Polonia mon amour

1939 – Hitler, Stalin and Eastern Europe. Geschichtswerkstatt Europa
 The international Forum will take place on 16 – 20 September 2009 in Wroclaw / Poland.
The thematic focus is the year 1939 and, in particular, the „Hitler-Stalin-Pact“. The pact had far-reaching consequences which are still firmly embedded in the remembrance landscapes of Germany and Poland. The symposium will deal not only with the German-Soviet Nonagression Pact, but also the current debates about the form and contents of contemporary memorials to 1939 in Germany, Poland, Moldova, Lithuania and Russia.
The Third Reich’s revision of the post-war Versaille order culminated in late summer of 1939: within five weeks Hitler, with Stalin as ally, transformed both political power relations across Europe and the political landscape of east central Europe, thereby igniting the Second World War. On 23 August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union signed a Nonagression Pact complete with a Secret Additional Protocol on the „territorial-political reconfiguration“ of eastern Europe. On 1 September, the Third Reich attacked neighbouring Poland and within a few weeks was occupying both Poland and the Free City of Gdansk. On 17 September, the Red Army marched into eastern Poland and advanced as far as the demarcation line stipulated in the Hitler-Stalin Pact. On 28 September, the Third Reich and the Soviet Union signed a borders and friendships treaty on the restoration of „peace and order“ in the region of „the hitherto Polish states “. With this the two dictators in Berlin and Moscow had, in accordance with the Prussian-Tsarist tradition of a negative stance towards Poland, destroyed the Second Polish Republic and divided it amongst themselves. The German-Soviet occupation of Poland lasted until Hitler’s attack on his former ally Stalin on June 22, 1941.
Thus in August and September 1939 the foundations were laid for the briefly successful attempt at establishing a „new Europe“ along Nazi lines from „Narvik to Crete“. The main elements of this were occupation, territorial redistribution, forced displacement, forced labour, Holocaust and Porrajmos. By spring 1939 Czechoslovakia had been destroyed by Germany and a Slovakian Republic established as a vassal state of the Third Reich, and the Memel region in Lithuania had been surrendered to Hitler. In October the USSR forced „mutual aid pacts“ on Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, sanctioning the establishment of Soviet military bases. In November the Soviet Union was attacked by neighbouring Finland.
By taking the triad „Hitler, Stalin and eastern Europe“ as our theme, we focus attention on the German and Soviet policies, coordinated and delimited by one another, in the spheres of influence in north eastern, east central and south eastern Europe. The theme also raises questions about the influential groups in politics and society in these European regions and their reactions to the intervention of the dictatorial empires. Alongside forms of active and passive resistance, we will discuss other behaviours, such as indifference, conformity, opportunism and collaboration.
Finally we will investigate the widely differing east and west European significances of 1939 as an object of commemoration: while from the Polish and Baltic viewpoints 1939 marks the beginning of the troubled 50 year period of occupation, loss of souvereignty and dictatorial rule which only came to an end in 1989 (or 1991), in Slovakia emphasis is placed on the beginning of statehood, although remembrance of this is ambivalent. In western European perceptions of the shocking aspects of 1939 are counterbalanced by 1945 – this is also partly true from the Czech perspective. From Russian perspectives 1939 is either entirely absent as an object of commemoration because priority is given to the year 1941 as a marker of the end of a period, or, from a nostalgic Soviet position, it represents the conflict within the ‚imperialist faction’. An engagement with 1939 inevitably leads to the central question in the history of Europe and the world: did the Second World War begin in 1939 or 1941?
An introductory address will lead into the main part of the symposium – interviews by contemporary historians with prominent contemporary witnesses from Poland, Germany, Moldova and Latvia – and the symposium will close with a plenary podium discussion.
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Geschichtswerkstatt Europa is a programme set up by the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility, Future” (EVZ), which supports international projects addressing the issue of the culture of memory and remembrance in Europe. Its aim is to strengthen dialogue between young Europeans comparing the differences and similarities in historical perceptions of the collective experience of oppression in the 20th century at a national, regional and local level. 
The Institute for Applied History is responsible for project support in cooperation with the European University Viadrina. The Institute provides advice and support on project ideas, from sketching the initial outline to completing the application and accounting procedures. It will also organise a meeting in Frankfurt (Oder) in spring 2010. The International Forum is organised by the Global and European Studies Institute at the University of Leipzig.