On 16 July 1941, Adolf Hitler convened top Nazi leaders at his
headquarters in East Prussia to dictate how they would rule the
newly occupied eastern territories. Ukraine, the "jewel" in the
Nazi empire, would become a German colony administered by Heinrich
Himmler's SS and police, Hermann Goring's economic plunderers, and
a host of other satraps. Focusing on the Zhytomyr region and
weaving together official German wartime records, diaries, memoirs,
and personal interviews, Wendy Lower provides the most complete
assessment available of German colonization and the Holocaust in
Ukraine.
Midlevel "managers," Lower demonstrates, played major roles in mass
murder, and locals willingly participated in violence and theft.
Lower puts names and faces to local perpetrators, bystanders,
beneficiaries, as well as resisters. She argues that Nazi actions
in the region evolved from imperial arrogance and ambition; hatred
of Jews, Slavs, and Communists; careerism and pragmatism; greed and
fear. In her analysis of the murderous implementation of Nazi
"race" and population policy in Zhytomyr, Lower shifts scholarly
attention from Germany itself to the eastern outposts of the Reich,
where the regime truly revealed its core beliefs, aims, and
practices.