Robert L. Nelson sets out to tell the story of German settler colonialism in East Central Europe through the intellectual biography of Max Sering (1857–1939), the prominent agrarian economist. Born in Barby, Sering worked throughout Germany at various academic institutions, published widely, and served as a governmental advisor for the Reichssiedlungsgesetz (Reich Settlement Law, 1919). Furthermore, he witnessed settlement in North America and Canada firsthand during two trips in 1883 and 1893. It was on these visits that he gained not only knowledge but also inspiration for ideas on solving not only the long-standing but also shifting problems of the time in Germany, such as overcrowding of cities, Junker control of agrarian land, food shortages, and the return of thousands of unemployed men after the First World War.

Throughout the book, Nelson aims to show how settler colonial thinking is a central element in the history of the German East until 1945 and, in focusing on Sering, how the economist’s work is significant for understanding the so-called Nazi East. In doing so, Nelson links his book to wider debates on the entanglements between colonialism and the National Socialist vision for settling territory within continental Europe, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. While Nelson admits that his argument of continuity from Sering’s to Nazi Germany is more abstract than, for example, Carroll P. Kakel’s work on the Nazi East and the American “Wild West” (The American West and the Nazi East: A Comparative and Interpretative Perspective [2011]), he still sees the American model as key in its influencing of settlement in the German East during the nineteenth century and, in turn, the radicalized settlement process during the Third Reich (10).

In Chapters 2–7, Nelson takes the reader through Sering’s life set against a backdrop of political events in the Kaiserreich, Weimar Republic, and the first six years of the Third Reich. The book traces the development of the German relationship with the East and the notion of eastern territories as suitable terrain for German settlement. This was especially relevant during the Kaiserreich when fears of the Polonization of Prussia substantially increased. In describing Sering’s first trip to America and Canada, funded by the Prussian Ministry of Agriculture in 1883, Nelson shows how Sering’s mammoth trip opened his eyes to inner colonization—the practice of settling ethnically contested land within a nation-state to cultivate and nationalize it (7-8).

While meeting with agricultural experts, politicians, and German settlers there, Sering discovered the benefits of enticing citizens to settle and farm the land thus increasing agricultural output, securing the nation’s borders, and creating enclaves of Germanness. In the following fifty years, Sering built a career as a renowned expert pushing for agrarian reform in the German East. In 1908, with the establishment of the journal Archiv für innere Kolonisation (Archive for Inner Colonization), and the 1912 creation of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der inneren Kolonisation (Society for the Advancement of Inner Colonization), of which Sering was a founding member, the field of inner colonization became officially institutionalized. Those involved worked in various disciplines, but as Nelson points out, “they all shared a vision of Prussian Poland as colonial space” which would be settled with Germans and “cleared” of “undesirable elements” (135).

It was not until the rise of the National Socialists in 1933 that Sering, then in his late seventies and an opponent of Nazi agrarian policies, was increasingly pushed out of academic and governmental circles. As Nelson points out, despite this, Sering’s work increasingly aligned with Ostforschung (Research on the East), and, though he was less inclined toward the intensely racialized National Socialist ideology, his vision was similarly aimed at a full-scale German colonization of eastern Europe. Nelson provides a fascinating insight into German settler colonial thinking concerning continental expansion, demonstrating how Sering’s work developed to meet ever-changing territorial and population considerations.

Using as much of Sering’s personal material as is available, Nelson delivers a study of a scholar leading his field yet still often facing the pressures of working in academia and securing funding. While Nelson portrays Sering’s work and its influence on settler colonial ideology as a prelude to the more radical National Socialist expansion, Chapter 8 that directly addresses the Second World War is analytically sparse in comparison with the other chapters. Much of Nelson’s investigation of Nazi Germany’s settlement of the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) in Reichsgau Wartheland and the lead-up to the Holocaust relies on Phillip T. Rutherford’s Prelude To The Final Solution (2007) as opposed to engaging with newer, more specialized literature on the topic. Additionally, Nelson does not provide much investigation of where specifically Sering’s work, as opposed to a more general colonial gaze directed toward Poland, can be seen in policymaking.

Although his argument for continuity is that of a more indirect one, the eighth chapter ultimately seems disconnected from the rest of the book’s deeper analysis. While Nelson argues for settler colonial thinking to understand the settlement policies in the Wartheland, he pays more attention to the treatment of non-Jewish Poles than to anti-Semitic policies. It is true that Nazi Germany largely targeted non-Jewish Poles in its initial waves of deportations, but the length of time between the beginning of the deportations and the formation of ghettos was not as significant as Nelson seems to imply (258). Planning for the Łódź ghetto had already begun in December 1939, the same time as the first deportations began, and the ghetto was officially created two months later in February 1940. Nelson’s arguments on settler colonial thinking add to our understanding of Nazi Germany’s territorial goals; however, he does not fully extend the investigation to its racial goals and the Holocaust. In light of the mass murder of not only Polish Jews but also Jews from other European states which occurred in the Wartheland, these topics deserve more attention in a study which aims to show that settler colonialism, frequently understood by scholars as inherently genocidal, is significant to the understanding of the German East until 1945.

Nevertheless, Nelson’s book provides a welcome contribution to the argument that settler colonial thinking predated Nazi Germany and supplemented the German colonial imagining of eastern Europe over many years. By placing Sering’s work at the forefront of the study, Nelson convincingly demonstrates an example of transnational knowledge transfer, thus tying into Christoph Kamissek and Jonas Kreienbaum’s concept of an imperial cloud (“An Imperial Cloud? Conceptualising Interimperial Connections and Transimperial Knowledge,” Journal of Modern European History [2016]). The book further demonstrates the value of exploring the direct and indirect entanglements between different states but also time periods to discover what role specific types of colonialism played. In highlighting the biography of Sering, Nelson additionally brings an original perspective and a novel approach to such explorations.