Based on the book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder, write a 10+ page journal from the perspective of 25-year-old German...

This is a very
interesting and
compelling assignment. Though I cannot write the 10 pages for you, I will

provide you with some thoughts that you can adapt or use to organize your
work.

First, this assignment asks you to consider your
character's mindset. Your character
was born around 1900 and is a person of
German origin living in Poland. As such, you would have
been affected by both
Stalin's policies and by Nazi policies, particularly as Poland was
occupied
by both powers from 1939€“1941 (see page xi in Bloodlands
by
Snyder). Poland was part of the "bloodlands" that Snyder discusses in his
book, an
area that was subjected to the mass killings of both the Wehrmacht
and the Red Army, the Soviet
NKVD and the German SS.

First, you must decide whether your character is
Jewish or not. If
he was Jewish, his fate would have been altered, as he would have faced Nazi

persecution and would have likely been killed by Nazis or had to flee. However, if you
were not
Jewish and were a German who had witnessed German defeat in World
War I, you might have embraced
the rise of Hitler in 1933. As Snyder writes
on page 9 of Bloodlands, most
Germans believed that
"Poland's borders were illegitimate," so your character might
have supported
Hitler's rise and events such as Krystalnacht. Your character may have
supported
Nazism and the German takeover of Poland.

In
addition, your character might
have heard of the famines that were taking
place in the Ukraine. As Snyder explains on pages
29€“30 of
Bloodlands, many Ukrainians fled into Poland. If you
were
committed to Fascism and to Nazism, you would have been opposed to
Stalinism and hated his
imposition of collectivization on Ukraine. The Poles
referred to Stalin as the "Hunger
Czar" (page 30), who caused his people to
go hungry.

Related to your
diary entries during World War
II (1939€“1945), if you were a committed Fascist and supported
Hitler, you
would have supported his rampage through Europe. Though Germany and the
Soviets
signed a non-aggression pact in 1939 (the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact),
the Nazis invaded the Soviet
Union on June 22, 1941, ending the pact.
Therefore, your entires for 1939 and 1941 would reflect
these events, and
your entry for May 9, 1945, would include your reflections about the end of

the war. After the war, your character might have been imprisoned by the Soviets who
occupied
Poland if he had sided with the Nazis. You can write about your
character's fate following the
war, and you can use the other sources your
teacher has recommended to gain more knowledge about
this time
period.

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