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Preface to the English Edition

MY BOOK HAD hardly come out in German when Paula Bradish from my German publisher Hamburger Edition looked for ways of funding an English translation. I am very much indebted to her for taking the initiative and to the amazing program Geisteswissenschaften International for awarding a translation prize making my research accessible to an English-reading audience. I would also like to thank Professor Mark Roseman for his consistent support, this time for putting me in touch with Indiana University Press, where I was assisted by the efficient Ashante Thomas, who guided the book to publication. And it is published right on time—shortly after the edited volume Beyond the Racial State by Mark Roseman, Richard F. Wetzel, and Devon O. Pendas has demonstrated how fruitful a critique is that questions the paradigm of National Socialism as a racial state—which is also the argument of my book.

My final thanks are to Wayne Yung. When writing in English or reading English books on this topic, I am always struck by just how translation ends up becoming interpretation—often by intent, too often by accident. Finding the right words not just for the atrocities the Germans committed during the Second World War but also for the language they spoke and the terminology they used is exceedingly difficult if one tries to retain—and not narrow down—the many allusions terms like völkisch or Volksgemeinschaft invoke in German. With this translation, Wayne has done exactly this.

Gerhard Wolf, Brighton, 2019