Every invading army conveys its message first through brutal force, guns, shells, and bullets, and only later occupies itself with explaining to the locals that in fact they come in peace and providing reasons it might be a good thing to be occupied. Communication with the occupied population is always conducted through language specialists who either come from within the army itself and who have cultural knowledge and foreign-language skills, or those who are recruited on the ground. Those who come from the second group usually experience endless problems as they can be seen to be collaborators.1 Despite the outright genocidal nature of the campaign the Wehrmacht unleashed in the USSR in June 1941, the Germans needed to address the issue of how to talk to people.
Some studies argue the significance of foreign languages at the centre of conflict: âforeignnessâ and foreign languages are key to understanding what happens in war.2 In multi-lingual and multi-national settings, which are inevitable during both occupation and in instances of cooperation with allied countries, the interpreterâs role is of vital importance. This is not just true of any given individual engaged in mediating the language, but also of translators as a group.3 Social approaches to the topic of war interpreters have only recently started attracting scholarly attention.4 This chapter aims to add to this growing area of study.
Unaccepted Defeat
Those people belonging to a national diaspora can be a source for identifying able language specialists; during the German-Soviet War, White Russian émigrés took on the role of interpreters. In the Russian Civil War, the White Army was defeated and suffered a hasty exodus from Crimea in November 1920.5 The Russian fleet, numbering some 150,000 people, civilians and military men alike, including the entire First Army Corps, landed in Turkey.6 While the Cossacks went to Lemnos,7 the First Army Corps, roughly 26,000 men, went to Gallipoli.8 Three years of internment in a makeshift camp followed, beset by enormous hardships. This experience left an indelible mark on these now stateless Russians, an experience that only hardened them in their beliefs that the fight against Bolshevism would be revived sooner or later.9
From 1921, the last leaving the camp in May 1923, the members of the White Army began to scatter across Europe and the world. Former soldiers and officers took up low-paying jobs as coal miners, carpenters, bellboys, and taxi drivers. Yet they refused to give up their identity. âRussia abroad,â the term coined by interwar Ă©migrĂ©s to describe their extraterritorial nation, articulated an alternative version of âRussianness,â different and even hostile to the Soviet one. This âalternative Russiaâ produced and maintained its own set of holidays, a rich press and publishing, and charitable, educational, and professional institutions, underpinned by non-Soviet Russian culture and a fervent Orthodox Christianity. Despite being geographically diverse, these exiled Russians created a modern imagined nation.10
White Russians also created their own defence force. In order to preserve the identity of the White Army, if not the actual entity itself, on 1 September 1924, a unique organisation was formed, known as the Russian All-Military Union (ROVS).11 Lieutenant General Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel, the commander-in-chief of the White forces and an architect of the emigré evacuation, headed this organisation, which he himself had established.12
Not only was ROVS intended to maintain the cohesion of the former White Russian movement, it was explicitly intended to mobilise émigrés for a possible war against Soviet Russia. In fact, ROVS was a disguised demobilised army, and its structure and internal cohesion built upon the camaraderie of the Civil War veterans and their conviction that the war was not over yet. Participation in the organisation was on a voluntary basis.13 Because of their fierce anti-communist convictions as well as their language skills, in 1941 these exiled Russians constituted one of the important pools of recruits for the Wehrmacht.14
Language and the Army
As early as 1935, Russians had appeared in the Wehrmachtâs system of language training.15 The army worked with Reichsfachschaft fĂŒr das Dolmetscherwesen (RfD, Imperial Association for Interpreting), a body of language professionals, headed by Otto Monien,16 that was responsible for most of the language manuals and guides used by the defence force.17 The RfD worked with career linguists and a number of universities (such as Heidelberg University). This ensured a steady supply of experienced specialists.18
Nazi Germany had an administrative system of Wehrkreis (military district) that provided an uninterrupted flow of recruits into the army. Each Wehrkreis had a Dolmetscher-Kompanie (Interpreter Company) attached to it. âCompanyâ here refers to a bureaucratic formality to identify a body of men: Berlinâs âCompanyâ was 1200 men strong, whereas Dresden had a tenth as many men.19 When conscripted, a recruit who knew any foreign language to a reasonable level of expertise was sent to the respective districtâs Company for screening, a process which included oral and written examinations to certify proficiency. Three grades could be awarded: grey card (Sprachkundiger, âlanguage assistant,â or rudimentary knowledge), yellow card (Ăbersetzer, âtranslator,â or mediocre level), or red card (Dolmetscher, âinterpreter,â or fluent in the language).20
Depending on proficiency results, the prospective interpreter was then assigned a SonderfĂŒhrer (Special Leader, hereafter Sdf) rank, was trained in special military terminology, and from there sent to a selected military unit, headquarters, prisoner of war (POW) camp, or propaganda formation.21 On commencement of the war in August 1939, men with specialised skills, but without the necessary military training, could be promoted to non-commissioned officer (NCO) or officer supervisory positions as Sdf.22 This rank had been introduced in 1937. While not a regular soldier, an Sdf held a rank equivalent to that of his military counterparts, the so-called Stellengruppe.23 Sdf âGâ (GruppenfĂŒhrer) was Corporal; Sdf âOâ (Oberfeldwebel) Company Sergeant Major; Sdf âZâ (ZugfĂŒhrer) platoon leader, same level as Lieutenant; Sdf âKâ (KompaniefĂŒhrer) Company leader, an equivalent to that of Captain; Sdf âBâ (BataillonsfĂŒhrer) Major; and Sdf âRâ (RegimentsfĂŒhrer) Colonel, a short-lived, rare rank that was abolished by March 1940.24
In Berlin, a special sub-institution existed that was preoccupied with the replenishment of qualified personnel, Dolmetscher-Lehrabteilung (Interpreter Department). This was an integral part of the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme High Command of the Wehrmacht) and an umbrella organisation for all the Companies.25 Various specialists who had knowledge of Russian culture worked there, including linguists and historians of Russia.26 The head of the Russian-language section was a famous Slavist, Maximilian Braun, who was born in Saint Petersburg in 1903.27
The Germans never trusted Russian nationalists and were afraid of political rivalry, and so repeatedly banned émigré personnel from service in the army.28 However, there is enough evidence to show that at the unit level, these bans were in fact ignored, since the German army, driven by military necessity, was in need of people that were familiar with the Russian language.29 In the occupied territories, Germans transmitted their orders almost completely through interpreters.30
For the role of interpreter in the occupied territories, the Wehrmacht preferred to use Germans, but Russian Ă©migrĂ©s became the âgeneral exceptionâ to the rule because of their fluency in the language.31 Recruitment of Russians was thus carried out in a semi-unofficial fashion. For example, shortly before the invasion of the USSR, on 13 June 1941 at a special meeting in Danzig, ârepresentatives of the German Army appealed to the Russians with an offer to voluntarily join the army as interpreters, mentioning that in such a post, Russian officers were especially desirable.â Colonel of the Life-Guard Finlandskii Regiment, Dmitrii Khodnev, was the first to answer the German call.32 Khodnev was subsequently attached to the supply department of the 36th Motorised Division, where he served for a few months in 1941, before being demobilised.
Some of the exiles from the Russian Empire were from the Baltic and had German ethnic backgrounds that made them highly desirable for interpreter positions.33 Exactly how many bilingual Baltic Germans took part in the German-Soviet War remains unknown, as do their exact functions.34 Under the racial laws of the time, Baltic Germans were not considered to be âRussiansâ; therefore, they were not treated as a group of âuseful aliensâ that otherwise would have produced a steady documentary trail. Ethnic Russian Ă©migrĂ©s, many of them not even having citizenship of the respective country they resided in, were a different story and are somewhat easier to identify in the documentary record. While it is difficult to estimate absolute numbers of Russian Ă©migrĂ©s who were sent to the USSR as interpreters, we can estimate some figures. By May 1943, 1200 interp...