From the preface: This book is a study of Nazi regional organization, the Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft (SOEG) in Vienna. It describes the agency's internal development, its interaction with other agencies, and its role in planning and executing the Third Reich's blueprint for the New Order in...

First, we demonstrate that structural explanations based on socio-economic factors are insufficient to account for authoritarian regression in two of collapsology’s “crucial cases” – inter-war Germany and post-communist Russia. Instead, (a) a dearth of pro-democratic actors on the elite,...