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Podcast: New Books in American Studies
Episode: Edward Westermann, "Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest" (U Oklahoma Press, 2016)
Description: As he prepared to wage his war of annihilation on the Eastern Front, Adolf Hitler repeatedly drew parallels between the Nazi quest for Lebensraum, or living space, in Eastern Europe and the United States's westward expansion under the banner of Manifest Destiny. The peoples of Eastern Europe were, he said, his "redskins," and for his colonial fantasy of a "German East" he claimed a historical precedent in the United States's displacement and killing of the native population. Edward B. Westermann examines the validity, and value, of this claim in Hitler's Ostkrieg and the Indian Wars: Comparing Genocide and Conquest (Uni...