One would be hard-pressed to exaggerate just how central notions of race were for the National Socialist project. As the Nazis saw it, their racial agenda was underpinned by scientific insight and empirically verifiable facts. Yet the actual implementation of this agenda inevitably subverted any such claim. Needless to say, when it came to establishing the racial identity of various groups and individuals, the distinguishing racial features supposedly established by “racial scientists” never provided sufficiently reliable criteria for the clear distinctions the regime envisaged. Ehrenreich cites the Thuringian Reichsstatthalter, Fritz Sauckel, who stated in 1940 that he had seen “hundreds of extremely criminal full-Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp by Weimar, who, for the most part, did not exhibit even a trace of anthropological Jewish characteristics. Frequently they were tall and blond and possessed a sharply defined ‘Aryan’ countenance” (p. 130). In short, when it embarked on the realization of its racial agenda, the regime, far from relying on the “racial science” that supposedly provided the basis for its actions, in fact had to rely simply on the principles of descent and (ultimately) religious affiliation. The racial characteristics that supposedly set Jews apart really only played a role in the identification of Jews when their occurrence happened to coincide with the fact that an individual's forebears had belonged to the Jewish community anyway. The ancestral proof thus formed the bedrock of the regime's racial policies and “spawned its own cottage industry” (p. 70). Ehrenreich suggests that “it is probably not an overstatement to say that by 1945, aside from the very old and the very young, virtually every Reich citizen, or would-be citizen, had made an ancestral proof at one time or another” (p. 61). It is all the more surprising that this issue has not received more scholarly attention, and Ehrenreich has made an interesting and valuable contribution by elucidating it.

Conceptually, the strength of his discussion springs from his refusal to conclude from the lack of internal consistency in its approach to the determination of racial categories that the regime may have been in some way disingenuous or lacked genuine conviction in these matters. What exactly the relationship between the ancestral proof and “racial science” proper was, and how it could best be rolled out and serve its purpose, may have been contested, both among committed National Socialists and in society more generally, but these debates and controversies never fundamentally questioned the basic desirability of clear and reliable racial distinctions. The (seemingly) intransigent stance of the Protestant Church province of Schleswig-Holstein that Ehrenreich discusses at some length is a case in point. As he concludes, “rather than evidencing discomfort with racist policy, this story shows a church leadership comfortable enough with its position in the National Socialist state that it was willing openly to confront both the Interior Ministry and party organs in an effort to reap greater benefits from the ancestral proof requirement” (p. 148).

Ehrenreich's account falls squarely within the parameters of the recent synthesis between intentionalism and functionalism that concedes the regime's polycratic nature (p. 83) yet considers it a source not of weakness and self-destruction but of flexibility and resilience and thus of strength. Ehrenreich argues that it was, in fact, precisely the lack of internal conceptual consistency at this juncture that allowed many Germans to align themselves with Nazi racial policies with which they would have been rather more uneasy had they only had the choice of accepting them on the regime's own terms or not at all. Eugenic notions and anti-Jewish sentiment were widely accepted in German society well before 1933, and the ancestral proof was in some ways more in keeping with this general mood than it was with the Nazis' rather more extreme aspirations. As Ehrenreich points out in his thoughtful final chapter, “Racial Scientific Ideology and the Holocaust,” all its rabid anti-Semitic rhetoric notwithstanding, the regime in fact “almost invariably justified the racial laws and the ancestral proof on the alleged need to maintain racial purity, not prevent Jewish perfidy” (p. 168). It was the lack of internal conceptual consistency that allowed the issues to become fudged so that the specific Nazi agenda became increasingly associated with suggestions and sentiments that many already considered plausible and legitimate.

At its core, then, this is an interesting, instructive, and occasionally intriguing monograph. Ehrenreich is altogether less successful, though, in his portrayal of the continuities of genealogical theory and practice since the Imperial period, and readers would do well not to let this section of the book put them off. Here Ehrenreich spreads himself too thinly and lacks sureness of touch. He treats both Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany as static entities. None too surprisingly, a substantial share of the really juicy material he attributes to demonstrate “precursive elements” (p. 50) in genealogical practice in Imperial Germany was in fact published during the second half of World War I, yet he does not relate this to the Judenzählung and the general escalation of racism and anti-Semitism from 1916 onward. Similarly, he understands the rise of eugenics and racism in the Weimar period as a response to its political and social instability. Yet ironically the most obnoxious utterances he cites are from the period of relative stability between 1924 and 1928 while he introduces a call for moderation from 1929 on. The issue of “Jewish” names is touched upon, yet without any recourse to Dietz Bering's work. This section of the book is also sloppy. Stradonitz becomes Stradonowitz, and von Hartmann-Franzenschuld becomes Hartmann von Franzenschuld (p. 17). We are referred to Reclams Universal Bibliothech (p. 34) and told that a Volkschulklasse (sic) is an “adult school class” (p. 37), etc. In fact, the book as a whole could have been more carefully edited. The handling of German terms, titles, and phrases is replete with problems, there are quite a few dodgy translations, and the umlauts are all over the place (Völkskorper, p. 46). Winifred Wagner makes three appearances, each time spelled incorrectly as Winifried and introduced as Wagner's daughter (pp. 114, 157, 173).