Cambridge.University.Press.War.Land.on.the.Eastern.Front.Culture.National.Identity.and.German.Occupation.in.World.War.I.May.2000.
This page intentionally left blank War Land on the Eastern Front is a study of a hidden legacy of World War I: the experience of German soldiers on the Eastern Front and the long-term eVects of their encounter with Eastern Europe It presents an ‘‘anatomy of an occupation,’’ charting the ambitions and realities of the new German military state there Using hitherto neglected sources from both occupiers and occupied, oYcial documents, propaganda, memoirs, and novels, it reveals how German views of the East changed during total war New categories for viewing the East took root along with the idea of a German cultural mission in these supposed wastelands After Germany’s defeat, the Eastern Front’s ‘‘lessons’’ were taken up by the Nazis, radicalized, and enacted when German armies returned to the East in World War II Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius’ persuasive and compelling study Wlls a yawning gap in the literature of the Great War ve j a s ga b ri e l l i ul e vi c i us is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare General editor Jay Winter, Pembroke College, Cambridge Advisory editors Paul Kennedy, Yale University Antoine Prost, Universite´ de Paris-Sorbonne Emmanuel Sivan, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem In recent years the Weld of modern history has been enriched by the exploration of two parallel histories These are the social and cultural history of armed conXict, and the impact of military events on social and cultural history Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare presents the fruits of this growing area of research, reXecting both the colonization of military history by cultural historians and the reciprocal interest of military historians in social and cultural history, to the beneWt of both The series oVers the latest scholarship in European and non-European events from the 1850s to the present day For a complete list of titles in the series see end of book War Land on the Eastern Front Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius University of Tennessee The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcón 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius 2004 First published in printed format 2000 ISBN 0-511-03352-4 eBook (Adobe Reader) ISBN 0-521-66157-9 hardback Contents List of maps Acknowledgments List of abbreviations Introduction page vi vii viii 1 Coming to war land 12 The military utopia 54 The movement policy 89 The Kultur program 113 The mindscape of the East 151 Crisis 176 Freikorps madness 227 The triumph of Raum 247 Conclusion 278 Select bibliography Index 282 300 v Maps Eastern Europe before 1914 The German ‘‘Great Advance’’ of 1915 – Eastern Front The Ober Ost state – main administrative divisions The fullest extent of the German advance on the Eastern Front by 1918 Postwar Eastern Europe in the 1920s vi 13 18 60 207 250 Acknowledgments My thanks for help and assistance in this venture are owed to many individuals and institutions I am especially grateful to Thomas Childers of the University of Pennsylvania, the ideal advisor, Frank Trommler of the University of Pennsylvania, and Alfred Rieber of the Central European University, Budapest Thanks for suggestions and comments are due to Michael Geyer, Thomas Burman, and Jay Winter, editor of the series in which this book appears My grateful thanks also goes to Elizabeth Howard, editor at Cambridge University Press I gratefully acknowledge the support I was given in my studies and research by the Mellon Fellowships in the Humanities, the William Penn Fellowship of the University of Pennsylvania, the DAAD-German Academic Exchange Fellowship, and the Title VIII Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the archives of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University While researching, I was grateful for friendly receptions at the Bundesarchiv-Militaărarchiv in Freiburg, the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin, the German Foreign Ministry archive in Bonn, the Lithuanian State Historical Archive and the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences library manuscript section, both in Vilnius, the archives of the Hoover Institution in Stanford, and kind librarians at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Freiburg, and the University of Tennessee For the production of maps for this book, I thank University of Tennessee’s SARIF EPPE fund for its award, and Wendi Lee Arms for her skilled cartography Finally, my thanks go to my parents, to whom this book is dedicated, for their unfailing encouragement and support, and to my grandfather, who awakened my fascination for the past vii Abbreviations Archival sources BA BAMA Bundesarchiv, Koblenz, Germany Bundesarchiv-Militaărarchiv, Freiburg-in-Breisgau, Germany GSTA PK Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin, Germany LCVIA Lietuvos Centrinis Valstybinis Istorijos Archyvas, Vilnius, Lithuania LMARS Lietuvos Mokslu˛ Akademijos Rankras˘c˘iu˛ Skyrius, Vilnius, Lithuania Publications BUV ZXA KB viii Befehls- und Verordnungsblatt des Oberbefehlshabers Ost BAMA PHD 8/20 Zeitung der 10 Armee University of Pennsylvania Library; Special Collections Korrespondenz B BAMA PHD 8/23