The Nazi invasion of Poland was the first step in an unremittingly brutal occupation, one most infamously represented by the network of death camps constructed on Polish soil. The systematic murder of Jews in the camps has understandably been the focus of much historical attention. Less well-remembered today is the fate of millions of non-Jewish Polish civilians, who—when they were not expelled from their homeland or forced into slave labor—were murdered in vast numbers both within and outside of the camps. Drawing on both German and Polish sources, In the Shadow of Auschwitz gives a definitive account of the depredations inflicted upon Polish society, tracing the ruthless implementation of a racial ideology that cast ethnic Poles as an inferior race.
Table of Contents:
Preface
Introduction
Part I: The setting of massacres: prehistory, enemy constructs and the order of violence
Chapter 1. Continuities and ruptures: Germans and Poles before 1939
Chapter 2. Occupation as a framework for action: ideology, politics and violence
Part II: ‘Polish bands’: war, occupation policy and the logic of massacres
Chapter 3. Beyond the border: the war in September 1939
Chapter 4. Initiation and practice: ‘Hubal’ and the beginnings of counter-partisan operations
Chapter 5. Removal of constraints: fighting partisans through a ‘small-scale war’ in 1942
Chapter 6. Losing control: escalating crisis and the dynamics of violence in 1943
Chapter 7. Authority amid the death throes: the final phase of German rule, 1944–1945
Chapter 8. Transfer and culmination: the quelling of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944
Part III: Coming to terms with the past after 1945
Chapter 9. Extradition and punishment: Poland, the Allies and German perpetrators
Chapter 10. Prosecution and suppression: massacres and German justice
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author :
Daniel Brewing is Assistant Professor of Modern History at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. His scholarly work has been supported with numerous scholarships from prestigious institutions such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the German Historical Institute Washington DC, the Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah and the Gerda Henkel Foundation. He is the recipient of several awards including the Geisteswissenschaften International prize in 2019.
Review :
“In this deeply researched volume, evidence of the author's masterful command of a massive volume of primary and secondary materials, Brewing…focuses on German massacres in rural and urban Polish villages and communities, which he defines and examines in careful detail…Sections of this study are emotionally wrenching to read, but the scholarly balance justifies the numerous prizes this book has received. It is a major contribution to both German and Polish historiography and has important lessons and insights for society as a whole….Highly Recommended.” • Choice
“Based on a dense archival source base that captures different levels of German decision-making against relevant literatures in German, Polish, and English, Brewing offers a model for the escalation of killing that remains attuned to variation…The book’s central contribution will be on the isolation of the massacre as an event deserving of its own analysis, though historians of the Holocaust will also be interested in the way the early occupation radicalized German behavior and how partisan and anti-partisan activities made Polish Jews vulnerable.” • German Studies Review
Praise for the German Edition:
“Brewing, in his meticulously researched, excellently structured and captivatingly written study, focuses for the first time on the massacres of Polish civilians mainly committed by Germans.” • Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“Daniel Brewing closes a research gap on German occupation in Poland and provides an excellent basis for further investigation. He sets new standards with his carefully argued, theoretically well-founded, and excellent, empirically rich study.” • Sehepunkte
