Racial Colonists in the Nazi East: Disabled Veterans and the Malleable Boundaries of Race, Masculinity, and Disability

Abstract

The Wehrmacht's stunning victories in the first three years of the Second World War produced a euphoric response among Nazi leaders. Suddenly, the East became a vast expanse of nearly limitless possibilities, and creating a new racial order topped the list. Although most historians have focused on the Volksdeutsche, the regime also planned to settle veterans after the war's conclusion to serve as model Germans, farmers, and a “living wall” to defend the East. As the war dragged on into 1942 and these men continued to fight, the regime turned to disabled veterans to garrison the East. The SS designed a racial selection process that proved too restrictive to generate enough applicants and, during 1943 and 1944, settlement officials revised standards. In the process, contingency, constrained practices, and contested ideology all cast the boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, able-bodiedness, and disability as much more malleable than Nazi propaganda projected.