Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius presents a study of a hidden legacy of World War I: the experience of German soldiers on the Eastern front and the long-term effects of this encounter. Using hitherto neglected sources from both occupiers and occupied, official documents, propaganda, memoirs, and novels, he reveals how German views of the East changed during total war, and how these views affected the return of German armies under the Nazis. This persuasive and compelling study fills a yawning gap in the literature of the Great War.

Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius presents a study of a hidden legacy of World War I: the experience of German soldiers on the Eastern front and the long-term effects of this encounter. Using hitherto neglected sources from both occupiers and occupied, official documents, propaganda, memoirs, and novels, he reveals how German views of the East changed during total war, and how these views affected the return of German armies under the Nazis. This persuasive and compelling study fills a yawning gap in the literature of the Great War.

Over the last two centuries and indeed up to the present day, Eastern Europe's lands and peoples have conjured up a complex mixture of fascination, anxiety, promise, and peril for Germans looking eastwards.
Across the generations, a varied cast of German writers, artists, philosophers, diplomats, political leaders, generals, and Nazi racial fanatics have imagined (often in very different ways) a special German mission in the East, forging a frontier myth that paralleled the American myths of the "Wild West" and "Manifest Destiny." Through close analysis of German views of the East from...

Over the last two centuries and indeed up to the present day, Eastern Europe's lands and peoples have conjured up a complex mixture of fascination, anxiety, promise, and peril for Germans looking eastwards.
Across the generations, a varied cast of German writers, artists, philosophers, diplomats, political leaders, generals, and Nazi racial fanatics have imagined (often in very different ways) a special German mission in the East, forging a frontier myth that paralleled the American myths of the 'Wild West' and 'Manifest Destiny'. Through close analysis of German views of the East from...