Comparative history at its best, Westermann's assessment of these two national projects provides crucial insights into not only their rhetoric and pronouncements but also the application of policy and ideology "on the ground." His sophisticated and nuanced revelations of the similarities and dissimilarities between these two cases will inform further study of genocide, as well as our understanding of the Nazi conquest of the East and the American conquest of the West.

Edward B. Westermann is Professor of History at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. He is the author of Hitler's Police Battalions: Enforcing Racial War in the East.