About the project
The project studied the development of racial science in Nazi-occupied Europe. Links between racial science in Hitler’s Germany and similar ideas and intellectual trends in different Nazi-occupied or Nazi-dominated countries in Europe were examined. Many links between these countries may be established with regard to scientific exchanges, ideological borrowings, institutional or individual collaboration and policy development. The project explored the continuity between scientific developments in various parts of Europe before and during WWII, and the existence in each of the countries studied of a “racial science” agenda born of their own specific histories and cultures. The case studies include Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Hungary, Romania, Croatia, Latvia and Estonia.
Results
The project’s subject matter was discussed at the conference Racial Science in Hitler’s ’New Europe’, which was organised by the Norwegian Holocaust Center in partnership with the University of Oslo in September 2009. An anthology of the conference proceedings was published by University of Nebraska Press in 2013.
The anthology’s contents
Introduction
Anton Weiss-Wendt og Rory Yeomans
1. Defining “(Un)Wanted Population Addition”: Anthropology, Racist Ideology, and Mass Murder in the Occupied East
Isabel Heinemann
2. Preserving the “Master Race”: SS Reproductive and Family Policies During the Second World War
Amy Carney
3. Pureblooded Vikings and Peasants: Norwegians in the Racial Ideology of the SS
Terje Emberland
4. “Nordic-Germanic” Dreams and National Realities: A Case Study of the Danish Region of Sønderjylland, 1933–1945
Steffen Werther
5. Eugenics Into Science: The Nazi Period in Austria, 1938–1945
Thomas Mayer
6. Biological Racism and Anti-Semitism in Intellectual Constructions in Italian Fascism: The Case of Telesio Interlandi and La difesa della razza
Elisabetta Cassina Wolff
7. Regenerating the Nation: Racial Anthropology and Mass Murder Under the Ustasha Regime
Rory Yeomans
8. Ethnic Nationalism Versus Racial Science: The Case of Romania
Vladimir Solonari
9. “If our race did not exist, it would have to be created”: Racial Sciences in Hungary, 1940–1944
Marius Turda
10. Germanic Brothers: The Dutch and the Germanization of the Occupied East
Geraldien F. D. Kunzel
11. Building Hitler’s “New Europe”: Ethnography and Racial Research in Nazi-Occupied Estonia
Anton Weiss-Wendt
12. Eugenics and Racial Paradigms in Nazi-Occupied Latvia, 1941–1945
Björn M. Felder
13. The Eternal Voice of the Blood: Racial Science and Nazi Ethics
Wolfgang Bialas