Alex J. Kay's Exploitation, Resettlement, Mass Murder appears as volume ten in Omar Bartov's series, Studies in War and Genocide. Having read two of the series' offerings, this reviewer launched into Kay's book with great anticipation. In part it met expectations; in part they went unfulfilled. Kay faithfully delivers what his subtitle promises, a study of “Political and Economic Planning for German Occupation Policy in the Soviet Union, 1940–1941.” A rewriting of Kay's doctoral dissertation, this narrowly focused work reflects impeccable, painstaking research through an impressive array of sources. In his introduction Kay provides an incisive analysis of relevant literature and interpretations, and a rich and comprehensive bibliography offers scholars a convenient starting point for researching related issues or inquiring further into German wartime planning in respect to the occupied East.

The author's declared purpose is to rectify what he believes are shortcomings in extant studies on the German occupation of the conquered East, including Alexander Dallin's classic, German Rule in Russia, 1941–1945, which, according to Kay, focuses on implementing policy but neglects the planning. He also alludes to more recent works by historians such as Susanne Heim and Götz Aly, Vordenker der Vernichtung, and Rolf-Dieter Müller, Hitlers Ostkrieg und die deutsche Siedlungspolitik—among others—which, as he observes, “stress the importance of agricultural-economic considerations” in preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union, but have inadequately covered the economic planning itself. The interaction and “collaboration of economic planners and political planners” still needs to be addressed, and this he sets as one of his main goals. Among other salient points, Kay professes that the attack on the Soviet Union “was no purely ideological impulse on the part of Hitler, but had rather a more calculated agenda with agricultural-economic considerations at its core.” Another perceptive but not pioneering disclosure relates to Hungerpolitik, which emerges as a key imperative in the planning phase, not merely as a harsh but inevitable consequence of pragmatic circumstances. Kay also reconfirms the purposeful role of the Reich military in perpetrating atrocities in the East, since the planning process reveals the military command as an active and willing accomplice in the occupation.

Although Kay accomplishes what he intended by producing a thorough, scholarly study of his declared subject—and that is all a reviewer should require—his self-imposed constraints in time and scope leave the reader questioning some of his conclusions and interpretations. No one can reproach the author's fastidious analysis and synthesis of a plethora of documentation related to the planning process, nor his dissection of the most intricate organizational procedures—but to what purpose? His narrative ends with the invasion and the July 16, 1941, conference at which Hitler informed his top subordinates of his expectations for the occupation of the East. And as most historians concur, for all intents and purposes from this point on Hitler dispensed with blueprints and plans and charged his chief subordinates to do as they pleased in their exploitation of the region, as long as they complied with his general principles. As has been well-documented, orderly, planned administration quickly yielded to chaos engendered by competition among the chief rivals, including Göring's economic empire, the German military, Himmler's SS, and last and least the civil administration under Alfred Rosenberg. The reader therefore cannot help but question the need for this laborious examination of the planning process, one that many historians have dismissed as somewhat irrelevant to what ensued.

Kay's interpretation of the planning process also tends to distort the relative importance of several leading personalities. For example, he overinflates the role of Alfred Rosenberg, who during the planning phase seemed destined—but misleadingly so—to become a major player in the occupation. Although Rosenberg was deeply involved in planning, and on the eve of the invasion Hitler designated him chief civilian authority in the East, according to most accounts he was already declining in the Führer's esteem and slipping in the hierarchy of Nazi power. After 1941 he did little more than strut around in his “golden pheasant” uniform as Minister of the Occupied East. Conversely Kay diminishes somewhat the potency of another figure, Heinrich Himmler, and his constituency, the SS. Although Kay addresses the planning of population policy and acknowledges the growth of SS power in the East, he leaves the reader wondering whether the SS truly “ruled the East”—and in this reviewer's opinion, it did.

This final comment does not apply only to Kay's work, but rather to the genre to which this publication belongs, the reworked dissertation. The formula and expectations for an acceptable and defendable dissertation are not necessarily appropriate guidelines for a readable book. As evidenced in this work, the parameters in time and scope of subject so carefully delineated for a dissertation may not resonate well with a broader reading public. The assumption that a dissertation should engage in an explicit historical discourse does not necessarily hold true for a book intended for a wider readership, which also values a good story with literary vitality and historical drama. Unfortunately but not surprisingly this present study, as an example of a rewritten dissertation, misses the human touch, and has lost in its precise tracing of organizational interactions and routings of planning drafts—and the like—any sense of historical drama. Perhaps an extra touch of the human element could have breathed more life into this study and thereby offered the reader a better understanding and deeper appreciation for this important subject.