This English translation of Gerhard Wolf's Ideologie und Herrschaftsrationalität. Nationalsozialistische Germaniserungspolitik in Polen (2012) is a detailed and highly informative study of the Nazi regime's attempts at ethno-national transformation in three areas of prewar Poland annexed to the Third Reich in 1939: Danzig-West Prussia, the Wartheland, and Upper Silesia. Rather than claiming the primacy of either ideology or pragmatism in the development and implementation of National Socialist Germanization policy in these regions, the author seeks to bridge a gap in the scholarship by locating that policy “in the conflicted zone between ideological premises and the rational needs of power” (8), thereby challenging both the “racial state” paradigm prevailing in much of the scholarship as well as the common assumption that Nazi measures were a direct outgrowth of ideological principles. Building on established Polish- and German-language works as well as more recent scholarship, the book is an important contribution to the growing literature on the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Wolf centers his analysis of Germanization on National Socialist population policy, which took three main forms: the deportation of Jews and Poles, the settlement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, and the assimilation of large segments of the local population through the selection and categorization processes associated with the German People's List (Deutsche Volksliste or DVL). Contrary to the early hopes and expectations of Nazi population planners, these processes were never effectively synchronized, but conflicted with one another. Administrative chaos, antagonism between the various agencies and institutions formulating and implementing population policy (the SS, the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the Reich Security Main Office, the Wehrmacht, the Race and Resettlement Main Office, and the Ethnic German Liaison Office, among others), and the power of the Gauleiter in the three regions obstructed any efforts to reach a uniform or effective program for transforming western occupied Poland into the new “German East.” In the author's words, “the SS apparatus was unable – and the Reich Interior Ministry even less so – to maintain control over the wayward powers on the periphery and the competing power blocs in Berlin or to steer them into prescribed paths.” (11)

Of particular importance is Wolf's challenge to conventional interpretations – especially those in the Polish-language literature – that tend to place inordinate emphasis on the exclusionary elements of Nazi policy in western Poland. Instead, the author endeavors to show “how the Germanization policy of the occupiers was at least as much about inclusion too – and not only of people like the ‘Volksdeutsche’ who were organized in German associations, but also of what would soon become an ever-expanding section of the local populace.” (113) Moreover, the author appropriately stresses how the labor demands of the German economy influenced and even directed the strategy and tactics of deportation and assimilation policy. Such claims come as no surprise to the informed reader, but the demand for Polish workers emerged, according to Wolf, already in the early months of the occupation, rather than, as many assume, in conjunction with plans for the German attack on the Soviet Union. And over time, deportation policy came to focus less on security concerns, the need to make space for ethnic German settlers, or the goal of removing the allegedly racially unfit, than on the provision of labor for the Reich. Similarly, the efforts of the DVL were driven less by the goal of achieving a more racially pure “Volkskörper” in western Poland than the need to provide the Reich with an allegedly assimilated or assimilable workforce for the German wartime economy. In the end, Wolf concludes, it was the category of “Volk” that dominated over “race” in the “ideological contest over who was German and how to determine German ‘ethnonational membership.’” (364)

Gerhard Wolf's research is thorough and his documentation scrupulous. He shows a mastery of the German-, Polish-, and English-language historiography on the subject and has meticulously mined relevant archival collections in Germany, Austria, Israel, Russia, the UK, and especially Poland, where his work in national and regional state archives is particularly impressive. A deep dive into the administration and bureaucracy of the Nazi occupation, the book will be accessible only to specialists, who will note that the author is occasionally overly eager to distinguish his analysis from the work of other scholars. Wolf's prose is at times mired in administrative detail and thus renders his narrative periodically lacking in coherence and argument – this despite an admirable translation by Wayne Yung. Overwhelmingly based in German documents, Ideology and the Rationality of Domination is, to be sure, written from the perspective of the “perpetrator.” Such an approach is certainly not inappropriate, but Wolf's analysis could nonetheless offer a sense – if only in a limited way – of the experiences and responses of the deported, the resettled, the excluded, and the assimilated. Moreover, the author's legitimate emphasis on the inclusionary aspects of Nazi policy may diminish for some readers the discriminatory and even murderous overall character of the occupation regime, especially in the Wartheland. These criticisms should not, however, detract from the exhaustive research, powerful conclusions, and overall importance of Wolf's contribution, which will likely remain a standard reference for the study of National Socialist population policy in western Poland.