Heimat, Region, and Empire: Spatial Identities under National Socialism (The Holocaust and its Contexts)

This collection brings together international scholars pursuing cutting-edge research on spatial identities under National Socialism. They demonstrate that the spatial identities of the Third Reich can be approached as a history of interrelated dimensions; Heimat, region and Empire were constantly reconstructed through this interrelationship. The history of spatial identities in the Third Reich is best approached not as the history of a singular ideology of place, but rather, as a history of interrelated spaces. National Socialists, it is clear, attached great importance to place: it was at the heart of their utopian political project, which was about re-making territories as well as people's relationships with them. But in this project, Heimat, region and Empire did not constitute separate realms for political interventions. Rather, in the Third Reich, as in the preceding periods of German history, Heimat, region and Empire were constantly imagined, constructed and re-moulded through their relationship with one another. This collection brings together an exciting mixture of international scholars who are currently pursuing cutting-edge research on spatial identities under National Socialism. They uncover more differentiated spatial imaginaries at the heart of Nazi ideology than were previously acknowledged, and will fuel a growing scepticism about generic national narratives Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction....Pages 1-22 Front Matter....Pages 23-23 Regions and National Socialist Ideology: Reflections on Contained Plurality....Pages 25-42 Milieus, Political Culture and Regional Traditions in Lower Saxony in Comparative Perspective....Pages 43-55 ‘Grenzlandschicksal’: Historical Narratives of Regional Identity and National Duty in ‘Gau Oberrhein’, 1940–1944....Pages 56-71 National Socialism and Hierarchical Regionalism: The German Minorities in Interwar Poland....Pages 72-90 Front Matter....Pages 91-92 Germanization in the Warthegau: Germans, Jews and Poles and the Making of a ‘German’ Gau....Pages 93-111 ‘A Sense of Heimat Opened Up during the War.’ German Soldiers and Heimat Abroad....Pages 112-147 ‘Here Too Lies Our Lebensraum’: Colonial Space as German Space....Pages 148-165 Conceptions, Competences and Limits of German Regional Planning during the Four Year Plan, 1936–1940....Pages 166-182 Front Matter....Pages 183-184 Race, Regional Identity and Volksgemeinschaft: Naturalization of Ethnic German Resettlers in the Second World War by the Einwandererzentralstelle/Central Immigration Office of the SS....Pages 185-198 Reich Propaganda Offices and Political Mentoring of Ethnic German Resettlers....Pages 199-212 Suitable Germans — Enforced Assimilation Policies in Danzig-West Prussia, 1939–1945....Pages 213-234 On the Margins of Volksgemeinschaft: Criteria for Belonging to the Volk within the Nazi Germanization Policy in the Annexed Territories, 1939–1945....Pages 235-251 Commentary....Pages 252-275 Back Matter....Pages 276-280