Controversial Kinship Colonial and National Socialist Violence

What do colonial and Nazi violence have in common? How do they differ? And why has the question of a possible connection between the two remained controversial to this day? Since the 1930s, questions such as these have been debated by anti-colonial thinkers, journalists, politicians, historians, and Holocaust survivors. The exhibition "Controversial Kinship: Colonial and National Socialist Violence" – curated by Stephan Malinowski and opening at the Deutsches Historisches Museum on 16 October 2026 – examines a historical comparison that has been debated for nearly a century and extends far beyond the discipline of history. The exhibition traces the ongoing debate over similarities, differences, and equivalence back to its historical origins. The museum’s aim is to promote a more nuanced discussion of the topic and enable visitors to assess such comparisons for themselves on the basis of historical evidence.

Raphael Gross, President of the Stiftung Deutsches Historisches Museum: “With this exhibition, we are undertaking a close historical examination of the debate about the comparison between colonial and Nazi violence. We are not attempting to settle this debate, but rather to tell its story. Our role as a historical museum is to create a space in which historical findings are taken seriously – even if they do not fit neatly into a political narrative. The exhibition also examines where empirically verifiable similarities between the two regimes of violence actually exist, and when the comparison has been used primarily as a political argument.”

Stephan Malinowski, curator of the exhibition: “The question of the relationship between colonial and Nazi violence has been answered in highly different ways by perpetrators, anti-colonial intellectuals, and historians. In recent years, it has once again moved to the centre of public debate. The exhibition takes up this controversy, traces it back to its historical roots, and thereby aims to strengthen visitors’ critical judgement.”
History of the Comparative Debate

In the mid-1930s, intellectuals in the centres of the anti-colonial movement – from Calcutta, Algiers, and Accra to London, Paris, and New York – advanced the idea, still influential today, that two historical regimes of violence were closely related, even though they differed markedly in temporal, geographical, and structural terms: European colonial rule, which lasted for several centuries, and Nazi domination over Europe, which ended barely six years after it had begun but saw acts of violence conceived and carried out with extraordinary speed. Anti-colonial thinkers regarded fascist rule in Europe as the continuation of colonial and racist violence in a new form, now turned against Europe itself. International in scope, the exhibition recounts the history of this comparative debate from a broad geographical and temporal perspective. Focusing on the Nazi regime of violence and the Holocaust, it asks which colonial experiences served as the principal points of comparison in the debates between 1900 and 1960.

Controversial Kinship: Nine Key Themes

Colonial and Nazi rule were rooted in violence, exploitation, and annihilation. While they may appear at first glance to have numerous similarities, a closer examination also reveals fundamental differences. The question of whether the two systems of violence are related in any substantive sense remains contested. Even more controversial, both then and now, is the question of the extent and significance of the parallels between them, and whether these parallels imply continuities or even causal connections. In this context, the DHM presents an empirically grounded examination of historical phenomena whose interrelationships can be productively explored across both forms of rule, without reducing one to the other or treating them as identical.
Just after the prologue, the first of the exhibition's nine galleries examines the conditions under which anti-colonial intellectuals in the 1930s first advanced the idea of a link between colonialism and fascism. The historical backdrop is Fascist Italy's invasion of the Ethiopian Empire in October 1935 and the global protests against this exceptionally brutal colonial war of conquest.

As visitors continue through the 1,100-square-metre exhibition space, they encounter a range of themes central to colonial and National Socialist rule that have long shaped debates about the relationship between the two: repression; racism and antisemitism; conquest and settlement; concentration camps; collaboration; resistance; forced labour; industrialised extermination; and the (in)visibility of extreme violence. Historical source material is presented alongside contemporaneous and later interpretations. The exhibition also examines how comparisons between the two systems have been politically instrumentalised since the 1930s. In the epilogue, newly recorded video interviews with historians from around the world offer a variety of perspectives on the relationship between colonial and Nazi rule. The focus is on questions of continuity, rupture, and comparability.

The Limits of Historical Comparison 

Historical comparisons can help us understand systems of violence, evaluate different interpretations, and identify structural similarities and fundamental differences. They can also flatten complexities, relativise past crimes, and be instrumentalised for ideological purposes. For this reason, the exhibition addresses the possibilities and limits of historical comparison. It portrays the systematic murder of European Jewry not as the culmination of colonial traditions of violence, but as the most radical departure from these traditions and as a turning point in the history of violence in Europe. Here, the examination of similarities and overlaps does not culminate in deeper understanding; it loses its explanatory power. The eighth room of the exhibition illustrates this interpretation through a rarely noted episode: the deportation of the Jewish population of Rhodes in the summer of 1944. Defying all military and economic rationale, they were transported by ship and train in a three-week operation over a distance of more than 2,000 kilometres, only for the vast majority to be murdered immediately upon their arrival in Auschwitz. There are also no colonial counterparts for the extermination camps established at Bełżec, Sobibor and Treblinka in 1942, which served exclusively to murder people as quickly and efficiently as possible. This exhibition room is therefore the only one without a colonial counterpart.

Located on the lower level of the Pei Building, the exhibition explores the debate over historical comparison through around 580 objects from the DHM’s collection and from museums and archives in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Namibia, the Netherlands, Norway, Austria, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It includes paintings, drawings, photographs, postcards, books, periodicals, documents, and historical artefacts. Film and audio stations provide additional perspectives on the exhibition’s themes, while a German- and English-language audio guide offers background information on selected objects and the exhibition itself. A richly illustrated catalogue in both German and English, featuring scholarly essays by international experts, will be published by Wallstein Verlag. An accompanying academic programme, a film series, guided tours, and educational events will further expand on the exhibition’s themes throughout its run. 

The press kit and high-resolution images are available in the press section of the DHM website. Please make sure to use the accompanying captions, which provide background information on the subjects depicted.

Video interviews with DHM President Raphael Gross and curator Stephan Malinowski, as well as further features on the exhibition, can be found at the DHM Journal.