WJU Historian at Work: Part II

Dan Weimer's 2011 publication, Seeing Drugs: Modernization, Counterinsurgency and U.S. Narcotics Control in the Third World, 1969-1976, was followed in 2012 by Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide and Radicalization, co-edited by Wheeling Jesuit University's Assistant Professor Jeff Rutherford. The latter book was just released in paperback this month.

The three editors -- in addition to Rutherford, the Frankfurt, Germany-based independent historian Alex J. Kay and David Stahel, lecturer at the University New South Wales Canberra, Australia -- first conceived of the volume at the Society for Military History's 2007 conference both as a means to introduce current research trends in Germany to an English-language audience and as a means of providing an examination of the pivotal year of 1941.






The editors assembled a team of younger international scholars drawn from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, and Israel, all of whom penned chapters based on their specialized research agendas. The military aspects of the campaign are covered by David Stahel and Adrian Wettstein. Stahel examines the attrition suffered by the panzer groups of Army Group Center during the summer fighting and concludes that already by early August, the Germans' chances for success were rapidly dwindling. Wettstein's analysis of urban combat highlights the Wehrmacht's struggles of trying to wage a blitz campaign while getting bogged down in positional warfare within fiercely defended cities. German economic and occupation policies are examined by several contributors. The German Army's willing participation in the criminal war demanded by Berlin is expertly covered by Felix Roemer. Alex J. Kay details the evolution of German food policy towards the Soviet Union in 1940-41, while Jeff Rutherford looks at the occupation of Pavlovsk by the 121st Infantry Division and lays bare the horrifying results of these food policies for Soviet civilians. The currency and finance crisis faced by the Germans in 1941 receives attention from Paolo Fonzi while Stephan Lehnstaedt perceptively examines life in Minsk under the German occupiers.

In addition to the military and economic aspects of the campaign, the ideological goals of the invasion are also well covered. Three different contributors analyze the development of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Acclaimed historian Wendy Lower examines the participation of Germany's Axis partners in carrying out the murder of Soviet Jews, focusing in particular on the participation of Romanian and Hungarian units. Leonid Rein details the evolution of German anti-Jewish policy in Belarus while Martin Holler traces the influence of noted Einsatzgruppe commander Otto Ohlendorf in instigating the mass murder of the Sinti and Roma. The nature of warfare and occupation in the Soviet Union necessarily affected German policy in occupied Europe, a topic investigated by Thomas Laub in his chapter on France.

The book has received numerous positive reviews from within the historical community. According to the Canadian Journal of History, "this amazing book is a valuable gift to all those interested in the history of Nazi warfare in the east.... It ... also introduces new archival materials and makes important statements bound to produce a powerful impact in various fields." The journal War in History concludes that "the volume contains groundbreaking new contributions and valuable overviews of topics that have already been researched. It also has the special advantage of making primary and secondary sources from other countries, especially Russia and Germany, accessible to the English-speaking world," while the Journal of Military History terms the book "a superb collection that materially enhances our understanding of the broader Nazi effort in the East; anyone interested in the Soviet-German conflict or the Holocaust will profit from it." Finally, German History writes that the authors "offer -from different angles- new insights into one overarching theme: the radicalization of Nazi policies in the East in 1941... highly accessible and therefore recommended to the specialist as well as to the interested general reader or for classroom use," and the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies notes "The essays, along with a very helpful introduction, will introduce readers to the state of the historiography on the Eastern Front, including much of the work done in German in recent years that remains untranslated."