Poiger: Imperialism and Empire in C20th Germany

[jbor at bigpond.com]

A good overview, well-referenced, which discusses connections between 
the period when Germany possessed an overseas empire (1884-1919) and 
German "economic and political" imperialism before and after that time, 
up to the present day. (Interesting comments also on the 
"Americanization paradigm".) Might be profitably read alongside the 
obvious development of Pynchon's take on the same topic between the 
writing of _V._ and _GR_:

'Imperialism and Empire in Twentieth-Century Germany'
by Uta G. Poiger, _History & Memory_ 17.1/2, 2005, pp. 117-143.

Abstract: Presents an analysis of imperialism in the context of German 
history. Political motivations behind German colonialism; events that 
characterized racism following World War II; impact of the Cold War on 
relations of Germany with the Third World countries.

Excerpt:
[...] Historians now seem to agree that German colonial practice, 
including the colonial wars in Africa and the increased organizing of 
German society by racial categories, prefigured National Socialism in 
complex ways: as Isabel Hull has shown, the genocidal wars against the 
Herero and Nama in German Southwest Africa, enabled by an 
insufficiently critical German political culture, fostered "final 
solutions" as a legitimate goal for the German military. Even so, 
colonial rule during Imperial times was not the same as the Nazi racial 
state or the Nazi occupation of Europe, nor did colonialism necessarily 
lead to the rise of National Socialism and the Nazi genocide of 
European Jews. Moreover, while many colonists and colonialists were 
particularly prone to joining the Nazi movement, the obsession with the 
recapture of colonies during the Weimar years was not restricted to the 
right wing. For example, Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann, a 
"republican by reason", used the lament of the Germans as a "people 
without space" at the 1925 colonial exhibition in Berlin. [...] (p. 
122)

Pdf available.

best

On 17/02/2006 jbor at bigpond.com wrote:

> The development in Pynchon's thought from _V._, where the Herero 
> massacres are viewed as prefiguring the Nazi campaign of genocide in a 
> pretty simplistic way, to _GR_ and _M&D_ where there is seen to be a 
> much broader panorama of imperialist oppression and exploitation at 
> play (economic, poitical, religious, scientific et al), reaching back 
> for centuries, is clear enough. The letter to Thomas Hirsch in Seed's 
> book lays it out in fairly straightforward terms if you need a crib.