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Africa or the East?

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During the Second World War, the Nazi pursuit of race war and empire in Eastern Europe put colonialists under greater pressure to justify their African focus. While Africa remained a future possibility, Eastern Europe offered readily accessible territory for the fulfillment of colonial ambitions. In the euphoric early years of the war, colonialists presented the outbreak of war as finally providing the opportunity to fulfill their irredentist demands. Nazi officials, in particular within the Propaganda Ministry and the Nazi Party’s Reich Propaganda Office, objected to colonialists’ persistent propaganda efforts as distractions from the more urgent needs of the war effort. In the wake of the German defeat at Stalingrad and the declaration of total war, Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery, shut down the colonialist organizations in January 1943, ending sixty years of organized overseas colonialist agitation in Germany.

Oxford University Press

Willeke Sandler

Oxford Scholarship Online

Title: Africa or the East?

Description:

During the Second World War, the Nazi pursuit of race war and empire in Eastern Europe put colonialists under greater pressure to justify their African focus.

While Africa remained a future possibility, Eastern Europe offered readily accessible territory for the fulfillment of colonial ambitions.

In the euphoric early years of the war, colonialists presented the outbreak of war as finally providing the opportunity to fulfill their irredentist demands.

Nazi officials, in particular within the Propaganda Ministry and the Nazi Party’s Reich Propaganda Office, objected to colonialists’ persistent propaganda efforts as distractions from the more urgent needs of the war effort.

In the wake of the German defeat at Stalingrad and the declaration of total war, Martin Bormann, head of the Party Chancellery, shut down the colonialist organizations in January 1943, ending sixty years of organized overseas colonialist agitation in Germany.

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