Hitler’s Geographies: The Spatialities of the Third Reich

385 Pages·2016·2.665 MB·English

by  Paolo Giaccaria, Claudio Minca

Hitler’s Geographies

Hitler’s Geographies
Th e Spatialities of the Th ird Reich
Edited by Paolo Giaccaria
and Claudio Minca
Th e University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Paolo Giaccaria is assistant professor of political and economic geography at the
University of Turin, Italy. Claudio Minca is professor and head of cultural geogra-
phy at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.
Th e University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
Th e University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by Th e University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 27442- 3 (cloth)
ISBN- 13: 978- 0- 226- 27456- 0 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226274560.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Giaccaria, Paolo, editor. | Minca, Claudio, editor.
Title: Hitler’s geographies : the spatialities of the Th ird Reich / edited by Paolo
Giaccaria and Claudio Minca.
Description: Chicago ; London : Th e University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifi ers: lccn 2015045702 | isbn 9780226274423 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9780226274560 (e-book)
Subjects: lcsh: National socialism. | Germany—History—1993–1945. |
Geography—Political aspects.
Classifi cation: lcc dd256.7 .h58 2016 | ddc 943.086—dc23 lc record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015045702
Chapter 3, “In Service of Empire: Geographers at Berlin’s University between Colonial
Studies and Ostforschung (Eastern Research)” by Jürgen Zimmerer, was originally
published in German as “Im Dienste des Imperiums: Die Geographen der Berliner
Universität zwischen Kolonialwissenschaft en und Ostforschung,” in Jahrbuch für
Universitätsgeschichte 7 (2004): 73– 100.
Chapter 5, “Race contra Space: Th e Confl ict between German Geopolitik and National
Socialism,” by Mark Bassin, was originally published in Political Geography Quar-
terly 6, no. 2 (1987): 115– 34. Reprinted by permission.
Chapter 7, “National Socialism and the Politics of Calculation,” by Stuart Elden,
was originally published in Social and Cultural Geography 7, no. 5 (2006): 753– 69.
Reprinted by permission.
Chapter 8, “Applied Geography and Area Research in Nazi Society: Central Place
Th eory and Planning, 1933 to 1945,” by Mechtild Rössler, was originally published in
Environment and Planning 7 (1989): 419– 31. Reprinted by permission.
Chapter 11, “Nazi Biopolitics and the Dark Geographies of the Selva,” by Paolo Giac-
caria and Claudio Minca, was originally published in Journal of Genocide Research 13
(2011): 67– 84. Reprinted by permission.
Chapter 14, “Hello Darkness: Envoi and Caveat,” by Andrew Charlesworth, was origi-
nally published in Common Knowledge 9, no. 3 (2003): 508– 19. Copyright 2003, Duke
University Press. All rights reserved. Republished by permission of the copyright
holder, Duke University Press. www .dukeupress .edu. Reprinted by permission.
Th is paper meets the requirements of ANSI/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of
Paper).
Contents
Introduction: Hitler’s Geographies, Nazi Spatialities 1
Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca
Spatial Cultural Histories of Hitlerism
1 For a Tentative Spatial Th eory of the Th ird Reich 19
Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca
2 Holocaust Spaces 45
Dan Stone
part i Th ird Reich Geographies
Section 1 Biopolitics, Geopolitics, and Lebensraum
3 In Service of Empire: Geographers at Berlin’s University between
Colonial Studies and Ostforschung (Eastern Research) 67
Jürgen Zimmerer
4 Th e East as Historical Imagination and the Germanization Policies
of the Th ird Reich 93
Gerhard Wolf
5 Race contra Space: Th e Confl ict between German Geopolitik and
National Socialism 110
Mark Bassin
6 Back Breeding the Aurochs: Th e Heck Brothers, National Socialism,
and Imagined Geographies for Non- Human Lebensraum 138
Clemens Driessen and Jamie Lorimer
Section 2 Spatial Planning and Geography in the Th ird Reich
7 National Socialism and the Politics of Calculation 161
Stuart Elden
vi Contents
8 Applied Geography and Area Research in Nazi Society:
Central Place Th eory and Planning, 1933–1945 182
Mechtild Rössler
9 A Morality Tale of Two Location Th eorists in Hitler’s Germany:
Walter Christaller and August Lösch 198
Trevor J. Barnes
10 Social Engineering, National Demography, and Political Economy in
Nazi Germany: Gottfried Feder and His New Town Concept 218
Joshua Hagen
part ii Geographies of the Th ird Reich
Section 3 Spatialities of the Holocaust
11 Nazi Biopolitics and the Dark Geographies of the Selva 245
Paolo Giaccaria and Claudio Minca
12 Geographies of Ghettoization: Absences, Presences, and Boundaries 266
Tim Cole
13 Spaces of Engagement and the Geographies of Obligation: Responses
to the Holocaust 282
Michael Fleming
14 Hello Darkness: Envoi and Caveat 299
Andrew Charlesworth
Section 4 Microgeographies of Memory, Witnessing, and Representation
15 Th e Interruption of Witnessing: Relations of Distance and Proximity
in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah 313
Richard Carter- White
16 A Mobile Holocaust? Rethinking Testimony with Cultural Geography 329
Simone Gigliotti
17 What Remains? Sites of Deportation in Contemporary European
Daily Life: Th e Case of Drancy 348
Katherine Fleming
Acknowledgments 363
Contributor Biographies 365
Index 369
Introduction
Hitler’s Geographies, Nazi Spatialities
paolo giaccaria and claudio minca
Th is book moves from the assumption that the Nazi project was, among other
things, an eminently geographical project. Nazi ideology was in fact perme-
ated by a broad spatial vision of the Reich and its territories, supported by a
number of key geographical concepts, like those of Lebensraum, Großraum,
Farther East, and Geopolitik, to name but a few. However, despite the popu-
larity and widespread use of spatial concepts and metaphors in the Nazis’
imperial discourse, including in policy pronouncements, and despite the fact
that geographers and spatial planners played an important role in the Nazi
project, a comprehensive examination of the relationship between geogra-
phy, spatial theory, and the Th ird Reich remains to be developed. It is thus
our contention that a geographical perspective on the spatialities of the Th ird
Reich is much needed. Indeed, Hitler’s Geographies aims to respond to the
growing interest in the current academic literature in English— that is, the
literature available to international debates— for a detailed investigation of
the spatial imaginations of the Nazi regime and of the actual geographies it
designed and implemented through its thirteen years of grand plans, coloni-
zation, exploitation, and genocide.
Th is volume provides a fi rst overview of how recent research in English-
speaking human geography and related disciplines has approached the spati-
alities of Hitlerism, and their relation to the geopolitical and, in some cases,
biopolitical projections of the Nazi regime. While providing an analysis of
“the spatial” in Nazi ideology from a multiplicity of theoretical perspectives,
Hitler’s Geographies also refl ects on the entanglements between the Nazis’
grand spatial plans and spatial practices “in place,” something only margin-
ally discussed in the key literature thus far. Furthermore, this collection is an
2 introduction
attempt to introduce a geographical approach into most recent debates on the
“cultural histories of the Th ird Reich” (see chapter 1 in this volume).
More specifi cally, we believe that Hitler’s Geographies can contribute to
broader debates on the spatialities of the Th ird Reich in two distinct ways.
First, by providing an unprecedented collection of papers directly engaging
with the specifi c relationship between spatial theory, Nazi ideology, and its
geopolitical and genocidal practices. Th is is a theme that has recently gained
momentum among scholars of National Socialism and the Holocaust and
among geographers as well. Th is book intends to consolidate such interest
by off ering an ambitious lineup of chapters penned by geographers, along-
side key interventions by prominent scholars in the fi eld of Holocaust studies
and historians of the Th ird Reich who have considered questions of space
and spatial theory in their work. In addition, it brings together some of the
key contributions on this topic in geography, which had previously only been
available scattered across diff erent journal issues. Hitler’s Geographies rep-
resents therefore a fi rst attempt to map the state of the art of geographers’
and spatial thinkers’ contribution to the literature on the Th ird Reich and the
H olocaust available in English—t hat is, again, the literature available to inter-
national debates— but also an attempt to move the discussion a step further
and propose this as a key area of future investigation for the fi eld in the years
to come.
Th e second objective of this project is more inherently theoretical, and it
speaks to the increasing role geography and geographers play within inter-
disciplinary debates on “the political” and on the cultural histories of mo-
dernity. While this book clearly addresses the fi eld of geography, its more
general and signifi cant ambition is to refl ect on what the broader debate on
Nazism and the Holocaust may learn from a deeper understanding of their
spatialities and, more specifi cally, on how a geographical approach can con-
tribute to such an analysis. But it is also an investigation of what geography
may learn about the Th ird Reich—a nd its own (direct and indirect) relation-
ship with it—b y engaging with the work of other specialists preoccupied with
the spatial dimension of Nazism and the Holocaust. Furthermore, we believe
that this collection helps demonstrate how a closer look at the specifi cities of
Hitler’s geographies may draw attention to some undisclosed features of mo-
dernity and its spatialities. Th e growing interest in these issues in recent years
on the part of non- geographers is a testament to the need for more interdisci-
plinary work on the geographical imaginations and on the implementation of
the set of ideas, concepts, and practices that go under the label of “Hitlerism”
(see, among others, Levinas 1990). Th e contributions from non-g eographers
are also key to the volume for this reason, and they confi rm the wider pur-
paolo giaccaria and claudio minca 3
chase of our guiding argument. Th e entanglements between biopolitics and
geopolitics, the pervasiveness of cartographic and calculative rationalities,
and the endless search for new spatial orders and orderings are all geographi-
cal facets of modernity that can be fruitfully investigated with a closer inter-
rogation of some of their manifestations in the regime, established by what
Daniel Pick (2012) has called the “Nazi mind.”
Th rough a direct and critical engagement with some of the most signifi -
cant streams of the relevant literature, and with the aim of contributing more
specifi cally to present debates on the cultural histories of Nazism and the
Holocaust (for an overview of these, see chapters 1 [Giaccaria and Minca] and
2 [Stone] in this volume), Hitler’s Geographies represents the fi rst product of
a broader project that intends to start formulating a tentative spatial theory
of the Th ird Reich (see Giaccaria and Minca, this volume, chapter 1). Th e
existing geographical literature, which has focused on Haushofer’s Geopolitik,
on the long trajectory of Lebensraum across the twentieth century, on the
contribution of Walter Christaller and other geographers to the realization
of the Nazi spatial imaginaries and broader ideology—a nd more recently on
the “Holocaust Geographies”—h as only partially completed its task. We ar-
gue instead that some of these geographical concerns must be scrutinized
once again, especially in light of the perspectives on the spatial dimension/
roots of the Th ird Reich made possible by the new lines of historical and
philosophical research described above.
Hitler’s Geographies sets out to complement the contemporary cultural
histories of the Th ird Reich from a number of fresh geographical perspectives
in order to off er new understandings on the spatialities that have character-
ized Nazi imaginaries and practices. Th e ambition of elaborating a tentative
spatial theory of the Th ird Reich, starting with the present volume, is in fact
grounded in our confi dence that contemporary cultural and political geogra-
phy might off er analytical tools capable of providing original insights into the
arcana of the Nazi project, and a belief that the leadership of the Nazi regime—
not only Hitler and Himmler, but also the “experts” who “worked towards”
them (Kershaw 1993) in materializing their ideological imaginaries— were
driven by a fundamentally spatial Weltanschauung, itself characterized by a
racialized bio- geography of sorts. Accordingly, what we would like to suggest
is that, while the specifi cally geographical forma mentis that has marked Hit-
lerism should be contextualized with reference to the geographical thought
of the day, it should nonetheless be interpreted through the conceptual lenses
that contemporary critical geographical theory provides.
Th e realization of a spatial theory of the Th ird Reich and the Holocaust—
that is, an understanding of Nazism that adopts spatial and geographical