Copyright by Jeffrey C. Rutherford 2007 - University of Texas ...

elatively equal, the use of letters written by members of these additional divisions should
provides a strong supplement to understanding the mentalities of the infantrymen under
investigation.
A soldier’s mentality was molded by his Heimat’s long-term cultural and social
influences – the religious, class, and political traditions – as well as by the more
immediate experiences of the 1920s and 1930s. The differing historical and cultural
backgrounds of East Prussia, Berlin-Brandenburg and Rhineland-Westphalia were bound
to produce differences in how these soldiers responded to and viewed the war in the
Soviet Union. One way to examine these differences is using the methodological tools of
Alltagsgeschichte. 118 Proponents of this school of history examine the every-day practices
and the conceptual frameworks that develop around them which people utilize to
understand their world. This approach holds great merit for a study of combat troops as it
should be possible to examine how soldiers fit their experiences of war and occupation
into pre-existing notions and belief frameworks. 119 By analyzing the writings of these
men using this methodology, patterns and practices specific to regions will be identified
in both combat and occupation and this will provide a necessary specificity concerning
both the committing of crimes and the motivation for doing so.
Utilizing only German sources, however, necessarily skews the historical record.
Not only do the seemingly complete and comprehensive Wehrmacht records frequently
omit mention of atrocities, the records themselves were tampered with after the war. Due
118 On Alltagsgeschichte see Alf Lüdtke, “What is the History of Everyday Life and Who are its
Practitioners,” in idem. (ed.), The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and
Ways of Life (Princeton, 1995), pp. 3-40.
119 Two excellent examples of this methodological approach are Alf Lüdtke, “The Appeal of Exterminating
‘Others’: German Workers and the Limits of Resistance,” in Journal of Modern History (64/1992), pp. 46-
67, and Hans-Joachim Schröder, “Alltagsleben im Russlandkrieg 1941-1945. Eine deutsche Perspektive,”
in Hans-Adolf Jacobson (ed.), Deutsch-russische Zeitenwende. Krieg und Frieden 1941-1945 (Baden-
Baden, 1995), pp. 388-409.
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