target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_446aa066-6e7d-5df9-beb8-41862e0d3888">48 Philip W. Blood, ‘Securing Hitler’s Lebensraum: the Luftwaffe and the forest of Białowieźa 1942–4’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, (Oxford, 2010).
An Aide-Mémoire:
Reading Maps Like German soldiers
A.J.P. Taylor once wrote: ‘Every German frontier is artificial, therefore impermanent; that is the permanence of German geography.’1 The Luftwaffe’s mission in Białowieźa was part of a policy of erecting a permanent frontier on the eastern borderlands. Beyond this ‘new’ frontier lay Belorussia, Soviet Russia, and Ukraine, in effect Hitler’s Lebensraum empire. A permanent eastern frontier represented a geopolitical goal for the Nazis. Göring’s three-part plan to bring this about included racial population engineering in Białowieźa. The first and fundamental goal was to bring about the eradication of Eastern European Jewry. The second goal involved the reduction and deportation of Slavs, dubbed Untermensch (sub-humans), from the large group of forest settlements. In the third stage, Göring’s plan called for the settlement of ethnic Germans, mostly repatriated from the east. Hitler’s invasion of Soviet Russia complicated this plan, slicing through the former Pale of Settlement from Tsarist times, a vast territory that was still homeland to several millions of Jews.
The problem I had to overcome concerned the relationship between the Landser and the environment. How did 650 German soldiers effectively secure 256,000 hectares of Nazi-occupied Białowieźa? The command and control of space or terrain have always been a strategic concern of nations, colonisers, army commanders, and security forces. During the Iraq insurgency (2003–11), the American army was forced to adopt a ‘population-centric’ strategy.2 For this research, the first step was to recognise that the expansion of the Białowieźa Forest, by the Nazis, was the creation of a frontier security zone. I called this frontier security zone the Białowieźa arena, to reflect the full extent of Göring’s territorial ambitions in this region. This arena was secured on the basis of a ratio of one soldier per 1.52 square miles. How did the Germans fill the command and control of space, and was it effective? These questions challenged my research because they fundamentally alter our understanding of how Nazi occupation and colonisation was practised. In 2010, the research began the application of Historical GIS to solve these challenges and look afresh at how the Germans organised security. Consequently, this chapter is an aide-mémoire to the GIS maps that were generated and are included in full within the narrative.
I. The Nazis and military geography
Nazi aspirations were particularly focused on the frontier of East Prussia. Following an ultimatum to Lithuania, in March 1939, Memelland (today—Klaijpéda in Lithuania) was annexed, an area covering 3,000 square kilometres.3 After Memelland, there were more acquisitions of former Polish territory in the south-east, named Regierungsbezirk Zichenau. This added another 12,000 square kilometres. Further annexations increased the state’s landmass to 52,731 square kilometres (5,270,000 hectares), with a total population of 3,336,771. In July 1941, three forests became the anchors for further expansions. The Elchwald (Elk forest) designated Forstamt Tawellningken (due west of Tilsit and running north/south along the Kupisches Haff) was expanded to 100,000 hectares with localized annexations. The Kaiser’s former hunting estate at Rominten was increased to 200,000 hectares with Polish acquisitions. The third was Białowieźa forest, a trophy from the Nazi invasion of Soviet Russia in June 1941. Between 1915 and 1939, the approximate forest area was 160,000 hectares. Göring’s plan required an increase of 90,000 hectares, increasing the gross area of the forest to 256,000 hectares. One hectare is equivalent to Trafalgar Square (London) or the area of an American football stadium. Shenandoah National Park boasts 200,000 acres, which converts to 81,000 hectares. This brought the eastern forest plan to a gigantic total of 560,000 hectares. In forest mass alone, East Prussia’s 1933 borders had increased by twenty-five per cent.4 This occupation area, including Białowieźa, was designated Bezirk Bialystok and administered from Königsberg as domestic territory.
Where this expansionism was leading is not altogether clear, since Nazi dogma, strategic ambitions, and geopolitical annexations were all at odds. Erich Koch, as ruling Nazi Gauleiter of East Prussia, not only presided over all these expansions but was also gifted with the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. Koch was turned into an overlord of a racialized colonial frontier. In effect, East Prussia and Bezirk Bialystok symbolised the fulfilment of the eastern frontier of the Greater German Reich—virtually replicating the brief existence of New East Prussia (1795–1806). The annexation of Ukraine, however, represented a fulfilment of Hitler’s Lebensraum ambitions. Thus, Bezirk Bialystok was also a geopolitical land bridge between Nazi Lebensraum and an Imperial style Greater German Reich. The creation of a colossal forest wilderness, dubbed an Urwald (primitive forest), also had strategic and cultural implications. There was a belief in the defensive military qualities of forest wilderness, which will be discussed later. Culturally, the creation of a massive forest pointed to the recreation of the ancient forests of Germania. In parallel, there were biological-zoological ambitions to recreate long-extinct animals, like the Aurochs that once roamed the ancient forests. In effect, Zoologists had institutionalised the notion of the racialized game. These mindsets lay behind the German occupation’ transformation of Białowieźa into a wilderness arena, however, even this story was loaded with contradictions.
In the military context, the expansion of the eastern frontier produced significant security administration requirements of a colonising scale, rather than for a political annexation. The challenge for the military-security services was to meet the Nazi goal. To excel in military geography was the German officers’ mantra. Field Marshall Schlieffen’s staff rides, his battlefield tours, were lessons in reading maps to better understand the nature of battle.5 Göring’s fitness for command could be partly gauged by his map skills and understanding of the terrain. In the first instance, he had acquired knowledge as a user of military geography. As an officer cadet, he was schooled in terrain and geography; as an airman-observer, he was an expert of map interpretation; and as a squadron leader conducted his command through maps—but was he suited to command-control Białowieźa from the comfort of Rominten? In the Second World War, German military cartographers not only plotted the movements of armies and the positions of enemies, but also the distribution of populations and strategic raw materials. The search and acquisition of local information were paramount to military and civilian occupations. Consequently, the daily production of maps was essential to both warfare and racial engineering. By 1942–43, it is estimated were that the armies in the east were printing and distributing upwards of 25,000 maps per day.6
German military geography was not well documented to assist this research,7 but an indication of the German cartographical system can be located in other sources. In July 1945, British Army intelligence interrogated a senior NCO from the Wehrmacht’s military geography branch. His interrogators isolated the German administration of military geography as the focus of their questions. They learned that Lieutenant General Gerlach-Hans Hemmerich (1879–1969) was reactivated in October 1936 as Chief of Abteilung für Kriegskarten- und Vermessungswesen, the Mapping and Surveying department within the Chief of Staff of the Army (OKH). He remained chief of army mapping until April 1945. The department was designated MIL-GEO, with its head office in Berlin and with smaller satellite departments dispersed throughout the army. Maps remained its primary mission throughout the war.8 Following the outbreak of war, MIL-GEO’s offices and personnel expanded through the conscription of elderly professors and civilians with geographical
