Following their occupation by the Third Reich, Warsaw and Minsk became home to tens of thousands of Germans. In this exhaustive study, Stephan Lehnstaedt provides a nuanced, eye-opening portrait of the lives of these men and women, who constituted a surprisingly diverse populationincluding everyone from SS officers to civil servants, as well as ethnically German city residentsunited in its self-conception as a master race. Even as they acclimated to the daily routines and tedium of life in the East, many Germans engaged in acts of shocking brutality against Poles, Belarusians, and Jews, while social conditions became increasingly conducive to systematic mass murder.

Stephan Lehnstaedt is Professor for Holocaust Studies and Jewish Studies at Touro College Berlin. After receiving his Ph.D. from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, he worked at the German Historical Institute Warsaw and taught at Humboldt University Berlin and the London School of Economics. For his research, he was awarded the medal Powstania w Getcie Warszawskim and the commanders cross of the order Missio Reconciliationis in Poland.

List of Tables and Figures List of Abbreviations

Introduction

Chaprter 1. Germans on Duty in the East in Warsaw and MinskChapter 2. Prescribed Daily ActivitiesChapter 3. Transgression of NormsChapter 4. The Attitude of the OverlordsChapter 5. Violence in Everyday Life: The German Occupiers and the Local Population

Conclusions

Bibliography