How did the Nazis imagine their victory and the subsequent Thousand-Year Reich?

Between 1939 and 1943, the Nazi imperial Utopia started to take shape in the conquered areas of Eastern Europe, brutally emptied of their inhabitants, who were displaced, reduced to slavery and, in the case of the Jews and a considerable number of Slavs, murdered. This Utopia had its engineers, its agencies and its pioneers (no fewer than 27,000 Germans, most of them young). It aroused fervent support. In the Thousand-Year Reich, with its borders extended by conquest, a racially pure community would soon live a life of peace and prosperity, in total harmony.

In this book, renowned historian Christian Ingrao draws on extensive archival material to shed new light on this movement and explain how it could prove so appealing, examining the coherence and the inner contradictions of the activities undertaken by the different institutions, the careers of the women and men who played a part in them, and the ambitious plans that were drawn up. Ingrao adopts a social anthropological point of view to investigate the emotions aroused by the Nazi dream, and describes not just the hatred and the anxieties it fed on but also the joys and expectations it created two sides of a single reality. As we learn from the terrible violence unleashed across the region of Zamo, on the border between Poland and Ukraine, the hopes of the Nazis became a nightmare for the native populations.

This important work reveals an aspect of Nazism that is often overlooked and greatly extends our understanding of the general framework in which the Holocaust was realized. It will find a wide audience among students and scholars of modern German history and among a broad general readership.

Christian Ingrao is one of the leading experts on the history of Nazism. Currently a researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), he was director of the Institut dhistoire du temps présent (IHTP) from 2008 to 2013. His previous books includeBelieve and Destroy: Intellectuals in the SS War Machine (Polity, 2013).

List of MapsAcknowledgmentsSynoptic table of plans for Germanization, displacements of population, and constructionIntroductionPrologue: The moment of Utopia (September 1939 - summer 1943)The mist-enshrouded time of foundations (1 September - 30 November 1939)The round of short-term plans (1 December 1939 - 21 June 1941)New horizons: the General Plan for the East (22 June 1941-15 February 1943)Part I: The men and the institutions of UtopiaChapter One: A nebula of institutionsThe diversity of the institutions of UtopiaThe central institutions: RKFdV, RSHA, WVHAThe regional and local extensions of the SS: HSSPF and SSPFLocal agencies and institutions: EWZ and UWZCivilian administrations of incorporated and occupied territoriesHow consensus was generatedForms and thoughts of the future in the East: the three main general plansThe RSHA plansThe WVHA memorandaPlanning the RKFdVChapter Two: Networks and trajectories of the men of the EastMen of the East? A world in itselfProfessional networks and military networksTowards genocide? The itineraries of the expertsChapter Three: Osteinsatz. The journey to the East, a form of Nazi fervourThe East, between utopia and anxietyThe myths of the Great TrekThe racial, hygienic and educational dimensionsConclusionPart II: Times and spaces of UtopiaChapter Four: General planning for the EastThe curse of Germanic insularity liftedUmvolkung: dissimilation or ethnomorphosis?The drying up of the alien ocean. Mass murder and utopiaChapter Five: At the School of Fine ArtsThinking about spaceCity, Volksgemeinschaft and segregationDreaming of rural space: the architect, the SS and the peasantChapter Six: From one plan to the next? The Kammler sequenceOn planning style: the WVHA, Hans Kammler and their estimatesAchieving Utopia? The institutionalization and failure of building programmesFrom the future back to the present: Utopia evaporatesConclusionPart III: The case of ZamoIntroductionChapter Seven: The microcosms of radical policy: ZamojszczyznaThe men, the space and the past of ZamojszczyznaInstitutional microscosmsThe land of all Nazi radicalismsChapter Eight: The politics of the laboratoryClassifying, expelling, deporting. The social engineering at the basis of utopiaBuilding. The Nazi attempt to shape the territoryBuilding, installing, settling. At the heart of a new worldChapter Nine: The nightmare. From the ethnic domino effect to the flames of despairIn the full sight of all. The extermination of the Jews, prior to GermanizationA society martyredWars of the entre-soi (inter-self wars), (1943-1945)ConclusionNotesAppendix 1: List of acronyms of the SSs utopian institutionsAppendix 2: Organizational chart of the SS institutions of UtopiaTimelineIndex