| Senior Research Fellow | |
| Home institution: | Stetson University, Florida |
| Time at IEG: | 2026 |
| Funding: | IEG Senior Research Fellowship |
| Research topic: | A Global History of the Nazi ‘Jewish Question’, 1919-1941 |
| "As part of a larger book project, Before the “Final Solution”: A Global History of the Nazi “Jewish Question,” 1919–1941, my research at the IEG situates the Nazi Nisko and Madagascar Plans within a broader global history of territorial “solutions” to the Jewish question from the late nineteenth century to 1941. Rather than treating these schemes as mere precursors to genocide, the project shows how they drew on longstanding international debates about mass resettlement, minority policy, and settler colonial experimentation. Between the 1890s and 1930s, Russian, Polish, French, and British policymakers—as well as Zionist and Territorialist thinkers—advanced resettlement proposals spanning Eastern Europe, Africa, and Asia. Against this backdrop, the Nisko (1939–40) and Madagascar (1940) Plans represented the Third Reich’s last, most ambitious attempt to adapt such models to “solving” the “Jewish Question” in non-genocidal fashion. Their collapse stemmed less from insincerity than from military setbacks, logistical barriers, and the radicalization of the war. This reframing highlights alternative, contingent paths within the Nazis' evolving antisemitic project." |
(c) Dr. Eric Kurlander
