Description
Book Synopsis Recently, there has been a major shift in the focus of historical research on World War II towards the study of the involvements of scholars and academic institutions in the crimes of the Third Reich. The roots of this involvement go back to the 1920s. At that time right-wing scholars participated in the movement to revise the Versailles Treaty and to create a new German national identity. The contribution of geopolitics to this development is notorious. But there were also the disciplines of history, geography, ethnography, art history, archeology, sociology, and demography that devised a new nationalist ideology and propaganda. Its scholars established an extensive network of personal and institutional contacts. This volume deals with these scholars and their agendas. They provided the Nazi regime with ideas of territorial expansion, colonial exploitation and racist exclusion culminating in the Holocaust. Apart from developing ideas and concepts, scholars also actively worked in the SS and Wehrmacht when Hitler began to implement its criminal policies in World War II.
This collection of original essays, written by the foremost European scholars in this field, describes key figures and key programs supporting the expansion and exploitation of the Third Reich. In particular, they analyze the historical, geographic, ethnographical and ethno-political ideas behind the ethnic cleansing and looting of cultural treasures.
Trade Review CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR 2005
“Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch have done a great service to the study of the internal co-optation of scholars into the Nazi ideology and praxis by putting together unflinching essays of the involvement of historians and members of other professions and academic fields in the structure of the Third Reich…The book is well edited and presents a wide range of important material …the place of Haar and Fahlbusch in the ranks of capable and exacting chroniclers of this period is assured.” · German Studies Review
"All in all, this collection, made pleasantly user-friendly through the index and bibliography, offers an important first step towards the internationalization of the German debate. One can only hope that this initiative will be followed through by other researchers." · Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft
Table of Contents Foreword
Georg G. Iggers†
Preface
Ingo Haar and Michael Fahlbusch
List of Abbreviations
Chapter 1. German Ostforschung and Anti-Semitism
Ingo Haar
Chapter 2. The Role and Impact of German Ethnopolitical Experts in the SS Reich Security Main Office
Michael Fahlbusch
Chapter 3. The Nazi Ethnographic Research of Georg Leibbrandt and Karl Stumpp in Ukraine, and Its North American Legacy
Eric J. Schmaltz and Samuel D. Sinner
Chapter 4. Volk, Bevölkerung, Rasse, and Raum: Erich Keyser’s Ambiguous Concept of a German History of Population, ca. 1918–1955
Alexander Pinwinkler
Chapter 5. Ethnic Politics and Scholarly Legitimation: The German Institut für Heimatforschung in Slovakia, 1941–1944
Christof Morrissey
Chapter 6. The Sword of Science: German Scholars and National Socialist Annexation Policy in Slovenia and Northern Italy
Michael Wedekind
Chapter 7. Romanian-German Collaboration in Ethnopolitics: The Case of Sabin Manuila
Viorel Achim
Chapter 8. Palatines All Over the World: Fritz Braun, a German Emigration Researcher in National Socialist Population Policy
Wolfgang Freund
Chapter 9. German Westforschung, 1918 to the Present: The Case of Franz Petri, 1903–1993
Hans Derks
Chapter 10. Otto Scheel: National Liberal, Nordic Prophet
Eric Kurlander
Chapter 11. The “Third Front”: German Cultural Policy in Occupied Europe, 1940–1945
Frank-Rutger Hausmann
Chapter 12. “Richtung halten”: Hans Rothfels and Neoconservative Historiography on Both Sides of the Atlantic
Karl Heinz Roth
Chapter 13. Polish mysl zachodnia and German Ostforschung: An Attempt at a Comparison
Jan M. Piskorski
Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Subject Index
Names Index
