German names for conqured cities

[nwinther]

Did Germany (Hitler) have plans to rename the conqured russian cities once they'd defeated the Soviets?

It was common practice for the communists to name/rename towns and cities after prominent communists, Leningrad and Stalingrad being the most obvious, but a number of towns/cities were named after communists: Sverdlovsk, Kirov, Kalinin, Kuybyshev etc.

I can't imagine Hitler would allow these cities to be named after famed communists - but would he just revert the names back to their Tsarist names, or would he use the oppertunity to rename some of them to something more... German?

When you look at Rosenbergs plan for the Lebensraum, there are obvious german names of the areas/states. But what about the cities?

 

[Veldmaarschalk]

I only know that they (or at least wanted to) renamed Sevastopol to Theodorichhafen and Simferopol to Gotenburg.

 

[nwinther]

I only know that they (or at least wanted to) renamed Sevastopol to Theodorichhafen and Simferopol to Gotenburg.

Yeah, I get that from the Rosenberg Plans also. But Leningrad and Stalingrad pretty sure wouldn't get to keep those names. But Hitlergrad wouldn't be like him, would it? More likely it would be named after something from a Wagner opera. Or more likely "Grossstadt Himmelreich Hermann Göring" I+II.

 

[Finnish Dragon]

AFAIK, Hitler wanted to destroy Leningrad.

1941
April: Hitler intends to occupy and then destroy Leningrad, according to plan Barbarossa and Generalplan Ost

I don´t think he spent much time considering the new name for Leningrad. About Stalingrad I don´t know. I guess if Germany had been able to crush Soviet Union then they would have renamed that city and other Russian cities named after Bolshevik leaders.

 

[nwinther]

Interestingly, the article itself explicitly says Hitler intended to capture the city. Other than the single line no other mention is made of a destruction.

From a logic point of view, it seems foolish to destroy a city of such strategic significance, even after the war would be won. Another thing is to entirely destroy a city. It takes quite an effort and is parctically worth nothing. The harbours, smelters and factories in Leningrad would be quite a boon for German industrial potential, and would secure a strategic industrial "reserve", out of reach from allied bombers.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Interestingly, the article itself explicitly says Hitler intended to capture the city. Other than the single line no other mention is made of a destruction.

From a logic point of view, it seems foolish to destroy a city of such strategic significance, even after the war would be won. Another thing is to entirely destroy a city. It takes quite an effort and is parctically worth nothing. The harbours, smelters and factories in Leningrad would be quite a boon for German industrial potential, and would secure a strategic industrial "reserve", out of reach from allied bombers.

The territories that the Nazis intended to conquer had plenty enough smelters and harbours. The Nazis preferred to raze those cities which held symbolic value to their enemies. They considered symbols and perceptions to be just as important to their planned European Empire as tangible assets, i.e. smelters, cities, railroads and so on. And for that reason Hitler was of the opinion that a razed and destroyed Leningrad was more valuable to a victorious Germany than an intact city. Kind of like how the Romans razed Carthage, to show the world that you don't mess with Rome.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

AFAIK, Hitler wanted to destroy Leningrad.



I don´t think he spent much time considering the new name for Leningrad. About Stalingrad I don´t know. I guess if Germany had been able to crush Soviet Union then they would have renamed that city and other Russian cities named after Bolshevik leaders.

St. Petersburg would probably do, considering how Peter was a Germanophile... Alternatively they could simply rename it Gross-Schlüsselburg, after the suburb Shlisselburg which already has a convenient German sounding name.

 

[nwinther]

The territories that the Nazis intended to conquer had plenty enough smelters and harbours. The Nazis preferred to raze those cities which held symbolic value to their enemies. They considered symbols and perceptions to be just as important to their planned European Empire as tangible assets, i.e. smelters, cities, railroads and so on. And for that reason Hitler was of the opinion that a razed and destroyed Leningrad was more valuable to a victorious Germany than an intact city. Kind of like how the Romans razed Carthage, to show the world that you don't mess with Rome.

Can you name any examples? And I don't mean cities destroyed due to battle, but outright destruction for the reasons you mention. I mean, Paris was left pretty much alone - if fact, most French, Belgian etc. cities were left alone. A City like Kiev was destroyed not only by battle, but because of the thousands of mines planted there by the Russians! Warsaw was destroyed in 1944, not 39 as would be the case following your argument above. The pre-39-planned destruction of Warsaw was not a complete destruction of the city, but more a remodelling with all that characterized Warsaw would be destroyed and replaced. And the 1944 "destruction" was done in a fit of revenge - not some carefully planned propaganda move.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Can you name any examples? And I don't mean cities destroyed due to battle, but outright destruction for the reasons you mention. I mean, Paris was left pretty much alone - if fact, most French, Belgian etc. cities were left alone. A City like Kiev was destroyed not only by battle, but because of the thousands of mines planted there by the Russians! Warsaw was destroyed in 1944, not 39 as would be the case following your argument above. The pre-39-planned destruction of Warsaw was not a complete destruction of the city, but more a remodelling with all that characterized Warsaw would be destroyed and replaced. And the 1944 "destruction" was done in a fit of revenge - not some carefully planned propaganda move.

Hey, I didn't say they wanted to destroy all cities. Only those of symbolic value to those people Hitler considered irreconcilable enemies. French people were not irreconcilable enemies, hence no reason to harm Paris (unless it was about to fall into the enemy's hand ofc).

Moscow on the other hand was considered by Hitler to be the symbol of Russia, which he wanted to eradicate as a state. I doubt he had any concrete plans in 1941 or 1942, but he did rant about how the city would be destroyed once the Germans captured it. The plans Hitler had ordered drawn up by Rosenberg and the SS (the Generalplan Ost and other such stuff) called for the establishment of some sort of Russian client state or territory called "Moskowien" (German term for Muscovy) which logically would have Moscow as its capital, but considering that this territory was to be just a colony for exploitation, it would not need a multi-million city as a capital, any half decent provincial city with a rail connection would do... Gomel, Tula, or another city on a railroad junction.

Leningrad similarly was -to him- a symbol of the Bolshevik Revolution. I don't know if he really wanted to flatten the whole city after the final victory, but from what I gathered he was also not interested at all in any sort of reconstruction of repopulation. Rosenberg's plans largely neglected Leningrad, instead the Baltic coast was to form an economic and territorial unit dominated by Germans, the "Ostland", with its economic focus on the Baltic cities of Riga and Tallin. Leningrad, with its peripheral position, would not be of much value to Germany anyways, without its population.

I don't recall reading anything about Hitler getting excited about Kiev. It did not have any symbolic value to him.

Warsaw on the other hand was to Hitler a symbol of Poland, a nation he wanted to wipe out, not just on the map but also culturally and to some extent ethnically. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pabst_Plan for a German plan to rebuild Warsaw as a small provincial city...

 

[unmerged(87984)]

Out of the protocols of the Nuremberg Trial, 110th day, April 17th 1946, afternoon session; Rudenko inquiring Rosenberg about the Generalplan Ost:

Können Sie sich daran erinnern, daß Sie nicht nur diese Pläne gebilligt haben, sondern daß Sie sogar neue Namen für Städte erfunden haben; zum Beispiel sollten Simferopol »Gotenburg« und Sewastopol »Theoderichhafen« heißen. Erinnern Sie sich daran?


ROSENBERG: Ja, das stimmt; der Führer sagte mir, daß ich die Umbenennung dieser Städte ausdenken sollte; es war ja auch von einer Umbenennung sehr vieler anderer Städte gesprochen worden.

My Translation:

General Rudenko: Can you remember that not only did you approve of these plans, but that you even invented new names for cities, for example Simferopol should be called "Gotenburg" and Sewastopol "Theoderichhafen". Do you remember it?

Rosenberg: Yes, that is true; the Führer told me, that I should conceive of the renaming of this cities; indeed there had been a lot of talking about the renaming of a lot of other cities.

Maybe you could find something if you want to dig deeper in to the Nuremberg Protocols.

 

[unmerged(71032)]

As for the changing cities names, you can follow examples of name changes in Poland on the territories incorporated into the Reich:

- Gdynia (pre-WWI village Gedingen, turned into a main polish harbor in interbelllum period) was renamed "Gottenhaffen" (Goths Harbor),

- Lodz was renamed Litzmannstadt, after WWI general that took the city in 1914 from Russians.

So, after moving Reich territories east, you could expect both cathegories of new names popping up - either something with racial/ideological context (wonder what name Kyjiv/Kiev would have, something with Vikings?) or related to the victories and victors (Mannsteinberg, Guderianstadt, Rommelhaffen).

But like it was said before, those cities were nto supposed to be such hubs as their were originally - General Plan Ost called for significantly lower population on those areas and dispersed over the small settlements (towns, small cities) on the top of that.

 

[nwinther]

Out of the protocols of the Nuremberg Trial, 110th day, April 17th 1946, afternoon session; Rudenko inquiring Rosenberg about the Generalplan Ost:



My Translation:

General Rudenko: Can you remember that not only did you approve of these plans, but that you even invented new names for cities, for example Simferopol should be called "Gotenburg" and Sewastopol "Theoderichhafen". Do you remember it?

Rosenberg: Yes, that is true; the Führer told me, that I should conceive of the renaming of this cities; indeed there had been a lot of talking about the renaming of a lot of other cities.

Maybe you could find something if you want to dig deeper in to the Nuremberg Protocols.

Very interesting. At least it shows that the Germans were actively considering it. What part of the Nuremberg trial documents should I look for - or is it likely that this particular information exists in its own right or part of some other, popular publishing (going through tens of thousands of documents related to NBT aren't my idea of a fun summer)?

 

[unmerged(87984)]

Searching the NBT documents could be quite time consuming, there are 43 volumes, and they are not fully digitalized.

http://nuremberg.law.harvard.edu/php/docs_swi.php?DI=1&text=overview Here are all of the documents in photocopies, but only as images so it would be hard to search there for such a specific topic. My university library has them all, I'll have to go to the history section tomorrow anyway so I'm going to have a look if I can find anything relevant in the register. I don't have much time, though, and contemporary history is not my specialty; maybe you'd have more luck in some work about the Generalplan Ost (it's an interesting topic after all, maybe someone has already done the work ). When I think of the detail that generally went into the Nazis pipe dreams, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some thought out concept for that, somewhere in a drawer.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

Very interesting. At least it shows that the Germans were actively considering it. What part of the Nuremberg trial documents should I look for - or is it likely that this particular information exists in its own right or part of some other, popular publishing (going through tens of thousands of documents related to NBT aren't my idea of a fun summer)?

The Germans had long, long lists of names for cities, towns and hamlets all across eastern Europe. Litzmannstadt and Gotenhafen are just small examples. I wish I could still find that long list I once saw on the web... basically one of the tasks of the Gauleiters who had Polish / Belorussian territories annexed tpo their lands (East Prussia, Danzig-Westpreußen, Warthegau, Silesia, etc) was to rename the towns so that they appeared more Germanic. The same task was given to the district governors in the Ukraine, in the Baltics, in Belorussia and in the General Gouvernement, although for obvious reasons the Nazi leadership did not require them to come up with Germanic names for all the places, just some of them. This started out as part of the usual cartographic mapping of the conquered territories (the maps the Wehrmacht had were outdated, and mostly labeled in Cyrillic) and turned into a very Nazi-cranky fad.

Place names in the territories annexed to East prussia:
Zichenau (Ciechanów) region http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zichenau_(region) they have almost nothing in common with the original Polish names
Sudauen (Suwalki) region http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landkreis_Sudauen#Ortsnamen same here...

It should be noted that the eradication of pre-German history in the eastern regions of Germany was a fad which had started in the 1920s already. East Prussia used to have a lot of place names which had names that were visibly non-German in origin, i.e. names that ended in -wolla, -eyken, -laugken, -girren, -gallen, -auen and so on. (link (in German)) (Old Prussian, Lithuanian or Polish roots.) After WW1 many places changed their names voluntarily, in 1938 they had a huge government-mandated name change action. This was for purely ideological reasons, and must be seen as strongly connected to Hitler's and other Nazis' urge to rename cities like Stalingrad, Moscow, Leningrad and so on.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskommissariat_Ostland#Ortsnamen
Ortsnamen = place names; the english language version of that page does not have anything about place names. It says that the Reichskommissar reintroduced the place names that had been in use before 1914, and also adapted the names of all "postal towns" (I think this means the postal districts) to the German spelling and pronounciation. I.e. Valmiera --> Wolmar, Liepaja --> Liebau, Baranawitschy --> Baranowitschi and so on

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskommissariat_Ukraine#Ortsnamen
same here: in general place names were left original, but were adapted to German spelling and pronounciation. Some "bolshevik" place names were changed, i.e. Stalino, etc. Some place names were changed totally, though: Zaporizhia/Saporischschja --> Alexanderstadt, Molochansk/Molotschansk --> Halbstadt. This may have been for propaganda reasons.

 

[krieger11b]

The idea of completely destroying so many huge cities is mind boggling, I mean the effort needed to do it alone, wow. I have never seen any real data on how much the Germans destroyed in Warsaw in 1944, I mean they could have destroyed city centers, but all suburbs etc? What a stupid waste. Also how did he in late 1944 find enough troops to and explosive to be wasted on doing that when he had an Epic battle going no too far to the East?

 

[Zebedee]

Interestingly, the article itself explicitly says Hitler intended to capture the city. Other than the single line no other mention is made of a destruction.

From a logic point of view, it seems foolish to destroy a city of such strategic significance, even after the war would be won. Another thing is to entirely destroy a city. It takes quite an effort and is parctically worth nothing. The harbours, smelters and factories in Leningrad would be quite a boon for German industrial potential, and would secure a strategic industrial "reserve", out of reach from allied bombers.

The KM were quite upset when they were told Leningrad was to be razed - they wanted the shipbuilding facilities. Other than that there seems to be little opposition to the plan based on 'economic' rationale. But then the war in the East was a 'race war' and Halder had already rubberstamped the army's acquiescence to this kind of 'action' and the LW were unlikely to oppose such decisions taken by the Nazi leadership.

 

[superflo]

The idea of completely destroying so many huge cities is mind boggling, I mean the effort needed to do it alone, wow. I have never seen any real data on how much the Germans destroyed in Warsaw in 1944, I mean they could have destroyed city centers, but all suburbs etc? What a stupid waste. Also how did he in late 1944 find enough troops to and explosive to be wasted on doing that when he had an Epic battle going no too far to the East?

You don't need many troops to do that. After the uprising was crushed, there was literally no resistance in the city. You can do that with an average amount of occupation troops which were readily available. I don't think explosives were hard to find either.

 

[unmerged(138457)]

I don't think explosives were hard to find either.

Near the end they dumped tons after tons of explosives to the Baltic sea. And still the allies captured enough to blow up hills, mines and small islands. Also Germans had enough idle explosives for the Nerobefehl. So no shortage there.
How to transport and place them in cities is a different matter.

 

[unmerged(75409)]

The idea of completely destroying so many huge cities is mind boggling, I mean the effort needed to do it alone, wow. I have never seen any real data on how much the Germans destroyed in Warsaw in 1944, I mean they could have destroyed city centers, but all suburbs etc? What a stupid waste. Also how did he in late 1944 find enough troops to and explosive to be wasted on doing that when he had an Epic battle going no too far to the East?

Well, th idea was that they would demolish the city center of Warsaw, which was widely damaged anyways, and then the suburbs would just be left to their fates. The Nazis considered the (Polish) people living there as commodities anyways, probably the idea was that they would either be relocated wherever their labor was needed, or that they would help rebuild the provincial Germanic town that was to take its place.

 

[BananaNeptune]

Reichskommissariat Ukraine:

Kiev - Kiroffo (Supposed Medieval Germanic Name after it appeared in the Magdeburg Rights)
Rivne - Rowno (Original Capital of Reichskommissariat Ukraine)
Zhytomyr - Schytomir

Reichskommissariat Kaukasus/ Kaukasien:

Ganja - Elizabethstadt
Baku - Windestadt
Astrakhan - Wolgastadt
Yerevan - Jerewan
Tbilisi - Tiflis (Projected Capital of Reichskommissariat Kaukasus/ Kaukasien)
Ordzhonikidze - Wladikawkas
Stavropol - Kruezstadt (Cross Town, Interesting Story)
Kransodat - Katherinastadt
Viatka - Wjatka
Kazan - Kasan


Reichskommissariat Moskowien

Engels - Kosackenstadt (Original Volga German Name)
Moscow - Moskau
Nizhny Novgorod - Bitter
Tver - Twer
Ofa - Ufa
Arkhangelsk - Erangelstadt

Reichsgau Gotenland:

Melitopol' - Melitopol
Simferopol - Gotenburg
Sevastopol - Theodorischaven

Reichskommissariat Ostland:

Tallinn - Reval
Riga - Riga
Kauen - Kaunas
Minsk - Asgard (Not Verified)
Vilnius - Wilno
Novgorod - Holmgard/ Neugard