and after the Second World War. While acknowledging the historiographical consensus underscoring Cyprus’ renewed strategic importance in the context of British post-Second World War imperial retreat in the East, the article argues that Jewish transmigration revealed new potential uses for the island which in turn contributed to confirm British sovereignty in that possession. Drawing on British and Cypriot sources, the article further shows the transformative impact of Jewish transmigration for Cyprus politics as it induced British authorities, who had established an authoritarian regime in the island in the 1930s, to invoke Cypriot reactions in order to stem the flow of refugees to the island. This paved the way for future policies meant to redefine the relations between rulers and ruled. As the management of refugees coming to Cyprus during the period under scrutiny relied on ever more refined instruments of classification, the paper finally highlights the contribution of Empire to the crafting of official categories to designate people on the move—‘refugees’, ‘illegal immigrants’—which still inform European migration policies.