Rustic Reich: The Local Meanings of (Trans)National Socialism among Paraguay’s Mennonite Colonies

What is it about?

This article compares two German-speaking Mennonite colonies in Paraguay and their encounters with Nazism during the 1930s. It focuses particularly on their understandings of the Nazi bid for transnational völkisch unity, what I call (trans)National Socialism. The Menno Colony was made up of voluntary migrants from Canada who arrived in Paraguay in the 1920s. The Fernheim Colony was composed of refugees from the Soviet Union who settled alongside the Menno Colony in the 1930s. Both groups shared a history in nineteenth-century Russia as well as a common faith and culture. Nevertheless, they developed radically different opinions about the Nazi movement and what it meant for their understandings of "Germanness." The Menno Colony’s communal understanding of Germanness made völkisch propaganda about Hitler’s “New Germany” unappealing to their local sensibilities. They rejected all forms of nationalism as attempts to thwart their cultural and religious isolation. The refugees of Fernheim Colony, by contrast, shared little communal unity since they originated from diverse settlements across the Soviet Union. They viewed their Germanness as a bridge to an imagined German homeland. Like other German-speaking communities in Latin America, the two colonies—which seemed identical to Nazi observers from Germany—held vastly different interpretations of their Germanness at the height of the Nazi bid to establish transnational German unity with Auslandsdeutsche (overseas Germans) Latin America.

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Why is it important?

This article intervenes in the historiography of the Nazi movement by contrasting how (trans)National Socialism was mediated by two specific, local cultures. It demonstrates that the unity offered by Nazism to Latin America’s Auslandsdeutsche (overseas Germans) could appear clear from afar, but was mercurial up close. Latin America presents a unique context for studying the Nazis’ relationship to Auslandsdeutsche because the continent held the allure of being the last prospect for German cultural and economic expansion, but was simultaneously impossible for the German state to invade. As a case study, the Menno and Fernheim Colonies help us understand how Auslandsdeutsche interpreted (trans)National Socialism and their own "Germanness" during the interwar period. The article shows how the Nazi state used (trans)National Socialism as a narrative tool to unify Auslandsdeutsche, but also how local communities used, recast, discarded, or ignored this official narrative according to their local sensibilities, goals, and understandings of "Germanness." These local narratives were ironically more consistent and durable (“intractable” from a Nazi perspective) than official interpretations emanating from Germany.