The public attention that greeted the publication of Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands in 2010 drew the ire of many specialists who had spent decades exploring the nuances of the nightmare visited on eastern Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. In Export Empire, Stephen Gross takes an entirely different approach to understanding this catastrophic period. Rather than focus on the naked greed, violence, racism, and antisemitism that was so potent in the Third Reich's drive toward the east in Poland and Russia, Gross looks instead at the deployment of German “soft power” in southeastern Europe, particularly in Romania and in what later became Yugoslavia. Gross argues that before they controlled this region more formally, German merchants, trade organizations, and other institutions had helped to build up a “Reichsmark bloc” that facilitated the massive building and arms projects of a Nazi state that hoped to disentangle itself from much of the world economy—in the process turning parts of southeastern Europe into economic vassals dependent on German markets. Gross demonstrates that neither the violent empire of the Third Reich nor the power exerted by the German economy over southeastern Europe was the result of a straight line of development. Instead, the idea of an informal and peaceable (if strikingly unequal) economic empire in the underexploited agrarian regions of the southeast went from being a counterpoint to the more dominant bluster of the Kaiserreich, to a lifeline that businessmen in Saxony, in particular, hoped could integrate them back into international markets in the chaos of post-World War I Europe.

In the first three chapters of the book, Gross takes pains to document the meticulous efforts of individuals and organizations to develop a network of connections and expertise in southeastern Europe in order to tap into the region's market potential, especially through the Leipzig trade fair, the Central European Business Forum (Mitteleuropäischer Wirtschaftstag), the Central European Institute (Mitteleuropa-Institut), and the Institute for Central and Southeastern European Economic Research (Institut für Mittel- und Südosteuropäische Wirtschaftsforschung). As the German and international economy collapsed in the throes of the Great Depression, what might otherwise have been little more than the efforts of local businessmen marginalized by great concerns like IG Farben to scratch out a living in the east became the hands-on vanguard of a growing interest in “Mitteleuropa” as a market and agricultural hinterland.

Gross's work shines most brightly in the chapters on the 1930s, where he weaves together primary and secondary research from a variety of economic and political organizations, ranging from the trade and research groups he emphasizes to the Foreign Office and Reichsbank. Here he charts the growing interest in the southeast by important leaders like Reichsbank President and Minister of Economics Hjalmar Schacht, as well as the region's compatibility with National Socialist ideas—or at least with the practical needs of the party. More important, Export Empire demonstrates how the networks established by business pioneers in the region could be used to prop up the sometimes poorly conceived efforts of the state. This helped to foster an increasingly dense network of business, trade, and even cultural links through exchanges and summer schools between Germany and what was rapidly becoming its agrarian hinterland in the southeast.

Throughout the book, Gross draws heavily on the concepts of “informal empire” and “soft power” to describe the German relationship to Romania and Yugoslavia in particular. This allows him to chart many points of overlap between Nazi ideology and many businessmen's ideas about the role of Germany, development, dependency, and race. Antisemitism played a particularly important role in linking German business to southeast European markets and producers. This approach also allows Gross to situate the efforts of the Nazi state in the context of wider Western ideas about trade and development that normalized dependency and exploitation. He convincingly demonstrates that this informal empire was surprisingly effective—or at least more productive and efficient than the more formal empire he describes in the last chapter, which covers the war.

The book might nevertheless overplay the more sinister connotations of empire, at least for the period before 1940. Gross acknowledges that many policymakers in southeastern Europe saw trade with Germany as an opportunity for development, but also emphasizes very heavily the role of the inequality between the German and other Central European economies. It is sometimes difficult to imagine what German businessmen might have done differently in dealing with what was still a primarily agrarian economy, especially given the Romanian fascists' interest in peasant farming culture, for instance, which fit in nicely with German plans for the region. A stronger focus on political positions, debates, and choices within the private institutions Gross examines would also have been welcome and helped situate the book more firmly in the business history of the Third Reich, as well as with regard to questions about businessmen's “room to manoeuvre” (Handlungsspielraum). This is especially apparent when Gross reveals that two of the leading figures in the Central European Business Forum were executed or confined in a concentration camp in the aftermath of the conspiracy of July 20, 1944, even as the director of the Central European Institute drew ever closer to the regime. It is unclear whether these different relationships with the Nazi state were reflected in the discussions and activities of the organizations, or whether their views might have instead stemmed from the different approaches to empire taken in different regions by the Nazis after 1940.

These are minor concerns, however, ones that raise questions for other studies. Gross demonstrates the important role that smaller, unofficial, or semi-official trade and business relationships played in developing links between Nazi Germany and southeastern Europe that helped prepare the German state for war and empire. In doing so, he exposes some of the important connections between day-to-day business and trade activity and the violent expansion that came in their wake.