Search

World War II led to extensive rationing, both of agricultural production and individual consumption, which significantly shaped the everyday life of the Czech population in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia from 1939 to 1945. This paper shows how new digital methods can be used to contribute to this history of National Socialism, in particular, in the areas of rule, administration, and everyday life in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Different types of sources from the local administration of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia are presented and analyzed using a specially developed software. This provides a structured insight into the everyday life of the local population. The software makes it possible to systematically and statistically evaluate previously unstructured source material. It can be shown that district offices staffed by Czech officials and institutions previously unknown to research, such as the Supreme Price Authority and the Bohemian- Moravian Market Association, were central to the enforcement of the wartime economy in the protectorate. The everyday contact of the local population with the administration was mostly within the framework of a “normative state” rather than a “prerogative state.” In contrast to traditional accounts, this analysis shows that the security organs, such as the Czech or German police and gendarmerie, or Gestapo were only involved to a minor and rather incidental extent. Furthermore, the paper shows that the local population possessed a wide range of agency, which it was able to use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the issue of loyalty in the Southeast European region of Bessarabia (today Republic of Moldova), which during World War II switched its political status from Romania to the USSR and back several times (1940, 1941, and 1944). This bottom-up analysis, drawing on an anextensive documentary basis from different archives, provides a new bottom-up perspective, which focuses on local public institutions and their employees. It reveals that, despite the fact that both regimes acknowledged the role of the bearers of vernacular knowledge about the society and entrusted them with daily administrative issues, the authorities constantly treated local public employees with mistrust and suspected them of “betrayal”. Whereas questioning their loyalty with regard to their activity during the previous regime, no standard criteria of loyalty assessment were applied; it was fragile and had a situational character. When one regime left and another came, the great majority of high-ranking public officials, such as heads of districts and mayors (heads of local Soviets, in the case of the Soviet Union), left Bessarabia together with the army and administration, in order to avoid repression and annihilation. In contrast, the low-rank employees (secretaries, accountants, as well as priests and teachers) stayed in the region, their decision to remain being guided by personal and family interests rather than by political or other convictions. The daily praxis of loyalty was based on a pragmatic adjustment to the new political requirements, so that personal and career benefits were ensured; many employees developed different survival strategies, such as inventing new autobiographies. The article’s findings challenge the alleged claims of national historiography concerning the “rupture” between two mutually exclusive regimes, showing that there was “continuity” at the local level. The people, regardless of their origin and duty, made efforts to survive the war and secure their family’s well-being. By applying this perspective, an entangled version of the wartime history of the contested Bessarabian (Moldovan) borderland that encompasses both the Romanian and the Soviet regimes, challenges the dominant version of the wartime history of the region, written through the “occupation vs liberation” lens.

Este artículo analiza Radio Nacional de España en la inmediata posguerra. Con una gran carestía material y humana, y una legislación en desarrollo, el franquismo se vio obligado a redefinir una radio que se había planteado para la Guerra Civil y adaptarla para una nueva etapa. Ello obligó a actuar sobre dos ejes: por un lado, el desarrollo de una administración centralizada que permitiera gestionar los escasos y dispersos recursos de la forma más eficiente posible, en lo que tuvo un papel muy destacado REDERA. Por otro, la planificación y construcción de una infraestructura, particularmente a través del complejo de Arganda, que permitiera una apropiada cobertura nacional e internacional.

Nothing more usual than to find Spanish refugees of 1939 in the French Resistance as they continued their fight against fascism. Therefore, hundreds of Spaniards where caught in the nets of the Vichy Government and the Gestapo. They are imprisoned in the French jails (Toulouse, Montluc, Fresnes, Compiègne, etc.) alongside the French Resistant women. Both will be piled up in wagons to the camps of the Third Reich. Many ended at the women’s camp in Ravensbrück. Usually, the Spaniards were labelled “F”, “French”, because they were arrested in France. This “F” was part of the “red triangle” of the “political prisoners”. Some were even classified NN (Nacht und Nebel), i.e. called to disappear without a trace. As they were recognized by nobody (neither the French nor the Spaniards), this means: no mail, no parcels. They held on for life thanks to the links they forged randomly across blocks, satellite camps, languages, affinities... However, many died. For some of them, the release arrived in April 1944, thanks to “neutral” countries initiatives: in fact, a few Spanish women were able to slip into the Red Cross convoys transiting through Switzerland, which were initially reserved for French women. Others returned by Sweden. Others, finally, faced the apocalyptic evacuation of the camps of 1945 and the “marches of death”. We propose to study “the return to life” helps through some cases – obviously return to France since there could be no possible repatriation for these Spanish anti-fascist survivors, as the victory of the Allies did not affect General Franco’s power. After returning to France, this help continued for two or three years, in particular thanks to convalescent stays in Switzerland, Sweden and somewhere else, and thanks to one-off material contributions from the Swiss Grant (“Don suisse”) or from various organizations.

The paper is a survey of research on music in territories of occupied Poland conducted by the author in recent years, as well as a review of selected existing literature on this topic. A case study illustrates a principal thesis of this essay according to which music was used by the German Nazis in the General Government as a key elements of propaganda and in appropriation of conquered territories as both physical and symbolic spaces.

La Pologne devient un sujet majeur de l’action de l’URSS pendant toute la durée de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Rayée de la carte en septembre 1939 en vertu du pacte germano-soviétique, elle est restaurée comme État sous la protection de l’Armée rouge en 1944. Trois films soviétiques présentent ces événements du point de vue supposé de citoyens polonais. Vent d’Est (Veter s Vostoka) d’Abram Room en 1940 et Le Rêve (Mečta) de Mikhaïl Romm en 1941 mettent en contexte et justifient l’annexion de l’Est de la Pologne par l’Union soviétique en 1939. En 1945, Zigmund Kolosovski de Zigysmund Navrotski est au contraire une ode à l’esprit d’indépendance des Polonais luttant héroïquement contre les nazis. On s’interrogera sur les représentations ainsi véhiculées sur la Pologne à l’usage des Soviétiques. Au-delà de la fonction propagandiste évidente de ces films, ces représentations témoignent d’une circulation culturelle, fût-elle contrainte, entre la Pologne et le monde soviétique. Elles révèlent également certaines articulations et fractures du discours soviétique, entre nationalisme et communisme. Le parcours de certains membres de l’équipe des trois films dévoile un autre aspect des transferts culturels. Citoyens soviétiques ayant des origines polonaises et / ou juives, aussi bien que Polonais ou Ukrainiens soviétisés en 1939, ils ont une expérience transculturelle qui fait écho aux propos des films. Parmi eux, se dégage la figure de Wanda Wasileska, écrivaine et scénariste polonaise qui fit le choix de l’URSS et incarna les deux identités dans la guerre.

This study deals with celebrations of Labour Day in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. Despite the fact that public celebrations of 1 May were forbidden in the Protectorate, it remained a public holiday and attracted a significant media coverage. This study examines the aspects of regulations and laws and their implementation in practice and analyses the way in which Labour Day was re-defined during the Protectorate era, focusing on ways of orchestration of the festive day, including continuity with the preceding models and patterns.

The article offers information on how curators and archivists of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace in Stanford, California have kept alive the interest of former U.S. President Herbert Hoover in collecting papers. The collection is estimated to contain over 100,000 posters, although the fragility of the aging paper makes the collection's systematic count as a whole impossible. The Hoover Institution received 4,000 pounds of posters from the New York Public Library in 1974.

Este artículo pretende ofrecer un panorama de las dificultades con las que se enfrenta la población pontevedresa como consecuencia de la política económica practicada en los años de la inmediata posguerra, y pone de manifiesto las prioridades y discriminaciones oficiales en el reparto de los abastecimientos, así como la miseria generada, para hacer frente a la cual resulta insuficiente la organización falangista Auxilio Social, en aguda crisis en este ámbito geográfico, disponiendo entonces las autoridades sucedáneos auxilios que tienen por objeto mejorar la imagen del Partido, del régimen y aún del propio Franco.This artlcle tries to offer a view of the troubles that the populatlon of Pontevedra faced up as a consequence of the economic politics carried out during the years of the postwar. It also reveáis the officlal priorities and dlscrlmlnatlons In the distributlon of the provisions, as well as the poverty generated, to face which the work of the Falangist organlzation Welfare Service was not enough due to the acute crisis in which the organlzation was involved in this part of the country, offering then the authorities substitute social Services thatjust have the alm of Improvlng the image of the Party, the régime and even of Franco himself.