Otto's Random Thoughts

Below is a translation of the first part of the decree ordering the first mass mobilization of Russian-Germans into the forced labor detachm...

UKAZ PRESIDIUM of the SUPREME SOVIET of the USSR On the criminal responsibilities for flight from places of obligatory and decreed set...

The History Department of the University of Ghana is set to reclaim its former glory. We now have eleven full time lecturers of which eight ...

Yesterday I taught my class on world history between 1914 and 1945. The students asked a lot of questions. This means they are paying close ...

The Stalin regime classified the deported Russian-Germans as special settlers and imposed a number of legal restrictions upon them. Later th...

Today is the official day of remembrance for the deportation of the Russian-Germans from their homelands in the Volga, the Black Sea, the Ca...

Tomorrow is the official day of commemoration for the Stalin regime's deportation of the Russian-Germans in 1941. On this day the Presid...

Sunday marks the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the deportation of the Volga and other Russian-Germans from their ancestral territ...

Things went pretty well this week. Yesterday I gave a presentation on the Russian-Germans entitled "The Transformation of the Russian-G...

The anniversary of the deportation of the Volga Germans and subsequently the other ethnic German communities of the western USSR is traditio...

Timeline for the German minority in the Russian Empire and USSR 1763 – Manifesto by Empress Catherine II inviting Christian foreigners to...

On 23 August 1939, Molotov and Ribbentrop signed a "non-aggression pact" dividing up Central Europe between the USSR and Nazi Germ...

Yesterday, I got the anti-virus software subscription on my laptop renewed for free by the university. This is one of the great benefits I g...

Today we had our first faculty meeting of the semester. Last semester I was the only new person. This semester we have five new people. The ...

Ramen noodles are universal. We even have them in Africa. I have taken to preparing them in a mixture of tomato paste, shito sauce, and ketc...

Under Jakob's Ladder is getting amazing press in the UK. It is beyond anything I could ever have imagined. If you go see the movie just...

I have decided there is no point in wasting money. For instance a 1.5 liter bottle of water here costs 1.30 cedis. But, you can buy the same...

HIST 309 Aspects of Early Modern European History Fall Semester 2011 Department of History University of Ghana J. Otto Pohl, Ph.D. Meeting ...

Stalin began the deportation of the ethnic German population of the European USSR to Kazakhstan and Siberia in August 1941. The official da...

This morning I got about 500 words written on my cotton paper. Most of what I wrote was on the section describing the relative success of th...