TY - JOUR
AU - Bonnell, Andrew G.
AB -  European History Quarterly, . practices established by bourgeois women in the Imperial era became both a characteristic used to identify Germanness and an essential quality to inculcate in ethnic German settlers in German-occupied Poland. In contrast to previous studies, which have seen women’s work as tangential to the Nazi racial project, Reagin finds that ‘in occupied Poland, clean- liness (along with order and thrift) became a bridge to Germanness’ (217). Seeing them- selves as ‘female missionaries’, women sent to teach Volksdeutsche women about keeping their curtains white and modernizing housekeeping and childcare practices believed that the latter could thereby be brought into the national community. Yet, as Reagin points out, the belief that a ‘scrubbed floor and white sheets were . . . more important markers than “Aryan” coloring’ undermined Nazi efforts to maintain strict racial policy (211). Reagin’s sources allow her to tell a lively and dynamic story, which is rich in anecdotes from housewives and reveals how they saw themselves and viewed their jobs. While her study is not comparative, she convincingly argues that women’s roles and domesticity were important factors in definitions of what it meant to be German. Sweeping the Nation is a fascinating 
TI - Review: James Retallack, The German Right, 1860—1920: The Limits of the Authoritarian Imagination, University of Toronto Press: Toronto, Buffalo, NY, and London, 2006; 430 pp.; 0802091458, $75.00/ £48.00 (hbk), 0802094198, $35.00/ £19.95 (pbk)
JF - European History Quarterly
DO - 10.1177/02656914080380040316
DA - 2008-10-01
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/sage/review-james-retallack-the-german-right-1860-1920-the-limits-of-the-LbFGvSUXmI
SP - 662
EP - 663
VL - 38
IS - 4
DP - DeepDyve
ER -