1st Edition
Hitler’s Brudervolk The Dutch and the Colonization of Occupied Eastern Europe, 1939-1945
This is the first academic book on Dutch colonial aspirations and initiatives during WWII. Between the summers of 1941 and 1944, some 5,500 Dutch men and women left their occupied homeland to find employment in the so-called German Occupied Eastern Territories: Belarus, the Baltic countries and parts of Ukraine. This was the area designated for colonization by Germanic people. It was also the stage of the "Holocaust by Bullets," a centrally coordinated policy of exploitation and oppression and a ruthless anti-partisan war. This book seeks to answer why the Dutch decided to go there, how their recruitment, transfer and stay were organized, and how they reacted to this scene of genocidal violence. It is a close-up study of racial monomania, of empire-building on the old continent and of collaboration in Nazi-occupied Europe.
Introduction 1. Hunger for Land 2. Pure-Blooded Germanics 3. Embarking on a Great Adventure 4. Towards Absolute Monopoly 5. The Benefits of Crime 6. Fragments of Colonial Dreams 7. The Final Act 8. Imperium Neerlandicum
Biography
Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel is Assistant Professor of History at Utrecht University.
"With this important contribution to the study of Nazi imperialism, Geraldien von Frijtag Drabbe Künzel explores Dutch attempts to stake out a claim in this vast continental empire… This is a well-researched book that restores agency to those Dutch organizations, leaders, and recruits who believed themselves to be charting new imperial terrain." - Jennifer L. Foray, Purdue University, Indiana, European History Quarterly
