Stephen Fritz: Ostkrieg

AFV — armored fighting vehicle

AK — Armeekorps (army corps)

BA — Bundesarchiv (German Federal Archives)

Bagration — Soviet offensive in Belorussia, June–July 1944

Barbarossa — 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union

Berghof — Hitler’s Bavarian retreat (Obersalzberg)

Blau — Blue, 1942 summer offensive in the Soviet Union

blitzkrieg — lightning war

commissar — political officer attached to Red Army units

Commissar Order — “Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars”; order of 6 June 1941 to shoot Red Army political officers

Edelweiss — advance into the Caucasus, July–November 1942

Einsatzgruppe — mobile killing squad

Einsatzkommando — subunit of an Einsatzgruppe

Fredericus — operation against the Izyum bulge, May 1942

Freikorps — German paramilitary groups

front — Soviet equivalent of an army group

Frühlingserwachen — Spring Awakening, German offensive toward Budapest, March 1945

Gauleiter — Nazi Party regional leader

Generalplan Ost — General Plan East

Gestapo — Geheime Staatspolizei (Secret State Police)

Hiwi — Hilfswillige ( r ), Russian volunteers/auxiliaries who performed noncombat duties with the German army

Kampfgruppe — battle group (usually formed of units seriously reduced in strength)

Kessel — pocket; cauldron

Kesselschlacht — a battle of encirclement

Landser — German infantryman

Lebensraum — living space

Luftflotte — German air fleet

Luftwaffe — German air force

Mars — Soviet offensive against the Rzhev salient (Ninth Army), fall/winter 1942

NSV — Nationalsozialistische Volkswohlfahrt (National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization)

OKH — Oberkommando des Heeres (Army High Command)

OKW — Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Armed Forces High Command)

Ostfront — Eastern front

Ostheer — Eastern Army

Ostkrieg — Eastern war

panje — Russian horse-drawn wagon

Panther position — proposed German defensive position in the east

Panzerfaust — German one-shot anti-tank weapon

Pz III — German tank, from 1942 with 50 mm antitank gun

Pz IV — mainstay German tank with a long-barreled, high velocity 75 mm gun

Pz V — Panther tank (from 1943, with a long-barreled, high velocity 75 mm gun

Pz VI — Tiger tank (from 1942, with an 88 mm gun)

rasputitsa — lit., time without roads; spring and fall rainy season in the Soviet Union

Reichsführer-SS — Himmler’s title

Reichsmarshall — Goering’s title

Ring — final Soviet offensive against Stalingrad, January 1943

Rollbahn — main highway in the Soviet Union

RSHA — Reichssicherheitshauptamt (Reich Main Security Office)

SA — Sturmabteilung (Storm Troopers)

Saturn — proposed Soviet offensive west of Stalingrad aimed at Rostov, November 1942 (“Little Saturn” actually executed)

Schwerpunkt — focal point of an attack

SD — Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service, part of the RSHA)

Sonderkommando — smaller subunit of an Einsatzgruppe

SS — Schutzstaffel (elite Nazi troops)

Stavka — headquarters, Soviet Supreme Command

Stuka — Sturzkampfflugzeug (German dive bomber; JU-87)

T-34 — Soviet mainstay tank (76 mm, then after 1944 an 85 mm gun)

Taifun — Typhoon, drive on Moscow, October–December 1941

Trappenjagd — Bustard Hunt, operation on the Kerch Peninsula, May 1942

trek — German refugee column

Uranus — Soviet counteroffensive at Stalingrad, November 1942

Vernichtungskrieg — war of annihilation

Viking — Fifth SS Division

Volk — people, nation

Volksdeutsche — ethnic German

Volksgemeinschaft — national community, people’s community

Volkssturm — “People’s Storm” (German national militia)

Waffen-SS — armed or combat SS

Wehrkraftzersetzung — undermining of the war effort

Wehrmacht — German armed forces, often used to refer specifically to the army

Wintergewitter — Winter Storm, operation to relieve Stalingrad, December 1942

Wolfsschanze — Wolf’s Lair (Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia)

For decades after the end of World War II, much of our understanding of the German-Soviet war came from the German perspective, for the very good reason that only German documents and archives were readily available. Equivalent Soviet sources were either unavailable, marred by ideology, or limited in their circulation because of language problems. Moreover, the various histories of the Ostfront, or eastern front, that emerged were skewed in other ways as well. Many of the earliest accounts were written by German generals who did not have access to original records but wrote from their own diaries or memories, the latter being, of course, both unreliable and easily distorted over time. In addition, German officers writing either on their own or under the auspices of the U.S. Army’s historical project rather consciously sought to create an image of the Wehrmacht as professionally competent, technically proficient, and, above all, “clean.” In this version of history, which largely confined itself to accounts of battles and military events, not only had the army suffered from Hitler’s megalomania, constant interference, and poor strategic and operational judgments, but its leaders had neither known of nor condoned the massive crimes committed against the Soviet civilian population, especially the Jews. In the narrative the generals created after the fact, the military operations and the massive crimes perpetrated by German forces on the eastern front existed in two separate and parallel spheres, with little interaction between the two. This, of course, was later shown to be a self-serving cover-up, but for a variety of reasons—not least the growing impact of the Cold War—this initial version of events stuck in the Western mind. Thus, standard narratives of the Ostkrieg, the war in the east, available in English primarily focused very narrowly on the sweep of military events and ignored the intersection of the war and Hitler’s overtly ideological, racial, and economic plans for the conquered eastern territories.