Threatening mobility: Cycling during World War II from a Ukrainian perspective

Although bicycles hardly figure in studies of World War II, their use was often a life-and-death matter. This article explores cycling in Ukraine as part of survival strategies and as an object of mobility policies under the Soviet and Nazi regimes. By analysing newspapers, interviews, diaries and rare archival documents, the article concludes that using a bicycle marked a privilege and at the same time put the rider under suspicion of collaboration with an enemy. During the Nazi occupation, the authorities used bicycles to maintain power over subjugated populations. Later, as the Soviet Army proceeded westwards, many civilians and military persons acquired bicycles, first as war trophies and then from the development of the Soviet bicycle industry in response to wartime experiences. The article proposes understanding World War II as a radical exercise in forcing and limiting mobility. In this context, survival implied an ability to transgress established borders.

"A bicycle is a good thing when it works, but when it breaks, it demands more fuss than oxen".1 Dmytro Brazhenko, a 30-year-old village teacher from northern Ukraine, wrote this in a diary he kept during the 28 months of the Nazi occupation between 1941 and 1943.The diary names multiple instances of the bicycle turning into a lifesaver.Brazhenko cycled to neighbouring towns to arrange food rations and salaries for his school colleagues.He used it to escape from a conflict zone between Soviet partisans and German militia.And by travelling back and forth between neighbouring villages, he traded goods to save his family from hunger.Having no supplies to repair his bike, he came up with DIY solutions.For Brazhenko, keeping the bike going meant survival amidst catastrophes. 2owever, Brazhenko's example is not typical in historical representations of daily experiences in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.The diary was first published in 2012 and is little known among World War II scholars.The typical image of the Nazi occupation is of local populations treading on foot after being forced to leave their homes.Within the growing field of studies on daily life during World War II, 3 the bicycle in eastern Europe is considered a rare and insignificant phenomenon.Brazhenko, too, complained in his diary about having too few fellow cyclists in his community to help with repairs.
In this article, I will show that while cycling was not mainstream, it was quite common in the Nazi-occupied territories of the Soviet Union.My aim is not to evaluate the scope of cycling but to show how the conflicting totalitarian regimes shaped unprecedented patterns of mobility.I argue that due to the deficit of vehicles in the Soviet Union as compared to the industrially advanced West, bicycles had a particularly high value and prestige.In the wartime chaos, bicycles changed hands multiple times.The conventional ideas of who was entitled to use a bicycle reflected changing social hierarchies.Bicycles therefore served as a marker of power and also put their users under suspicion of collaborating with the enemy.
Within the framework of mobility studies, researchers have covered a broad range of bicycle histories across the world, enhancing our understanding of mobility and micromobility.The bicycle has become a prominent example of how social groups construct technological designs, determine their development and constitute the meanings of technological artefacts. 4The meaning of bicycles is shaped by complex historical conditions, often resulting in controversies in interpretations between different groups. 5omplex mobilities, which encompass the movement of people, goods and ideas, have been shown to be viable metaphors for describing society, which is traditionally explained in terms of "roots" and not "routes". 6Finally, others have argued that space is not a neutral background but a political order.Infrastructures do not only embody inequalities, but they also reproduce them. 7Uneven mobilities yield uneven spatial patterns, which in turn create pressures on disadvantaged users and ecological disasters. 8epending on the historical context, bicycles gained and lost visibility, oftentimes falling out of the public eye as too mundane, as less important than motorised means of transport, or as a relic in the shadow of technological novelties. 9Studies of the uses of bicycles in colonial contexts have demonstrated the sweeping power of westernisation through the distribution of small technologies.At the same time, colonial ideology created social hierarchies in which using particular artefacts marked a proximity to power circles. 10rawing ideas from existing research in mobility studies, this work invites us to look deeper into wartime mobilities.While the purpose of war is the physical destruction of the enemy and the appropriation of its productive resources, the enactment of this goal assumes elaborate mobility strategies.Parties of conflicts mobilise human resources, armour, vehicles, and communication technologies, traverse large distances, paralyze enemies' capacity of movement, limit civilians' mobility in occupied territory, accumulate supplies for offensives or retreats and so on.War can be understood as a radical exercise in forcing and limiting mobilities, an exercise in which technological capacities imply political power and legitimise social discourses.The inequalities of peacetime turn into open violent conflicts, and infrastructure and mobility policies reveal their liminal possibilities of use.Cycling in these circumstances, for violence or for resistance, shows its darkest and brightest sides.In eastern Europe, cycling during wartime bore a distinct set of meanings in comparison to other parallel cases.In the book Bike Battles, James Longhurst shows that for a short period in the early 1940s, using a bicycle instead of a car became a sign of patriotism in the USA.The USA did not have an active front, but it did suffer from a deficit of petrol, rubber and resources for industrial production.Eventually, the fuel-saving practice of cycling became a marker of personal contribution towards victory. 11In Nazi-occupied France, bicycles came to be associated with scarcity and poverty, since many survivors used them to obtain resources and travel autonomously when public transport was unavailable. 12Netherlands suffered massive bicycle confiscations to the benefit of German army, which was later remembered through a grudging phrase "Give my grandpa's bicycle back". 13This article suggests that the particularly harsh circumstances on the eastern front shaped a distinct understanding of goods and particularly of bicycles.In order to cycle in wartime Ukraine, one needed not only to have physical access to goods and power but also the right to mobility.
World War II archives reflect a radical redistribution of material goods in eastern Europe during and after World War II.Thousands of relevant documents are stored in institutions across Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, and the rest of the world, but many of them were originally archived for other reasons and have not been scanned, so piecing together a history of mobility and materiality is difficult.Not claiming comprehensiveness, this survey is largely based on digitalised sets of historical sources: Soviet newspapers, Ukrainian newspapers published under the Nazi regime, interviews with survivors, and diaries of war witnesses. 14Browsing through entries with multiple mentions of "bicycle", I identified typical situations and representations of cycling during World War II.By combining this analysis with my discoveries of rare documents from archives across Europe, I have tried to define the political and cultural discourses that shaped representations of cycling.
11 James Longhurst, Bike Battles.A History of Sharing the American Road, repr.ed.(Seattle WA: University of Washington Press, 2017), 120-51. 12Catherine Bertho Lavenir, "Scarcity, Poverty, Exclusion.Negative Associations of the Bicycle's Uses and Cultural History in France", in Ruth Oldenziel and Helmuth Trischler (eds), Cycling and Recycling.Histories of Sustainable Practices (New York NY: Berghahn Books, 2015), 58-72. 13 Pete Jordan, In the City of Bikes: The Story of the Amsterdam Cyclist (New York NY: Harper Perennial, 2013). 14The Libraria and EastView collections provide access to Nazi-controlled Ukrainian press and Soviet press, respectively.The Ta storona and Zwangsarbeitarchiv databases offer oral sources from forced migrant workers in Germany.The databases not only reveal experiences of being limited in mobility during WWII but also provide accounts of cycling before and after the war.The collection Prozhito does not offer any new data but aggregates published diaries with a search tool that makes it possible to search across different diaries by keyword.An obvious limitation of all these digital databases, as well as of the vast majority of WWII narratives about Ukraine, is a lack of accounts by those who were later considered collaborators and perpetrators.The present study focuses on the Reichskommissariat Ukraine and the zone of military occupation between 1941 and 1943.Many territories (Galicia, Transcarpathia, Crimea, the Donbass) and the period of the Soviet invasion in western Ukraine between 1939 and 1941 are only marginally covered.The article is not particularly sensitive to ethnic aspects of cycling and does not scrutinise connections between the Holocaust and mobility politics.The role of cycling in partisan movements is not considered.All these aspects deserve special research and could shed new light on wartime mobilities.
During the Soviet and Nazi regimes, millions of civilians in Ukraine lost their lives in the course of an artificial famine (1932-33), Soviet purges (1937-38), the Holocaust, the Nazi hunger plan and forced migrations.A historically diverse state, Ukraine suffered under the ethnically charged Soviet and Nazi politics, which deployed Ukrainian collaborators against discriminated ethnic and social groups.World War II marked drastic demographic and spatial changes, which were accompanied by a chaotic circulation of material goods.Ukraine's developments may be characteristic of other lands under Soviet and Nazi occupation, since Ukraine was occupied longer by the Wehrmacht than territories to the east.I will also consider the case of western Ukraine, which was part of Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia before World War II, as an example of Nazi politics in regions without a communist heritage but with a similar social and economic profile.

Bicycles in war propaganda
During 1941-43, the Nazi-controlled Ukrainian press published propaganda materials to encourage voluntary work migration to Germany.Bicycles served as an alluring image of living abroad.Articles pictured a utopia of cyclists streaming down tidy roads in German cities and the countryside.The roads were so perfect that one could cycle in any weather.Workers, teenagers, housewives, the elderlyeveryone cycled in Germany, claimed the newspapers, which suggested that Ukrainian labourers could enjoy this luxury too.
The authors dramatised differences between the cycling cultures of Germany and the Soviet Union.In Germany, they claimed, bicycles could be left unattended at railway stations, schools, municipal buildings, and theatres.Germans had no fear of bike theft.A worker could afford a solid high-speed German bicycle at the cost of 60 Reichmarks with an average monthly salary of 160 RM.Each family member could own a bike.
Ukrainian workers were promised that they would become auto-mobile once they arrived in Germany.In fake letters published in newspapers, Ostarbeiter wrote their family members in Ukraine: "I have earned a decent suit; on Sundays I ride a bicycle and drink beer in a restaurant"."I was recently given a bicycle.My landlords offered to teach me how to use it.This should be very useful for running errands"."I am sorry not to have learned cycling until now: here everybody cycles, from age 8 to 50, with no exceptions.Every farmer possesses a bicycle". 15The bicycle, claimed German propaganda, was not a luxury or sports equipment, like in the Soviet Union, but an attribute of a cultured man."Had the people from the USSR worked at home as good as they do in Germany, each Soviet family would also own a bike". 16he reality that Ukrainian migrant workers experienced in Germany was the opposite of this mobile utopia.Instead of enjoying freedom of movement, they were under house arrest.Instead of entering a technologically advanced, mobile society, Ostarbeiter were deprived of basic goods.However, my main point is not about how German propaganda differed from reality but rather about how it responded to Soviet narratives of cycling.
After an industrial collapse during the revolutionary years of 1917-21, bicycle production in the Soviet Union restarted only in 1924, initially with meagre results.Only in the early 1930s did the Soviet economy start producing 100,000 bicycles per year, which could hardly satisfy the growing demand of the modernising state. 17Soviet top management designed a bicycle distribution plan to benefit key institutions and favoured populations.The plan assumed special supplies for key institutions like the Communist Party, the army, the state-run lottery, and sport associations.The remaining bikes went on sale in targeted market areasin several big cities and industrial regions.With an average monthly salary of 110-115 roubles for a skilled worker, only a lucky few civilians could buy a bicycle for 200-250 roubles. 18Central Asian Soviet republics and agrarian regions received next to no bicycles.
The Soviet Union of pre-war Stalinism developed its own culture of making the bicycles it did produce visible.The Soviet press focused on cross-country cycling tours.Workers who surpassed their targets for production received bicycles as awards.Films and artworks depicted riding police officers, mail carriers, doctors and agronomists.Starting in 1934, the press repeated that the bicycle was no longer a wonder in the Soviet countryside and that together with the radio and gramophone, it had firmly entered the daily life of collective farms. 19With this propaganda, the bicycle became a much desired but scarce product.Research on the material culture of Stalinism has indicated that short-supply products were often obtained through corruption schemes. 20he pre-war Soviet Union developed its culture of bicycle mobility ahead of an actual proliferation of bicycles, just like it celebrated industrial modernisation while largely remaining an agrarian state.Moreover, the Soviet idea of cycling undermined the idea of auto-mobility because cyclists were expected to act in the interests of the communist 17 The Soviet Union produced 125,500 bicycles in 1932, 540,700 in 1937, and 279,000  state.They were expected to build a new society with the newly available technological means rather than to cycle for personal reasons.Most cyclists did not own bicycles but used them as institutionally provided equipment.Bicycles, like any other private vehicle, could be "mobilized for the needs of the Red Army", which already occurred in 1919 and was eventually repeated in 1941. 21azi propaganda promised exactly what the Soviet Union did not offereasy-to-obtain vehicles that one could use as one wished and did not need to share with others.Trying to buy the loyalty of those dissatisfied with the communist regime, it conveyed a retouched and amplified picture of cycling in a capitalist society.Cycling was advertised as part of a modern lifestyle in which one could afford mass-produced goods and quality leisure time, while working in industries that produced these same goods.This was not what Soviet citizens found in the Germany, however; to resist and survive many of them learned to use objects of the new material world for their own needs.

Cycling as a privilege and risk under Nazi occupation
The policies of Nazi civilian rule have recently been a focus of many historians.Although no research has specifically tackled mobility politics, the literature has revealed the general policies in eastern Europe.On the one hand, Nazi strategies aimed to create Lebensraum, "living space", for the future expansion of Germany, which assumed a near total annihilation of the local population and its ability to maintain resistance.On the other hand, to sustain power over a large territory with limited human and technological resources, Nazi rulers needed allies.The new authorities recruited citizens of select ethnicities for the police and other supplementary units, which implemented Nazi policies and particularly aided in the mass murder of Ukrainian Jews.Many worked in sustaining critical infrastructure for a wage that allowed subsistence in the hunger-ridden years.German administrators were corrupt, and they often acted upon their individual understandings of situations, particularly during retreat.The acts of both military and civilian German administrations broke with internationally accepted treaties. 22rom December 1941 until the end of the occupation in the autumn of 1943, the Nazi-controlled Ukrainian press published multiple announcements aimed at regulating cycling and other means of transport.Bike owners had to register their vehicles, pay taxes, obtain permits, and mount licence plates.Cycling was forbidden during curfew hours.The use and sale of unregistered bicycles was prohibited.In some locales, the authorities forbade the use of bikes for private purposes.It was forbidden to cycle on sidewalks, park alleys, or between tram rails, and pulling oneself on trams, carrying passengers on frames or carriers, and cycling with no hands were also not allowed. 23s they did in other parts of Europe, the German authorities confiscated bicycles in central Ukraine, but only in select territories and not as part of a concerted campaign.For instance, on 19 August 1943, citizens of Vasylkiv, a town near Kyiv, addressed local authorities to receive cash compensation for their bicycles that were "formerly transferred into the possession of the Gebietskommisar".The owners never received compensation, but they did obtain "signed tickets".In July 1942, authorities in Lutsk announced the seizure of all bicycles in the Volhynia region.The owners received neither compensation nor tickets. 24The situation in central Ukraine was different from western Ukraine, at that time the District of Galicia of Greater Germany.There all bicycles were officially confiscated on 6 August 1942, except for those owned by German nationals.To keep a bicycle, non-German cyclists had to prove a professional need for it. 25vidence and witness accounts indicate that the official transport regulations in Nazi-controlled Ukraine responded to real developments on the ground rather than defining it.The regulations first appeared in the local press only after the initial months of the German invasion, which were marked by lawlessness, unrestrained violence, and mass murder.The German führer had ordered that the enemy be annihilated, disarmed, and exploited.During the invasion in the summer and autumn of 1941, the new authorities took over houses, public facilities, and material goods without warning or compensation. 26The transport regulations began to be introduced only at the end of 1941, after the massive wave of plundering.They aimed to establish control over unbridled looting and to organise a stable system of resource exploitation.
Technically, there should not have been any bicycles in circulation after the Red Army's call for bicycle donations in 1941.Using a bicycle during 1941-43 marked its owner as a disloyal former Soviet citizen who had not sacrificed the vehicle to the Soviet motherland.Little evidence exists of how many bicycle owners did indeed turn over their vehicles to the Soviet authorities, but the failure to do so certainly casted a shadow of disloyalty on these individuals in the eyes of the Soviet state after its return.
The local population naturally attempted to circumvent the new regulations of the Nazi regime.Archival documents of the local authorities in the provincial city of Bila Tserkva, dated from 1943, offer a list of 63 persons who were fined for registering their bicycles late, while another document lists 41 persons who registered their bicycles on time.These numbers indicate that the local population only followed the new Nazi regulations reluctantly. 27 special announcement in a local newspaper in Chernihiv province from July 1943 forbade a list of ways of using bicycles, which hints at the real strategies of bike users.New rules forbade using documents and licence plates on a third-party vehicle, giving or lending plates to third parties, riding without a licence plate on a registered bicycle, and changing frames and basic details of a bicycle without reregistering.Bicycle owners who had lost their documents could not use their vehicles for one month.After losing the documents twice, the bicycle was to be confiscated. 28All this indicates that in reality bike owners lent their vehicles, documents and plates to others, substituted bicycle frames, remounted registered bicycles into two separate machines, and generally avoided registering their bicycles and paying fees for them.
Witness accounts also describe cases when representatives of new auxiliary units, particularly the new Nazi-controlled local police, confiscated bicycles without any paperwork or official announcement. 29In an interview, Oleksandr Iliashenko told a story of a Ukrainian police officer who took his bicycle without warning and without documenting the action.Before the war, Iliashenko was the only bicycle owner in his village despite being a teenager.After the German invasion, the boy hid his bike in an attic.But the new police quickly learned about the one bicycle in the village.A police officer came asking: "You had a bicycle.Where is it?"The boy cried in response, but this did not help.Realising that there was no other option than giving up the bicycle, he quickly borrowed a sewing awl from a neighbour, climbed into the attic, stabbed the wheels and other details, and then brought down the wretched device. 30This case also indicates that damaging a bicycle was another possible coping strategy.
The act of bicycle expropriation is vividly described in the diary of Dmytro Brazhenko.As a teacher who maintained his job under Nazi rule, he also enjoyed a bicycle permit and a reputation as an ardent cyclist.In the summer of 1942, the police "mobilised" Brazhenko's bicycle twice, each time for only several days, to carry out "a special operation".In one of the cases, however, the police used the bicycle to visit a drinking party in a neighbouring village.The next day, schoolchildren found the bicycle in a barley field and reported it to their teacher so that he could regain his property.According to Brazhenko's diary, the Nazi-controlled police always appeared in his village on bicycles, each time with particular tasks: for example, to round up reluctant villagers to watch a hanging of red partisans or to recruit workers for Germany. 31 new police officer awkwardly riding a bike was so recognisable that a local newspaper in Poltava province published a satire in verse.It tells the story of an old lady who is reading a newspaper announcement about the ban on cycling on sidewalks.She is happy to learn that the new German authorities have finally spared her from unruly cyclists.But as she finishes reading the report and steps out of her house, she is hit by a cycling police officer.The elderly woman concludes that the police officer should arrest himself for being undisciplined. 32The anecdote praises the new "German order" while at the same time recognising the massive bike expropriation by local police.
To summarise, Ukrainian citizens cycled under Nazi rule, so long that they were not denied their right to exist.However, the risk of losing one's vehicle was constant.Bicycles were regularly confiscated, either officially or unofficially.Two ways of securing bikes were hiding them until better times or registering them officially.Hiding a bicycle or using an unregistered bicycle meant acting against the new rules, which could potentially lead to punishment.Registering a bicycle was also risky because a registered bicycle could be confiscated at any time.And the right to use a bicycle was coupled with official employment under Nazi rule.
This explains why after the war, cycling during World War II became "invisible" as people kept secret past activities like cycling during the Nazi occupation.First, if someone had retained a bicycle during the occupation, this meant that they had not sacrificed it to the Red Army as part of the pre-war mobilisation of vehicles.Second, the ability to cycle during the years of Nazi occupation indicated a certain status under that regime and so made the person suspicious.While the survival strategies were diverse, the Soviet criminal code provided multiple grounds to suspect everyone who lived under the Nazi occupation of "betraying the motherland", "working in the interests of the enemy or having such an intention", "supporting the enemy in its economic activities", having "relations with foreign states and their representatives", or of possessing "treacherous sentiments".In practice, many avoided punishment through demonstrations of loyalty and moral purity. 33But in these circumstances, a bicycle could be a visible marker of former privilege and criminal behaviour.

Cycling in Germany: memories of Soviet forced labourers
Despite its fame as a highly technological army, the Wehrmacht owned fewer motorised vehicles than other western European armies and therefore relied significantly on muscle-powered devices. 34German film chronicles focused on heavy transports at the front of the lines, but photos from the rear picture many horses and bicycles. 35Interviews with World War II survivors have confirmed this, especially their descriptions of their first contact with the German Army.While urban dwellers described coordinated marches of motorised transports, rural dwellers often saw cyclists.A very transport-minded Dmytro Brazhenko described two Hungarian bicycle battalions that were stationed for several days in his village school before marching farther eastwards. 36o less often, respondents remembered bicycles in descriptions of their first entry into Germany.First impressions of Germany were often full of fascination.Ukrainian witnesses remembered good roads, parking lots near train stations, unlocked bicycles near racks and old ladies with baskets on a front fork. 37Many noted the abundance of bicycles. 38All this confirmed the propagandist image of Germany's more advanced material culture, which stimulated at once respect and envy.
Very few forced labourers were able to use bicycles in Germany.If they did, it was almost exclusively for farming tasksfor travelling back and forth to fields, riding to the highway, making milk deliveries or delivering messages.Cycling was not for pleasure; the routes were predefined. 39Outside of farm households, Soviet Ostarbeiter remembered bicycles as tools of German domination.Former prisoners mentioned supervisors on bicycles who cycled across the camps and grounds accompanied by dogs.Olha Holovina, a prisoner in the Ravensbrück camp, described a case when a female supervisor set a dog on an anaemic child and then cycled over the body to make sure the child was bitten to death. 40Another image of violence on a bike was of a police officer or administrative officer who forced captives to run behind a bicycle.Inessa Mirchevs'ka remembered a police officer whistling during a bike ride while she and her mother were running behind him, both newly arrested after an attempt to escape. 41Some remember running with handcuffs on. 42n accounts of escapes from enslavement, bicycles appear in two roles.On the one hand, bicycles were a potential means of transport for escapees; on the other, eluding cyclists posed a danger to pedestrian escapees.A bicycle was easier to steal than a motorcycle or car; it did not need any fuel or a key to start the engine; it was easier to steer, easier to hide in thickets, and made less noise.However, unlike the drivers of large trucks, other cyclists could better note the suspicious appearance of escapees.Ostarbeiter fleeing on bikes did not look like normal German cyclists: their clothes were inappropriate; they steered unskilfully.Camp escapees were suspiciously thin, and their heads were shaved; many of them had too little energy to ride a bike.In the luckiest situations, cycling refugees could pretend to be Ostarbeiter on farming duties. 43For this reason, most people chose to try to escape on foot, even if they had a chance to steal a bike and ride at night, they avoided open roads and passing cyclists.
Seventeen-year-old Hryhoriy Kul'baka from Dnipropetrovsk escaped from a camp near Kiel in north Germany with an older friend.They lagged behind the column on the way to the cement-loading workstation and hid in a ravine.Then they followed road signs in the reverse direction of Kiel.They kept walking until two German soldiers passed them on their bikes.Their gaze frightened Kul'baka, but the older teenager calmed him down, saying that the soldiers did not care about them.After a few kilometres, the two saw these same cyclists again, and after another turn, 17 km away from Kiel, local police arrested the boys. 44In this case, the cycles provided a combination of vigilance and manoeuvrability for the authorities.
The case of Arkadiy Lukianovych from Kharkiv is another example of how an escape failed because of cyclists.Together with two friends, he escaped from a stone quarry near Plattling in southern Germany.Avoiding any contacts, they travelled at night on foot and slept in haystacks during the daytime, while aiming for the French border.On the fifth day of their travels, they woke up in brushwood from the honk of a bicycle.The passing cyclists were a mother and a son.After noticing the sleeping fugitives, the son yelled and rushed away to call the police.Meanwhile, his mother took mercy on them, gave them food, and pointed them in a direction for further escape, promising to tell the police to go in a different one.The police, however, showed up with dogs, who quickly sniffed the trail. 45nce the allies took a particular territory under control, prisoners and Ostarbeiter took more risks in escaping.They headed towards repatriation gathering points.Farmworkers described taking bicycles without asking and bidding farewell.Some learned cycling for the first time. 46Prisoners escaped from burning concentration camps on the bikes of their 41 Interview with Inessa Mirchevska in Zwangsаrbeitarchiv. 42Diary entry of Herman Zanadvorov from 14 February 1943 in Прожито; interview with Volodymyr Diachenko in Ta Storona. 43Interview with Ivan Ovcharenko in Ta Storona. 44Interview with Hryhoriy Kul'baka in Ta Storona. 45Interview with Arkadiy Lukianovych in Ta Storona. 46Interview with Anna Huliaeva in Ta Storona.
supervisors. 47The formerly subjugated entered vacant buildings and took food, clothes and bicycles -"anyway, cycling is better than walking on foot". 48hile the occupation regime in Ukraine limited mobility, forbade leaving settlements, and controlled all means of transport, those enslaved on German territory lived through different sorts of restrictions, being confined to farms, labour camps and prisons.Germans, both military and civilian, used bicycles, motorcycles and cars to control enslaved workers.The occupation regime in Germany had a mobility profile that included the mass use of bicycles as a means of controlling captives.The history of Nazi terror provides a rare example of when a seemingly innocent device, advertised for decades as friendly and fair, could act as a tool of violence.

Trophies for army men and for civilians
The first mention of trophy bicycles in the mainstream Soviet newspaper Izvestia was on 7 August 1941, during the second month of Operation Barbarossa -"The Red Army men captured three anti-tank devices, 40 motorcycles, 100 bicycles, five cars, several machine guns, and valuable documents; the enemy lost 66 soldiers and 12 officers".In the next four years, this phrasing turned into a wartime mantra of the Soviet press. 49According to Brendan Schechter, the Soviet trophy reports conveyed several meaningsthat the Soviet Army had the situation under control, that it was increasing its military arsenal, that the enemy was losing resources, and finally, that the enemy was insidious and covetous. 50In the context of mobility history, such reports also marked a rarity in the Soviet understanding of bicycles, namely, as a transport and military tool, not as a sporting good (as before WWII) or as a leisure device (after).In subsequent years, the scale of trophy taking grew.Pravda and Izvestia described how Red Army soldiers "neutralised" enemy bicycle scouts and forced Germans to abandon more than a hundred bicycles and motorcycles at once. 51The newspapers published wide-format photos of artistically staged bicycles in forest meadows, 52 reported on captured train cars of bicycles, 53 and calculated yearly counts of gained trophies. 54ecause bicycles carried a certain symbolism as trophies, civilian cyclists remained a target of partisan revenge actions.The pivotal turn in the diary of Dmytro Brazhenko was his escape from a village in Chernihiv province to another village 250 km away in Poltava province.This was a tough decisionsince he needed to obtain a number of travel permits, leave most of his possessions and find a new job.But he had little choice, because in the swampy and forested area of Chernihiv province, red partisan groups were constantly attacking German officers and Ukrainian civilians.Brazhenko felt that he would soon become a victim of the partisans' actions, despite his past loyalty to communism.He loaded a horse-drawn cart with his possessions and family and left with it on a cycle, at times lagging behind or darting ahead, with the desire to start a new life in a village without any forests and partisans around. 55he trophy politics changed drastically once the Red Army entered Germany.Foreseeing the near end of the war, there was no need to save on military technology.The Soviets had enough transports to reach Berlin, and the Soviet Army no longer collected every bicycle to display its military advancement.In their diaries and memoirs, soldiers described how they would find bicycles on roadsides, cycle for fun and then throw them away after minor damages.Many spare bicycles had no tires, so some cycled on a rim.Many soldiers learned to cycle while marching towards Berlin. 56While trophies were considered property of the Soviet state before 1945, after crossing the border, restrictions on acquiring them were lifted.If German fascists were looters, then it was not considered a crime to loot the goods back. 57ccounts indicate that many Soviet soldiers managed to bring bicycles home, sometimes also motorcycles.Only cars could not be obtained without official state permission.One could also buy a trophy bicycle in the military commission shop or receive one as an award for exemplary service.Trophies brought Soviet citizens closer to the material standards of Western culture, promised a more comfortable life and expanded imaginative capacities. 58Trophies westernised Soviet society.
Trophy collection did not end with soldier looting in 1945.Within the next few years, the Soviet state collected trophies from German enterprises, including factory equipment.New equipment boosted the automotive industry in Soviet countries.For example, the Kharkiv Bicycle Factory, after a return home from Uzbekistan, relaunched production with the help of 32 train wagons of machinery from the Deutsche Präzisions-Kette Soldin, a massive pre-war facility in eastern Prussia. 59These wagons of classified tools, coupled with the will of Soviet people to rebuild the economy and massive financial investments, drastically changed the profile of the bicycle industry in Ukraine.During the second half of the 1940s, bicycle production expanded with lightning speed so that on the third anniversary of victory over fascism, the factory was producing 250 bicycles a day. 60hile the German POW and GULAG inmates renovated Soviet roads and built new highways in all parts of the union, 61 Soviet factories produced female, sport and teenager bicycles for the first time.The first Soviet horns, pumps and carriers entered massconsumer markets.The road-bike design of the Kharkiv factory improved and changed its name from Ukrainka to Ukraina.In their official statements, the factory engineers set goals of bringing the quality of Soviet bikes up to the level of the best foreign brands.The engineering department now had its own party cell and was bound by vows of nondisclosure regarding the new equipment. 62he Soviet state then began to implement what it had announced in the pre-war years and what the Third Reich had promised to Ukrainian workersthe broad availability of mass-produced bicycles, for work and for pleasure, though the Soviet Union chose an automobile-centric approach to developing its infrastructure, just as Nazi Germany had done.In sum, contact with German material culture brought new standards of living with new standards of individual comfort.Years of treading mud and sand paid off with elegant wheeled vehicles and solid flat roads.

Conclusions
Under Nazi occupation, bicycles in Ukraine were endowed with a distinct set of meanings.Bicycles were rare both before and during the war, so they were valuable.Many persons used bicycles for private purposes, but both the Soviet and Nazi regimes expected bikes to be used exclusively for the respective regime's benefit.The need to use a bicycle for work was the only way to secure the right to use a bike in Nazi-occupied Ukraine.Cycling, in turn, indicated collaboration in the eyes of Soviet partisans and post-war authorities.Finally, like other vehicles and weapons, trophy bicycles were signs of success.
This phenomenon adds another possible reason why everyday cycling during the Nazi occupation became invisible after the war.In the environment of the post-war Soviet Union, it was uncomfortable and possibly even dangerous to recall memories of cycling during the war.Brazhenko's diary is again a good example of this.It was not published in the aftermath of the war because his pro-Soviet political stance was not evident enough.Deep inside, he felt loyal to communism, but he also understood that the returning Soviet authorities would be suspicious of the fact that he had retained a jobwith its benefits, particularly food rations and a bicycle permitduring the Nazi occupation.Brazhenko volunteered to enter the Red Army to avoid punishment and died on the battlefield in late 1943.His family kept the diary secret until 2012.While the invisibility of bicycles in recollections of the war is often associated with their mundaneness, in this case, the invisibility is explained by the moral meanings of this privilege.At the same time, the Soviet culture of trophy exhibition was another reason for the visibility of bicycles in the public spherethat of demonstrating military pre-eminence. 61Siegelbaum, Cars for Comrades, 169 62 Каневский, Первенец, 81-83; "Новый велосипед Харьковского завода", Известия 23 June 1945.
But bicycle use was not just predefined by the respective ideological systems.There was a certain continuity and dialogue between the Soviet and Nazi regimes.The Nazi regime used images of mobility to attract the subjugated populations; it stressed real and perceived differences in mobility cultures and speculated on desires that had been awoken by Soviet ideology.The post-war Soviet Union responded first by exhibiting trophy bicycles as signs of German failures.After the war, the Soviet Union adopted the dream of personal mobility for all.The Soviet march through central Europe eventually spread German material culture to the Soviet territories in the east, first in the form of looting and trophy taking, then in the form of semi-official reparations.In a bizarre way, the war became a form of intercultural dialogue, in which power imbalances and violence brought new meanings to technological artefacts.In this sense, the cultural contexts that defined the meanings of bicycles should be imagined not only as organic self-sufficient traditions but also as an unequal intercultural communication with sudden narrative shifts and clashes.
Mobility is not only about the physical accessibility of transport but also about social norms that "licence" some people to ride and others not to.The prestige and vulnerability of bike users point directly to established social hierarchies.One's role in a system defined one's right for a particular mobility.Forced labourers in Germany chose not to escape on bikes because they were not entitled to use them; their bodies did not fit into the visual mobility pattern.Those who escaped pretended to be agrarian labourers or travelled at night, away from the public eye.Totalitarian regimes built racist ideologies, which excluded ethnic and social groups as unproductive and denied them a choice of movement.Subjugation implied not only being stripped of resources but also being barred from access to them, from the right to settle deals, reach out to partners and communicate.The survival strategies of the civilian population therefore implied traversing established borders, which included hiding one's means of transport, using them illegally or semi-legally, pretending to follow a different route, and sharing the transport with others.
World War II changed eastern Europe's population, material culture and mobility patterns.Few pre-war bicycle owners retained their devices over the course of it.It cast people and objects into a destructive whirl and grew a new mobile society on its remnants.
From its beginnings in the 1890s, the modern two-wheeled bicycle with chain transmission signified accessible technology, the harmonious coexistence of man and technology, the unity of physical and mental health, and female emancipation.However, a look at bicycles in World War II unmasks the dark side of technological use.Bicycles could serve as an instrument of coercion, humiliation and violence.Yet at the same time, this event of extremes also shows how bicycles could serve as a tool to escape, resist and survive.

Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/ or publication of this article.