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The lands Germany ceded to Poland after World War I included more than one million ethnic Germans for whom the change meant a sharp reversal of roles. The Polish government now confronted a German minority in a region where power relationships had been the other way around for more than a century. Orphans of Versailles examines the complex psychological and political situation of Germans consigned to Poland, their treatment by the Polish government and society, their diverse strategies for survival, their place in international relations, and the impact of National Socialism. Not a one-sided study of victimization, this book treats the contributions of both the Polish state and the German minority to the conflict that culminated in their mutual destruction. Based largely on research in European archives, it sheds new light on a key aspect of German-Polish relations, one that was long overshadowed by concern over the German revanchist threat and the hostility that subsequently dominated the German-Polish relationship. Thanks to the new political situation in central Europe, however, this topic can finally be addressed evenhandedly.
This monograph presents a critical analysis of the body of historical writing on the history of the Jewish population in Poznania in the era of the Prussian rule (1772-1918 ), including the identification and verification of the attendant myths and stereotypes. The interest in the Polish edition of this book was considerable. Similarly noticeable was the academic response to the title, despite its ostensibly local subject matter. While this study was also noticed abroad, the language barrier has severely impeded its impact. This prompted the author to work towards the English edition of this book, hoping it would find its way into global academic circulation. Some changes and additions were made in the English version. It includes an updated survey of scholarship on this subject of the past twenty years, a response to reviews engaging with the Polish edition, and some general reflections on the evolution of historiography in the recent years.
Examination of the role of German women in borderlands activism in Germany's eastern regions before 1939 and their involvement in Nazi measures to Germanize occupied Poland during World War II. Harvey analyses the function of female activism within Nazi imperialism, its significance and the extent to which women embraced policies intended to segregate Germans from non-Germans and to persecute Poles and Jews. She also explores the ways in which Germans after 1945 remembered the Nazi East.
Following the brutal invasion and occupation of Poland, the Nazis put measures into place: remove the Jews, bring in German settlers, and racially classify the rest of the population in order to separate Poles from ethnic Germans. Gerhard Wolf reveals an astonishing reality in which the plan met with massive resistance from various Nazi occupation institutions, especially when it came to deeming a majority of Polish citizens as "racially unfit." According to Wolf, the everchanging environment of the war meant this was a highly experimental process and emphasizes the formative aspects of Nazi policy-making and how key actors struggled to define racial criteria and determine whether they would have the desired effect. Students and scholars of the Polish occupation, the Holocaust, and Nazism will find new analysis of German imperialism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in this important book.
A study of how relations between the Nazi regime & contemporary scholarly experts on eastern Europe eventually set an entire academic discipline on a path to biological racism through Nazi manipulation.
The Paradox of Ukrainian Lviv reveals the local and transnational forces behind the twentieth-century transformation of Lviv into a Soviet and Ukrainian urban center. Lviv's twentieth-century history was marked by violence, population changes, and fundamental transformation ethnically, linguistically, and in terms of its residents' self-perception. Against this background, Tarik Cyril Amar explains a striking paradox: Soviet rule, which came to Lviv in ruthless Stalinist shape and lasted for half a century, left behind the most Ukrainian version of the city in history. In reconstructing this dramatically profound change, Amar illuminates the historical background in present-day identities and tensions within Ukraine.
Explores what happened when Germans from three different empires were forced to live together in Poland after the First World War.
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