The Russian Roots of Nazism
White Émigrés and the Making of National Socialism, 1917–1945

This book analyses the contributions of 'White émigrés', anti-Bolshevik Russian exiles, to Nazism.

Michael Kellogg (Author)

9780521070058, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 31 July 2008

344 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.51 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Michael Kellogg's The Russian Roots of Nazism is a major contribution to the research on the origins of Nazism. In a domain where so much has been published and discussed, Kellogg's work succeeds in introducing a dimension never so thoroughly explored: the essential impact on early Nazi world-view of ideological elements and political themes, carried over to Germany by White-Russian emigres.' Professor Saul Friedlander, 1939 Club Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and Maxwell Cummings Chair of European History at Tel Aviv University

This book examines the overlooked topic of the influence of anti-Bolshevik, anti-Semitic Russian exiles on Nazism. White émigrés contributed politically, financially, militarily, and ideologically to National Socialism. This work refutes the notion that Nazism developed as a peculiarly German phenomenon: it arose primarily from the cooperation between völkisch (nationalist/racist) Germans and vengeful White émigrés. From 1920–1923, Adolf Hitler collaborated with a conspiratorial far right German-White émigré organization, Aufbau (Reconstruction). Aufbau allied with Nazis to overthrow the German government and Bolshevik rule through terrorism and military-paramilitary schemes. This organization's warnings of the monstrous 'Jewish Bolshevik' peril helped to inspire Hitler to launch an invasion of the Soviet Union and to initiate the mass murder of European Jews. This book uses extensive archival materials from Germany and Russia, including recently declassified documents, and will prove invaluable reading for anyone interested in the international roots of National Socialism.

Introduction
1. The far right in the German and Russian empires
2. At the extreme in the Ukraine and in Germany
3. The Latvian intervention and the Kapp Putsch
4. The radical right's Aufbau (Reconstruction) in Munich
5. 'Germany-Russia above everything'
6. Conspiracies of fire and the sword
7. 'In quick march to the abyss!'
8. The four writers of the Apocalypse
9. Aufbau's legacy to National Socialism
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS], European history [HBJD]