Refugees From Nazi Germany and the Liberal European States

by Frank Caestecker (Editor), Bob Moore (Editor)

Overview

The exodus of refugees from Nazi Germany in the 1930s has received far more attention from historians, social scientists, and demographers than many other migrations and persecutions in Europe. However, as a result of the overwhelming attention that has been given to the Holocaust within the historiography of Europe and the Second World War, the issues surrounding the flight of people from Nazi Germany prior to 1939 have been seen as Vorgeschichte (pre-history), implicating the Western European democracies and the United States as bystanders only in the impending tragedy. Based on a comparative analysis of national case studies, this volume deals with the challenges that the pre-1939 movement of refugees from Germany and Austria posed to the immigration controls in the countries of interwar Europe. Although Europe takes center-stage, this volume also looks beyond, to the Middle East, Asia and America. This global perspective outlines the constraints under which European policy makers (and the refugees) had to make decisions. By also considering the social implications of policies that became increasingly protectionist and nationalistic, and bringing into focus the similarities and differences between European liberal states in admitting the refugees, it offers an important contribution to the wider field of research on political and administrative practices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781845455873
Publisher:	Berghahn Books
Publication date:	01/01/2010
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Frank Caestecker read history at the University of Ghent and worked as an eligibility officer for UNHCR and the Belgian asylum institution. He completed his graduate studies at the European University Institute in Florence and is now affiliated to the University of Ghent and the University College Ghent, focusing his research on alien policy in the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries and the influence this policy has on migration dynamics.

Bob Moore is Professor of Twentieth-Century European History at the University of Sheffield. He has published extensively on the History of the Second World War, and specifically on the Holocaust, the Netherlands, and Prisoners of War. He is currently completing a book about the rescuers of Jews in Western Europe during the Nazi occupation.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Graphs
List of Abbreviations
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore

PART I: NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ANALYSES OF POLICIES TOWARDS THE REFUGEES FROM NAZI GERMANY

Chapter 1. International Refugee Policy and Jewish Immigration under the Shadow of National Socialism
Susanne Heim

Chapter 2. The Danish Immigration Authorities and the Issue of Rassenschande
Lone Rünitz

Chapter 3. Unwilling Refuge: France and the Dilemma of Illegal Immigration, 1933–1939
Vicki Caron

Chapter 4. Dwindling Options: Seeking Asylum in Switzerland 1933–1939
Regula Ludi

Chapter 5. The 1930s: The End of the Latin American Open-door Policy
Patrick von zur Mühlen

Chapter 6. Shanghai: A Last Resort for Desperate Jews
Steve Hochstadt

Chapter 7. Palestine as a Destination for Jewish Immigrants and Refugees from Nazi Germany
Aviva Halamish

Chapter 8. American Refugee Policy in the 1930s
Bat-Ami Zucker

Chapter 9. Were Unaccompanied Child Refugees a Privileged Class of Refugees in the Liberal States of Europe?
Claudia Curio

PART II: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF IMMIGRATION POLICIES OF LIBERAL STATES IN WESTERN EUROPE AND THE FLIGHT FROM NAZI GERMANY
Frank Caestecker and Bob Moore

Chapter 9. The Legal Construction of Policy towards Aliens prior to 1933
Chapter 10. Refugees from Nazi Germany and the Development of Refugee Policies, 1933–1937
Chapter 11. The Deeping Crisis: March 1938–October 1938
Chapter 12. From Kristallnacht to War, November 1938–August 1939

Conclusion

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"The noteworthy strengths of this work are its transnational and comparative perspective and its nuanced analysis of the disparate practices of refugee policy below the level of discourse and official decision-making. [It] provides a thoughtfully critical examination of the controls used by officials in western Europe to manage the migration from the Third Reich and to withstand the pressures on their frontiers during the refugee crisis of 1938/39." · German History

“ This is a thoroughly well-researched and organized book. “ · American Historical Review

From the Publisher