A few years after the Nazis came to power in Germany, an alliance of
states and nationalistic movements formed, revolving around the German
axis. That alliance, the states involved, and the interplay between
their territorial aims and those of Germany during the interwar period
and World War II are at the core of this volume. This "territorial
revisionism" came to include all manner of political and military
measures that attempted to change existing borders. Taking into account
not just interethnic relations but also the motivations of states and
nationalizing ethnocratic ruling elites, this volume reconceptualizes
the history of East Central Europe during World War II. In so doing, it
presents a clearer understanding of some of the central topics in the
history of the war itself and offers an alternative to standard German
accounts of the period and East European national histories.