Nazi empire-building and the Holocaust in Ukraine.

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 Goring'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. 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 Goring'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.Although the Nazi leaders derived many of their colonial ambitions from European models, Lower argues, the Nazi takeover of Ukraine was an unprecedented attempt at empire-building in which violence, racism, anti-Semitism, and militarism pervaded all aspects of everyday life. Zhytomyr, a significant forward base for the Nazi elite, also served as the site of Himmler's experimental ethnic German colony Hegewald, where campaigns of destruction and genocide were perpetrated in the name of progress.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. Nazi Colonialism And Ukraine -- Military Conquest And Social Upheaval, July-august 1941 -- The Wehrmacht Administration Of Zhytomyr -- Making Genocide Possible : The Onset Of The Holocaust, July-december 1941 -- The Zhytomyr General Commissariat, 1942-1943 -- The General Commissariat's Machinery Of Destruction : The Holocaust In The Countryside And Jewish Forced Labor, 1942-1943 -- Himmler's Hegewald Colony : Nazi Resettlement Experiments And The Volksdeutsche -- The Unraveling Of Nazi Rule, 1943-1944 -- Legacies Of Nazi Rule. Wendy Lower. Published In Association With The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [279]-299) And Index. Creating Hitler's German colony in Ukraine 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