Contesting the Russian Borderlands: The German Military Administration of Occupied Lithuania, 1915-1918

Barthel, Christopher Alan

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Year:: 2011
Contributor:: Barthel, Christopher Alan (creator); Bartov, Omer (Director); Mandel, Maud (Reader); Cohen, Deborah (Reader); Brown University. History (sponsor)
Genre:: theses
Subject:: World War I; Eastern Front; Occupation; German Empire; World War (1914-1918); Eastern Front (World War (1939-1945)); Imperialism; Borderlands
Extent:: vii, 337 p.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7301/Z02J6940

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Abstract:: Contesting the Russian Borderlands analyzes German military rule in occupied Lithuania during the First World War within the context of the German Empire's imperial history. The experience was startling and novel to most of those who implemented policy in the conquered eastern territory, but German administrators and soldiers channeled prewar stereotypes and relied on past policies toward ethnic and national minorities in order to conceptualize and rule the occupied lands. A variety of published and unpublished documents from German and Lithuanian archives provide new information on German soldiers' and administrators' confrontation with the Russian borderlands. Diaries, memoires, and regimental histories indicate that Germans' impressions of Russian territory hewed to widespread stereotypes of the Russian Empire as a threatening, disorganized, dirty, and fundamentally different place. Administrative reports and newspapers document how policy and propaganda subsequently reinforced these views by insisting upon the inferiority of local residents and by striving for the full exploitation of the occupied lands' material and human resources. Administrators' desire to spread an idealized vision of Germanness (Deutschtum) to the industrially underdeveloped lands was expressed as the broadly defined spreading of "culture" that would improve all aspects of the local civilians' lives. The context of the imperial borderlands was decisive; the occupiers sought to "liberate" the local residents from the Russian Empire by instituting what they regarded as benevolent and superior German rule. Because of the emphasis on the inferiority of the occupied population and the importance of obtaining raw materials for the German war effort, however, the occupiers made few concessions to local ethnic groups, including Lithuanians, Latvians, Jews, Poles, and Belarusians. Military defeat on the Western Front nullified the attempt to permanently subject the borderlands and their residents to German rule, but the experience of occupation nonetheless profoundly influenced German views of the East.
Notes:: Thesis (Ph.D. -- Brown University (2011)

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Rights: In Copyright
Restrictions on Use: Collection is open for research.

Citation

Barthel, Christopher Alan, "Contesting the Russian Borderlands: The German Military Administration of Occupied Lithuania, 1915-1918" (2011). History Theses and Dissertations. Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library. https://doi.org/10.7301/Z02J6940

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History Theses and Dissertations

Theses and Dissertations for the History department.
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