Ensnared between Hitler and Stalin: Refugee Scientists in the USSR

by David K Zimmerman

Overview

In the 1930s, hundreds of scientists and scholars fled Hitler’s Germany. Many found safety, but some made the disastrous decision to seek refuge in Stalin’s Soviet Union. The vast majority of these refugee scholars were arrested, murdered, or forced to flee the Soviet Union during the Great Terror. Many of the survivors then found themselves embroiled in the Holocaust. Ensnared between Hitler and Stalin explores the forced migration of these displaced academics from Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union.

The book follows the lives of thirty-six scholars through some of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth century. It reveals that not only did they endure the chaos that engulfed central Europe in the decades before Hitler came to power, but they were also caught up in two of the greatest mass murders in history. David Zimmerman examines how those fleeing Hitler in their quests for safe harbour faced hardship and grave danger, including arrest, torture, and execution by the Soviet state. Drawing on German, Russian, and English sources, Ensnared between Hitler and Stalin illustrates the complex paths taken by refugee scholars in flight.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487543662
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/21/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	376
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

David Zimmerman is a professor of military history at the University of Victoria.

Table of Contents

List of Images
Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Scholars and Scientists
2. German Scientists in the Soviet Union before Hitler
3. Scientists and Communists
4. Scientists in Flight to the Soviet Union
5. Living in Stalin’s Soviet Union
6. Refugee Scholarship in the Soviet Union
7. The Great Terror
8. Into Stalin’s Frying Pan
9. From Stalin’s Frying Pan into Hitler’s Fire
10. From the Great Terror to the Shoah
11. Survival and Triumph
12. The Ensnared in the Cold War
13. The Long Ordeal

Conclusion: The Ensnared and History

Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

Robert Bud

"Here is twentieth-century history with a human face. This book provides a necessary and moving next step beyond chilling statistics of murder by Hitler and Stalin, on the one hand, and, on the other, heart-warming stories of academic refugees from Nazi Germany welcomed and prospering in Britain and the US. It shows individuals' struggles in all their variety, sometimes idealistic, often desperate — and always at the mercy of luck."

Paul Weindling

"How academics were caught between Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union shows how high expectations of a land of refuge were cruelly dashed. The group of thirty-six36 researchers featured in this book had a creative but brief period before being subjected to Soviet imprisonment in appalling conditions. Eventually most were returned back to Hitler's Germany, putting their lives at grave risk. This is a thrilling and impeccably researched microstudy of how two dictatorships manipulated a group of high-achieving group of academics' lives."

Frank W. Stahnisch

"David Zimmerman details German-speaking scholars' and scientists' stories and cultural adjustment while revealing their societal and academic contributions to the Soviet Union. He also demonstrates the ferociousness with which the Nazi regime persecuted these experts since 1933. The book is an obvious step forward in English-speaking language scholarship. At the same time, it is distressingly timely given the current political and military conflicts as they again lead to growing numbers of refugee scientists globally."