Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part I. Nationhood and Imperial Rivalry through World War I -- Suffering and Salvation : Intellectual and Cultural Origins -- Locating Russia in a World of Nations and Empires : Nineteenth-Century Intellectual Discourse -- "America" in Asia : Siberia and German Experts on Russia from Peace to War -- Part II. Re-mapping "the East" between the Wars -- "Asia Awakes" : The Rhetoric of Colonization in Interwar German Travel Accounts -- Siberia and Visions of Continental Empire -- Germanizing "the East" : Imagining Ethnic Germans in the Soviet Union.

"This book traces transformations in German views of Russia in the first half of the twentieth century, leading up to the disastrous German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Casteel shows how Russia figured in the imperial visions and utopian desires of a variety of Germans, including scholars, journalists, travel writers, government and military officials, as well as nationalist activists. He illuminates the ambiguous position that Russia occupied in Germans' global imaginary as both an imperial rival and an object of German power. During the interwar years in particular, Russia, now under Soviet rule, became a site onto which Germans projected their imperial ambitions and expectations for the future, as well as their worst anxieties about modernity. Casteel shows how the Nazis drew on this cultural repertoire to construct their own devastating vision of racial imperialism"-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record.