On the Brink of Bacteriological War

2018 ◽  
pp. 137-174
Author(s):  
Anthony Rimmington
Keyword(s):  
Late Summer ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Biological Agents ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
Second World

During the 1930s, a series of reports generated by both German and Soviet intelligence fueled increasing alarm with regard to the perceived BW capabilities allegedly being developed by their potential opponents. After the onset of the Second World War, if either side was going to break the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of gas and bacteriological warfare, to which they had both agreed to abide, then 1942 was the most likely year. However, a number of prominent scholars have strongly disputed Alibek’s account of the deliberate aerosol dissemination of tularemia by the Red Army at Stalingrad in the late summer of 1942. The occasional use by Soviet-supported partisans of biological agents against the German occupation forces is better documented but there is no evidence that these attacks formed part of a wider, centrally coordinated, campaign of biological sabotage by the Soviet authorities.

ABCs of the Revolution

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 278-291
Author(s):  
Egor A. Yesyunin
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Special Significance ◽  
Development History ◽  
The People ◽  
Red Army ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Revolution

The article is devoted to the satirical agitation ABCs that appeared during the Civil War, which have never previously been identified by researchers as a separate type of agitation art. The ABCs, which used to have the narrow purpose of teaching children to read and write before, became a form of agitation art in the hands of artists and writers. This was facilitated by the fact that ABCs, in contrast to primers, are less loaded with educational material and, accordingly, they have more space for illustrations. The article presents the development history of the agitation ABCs, focusing in detail on four of them: V.V. Mayakovsky’s “Soviet ABC”, D.S. Moor’s “Red Army Soldier’s ABC”, A.I. Strakhov’s “ABC of the Revolution”, and M.M. Cheremnykh’s “Anti-Religious ABC”. There is also briefly considered “Our ABC”: the “TASS Posters” created by various artists during the Second World War. The article highlights the special significance of V.V. Mayakovsky’s first agitation ABC, which later became a reference point for many artists. The authors of the first satirical ABCs of the Civil War period consciously used the traditional form of popular prints, as well as ditties and sayings, in order to create images close to the people. The article focuses on the iconographic connections between the ABCs and posters in the works of D.S. Moor and M.M. Cheremnykh, who transferred their solutions from the posters to the ABCs.

Le rôle de l’armée juive dans la libération de Juifs en France 1942 - 1945

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 00007
Author(s):  
B Dewi Puspitaningrum ◽  
Airin Miranda
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
World War ◽  
French Army ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Status ◽  
Jews In France ◽  
State Of Israel ◽  
Second World

<p class="Keyword">Nazi Germany used Endlösung to persecute Jews during the Second World War, leading them to the Holocaust, known as “death”. During the German occupation in France, the status of the Jews was applied. Polonski reacted to the situation by establishing a Zionist resistance, Jewish Army, in January 1942. Their first visions were to create a state of Israel and save the Jews as much as they could. Although the members of the group are not numerous, they represented Israel and played an important role in the rescue of the Jews in France, also in Europe. Using descriptive methods and three aspects of historical research, this article shows that the Jewish Army has played an important role in safeguarding Jewish children, smuggling smugglers, physical education and the safeguarding of Jews in other countries. In order to realize their visions, collaborations with other Jewish resistances and the French army itself were often created. With the feeling of belonging to France, they finally extended their vision to the liberation of France in 1945 by joining the French Forces of the Interior and allied troops.</p>

scholarly journals Axis Internationalism

2019 ◽  
pp. 20-56
Author(s):  
David Brydan
Keyword(s):  
International Cooperation ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Nazi Germany ◽  
New Order ◽  
World War ◽  
Axis Axis ◽  
Scientific Networks ◽  
Formed Part ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores the relationship between Spain and the Axis powers during the Second World War. Spanish experts were involved in intensive exchange with Nazi Germany during the war. This formed part of a wider pattern of cooperation between Axis, Axis-aligned, and neutral states under the auspices of the Nazi ‘New Order’. This chapter argues that the scientific networks, conferences, and organizations promoted by Nazi Germany represented a form of ‘Axis internationalism’, which appropriated the language and practices of pre-war internationalism to promote the idea of collaborative continental order under Nazi leadership. Spanish experts, like many of their European counterparts, were willing to embrace Axis internationalism as a new, and in many ways improved, form of international cooperation. Their work highlights how internationalist structures and ideas, particularly within the ‘technical’ and humanitarian fields of health and medicine, could be appropriated by political projects from across the ideological spectrum.

scholarly journals Dokia Humenna’s Depiction of the Second World War and the OUN in Khreshchatyi iar: How Readers Responded

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Myroslav Shkandrij
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Reader Response ◽  
Ukrainian Academy ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Emigre Literature ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Way

<p class="EW-abstract"><strong>Abstract:</strong> When Dokia Humenna’s novel depicting the Second World War, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em> (Khreshchatyk Ravine), was published in New York in 1956, it created a controversy. Readers were particularly interested in the way activists of the OUN were portrayed. This article analyzes readers’ comments and Humenna’s responses, which are today stored in the archives of the Ukrainian Academy of Science in New York. The novel is based on a diary Humenna kept during the German occupation of Kyiv in the years 1941-1943.</p><strong>Keywords: </strong>Dokia Humenna, <em>Khreshchatyi iar</em>, Second World War, OUN, Émigré Literature, Reader Response

scholarly journals The Investigation and the Trial of Lt. Col. Bolesław Michał Nieczuja-Ostrowski

Sowiniec ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 26 (47) ◽  
pp. 35-63
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Wątor
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Public Security ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Second World

This is another article devoted to Lt. Col. Bolesław Michał Nieczuja-Ostrowski “Bolko”, “Tysiąc” (1907-2008) who during the Second World War was an officer of the Polish Army, then of the underground Home Army (Armia Krajowa – AK), and since 1944 the commander of the great unit of the AK: the 106th Infantry Division. The article is associated with the investigations conducted against this man and with a trial as a result of which he was sentenced to death. The author used mainly the materials prepared by the functionaries of the Office of Public Security during the inquiry and the trial that were conducted. The information was compared and extended by the data contained in the publications of Lt. Col. Nieczuja-Ostrowski that appeared after 1989.Ostrowski was accused of participation in “illegal organisations” after 1945, and previously he was accused of the contacts that were maintained by the soldiers of the division that he commanded (the division operated on the areas of the AK “Maria” Regional Inspectorate) with the representatives of the German occupation authorities, as well as the supposed killings of Soviet soldiers, people of Jewish ethnicity and communist activists. In the years 1946-1956 he was arrested a number of times, he was repeatedly interrogated, imprisoned and as a result of this he was sentenced to death two times. After the amnesty his sentence was reduced to 12 years of prison (he spent a total of more than seven years in prison).

God Save the USSR

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeff Eden
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
World War ◽  
Holy War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Red Army ◽  
Second World

God Save the USSR reviews religious life in the Soviet Union during the Second World War and shows how, as the Soviet Red Army was locked in brutal combat against the Nazis, Stalin ended the state’s violent, decades-long persecution of religion. In a stunning reversal, priests, imams, rabbis, and other religious elites—many of them newly released from the Gulag—were tasked with rallying Soviet citizens to a “Holy War” against Hitler. The book depicts the delight of some citizens, and the horror of others, as Stalin’s reversal encouraged a widespread perception that his “war on religion” was over. A revolution in Soviet religious life ensued: soldiers prayed on the battlefield; entire villages celebrated once-banned holidays; and state-backed religious leaders used their new positions to not only consolidate power over their communities but also petition for further religious freedoms. As a window on this wartime “religious revolution,” this book focuses on the Soviet Union’s Muslims, using sources in several languages (including Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Uzbek, Persian, and Kumyk). Drawing evidence from eyewitness accounts, interviews, soldiers’ letters, frontline poetry, agents’ reports, petitions, and the words of Soviet Muslim leaders, the book argues that the religious revolution was fomented simultaneously by the state and by religious Soviet citizens: the state gave an inch, and many citizens took a mile, as atheist Soviet agents looked on in exasperation at the resurgence of unconcealed devotional life.

Parleying with the Devil

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković ◽  
Klaus Schmider
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
Two Sides ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Second World

The Second World War in Yugoslavia is notorious for the brutal struggle between the armed forces of the Third Reich and the communist-led Partisans. Less known is the fact that the two sides negotiated prisoner exchanges virtually since the beginning of the war. Under extraordinary circumstances, these early contacts evolved into a formal exchange agreement, centered on the creation of a neutral zone—quite possibly the only such area in occupied Europe—where prisoners were regularly exchanged until late April 1945, saving thousands of lives. The leadership of both sides used the contacts for secret political talks, for which they were nearly branded as traitors by their superiors in Berlin and Moscow. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of prisoner exchanges and the accompanying contacts between the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans. Specifically, the book will argue that prisoner exchange had a decisive influence on the POW policies of both sides and helped reduce the levels of violence for which this theater of war became infamous. It will also show that the contacts, contrary to some claims, did not lead to collusion between these two parties against either other Yugoslav factions or the Western Allies.

The Neutral Zone at Pisarovina

2020 ◽  
pp. 196-306
Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Neutral Zone ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Village ◽  
Second World

What transpired in Pisarovina, a small village located on the outskirts of Zagreb, is unique not only to Yugoslavia, but to the Second World War in general. Pisarovina was the location officially agreed by both the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans to function as the center of the prisoner exchange cartel at the end of 1943. In order to facilitate this, the village and its immediate surroundings were declared a neutral zone, quite possibly the only such place in war-torn Europe. The system saved hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners who faced an uncertain fate. Frequent contacts between the envoys provided both the Germans and the Partisans with a "back-channel" for talks on political issues and trade, as well as the opportunity to spy on each other.

Stereotypes of Polish–Jewish Relations after the War: The Special Commission of the Central Committee of Polish Jews

2000 ◽  
pp. 194-205
Author(s):  
Jan Gross
Keyword(s):  
Central Committee ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Special Commission ◽  
Jewish Experience ◽  
Polish Jews ◽  
Post War ◽  
Scientific Socialism ◽  
Second World

This chapter describes stereotypes of Polish–Jewish relations after the Second World War. Even though most Polish Jews were killed during the German occupation, the stereotype of Judaeo-communism survived the war. If anything, it was reinforced by a widespread consensus that Jews assisted the Soviets in the subjugation of the Polish Kresy in 1939–41. The establishment of the Lublin government in the aftermath of the war served to perpetuate this stereotype still further. Popular sentiment attributed a nefarious role to the Jews and portrayed them as particularly zealous collaborators with the security police serving the new regime. Was it indeed the case that the dominant post-war Jewish experience in Poland was imposing scientific socialism on reluctant fellow citizens and persecuting ethnic Poles? The chapter argues that the dominant Jewish experience in Poland after the Second World War was fear. It also considers the Special Commission (Komisja Specjalna) established by the Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce (Central Committee of Jews in Poland: CKŻP).

From Heroes to Villains

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elke Weesjes
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Second World War ◽  
War Trauma ◽  
World War ◽  
History And Memory ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

Informed by oral history and memory studies, this chapter draws on a series of interviews with 38 British and Dutch cradle communists and is dedicated to the impact of the Second World War and its aftermath, and the events of 1956 – the year of Khrushchev’s secret speech and the Soviet invasion of Hungary – on the Dutch and British communist movements. This chapter particularly examines how cradle communists in the Netherlands and Britain experienced the contrast between the communist movement’s zenith during the Second World War and its nadir in 1956. Within this context, it discusses the Dutch communist resistance during the German occupation, parental war trauma and transgenerational communication, and the impact of anti-communist measures in Britain and the Netherlands on participants’ lives.

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