Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 6/13/2014
EAN 9780521674089, ISBN10: 0521674085
Paperback, 100 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
Drawing on recent studies of the links between empire, colonialism and genocide, Nazi Empire examines German history from 1871 to 1945 as an expression of the aspiration to imperialist expansion and the simultaneous fear of destruction by rivals. Acknowledging the important differences between the Second Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, Shelley Baranowski nonetheless reveals a common thread: the drama of German imperialist ambitions that embraced ethnic homogeneity over diversity, imperial enlargement over stasis and 'living space' as the route to the biological survival of the German Volk.
Introduction
1. From imperial consolidation of global ambitions
imperial Germany, 1871–1914
2. From dominion to catastrophe
imperial Germany during World War I
3. From colonizer to 'colonized'
the Weimar Republic, 1918–33
4. Empire begins at home
the Third Reich, 1933–9
5. The Nazi place in the sun
German occupied Europe, 1939–41
6. The final solution
total war and genocide, 1941–5.
'For more than a decade now, historians have been rediscovering that the best key to the question of the continuities of German history is to be found in the histories of German expansionism since the mid-nineteenth century. Admirably attuned both to the longer-term patterns and to the Nazi empire's terrible specificities, with an assured grasp of detail and a clear analytical vision, Shelley Baranowski has given us the best critical synthesis yet of that steadily mounting scholarship.' Geoff Eley, University of Michigan