Fighting Hunger, Dealing with Shortage: Everyday Life under Occupation in World War II Europe. A Source Edition

1496 Pages·2021·8.788 MB·English

by  Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Peter Haslinger, Włodzimierz Borodziej, Stefan Martens, Irina Sherbakova (editors)

Fighting Hunger, Dealing with Shortage
Volume 1
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History of Warfare
Editors
Kelly DeVries (Loyola University Maryland)
John France (University of Wales, Swansea)
Paul Johstono (The Citadel, South Carolina)
Michael S. Neiberg (United States Army War College, Pennsylvania)
Frederick Schneid (High Point University, North Carolina)
volume 133/1
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/hw
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Fighting Hunger,
Dealing with Shortage
Everyday Life under Occupation in World War II Europe
A Source Edition
volume 1
Edited by
Tatjana Tönsmeyer
Peter Haslinger
Włodzimierz Borodziej
Stefan Martens
Irina Sherbakova
In cooperation with
Francis Ipgrave
Agnes Laba
LEIDEN | BOSTON
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This project was funded by the Leibniz Association (https://www.leibniz-gemeinschaft.de/en): Leibniz
Competition Fund Cluster 7 “Internationalisation” (SAW Verfahren Förderlinie 7 “Internationalisierung”)
Term: 01.05.2012–30.04.2016, the University of Wuppertal and the German Historical Institute Paris.
Cover illustration: A woman and child handing over food to Soviet POWs, Ukraine. Herder-Institute
for Historical Research on East Central Europe Marburg, Image Archive, inventary number 310138,
photograph by Stefan Arczyński.
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2021010878
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1385-7827
ISBN 978-90-04-44824-7 (hardback, set)
ISBN 978-90-04-46182-6 (hardback, volume 1)
ISBN 978-90-04-46183-3 (hardback, volume 2)
ISBN 978-90-04-46184-0 (e-book)
Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink,
Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
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This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
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Contents
Foreword vii
Tatjana Tönsmeyer and Peter Haslinger
Fighting Hunger, Dealing with Shortage. Everyday Life under Occupation
in World War II Europe—An Introduction ix
Tatjana Tönsmeyer, in cooperation with Dirk Luyten, Karl Christian
Lammers and Irina Sherbakova
Editorial Guide lix
Francis Ipgrave
Documents by Date lxxiv
Documents by Country cx
Contributors cxii
Volume 1
Documents (1–300) 5
Volume 2
Documents (301–600) 637
Archives 1345
Index of Subjects 1349
Index of Places 1359
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Foreword
Tatjana Tönsmeyer and Peter Haslinger
The edition which you have in front of you, containing 600 translated and edited
sources from throughout German-occupied Europe documenting the everyday
experiences of conditions of shortage and supply, is the fruition of the large-
scale research and editorial project ‘Societies under German Occupation –
Experiences and Everyday Life in World War II’. This project, based at the
University of Wuppertal and the Herder Institute for Historical Research on
East Central Europe in Marburg, was funded in its initial, pilot stage by the
Leibniz Association, and also received further funding from the University of
Wuppertal and the German Historical Institute in Paris.
The central aim of the edition is, through the annotation, translation and
editing of a wide variety of sources from throughout the European continent,
to document the experiences of everyday life among local populations liv-
ing under German occupation, in particular their efforts to find supplies and
struggles against shortages and hunger, and to open up this field of research
to a wider, international public. The result is this collection of sources, taken
from 20 countries and translated from 17 languages into English. These sources
document the diverse and complex everyday circumstances, experiences and
survival strategies of ordinary people in the states and territories occupied by
the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. They demonstrate not only the
different perspectives and regional specificities of daily life for the roughly
230 million members of these occupied societies, from Norway to Greece and
France to the Soviet Union, but they also reveal for the first time in this trans-
national form certain shared experiences common to various differing societ-
ies under conditions of occupation. This comparative approach is very timely,
since World War II continues to be one of the epochs of world history which
draws the greatest attention of scholars and the public alike. Furthermore,
given recent developments in memory politics related to World War II in some
European countries, this edition also attests to the added value of a transna-
tional concept for the documentation of complex realities and different mind
sets and experiences. We therefore believe that this edition not only provides
ample opportunity for those interested in these topics to become acquainted
with everyday lives all over occupied Europe, but also has the potential to serve
as a useful starting point for those seeking to explore these issues further.
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viii Foreword
None of this would have been possible without the vital contributions made
by each and every member of the project across the continent, from the editors
and expert supervisors through to the translators and proof-readers and, as
the editorial team, we would therefore like to take this opportunity to express
our deepest gratitude to all 120 of them.1 The transnational and comparative
nature of this edition is also reflected in the network of academic experts from
throughout the continent, each of whom could feed their knowledge and per-
spectives into this truly pan-European project. The structure of the network
consists of three levels. At the first level, guiding the publication throughout,
were the general editors. We would like here to mention Włodzimierz Borodziej
in particular. He was with us from the very start of the project, and was one of
the absolutely central pillars upon which it rested. We are therefore extremely
sad that he did not live to see the fruits of his work, given his passing shortly
before its publication. He may not have been able to see the edition in print,
but his inspiration, insight and support can be found on every page.
The general editors were assisted, at the following level, by a network of
country supervisors, each with a responsibility for overseeing the selection and
annotation of the sources from their respective countries. In this they were
supported, at the third level, by their own groups of researchers – generally
young academics – within each of the countries represented in this edition.
Finally, alongside this network, the work of the project was closely coordinated
and supervised by the project coordinator and the managing editor. In their
work overseeing the implementation of the project guidelines and the prepa-
ration of the selected documents for publication, they, in turn, were assisted by
a team of nearly 40 translators and numerous proof-readers.
Furthermore, we would like to take this opportunity to once again express our
thanks to all those who provided the funding for this challenging endeavour –
above all the Leibniz Association, the Herder Institute for Historical Research
on East Central Europe in Marburg, the University of Wuppertal and the
German Historical Institute in Paris. Without their support these two volumes
would not have been possible.
With these two volumes we hope not only to offer interesting insights into
the situation in different countries in World War II Europe, but also to facilitate
new research in a field where a transnational perspective is crucial.
1 A full list of all those who have contributed to this publication can be found in the ‘List
of Contributors’, with further information available on the project website at http://www
.societies-under-german-occupation.com/.
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Fighting Hunger, Dealing with Shortage. Everyday
Life under Occupation in World War II Europe—
An Introduction
Tatjana Tönsmeyer, in cooperation with Dirk Luyten, Karl Christian
Lammers and Irina Sherbakova
1 War and Occupation
War and occupation are closely connected, but they are not the same thing.
Rather, to state the obvious, the former is the precondition for the latter: occu-
pation follows war. Historians agree that National Socialist Germany began
planning for war at an early stage, and Hitler himself was obsessed by the
belief that, after the First World War – those four years which he described in
“Mein Kampf” as “the greatest and most unforgettable time” of his life1 –, the
bitter defeat and the imposition of peace terms he regarded as shameful, a new
conflict was needed in order to restore Germany to its former greatness. In this,
he shared the views of a considerable section of German society.2
Although the focus of foreign policy initially seemed to be on “revision”,
Hitler committed his leading military figures to war from the start of his rule.
As early as February 1933 he left them in no doubt as to his aims: it was nec-
essary to build up a formidable Wehrmacht and, with their help, to “pursue
an active foreign policy” in order to eradicate “Marxism, root and branch”. He
spoke openly about the “expansion of the Lebensraum of the German Volk …
with an armed fist if necessary”. In order to achieve this, he would have “ruth-
lessly to expel several million people” – above all in Eastern Europe.3
The leadership of the German Reich finally abandoned any notion of tra-
ditional great power politics, at the latest, with the invasion of Austria in 1938.
This event signalled the final transition to a policy of aggression. This aimed not
only at the conquest of territory, but also at the construction of a political and
territorial “new order” for the continent, under German leadership. The goal
was the acquisition of “Lebensraum”, the Germanisation of this territory, and
the resultant restructuring of the continent according to racial principles.4 In
1 Cited in Birthe Kundrus, „Dieser Krieg ist der große Rassekrieg‟. Krieg und Holocaust in
Europa, München 2018, p. 14.
2 Nicholas Stargardt, The German War. A Nation under Arms, 1939–1945, London 2015.
3 Both citations in Kundrus, Krieg, p. 22.
4 Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, ed. by Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt,
10 vol, Stuttgart 1979 onwards. On Germanisation i.a. Gerhard Wolf, Ideologie und
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x INTRODUCTION
rapid succession there followed the incorporation of Austria, then the Munich
Agreement and shortly thereafter the German attacks on Czechoslovakia in
March 1939, Poland in September 1939, Denmark and Norway in April 1940,
Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and France in May 1940, Yugoslavia
and Greece in April 1941 and, finally, the Soviet Union at the end of June 1941.
Following the capitulation of Italy, German troops occupied the northern
and central parts of the country in September 1943, followed by Hungary and
Slovakia in 1944. At the turn of 1941/1942, therefore, at the highpoint of German
dominion, large swathes of the European continent and around 235 million
people found themselves under German occupation.
In terms of institutions and instances, the German occupation during the
Second World War was baffling in its variety. Nevertheless, it is possible to dif-
ferentiate between several types of occupation. These were – first – militarily
administrated territories, including Belgium, Northern France, parts of the
Soviet Union, Serbia, Greece and the occupied areas of Italy. The military
administrations cooperated with the National Socialist leadership, which can
be seen both in the extremely brutal treatment of the civilian population in the
Soviet areas of occupation and in their seamless participation and cooperation
in the genocide of the Jews. Secondly, a particularly National Socialist form
of occupation can be identified, that of civilian administration. This includes
the Reich Commissariats in Ukraine, Ostland, Norway, and the Netherlands,
as well as the General Government in Poland. It should be emphasised, how-
ever, that the differences between the military and civilian forms of admin-
istration were less pronounced than those between occupation practices in
Eastern and Western Europe. Whereas the Second World War in Western and
Northern Europe was generally conducted as a conventional war, the German
Reich inflicted an ideologically-motivated and racist war of annihilation upon
Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, perpetrating state-legitimated war crimes
there on a previously unprecedented scale.5
The areas annexed to the German Reich experienced a third form of occu-
pation. These included the Sudetenland, Upper Silesia, Posen, West Prussia
Herrschaftsrationalität. Nationalsozialistische Germanisierungspolitik in Polen, Hamburg
2012. Markus Leniger, Nationalsozialistische „Volkstumsarbeit‟ und Umsiedlungspolitik:
Von der Minderheitenbetreuung zur Siedlerauslese, Berlin 2006. Isabel Heinemann, „Rasse,
Siedlung, deutsches Blut‟. Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt und die rassenpolitische
Neuordnung Europas, Göttingen 2003.
5 Dieter Pohl, Herrscher und Unterworfene. Die deutsche Besatzung und die Gesellschaften
Europas; in: Das “Dritte Reich”. Eine Einführung, ed. by Dietmar and Wilfried Süß, München
2008, pp. 267–285, pp. 270f. On German war and occupation crimes Id.: Verfolgung und
Massenmord in der NS-Zeit 1933–1945, Darmstadt 2003, pp. 36–62.
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