Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War ed. by Marina Cattaruzza, Stefan Dyroff, and Dieter Langewiesche (review)

One of the lasting legacies of the twentieth century in Europe is the radical reorganization of national boundaries. At the end of World War I, during and after World War II, and again after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which led to the end of the Cold War, the map of Europe was redrawn, generally emphasizing the monoethnic nation-state over the multicultural empires of the nineteenth century. Nationalism had, of course, been on the rise throughout the nineteenth century and climaxed with the creation of these new nation-states. For many reasons, not the least of which was its emphasis on the importance of ethnic identification, this rise of nationalism also corresponded with the development of fascism in the twentieth century, and one of the major goals of both movements was territorial expansion. Particularly for Nazi Germany, expanding its territory into neighboring countries was a major policy goal, and the redistribution of conquered territory was one of the ways that the Germans attempted to win allies. Countries like Hungary and Slovakia, which had their own fascist governments, made alliances with the Nazis in order to reinforce their independence from the now-defunct Austro-Hungarian Empire, but also in response to the promise of additional territorial gains. This emphasis on territorial expansion, particularly in Eastern Europe, both was the result of the nationalism that led to the creation of new nation-states after World War I and led to further conflicts between countries. Many of the newly created states had arbitrary boundaries, and the ethnic groups that they purported to represent were not neatly contained within their boundaries. Often this just meant political posturing between neighbors and vying for assistance from Germany, but sometimes these conflicts exploded into genocidal violence.

This project is an anthology of ten essays on territorial revisionism during World War II, with topics ranging from the position of ethnic Germans in the new nation-states of Eastern Europe, to Transylvanian Hungarians, to the conflict between Poland and Ukraine. It is divided into three main sections, the first examining the situation of ethnic minorities within new nation-states. Section two is more specifically about how the desire to acquire territories perceived as lost came to drive policy in Central and Eastern Europe. One particular author, Holly Case, makes the provocative and compelling argument that this wish lay at the center of fascist ideology. She notes that territorial expansion and the inclusion of ethnic brethren abroad into the nation-state was at the heart of all decision-making including foreign policy, but also domestic programs. For me, the most interesting section of this book was the third set of essays, dealing with the ethnic cleansing of newly acquired or reclaimed territories. Some of this violence was, clearly, aimed at Jews in Central and Eastern Europe. One example of an essay examining this history of anti-Jewish violence is Mariana Hausleitner’s “Romania in the Second World War: Revisionist out of Necessity,” which concludes that persecution of Jews in Romania gained urgency after the country lost territory to other nation-states. Not all of the essays on ethnic violence focus on the persecution of Jews though. Several of the articles, specifically those by Frank Golczewski and Frank Grelka, look at the struggle between Poles and Ukrainians. This is a topic that has received far less attention from English-speaking scholars, and it is a welcome addition to this text.

Overall this book represents a welcome addition to the existing scholarship on nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, and there is much that scholars of the region can learn from the essays included in this anthology. It is well researched, and many of the authors make provocative, substantiated claims about the nature of territorial acquisition in the mid-twentieth century. This is a text that will be most useful to...