Date Approved
2024
Degree Type
Open Access Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department or School
History and Philosophy
Committee Member
Jesse Kauffman, Ph.D.
Committee Member
John McCurdy, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Robert Erlewine, Ph.D.
Abstract
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.
Recommended Citation
Calcaterra, Charles Joseph, "In a hell of our own creation: Spatial context and the Wehrmacht’s genocidal war in Eastern Europe, 1941–1943" (2024). Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations. 1278.
https://commons.emich.edu/theses/1278
