Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler - Hardcover

'For more than a decade now, historians have been rediscovering that the best key to the question of the continuities of German history is to be found in the histories of German expansionism since the mid-nineteenth century. Admirably attuned both to the longer-term patterns and to the Nazi empire's terrible specificities, with an assured grasp of detail and a clear analytical vision, Shelley Baranowski has given us the best critical synthesis yet of that steadily mounting scholarship.' Geoff Eley, University of Michigan

'This fine new political history of Germany between 1871 and 1945 does a wonderful job of synthesizing all of the most recent literature in English and German.' Suzanne Marchand, Louisiana State University

'Reasonable yet provocative, at once sober and humane, this book is a chilling portrait, as [Baranowski] puts it, of 'the Third Reich's own horrific contribution to the history of European imperialism'.' Dirk Moses, University of Sydney

'In this ambitious book, Shelley Baranowski, an expert on the history of Nazi Germany, defines for readers what was distinctive about the Nazi version of racial empire. At the same time, she offers a valuable guide to the growing literature on German colonialism and its links to Nazism.' Lora Wildenthal, Rice University

Drawing on recent studies of the links between empire, colonialism and genocide, Nazi Empire examines German history from 1871 to 1945 as an expression of the aspiration to imperialist expansion and the simultaneous fear of destruction by rivals. Acknowledging the important differences between the Second Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich, Shelley Baranowski nonetheless reveals a common thread: the drama of German imperialist ambitions that embraced ethnic homogeneity over diversity, imperial enlargement over stasis and 'living space' as the route to the biological survival of the German Volk.