During the 1940s Greece was torn apart twice, first by World War II and second by Civil War.Beginning in 1941, the occupation of Greece by Germany was intensely brutal. Children starved on the ...streets of Athens. The Jewish population was decimated in the Holocaust. Heroic acts of resistance - performed in concert with the SOE - were met with vicious reprisals. When Greece was finally freed from Nazi rule in 1944, the fractured and embittered nation became engulfed in civil war, as conflict flared between the British and American-sponsored government and communist-led rebels. Acclaimed historian of Greece David Brewer here investigates this tumultuous decade in Greece’s modern history, providing a compelling military and political history.
In this compelling account of life and death in a Russian province under Nazi occupation, Johannes Due Enstad challenges received wisdom about Russian patriotism during World War II. With the benefit ...of hindsight, we know how hopelessly destructive Germany's war against the Soviet Union was. Yet ordinary Russians witnessing the advancing German forces saw things differently. For many of them, having lived through collectivization and Stalinist terror in the 1930s, the invasion created hopes of a better life without the Bolsheviks. German policies on land and church helped sustain those hopes for parts of the population. Drawing on Soviet and German archival sources as well as eyewitness accounts, memoirs, and diaries, Enstad demonstrates the impact of Nazi rule on the mostly peasant population of northwest Russia and offers a reconsideration of the relationship between the Soviet regime and its core Russian population at this crucial moment in their history.
Based off of a wide range of archival materials, this article reveals a little-known chapter in the history of the Leningrad blockade-the processes involved with the manufacturing of food ration ...cards for the population of the besieged city. The authors describe the initial phase of the rationing system in Leningrad by showing the diversity of circulating ration cards and coupons which personified the system of rationed food supply. The authors also note that the Leningrad City Soviet Executive Committee's office for the management and allocation of food and industrial goods ration cards during 1941-42 was headed by Ivan G. Stozhilov. The latter office not only controlled the production of the cards, but was also--for the Party and Soviet bodies involved--one of the main sources in defining the size of the city's population. The authors' analysis of documents involved suggests the production of ration cards in Leningrad began hastily after the German attack on the Soviet Union. This work was entrusted to the Volodarskii printing factory located in the vicinity of the Leningrad paper mill which produced the special paper involved. Issues related to the number of cards printed for the city's populations--as well as the very process of manufacturing of these valuable products--were closely controlled by its Party and Soviet leadership. In 1942, because of the economic state of emergency which city lived under, ration cards began to be produced on plain paper instead of paper with water marks. This latter fact contributed to increasing the number of counterfeit cards. Often the specialists of printing factory themselves were involved in this crime. At the same time there were recorded cases of stealing cards from shops of the printing factories, where they were being manufactured.
This book considers the evolving strategic interests and foreign policy intent of the Third Reich toward the Arabic-speaking world, from Hitler's assumption of power in January 1933 to 1944, a year ...following the final Axis defeat in and expulsion from North Africa in May 1943. It does so within the context of two central, interconnected issues in the larger history of National Socialism and the Third Reich, namely Nazi geopolitical interests and ambitions and the regime's racial ideology and policy. This book defines the relatively limited geopolitical interests of Nazi Germany in the Middle East and North Africa within the context of its relationships with the other European great powers and its policies with regard to the Arabs and Jews who lived in those areas.
The Geheime Feldpolizei (Secret Field Police) was the political police of the German Army during World War Two. Its members were drawn from both the regular German police, including detectives, as ...well as personnel from various Nazi security organizations. The mission of the GFP was numerous: protecting important political and military leaders, investigating black market activities, as well as acts of sabotage and espionage; tracking down deserters, examining anti-German activists, and hunting down partisans and partisan suspects. An additional role of the GFP was to act as liaison between the German Army and the Nazi SS. While performing some of these duties, members of the GFP eventually involved themselves directly in criminal activities. The GFP committed numerous crimes to both the Jewish community and the general population of Greece. Its leadership cadre was composed of dedicated Nazis and in one instance, included a former concentration camp commander! As the war progressed, their crimes in Greece increased in intensity and volume. The behavior of the GFP in Greece was a combination of the manner in which they operated in the West and East.
Helmut Mejcher fasst die Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkriegs im Nahen Osten fundiert zusammen. Die anglo-amerikanische Zwangsbewirtschaftung der arabischen Länder und deren weitreichende Folgen stehen ...im Zentrum. Zudem analysiert der Autor die militärischen Ereignisse in Nordafrika, im Irak und in Syrien sowie die Gründung der Arabischen Liga und die alliierten Planungen für die Region in der Nachkriegszeit. Nach der Schließung des Mittelmeers für die zivile Schifffahrt wurde der Nahe Osten unvorbereitet vom Welthandel ausgeschlossen. Unter anglo-amerikanischer Regie, oft mit drakonischen Methoden und gepaart mit eigennützigen entwicklungspolitischen Strategien, wurde die Region Rationierungsmaßnahmen unterworfen und auf wirtschaftliche Selbstversorgung ausgerichtet. Die Wirksamkeit der Eingriffe war den kolonialistischen Techniken und den imperialen Privilegien der Briten zu verdanken. Die materielle Absicherung wurde von den USA geleistet. Auf der Grundlage umfassenden Quellenmaterials zeigt Helmut Mejcher, wie dieses Vorgehen in Nahost ganz unterschiedlich aufgenommen wurde. Die gesamte Region ist jedoch bis heute geprägt von den damaligen anglo-amerikanischen Eingriffen.
Drawing from engrossing survivors' accounts, many never before published, The Minsk Ghetto 1941-1943 recounts a heroic yet little-known chapter in Holocaust history. In vivid and moving detail, ...Barbara Epstein chronicles the history of a Communist-led resistance movement inside the Minsk ghetto, which, through its links to its Belarussian counterpart outside the ghetto and with help from others, enabled thousands of ghetto Jews to flee to the surrounding forests where they joined partisan units fighting the Germans. Telling a story that stands in stark contrast to what transpired across much of Eastern Europe, where Jews found few reliable allies in the face of the Nazi threat, this book captures the texture of life inside and outside the Minsk ghetto, evoking the harsh conditions, the life-threatening situations, and the friendships that helped many escape almost certain death. Epstein also explores how and why this resistance movement, unlike better known movements at places like Warsaw, Vilna, and Kovno, was able to rely on collaboration with those outside ghetto walls. She finds that an internationalist ethos fostered by two decades of Soviet rule, in addition to other factors, made this extraordinary story possible.
As a force that had to serve two masters, both the Jewish population of the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania and its German occupiers, the Kovno Jewish ghetto police walked a fine line between helping Jews ...survive and meeting Nazi orders. In 1942 and 1943 some of its members secretly composed this history and buried it in tin boxes. The book offers a rare glimpse into the complex situation faced by the ghetto leadership and the Jewish policemen, caught between carrying out the demands of the Germans and mollifying the anger and frustration of their own people. It details the creation and organization of the ghetto, the violent German attacks on the population in the summer of 1941, the periodic selections of Jews to be deported and killed, the labor required of the surviving Jewish population, and the efforts of the police to provide a semblance of stability. The secret history tells a dramatic and complicated story, defending the actions of the police force on one page and berating its leadership on the next. A substantial introduction by distinguished historian Samuel D. Kassow places this powerful work within the context of the history of the Kovno Jewish community and its experience and fate at the hands of the Nazis.
A powerful and unique study of the realities and long-term impact of occupation, Mussolini's Greek Island reveals the Italian dictator's imperial vision, the mechanisms of Italian occupation and its ...tragic consequences. The small island of Syros is a vital entry-point illuminating Italian imperialism - its ethos, fascist connection, pretension and administrative achievements, marred by famine. Here Lecoeur examines the devastating effects of war and occupation on the local community - starvation, corruption and survival - and, drawing on local archives and interviews with survivors, offers new insight into this crucial but little known episode. Enriching our understanding of Mussolini's hegemonic visions and the mechanisms of occupation, a key issue of our times, this path-breaking book will appeal to scholars of fascism, World War II and military occupation in general._x000D__x000D_'Sheila Lecoeur has written a path-breaking and moving study of the Italian wartime occupation of the Greek island of Syros. This is the very first study I know which shows the realities of Italian fascist - as opposed to German - Second World War occupation from the ground up...this is an important contribution which offers us a badly needed point of comparison with German policy elsewhere.' -- Professor Mark Mazower, Department of History, Columbia University.
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