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Conflicted Afterlives: Managing Wehrmacht Fallen Soldiers in the Soviet Occupation Zone and GDR

Tradii, Laura (2023) Conflicted Afterlives: Managing Wehrmacht Fallen Soldiers in the Soviet Occupation Zone and GDR. Journal of Contemporary History, 58 (2). pp. 267-286. ISSN 1461-7250. (doi:10.1177/00220094231151817) (KAR id:100029)

Abstract

In the last months of the Second World War, as the Red Army approached Berlin, the Wehrmacht suffered catastrophic losses, resulting in thousands of war graves on East German soil. In the aftermath of the war, the Soviet Occupation Zone (1945–9) and the German Democratic Republic (1949–90) committed to a socialist ‘politics of history’ which centred on the liberation of Germany by the Red Army, disowning the German fallen. This article, based on my PhD research and current British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship, outlines how the central authorities of the Soviet Occupation Zone and the GDR managed the thousands of German Wehrmacht war burials on East German territory. I focus, in particular, on how Wehrmacht war burials came to constitute political and ideological liabilities, prompting concerns about their appropriations by the German Lutheran Church and West Germany. In doing so, I uncover a little-known yet highly significant dimension of the transition between the Third Reich and the German Democratic Republic.

Item Type: Article
DOI/Identification number: 10.1177/00220094231151817
Uncontrolled keywords: body politics, cold war, German Democratic Republic, politics of history, Wehrmacht, War Graves
Subjects: D History General and Old World
D History General and Old World > D History (General) > D731 World War II (1939-1945)
D History General and Old World > DD Germany
D History General and Old World > DK Russia. Soviet Union. Former Soviet Republics
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Funders: University of Kent (https://ror.org/00xkeyj56)
SWORD Depositor: JISC Publications Router
Depositing User: JISC Publications Router
Date Deposited: 15 Feb 2023 14:35 UTC
Last Modified: 14 Apr 2023 14:00 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/100029 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

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