Re-Imagined Communities: Racial, National, and Colonial Visions in National Socialist Germany and Fascist Italy, 1933-1943 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Eric S. Roubinek IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Eric D. Weitz, advisor Mary Jo Maynes, co-advisor December 2014 © Eric S. Roubinek 2014 Acknowledgements This project could not have been completed without the ongoing support and encouragement of numerous friends and colleagues. Foremost among them, I am deeply indebted to my two wonderful advisors Eric Weitz and MJ Maynes. Whether from across town, the mountain-tops of the Alps, or the south of France, Eric and MJ always found time to answer my questions and challenge my ideas while providing moral support throughout my graduate career. The strengths of this work are the result of their mentorship and guidance. I am also indebted to my committee members Rick McCormick, Patricia Lorcin, and Helga Leitner who not only provided useful comments throughout the writing process, but whose courses were influential in the defining of this project. I would be remiss not to thank Gary Cohen whose encouragement and humor were a constant throughout my graduate studies. I have received financial support from the University of Minnesota History Department, Graduate School (Graduate Research Partnership Program, Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship), European Studies Consortium (Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship Program), Center for German and European Studies, and from the German Academic Exchange Service. I am grateful for their support without which this project could not have been completed. Throughout the research process I spent several years in the archives of Germany and Italy. I wish to thank the staff of the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, the Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, and the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv for their kind support. In Rome I am grateful for the patience and direction offered to me by the staff of the Archivio Centrale dello Stato. And finally I wish to thank the staff of the Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde, whose assistance and friendliness over the years have made the archive an inviting, and at times, entertaining place to work. I also wish to thank many of my graduate colleagues at the University of Minnesota who offered me their guidance and friendship and who kept me sane throughout my graduate career. Emily Bruce and Melissa Kelley were a constant source of encouragement and Eric Otremba and Tim Smit always provided a healthy dose of realism and experience. I am also grateful to Chris Marshall and Ed Snyder, who helped me find my own voice in my early years as a graduate student, offered friendly competition and commentary in the final stretch of writing, and provided innumerable hours of entertainment throughout my years in the history department. I am also indebted to Marnie Christensen who is responsible for getting me back into my running shoes and providing me with a healthy outlet for my stress and a sounding board for my work in the final years of dissertating. Whether accompanying me to the archives in Berlin and Rome, or submitting forms to the Graduate School in my absence Adam Blackler has been a terrific friend and indispensable colleague. Jessica Namakkal and Matt Konieczny formed my “shadow writing group.” Thank you both for your professional and personal support and encouragement throughout the writing process. Additional thanks go to my “nemesis” Willeke Sandler and to Kobi Kabalek who provided a strong intellectual network while researching in Germany and beyond. i I also owe a debt of gratitude to my new colleagues at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, without whose patience and support I could not have finished the final push of writing. A special thanks goes to Jake Butera, Regine Criser, Oliver Gloag, and Darin Waters. Outside of the university I wish to thank my extended network of family and friends for their ongoing support. My “adopted” big sister and big brother Marynel Ryan van Zee and Will Cremer have been unbelievable mentors throughout the writing process and the transition into the post-dissertation world. In Germany Britta, Tobias, Tessa, and Frank provided so much more than just a roof over my head during my many research trips. I value our great conversations and lasting friendship. To my family in Germany I extend my deepest thanks for all that you have done to support me over the years. Whether offering a respite from the archives on the North Sea or not so subtly critiquing my German, I could not have completed this project without your support and friendship. Thank you Kristin, Christa, Henning, Helge, Katja, and Ingmar! Finally I wish to thank my mom and dad and sister without whose love and support this project could never have been completed. “Next year” has finally come, dad, and I am now finished writing. ii Abstract The rise of National Socialism in 1933 offered a new opportunity to the German colonial movement whose demands for a restored overseas empire had remained at the margins of nationalist politics throughout the Weimar Republic. Profiting from the broader political revisionism of National Socialism, colonial revisionists sought to meld their ambitions overseas with the racial, national, and expansionist politics of Nazism, while the regime sought to benefit from the popular support for colonialism. Using a biographical approach, I move beyond a strictly diplomatic history of National Socialist overseas empire to explore the experiences of members of the German colonial movement – from mid-level, Party functionaries, to women journalists, and even opponents of the regime – to demonstrate the contentiousness of ideas of race, space, and nation under the Third Reich. Viewing race and nation through the lens of overseas empire, I argue that not only were these ideas highly variable and mobile within a national context, but also that contestations over these terms allowed for the creation of new racial and national communities that transcended the borders of the nation-state. When it became apparent to the German colonial movement that the National Socialist leadership was more interested in expansion on the continent than overseas, the movement looked increasingly to Fascist Italian colonialism for inspiration and collaboration. This transnational cooperation provided an alternative to the formal political and military alliances between the two states and posited a German and Italian fascism as the defender of a “new Europe.” My research draws on a broad variety of secondary sources and the primary and archival source collections of the Bundesarchiv Berlin, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, iii Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg, Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Politsches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Staatsbibliothek Berlin, and the Archivio Centrale dello Stato. iv Table of Contents Introduction and Literature Review 1 Chapter 1: “To be Colonial is to be National”: Overseas Empire under the Third Reich 29 Chapter 2: Fascist Colonialism: Transnational Nationalisms and the Creation of a “New Europe” 76 Chapter 3: “Mit kolonialem Gruß” to “Heil Hitler”: Colonial Education in the Third Reich 126 Chapter 4: Creating “Carriers of the Nation”: The Fascist Colonial Police 174 Conclusion 221 Bibliography 227 v Introduction and Literature Review As a consequence of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles Germany ceded all of its overseas possessions to the newly created Mandate Powers. Yet, despite the loss of colonies, German colonialism did not end. Instead it lived on in the memories of former German colonists, and colonial officials and soldiers. United in spirit if not in name, a multitude of German colonial revisionist organizations such as the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society) kept the dream of overseas empire alive throughout Germany’s Weimar Republic. Colonial revisionists – these diehard supporters of the return of a German overseas empire – made little headway in the midst of Weimar’s political, social, and economic crises. Therefore, many colonialists welcomed the National Socialist seizure of power in 1933. The Nazis had promised to take up the colonial banner in domestic politics and reinstate a strong, national colonial will. Since 1920 point three of their party platform declared, “We demand land and territory (colonies) for the sustenance of our people, and settlement of our surplus population.”1 In many ways the Nazis kept their promise, and under the Third Reich colonialism took on a new dimension of symbolic national and international importance. The colonial press, colonial literature, membership in colonial organizations, and participation in colonial events all increased after 1933. Beyond the propaganda, the National Socialist regime actively planned for a return to overseas territories. By the end of its 10-year-long quest for overseas colonies in 1943 the Nazi colonial administration had moved from a process of synchronization and ‘nazification’ 1 “Programm der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei, München 24.2.1920,” in Wolfgang Treue, Deutsche Parteiprogramme 1861-1954 (Göttingen: Musterschmidt, 1956), 143. 2 of the various colonial revisionist groups of the Weimar era to establishing its own departments of overseas colonial preparation and education. It had even developed detailed plans to create a Colonial Ministry in