One of the most harrowing phenomena in recent political history was the attempt by the Nazi government to liquidate, shift, and redistribute the populations of the unfortunate territories that came under its domination during the second World War. By tracing the rise and fall of the agency created to effect this gigantic geopolitical movement, the RKFDV (Reichskommisariat fur die Festigung deutschen Volkstums or Reich Commission for the Strengthening of Germandom), Robert Koehl reveals the complexity, brutality, and inconsistency of National Socialism, the neofeudalism of Nazi power politics, and the nature of the men who manipulated the monstrous scheme.

Using captured documents which have never been published before, some signed by Hitler's and Himmler's own hands, Koehl relies for the main source of his study on the actual testimony, evidence, and statements made during the United States Military Tribunal Trials Numbers Eight and Eleven at Nuremberg. His conscientious marshaling of concrete facts serves better than the most dramatic intervention to drive home the implications of this recent tragedy involving millions of Germans, Poles, Frenchmen, Russians, Yugoslavs.