Co-sponsored by the Center for European Studies and the Center for Russia, East Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA).
Nicole Eaton will present on her book, “German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad” on Thursday, March 14, 2024 at 4:00 pm in 206 Ingraham Hall, 1155 Observatory Drive.
In the wake of the Second World War, the German city Königsberg, once the easternmost territory of the Third Reich, became the Russian city Kaliningrad, the westernmost region of the Soviet Union. Königsberg/Kaliningrad is the only city to have been ruled by both Hitler and Stalin as their own—in both wartime occupation and as integral territory of the two regimes. During the war, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between Nazism and Stalinism. Eaton’s book German Blood, Slavic Soil: How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe’s two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. Drawing on archival documents, diaries, letters, and memoirs from both sides, this talk presents an intimate look into the Nazi-Soviet encounter during World War II and shows how this outpost city, far from the centers of power in Moscow and Berlin, became a closed-off space where Nazis and Stalinists each staged radical experiments in societal transformation and were forced to reimagine their utopias in dialogue with the encounter between the victims and proponents of the two regimes.
Nicole Eaton is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Boston College. Her teaching interests include modern European history, Soviet history and the Russian empire, Central European history, the Second World War, daily life in authoritarian regimes, violence, forced migrations, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Her research interests include the history of medicine, environmental history, and the history of the body in Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Her first book, German Blood, Slavic Soil reveals how Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, twentieth-century Europe’s two most violent revolutionary regimes, transformed a single city and the people who lived there. During World War II, this single city became an epicenter in the apocalyptic battle between their two regimes.