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The US frontier as rationale for the Nazi east? Settler colonialism and genocide in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe and the American West

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 15; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14623528.2013.856084

1469-9494

Jens-Uwe Guettel,

Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

AbstractMany scholars of German and Native American history and the field of genocide studies argue that during World War II the Nazis' genocidal attempt to turn vast portions of Eastern Europe into Lebensraum [living space] for Aryan settlers was connected to the near-extinction of America's Native Peoples during the 'conquest' of the American west by the United States. In their view, there exist direct historical continuities between settler colonialism and genocide in the American west and Eastern Europe between 1939 and 1945. This article denies the actuality of straight links between American west and Nazi Germany's eastward expansion and argues that the Nazis did not use the settlement of western North America as a model for their occupation, colonization and extermination policies. In addition, this study shows that at least on the ground in the Soviet Union, German soldiers were not under the impression that they were carrying out a colonialist land-grab exercise. As a result, this article also challenges the notion of the existence of straight links between Western colonialism and Nazi eastward expansion. By looking at both official documents and the writings of German soldiers, the following analysis shows how and why it was by and large impossible for the Nazis to utilize the American west as a concrete model for their regime's colonial plans in Eastern Europe. AcknowledgementsI would like to thank the editors of the Journal of Genocide Research, in particular A. Dirk Moses, who gave much-needed editorial input and patiently awaited the final manuscript version. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Sigrid Güttel for her indispensable research assistance, Sarah Paulu Boittin for her many editorial comments and Jennifer Boittin for her conceptual and editorial support.Notes on contributorJens-Uwe Guettel holds a Staatsexamen degree in History and English from the Freie Universität Berlin and a PhD in History from Yale University. He is a faculty member of the Department of History at Penn State University. Recent publications include German expansionism, imperial liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945 (Cambridge, 2012); 'The myth of the pro-colonialist SPD: German Social Democracy and imperialism before the First World War', Central European History, Vol. 45, No. 3, 2012, pp. 452–484; and 'From the American frontier to German South-West Africa: German colonialism, Indians, and American westward expansion', Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2010, pp. 523–552.Notes1. John Toland, Adolf Hitler (New York: Doubleday, 1976), p. 702; Norman Rich, 'Hitler's foreign policy', in Gordon Martel (ed.), The origins of the Second World War reconsidered: the A. J. P. Taylor debate after twenty-five years (Winchester, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1986), p. 136; Alan E. Steinweis, 'Eastern Europe and the notion of the "frontier" in Germany to 1945', Yearbook of European Studies, Vol. 13, 1999, p. 57; Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust industry: reflections of the exploitation of Jewish suffering (London: Verso, 2000), p. 145; Lilian Friedberg, 'Dare to compare: Americanizing the Holocaust', American Indian Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 3, 2000, pp. 360–361; Ward Churchill, Struggle for the land: Native North American resistance to genocide, ecocide and colonization (San Francisco, CA: City Lights, 2002), pp. 352–353; Mark Mazower, Hitler's empire. Nazi rule in occupied Europe (London: Penguin Books, 2009), p. 584; Carroll P. Kakel, The American west and the Nazi east: a comparative and interpretive perspective (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 2, 215–216; Robert Cribb, 'Genocide in the non-western world', in Steven L. B. Jensen (ed.), Genocide: cases, comparisons and contemporary debates (Copenhagen: The Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2003), p. 137; Wendy Lower, Nazi empire-building and the Holocaust in the Ukraine (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), pp. 3, 19; David E. Stannard, American Holocaust: the conquest of the New World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 153; Adam Tooze, The wages of destruction: the making and breaking of the Nazi economy (London: Viking, 2007), p. 469. For a convincing and nuanced treatment of the role of the American west in the context of German colonialist visions of Eastern Europe, see Kristin Kopp, Germany's wild east: constructing Poland as colonial space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). Adam Tooze makes a brief reference to the similarities between the American west and the Nazis' activities in his The wages of destruction, but his actual argument for the importance of the United States for the Nazis has a different trajectory. He argues that beginning in 1928 the United States became significant for Hitler, yet this significance was not grounded in the United States' exemplary status for a future, eastward-expanding Greater Germany. Instead, the US was seen as a monstrosity, a nation that because of the large landmass it controlled was more advantageously situated than any European nation and was therefore a threat. This interpretation builds on historian Andreas Hillgruber's influential 'intentionalist' (meaning 'based on Hitler's intentions') explanation of Nazi foreign policy objectives. In the 1960s, Hillgruber posited that Nazi foreign policy goals rested on a stage-by-stage plan—Stufenplan—that envisioned an eventual showdown between the newly created 'world power' Germany with its vast eastern Lebensraum and the United States. Jens-Uwe Guettel, German expansionism, imperial liberalism, and the United States, 1776–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 194.2. Richard Evans, The Third Reich at war (London: Penguin Books, 2008), pp. 179–180; David Furber, 'Near as far in the colonies: the Nazi occupation of Poland', International History Review, Vol. 26, No. 3, 2004, pp. 541–542; Kakel, The American west, pp. 216–217; Ben Kiernan, Blood and soil. A world history of genocide and extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 416–417; Benjamin Madley, 'From Africa to Auschwitz: how German Southwest Africa incubated ideas and methods adopted and developed by the Nazis in eastern Europe', European History Quarterly, Vol. 35, No. 3, 2005, pp. 429–464; Mazower, Hitler's empire, p. xxxix; Jürgen Zimmerer, 'The birth of the Ostland out of the spirit of colonialism: a postcolonial perspective on the Nazi policy of conquest and extermination', Patterns of Prejudice, Vol. 39, No. 2, 2005, p. 199; Hannes Heer, 'Einübung in den Holocaust: Lemberg Juni/Juli 1941', Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft, Vol. 49, No. 5, 2001, pp. 409–427; Walter Manoschek, 'Es gibt nur eines für das Judentum: Vernichtung': Das Judenbild in deutschen Soldatenbriefen 1939–1944 (Hamburg: Hamburger Edition, 1995); Sven Oliver Müller, 'Nationalismus in der deutschen Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945', in Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Zweiter Halbband: Ausbeutung, Deutung, Ausgrenzung (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005), pp. 9–92; Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, 'The pre-history of the Holocaust? The Sonderweg and Historikerstreit debates and the abject colonial past', Central European History, Vol. 41, No. 3, 2008, pp. 477–503; Robert Gerwarth and Stephan Malinowski, 'Hannah Arendt's ghosts: reflections on the disputable path from Windhoek to Auschwitz', Central European History, Vol. 42, No. 2, 2009, pp. 279–300; Katrin A. Kilian, 'Kriegstimmungen. Emotionen einfacher Soldaten in Feldpostbriefen', in Jörg Echternkamp (ed.), Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg: Die deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft. Zweiter Halbband: Ausbeutung, Deutung, Ausgrenzung (Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2005), pp. 251–252; Michaela Kipp, 'The Holocaust in the letters of German soldiers on the eastern front (1939–44)', Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 9, No. 4, 2007, pp. 70–74, 79. See also Anatoly Golovchansky, 'Ich will raus aus diesem Wahnsinn'. Deutsche Briefe von der Ostfront. 1941–1945: Aus sowjetischen Archiven (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1993).3. Steinweis, 'Eastern Europe', pp. 56–57.4. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf (Munich: Zentralverlag der N.S.d.A.P., 1936), pp. 24/25, 153, 313, 33.5. Adolf Hitler, Monologe im Führerhauptquartier 1941–1944 (Hamburg: Albrecht Knaus Verlag, 1980), pp. 78, 90, 91, 168, 398; Gerhard L. Weinberg (ed.), Hitlers zweites Buch (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1961), pp. 128–132. See also Gerhard L. Weinberg, 'Hitler's image of the United States', American Historical Review, Vol. 69, No. 4, 1964, p. 1007; Ian Kershaw, Fateful choices: ten decisions that changed the world, 1940–1941 (New York: The Penguin Press, 2007), p. 38; Steinweis, 'Eastern Europe', pp. 56–57, 61–62, 65; Otto Maull, Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika als Großreich (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1940), pp. 152–153. Klaus P. Fischer's very recent book Hitler and America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) does not address the question of potential links between the American west and the German east. Compare Kakel, The American west, p. 35; Jens-Uwe Guettel, 'The American west and the Nazi east: a comparative and interpretative perspective (book review)', Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 14, Nos. 3–4, 2012, pp. 514–519. Otto Maull's Die Vereinigten Staaten von Nordamerika als Groβreich, despite claims to the contrary, does not in fact promote the American west as a model for Germany's eastward expansion. See Guettel, German expansionism, p. 211. In English-language works, Hitler's Monologe [cursive] are often referred to as Table Talk [cursive].6. Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich. Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung, 1933–1945 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997), pp. 87, 204; 'Der "Wilde Westen" lebt noch! "Weidelandgesetz" in den USA. Fehden mit Revolvern und Lasso zwischen Herdenbesitzern', Der Völkische Beobachter, 20 April 1935.7. Hitler, Monologe, pp. 78, 90, 91, 168, 398; Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich, pp. 98, 247; Jens-Uwe Guettel, 'From the frontier to German South-West Africa: German colonialism, Indians, and American westward expansion', Modern Intellectual History, Vol. 7, No. 3, 2010, pp. 523–552; H. Glenn Penny, 'Elusive authenticity: the quest for the authentic Indian in German public culture', Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 48, No. 4, 2006, pp. 798–820; Andrew Zimmerman, 'A German Alabama in Africa: the Tuskegee expedition to German Togo and the transnational origins of West African cotton growers', American Historical Review, Vol. 110, 2005, pp. 1362–1398; Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the globalization of the New South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010); Colin G. Calloway (ed.), Germans and Indians: fantasies, encounters, projections (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2002). On Hitler's infatuation with Karl May, see esp. Hartmut Lutz, 'German indianthusiasm: a socially constructed German national(ist) myth', pp. 167–185, in Calloway, Germans and Indians.8. Karl Heinz Roth, 'Das Arbeitswissenschaftliche Institut der Deutschen Arbeitsfront und die Ostplanung', in Mechthild Rössler and Sabine Schleiermacher (eds.), Der 'Generalplan Ost': Hauptlinien der nationalsozialistischen Planungs- und Vernichtungspolitik (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1993), p. 218; Tooze, The wages of destruction, p. 530.9. Ronald Smelser, Robert Ley: Hitler's Labor Front leader (Oxford: Berg, 1988), p. 263; Roth, 'Das Arbeitswissenschaftliche Institut', pp. 220–221.10. Roth, 'Das Arbeitswissenschaftliche Institut', pp. 215–226. See also Robert L. Nelson, 'The "Archive for Inner Colonization", the German east and World War I', in Robert L. Nelson (ed.), Germans, Poland, and colonial expansion to the east (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2009), p. 66.11. David Blackbourn, The conquest of nature: water, landscape and the making of modern Germany (London: Jonathan Cape, 2006), pp. 284–287; Roth, 'Das Arbeitswissenschaftliche Institut', pp. 215–226; Tooze, The wages of destruction, p. 526; Eric Foner, Free soil, free labor, free men: the ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970); Drew McCoy, The elusive republic: political economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Daniel T. Rodgers, 'Republicanism: the career of a concept', Journal of American History, Vol. 79, No. 1, 1992, pp. 11–38.12. Kakel, The American west, p. 1.13. See Gerd R. Ueberschär, 'Hitlers Entschluss zum "Lebensraum"-Krieg im Osten: Programmatisches Ziel oder militärstrategisches Kalkül?', pp. 83–111, in Gerd R. Ueberschär and Wolfgang Wette (eds.), 'Unternehmen Barbarossa': der deutsche Überfall auf die Sowjetunion 1941 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1984).14. Bartov quoted in Klaus Latzel, 'Wehrmachtssoldaten zwischen "Normalität" und NS-Ideologie, oder: Was sucht die Forschung in der Feldpost?', in Rolf-Dieter Müller and Hans-Erich Volkmann (eds.), Die Wehrmacht. Mythos und Realität (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1999), p. 577. For this article, eleven complete 'convolutes', i.e. a complete series of letters from one author, were analysed. Each convolute contained between ten and fifty letters from the time of the author's entry into the Wehrmacht until his death or capture. In addition, many odd pieces from other authors were analysed. Overall, around four hundred letters from the Museumstiftung Post und Telekommunikation were scrutinized. The vast majority of these letters contained no references to 'living space' ideas or plans, and not a single letter referenced the American west. See also Stephen G. Fritz, Frontsoldaten: the German soldier in World War II (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1995), p. 9; Walter Manoschek (ed.), Die Wehrmacht im Rassenkrieg: Der Vernichtungskrieg hinter der Front (Vienna: Picus Verlag, 1996); Klaus Latzel, Deutsche Soldaten: Nationalsozialistischer Krieg? Kriegserlebnis - Kriegserfahrung 1939–1945 (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1998); Karl Heinrich Pohl (ed.), Wehrmacht und Vernichtungspolitik (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999); Robert Gellately, Hingeschaut und weggesehen. Hitler und sein Volk (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 2002); Stephen G. Fritz, Ostkrieg: Hitler's war of extermination in the east (Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, 2011). On methodological questions in respect to 'Soldatenbriefe', see also Martin Humburg, 'Feldpostbriefe aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg—Werkstattbericht zu einer Inhaltsanalyse', H-Soz-u-Kult, available at: http://hsozkult.geschichte.hu-berlin.de/beitrag/essays/feld.htm; Martin Humburg, Das Gesicht des Krieges: Feldpostbriefe von Wehrmachtssoldaten aus der Sowjetunion 1941–1944 (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1998). For statistics, see Michael Geyer, '"There is a land where everything is pure: its name is land of death": some observations on catastrophic nationalism', in Marcus Funck, Greg Eghigian and Matthew Paul Berg (eds.), Sacrifice and national belonging in twentieth-century Germany (Arlington, TX: University of Texas Press, 2002), p. 122.15. Eugen to Hans, 22 June 1941, Museumsstiftung Post und Telekommunikation (hereafter MSPT), 3.2002.0210; Heinz Rahe to his wife, 29 June 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0985; Heinz Rahe to his wife, 7 September 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0985; Heinz Rahe to his wife, 11 March 1943, MSPT, 3.2002.0985.16. Manfred von Plotho to his wife, 30 June 1941, MSPT, 3.2008.2195.17. Deutsche Wochenschau, 9 July 1941, available at: http://archive.org/details/1941-07-09-Die-Deutsche-Wochenschau-566; Martin Meier to his wife, 7 July 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0904; Hans-Joachim S. to his wife, 8 July 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.1214; Hans-Joachim S. to his wife, 23 July 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.1214; Paul Wortmann to his parents, 12 June 1942, MSPT, 3.2002.0935.18. Hans Rahe to his wife, 18 July 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0985.19. Compare Gustav Böker to his parents, 27 June 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0966.20. Müller, 'Nationalismus', p. 75.21. Hans-Karl Schmidt to his parents, 8 August 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0251; Gerhard Kunde to his mother, 19 October 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.1941; Gerhard Kunde to his mother, 15 June 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0864; Müller, 'Nationalismus', pp. 73–74.22. Müller, 'Nationalismus', p. 74–80; Gerhard Kunde to his mother, 15 June 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0864; Gerhard Kunde to his mother, 20 February 1945, MSPT, 3.2002.0864.23. Hans-Karl Schmidt to his parents, 20 August 1944, MSPT, 3.2002.0251.24. Heinz Rahe to his wife, 28 October 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0985; Heinz Rahe to his wife, 11 March 1941, MSPT, 3.2002.0985; Heinz Rahe to his wife, 11 March 1943, MSPT, 3.2002.0985; Heske Henning, ' … Und morgen die ganze Welt': Erdkundeunterricht im Nationalsozialismus (Gießen: Focus Verlag, 1988); Fritz Brennecke, Vom deutschen Volk und seinem Lebensraum: Handbuch für die Schulungsarbeit in der HJ (Munich: Eher Verlag, 1937).25. Müller, 'Nationalismus', pp. 79–80; Latzel, Deutsche Soldaten, pp. 119–120.26. Müller, 'Nationalismus', p. 76; Latzel, 'Wehrmachtssoldaten', p. 582.27. Eley, 'Empire, ideology, and the east', in Claus-Christian Szejnmann and Maiken Umbach (eds.), Heimat, region, empire: spatial identities under National Socialism (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 262–269; A. Dirk Moses, 'Redemptive antisemitism and the imperialist imaginary', in Christian Wiese and Paul Betts (eds.), Years of prosecution, years of extermination: Saul Friedländer and the future of Holocaust studies (London: Continuum Books, 2010), p. 237; Cornelius Castoriadis, The imaginary institution of society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), p. 23.28. Geoff Eley, Nazism as fascism: violence and ideology and the ground of consent in Germany 1930–1945 (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 131. Compare also Moses, 'Redemptive antisemitism', pp. 237–238. For a detailed bibliography on the German fascination with Native Americans, see Guettel, German expansionism, p. 83.29. Guettel, German expansionism, pp. 93–111, 164–171, 201–202; Eley, Empire, ideology and the east, pp. 262–275.30. Hitler quoted in Guettel, German expansionism, p. 188; Roberta Pergher et al., 'Scholarly forum on the Holocaust and genocide', Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust, Vol. 27, No. 1, 2013, p. 46. This reading of the relationship between Nazi ideology and colonialism highlights the continued importance of Klaus Hildebrand's analyses in his Vom Reich zum Weltreich (1969), to this day the most detailed and comprehensive study of the connections and, more importantly, ruptures between 'classic' colonialism and the Nazis' (specifically Hitler's) 'program' for German eastern expansion. Notably, Hildebrand's book is absent from the bibliographies of some recent American works on Nazi expansionism, among them Shelley Baranowski's Nazi empire (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 2011) and Carroll P. Kakel's The American west and the Nazi east. See Klaus Hildebrand, Vom Reich zum Weltreich: Hitler, NSDAP und koloniale Frage 1919–1945 (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1969), esp. p. 775.31. For in-depth discussions and summaries of the colonialism-Holocaust debate, see Thomas Kühne, 'Colonialism and the Holocaust: continuities, causations, and complexities', Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 15, No. 3, 2013, pp. 339–362; Roberta Pergher et al., 'Scholarly forum on the Holocaust and genocide', esp. p. 46; Eley, 'Empire, ideology, and the east', p. 262. For Nazi expansionism as anti-imperialism and Hitler's 'eastern living space as anti-capitalist and -liberalist expansion', see Guettel, German expansionism, pp. 188, 222–223; Hildebrand, Vom Reich zum Weltreich, pp. 652–673; Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–45: nemesis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001), p. 47. See also Moses, 'Redemptive antisemitism', pp. 245–246, 248–249; Moses, 'Empire, colony, genocide: keywords and the philosophy of history', in A. Dirk Moses (ed.), Empire, colony, genocide: conquest, occupation, and subaltern resistance in world history (New York: Berghahn Books, 2008), p. 36. In 'Redemptive antisemitism', Moses brilliantly elucidates the question of continuities and/or ruptures between Nazi ideology and its rabid antisemitism and European (and German) colonialism and imperialism, thus making an argument about the relationship between the Holocaust and European imperialism that is closely related to this article's argument about the relationship between German pre-1914 colonialism and the Nazis' eastward expansion schemes.