Russian/German Phrase Book

[desantnik]

This 108-page "Brief Russian-German Military Phrase Book" for "the soldier and junior commander" was set to print 29 May 1941, almost a month before the actual German invasion. This book was definitely not intended for jovial, fraternal conversations between the two military powers' service members.

The Soviet GRU defector writing under the pseudonym Viktor Suvorov invokes this booklet as one piece of evidence indicating Soviet intentions to invade the West, however Stalin was preempted by Hitler. This proposal has been fiercely contested by both Western and Russian historians.

Back to the booklet, for starters, the very first phrases the soldier is urged to memorize are "Halt!", "Drop your weapon!", and "Hands up!".

Chapter 10 deals with "Capture of a Railroad Station by Disembarking or Reconnaissance Party" and includes the phrase "Cease transmission of telegraphs or I'll shoot!"

Finally, the booklet has ID drawings of German aircraft and tanks.


Interestingly, the booklet is not classified, however this is are "27" and "35" control numbers stamped on the final pages.

You draw your own conclusions.

[CtahhR]

Some how I don't think there will have been many learning "Cease transmission of telegraphs or I'll shoot!" it's far easier just to shoot.

This is a fascinating item... I suppose it doesn't have any subtle phrases to deal with civilian women? "Don't worry, we won't touch you".

[desantnik]

No, these are all "get to the point" phrases - no niceties and no time for hanky panky.

A series of queries in sequence on page 64 - 65:

Where is water?

Is it potable?

You drink it first!

Give me the bucket!

[CtahhR]

"Give me the bucket!" that is the one I'd have polished off to perfection. I never thought there could be a perfect "guide book" phrase but I think you just presented it.

"Give me the bucket and I'll shoot!"

[deValcourt]

I have seen similar Cold War versions of this type of book - Russian-English port of call phrases. These questions were designed to illicit information that might be useful to the KGB officer on board. They start with the usual greetings and progress to questions about the other persons family, and then "where do you work" and eventually questions about what contacts they might have that could be of use. In fact, I regret not really looking to see who published it because I expect it was one of the KGB's pocket newspapers or publishing companies.

Regardless, the book you have is clearly designed for vanguard troops of the Red Army or NKVD troops embedded in regular army regiments. It is hardly a "get to know your German neighbors" sort of book. The indirect purpose is rather more obvious than I would have expected. Then again, Hitler and Stalin were never friends (despite early propaganda) and the one wanted to overrun the other from the start. Look at all the photos of the two together and the very obvious body language of hatred toward each other.

Phillip

[medals73]

Originally Posted by deValcourt

It is hardly a "get to know your German neighbors" sort of book.

Interesting, but no more surprising than the French language phrase books that the US military prepared in the late 1920 and early 1930 were intended to get to know our Canadian neighbors. These accompanied the plans to invade Canada and/or defend agains an expected Canadian invasion that were concocted to scare Congress into continuing to fund the military. All military machines think alike and the phrases on their minds are more in the nature of "Hands up" than an involved philosophical discussion.

[CtahhR]

Sometimes you have to question the motivation and agenda of those writing military phrase handbooks. I have various "wartime emergency" phrase books in which some of the most emphasised points are quite passive things such as "Would you like a cup of tea?" and "Where can I pee?". Possibly very hastily converted tourist books than a "combat inspired" guide. Mind you war is sometimes more "cricket" between some combatants that others.

Then you have the cliché "For you the war is over".

Somewhere, deep in the collection (so deep I haven't seen it in about 15 years), I have a first half of the 19th century military phrasebook and the phrases that are suggested for interacting in different languages are so obscure that you need an English dictionary just to understand the English. It was taken for granted that any enemy you ever bump into whilst in the service of the British Empire would, of course, know every detail of the Greek and Roman classics and the bible. Not the sort of "nonsense" you will be finding in Soviet handbooks though.

[desantnik]

Originally Posted by medals73

Interesting, but no more surprising than the French language phrase books that the US military prepared in the late 1920 and early 1930 were intended to get to know our Canadian neighbors. These accompanied the plans to invade Canada and/or defend agains an expected Canadian invasion that were concocted to scare Congress into continuing to fund the military. All military machines think alike and the phrases on their minds are more in the nature of "Hands up" than an involved philosophical discussion.

Ed, I'd be curious to see that. It's pretty well known that the US military post WWI had its own existential problems and an invasion was probably far from anyone's real priorities. After being gutted post-WWI, for at least the '30s it was pretty focused on the growing threat that materialized on the Old Continent.

[medals73]

Originally Posted by desantnik

Ed, I'd be curious to see that. It's pretty well known that the US military post WWI had its own existential problems and an invasion was probably far from anyone's real priorities. After being gutted post-WWI, for at least the '30s it was pretty focused on the growing threat that materialized on the Old Continent.

I wish I could remember the name of the classmate from graduate school, but it is one of those things that have gone over the decades. I know he was a fairly young US Army major who was being groomed to go back to West Point and teach history. Most of those folks had very little to do with the other graduate students, with those they called the "civlians". I took some military history courses, until I realised that I'd never get a visa to do the research I wanted to do. He'd been sent off to do a MA (or was it a PhD) before returning to "mother church". Somehow, given the deep and serious work he did it must have been a PhD? He actually a decent historian. Anyway, he was working on the efforts to justify a larger and stronger US army in the post-Great-War period, as the experiences of that conflict came together with postwar economic reality to make the task of keeping that large military very difficult. I felt sorry for him when he discovered the material on the "threat from/to Canada", as he had drunk very deeply of the "Kool Aid" and didn't want to believe of the US military what he was discovering in the documents. I suspect none of his research was ever published (that would be a shame), but most of those guys who went off to teach at the academies never published anything (and most of these theses and dissertations were witheld from University Microfilms -- as it was in those days).

[desantnik]

Yeah, I hate it when that happens - probably University of Roswell.

This from a quick scan of web http://www.history.army.mil/books/Li.../chapter4.htm:

"A year after the armistice the Army had demobilized fifty-five of its sixty-two divisions, including all the National Guard and National Army units (Table 7). Before the units left service, the War Department gave the American people the opportunity to show their appreciation to the men who had fought in the war. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington held divisional parades and over five hundred regiments marched through the streets of their hometowns.6

After November 1919 only the 1st through the 7th Divisions and a few smaller units remained active. All were Regular Army units. These divisions retained their wartime configurations, but personnel authorizations for fiscal year 1920 prevented full manning. Divisional regiments had the strengths prescribed in the prewar tables of organization issued on 3 May 1917, and the ammunition, supply, and sanitary trains had only enough men to care for their equipment. Within only a year, the mighty combat force the Army had struggled to build during 1917-18 had vanished without any plans to replace it.7 The helter-skelter pace of demobilization and the lack of any sound transitional planning greatly undermined efforts to create an effective peacetime force. A student of demobilization, Frederic L. Paxon, characterized this situation as worse than a "madhouse in which the crazy might be incarcerated. They were at large." "

And this is the site's summary of the day:

"After World War I the Army quickly demobilized its forces, but memories of the unpreparedness of 1917 caused the nation to change the way it maintained its military forces. Infantry and cavalry divisions, rather than regiments or smaller units, became the pillars that would support future mobilization. Officers examined the structure of those pillars and adopted a modified, but powerful, square infantry division designed for frontal attack and a small light cavalry division for reconnaissance. Although the lessons of war influenced the structure of these divisions, more traditional criteria regarding their local geographical employment continued to affect their organization. But with no real enemy in sight and the nation's adoption of a generally isolationist foreign policy, it is not surprising that Congress provided neither the manpower nor the materiel to equip even a caretaker force adequately."