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‘Rediscovering Homeland’: Russian Interpreters in the Wehrmacht, 1941–1943

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Communication, Interpreting and Language in Wartime

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Languages at War ((PASLW))

Abstract

The German-Soviet War demonstrated that the invading language specialists could be of the same ethnic origin and cultural background as those being occupied. This was the case for a few thousand White Russian émigrés that served in the Wehrmacht. The murderous campaign unleashed in June 1941 offered them an illusory opportunity to continue their Civil War long since lost in 1920. In what roles and capacity were these recruits used? The bulk of sources for this chapter have come from Russian, Czech, and German state archives and libraries, and include contemporary letters, reports, and post-war memoirs. The contradictory experiences of the exiled Russians in German service broaden our understanding of the war on the German-Soviet front beyond the strictly ‘Nazi Germans’ against ‘Soviet Russians’ endeavour.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the figure of Izzy the interpreter, an Iraqi working with the Americans, in: D. Finkel (2009), The Good Soldiers (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), pp. 154–57.

  2. 2.

    H. Footitt, M. Kelly (2012), ‘Introduction’, in H. Footitt and M. Kelly (eds), Languages at War: Policies and Practices of Language Contacts in Conflict, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 1–15, here pp. 1, 10.

  3. 3.

    P. Kujamäki (2012), ‘Mediating for the Third Reich: On Military Translation Cultures in World War II in Northern Finland’, in H. Footitt and M. Kelly (eds), Languages and the Military: Alliances, Occupation and Peace Building (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 86–99, here p. 86.

  4. 4.

    M. Inghilleri and S.-A. Harding (eds) (2010), Translation and Violent Conflict. Special Issue of The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication, 16:2 (Routledge: London); A. Fernández-Ocampo and M. Wolf (eds) (2014), Framing the Interpreter: Towards a Visual Perspective (Routledge: New York); T. Guo (2016), Surviving in Violent Conflicts: Chinese Interpreters in the Second Sino-Japanese War 1931–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan); M. Wolf (ed) (2016), Interpreting in Nazi Concentration Camps (Bloomsbury: New York); H. Effinghausen (2017), Zwischen Neutralität und Propaganda—Spanisch-Dolmetscher im Nationalsozialismus (Berlin: Frank & Timme); P. Kujamäki (2017), ‘Finnish Women, German Pigs and a Translator: Translation Consolidating the Performance of “Brotherhood-In-Arms” (1941–44)’, Translation Studies, 10.3, pp. 312–28, here p. 313.

  5. 5.

    J. D. Smele (2017), The ‘Russian’ Civil Wars, 1916–1926: Ten Years That Shook the World (New York: Oxford University Press).

  6. 6.

    N. A. Kuznetsov (2009), Russkii flot na chuzhbine (Moscow: Veche), p. 104.

  7. 7.

    B. Bruno (2009), ‘Lemnos, l’île axus Cosaques’, Cahiers du Monde Russe, 1, pp. 187–230; K. M. Ostapenko, V. (2015), ‘Lemnosskii dnevnik’, in V. E. Koisin and A. A. Konovalov (eds), Lemnosskii dnevnik ofitsera Terskogo kazach’ego voiska 1920–1921 gg. (Moscow: Sodruzhestvo ‘Posev’).

  8. 8.

    G. F. Voloshin et al. (eds.) (1923), Russkie v Gallipoli. Sbornik statei, posviashchennyi prebyvaniiu 1-go Armeiskogo korpusa Russkoi armii v Gallipoli (Berlin: EAG/Druck); K. Acar (2016), ‘Rusça kaynaklarda Gelibolu ve Beyaz Ruslar’, Çanakkale Araştırmaları Türk Yıllığı, 14:20, pp. 1–33.

  9. 9.

    A. Shmelev (2008), ‘Gallipoli to Golgotha: Remembering the Internment of the Russian White Army at Gallipoli, 1920–3’, in J. Macleod (ed), Defeat and Memory: Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era, (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan), pp. 195–213.

  10. 10.

    L. Manchester (2016), ‘How Statelessness Can Force Refugees to Redefine Their Ethnicity: What Can Be Learned from Russian Émigrés Dispersed to Six Continents in the Inter-war Period?’, Immigrants & Minorities, 34:1, pp. 70–91, here p. 72.

  11. 11.

    P. Robinson (2002), The White Russian Army in Exile, 1920–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

  12. 12.

    A. Kröner (2010), The White Knight of the Black Sea: The Life of General Peter Wrangel (The Hague: Luxemburg Publishing).

  13. 13.

    M. I. Boiarintsev, ‘Epokha 1937–1965 gg.’, pp. 33–34. Box 1, Mitrofan Ivanovich Boiarintsev Papers (hereafter BAR Ms. Coll/Boiarintsev). Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

  14. 14.

    O. Beyda (2016), ‘A Different Russian Perspective or “Their Long Defeat”: White Émigrés and the Second World War’, in T. Moss and T. Richardson (eds), New Directions in War and History (Sydney: Big Sky Publishing), pp. 72–87.

  15. 15.

    A. Reziapkin (2008), ‘Voennye razgovorniki. Otkrytiia, kotorye potriasli mir’, in G. Pernavskii (ed), Nepravda Viktora Suvorova (Moscow: Iauza), p. 418.

  16. 16.

    C. Sinner and K. Wieland (2013), ‘Eine translationswissenschaftliche Sicht auf Sprachmittlung im Fremdsprachenunterricht’, in D. Reimann and A. Rössler (eds), Sprachmittlung im Fremdsprachenunterricht (Tübingen: Narr Verlag), p. 94; C. P. Kieslich (2017), ‘“Volksgemeinschaft” und “Richtiges Dolmetschen”’, in M. Behr and S. Seubert (eds), Education Is a Whole-Person Process: Von ganzheitlicher Lehre, Dolmetschforschung und anderen Dingen (Berlin: Frank & Timme), p. 389.

  17. 17.

    The RfD was also responsible for certifying the translation of the proofs of ancestry, an important aspect of every foreigner’s legal situation, including Russians. E. Ehrenreich (2007), The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), p. 98.

  18. 18.

    Head of the university’s Russian section was an émigré, Nikolai von Bubnov (Bubnoff). K. Schultes (2006), ‘Die Staats- und Wirtschaftwswissenschaftliche Fakultät’, in W. U. Eckart, V. Sellin, and E. Wolgast (eds), Die Universität Heidelberg im Nationalsozialismus (Heidelberg: Springer Medizin Verlag), pp. 579ff.

  19. 19.

    Interrogation report, interpreter Josef Russ, 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS ‘Charlemagne’, 17 April 1945. F. 972, op. 1, d. 299, l. 98. Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence (hereafter TsAMO RF).

  20. 20.

    H. Salevsky (2012), ‘Training Translators and Interpreters in Germany: Past and Present’, in N. Reingold (ed), Istoriia perevoda: mezhkul’turnye podkhody k izucheniiu. Materialy mezhdunarodnogo simpoziuma v ramkakh proekta ‘Natsional’no-istoricheskie traditsii v perevodovedenii’. Moskva, 15–17 sentiabria 2011 g., (Moscow: RSUH), pp. 165–91.

  21. 21.

    Interrogation report, interpreter Josef Russ, 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS ‘Charlemagne’, 17 April 1945. F. 972, op. 1, d. 299, l. 98. TsAMO RF.

  22. 22.

    N. Thomas (2002), The German Army in World War II (Oxford: Osprey Publishing), pp. 122, 148.

  23. 23.

    A. Schlicht and J. R. Angolia (1996), Die Deutsche Wehrmacht. Uniformierung und Ausrüstung 1933–1945. Band 1: Das Heer (Stuttgart: Motorbuch Verlag), p. 305.

  24. 24.

    N. Thomas (1999), The German Army 1939–45 (3): Eastern Front 1941–43. Men-at-Arms #326 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing), p. 10.

  25. 25.

    C. Trollmann (2016), Nationalsozialismus auf Japanisch? Deutsch-japanische Beziehungen 1933–1945 aus translationssoziologischer Sicht (Berlin: Frank & Timme), p. 101.

  26. 26.

    W. Krauss (2004), Ein Romanist im Widerstand: Briefe an die Familie und andere Dokumente edited by P. Jehle and P.-V. Springborn (Berlin: Weidler), p. 175; W. Krauss (1997), Spanische, italienische und französische Literatur im Zeitalter des Absolutismus edited by P. Jehle and H. F. Müller (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter), p. 576; K. Sydow (2008), ‘Die Akzessionsjournale der Preußischen Staatsbibliothek im Hinblick auf NS-Raubgut und die Reichstauschstelle’, in H. E. Bödeker and G.-J. Bötte (eds), NS-Raubgut, Reichstauschstelle und Preußische Staatsbibliothek, (Munich: K. G. Saur), p. 79.

  27. 27.

    R. Lauer (1985), ‘Maximilian Braun zum Gedächtnis’, Die Welt der Slaven, 30, pp. 203–13, here p. 204; H. W. Schaller (2010), Die ‘Reichsuniversität Posen’ 1941–1945: Vorgeschichte, nationalsozialistische Gründung, Widerstand und polnischer Neubeginn (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang), p. 189; J. Dinkel (2009), Maximilian Braun als Südslavist. Eine akademische Biographie (1926–1961), (Munich: Verlag Otto Sagner), pp. 77–80.

  28. 28.

    I. Petrov and O. Beyda (2017), ‘The Soviet Union’, in D. Stahel (ed), Joining Hitler’s Crusade: European Nations and the Invasion of the Soviet Union, 1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 373.

  29. 29.

    On military necessity in the Wehrmacht: J. Rutherford (2014), Combat and Genocide on the Eastern Front. The German Infantry’s War, 1941–1944 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). On interpreting in the Red Army: A. Hill (2017), The Red Army and the Second World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 27; A. Statiev (2018), At War’s Summit: The Red Army and the Struggle for the Caucasus Mountains in World War II, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 80.

  30. 30.

    S. Lehnstaedt (2012), ‘The Minsk Experience: German Occupiers and Everyday Life in the Capital of Belarus’, in A. J. Kay, J. Rutherford, and D. Stahel (eds), Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization (New York: University of Rochester Press), p. 249.

  31. 31.

    Interrogation report, interpreter Josef Russ, 33rd Waffen-Grenadier Division der SS ‘Charlemagne’, 17 April 1945. F. 823, op. 1, d. 71, l. 197. TsAMO RF.

  32. 32.

    ‘Prikaz po ORVS no. 41’, 16 June 1941. F. R-5845, op. 1, d. 4, l. 37. State Archive of Russian Federation (hereafter GARF).

  33. 33.

    For example, Baron Achim von Kutzchenbach: T. Diedrich (2008), Paulus: Das Trauma von Stalingrad. Eine Biographie (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh), pp. 147, 213, 251, 336.

  34. 34.

    K. Kangeris (1994), ‘Kollaboration vor der Kollaboration? Die baltischen Emigranten und ihre “Befreiungskomitees” in Deutschland 1940/41’, in W. Röhr (ed), Okkupation und Kollaboration (1938–1945): Beiträge zu Konzepten und Praxis der Kollaboration in der deutschen Okkupationspolitik (Berlin: Hühtig Verlagsgemeinschaft), p. 181.

  35. 35.

    B. Dodenhoeft (1995), ‘Vasilij von Biskupskij—Eine Emigrantenkarriere in Deutschland’, in K. Schlögel (ed), Russische Emigration in Deutschland 1918 bis 1941: Leben im europäischen Bürgerkrieg (Berlin: Akademie Verlag), p. 227.

  36. 36.

    K. Schlögel (2006), ‘Berlin: “Stepmother” Among Russian Cities’, in K. Schlögel (ed), Russian-German Special Relations in the Twentieth Century: A Closed Chapter? (Oxford: Berg), p. 62.

  37. 37.

    For the experience of Soviet interpreters: V. Zhdanova (2009), ‘Nashim oruzhiem bylo slovo…’: perevodchiki na voine/‘Unsere Waffe war das Wort…’: Translation in Kriegszeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang); B. D. Suris (2010), Frontovoi dnevnik: dnevnik, rasskazy, edited by T. B. Trubetskaia and I. I. Galeev (Moscow: ZAO Izdatel’stvo Tsentrpoligraf).

  38. 38.

    Serving with the 52nd ‘Torino’ Italian Infantry Division, Lieutenant Iurii Sokolov also quickly became an object of interest to the peasants. Suffering from looting by the Italians, the Russian population complained only to Sokolov, calling on him to defend them. I. Sokolov, ‘S ital’ianskoi armiei na Ukraine’. Novyi zhurnal, No. 142, March 1981, pp. 115–117, 122. In France, some raped women turned to the help of the interpreters since they were often the only ones who, due to their language skills, were able to maintain contact with the local population. B. Beck (2004), Wehrmacht und sexuelle Gewalt: Sexualverbrechen vor deutschen Militärgerichten 1939–1945, (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh), p. 171.

  39. 39.

    Anlagen zum Tabeguch 6. I.D. 1.4 – 31.12.1942, Anl. 24, 29 June 1942. RH 26-6/66. Bundersarchiv – Militärarchiv Freiburg (hereafter BArch Freiburg).

  40. 40.

    ‘Iz sochineniia uchenika 5 klassa srednei shkoly No. 5 Gennadiia Levana’, in Voina glazami detei. Sbornik dokumentov, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Kaluzhskoi oblasti, Kaluga, 1993, p. 45.

  41. 41.

    D. Stahel (2015), The Battle for Moscow (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 208–09.

  42. 42.

    Besondere Anordnungen, Anlage zum Sonderbefehl des Rgt. vom 21.12.1941. F. 500, op. 12480, d. 59, l. 132. TsAMO RF.

  43. 43.

    O. V. Budnitskii and G. S. Zelenina (eds) (2012), ‘Svershilos’. Prishli nemtsy!’ Ideynyi kollaboratsionizm v SSSR v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny (Moscow: Rossiiskaia politicheskaia entsiklopediia (ROSSPEN)), p. 92.

  44. 44.

    D. A. Zhukov and I. I. Kovtun (2012), RNNA. Vrag v sovetskoi forme (Moscow: Veche), p. 58.

  45. 45.

    ‘Beurteilung des Dolmetschers Andrej Wolkow’, 9 March 1943. T-315, R. 498. Washington, DC, National Archives and Records Administration (hereafter NARA).

  46. 46.

    At the beginning of the war, Section Ic of the Eighteenth Army under Major Allmann received a group of émigré recruits that were supposed to be gathering intelligence. Yet their spoken Russian was so different (probably too eloquent, with a touch of outdated terms) from the simplistic Russian the peasants were speaking that it immediately drew unneeded attention to them. D. Karow, ‘Entstehung der ersten sowjetischen Einheiten aus Einwohnern der U.d.S.S.R.’. ZS/A–10/3. Archiv des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte (hereafter IfZ-Archiv).

  47. 47.

    M. Edele (2017), Stalin’s Defectors: How Red Army Soldiers Became Hitler’s Collaborators, 1941–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 30–31, 48; O. Buchbender (1978), Das tönende Erz. Deutsche Propaganda gegen die Rote Armee im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Stuttgart: Seewald Verlag), pp. 175, 177; K. Zellis (2011), ‘Nacionālsociālistiskās Vācijas okupācijas režīma propaganda Latvijā (1941–1945)’, PhD Thesis, University of Latvia, p. 57.

  48. 48.

    Probably, this was Georgii Antonov, who collaborated with the Germans from 1942 onwards. Male, 52, Great Russian, Regular Army. Schedule A, Vol. 18, Case 341 (interviewer M.L., type A4), p. 16. Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Harvard University, Widener Library.

  49. 49.

    D. Karov, ‘Russkie na sluzhbe v nemetskoi razvedke i kontrrazvedke’, pp. 22, 137. Box 280, Folder 4. Boris I. Nicolaevsky Collection (hereafter HIA/Nicolaevsky), Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  50. 50.

    Postcard from Gubanov, 9 December 1941. F. R-5759, op. 1, d. 64, l. 461. GARF. Full biographical reconstruction: O. Beyda (2018), ‘“Re-Fighting the Civil War”: Second Lieutenant Mikhail Aleksandrovich Gubanov’, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, 66:2, pp. 245–73.

  51. 51.

    ‘Voennyi perevodchik’. Novoe slovo, No. 77, 26 September 1943, p. 6. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz (hereafter SzB).

  52. 52.

    D. Zhukov and I. Kovtun (2016), Politsai: istoriia, sud’by, prestupleniia. Izd. 3-e, ispr. i dop. (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo ‘Piatyi Rim’ (OOO ‘Bestseller’)), p. 261.

  53. 53.

    J. D. Enstad (2018), Soviet Russians under Nazi Occupation: Fragile Loyalties in World War II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 73.

  54. 54.

    A. Gabrieli [A. Iaremchuk II], ‘S ital’ianskoi armiei v Rossii. Moia posledniaia (chetvertaia) voina’, p. 98. Box 1. Globus Publishers Records (hereafter HIA/Globus), Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.

  55. 55.

    D. Khodnev, ‘Mesiats v germanskoi armii’, pp. 24–25, 31, 34. Box 10, Folder ‘Minor Manuscripts’. Finliandskii Leib Gvardii Polk Records (hereafter BAR Ms. Coll/Finliandskii Polk). Bakhmeteff Archive, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

  56. 56.

    A. Dumbadze, ‘Iz zapisok perevodchika’. Vozrozhdenie, No. 206, February 1969, p. 42.

  57. 57.

    D. Karov, ‘Russkie na sluzhbe v nemetskoi razvedke i kontrrazvedke’, p. 166.

  58. 58.

    V. Rudinskii, ‘S Ispantsami na Leningradskom Fronte’. Pod Belym Krestom, No. 3, 1952, p. 13.

  59. 59.

    ‘Tak bylo’. Suvorovets, No. 40 (55), 21 October 1949, p. 2. Russian State Library (hereafter RGB).

  60. 60.

    Information Summary of the Administration of I Department of ROVS, 1 March 1942, p. 3.

  61. 61.

    Entry from 21 December 1941. Ivan Steblin-Kamenskii’s diary. Archive of Steblin-Kamenskii family (hereafter ASKF).

  62. 62.

    Entry from 30 March 1942. Ibid.

  63. 63.

    R. V. Zavadskii (2014), Svoia chuzhaia voina. Dnevnik russkogo ofitsera vermakhta, 1941–1942 gg., edited by O. I. Beyda (Moscow: Sodruzhestvo ‘Posev’), p. 126.

  64. 64.

    J. Hürter (ed) (2016), Notizen aus dem Vernichtungskrieg. Die Ostfront 1941/42 in den Aufzeichnungen des Generals Heinrici (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft), pp. 64–65, 85–87.

  65. 65.

    N. Sakhnovskii, Sobytiia 1940–1945 godov i moe uchastie v nikh, p. 16. Author’s private archive.

  66. 66.

    S. Kokh, ‘Nizhnee Karlovo (iz vospominanii perevodchika)’. Chasovoi, No. 530, August 1970, p. 19. André Savine Collection (hereafter UNC-CH/Savine), Rare Book Collection, Louis Round Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

  67. 67.

    A. Morelli [V. Levashov], ‘Na Rodine’. Chasovoi, No. 308, May 1951, p. 25. UNC-CH/Savine.

  68. 68.

    A. Morelli [V. Levashov], ‘Na Rodine’. Chasovoi, No. 309, June 1951, p. 15. UNC-CH/Savine.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., p. 16.

  70. 70.

    A. Morelli [V. Levashov], ‘Na Rodine’. Chasovoi, No. 311, September 1951, p. 23. UNC-CH/Savine.

  71. 71.

    T. Schlemmer (2005), Die Italiener an der Ostfront 1942/43. Dokumente zu Mussolinis Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion (Munich: R. Oldenbourg), pp. 33–38; X. M. Núñez Seixas (2018), ‘Unable to Hate? Some Comparative Remarks on the War Experiences of Spaniards and Italians on the Eastern Front, 1941–1944’, Journal of Modern European History, 16:2, 269–89, here p. 277.

  72. 72.

    Some ROVS wartime reports with such sentiments are available at: K. M. Aleksandrov (2005), Russkie soldaty Vermakhta. Geroi ili predateli. Sbornik statei i materialov (Moscow: Iauza, Eksmo), pp. 512–29.

  73. 73.

    J. Hoffmann (1974), Deutsche und Kalmyken: 1942 bis 1945 (Freiburg: Rombach), p. 98.

  74. 74.

    W. Hubatsch (ed) (1983), Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegsführung 1939–1945. Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht (Koblenz: Bernard & Graefe), pp. 201–05.

  75. 75.

    B. Tromly (2016), ‘The Making of a Myth: The National Labor Alliance, Russian Émigrés, and Cold War Intelligence Activities’, Journal of Cold War Studies, 18:1, pp. 80–111, here pp. 83–84.

  76. 76.

    A. Polianskii, ‘Russkii Korpus v Serbii, 1941–1945 g.g.’, part IV, pp. 29–30. Arranged P(2) PL-POLIA. General Manuscripts Collection. BAR.

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Beyda, O. (2020). ‘Rediscovering Homeland’: Russian Interpreters in the Wehrmacht, 1941–1943. In: Laugesen, A., Gehrmann, R. (eds) Communication, Interpreting and Language in Wartime. Palgrave Studies in Languages at War. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27037-7_7

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