Eastern Michigan University
In a hell of our own creation: Spatial context and the Wehrmacht’s genocidal war in Eastern Europe, 1941–1943
Abstract
dc:description.abstract<p>A multitude of social, ideological, psychological, and environmental factors encouraged German servicemen to willingly commit atrocities in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. How should historians contextualize which factors held greater influence over servicemen deployed to different sectors of the vast Eastern Front? Charles Calcaterra highlights soldiers’ responses to their surrounding environments—the landscape of Eastern Europe—to explain why frontline divisions killed and destroyed indiscriminately in accessory to the Holocaust while rearguard personnel socially justified roundups, executions, and the horrid maltreatment of Red Army prisoners of war. Through the lens of military geography, the spatial contexts that fostered frontline units’ existential fear of combat, their struggle to procure food and supplies, soldiers’ brutal responses to the threat of partisan activity, and rearguard troops’ passive apathy toward the suffering of Eastern Europeans bolstered the Wehrmacht and Ordnungspolizei’s complicity in Adolf Hitler’s war of annihilation.</p>
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Arts (MA)
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Open Access Thesis
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- History and Philosophy
- Year dc:date.available
- 2024
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Calcaterra, Charles Joseph
- Contributors dc:contributor
-
- Jesse Kauffman, Ph.D.
- John McCurdy, Ph.D.
- Robert Erlewine, Ph.D.
Subjects
dc:subject × 9Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- Repository record dc:identifier
- https://commons.emich.edu/theses/1278
- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:commons.emich.edu:theses-2616