Nazi Empire-Building and the Holocaust in Ukraine (review)

In the past decade, a number of excellent regional studies have provided important insights into the events of the Holocaust at the local level and the nature of German occupation policy in the East. Thomas Sandkühler’s and Dieter Pohl’s works on the German administration in Galicia and Christian Gerlach’s massive study of German occupation policies in Belorussia offer some of the most outstanding examples.¹ Likewise, Wendy Lower’s first-rate study of the Zhytomyr region provides an important contribution to the existing scholarship and serves as a welcome complement to Karel Berkhoff’s work on Ukraine.²

In addition to incorporating a broad range of secondary sources, Lower expertly leverages an impressive collection of primary sources: local Ukrainian archival holdings, memoirs and diaries, interviews conducted with survivors of the German occupation, and materials from captured German document collections and former Soviet archives. The author’s command of this literature makes it possible for her to present a detailed and nuanced picture of the occupation in the Zhytomyr region during the period 1941–1944, including the everyday experiences of Jews, non-Jewish Ukrainians, the ethnic German population, and the various agencies and organizations of the German administration. Her depiction of the issues, challenges, opportunities, and dangers faced by each of these groups at the grass-roots level constitutes one of the major strengths of the work.

Despite her focus on the expression of National Socialist rule in the Zhytomyr region, Lower also traces the relationship of specific Nazi initiatives in the region to their broader historical and contemporary influences. On the one hand, Lower argues that Hitler’s conception of Ukraine as a “Garden of Eden” or the “California of Europe” must be seen through the prism of a long tradition of European imperialism. In light of that tradition, the region emerged as an object of Nazi desire based on an admixture of “völkisch utopian fantasies, the Lebensraum tradition of continental migration, and the imperialistic Weltpolitik of economic exploitation” (p. 24). On the other hand, Lower describes the ways in which German administrators, the Wehrmacht, and SS and police authorities on the periphery pursued the goals and objectives emanating from the center. While Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Reinhard Heydrich established policy aims and constructed an administrative apparatus to achieve them, “the process of persecution and methods of mass murder developed from the ground up” (p. 158). In this respect, the cooperation and collaboration of the entire occupation structure in the destruction of Ukraine’s Jewish population highlights the general agreement from top to bottom concerning a “final solution to the Jewish Question.” Lower demonstrates that in contrast to the great degree of consensus achieved for the project of annihilating the Jews, Himmler’s vision for the ethnic German communities of the East differed markedly from those of local administrators. The reluctance of the latter to pursue Nazi colonial schemes emanating from Berlin—which was exacerbated by the confusing array of agencies and organizations involved in the process, with their often overlapping authorities—provides a clear example of the limits of the center’s influence on local events.

Ultimately, Lower’s description and analysis of actors and events at the local level provides the greatest insight into the realities of the everyday experiences of occupied and occupier. She highlights the diversity of Ukrainian society as well as the range of motivations that led particular groups to oppose, cooperate with, or collaborate with the German administration. Her analysis of the changing roles and attitudes among the various Ukrainian nationalist groups is especially noteworthy, as is her evaluation of the relations between Ukrainians, ethnic Germans, and Jews. Likewise, Lower discusses the variety of situational and dispositional factors that influenced the behavior of specific groups within Ukrainian society, including Ukrainian auxiliary policemen and local administrators. Her detailed description of the nature and organization of the...