Nazism Across Borders

‘Call it “militarism” if you please; it certainly raises the standards of public health’ (p. 286). This citation from an American report about Nazi approaches to social policy at the time of the New Deal captures one of the leitmotifs of this volume, edited by Sandrine Kott and Kiran Klaus Patel, which makes a novel contribution to the understanding of Nazi rule in transnational and global contexts. Examining regions with different types of relationship to the German state, it provides a detailed understanding of the motives for collaboration with, and imitation of, the Nazi welfare state. The authors outline the extent to which social policy measures crossed geographic borders as well as the supposedly clear divides between democracies and dictatorships. The volume is organised into four sections, with the first discussing the international entanglements of Nazi social policy as well as its expansion in the borderlands and newly annexed territories such as Alsace, Bohemia and Austria. The second section addresses the place of social policy in states allied with, or loyal to, Nazi Germany: Italy, Spain, Japan, Norway and Croatia. Then follows a short section on the transatlantic reception of Nazi social policy, looking at democratic America and authoritarian Brazil. The concluding section addresses the implementation of social policy in the occupied countries, examining case-studies from Denmark, France and Belgium

Appeal · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Political science · Politics · European history and politics · German History and Society · Law