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.     

The War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia and the Popular Movement to Manufacture Artillery Ammunition in the British Empire in the First World War

Among the nations that comprised the British Empire, the First World War has generally either been forgotten, as in India, as irrelevant to the achievement of political independence, or remembered, as in Canada, as the catalyst for developing a separate national identity. This article argues that both these historical interpretations ignore the extent to which the First World War was a shared British Empire experience. The article examines the establishment of the War Munitions Supply Company of Western Australia as an example of the popular movement to make artillery ammunition that swept many parts of the British Empire in 1915. The munitions movement provided an outlet for the patriotic surge that occurred in April–May 1915 in reaction to the German use of poison gas and the sinking of the Lusitania. It was also an attempt to overcome wartime economic disruption by creating a new local industry. The practicalities of cost and shipping meant that by 1917 artillery ammunition production was continued only in Britain, Ireland, and Canada, but in 1915 the Western Australian company was part of an Empire-wide movement to make munitions and support the war.     

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.     

From Control to Terror: German Prostitution Policies in Eastern and Western European Territories during both World Wars

In both World Wars, the German armies enacted a prostitution policy in all the occupied territories of Western and Eastern Europe. Through a comparative study, this article uses archival research in Poland, France, Belgium and Germany as well as existing studies in five languages to examine the continuities and discontinuities in German prostitution policies between the Western and the Eastern territories during both wars. In exploring the question of continuity, we consider the interaction of local authorities with occupation forces and how prostitution policies in Western and Eastern countries differed from the German ‘home front’. Strong continuities existed between the First and Second World War, including a severe backlash against the abolitionist trend in Europe and the extension of regulatory controls beyond the prostitutes to include other ‘suspect’ women, often justified by concerns over the spread of venereal diseases and public morality and health. Despite these continuities, prostitution policies were even more regressive during the Second World War, with the racial ideology of Nazism as the main trigger for the brutalisation of prostitution policies. German authorities pushed the system to greater extremes, overseeing its evolution from control to terror.     

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.     

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.     

Blood transfusion between the wars

This article examines the introduction of blood transfusion into general practice from the end of the First World War to the Second World War. Developments during most of this period were not the result of new discoveries but rather the spread of ideas and the establishment of donor organizations to secure an adequate blood supply. The identification, testing, and organization of potential donors were done in a wide variety of settings that reflected differences in political and cultural experiences. At the end of the 1930s, with war approaching, the resolution of problems with storage of blood and the discovery of new techniques for separating and storing plasma dramatically changed transfusion practice. Thus, the innovations of the Second World War were very much based on the development of broad donor organizations plus the new technical discoveries that had occurred during the interwar period.     

The Politics of Memory: History,Biography, and the (Re)-Emergence of Generational Literature in Germany

The existentialist philosopher Karl Jaspers is the father of a discourse on the spiritual consequences of the Holocaust. First addressed as the Schuldfrage (the question of guilt) by Jaspers immediately after the Second World War in his famous Heidelberg lecture, it has reappeared in various forms in German life and letters. Post-unification Germany has witnessed the valorization of the German experience of the Second World War. This ongoing re-evaluation has its antecedents in the generational literature of the 1970s and 1980s. Whereas the Vaterliteratur of the 1970s (by authors such as Christoph Meckel, Uwe Timm, and Peter Henisch) was often embedded in a left-wing critique of the establishment, recent contributions to this growing genre (by Marcel Beyer, Stephan Wackwitz, Wibke Bruhns, and Ulla Hahn among others) speak to the issue of collective identity and transgenerational family trauma outside distinct left- and right-wing interpretations of National Socialism. The current writings on the life during the Third Reich (filtered through the experiences of discrete generations) are a confluence of historical writing, memorial literature, biography, and fiction. They are closely related to the discussions that W. G. Sebald initiated in his 1997 lecture series on the silence of German postwar literature with respect to German suffering. The subsequent debate on how to bring closure to this “German suffering” was intensified by Günter Grass's widening of the concept of German victimization beyond the air war controversy in his book Crabwalk (2002). As Grass distinguishes clearly between the various post-World War II generations (and their different perspectives on historical events), the question becomes whether these recent writings will bring about a final so-called “zero hour” in German postwar history.     

对纳粹暴政与德意志历史最早的反思——德国流亡社会科学家与纳粹主义研究

德意志人对纳粹暴政以及德意志历史的反思并非始于第二次世界大战结束之后,而是早自1933年就开始了。只不过,它不是由当时生活在德国境内的德意志人,而是由一批逃出德国、流亡国外的德意志人开始的。美国高校接纳的德国流亡哲学家、政治学家、社会学家、经济学家和历史学家们最早开始了反思。这场反思不仅影响了西方政治理论的发展,更为重要的是,它还影响了战后美国对德国的占领政策和“民主化”的改造行动、联邦德国的经济重建以及德意志社会对自身历史的深刻反思。战后德意志社会的这场全面深刻的反思,正是在流亡美国的德国知识精英们所构筑的思想平台上进行的。     

Second World War bomb craters and the archaeology of Allied air attacks in the forests of the Normandie-Maine National Park,NW France

Well-preserved bomb craters in the forests of central Normandy, NW France, constitute archaeological legacies of combat inland from the D-Day beachheads that greatly extend the inventory of Second World War conflict landscapes in northwest Europe. Field survey and analysis of German and Allied documents demonstrates that bombscapes in the Forêt domaniale des Andaines and Forêt domaniale d'Ecouves reflect US Ninth Army Air Force attacks on a German fuel depot and radar installation, respectively, during June-August, 1944. One hundred and thirty-six craters are mapped, described and linked to specific air raids, bomb types and, for one raid on the 13th June, six specific participating aircraft and aircrews. These landscapes echo the impact of widespread tactical bombing against targets close to civilian population centers, and in some cases employing civilian and PoW labor. They are therefore well-placed to contribute to wider heritage narratives around the non-combatant experience of aerial warfare in WWII.     

America's Europe, Europe's America: Image, Influence, and Interaction, 1933–1958

John Lamberton Harper. American Visions of Europe: Franklin D. Roosevelt, George F. Kennan, and Dean G. Acheson .
Reinhold Wagnleitner. Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria after the Second World War .
Peter Duignan and L. H. Gann. The Rebirth of the West: The Americanization of the Democratic World, 1945–1958 .
Michael Ermarth, ed. America and the Shaping of German Society, 1945–1955 .     

War, suffering and modern German history

This introduction proceeds in five steps. First, it briefly considers the etymology of the term "suffering," as well as the way in which scholars from different disciplines have approached it conceptually and empirically. Second, drawing on the contributions to this issue, it raises general themes emerging from the study of the Thirty Years, Franco-Prussian and First World Wars, with particular attention to gender, the disabled, and Jewish-German veterans. Finally, it considers the most politically contested field of German suffering - the Second World War - and reflects on how that suffering can be narrated and understood without running into the intellectual dead ends of either self-pity or collective guilt.     

Review Article: The General History of the Second World War

MARTIN KITCHEN. A World in Flames: A Short History of the Second World War in Europe and Asia, 1939–1945. London and New York: Longman, 1990. Pp. xii, 377. $24.95 (CAN);

R.A.C. PARKER. Struggle for Survival: The History of the Second World War. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. xii, 328. £5.95;

H.P. WiLLMOTT. The Great Crusade: A New Complete History of the Second World War. New York: Free Press (Macmillan), 1989. Pp. xii, 500. $24.95 (us);

JOHN KEEGAN. The Second World War. Sydney: Hutchinson, 1989. Pp. vii, 608. Aus $39.95;

JOHN ELLIS. Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War. London: André Deutsch, 1990. Pp. xxii, 643. £19.95;

ALAN F. WILT. War from the Top: German and British Military Decision Making during World War II. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1990. Pp. x, 390. $35.00 (us).     

Einfluß der Chemischen Industrie auf den Chemieunterricht Abriß einer historischen Entwicklung

This historical inquiry into the enfluence with the Chemical Industriy and the chemistry education at German classical stateschools is described since the revolution of 1848. The introduction of chemistry lessons at German classical stateschools step by step is further observed between 1882 and 1901. Specially the author gives a comprehensive survey about the development after the World War II.     

Pushed into Pragmatism: British Approaches to Science in Post-War Occupied Germany

One of the most important dilemmas facing the British authorities when they occupied their zone of Germany at the end of the Second World War was what to do with German science. The contributions made by scientists and engineers to the Nazi war machine, in fields such as rocketry and submarines, meant that German science was both revered and feared, and was therefore closely linked to concerns about a post-war military resurgence in Germany. This article aims to chart the changing approaches which the British occupation officials adopted towards German science in this period. While the initial intention was to prevent Germany from ever waging war again, through demilitarisation, denazification and dismantling, the focus changed as British enmity shifted from a former adversary, Germany, to a former ally, the Soviet Union. Policy reflected this shift as technology transfer and the reconstruction of domestic German science won greater favour. This article aims to show that, in the face of growing hostility from the USSR and in the deeply suspicious climate of the early Cold War, Britain was forced to abandon its moral mission towards German science and adopt a far more pragmatic strategy instead.     

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.     

Falling into line? Kosovo and the course of German foreign policy

Germany's role in Operation Allied Force has been described as a watershed in its foreign policy. It remains perhaps the pinnacle of Germany's security and defence policy transition after the Cold War. Germany's participation in Operation Allied Force was the first aggressive use of force by the Bundeswehr since the Second World War and, remarkably, was undertaken without a United Nations Security Council mandate. The deployment of German forces in 1999 suggested that German reluctance to burden-share in crisis management alongside NATO allies had been overcome. Yet Germany remains a cautious actor when it comes to the deployment of offensive military force. In this regard, Germany has maintained a considerable degree of continuity in its foreign and security policy after unification, a theme which this article will outline.     

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’.     

What is ‘needed’ to keep remembering? War‐specific communication,parental exemplar behaviour and participation in national commemorations

Given the abundance of literature on collective memory practices, there is relatively little empirical research on the socialization processes explaining the transmission of such practices. This article examines to what extent war‐specific communication and parental exemplar behaviour function as a link between the collected memories of individuals and society's collective memory. Utilizing data from an online survey conducted in 2014, we focus on participation in the activities organized on Remembrance Day and Liberation Day in the Netherlands in remembrance of the Second World War. We distinguish between public and private practices. Our findings highlight that different forms of socialization substitute for one another. Whereas communication with non‐relatives is particularly relevant for those communicating less frequently with parents about past war experiences, parental exemplar behaviour, such as participating in the two‐minute silence on Remembrance Day, plays a bigger role amongst those with lower levels of communication with either relatives or non‐relatives.     

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.