Synopses & Reviews
On 16 July 1941, Adolf Hitler convened top Nazi leaders at his headquarters in East Prussia to dictate how they would rule the newly occupied eastern territories. Ukraine, the "jewel" in the Nazi empire, would become a German colony administered by Heinrich Himmler's SS and police, Hermann G¶ring's economic plunderers, and a host of other satraps. Focusing on the Zhytomyr region and weaving together official German wartime records, diaries, memoirs, and personal interviews, Wendy Lower provides the most complete assessment available of German colonization and the Holocaust in Ukraine.
Midlevel "managers," Lower demonstrates, played major roles in mass murder, and locals willingly participated in violence and theft. Lower puts names and faces to local perpetrators, bystanders, beneficiaries, as well as resisters. She argues that Nazi actions in the region evolved from imperial arrogance and ambition; hatred of Jews, Slavs, and Communists; careerism and pragmatism; greed and fear. In her analysis of the murderous implementation of Nazi "race" and population policy in Zhytomyr, Lower shifts scholarly attention from Germany itself to the eastern outposts of the Reich, where the regime truly revealed its core beliefs, aims, and practices.
Review
"A carefully nuanced picture of Ukrainian responses to Nazi occupation. . . . Both specialists and general readers seeking new insights into the Holocaust and the history of Nazi occupation in Eastern Europe will benefit greatly from [this] important study."
Journal of Modern History
Review
"Wendy Lower's Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine is an outstanding case study, centered on the Zhytomyr District, of German policies in an occupied Western Ukrainian region."--Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews
Review
"First-rate."
Journal of Modern History
Review
"A carefully nuanced picture of Ukrainian responses to Nazi occupation. . . . Both specialists and general readers seeking new insights into the Holocaust and the history of Nazi occupation in Eastern Europe will benefit greatly from [this] important study."
Journal of Modern History
Review
"Lower's excellent study offers important insights into the nature of National Socialist racial visions and efforts to transform colonial fantasy into reality, as well as into the tragic consequences for the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Ukraine."
Holocaust and Genocide Studies
Review
"[
Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine] offers an excellent regional account of the Holocaust, carefully unpacking the interaction between higher orders and lower level initiatives in the unfolding of genocide."
American Historical Review
Review
"A very useful contribution to the field of Holocaust studies. . . . An excellent analysis of Nazi empire-building and the Holocaust in the Zhytomyr district."
English Historical Quarterly
Review
"Lower presents an extremely important addition to our knowledge of the eastern front in the Second World War. By treating the Holocaust and German colonization policies at the local level, Lower presents social history as the consequence of political history. The 'bottom-up' and the 'top-down' perspectives are beautifully integrated here."--Timothy Snyder, Yale University
Review
"An exemplary local study of . . . the administrative entity encompassing much of the German-occupied Ukraine in World War II."
-- Central European History
Review
"An excellent study that bravely attempts to put the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in comparative context, and uses newly opened archives to extend our knowledge of the true horror of the era."
-- Europe-Asia Studies
Synopsis
Lower provides the most complete assessment available of German colonization and the Holocaust in Ukraine, the "jewel" of the Nazi empire. In this unprecedented attempt at Nazi empire building, violence, racism, antisemitism, and militarism pervaded all aspects of everyday life. Lower argues that it was in the eastern outposts of the Reich, such as Ukraine, that the regime's core beliefs, aims, and practices were revealed.
About the Author
Wendy Lower is assistant professor of history at Towson University. She is a former research fellow and director of Visiting Scholars Programs at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.