Raumordnung, Raumerschließung und Besatzungsalltag im Zweiten Weltkrieg - Plädoyer für eine erweiterte Besatzungsgeschichte
Organization and Appropriation of Space and the Everyday Experience of Occupation During the Second World War. On the Need for a Wider History of Occupation

Summary/Abstract: The article argues for a broader understanding of the history of occupation on the basis of the spatial theory of Henri Lefebvre. In a first step, the Generalplan Ost as designed by Nazi organizers and experts is read as a Nazi representation of space. Moving on from this organization of space, the appropriation of space is examined in a discussion of actual occupation policy in Eastern Europe. Here the Nazi plans for the spatialization of racism were made reality. With the extension of the history of occupation in mind, the paper then moves on from the perspective of the occupier and the focus on planning and execution, to look with Lefebvre at two other dimensions of space: the lived space of everyday life and the associated spatial practices. In doing so the focus is shifted to the actors living in that space, that is, both the occupiers and the occupied populations. Using the example of prisoner of war camps as a clear manifestation of the state of occupation, the practices that emerged in reaction to them will be analysed, revealing both specific patterns of solidarity in a society in a state of occupation and spatial practices ostracizing Jews in urban and rural communities. The paper thus shows that geographies of occupation, although rooted analytically in the occupiers’ representations of space and the ideologies, power relationships and knowledge regimes associated therewith, cannot stop there and need to look at the space of the occupied and their everyday experience. The geographies of power and powerlessness that emerge need to be examined in a wider history of occupation, demonstrating that the mass murder of the European Jews could only take place under the specific conditions of war and occupation.

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