Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe Book

Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire offers an ambitious, provocative look at Nazi management of conquered territories and collaborators throughout the Second World War. Mazower examines the underpinnings of Hitler's dream for lebensraum in the broader contexts of German imperial history, racial fears of Russians and Jews, and (reviving an old idea of A.J.P. Taylor) the American and British expansionists whom Hitler professed to admire. Yet Mazower stresses the differences between American Manifest Destiny or Pax Brittanica and Germany's late-stage empire building are more profound than the broad similarities. Neither Hitler nor his henchmen realized than a continental super-state was utterly incompatible with his fantasies of racial purity; each territorial acquisition brought more and more non-Germans into the Reich, without a clear plan how to manage them. Thus administration of territories proceeded ad hoc, less managed by Hitler than the whims of bureaucrats and local military commanders; some countries, particularly the Germanic peoples of Holland and Denmark, enjoyed relatively benign occupations while others (especially in Russia and Poland) suffered unrelenting savagery. Mazower's book emphases this inconstancy while emphasizing the brutality underpinning it; he demonstrates that fascist violence generally dissuaded mass resistance outside of the USSR, that they found many willing collaborators in conquered territories, and yet that political incompetence, economic mismanagement and crude "ersatz diplomacy" towards foreign allies and neutrals constantly undermined their goals. Overall, Mazower portrays a dysfunctional state both intoxicated and confused by its own success, with unworkable policies, unreliable allies and a capricious Fuhrer conspiring to undermine them. A fascinating, thought-provoking look at a well-worn subject.