Export Empire: German Soft Power in Southeastern Europe, 1890–1945 (New Studies in European History)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 1/5/2016
EAN 9781107112254, ISBN10: 1107112257
Hardcover, 398 pages, 24.1 x 16.5 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
German imperialism in Europe evokes images of military aggression and ethnic cleansing. Yet, even under the Third Reich, Germans deployed more subtle forms of influence that can be called soft power or informal imperialism. Stephen G. Gross examines how, between 1918 and 1941, German businessmen and academics turned their nation - an economic wreck after World War I - into the single largest trading partner with the Balkan states, their primary source for development aid and their diplomatic patron. Building on traditions from the 1890s and working through transnational trade fairs, chambers of commerce, educational exchange programmes and development projects, Germans collaborated with Croatians, Serbians and Romanians to create a continental bloc, and to exclude Jews from commerce. By gaining access to critical resources during a global depression, the proponents of soft power enabled Hitler to militarise the German economy and helped make the Third Reich's territorial conquests after 1939 economically possible.
Introduction
the foundations of soft power and informal empire
Part I. German Power in the Wilhelmine Empire and the Weimar Republic
1. The legacy of Wilhelmine imperialism and the First World War, 1890–1920
2. The economics of trade
building commercial networks in southeastern Europe, 1925–30
3. The culture of trade
cultural diplomacy and area studies in southeastern Europe, 1925–30
4. The politics of trade
Paneuropa, Mitteleuropa, and the Great Depression, 1929–33
Part II. Nazi Imperialism
5. Stabilising the Reichsmark bloc
commercial networks in the Third Reich, 1933–9
6. Economic pioneers or missionaries of the Third Reich? Cultural diplomacy in southeastern Europe, 1933–9
7. Forging a hinterland
German development aid in the Balkans, 1934–40
8. The Second World War
informal empire transformed, 1939–45
Conclusion
imperialism realised?