Borderlands
World War II in Soviet
http://www.history.neu.edu/fac/burds/hst1805.htm
HST1805
".
. . the overwhelming brunt of the Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1944,
as of the devastating Soviet reoccupation, was borne not by Russia but by the
Baltic States, by Belarus, by Poland, and above all by Ukraine."
--
Instructor
Professor Jeffrey Burds
Office: 269 Holmes Hall
Telephone: (617) 373-2079
JBURDS@AYA.YALE.EDU
Course Description
This advanced undergraduate seminar is restricted to a maximum of 20
History majors. This limited course enrolment is designed to enhance the
mentoring component in the course, and to facilitate teacher-student contact
throughout the quarter.
This seminar is devoted to the study of
Each student will be expected to write and substantially revise at least once a 10-12 page study on a theme to be agreed upon with the instructor. I expect all papers to represent your best work: all papers should conform to the History Style Guide, and all written work should be checked closely for spelling and grammatical errors. This paper will consist either of a survey of historiography on a particular theme, or a research paper on some aspect of the Second World War in Eastern Europe -- origins, conflict, legacy. Themes are open, though all paper topics must be approved by the instructor. A list of sample themes and a bibliography of potential readings is available below.
Final grades will be calculated with attention to the following formula:
• Active and considered class participation is encouraged: 30 percent
• Your presentation and short summary paper should be informative, concise, and
to the point: 10 percent
• Your semester paper should be well-written, well-argued, and informative: 35 percent
• The average of your best quiz scores: 10 percent
• Attendance of the two evening films: 5 percent
• Demonstration
of viewing of all ten hours of the documentary film:
[NOTE: Both sets of films are also available on reserve]
Presentation themes will be set during the first two weeks of classes. Generally, these will be devoted to materials related to the assigned reading for a given week. Presentation and short-paper themes will normally overlap directly with themes for the longer papers.
Quizzes
To encourage students to keep up with the reading, I
will offer at least five "surprise quizzes" during the quarter,
generally corresponding with the major readings in the course. Students are
obligated to take all five quizzes. The quiz grade--worth ten percent of the
final grade (i.e., the equivalent of one letter grade)--will be based on the
average of your best three scores. Any student who fails to pass any quiz (or
who is absent on the day of a quiz) will be required to write a three-to-five
page take-home paper on the quiz question, due at the beginning of the next
class. No student who does not have a passing grade on all quizzes (or makeup
papers) will pass this course. The point? Keep
up with the reading in this course.
Middler-Year Writing Requirement
Any History Major in HST1805 may use the course to fulfill the University's Middler Year Writing Requirement. Such students must produce a 20-page paper (instead of the 10-12 page version), and must revise that paper at least twice. In addition, they should register for HST1860 Historical Writing. See the MYWR Manual for Historical Writing for more information.
Documentary Film Viewing
Except for January 7 and 14, Monday classes will be devoted to screening all ten hours of the documentary film series: Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow. This film series is available on reserve in the Media Library, on the second floor of Snell Library. All students are expected to have viewed all ten hours of the documentary film by March 10.
Bibliography An extensive list of useful readings and materials
for choosing paper themes.
Check out summaries
of the latest research in Soviet
Military Studies [Frank Cass Publishing]
Check out the Journal of Slavic
Military Studies [David M. Glantz, ed.]
Check out the U.S. Army Homepage, with extensive on-line
monographs concnering all aspects of the Soviet
military, World War II, Soviet partisans, etc.
Connect to the National Archives
Connect to the
British Public Record Office [Press
for Catalogue
Search]
Get insight from The
Waffen-SS Order of
Battle provides
indispensable reference data on SS units, both German and non-German
SPASI!
A Russian woman and child under attack by Nazi bayonets: "Save us!"
This was one of the most memorable images of the Soviet home front in World War
II
Week 1 Introduction
/Contexts
Monday, January 6. Introduction. Discussion. "The Problem of Historical Memory"
Please read two short selections BEFORE the first class meeting:
Jeffrey Burds, "Ethnicity,
Memory, and Violence:
Reflections on Special Problems in Soviet and East European Archives,"
forthcoming in a special issue of Archivum, "Archival
Politics in Dissolving States," edited by William Rosenberg, Francis Blouin, and Nancy Bartlett, 2002.
Piotr Wrobel,
"Double
Memory: Poles and Jews After the Holocaust,"
East European Politics and Societies Volume 11, Number 3 (Fall 1997),
560-574.
Handout: Bibliographies
Tuesday, January 7. Lecture: Antecedents: The International Geopolitical Context in the 1930s
Thursday, January 9. Lecture:
August 1939 to June 1941; The Soviet Occupation of
Documents
The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion
Nazi-Soviet Relations, 1931-1941 [Documents of the Avalon Project]
Stalin's Speech Before the Politburo [19 August 1939]
Photo & Text
of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [23 August 1939]
Secret Protocols
of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact [23 August 1939]
Evening Film,
FILM: Come & See (Elem Klimov, USSR, 1985)
Described as "142 minutes of raw emotion", this film won top prizes
at the
Week 2 Operation Barbarossa and the German Invasion of Soviet
Monday, January 13. Soviet Espionage & the Barbarossa Calamity
MAP: Soviet Military Intelligence Analysis of the Concentration of German Forces on the Eve of War
MAP: Disposition of Soviet & German Forces on the Soviet western borders on the eve of invasion
Documents: Soviet Espionage Communiqués On the Eve of Barbarossa
Discussion: READ: Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 3-113.
Recommended
Gabriel Gorodetsky, Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German
Invasion of
Bruce W. Menning, ed. At the Threshold of War: The Soviet High Command
in 1941 in Russian Studies in History: A Journal of Translations
Volume 36, Number 3 (Winter 1997-98), pp. 2-93.
Cynthia Roberts, "Planning for
War: the Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941," Europe-Asia
Studies Volume 47, Number 8 (December 1995) pp. 1293-1326.
Choose paper/presentation themes. Presentations
will begin in Week 4.
Tuesday, January 14. Lecture: Operation Barbarossa, Learning to Hate: The Soviet Home Front
Handout: Map1, Operation Barbarossa
Document: Hitler's Commissar Order, dated
Molotov's Note on German Atrocities in Occupied
Ilya Ehrenberg, "The Justification of Hatred" (Summer 1942)
Follow the progress of the invasion through a
German war album:
Otto Willnauer 3rd
Company, 7th PanzerJaeger Battalion
[toward
Thursday, January 16. Discussion: The
READ: Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 114-219.
Data on Soviet/German/British/US Wartime Production
Recommended
K. I. Bukov, "The Anxious
October of '41", Russian
Studies in History Volume
31, No. 4 (Spring 1993): 30-48.
Mark Harrison, Accounting
for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence
Burden, 1940-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
Clement Leibovitz, Alvin Finkel,
Christopher Hitchens, In Our Time: The
Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998).
Albert Resis, "The Fall of Litvinov: Harbinger of the German-Soviet
Non-Aggression Pact," Europe-Asia Studies Volume 52, Number
(January 2000): 33-56.
Geoffrey Roberts, "The Soviet Decision for a Pact with Nazi Germany," Soviet Studies Volume 44, Number 1 (1992): 57-80.
War
Albums: Two German Soldiers on the Eastern Front
Photographs from
the Eastern Front
World War
II in Ukraine [A Photo Essay]
WEB Genocide Documentation
Centre: Internet Resources on Genocide & Mass Killings [World War II]
WEB Guide: SS Atrocities in Wartime
Soviet
Women & Nazi Violence in World War II: Women as Hero-Victims
[POWERPOINT SLIDE PRESENTATION by Jeffrey Burds]
These photographs are high-quality scans, and VERY slow unless you
are using a highspeed internet connection. I will
work on a no-frills version over the weekend.
Week 3 After
Monday, January 20. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The university is closed.
Tuesday, January 21. Discussion:
Film: The World at War:
READ: Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 220-302.
Thursday, January 23. Discussion: After
READ: Alan Clark, Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict, 1941-1945, pp. 303-465.
Handouts: Map3 of
the
Handout: Stalin's Toast to Victory (May 24, l945)
Photo credit: Raising the Hammer and
Sickle over the Reichstag,
Recommended
Michael Cherniavsky, "Corporal Hitler, General Winter and the Russian Peasant," The Yale Review Volume LI, Number 4 (Summer 1962), pp. 547-558.
William C. Fletcher, "The
Soviet Bible Belt: World War II's
Effects on Religion," in Susan J. Linz,
editor. The Impact of World War II on the
Leonidas E. Hill, "The Published Political Memoirs of Leading Nazis, 1933-45," in George Egerton, ed. Political Memoir: Essays on the Politics of Memory (London: Frank Cass, 1994), pp. 225-241.
Daniel Peris : "'God is Now On Our Side': The Religious Revival on
Week 4 Occupation Policies
Monday, January 27. Begin two hours each week of
documentary film:
Tuesday, January 28. Discussion: Soviet Occupation Policies west of the Curzon Line
DOCUMENT: Signals from Moscow
Of Related Interest
Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad: The
Soviet Conquest of
Terry Martin,
"The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing," The Journal of Modern
History Volume 70, Number 4 (December 1998): 813-861.
Benjamin B.
Fischer, "The Katyn Controversy: Stalin's Killing Field," Studies
in Intelligence (Winter 1999-2000) [CIA's Declassified Journal]
Victor Zaslavsky, "The Katyn
Massacre: 'Class Cleansing' as Totalitarian Praxis," Telos
Issue 114 (Winter 1999) 67-107.
DOCUMENT
Memorandum
on NKVD letterhead from L. Beria to "Comrade
Stalin" proposing to execute captured Polish officers, soldiers, and other
prisoners by shooting. Stalin's handwritten signature appears
on top, followed by signatures of Politburo members K. Voroshilov,
V. Molotov, and A. Mikoyan. Signatures in left
margin are M. Kalinin and L. Kaganovich,
both favoring execution
Thursday, January 30. Discussion: Ostpolitik: The German Occupation Zone
READ: Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the
Jewish Community in
And the review: "Polish 'Neighbors' and German Invaders: Contextualizing Anti-Jewish Violence in the Bialystok District during the Opening Weeks of Operation Barbarossa," Forthcoming in Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Volume 16 (2003), by Alexander B. Rossino
OPTIONAL
HISTORICAL
CONTROVERSY: The Reaction to "Neighbors" in
Yedwabne: [Jewish Shtetl] History
& Memorial Book
Voices
on the Jedwabne Tragedy
Anna Bikont, "Scene
fron Jedwabne,"
Yad Vashem
Studies (2002) A Polish Jew's discussion of the controversy
Of Related Interest on the Problem of Wartime
Collaboration
Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia,
1941-1945: A Study of Occupation Policies,
pp. 84-167, 305-319, 376-408. [View on-line in PDF format]
Martin Dean, Collaboration in
the Holocaust: Crimes of the Local Police in
Collaboration in
the Holocaust in its entirety.
John Erickson, "Nazi Posters in Wartime Russia," History Today, Sep94, Vol. 44 Issue 9, pp. 14-19.
Frank
Gordon, Latvians and
Jews Between Germany and Russia Translated
by Vaira Puķīte
and Jānis Straubergs
(Stockholm: Memento, 1990)
Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society Under
German Occupation: The Generalgouvernement, 1939-1944
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
Zygmunt Klukowski,
Diary from the Years of Occupation,
1939-44 (University of Illinois Press, 1993).
Excerpts from Klukowski's
diary
Wolodomyr Kosyk,
The Third Reich and Ukraine
(New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 1993), pp. 185-315. Documents on pp. 546-548,
548-549, 550, 554 [View on-line in PDF format]
Paula Kovalevskis,
Oskars Noritis and Mikelis Goppers, eds., Latvia:
Year of Horror [English translation of a German-prepared collection of photos and documents covering the communist
rule in
Richard Rhodes, Masters
of Death: The SS-Einsatzgruppen and the Invention of
the Holocaust (
Oleg Zarubinsky, "Collaboration of the Population
in Occupied
Nuremburg War Crimes
Tribunal Proceedings
[Complete series on line]
National Archives Collection of
World War II War Crimes Records (RG238)
Reading/Research
on World War II Poland
Week 6 Holocaust &
Genocide: The Politics of Ethnic Cleansing
Tuesday, February 4. Lecture: The Holocaust in Central & Eastern Europe
READ: Christopher
Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in
Recommended
Follow the German
Army's brutality in the East at War of Annihilation:
War Crimes of the Wehrmacht, 1941-1944
Judith Levin and
Daniel Uziel, Ordinary
Men, Extraordinary Photos, Yad Vashem Studies, 2002. Studies German soldiers' photo
albums as a source about the mentalité of
perpetrators of atrocities
Thursday, February 6. Discussion:
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Battalion 101 and the Final
Solution in
Before
Class, please review the Wannsee
Protocol Museum Site, birthplace of the Final Solution on
HANDOUT: Perpetrators,
Victims, Bystanders
HANDOUT: Beyond Redemption? Reflections on the Holocaust
HANDOUT: Eyewitness
Account of Einsatzgruppen Executions
Evening Film,
FILM: Angry
Harvest (Agnieszka Holland, Germany, 1986)
Acclaimed Polish film director Agnieszka Holland's
Academy-Award nominated film is a powerful emotional drama set during the
German occupation of southeastern
Visit the
Visit the Gallery of Holocaust Images prepared for an on-line Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust.
Visit an on-line Photographic Exhibition of the Holocaust.
Recommended
Yitzak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski and Shmuel Spector, editors. The Einsatzgruppen Reports (New York: Holocaust Library. 1989). [Includes additional documents]
Catherine A.
Bernard, "tell
him that I . . . . Women Writing the Holocaust,"
Richard
Breitman, "Himmler's Police Auxiliaries in the Occupied Soviet
Territories,"
The
Christine Damski/Sara Rozen
Story -- Jewish Rescue in
Follow more stories
in Ellen Land-Webber, To Save a Life:
Stories of Holocaust Rescue (
Daniel Goldgahen, Hitler's
Willing Executioners, and review by Raul Hilberg,
"The Goldhagen Phenomenon"
Library of Holocaust Survivor
Memoirs
A Virtual Tour of
Jewish Lodz (Poland)
Witnesses--On Line
Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors, Liberators & Other Documents
Documents
on the Holocaust -- Soviet Union
Week 7 Partisans &
Collaborators
Tuesday, February 11. Lecture: The Soviet Partisan Movement
Presentation: Propaganda on the Eastern Front
Thursday, February 13. Discussion:
READ: Colonel I. G. Starinov,
Over the Abyss: My Life in Soviet Special Operations (New York: Ivy
Books [Ballantine Books], 1995), pp. 161-366.
Presentation: The
Soviet Partisan Movement, and German Anti-Partisan Operations
Recommended
Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-1945: A
Study of Occupation Policies,
pp. 497-636. [View on-line in PDF format]
Truman Anderson, "Incident at Baranivka: German Reprisals and the Soviet Partisan
Movement in
Of Related Interest on the Partisan War
Perry Biddiscombe, "Unternehmen Zeppelin: The Deployment of SS Saboteurs and Spies in the Soviet Union, 1942-1945," Europe-Asia Studies Volume 52, Number 6 (2000): 1115-1142.
Leonid D. Grenkevich, Soviet Partisan Movements: A Critical Historiographical Analysis (London: Frank Cass, 1999).
Propaganda
Posters for the Eastern Front: An On-Line Exhibit
Rear Area Security in Russia: The Soviet Second Front Behind the German Front (Washington, DC: Department of the Army, 1951).
[From the German War Report Series based on
Major
Claude R. Sasso, Soviet
Night Operations in World War II (
Pavel Sudoplatov,
Special Tasks: The Memoirs of an Unwanted Witness -- A Soviet Spymaster (Boston:
Little, Brown, & Co., 1994-1995). Revised Edition.
All first drafts--at least 10-12 pages, typed, doubled spaced (conforming to the History Style Guide) -- are due in my office no later than 5:00 pm on Thursday, February 14. They will be returned and discussed with each of you individually in the week following.
Week 8 Volksdeutsche:
East European Reprisals Against Ethnic Germans
Tuesday, February 18. Lecture: The Roots of Ethnic
Nationalism in Soviet
Thursday, February 20. DISCUSSION:
READ: [HTML format] Waldemar
Lotnik, Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the
Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands (London: Serif, 1999), pp. 7-206.
[PDF format] Waldemar
Lotnik, Nine Lives: Ethnic Conflict in the
Polish-Ukrainian Borderlands (London: Serif, 1999), pp. 7-206.
Of Related Interest on postwar Gender Violence
Visit the WEBsite of Poland's Institute of National Remembrance, the Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes Against the Polish Nation
Jeffrey Burds, "Gender and
Policing in Soviet West Ukraine, 1944-1948, " in The Role of the
Political Police in the Soviet Union, 1918-1956, edited by Terry Martin and
Andreas Graziosi, in a special double issue on the
history of the Soviet political police, Cahiers du
Monde Russe et Soviétique
April-September 2001).
Lucille Eichengreen, From Ashes to Life: My Memories of the
Holocaust (Mercury House, 1994).
Marlene Epp, "The Memory of
Violence: Soviet and East European Mennonite Refugees and Rape in the
Second World War" Journal of Women's History, 9 (1), Spring 1997.
Norman Naimark, "Soviet
Soldiers, German Women and the Problem of Rape." The Russians in
Agate Nesaule, A Woman in Amber: Healing the Trauma of War and Exile (New York:
Penguin Books, 1995).
Alaine Polcz,
A Wartime Memoir:
Vieda Skultans,
The Testimony of Lives: Narrative and Memory
in Post-Soviet
Timothy Snyder, "'To
Resolve the Ukrainian Question Once and For All': The Ethnic Cleansing
of Ukrainians in
Press
to read a reprint of Jeffrey Burds' H-DIPLO review of
Snyder's article.
For More Information
Violence and Self-Identity: Diagnostic Criteria for
Evaluating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as identified by Judith Herman, M.D. Trauma
& Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992). Herman identifies trauma
as an overlooked epidemic.
Of Related Interest on Postwar Ethnic Violence
Zygmunt Klukowski,
Red Shadow: a physician's memoir of the
Soviet occupation of
J. Otto Pohl, Ethnic Cleansing in the
Week 9 WEEK FOR REVISIONS,
RESEARCH, WRITING
Tuesday, February 25. No class
Thursday, February 27. No class.
Week 10 Aftermath:
Postwar Soviet Policy in
Tuesday, March 4. For DISCUSSION. READ Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993).
Presentation: Postwar Retribution
Of Related Interest
Istvan Deak,
Jan Gross, and Tony Judt, eds.
The Politics of Retribution in
Erich Anton Helfert, Valley of the Shadow: After the Turmoil, My Heart Cries No More (Creative Arts Books, 1997). [Chronicles the fate of a Sudeten German family]
John Sack, An Eye for an Eye: The Untold Story of Jewish Revenge against Germans in 1945 (New York: Basic Books, 1993, 1995).
Bozena Szaynok, "The Jewish
Pogrom in Kielce, July 1946 -- New Evidence,"
Intermarium Volume I, Number 3,
Thursday, March 6. Final Thoughts: World War II and the Origins of the Cold War
HANDOUT: The Alperovitz Thesis
Very short selections from Gar Alperovitz,
Atomic Diplomacy:
New Documents: 'OPERATION
UNTHINKABLE': Churchill's Plan to Launch a Third World War Against Stalin [
Of Related Interest
The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the
Jeffrey Burds, Selections from
unpublished manuscript: 'A
"AGENTURA:
Soviet Informants' Networks & the Ukrainian Rebel Underground in
"Gender and Policing in Soviet West
Ukraine, 1944-1948," Cahiers du Monde Russe Volume 42, Numbers 2-4 (April-December 2001).
"The Early Cold War in Soviet
The Anti-Soviet Resistance in the
Juozas Daumantas,
Fighters for Freedom: Lithuanian
Partisans Versus the
Dorril, Stephen. MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service (2000).
Peter Grose, Operation
Rollback:
Mart Laar, War in the Woods:
Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining
the Kremlin:
Amir Weiner, "Nature,
Nurture, and Memory in a Socialist Utopia: Delineating the Soviet Socio-Ethnic
Body in the Age of Socialism," American Historical Review Volume
104, Number 4 (October 1999): 1114-1155.
Related Documents
Stalin's Analysis of Victory (February 9, 1946)
The Origins of Containment: George Kennan's "Long Telegram" (Moscow-to-Washington) (February 22, 1946)
"The Sinews
of Peace": Audio and Transcript of Churchill's Speech at
The Novikov Telegram: Soviet Ambassador in
Andrei Zhdanov's "Report on the International Situation" (September 1947)
NSC-68 -- The Foundations of American Cold War Policy
Compendium of Documents & Readings on the History of the Cold War
Of Related Interest
Cold War/International History Project WEBsite
Cold War Espionage on CNN.COM
Gar Alperovitz, The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (New York: Random House, 1996).
James Jay Carafano, "Mobilizing
Hiroshima-Nagasaki:
Fifty Years of Deceit and Self-Deception [An Exhibition at
Kenneth M. Jensen, ed. The
Origins of the Cold War: The Novikov, Kennan and Roberts "Long
Telegrams" of 1946. 1993 revised edition (US Inst of Peace, 1993).
Christopher
Simpson, Blowback:
America's Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988),
pp. 3-11, 138-175, 264-290.
The
Truman Presidential Papers. (University Publications of
A final version of your paper, plus comments
and earlier drafts, should be submitted to the instructor by