ABSTRACT
Germany’s expanionist drive to the east, which by 1918 had established German arms from the Baltic to the Caucasus, revealed a nationalist logic which was capable of emulating the worst excesses of Habsburg and Romanov national exploitation and oppression. The East, once a land of German hope and German work, which fell to the good of all peoples and united them to a Western community of fate, is shattered. A critical historiography of the German-Polish relationship is one of the unqualified goods to come out of the Brandt government’s Ostpolitik. Thus both Blanke and Hagen are ultimately too ‘Bismarckocentric’ in their interpretation of the Germanization measures, although at various points both show awareness of the wider dimension. Blanke, Hagen and Kulczycki explore different aspects of the nationality conflict in the east of Prussia, while Murphy deals with the experience of Polish migrant workers in the Ruhr.
