{"id":7161,"date":"2021-09-14T07:06:31","date_gmt":"2021-09-14T05:06:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/how-is-order-enforced-during-war-and-occupation-a-conference-on-local-administration-during-the-first-and-second-world-wars\/"},"modified":"2025-03-26T10:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-03-26T09:09:16","slug":"how-is-order-enforced-during-war-and-occupation-a-conference-on-local-administration-during-the-first-and-second-world-wars","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.uni.lu\/c2dh-en\/articles\/how-is-order-enforced-during-war-and-occupation-a-conference-on-local-administration-during-the-first-and-second-world-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"How is order enforced during war and occupation? A conference on local administration during the first and second World Wars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Wartime regimes are more than simple top-down structures of terror and coercion between the occupier and the occupied or between the warring state and its population. Existing administrations, networks and functional elites took on complex roles, often adapting to local circumstances. Administrative authorities and personnel were constantly interacting with the population regarding everyday affairs. Studying the responses of administrations to the World Wars could enrich our understanding of contemporary history. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n

The conference Local administration during the first and second World Wars<\/em> assembled case studies from different regions with various methodological approaches and aimed at exploring the complex realities of war on the local level. It was organized by Dr. phil. Jan Vondr\u00e1\u010dek, researcher at the Masaryk Institute and the Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences <\/em>(MIA CAS) in Prague as a hybrid conference. In his introductory remarks, Jan Vondr\u00e1\u010dek anticipated some overarching topics connecting many of the subsequent contributions. By focusing on local authorities and administrative structures, researchers could overcome simplifying dichotomies. Examining the practical implications of wartime regimes on the ground would allow for a deeper understanding of everyday realities during and after periods of war. Vondr\u00e1\u010dek also elaborated on the concepts of the \u201cdouble state\u201d (Ernst Fraenkel) and of the \u201cliving administration\u201d (Thomas Ellwein) as useful approaches for the study of local administrations. The underlying question of the conference was: How is order enforced during war and occupation? Or, as Therese Garstenauer (Vienna) has put it in her commentary: \u201cWho gets things done?\u201d<\/p>\n\n

While the presented papers covered a broad variety of cases, some commonalities recurred. The presentations showed that local communities had the potential to influence policies and war events, and that central administrations often failed to permeate territories down to its smallest units, such as villages. In her presentation, Kathryn Densford (Elizabethtown) analyzed local agency in Lower Austrian and Moravian provinces when it came to the requisitioning of food from the population during WWI. In one example, local women stood up against the requisitioning of milk from their village, complaining about the shortage of nutrition for their families. This was not the only case in which village communities tried to take their fate into their own hands. In Nazi-occupied Belarus, as explained by Leonid Rein (Jerusalem), peasant militias were set up in order to protect the population from the Guerilla warfare by Belarus partisans. The partisans who dominated most of the area terrorized villages that they suspected of collaboration with the Germans.<\/p>\n\n

Municipal and local authorities could also display some degrees of self-determination in the domains of culture and arts despite the existence of a centralized cultural policy. As Felix Steffan (Munich) showed for the case of Rosenheim in Nazi Germany, certain communities were able to manage their art exhibitions and programs rather independently from the central authorities (in this case, the Reichskulturkammer<\/em>), and maintained their art scene through member-based associations. Sol\u00e8ne Amice (Paris) described a conflict between municipal and national authorities in France regarding the preservation of cultural heritage during WWI, which indicated a certain local emancipation when it came to the question of \u201cownership\u201d of culture.<\/p>\n\n\n

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