Abstract
Alex J. Kay, Jeff Rutherford, and David Stahel (eds), Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization, Rochester, NY, University of Rochester Press, 2012; x + 359 pp.; £55.00 hbk.; ISBN 978 1580464079.
The Nazi ‘War of Annihilation’ in the Soviet Union has long been seen as one of excess, plunder, and cold-blooded murder. In this new edited volume, Kay, Rutherford and Stahel bring together younger historians from what might be called the most recent generation, a generation to which this reviewer admittedly also belongs. Together, the authors in this collection seek to describe and explain a radicalization of Nazi anti-Jewish, economic and occupation policy in 1941, a year which is often highlighted as a decisive one, not only for the course of the Second World War, but also for the evolution of Nazi genocidal policy. In combining these topics, the editors rightly reinforce the inextricable connections between the war on the Eastern Front, the Holocaust and the Nazi genocidal project in general, though they draw a line between ‘a conventional form of war’ and a ‘parallel war against the Soviet people’, which might represent a false distinction (315).
The contributors provide a wealth of information, some of which is a helpful distillation of their important monographic works. Many chapters are rigorously researched and rely heavily on archival sources, while others are mainly synthetic. Topics include the failure of military planning for Operation Barbarossa, dissemination and execution of the so-called ‘Criminal Orders’ by the Wehrmacht, the planned systematic (and genocidal) plan to starve the local populations, and the collaboration of local and national groups in the murder of the Jews. Every essay in the volume explores an important aspect of Nazi policy in the Soviet Union while both remaining linked to the larger themes of the book and contributing to the editors’ framing concept of radicalization. There are many chapters that deserve recognition, but I will mention two in particular. Thomas Laub presents a comparative piece on occupation policies in France, before and after Barbarossa, in which he argues that after 1941 Hitler ‘installed dedicated Nazis in leadership positions, and promised to harmonize German policy in occupied France with practices established in the Soviet Union’ (290). He concludes that ‘Hitler failed to initiate a war of destruction in France … but he did not fail for lack of trying’ (306). Martin Holler’s thoughtful investigation of the well-orchestrated and racially motivated murder of Soviet Sinti and Roma populations is another stand-out, particularly given the relative dearth of work in that area in general.
Each chapter describes the brutal and qualitatively different nature of Nazi policy and behaviors in the Soviet Union. Yet, while most authors seek to demonstrate a radicalization of policy, this concept is not as well developed as one would hope. Though the editors define radicalization as ‘a willingness to contemplate, plan, and execute ever more extreme policies in order to achieve ever more far reaching goals’ (1), this term is not always ideal in serving as a unifying conceptual framework for the studies. I do not mean to descend into a semantic argument that overlooks the excellent scholarship in this volume; however, a more nuanced definition of ‘radicalization’ seems particularly important. ‘Cumulative radicalization’, as described by Hans Mommsen, does not quite fit Nazi policy on the Eastern Front: the overall fate of the Eastern peoples (with 30 million expected to die) was quite radical from the start. The volume, therefore, does not distinguish carefully enough between policy radicalization and acceleration, greater participation, escalation in brutality, geographic proliferation, or normalization of abnormal behaviors.
In his preface, Christian Streit rightly points out that ‘a decisive radicalizing thrust already occurred in the preparatory phase for the attack, between January and June 1941’ (ix). The authors variously acknowledge the war and the occupation to be, in the words of Andreas Hillgruber, ‘Hitler’s true war’ (2). If much of the planning for a conscious, ruthless and oppressive occupation had been hashed out prior to the invasion, as both Felix Römer and Alex J. Kay powerfully demonstrate in their contributions, what is the nature of the radicalization that remains? To put it another way, historian Robert Citino was once asked what would have happened if Hitler had not invaded the Soviet Union, to which he responded, ‘if Hitler hadn’t invaded the Soviet Union, he wouldn’t have been Hitler’. What if the conduct of the war and the occupation of the Soviet Union was not an aberration in need of explanation but rather the closest realization of Nazi conquest? Indeed, most of the authors in this volume demonstrate in great detail changes in methods and local variation in the execution of policy, but often agree that most of the individuals and organizations involved were in full agreement with the genocidal and radical aims of the regime. Regardless of one’s position on radicalization at a global or ideological level, the excellent scholarship in this volume presents a powerful depiction of the various ways in which Nazi policies (military, economic and genocidal) became ever more severe on the ground after 1941.