1944/1945: Kriegsenden in Ostmitteleuropa

Aufzeichnungen einer Vortragsreihe des DHI Warschau in Kooperation mit dem Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Danzig

Vor rund 80 Jahren endete der Zweite Weltkrieg. Aus diesem Anlass veranstaltet das DHI Warschau in Kooperation mit dem Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Danzig eine Reihe öffentlicher Vorträge. Die internationalen Gäste präsentieren ihre Forschung sowohl in Warschau als auch in Danzig. Sie widmen sich dabei nicht nur den historischen Ereignissen, sondern auch der Frage, wie die schmerzhaften Erfahrungen während des Krieges bis heute die Gesellschaft prägen.

Bastiaan Willems: Life and death in East Prussia, 1944-1945

East Prussia was the first German province the Red Army reached, and the first where fighting took place. It saw battle from August 1944 until May 1945 – nine months, longer than any other German province. The dominant narrative for this era is that of the Germans’ flight and expulsion, but these months can teach us much more. Taking a more holistic approach to violence, this talk will discuss Nazi crimes perpetrated against foreign labourers and Jews, Red Army violence against civilians, violence of the German military perpetrated against its own population, and the post-war hardships faced by the remaining German population, showing how these related to each other.

Benjamin Lahusen: The Administration of Normality. German Law and German Society, 1943-1948

Scarcely disturbed by the bombing, capitulation and Allied occupation, court proceedings before and after 1945 simply continued, with the same players, according to the same rules. The German justice system between 1943 and 1948 shows the uncanny picture of a society that kept the big break as small as possible.

Elizabeth Harvey: Domesticating conquest: German womenand the Nazi empire from expansion to defeat

Studies of Nazi occupation in eastern Europe have identified both a colonialist and a gendered dimension to the German project to subjugate and exploit the occupied territories of the ‘East’. Making ‘German homes’, a task assigned above all to German women, indicated the will to stay and settle the conquered lands. This lecture will explore this drive to seize the homes and property of occupied populations in order to create domestic spaces and homely environments for the conquerors, and the consequences for those subjected to expulsion and displacement. Drawing on private letters and diaries from the time, the lecture will go on to consider examples of how German women involved in the ‘colonizing project’ in Nazi-occupied Poland and the occupied Soviet territories – whether as housewives, nurses, teachers or Nazi functionaries – registered or reflected at the time on the crimes committed against the non-Jewish and Jewish populations and how they reacted to the defeat and collapse of the Nazi ‘New Order’ in eastern Europe.

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Weitere Aufzeichnungen finden Sie auf dem YouTube-Kanal des DHI Warschau: https://www.youtube.com/@dhiwarschau

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