Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg: Oberbefehlshaber Ost

Ober Ost was a military state effectively, founded by (Ludendorff). This Militry state failed, but became the model of what a German state should be, in the views of the NAZIs, many of which got their training in Ober Ost. Effectively, this utopia should best be viewed as a concentration camp, a Wallerstein Lager (Thirty Years War: 1618 and 1648). Control over the movement of the population was required, called "Verkehrspolitik". All work in this state had to control peoples and resources.

Security behind the Front, lines of communication and a postal system, obtaining and distributing supplies, maintaining order, peace between different ethnic groups.

Mobilization and economic exploitation of land and peoples.

Control and Administration: The progressive reformation of lands and peoples through intensified control and administration.

A military railroad authority was essential to effect the above objectives, with roads, waterways, postal and telegraphic communications, forced labour, bridges, engineers and construction troops, telegraph troops. Germany was a leader in military geography, based upon research by Carl Ritter, von Humbolt, and Friedrich Ratzel [political geography]. Land could become German land. A new kind of war, war as geography to construct an internal colony, not a salt-water colony. Use is the basis of the claim to property (John Locke). Agriculture needs to be developed (Kurt von Rümker: plant hybrids). Forests had to be exploited, courts established, finances organized, churches organized, schools established, medical and veterinary services created, a police force created, a tax bureau, officials created (achivists, professors of theology, art historians, lawyers, estate owners coordinated, merchants, propagandists, writers, artists, etc.) A utopia! This was created, but on paper, not in reality. What was the reality?

Troops took livestock and food from farmers at gun point, with no pretense of eventual repayment (no recipts were handed out). Brutalities were reported (pastors clubbed to death by druken soldiers in the presence of an officer for resisting confiscation of clover feed). Forced requisitions increased, as it became more brutal and systematic. Statistics were gathered, the natives thoought the German occupiers would count trees in the forest, fish in the lakes. Would natives have to account fr every bite they ate? Soon, wouldn't cattle be counted for confiscation? Officials confiscated hand mills and large scale mills. The results were predictable: smuggling shot up. Holidays were not respected. Travel on poor roads with prehistoric wagons prevented delivery of forcefully requisitioned food. Peasants were forced to sell animals at ridiculously low prices. Result: peasants hid animals in cellars or secret forest clearings. Resistance was met with death or savage beatings. This was a German utopia. Horses were stolen, resulting in farmers refusing to transport goods.

This objecive would require:

Surveillance

Registration
Documentation

The area was not Land und Leute (lands and peoples), but as Raum und Volk (spaces and races).

The view of the future: annexation as a colony, not only by the military, but by the German people at home. Thus utopian aims vs brutal facts.

However, just as Germany was supposed to win WW1, collapse occured in the Western Front. Then, native resistance: rejection of Raum und Volk, as the Freikorps rampaged, thus leading to a failure to expand into Russia. The result: the rise of a proto-NAZI biological war to cleanse Ober Ost of "inferior" Volk. While this took place, economic warefare also took place: a Naval blockade by the British, helped by the French. The decisive result would take place on the Western Front, not the Eastern Front. One should recall that the Ober Ost was the crossroads between Germany (Europe) and Russia, a crossroads previously used by Napoleon during his 1812 disaster.

How did Germans view the East? Plagues: typhoid, malaria, cholera, dysentery, tuberculosis, lung inflammation, typhoid spotted fever, impeded by the primitive conditions in the East, as well as apathetic natives. "Polnische Wirtschaft" (Polish economy) meaning mismanagement. Thus a cultural gradient "Kulturgefälle", the more Eastward toward the Slavic East, the more dirt, underdevelopment, backwardness. workers at forced labour were numerous, but increasingly, labourers escaped into the forests to avoid the forced labour, thus increasing the number of bandits. Thus the Germans were politicizing the natives, and creating a united opposition! Now the view of the East changed from an absolutist monarchial state unified with Germany, into repression, backwardness, despotism, with invading Cossacks and inexhaustible waves of Russian peasants. In other words: total disaster! The same views were held by Frederick the Great, and the same views were also held by Hitler in WW2!

The Germans changed psychologically. Not only were there many ethnic groups and many languages, but even the forests were inhospitable! Germans were used to managed woods (scientifically ordered), but here they encountered enormous primeval forests. Who could know what was in these forests, especially with natives believing in vampires and werewolves, forest gods, etc? One could find wolves, bears, elk, deer, even bison in "Bialowies" (Click to see) forest. The Germans recognized these forests of 250 year old trees as "Urwälder" (ancient, prehistoric forests). This induced a somber apprehension, as Germans thought of themselves as masters of nature, masters of German Oaks, but now Germans were afraid of these dangerous forests. The East now became a war between German kulture vs Eastern unkulture.

Troops required enormous quantities of lumber for fortifications at the front, railways required ties. Bridges required lumber, as did sinkholes in the roads. Firewood was needed. A small army of POWs (5,000) was press-ganged to tap trees for sap and resin, as well as to produce charcoal. Army sawmills supplied the Army as well as wood for the Western Front. Lumber was sold to private German firms. The best wood was sent to the Reich, where cellulose from the timber was used for gunpowder and explosives such as nitroglycerine, and to manufacture paper. Ludendorff practiced strip-cutting. For kilometers on both sides of rivers and roads, forests were felled. The pagan natives looked on with dismay at the enourmous wastes.

Orders flooded the Army and in turn flooded the populace. For example, orders were written specifying Wednesdays and Saturdays as days when baking was permitted.

Translations were so bad that they were nearly incomprehensible. One legendary announcement read i Lithuanian, not "The German court judged", but instead "The German excrement shitted". The problem was deemed solved by making the German language the official language. Bandits threatened the villagers as well as the Army. These bands of bandits taxed villagers. "Santitätswesen" ("medical affairs") was created to take care of hygiene for delousing stations, especially in cities with special plague-troops. Prostitution was regulated, the Army ran its own brothels. Food was forbidden to be sold in the streets. Deaths had to be reported within one hour, washing corpses was forbidden, funeral processions were banned.

Travel passes were required for everything: crossing area borders, travel after curfew, traffic using bicycles, cars, or motorcycles. Dogs were issued passes (to show that the "dog tax" had been paid). Thirteen "Paβkommandos" issued passes. Native women bribed their way out of compulsory baths, fearing mistreatment by soldiers when exposed. This was not far-fetched, considering the "showers" (a few years in the future, at Auschwitz). Prisons had "beating machines" designed to conduct rationalized (Prussian Lutheranism again), scientific violence.

The Germans regulated languages in schools (to "Germanize" the minds of children). The natives returned to the traditional clandestine schooling. Ober Ost theatres as entertainment for both soldiers as well as natives. These theatres were not only entertainment, but were an "ethnic" interface: an opportunity to propagandize the natives. Thus theatres became a "Kulturekampf" (a culture war). Theatre was drama, Friedrich Schiller's "Wallenstein's Lager" (Thirty Years' War) supporting the idea of one people. one empire, one leader (Ludendorff, as well as Ober Ost, later Hitler), and included "Frontkino" (cinema). Also there was Bavarian puppet shows from the Middle Ages!

The Germans observed Lithuanian peasants speaking an archaic Indo-European language, a people still pagan with pagan temples, with an animistic religion, worshiping trees, snakes, and bees. The peasants had roadside crosses (crosses mixing Christian symbols with pagan symbols, holy hills, forest pagan images. The peasants plowed around rocks (pushed upwards by the freezing/thawing earth, thus viewed as having souls, thus plowed around these "living" stones with souls). The peasants continued to use primitive tools, such as the hook plow (Zocha or Hake). The peasants ate "Baumkuchen" at Christmas, a cake with branches and annular rings: very realistic. In this environment, with Germans creating trains to exploit innumerable trees in forests, the Pagan peasants saw the Germans as destroyers of culture.

Germans favoured speific local interests. The Germans disfavoured native languages. The Germans favoured more labour, well paid, but paid sometime in the future. The result: natives wanted Germans to leave, or an active nationalism. Thus the German policy was the exact opposite of what was intended. Soldiers in the streets met looks of open hostility and hatred. Smuggling flourished. Peasants tunneled under military cordons between cities and the countryside to carry on trade. Jews pretended to be dead, to carry on trade in cemeteries. The Army participated in the smuggling. The Germans feared armed resistance. Two concepts of "order" were pitted against each other. The German/Prussian order ("Ordnung") and the lithuanian order ("tvarka"). Ordnung was administration (state) policies to enforce "ordered circumstances" (borders and limits). Tvarka was unrelated to the state, was the way order is implemented in a farm household (based upon fencing or enclosure and creation, a living hedgerow). Lithuanians felt agreements had to be "living" or acceptable to all. The German view was a view of tha state: possibly unacceptable to all: no agreement at all. Lithuanians see agreement as "training the lands growth", while Germans see agreement based upon "troops" (violence, no agreement).

Germans when isolated from other Germans felt lost. The troops are sinking down into a spiritual wasteland, becoming businesses. Isolated, Germans turned to the natives. Orders against fraternization lapsed in the face of everyday reality. Natives began to influence the views of German troops: "To hate Baltic Barons", or to embrace socialist ideas. Ober Ost increasingly became a free-for-all to pilfer from military stores, black-market trading, stealing from impoverished natives. The soldiers began to resent Prussian officials and officers (a regional class conflict). The views of Herder condemned the crusades of the Teutonic Knights. Herder felt that culture could not be implemented by force (militarism) but that moral suasion was based upon respect (of all cultures). This is the exact opposite of the views of Ludendorff and his Ober Ost. The culture of Ober Ost was in fact, the culture of a violent Prussian concentration lager, in the style of Wallenstein. In 1918, Estonia and Livonia were united with Kurland (Balts) into a military unit called the "Baltikum". The Eastern armies of Ober Ost were becoming increasingly influenced with revolutionary, socialistic ideas, and could no longer be depended upon, thus could not be transported to the Western Front (which was already begining to disintegrate). Incidents of mutinous incidents occured when attempts were made to transport troops to the Western Front (dwinsk, Charkow, Kowno, etc.), and soldiers deserted in large numbers. Finally, on August 8, 1918, the German army collapsed. Seven painting of the Eastern Front at this time by Ludwig Dettman still exist, but unfortunately they remain censored. Ludendorff was dismissed by Hindenburg. On November 2, 1918,Lithuania rose, and a week later revolution broke out in Germany. Estonia was on the verge of rebellion, too. Ober Ost troops suffered a "complete nervious breakdown". Military storehoses were gutted, soldiers drunk, committing robberies. Soldiers deserted. The "Baltikumers" (Friekorps) rampaged, seizing Latvia, threatening to ignite WW1, again. Some aligned with the Baltikumers carried "Bundschuh" flags from the Peasant Wars of 1524-1525! Others carried the Hansa flag, singing pirate songs. Noske knew how to deal with the threat of a People's uprising: he murdered evveryone in sight. How could Ludendorff explain losing the war in Ober Ost? Ludendorff's "utopia" had endless resources, to oppose what he felt were backward, dirty, uneducated, powerless, unarmed, compliant peoples? An obvious explanation was easy to use: Germany (Ludendorff) was "stabbed in the back" by a conspiracy of Jews. Thus ended WW1, and began WW2.

Oberbefehlshaber Ost (Ludendorff)