Eric Roubinek, ‘Whose Peculiarities? Race in National Socialist Overseas Colonial Planning’

With the passing of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, Nazi racial ideology became the hegemonic discourse of international propaganda and diplomacy. In turn, it linked Nazi racial antisemitism to the Third Reich’s overseas colonial ambitions and portrayed Germany’s colonial policies as peculiar: different and more radical than those of its European neighbors. This talk seeks to challenge this national distinction by focusing on what the colonial organizations under the Third Reich were actually planning and with whom. By decentralizing international diplomacy and the Nazi leadership to focus on the middle management of the German colonial movement and their professional networks, it demonstrates the strong tensions that existed between colonial and racial discourses on the national, international and transnational scales.

Eric Roubinek is assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Asheville. His research focuses on the intersection of race and nation in the colonial planning of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. He authored several articles and book chapters, most recently “From a Nazi Colonialism to a Fascist Colonialism: Transnational Nationalisms and the Creation of a ‘New Europe’” in Nazi-Occupied Europe, edited by Raffael Scheck et al. (Routledge, 2019). Lately, he has delved into the history of fashion and consumption of German women in the 18th and 19th centuries.

This event is moderated by Andrea Sinn, O’Briant Developing Professor and assistant professor of history, Elon University, and is in cooperation with the Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill Departments of History, and the UNC-Chapel Hill Center for European Studies.

This event is part of the North Carolina German Studies Workshop and Seminar Series.