Med rasizmom in nujo 1943–1945

This monograph is devoted to the Operational Zone of the Adriatic Littoral, which, together with the Operational Zone of the Alpine Foothills, presented a unique administrative arrangement in German-occupied Europe during the Second World War. Although formally part of the Italian Social Republic, also known as the Republic of Salò, it was controlled by Nazi Germany and as such was a kind of administrative hybrid. As the monograph shows, it was even more diverse internally, as there were so-called collaborationist forces. But unlike other occupied territories, which included Slovenian lands, these collaborationist units did not come from the local area, but from the territory of the Soviet Union. The first ones came at the special invitation of the head of the SS administration, Odilo Globočnik. He saw in them an excellent replacement for the German soldiers, of whom fewer and fewer were available in the second half of the war. Moreover, the German units avoided losses in their own ranks by mobilising foreign collaborationist units. However, these collaborationist units were inferior from the ideological point of view of the Nazi racial apparatus. The monograph thus shows how the Nazis sought (often unsuccessfully) to balance their own racism and contempt for inferior nations with the need to recruit as many collaborators as possible.