German Minorities And The Third Reich

This book assesses the role of German minorities in East Central Europe before World War 2. Generalisations made under the influence of wartime propaganda created a stereotype of German minority behaviour according to which all ethnic Germans were fanatical supporters of Hitler, promoters of Nazism and obedient servants of the Third Reich's imperialistic foreign policy. These accusations were used to justify their mass expulsion after the war. The ethnic Germans defended themselves with counter accusations stating that they were the victims of prejudicial generalisations.

This is the first book to trace the history of all ethnic minorities in Germany during the nineteenth and twentieth-centuries. It argues that all of the different types of states in Germany since 1800 have displayed some level of hostility towards ethnic minorities. While this reached its peak under the Nazis, the book suggests a continuity of intolerance towards ethnic minorities from 1800 that continued into the Federal Republic. During this long period German states were home to three different types of ethnic minorities in the form of- dispersed Jews and Gypsies; localised minorities such as Serbs, Poles and Danes; and immigrants from the 1880s. Taking a chronological approach that runs into the new Millennium, the author traces the history of all of these ethnic groups, illustrating their relationship with the German government and with the rest of the German populace. He demonstrates that Germany provides a perfect testing ground for examining how different forms of rule deal with minorities, including monarchy, liberal democracy, fascism and communism.

The eleven essays that comprise this book offer an integrated perspective on Nazi policies of mass murder. Drawing heavily on primary sources from European and American archives, the collection of essays provides novel interpretations of Nazi policies vis-à-vis ethnic, religious, and sexual minorities in the German-occupied territories, specifically Eastern Europe. The essays printed in this volume advance two main theses, drawing a line under the Functionalist-Intentionalist debate regarding the origins of Nazi genocide. In their dealing with the “lesser races,” the Nazis proved more flexible and less single-minded than has been conventionally believed. Faced with what they saw as a temporary military setback, the Nazis were willing to renegotiate their murderous policies, granting certain concessions to the minority groups otherwise slated for destruction. In the long run, however, the Nazis never abandoned the ideology of racial exclusiveness, which had contributed to their ultimate defeat. Another thesis concerns the complex ethno-political landscape of Eastern Europe that came under Nazi domination. German occupation authorities encouraged ethnic rivalries and grievances, which trace back to the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires and beyond. Hobbesian war of all against all that had ensued made it easier for the Nazis to apply a divide-and-rule policy. It also provided a fertile ground for collaboration, specifically in the mass murder of Jews. The book will appear to both academic and non-academic audiences interested in the subjects as diverse as genocide, ethno-nationalism, and minority studies.

Lumans studies the relations between Nazi Germany and the German minority populations of other European countries, examining these ties within the context of Hitler's foreign policy and the racial policies of SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. He shows how the Reich's racial and political interests in these German minorities between 1933 and 1945 helped determine its behavior toward neighboring states. Originally published in 1993. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

Military Historian Weronika Kuzniar has "dared" to challenge the absurdly one-sided version of the Third Reich! This book, unlike so many, challenges the usual Third Reich history. Primary evidence, foreign language material, Hitler speeches, and dozens of photos that have either been missed or ignored have finally been brought forth in this amazing, unbiased analysis of Hitler's Reich. German and French-language eyewitness accounts, Hitler speeches and private monologues, German and foreign officer statements, interviews with several POWs (including the Tuskegee airmen), rare photographs and overlooked secondary works: all of this is included and assessed in this highly focused study. A refreshing read for anyone interested in all the facts and both sides of the story! Within just six years of war the Nazis established the most ethnically, religiously, nationally, politically, and culturally diverse military force in Western history. How and why did this happen and why are historians still so reluctant to acknowledge this? Kuzniar answers these questions, and many more! This book is a crucial addition to any revisionist or orthodox Third Reich library. Kuzniar has combed a wide range of source material to bring you a genuinely unbiased view of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler, and the German Armed Forces. You will come away from this war and society study with a deeper understanding of: racial dynamics in all Western societies before and since World War II; Axis history in general; Allied war criminality; non-German Wehrmacht and SS service; Adolf Hitler's ambivalent racial views; racial changes that occurred despite the official Nazi race ethos as a result of the war; the tolerant, arbitrary or inconsistent treatment of Jews, black people, Roma, non-Germans and mixed-race people in Nazi Germany and in the Greater Reich."

How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany Nazism triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler's American Model, James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained, significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. As Whitman shows, the Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices, already found in Hitler's Mein Kampf, was continuous throughout the early 1930s, and the most radical Nazi lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals, it was not the most consequential one. Rather, both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws—the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman looks at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices, it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened, but too harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi policies in Germany, Hitler's American Model upends understandings of America's influence on racist practices in the wider world.

"After the Nazi Racial State offers a comprehensive, persuasive, and ambitious argument in favor of making 'race' a more central analytical category for the writing of post-1945 history. This is an extremely important project, and the volume indeed has the potential to reshape the field of post-1945 German history." ---Frank Biess, University of California, San Diego What happened to "race," race thinking, and racial distinctions in Germany, and Europe more broadly, after the demise of the Nazi racial state? This book investigates the afterlife of "race" since 1945 and challenges the long-dominant assumption among historians that it disappeared from public discourse and policy-making with the defeat of the Third Reich and its genocidal European empire. Drawing on case studies of Afro-Germans, Jews, and Turks---arguably the three most important minority communities in postwar Germany---the authors detail continuities and change across the 1945 divide and offer the beginnings of a history of race and racialization after Hitler. A final chapter moves beyond the German context to consider the postwar engagement with "race" in France, Britain, Sweden, and the Netherlands, where waves of postwar, postcolonial, and labor migration troubled nativist notions of national and European identity. After the Nazi Racial State poses interpretative questions for the historical understanding of postwar societies and democratic transformation, both in Germany and throughout Europe. It elucidates key analytical categories, historicizes current discourse, and demonstrates how contemporary debates about immigration and integration---and about just how much "difference" a democracy can accommodate---are implicated in a longer history of "race." This book explores why the concept of "race" became taboo as a tool for understanding German society after 1945. Most crucially, it suggests the social and epistemic consequences of this determined retreat from "race" for Germany and Europe as a whole. Rita Chin is Associate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. Heide Fehrenbach is Presidential Research Professor at Northern Illinois University. Geoff Eley is Karl Pohrt Distinguished University Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Michigan. Atina Grossmann is Professor of History at Cooper Union. Cover illustration: Human eye, © Stockexpert.com.

This book deals with the ideas and institutions which underpinned the Nazi regime's attempt to restructure a 'class' society along racial lines.