Nazi Empire-building And The Holocaust In Ukraine

by Wendy Lower

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.

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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. 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.
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Genres: Holocaust, History, Nonfiction, Ukraine, World War II, Politics

307 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

WENDY LOWER, Ph.D. is the John K. Roth Chair of History at Claremont McKenna College and research associate of the Ludwig Maximillians Universität in Munich, Germany. A historical consultant for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, she has conducted archival research and field work on the Holocaust for twenty years.
She lives with her family in Los Angeles, CA, and Munich, Germany.

Reviews

[Jayden gonzalez · Rating 3 out of 5]

i thot it was going to be more critical and do more with colonialism. it’s just a history though. dry.

[Rod Zemke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of the more than one million Ukrainian jews killed in the holocaust, the vast majority were shot and not sent to the death camps.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent history of the Ukraine under German rule.

[Yunis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Historic work of the a place and time forgotten in America memory.