Mr. Bradley Nichols

Professional Background

Mr. Bradley Nichols is a PhD Candidate at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He is expected to earn his PhD in history in May 2015. Mr. Nichols earned an MA degree in comparative genocide studies from West Chester University of Pennsylvania in West Chester, Pennsylvania, in 2008.

While in residence at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies Mr. Nichols conducted research on his doctoral dissertation entitled “The Hunt for Lost Blood: Nazi Racial Selection and Re-Germanization Policy, 1939-1945.”

Mr. Nichols is fluent in German and knows basic Polish. Mr. Nichols has also taught two courses at the University of Tennessee. They are: “History of World Civilization: Mass Violence and World History,” and “History of Western Civilization: Empire and Revolution in Modern European History.”

Published works by Mr. Nichols include: “Forging the Aryan Utopia: Nazi Racial Policy in Occupied Poland, 1939-1945” in The Routledge History of the Holocaust ed. Jonathan L. Friedman (2011); review of Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany by Andrew D. Evans in Michigan War Studies Review (2012); and review of Model Nazi: Arthur Greiser and the Occupation of Western Poland by Catherine Epstein for Michigan War Studies Review (2010). Recent presentations and lectures by Mr. Nichols include: “From Desirable to Undesirable: The Nazi Re-Germanization of Polish Girls during the Second World War,” for the 127th Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in 2013; “Deutches Blut, fremdes Blut: Nazi Re-Germanization, Racial Hygiene, and National Security,” at the 34th Annual Conference of the German Studies Association in 2010; and “Lost Blood in the East: Nazi Re-Germanization Policy, 1940-1942,” at the 2010 Annual Conference of the Association for the Study of Nationalities.

Fellowship Research

During his time as a Cummings Foundation Fellow Mr. Nichols combed through the Museum’s International Tracing Service (ITS) digital archives in order to determine the fate of the many “re-Germanizables” during and after World War II. These “re-Germanizables” were, according to Nazi ideology, foreign nationals who were allegedly descended from German settlers and had since forgotten their “heritage.” The Germans originally attempted to integrate these people into the Third Reich but would eventually decide that the only way to save this “lost German blood” was to destroy it. In the end these “re-Germanizables” were oppressed and murdered just like any other non-Germans.

Bradley Nichols was in residence at the Mandel Center from May 1 to December 31, 2014.