Ben Shepherd

War in a Twilight World : Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe, 1939-45

Across German-occupied Europe during World War Two, it was the population of eastern Europe which suffered most. A far-reaching effect was the emergence of widespread, ferocious partisan warfare, the legacy of which still resonates in the countries affected. This book assembles cutting-edge case studies by established and emerging academics to examine both partisan and anti-partisan warfare in different regions and localities of German-occupied eastern Europe. It shows how such warfare was shaped by an array of factors including fighting power, political and economic structures, the ideological and psychological attitudes of the combatants, the stance of the occupied population towards occupier and partisans, varied and often extreme environmental conditions, and the hostile, often bloody relations between the different ethnic groups under occupation. The result is a new degree of illumination of the realities of partisan and anti-partisan warfare on the ground during this dark chapter in European history.

THE CLEAN WEHRMACHT, THE WAR OF EXTERMINATION, AND BEYOND

This article surveys recent research on the German Wehrmachts anti-partisan campaign in the Soviet Union during the Second World War. German anti-partisan warfare in the Soviet Union was conducted not just against partisans, but also as cover for annihilating the Reichs ‘ideological enemies’ and plundering ‘bandit areas’ for resources. The Wehrmachts role was significant, constituting an important element of its wider participation in Nazi crimes. The review sketches the historical background and surveys the historiographys development to the late 1990s. It then examines at length the significant works that have emerged since, dividing them according to the operational levels on which they focus: higher command, individual regions, and, finally, middle-level units.

Wehrmacht Security Regiments in the Soviet Partisan War, 1943

It is generally agreed upon by historians that the German Wehrmacht identified strongly with National Socialism and embroiled itself in the Third Reich’s criminality. Less certain is how far down this identification ran. For the German Army of the East, engaged in the ideologically coloured eastern campaign the scale of complicity makes investigation at lower-levels especially pertinent.

The Ordeal of Peace: Demobilization and the Urban Experience in Britain and Germany, 1917–1921

These last lines of Wilfred Owen’s “Insensibility” articulate an important feature of British—and indeed European—First World War culture: the moral indignation of those who did the fighting toward those at home who stood to benefit from that effort without bearing an equal share of the physical or emotional cost. The breakdown in relations between soldiers and civilians, or what Owen terms the “reciprocity of tears,” has served as one facet of a “mythic” paradigm through which the experience of the war has been viewed by millions of Europeans, and, indeed, by many scholars, especially since the publication of Paul Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory in 1975. Owen’s death one week before the end of the war—his parents received the news on November 11—has also underscored, in mythic fashion, the way the war seemed to create a chasm between preand postwar life. In recent years, however, social and cultural historians have sought to move beyond these mythic dichotomies in order to get at the overlap between soldiers’ and civilians’ war service and the continuities between prewar, wartime, and postwar Europe. Books such as Susan K. Kent’s Aftershocks, Nicoletta Gullace’s The Blood of Our Sons, and Deborah Cohen’s The War Come Home have helped to revise our understanding of the experience of the war and its role in the re-shaping of postwar Britain and Europe more generally. In examining key elements of the tumultuous transition from war to peace, Adam Seipp’s well-researched and thought-provoking book continues in this vein, arguing that, contrary to the received myth, the war did not end with the Armistice; as he writes, “the ending of the First World War was not an event, but rather a process” (2). Throughout this process, the language of “reciprocity”—which he defines as the expectations of people that the state would provide for a better world after their sacrifices during the war—“framed debates about the transition from wartime to postwar social order” (3). As with Cohen’s book, Seipp’s comparative approach is in line with recent transnational trends in First World War studies begun by Jay Winter and others. Conceding that such approaches can be daunting to undertake, Seipp narrows his scope to the processes of demobilization as experienced in Manchester and Munich; examining the interplay in THE SPACE BETWEEN

Bloodier than Boehme: The 342nd Infantry Division in Serbia, 1941

Your objective is to be achieved in a land where, in 1914, streams of German blood flowed because of the treachery of the Serbs, men and women. You are the avengers of those dead. A deterring example must be established for all of Serbia, one that will have the heaviest impact on the entire population. Anyone who carries out his duty in a lenient manner will be called to account, regardless of rank or position, and tried by a military court.1

Introduction: Illuminating a Twilight World

Eastern Europe suffered under Nazi rule much more than the rest of the occupied continent during World War II. Like western and southern Europe, its peoples found themselves subjected to harsh, punitive and sometimes ferociously savage measures inflicted in response to popular resistance. And like western and southern Europe, its foodstuffs, labour and economic resources were exploited increasingly ruthlessly as the war dragged on. However, it differed in its experience of occupation because it was populated by peoples who in Nazi thinking were racially inferior, even subhuman. This alone went a long way towards legitimising the singularly brutal, exploitative treatment to which Nazi policy subjected eastern Europe. It also often exacerbated that treatment to a horrific degree.1

Review: Edward B. Westermann, Hitler’s Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East, University Press of Kansas: Lawrence, KS, 2005; 329 pp., 20 illus.; 9780700613717,

music, it was difficult to pin down the ideological content. This allowed for the professional composers and critics to provide their own, less punitive interpretation of party mandates. Tomoff particularly focuses on the attack on composers that began in 1948. In this ‘brouhaha’, many of the best-known composers were accused of formalism. Tomoff proposes that the standard interpretation – that an attack on music was inevitable – is incorrect. Instead, the events of 1948 must be understood in the light of the ongoing battle between the populist and highbrow camps of composers. In other words, those who wrote popular music were fighting with those who wrote symphonic music, for control of the CU, something that had not changed since the 1930s. The new twist was that the bureaucrats who oversaw the CU were forced to rely on the composers themselves for interpretations of errant productions. Although no one was arrested or executed, the affair traumatized those within the CU, causing a deepening alienation in the profession. Tomoff also discusses how a broader anti-cosmopolitan campaign developed within the CU during the same time. He concludes that one cannot conflate anti-cosmopolitanism and anti-Semitism, arguing that the nationalist roots of the campaign incidentally spilled over to anti-Semitic activity. For example, in the conservatories, Russians were favoured by decree, which meant the second most prominent nation in those schools – the Jews – was displaced. The increasing professionalization of the CU allowed its leaders to deflect more odious antiSemitic attacks on prominent artists and teachers. Finally, the book concludes with several chapters that summarize the nature of the institution. Tomoff illustrates the ways in which composers were paid, gained status, and used patronage networks to survive. These chapters provide great detail into the inner workings of the union, and provide a detailed sense of how the composers managed their lives during the period here. Tomoff has given us both detail and a broad new way of thinking about the mechanisms of Soviet ideological control. It undermines many of the broad, standardized approaches to Soviet culture and provides a nuanced appreciation of the opportunities and constraints that shaped Soviet music during the years when Stalin was alive. It is a text that should be read by anyone interested in the cultural dynamics of the Soviet Union.

34.95 (hbk)

Rosenfeld seeks to explain the emergence, development, and significance of the ‘what if’ histories of the Third Reich that have proliferated in Britain, the United States, and the Federal Republic of Germany. The focus is largely on the fictional works that constitute much the greater proportion of the alternative histories that have been produced during the past 60 years. Rosenfeld argues that the boom in such works during recent decades shows that they are an important determinant of the evolving way in which the Third Reich is regarded in western memory. For a variety of reasons, moreover, they also reflect other preoccupations of the western mind. The book focuses primarily upon the development of alternative history with respect to three topics: the effects of Nazi victory in the Second World War, alternative fates of Hitler himself, and alternative scenarios relating to the Holocaust – whether they be its completion, its prevention, or its never having happened in the first place. Rosenberg first identifies, broadly speaking, an initial ‘moral phase’, lasting from the end of the war up until the mid-1960s, in which alternative histories unambiguously depicted Nazi victory as a nightmare scenario, and the bringing to justice of Hitler as a fantasy scenario. In doing so, they validated the course history had actually taken, and with it, a satisfaction with the present reality in which the authors were living. Rosenfeld asserts, however, that ‘this manner of representation functioned smoothly only as long as the post-war histories of all three nations were success stories’. Thus, from the mid-1960s onwards, new dangers and uncertainties in the three countries led to the emergence, albeit at different times, of a process in which alternative histories took an increasingly ‘normalized’ view of the Third Reich. In Britain, for instance, economic decline and the end of empire took their toll upon a hitherto positive national self-image. This ushered in a spate of works whose authors now challenged what had arguably been the overly reassuring idea that the Second World War had been Britain’s finest hour, bestowing upon the country a moral superiority over the rest of Europe. Instead, they stressed the extent to which normal Britons were likely to have collaborated in the event of Nazi occupation. Rosenfeld puts much of the change from a ‘moral’ to a ‘normalized’ alternative historical approach down to transformative economic and political changes in the countries under scrutiny, to an ‘organic Book Reviews 243

Book Review: The World Hitler Never Made: Alternate History and the Memory of Nazism. By Gavriel D. Rosenfeld. Cambridge University Press. 2005. xii + 524 pp. ₤25.00. boards. ISBN 0 521 84706 0

Abstract This introductory article begins by sketching the general historical background of partisan and anti-partisan warfare in German-occupied Europe. It then briefly outlines the state of available primary sources, and the often heated, controversial character of the historiographical debates which are taking place within this area. It then considers, at some length, the lessons which the five articles presented, offer for the present-day conduct of counter-insurgency warfare – lessons relating to the effects of higher-level strategic perceptions; to the potential, then as now, for directing a policy of ‘disaggregation’ against insurgents; to the importance of situating counter-insurgency warfare within the context of wider policies which are receptive to the needs of the occupied population and its social and cultural characteristics; and to the necessity of fielding counter-insurgency forces which not only are well-resourced, but which also, in stark contrast to the anti-partisan formations which the Germans so often deployed, conduct themselves in ways that cultivate the population rather than alienate it.

Partisan and anti-partisan warfare in german-occupied europe, 1939-1945: views from above and lessons for the present

cussing the fortunes of specific government initiatives, while more could have been done to explore the underlying structural and ideological problems of consumer policy in the GDR. Overall, however, this is a well researched and cogently argued book that deals with a matter of undoubted significance. Dictatorship and Demand makes a worthy addition to the growing body of English-language literature on the GDR economy.