Abstract

Convinced before the onset of Operation "Barbarossa" in June 1941 of both the ease, with which the Red Army would be defeated and the likelihood that the Soviet Union would collapse, the Nazi regime envisaged a radical and far-reaching occupation policy which would result in the political, economic and racial reorganization of the occupied Soviet territories and bring about the deaths of 'x million people' through a conscious policy of starvation. This study traces the step-by-step development of high-level planning for the occupation policy in the Soviet territories over a twelve-month period and establishes the extent to which the various political and economic plans were compatible.

“[…] reflects impeccable, painstaking research through an impressive array of sources.”  ·  Central European History

“… provides the first substantial comparative analysis of the undertakings of political and economic planners, highlighting the conformity and conflicts between them.”  ·  H-Genocide

“Kay illuminates these issues through clear, insightful analysis, and through a crisp writing style, at times emotive and darkly (yet never inappropriately) humorous. [...] The book is a valuable addition to the literature, pointing the way to further research into such issues as the degree of knowledge which the German civil service as a whole possessed of the plans, and the degree of opposition – or lack thereof – with which they greeted the plans. As an all-too-rare English-language addition to the literature on this particular aspect of Germany’s war in the east, it deserves attention from specialists and students alike.”  ·  War in History

“Based on meticulous research…this book is an excellent and well-written addition to the historiography about Nazi planning for mass murder."  ·  European History Quarterly

"Kay's painstaking exploration of the planning behind the subsequent 'organized chaos' goes far to enhance our understanding of Nazi intentions vis-à-vis the population of the occupied Soviet Union." Holocaust and Genocide Studies

"This is an original, richly detailed, and on the whole readable work. There is more in it than a short review can cover. Although relatively specialised, it has a clear importance. The true originality of Kay's work lies in reinterpretation as well as in archival evidence, but readers must work this out for themselves." American Historical Review

"... [a] thoroughly researched work ... The foundations of the German Vernichtungskrieg are clearly shown in this book, which corrects and clarifies its chronological development by assembling little known facts into a sound study of Nazi planning…For a long time to come, historians will have no need to focus special interest on these aspects of Nazi history, as they now can be perused in this book." H-German

"Kay solidly identifies the significant parameters of the starvation policy…[He] traces this exploitation, population and starvation policy of mass murder more closely and analyses the actions of those protagonists planning the policy more intensively than analyses hitherto available. It is written in a composed, factual style without unnecessary redundancy and in a very readable way." Archiv für Sozialgeschichte

Alex J. Kay graduated from the Universities of Huddersfield and Sheffield in the UK and received his PhD from Humboldt University, Berlin, in 2005. The following year he received the Journal of Contemporary History's George L. Mosse Prize. Since 2014 he has been Senior Academic Project Coordinator at the Institute of Contemporary History Munich–Berlin. Dr Kay is author of The Making of an SS Killer: The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905–1990 (2016), and co-editor of Nazi Policy on the Eastern Front, 1941: Total War, Genocide, and Radicalization (2012).