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Sinews of War: Financing French Resistance

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Objects Linked to the Occupation of France, 1944. Source: Adobe Stock Images, provided by the author under license.

‘If money be the sinews of war, it may be said to be the framework of Resistance and the punctual despatch of the very large sums needed to keep an Underground Movement, or Secret Army, in being was one of the greatest and, in every sense of the word, heaviest, preoccupations of the Sub-Section.’[i]

When thinking about French resistance during the Second World War, sabotage missions, intelligence gathering and the creation of escape lines for downed Allied pilots are likely to be at the forefront of any reflections. However, according to the 1944 official history of Section ‘RF’ of the British Special Operations Executive, the transportation of money was one of the most pressing concerns for those engaged in the underground war against German occupation. Operating under the aegis of the Ministry of Economic Warfare, ‘RF’ were one of the groups tasked with setting France ablaze. Working alongside the Gaullist Bureau Centrale de Renseignement et d’Action, they organised some of the most audacious special operations undertaken during the conflict. However, these missions risked being impossible to undertake were it not for the increasingly regular injections of cash it provided. Yet, historians have largely ignored the financial aspect of this irregular warfare. The importance of international fundraising, the logistical difficulties experienced when transporting money and the successful use of banditry in a martial context should be highlighted.

Importance of International Fundraising

The internationalised nature of French resistance funding is important to underline. Acquiring funds from within France was an exercise fraught with danger.[ii] In the context of the French economy under occupation, it was difficult for the heads of networks to procure the large amounts of cash needed to support those who were eking out their wartime existence on the black market.

Funds came primarily from the British government, but it was not the only source. From the earliest days of General de Gaulle’s Free French movement, private donations found their way to his London headquarters in Carlton Gardens. However, these gifts were sporadic and often in small amounts. Supporters of the Free French would send precious objects to be sold, including diamonds, with the proceeds being put towards the financing of the external resistance movement.[iii]

As the conflict progressed, financial support increased from further afield. Delegations were founded by French émigrés and Francophiles in Allied and non-belligerent nations. The largest of these groups were established in South America, notably in Argentina, Mexico, Uruguay and Chile. They organised dances and conferences designed to foster the movement’s soft power and fundraise on their behalf[iv].

At the end of 1943, a funding drive in the rallied French colonies sought to raise money for the Gaullist movement. This led to the greatest increase in money available to French resistance groups since the beginning of the conflict. Of the 4.3 million francs sent from New Caledonia, in the Pacific, 1.8 million francs were donated by the French expatriate community, companies gifted 1.2 million, fêtes and dances raised nearly 750,000 francs and 325,000 francs came from the indigenous Kanaks and the Asian community.[v] The islands’ inhabitants donated 61 francs per capita to the ‘Subscription to Help the French Resistance’. To put this into context, the New Caledonian contribution was a mere two percent of the total subscription received. The largest donation, of 141 million francs, came from French West Africa, which was raised over only three months.

Logistical Difficulties

However, the problems that arose when delivering the funding into occupied France continued to trouble mission planners outside of France. One of the main obstacles to providing funds was the weather. Inclement forecasts in December 1943 led directly to a halving in sorties attempted by the R.A.F.’s 161 Squadron. As the squadron’s pilots were involved in flying special operations missions, including money deliveries into occupied France, any meteorological impediments inevitably caused funding shortages in France.[vi]

The difficulties were not over when funds finally arrived in the country, whether transported by an incoming agent or within an airdropped container. The risks of holding money were greatly multiplied due to the unavoidable centralisation that clandestine operations required. Daniel Cordier, the secretary of Jean Moulin, who was de Gaulle’s representative in occupied France, nearly lost the entirety of his monthly delivery, as a thief stole his bicycle from outside a black-market café.[vii] To put this loss into perspective, bicycles cost around 7,500 francs or nearly double the monthly expenditure of an average Parisian family[viii]. Fortunately, Cordier had the presence of mind to take the contents of his side-bags with him into the meeting, but the episode highlights the inherent risks involved when keeping large quantities of illicit funding in the hands of one person.

Banditry Works…

With the chaos wrought by the Normandy landings of June 1944, aerial sorties to supply and fund French resistance groups became a vital lifeline for the estimated 300,000 to 500,000 people living in clandestine conditions.[ix] Moreover, banditry also became more common. In southern France, branches of the Banque de France were robbed of 4.4 billion francs by members of resistance groups. The largest of these raids occurred at Neuvic, in Dordogne. On 26th July, a group of resistance members hijacked a train heading towards Bordeaux and made away with 2.28 billion francs.[x] Unsurprisingly, news of the robbery was withheld from the press, and by June 1945, there were no attempts made to locate the lost money. Elsewhere, in Annonay (Ardèche), the local branch of the Banque de France was robbed on six separate occasions, from July to September 1944, losing a total of 44 million francs.[xi] Armed men forced their way into the branch and, after a ‘lively’ discussion and upon receiving the money, handed a receipt over to the manager in return[xii]. When it is considered that the financial cost of supporting a member of the resistance was estimated to be between 1,000 and 1,500 francs[xiii], these Annonay hauls could have funded around 30,000 to 40,000 resistance members for a month.

To conclude, French resistance funding was international and reliant upon the efforts of those outside of France. Both foreseen and unforeseen problems were experienced with the transportation of money and equipment into areas under enemy occupation. Finally, following the chaos generated by the Allied invasion, banditry became a means by which these groups acquired funding for themselves. While financial constraints may not immediately be associated with global conflict, they certainly proved a driving force behind significant French resistance activity during the Second World War.

[i] The National Archives, Kew, HS7 124, Appendix A, p.9

[ii] Henri Frenay, La nuit finira, (Paris, Éditions Robert Laffont, 1973), p.35-36

[iii] Pierre Denis, Souvenirs de la France Libre, (Paris, Éditions Berger-Levraut, 1947), p.35

[iv] Archives nationales (AN), Pierrefitte-sur-Seine, 3 AG 1 305, France Libre de Gaulle – 1 – Comptes 1940-1943

[v] Archives nationales d’Outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence, 1AFF-POL 879, Résultat complet et détaillé de la souscription du 20 septembre 1943 au 11 novembre 1943 pour venir en aide aux Combattants et Patriotes de France, 22/12/1943

[vi] David Foulk, ‘Homeward Bound: Mapping Clandestine Transportation into France during the Second World War’, War in History, November 2021

[vii] Daniel Cordier, Alias Caracalla, (Paris, Gallimard, 2009), p.531

[viii] Jean-Marc Binot, Bernard Boyer, L’Argent de la Résistance, (Paris, Larousse, 2010), p.17-18

[ix] Olivier Wieviorka, L’histoire de la Résistance, (Paris, Perrin, 2013), (Ebook) Chap. 15, Para. 58

[x] Banque de France (BdF), Paris, 1069199410 1 Prélèvements - Généralités

[xi] BdF, 1069199410 2 Prélèvements irréguliers, Prélèvements effectués à nos Caisses par les FFI, 16/10/1944

[xii] BdF, 1069199410 2 Prélèvements irréguliers, Compte rendu annexe à ma lettre du 2 août 1944 relative aux réquisitions à main armée du 1er août 1944, 09/08/1944

[xiii] AN, AG 3 (2) 276 - 171 MI 108 BCRA, Letter from Colonel ‘Vernon’ to Commandant Lejeune, 04/07/1944

The Bataan Death March: The Effects and Limits of Military Socialization

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by Sam Erkiletian

American and Filipino prisoners carrying comrades during the Bataan Death - March, 1942.
Source: United States National Archives and Records Administration

On 9 April 1942, approximately 60,000 Filipino and 15,000 beleaguered American soldiers surrendered to the Imperial Japanese 14th Army under the command of General Masaharu Homma after three months of heavy fighting across the Philippines and on the Bataan Peninsula. What followed was one of the greatest atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Second World War, which was aptly named the Bataan Death March. Exhausted and malnourished Filipino and American POWs were forced to make the roughly 70-mile journey from Bataan to the American military base Camp O’Donnell without adequate medical or food supplies, all while being subjected to routine beatings, torture, and executions from their Japanese captors.[i] Approximately 7,000 to 10,000 Allied soldiers (2,330 Americans) died on the march.[ii]

The early atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers across China and in the Philippines, coupled with the perfidious nature of the attack on Pearl Harbor, solidified Allied enmity towards the Japanese and the stereotype that they were a “robotic, ferociously brainwashed people” willing to carry out any order no matter how brutal.[iii] However, a comprehensive account of the Bataan Death March reveals something puzzling—a significant number of Allied POWs received relatively humane treatment from some of their Japanese wardens. While some Allied prisoners were beaten, murdered, and even forced to bury their own officers alive during the march, others were allowed to ride in trucks and given adequate supplies and humane treatment.[iv] [v]

What explains this variation and inconsistency in the treatment towards Allied POWs by Japanese soldiers during the Bataan Death March? Why did some Japanese guards unflinchingly follow orders to beat and murder their charges while others resisted them? In order to answer these questions and to understand what factors led to the Bataan Death March, it is necessary to first discuss the military socialization process for Japanese soldiers during the Second World War and to then engage with the growing literature on resistance to socialization within armed groups.

Captured American and Filipino soldiers march past Japanese guards.
Source: Cleveland Plain-Dealer

Military Socialization in Imperial Japan

Japanese treatment towards POWs and the atrocities committed during the Bataan Death March were a direct result of the military socialization processes within the Imperial Japanese Army. Military socialization is the process within armed groups that “strip away [the] pre-military norms and identities” of recruits and replace them with the expected values and behaviors of the armed group.[vi][vii][viii] Armed groups employ a combination of ideological and social pressures through formal training, indoctrination, hazing, and initiation rituals to reform the identity of recruits.[ix][x]

Japanese soldiers experienced one of the most intensive military socialization processes during the Second World War. Even before active duty, young Japanese men had already been inculcated with ultranationalist propaganda that glorified the military and death in service of the emperor through media, the national school system, and during preparatory military training which began as early as secondary school.[xi] Japanese adolescents were raised in a society that had been “geared for war for fifteen years” and extolled patriotism which was “ultimately expressed through devotion to the emperor” and military service.[xii] A central theme of the propaganda promulgated throughout 1930s Japan was not only service to the emperor, but also obedience to all other authority figures.

Once inside the Imperial Japanese Army, recruits endured brutal physical and psychological training that further emphasized blind obedience and fostered extreme group cohesion. The Army was built on a “structure of authoritarian coercion that transferred oppression downwards [and] superior officers commonly commanded fear rather than respect”.[xiii] Physically hitting recruits in the face, a practice known as binta, was a regular occurrence meted out seemingly at random. Insubordination was also unacceptable. If a single member of a unit suffered an infraction or hesitated to carry out an order, the rest of his squad-mates often suffered savage beatings by officers with baseball bats, some inscribed with the words “Military Spirit Instilling Bat”.[xiv] This normalized brutality accompanied severe physical training in the form of long marches and drills that pushed recruits to the limits of their endurance.

Ideologically, Japanese recruits were inculcated through formal and informal indoctrination that emphasized devotion to the nation and the emperor, as well as a strict policy of no surrender. The doctrine of no surrender was reinforced at every level and stage of the military socialization process and was codified in the official Field Service Code for the Japanese Army (Senjinkun). For instance, one of the codes stated the following: “never live to experience shame as a prisoner…always think of preserving the honor of your community and be a credit to yourself and your family…by dying you will avoid leaving behind the crime of a stain on your honor”.[xv] The concept of “death before dishonor” was so enshrined in Japanese military culture, that the Japanese government refused to ratify the Geneva Convention of 1929 on the grounds that the treaty was unfair as “Japan would have to feed and house POWs, while other countries would be spared the onus of caring for Japanese prisoners because there would be none”.[xvi]

This policy had an incredible impact on the conduct of Japanese soldiers throughout the Second World War. Out of the 5,000 Japanese defenders on Tarawa, only 17 surrendered. On Iwo Jima, only 216 out of 14,000 soldiers surrendered, and on Okinawa, only around 10,000 of the 170,000-man garrison were captured alive.[xvii] In comparison, approximately 235,000 Axis soldiers surrendered at Stalingrad in February 1943 and over 260,000 German and Italian soldiers were captured in Tunisia later that year.[xviii]

Given the norms and behaviors emphasized during the military socialization process in the Imperial Japanese Army—blind obedience, discipline, extreme physical endurance, and no surrender—it is unsurprising that many Japanese soldiers treated prisoners viciously and that entire units committed atrocities against them. To many of the Japanese soldiers overseeing the procession of Allied prisoners from Bataan to Camp O’Donnell in April 1942, POWs represented the antithesis of their military culture and training; they were disgraced soldiers “seen as legitimate objects of their captor’s scorn, contempt, and much worse”.[xix][xx] However, even within this system of extreme military socialization, there were a number of Japanese soldiers that did not conform to these norms and in some instances even directly resisted them.

Limits to Military Socialization

The fact that “cruelty was not systematic” during the Bataan Death March and that some Japanese guards and officers defied orders to execute their charges suggests the potential limits of and resistance to military socialization.[xxi] Mounting evidence finds that individuals within armed groups are capable of resisting socialization and, in turn, the prescribed norms and behaviors of their group.[xxii][xxiii] Individual combatants “retain a measure of agency even under pervasive social control” which can lead to conflicting behaviors and insubordination. [xxiv]

At Bataan, many officers disobeyed a direct order from Colonel Tsuji, a radical officer even by the standards of the Imperial Japanese Army, to execute all POWs in their possession. For example, upon receiving the order to execute his prisoners, Colonel Imai not only disobeyed Colonel Tsuji, but freed his roughly one thousand prisoners and allowed them to escape into the jungle, citing that the order would have violated his own personal interpretation of Bushidō, the ancient Japanese warrior code.[xxv] At the ground level, a multitude of Japanese guards also went against the norms of their military culture to beat and belittle prisoners and instead provided adequate food, water, and breaks during the march. In one instance, an American tank commander was hugged and supported by a Japanese officer who had been his classmate at the University of California, Los Angeles.[xxvi]

The Bataan Death March demonstrates the effects of military socialization as well as its limitations. While the few Japanese soldiers and officers who resisted the draconian norms of their military culture were unable to change the horrific outcome of the Bataan Death March and the widespread atrocities committed by their brothers-in-arms, their actions illustrate that resistance to socialization and expected behaviors can occur even within rigidly controlled armed groups like the Japanese Imperial Army. Colonel Imai refused an order because it conflicted with his own personal code, while another Japanese officer disregarded expected behavior and embraced an old classmate because they were friends before the war. These experiences demonstrate that soldiers are not “blank slates” but have enduring prewar civilian identities “formed through prior arenas of socialization, such as families and schools” that can conflict with or even override aspects of military socialization processes.[xxvii]

The unexpected behavior of these Japanese soldiers during this brutal event in history illustrates that there are complex and often overlooked dynamics of identity and resistance within armed groups. Further research is needed to better understand what factors lead certain combatants like Colonel Imai and other Japanese soldiers to go directly against the expected norms of their armed group. Investigating what leads to behavioral differences will provide a more nuanced understanding as to how armed groups function, and such exploration will help to better contextualize the motivation and behavior of combatants.

[i] Kevin Murphy. Inside the Bataan Death March: Defeat, Travail and Memory (Jefferson: McFarland & Company, 2014).

[ii] John Toland. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 301.

[iii] John Dower. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 2012), 122.

[iv] John Toland. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 294-301.

[v] Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath (New York: Picador, 2009).

[vi]Amelia Hoover Green. “The commander’s dilemma: Creating and controlling armed group violence,” Journal of Peace Research 53, 5 (2016): 619-632, 621.

[vii] Devorah Manekin. “The limits of socialization and the underproduction of military violence: Eviidence form the IDF,” Journal of Peace Research 54,5 (2017): p. 606-619.

[viii] Gary Wamsley. “Contrasting institutions of Air Force socialization,” American Journal of Sociology 78, 2 (1972): 399-417.

[ix] Anthony Kellett. Combat Motivation: The Behaviour of Soldiers in Battle (New York: Springer, 1982)

[x] Jefferey Checkel. “Socialization and violence: Introduction and framework,” Journal of Peace Research 54, 5 (2017): 801-826.

[xi] Ulrich Straus. The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005).

[xii]John Dower. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 2012), 58,193.

[xiii] Ibid, 58.

[xiv] Ulrich Straus. The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 37.

[xv] Ibid, 39.

[xvi] Ibid, 21.

[xvii] John Toland. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003)

[xviii] Antony Beevor. The Second World War (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2014)

[xix] Ulrich Straus. The Anguish of Surrender: Japanese POWs of World War II (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2005), 3.

[xx] Michael Norman and Elizabeth Norman. Tears in the Darkness: The Story of the Bataan Death March and Its Aftermath (New York: Picador, 2009).

[xxi] John Toland. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 301.

[xxii] Jefferey Checkel. “Socialization and violence: Introduction and framework,” Journal of Peace Research 54, 5 (2017): 801-826.

[xxiii] Theodore McLaughlin. “Desertion and collective action in civil wars,” International Studies Quarterly 59 (2015): 669-679.

[xxiv] Devorah Manekin. “The limits of socialization and the underproduction of military violence: Evidence from the IDF.” Journal of Peace Research 54,5 (2017): 607.

[xxv] John Toland. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (New York: Modern Library, 2003), 295.

[xxvi]Ibid, 295.

[xxvii] Devorah Manekin. “The limits of socialization and the underproduction of military violence: Eviidence form the IDF,” Journal of Peace Research 54,5 (2017), 610.

Sam Erkiletian is a PhD candidate at University College London’s Department of Political Science. His research focuses on the changing identities of combatants during conflicts and in postwar environments. In particular, he is interested in how the military socialization processes of armed groups affect the behavior and postwar identity of former combatants. Sam employs comparative case studies and utilizes primary sources from conflict archives in his research designs.

Sam is a Senior Editor at Strife. Find him on Twitter @SErkiletian

At the Crossroads between Psychiatry and the Holocaust

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The Hall of Names in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Site in Jerusalem, Israel, remembering some of the 6 million Jews murdered during World War II. Source: iStockPhoto.

In the decades following the First World War, discontent, inflation, and political infighting characterised Germany. Adolf Hitler, who would become one of the most infamous dictators in history, rode on the subsequent wave of popular discontent, eventually becoming Germany’s Chancellor in 1933 and unleashing a radical transformation of the German state. Linking Jewish people to the country’s defeat in 1918, the National Socialist Workers’ Party (NSDAP) gave new impetus to this age-old racial thinking. To historian Tim Grady, for example, the NSDAP became the embodiment of German defeat in the Great War.

Among many of the ideals of the Nazi party, the Volksgemeinschaft (or the people’s community) figured centrally within the NSDAP. With the ambition to create a kind of social solidarity, Nazism attempted to put forward a cohesive and unifying movement for all Germans, at least those acceptable under its ideals. This pursuit led to the promotion of the concept of the Volk (the nation’s people) and its associated notions of blood and soil (Blut und Boden), where they would dwell. The Artamanen-Gesellschaft (Artaman League) started in 1923 as a German agrarian and völkisch (folk)-oriented movement devoted to a blood-and-soil–inspired ruralism, intent on carrying out the reformation of society (Lebensreform. The League turned out to be firmly connected to, and was ultimately absorbed by, the Nazi Party and the aforementioned concepts of the German Volk and their associated place of belonging in the world, central to Nazi propaganda.

Among the Germans belonging to the Volksgemeinschaft, the superior race and racial hygiene were the Aryans featured most prominently, as the epitome of superiority reflected by their racial hygiene. As a race that was believed to have given birth to all European civilisations, including the German, typical Aryan features included fair skin, a strong physique, blue eyes, and blond hair. This idea of Aryanism became the foundation of the Nazi race theory. By contrast, the Jews became identified as unwanted elements within this future society. As a people collectively to blame for the German defeat in the First World War, they became the victims of a German revanchist movement. Excluded from the Volksgemeinschaft, the Jewish people became suitable and convenient scapegoats to explain any misery of the German people, particularly the loss of the German state’s property (territorial and financial) caused by stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles.

One of the Nazi propaganda posters depicting Jews as demons as compared to the superior and ideal Aryan race. Source: The Forward

Emerging in this climate, the eugenics movement, pioneered by Francis Galton - a psychologist working on the hereditary nature of intelligence - in 1883, , held that only people with superior characteristic traits should be allowed by society to procreate further. Years later in 1905, Alfred Ploetz, a German biologist, published his work The Fitness of Our Race and the Protection of the Weak which debilitated clinical attention to the frail and undesirables. Ploetz termed this as the theory of racial hygiene (Rassenhygiene). As a particular special notion of eugenics, this philosophy led to the formation of the International Society for Racial Hygiene (Gesellschaft fur Rassenhygiene) by Alfred’s brother-in -law, Ernst Rüdin in 1907. Rüdin, a psychiatrist and an advocate of racial hygiene, through his research into genealogy, reasoned that frail mindedness and its related issues were heritable, and could be forestalled through eugenics.

The 1917 photoplay, “The Black Stork”, edited and re-released in 1927 as “Are You Fit to Marry” further established the benefits of proper racial hygiene. Influenced by the notions of racial cleanliness and anti-Semitism, Hitler acknowledged that eugenic practices were important to eliminate degenerate components from the country’s blood stream. Besides Jews as the Unerwünschte (unwanted elements), the other, non-Jewish groups included Roma Sinti groups, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the disabled, and homosexuals.

An anti-Semitic sign that translates, as “Jews are unwanted here”. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The eugenic ideals were used to justify mass sterilisation on those persons the German state deemed unwanted. Moreover, in 1933, the sterilisation law was passed. Marriage laws followed, prohibiting union with the “ill suited”. A further measure that ensured the racial cleansing of the German nation was the enactment and adoption of The Nuremberg Laws on 15 September 1935. The Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor, both passed in Nuremburg at the time ensured the exclusion of Jews from the Reich citizenship and further the Blood Protection Law forbade the marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans. In this way, a eugenic thinking process and the idea of blood unity began to seep in and spread through the institutions across Germany.

The eugenic ideal was actualised in October 1939, when the Nazi Regime implemented Aktion T4 or the T4 Euthanasia Program. The name was taken after Tiergartenstrasse 4, the street address of the program’s coordinating office in Berlin. The program included practically the whole German mental network. Headed by physicists, Dr. Karl Brandt and Phillip Bouhler, an administration was set up with an order to execute anybody considered a useless eater. On one hand, where the Nazi regime treated the Jewish people as parasites and vermin, the psychiatric vocation treated them as genetic aberrations. Killed from the outset by starvation and deadly injection, then later suffocation by poison gas. Doctors supervised gassings in chambers in the guise of showers, utilising deadly carbon monoxide gas obtained from physicists. So successful was this endeavour that the program directors set up gas chambers at six existing psychiatric extermination centers in Germany and Austria.

To curb the proliferation of what the Nazis perceived as abnormal, defective, and flawed individuals, the psychiatrists, who were fervent eugenicists, killed their patients who otherwise appeared to be quite normal without any deformities, much to the violation of the ethics of the Hippocratic oath. A majority of the doctors who became skilled in the techniques of this kind of extermination later also operated the concentration camps. However, as they realised that the carbon monoxide gas would not be successful for a large-scale mass extermination, they replaced it with Zyklon B. Used for fumigant purposes in the camp, it soon proved out to be an effective means for mass murder.

Conclusion

Commenting on psychiatric activities in Nazi regime, the German biologist, Benno Muller-Hill argues: “Almost no one stopped to think that something could be wrong with psychiatry […] The international scientific establishment reassured their German colleagues that it had indeed been the unpardonable misconduct of a few individuals, but it lay outside the scope of science.” As much as physical selection took place in the extermination camps the moment victims descended from the cattle trains, psychiatric selection played an important role within the hospital framework that preceded the Holocaust as it targeted those inmates of institutions who were thought fit for sterilisation and thus it was the psychiatrists who decided the reproductive potential of the individuals.

It remains thus important to infer that the intrinsic, fundamental standards of psychiatry were not just mirrored by Nazi extremism and racist bigotry, but they also envisioned, supported, and acted as an entering wedge into the Holocaust. Psychiatry, further helped establish the concept of the Volk as individuals within the body politic, advocating the expulsion of purportedly parasitic people from the country’s society. This subject of treating society to the detriment of the individual was vital to the corruption of medication and the defense of the annihilations. An underlying principle that was shared between both Holocaust and psychiatry was the concept of selection.

Mehak Burza is a doctoral research scholar of Holocaust Studies in the Department of English, Jamia University (New Delhi, India). Her thesis title is Literary Representations of The Holocaust; An Assessment. Her primary interests include Holocaust/Genocide Studies, Gender Studies, Holocaust Trauma and PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). She has presented papers in international conferences in Texas and Gettysburg. Her creative works have been published in Trouvaille Review, Visual Verse and Galaxy International Multidisciplinary Research Journal. She also translates from Hindi/Urdu into English and her translations are published in Purple Ink Magazine, the online magazine of Brown University, Los Angeles. She is also associated with LLIDS Journal as a peer reviewer, CLRI journal as an editor for research papers and as a copy editor (part time) in Journal of International Women’s Studies. Apart from academics she is trained classical dancer, with Kathak being her forte.

Documentary Review: Berlin 1945 (2020)

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by James Brown

Berlin in 1945: The German army made a last stand in April 1945 to defend Berlin against the Red Army, the capital was a frontline city for over two weeks, leading to widespread devastation (Image credit: BBC)

The BBC’s Answer to Svetlana Alexievich at Remembrance Weekend

The 11 November 2020 marked the strangest day of remembrance in British history. In a country where the World Wars form the central pillars of national memory, the wartime style disruptions of COVID-19 meant the usual parades and ceremonies could not take place. Yet nonetheless, what did occur, as usual, was the remembrance of war as it takes place each year on television screens across the country.

Next to the broadcast of the traditional ceremonies, films and documentaries about the World Wars are traditionally shown as part of a period of reflection. The schedule, however, is often quite repetitive with the same heroic war films and armchair-general-type shows being re-run each year. There are comparatively few solemn attempts at reflection, particularly ones which highlight the multinational character of the conflict and the plight of civilians on all sides of the battle. That is why it was so refreshing to see the BBC release a new documentary that focuses on the civilian experience of war, Berlin 1945.

Berlin 1945 has an enticingly simple format: voice actors read diary entries from civilians and soldiers written in the year 1945 while their photographs and archive footage features on screen. The narrative focuses on the city of Berlin during the Second World War’s twilight period but includes voices from the allied side as well. The choice of the single city of Berlin gives the documentary a positionality that captures not only the creeping encirclement of Germany, but also how the military struggles enacted from the Berghof, Washington D.C., Moscow, and London were converging at a single point after years of bloodshed across far-flung corners of the world.

Those whose diaries are read out, and at whose lives we are allowed to look at their bleakest and most human, include conscripted 16-year old soldiers, a Jewish woman in hiding, worried mothers, fathers, and children. We also encounter enforced labourers from France and Eastern Europe, exhausted Soviet ground troops, and allied pilots conducting massive bombing raids over Berlin. Their stories tell of the desperation faced by Berliners and the intensity of WWII’s final days.

It is a Kafkaesque tale of daily struggles not just to survive, but also of the attempts to preserve remnants of normality as the Red Army exacts extreme military and sexual violence on Berlin’s civilian population, especially the women. People continue to watch light entertainment films at the cinema and return to finish them even after the viewing is interrupted by air raids. Family and friends still gather for schnapps before they listen to Hitler’s latest morale-boosting radio broadcast. Teenage air-craft gunners try to shoot down Allied bombers, intermittently referring to each other as comrades and classmates. And all the while inane Nazi propaganda continues to bleat promises of future victory even as the Third Reich’s armed forces melt away before the people’s eyes.

The Red Flag hoisted over the Reichstag in 1945 (Image credit: BBC)

While watching, I was reminded of Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Literature Laureate, and her oral chronicles of the Second World War and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (1979-1989). Her books are not novels or histories, but rather written choruses of individual voices who have borne witness to the tragedies of war. Uniquely, Alexievich is especially attentive to the experiences of Soviet women and children during these conflicts and her Unwomanly Face of War (2018) and Last Witnesses (2020) respectively cover the experiences of each group throughout WWII. As in Britain, the Second World War in the post-Soviet countries, known there as the Great Patriotic War, also occupies a central place in national histories. There too, the focus is on the story of the soldiers. Like Alexievich’s books, the BBC’s Berlin 1945 adds vital voices to the story of WWII which are frequently ignored.

Berlin 1945’s appearance this Remembrance Weekend, with its emphasis on the civilian and multinational side of conflict, also connects with the growing debate over how Britain should remember its wars. The country finds it difficult to discuss changing the focus of remembrance. When alternatives to the mainstream narrative are proposed; for example, as opposed to traditional red poppies, wearing white or black ones which highlight civilian and African or Caribbean experiences respectively, it provokes a visceral and corrosive backlash (the poppy issue imbricates broadcasters especially, including the BBC). A production like Berlin 1945, which is also significant for giving a humanised portrait of the enemy German population, helps remind us how conflict damages all human lives, on and away from the front, and gives voice to some of the forgotten victims of war.

Berlin 1945 is available on BBC iPlayer now.

James Brown is a PhD candidate in history at Northumbria University. His focus is on Soviet dissidents and their use in the politics and international relations of the Cold War. He previously studied at Glasgow University, doing a Master’s in East European, Russian, and Eurasian studies. During this time he studied Russian and wrote his thesis, ‘Returning to Machiavelli: Giving Belarus-Russia relations the Original Realist Treatment’, which received the prize for best dissertation from the Centre for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at Glasgow.