Collections of historical essays can vary widely over place and time. While this contribution to the University of Pittsburgh's Russian and East European Studies series offers a wide variety of articles, it deals specifically with German presence in southeastern Europe in the twentieth century. During this time, Germany and Germans exercise important cultural, economic, and political influence in southeastern Europe, even throughout the Soviet Russian control of much of the region.

The book is divided into two sections. The first contains articles on German influences in southeastern Europe during the First World War, the interwar period, and the Second World War. These articles examine economic and political issues involving German activities in southeastern Europe. The second section presents articles on the post-WWII era. Most of them address the German legacy in the region and the importance of memory and monuments. The focus of these studies sweeps from wide geographic and chronology perspectives to very narrow parameters. The works presented here range from an examination of Holocaust memories from throughout southeastern Europe to two articles dealing with the difficult fate of the small Gottschee German community in Habsburg Carniola and later Yugoslav Slovenia.

The areas that receive the most attention here are those that the Habsburgs had controlled or influenced since the Middle Ages, including the modern states of Bosnia, Croatia, Romania, and Slovenia. Both the Germans and the post-First World War Austrian state maintained strong interests among the German minorities in Romania and Yugoslavia in areas formerly ruled by the Habsburgs. The southern and eastern portions of the Balkan Peninsula, including Albania, Bulgaria, Kosovo, and (Northern) Macedonia receive little attention here. On the book's cover, Greece receives a nod in the photographic record from a WWII German atrocity there, but also remains beyond the scope of the book. This neglect is probably because the Germans had few economic and cultural interests in these region during the twentieth century.

In any collection such as this the articles can vary widely in terms of their research and analysis. Here they are generally very well based in fundamental materials and well presented. Of particular interest is David Hamlin's study of the economic subjugation of Romania to the Central Powers during the First World War. After Austro-Hungarian, Bulgarian, German, and even some Ottoman troops overran Romania in 1916 and 1917, the Germans in particular imposed economic strictures that turned Romania into a German colony. Hamlin argues reasonably that these strictures did not emerge from a prewar plan or the immediate Central Powers’ victory, but rather were the outcome of the Germans’ effort to assert themselves in the changing world order. This is sound. Unlike their Austro-Hungarian and Bulgarian allies, the Germans maintained no claims to Romanian territory. Although Hamlin does not employ the term Mitteleuropa, his analysis of the German plans to subjugate the Romanian economy to that of Germany certainly fits within the parameters of this concept.

Another excellent article in this collection is Mark Biondich's study of the German role in the Croatian Holocaust. Biondich demonstrates how the fascist Ustaša regime used ferocious anti-Semitic policies in part to seek favor from the Nazis to maneuver around the pretensions of its Italian patrons. A comparison with the Ustaša atrocities directed against the Serbs might be useful here.

One of the editors, Mirna Zakić, contributed an excellent article on the Nazis’ use of a French noble in Habsburg service during the eighteenth century, Eugene of Savoy (1663–1736), to recruit volunteers from among the Volksdeutsch communities in Banat, Vojvodina, and elsewhere in southeastern Europe for the SS Prinz Eugene 7^th SS Mountain Division. Prince Eugene achieved some of his greatest military successes in the border regions in southeastern Europe between the Habsburg possessions and the Ottoman empire. The same area was the general operational zone for the anti-partisan efforts of the Prinz Eugen Division during WWII. The reference to a past Habsburg military leader by the Nazis demonstrates the long reach of Austrian cultural norms in southeastern Europe both among the German population and others living there. Interestingly, in 1938, the Nazis Kreigsmarine launched a heavy cruiser named Prinz Eugene. It survived the war but sank after the Americans employed it in a nuclear test in the Pacific Ocean in 1946. This name probably had little chance of attracting potential naval recruits from among the land-locked German populations of southeastern Europe. A similar historical reference utilized by the Nazis for recruitment among southeastern Europe's Germans was the 8^th SS Calvary Division Florian Geyer. The name of this formation refereed to a revolutionary German military figure (1490–1525) used by the Nazis to recruit Germans from Transylvania and Banat. It also saw extensive anti-partisan service in Yugoslavia. Did the German communities of Romania and Yugoslavia tend to retain a strong historical self-awareness because they had lost a direct political connection to the Habsburg empire and through that the old Second Reich after WWI?

Overall this is an excellent collection of studies of twentieth century German connections to southeastern Europe. Much interesting and useful information and interpretation is available here. One important concept that is emphasized by these articles is the prevalence of the Habsburg connection in northwestern southeastern Europe throughout the twentieth century. Austria and Germany's quick recognition of Slovene and Croatian independence from Yugoslavia in 1991 demonstrates this continuity. The editors never clearly delineate between Habsburg (Austrian) and German interests in southeastern Europe. Were they always the same even in the twentieth century? Nevertheless this collection provides a specific look at the importance of Germany to twentieth century general and regional European history.