The Holocaust and the Germanization of Ukraine [Hardcover]

This book probes the local dynamics of the German occupation and the collaboration in the Holocaust in southern Ukraine.Using wartime records and postwar West German and Soviet investigative materials, this book probes the local dynamics of the German occupation and the collaboration in the Holocaust in southern Ukraine. Through the lens of a regional study, it contributes to recent scholarly interest in the Holocaust in the Soviet Union by analyzing why many local residents decided to participate in the Holocaust.Using wartime records and postwar West German and Soviet investigative materials, this book probes the local dynamics of the German occupation and the collaboration in the Holocaust in southern Ukraine. Through the lens of a regional study, it contributes to recent scholarly interest in the Holocaust in the Soviet Union by analyzing why many local residents decided to participate in the Holocaust.The German invasion of the Soviet Union during the Second World War was central to Nazi plans for territorial expansion and genocidal demographic revolution. To create living space, Nazi Germany pursued two policies. The first was the systematic murder of millions of Jews, Slavs, Roma, and other groups that the Nazis found undesirable on racial, religious, ethnic, ideological, hereditary, or behavioral grounds. It also pursued a parallel, albeit smaller, program to mobilize supposedly Germanic residents of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union  so-called Volksdeutsche or ethnic Germans  as the vanguard of German expansion. This study recovers the intersection of these two projects in Transnistria, a portion of southern Ukraine that, because of its numerous Volksdeutsche communities, became an epicenter of both Nazi Volksdeutsche policy and the Holocaust in conquered Soviet territory, ultimately asking why local residents, whom German authorities identified as Volksdeutsche, participated in the Holocaust with apparent enthusiasm.Introduction; 1. From privileged tls¦