The Linguistic Policy of the German Occupation Authorities in Belarus during the First and Second World Wars

Abstract

The linguistic policy implemented by the occupying powers in Belarusian territories during the World War I and World War II has never before been studied in a comparative perspective. In the present article, the author examines the territories of the Ober-Ost occupation district (1915–1918) and the occupied territories of the Belarus (1941–1944). The article poses the following research questions: Was there a policy of Germanization of the Belarusian population in the occupied territories during the two world wars? What role was assigned to the languages of national minorities in these periods? What was the position of the occupation authorities regarding the competition between the Cyrillic and Latin alphabets? How did the occupation authorities address the issue of language in education? What policies were pursued toward the Polish and Russian languages—the languages of the former metropolises? The research is based primarily on archival documents, both published and previously unpublished, discovered by the author in various archives. The analysis revealed that the most consistent feature of German occupation policy in both wars was the support of the Belarusian language (albeit grounded in different ideological rationales), the rejection of the Germanization of the local population, the promotion of minority languages, the use of the national language in education, as well as depolonization and derussification. The most evident difference was that, unlike the occupation authorities of the First World War, the General Commissariat of Belarus initially prohibited and later restricted the teaching of the German language for racial reasons. Nevertheless, it should be noted that the needs of the army and the economy frequently adjusted the linguistic policy of the German authorities.