The American West and the Nazi East

By employing new 'optics' and a comparative approach, this book helps us recognize the unexpected and unsettling connections between America's 'western' empire and Nazi Germany's 'eastern' empire, linking histories previously thought of as totally unrelated and leading readers towards a deep revisioning of the 'American West' and the 'Nazi East'.

“This book provides a valuable and uncharted insight into two dark moments of history. Kakel deserves considerable credit for tackling such an important and scarcely addressed topic. … Kakel’s work provides a fascinating and detailed assessment of two atrocity-laden nationalist projects and does so by unearthing profound insight without obscuring the individual histories. Any scholar of transnational history would do well to read this work and incorporate its lessons and approach into their own work and teaching models.” (Derrick J. Angermeier, H-War, H-Net Reviews, March 2018)

'Challenging and provocative, this well-researched and clearly written account utilizes the cutting-edge approaches of comparative genocide studies to identify what Kakel rightly calls 'disquieting underlying patterns of empirical similarity' in the genocidal policies and practices that flowed from colonial ambitions in the American West and the Nazi East. Kakel's judicious and insightful analysis can withstand the controversies that are likely to swirl around this important book.'

- John K. Roth, Founding Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights at Claremont McKenna College, California, USA

'Although historians have recognized that the Euro-American colonization of North America inspired the Nazi war for "living space," Carroll Kakel's study is the first sustained and detailed comparison of the American West and the Nazi East. These episodes of territorial expansionism, which combined settler colonialism with the expulsion and killing of indigenous people, occurred at different times and they evinced important differences arising from their specific contexts. Nevertheless, their similarities, among them the obsession with "space" as vital to national survival and the desire to expel or eliminate racial "undesirables" which Kakel demonstrates with rich detail and telling side-by-side comparisons, show conclusively that empire and race lay at the foundations of the American Republic, and that American expansionism became the most important imperialist model for the National Socialists.'

- Shelley Baranowski, Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Akron, USA

'Shocking as it may be to juxtapose American westward expansion and Nazi eastward expansion, Kakel employs a thorough knowledge of the two histories as well as of Holocaust and genocide studies to present a very unusual comparative history. It is startling, well-researched, and provocative. It deserves a fair-minded and broad readership.'

- Walter Nugent, author of Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion

Carroll P. Kakel, III ('Pete')  is a research historian and lecturer at The Johns Hopkins University Centre for Liberal Arts, USA. He has an MA in Holocaust Studies (with distinction) and a PhD in Modern History from Royal Holloway, University of London.