An international conference in Vilnius looks at the legacy of the Second World War that continues to divide opinions today.
Dedicated to the memory of the recently deceased Literature Professor Irena Veisaitė, the conference A Divisive Past: The Soviet-German War and Narratives of Mass Violence in East Central Europe is organised by the Lithuanian Institute of History, Vilnius University’s History Department and the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry.
The full programme, in English, for the event on June 4–5 is available here.
This year marks 80 years since the beginning of the war between the USSR and Germany. On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, launching a war that turned into the bloodiest conflict of the 20th century. The military action that began on September 1, 1939, with German invasion of Poland took on a new dimension. It expanded again on December 7, 1941, when Japan launched an attack on Pearl Harbor, and on December 11 when Germany declared war on the US. These developments transformed the conflict in Europe into World War 2.
This new phase of the war was unprecedented insofar as German forces designated civilians, not only the soldiers of the Red Army, as enemies. Nazi Germany sought to break down its opponents by military force and also to implement a race-based, ideological strategy of mass murder (Vernichtungskrieg), developed several months before. These processes and the military operations of the Wehrmacht, occupying new territories and carrying out massacres, have been analysed in detail.
Nevertheless, the war remains a source of significant controversy. Competition among groups that consider themselves victimised by this experience continues to fester, along with efforts to minimise or even deny their own responsibility for certain outcomes. Especially in East Central Europe, several communities see this war not as something of the past, but as a highly contentious present. Competition and confrontation among memories make it difficult for societies in the region to achieve mutual understanding as they reflect upon painful and traumatic historical experiences, contributing to the re-emergence of anti-Semitic rhetoric.
The conference aims to trace the origins of the current situation and generate a discussion on how to improve this state of affairs. Accordingly, the two-day event will focus not only on the mass violence that took place in 1941 and the narratives that seek to explain it, but to trace how testimonies of the events have influenced the evolution of public memory and the formation of prevailing narratives.
Certain aspects of this war have been treated by Western historiography in a simplified manner, with insufficient attention to the prevailing conditions resulting from the impact of war and foreign occupation on the local populations during the period immediately preceding Operation Barbarossa (1939–1941).
For example, in territories previously occupied by the Soviets, the new occupiers were often seen as liberators. German soldiers were greeted with flowers, and sometimes revolts broke out against the retreating Soviet forces in parallel with the military invasion, contributing to the success of German military operations. Certain events are not sufficiently documented and investigated, and seem to contradict widespread theses about a one-way, German-initiated policy of massacre, primarily against Jews, “semi-human Slavs” or Red Army soldiers.
Any reconstruction of events should include the perspective of locals. A renewed focus on the attitude of the locals towards great and dramatic events of history is leading to important shifts in current historiography. In the study of the Holocaust and other incidents of mass violence, a distinct direction of research has focused on the study of the testimonies of the survivors and other eyewitnesses.
At the same time, events in any given society should be seen in the wider regional context. By combining local and regional perspectives, the organisers of the conference hope to disclose the unique and general features of processes that occurred across East Central Europe. Another task set by the conference organisers is to capture and reflect on how these processes have been interpreted by different historiographical traditions.
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