Ernst Langthaler’s comprehensive study Schlachtfelder: Alltägliches Wirtschaften in der nationalsozialistischen Agrargesellschaft, 1938–1945 (Battlefields: Daily economic activities in agrarian society under Nazi rule, 1938–1945),...
moreErnst Langthaler’s comprehensive study Schlachtfelder: Alltägliches Wirtschaften in der nationalsozialistischen Agrargesellschaft, 1938–1945 (Battlefields: Daily economic activities in agrarian society under Nazi rule, 1938–1945), addresses the largely neglected history of what happened to agriculture in Austria during the time of Nazi domination. Expounding on this theme, Langthaler argues for some rethinking of the long-debated paradox of the Nazis’ Blut und Boden—“blood and soil”—policy, and of how it related to the concept of modernity. Up till now, the huge number of studies on the Nazi era have tended to neglect research on agriculture, despite its central role in the Nazis’ Blut und Boden ideology, which centered on the German farmer as the savior of the “degenerated German nation.” The range of approaches and disciplines represented in this monograph is very impressive. Schlachtfelder offers a rich sampling of primary and secondary literature on a large number of relevant topics, makes extensive use of archival source material, and combines sociological theory with more traditional historiographical approaches.
