The conference "Citizenship and National Socialist Persecution," which will take place on 11 and 12 June 2026, at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), addresses questions that have received remarkably little attention in research to date. It mainly focuses on the analysis of state interventions to protect foreign citizens in Germany and the territories occupied by Germany during the Second World War. Furthermore, it examines the reactions of the German bureaucracy as well as collaborationist governments to foreign interventions and the resulting conflict between "pragmatic foreign policy", the goals of National Socialist ideology, and the willingness to collaborate.
Citizenship and National Socialist Persecution
Following the Nazi seizure of power in January 1933, foreign nationals residing in Germany, as well as their countries of origin, were confronted with laws, decrees, and practices that violated customary international law on aliens and bilateral settlement and legal protection treaties. Based on the principle of "racial inequality," the Nazi regime targeted all "alien" and "racially inferior" persons, regardless of whether they held German or foreign citizenship, and reduced their legal status below the minimum standard of international law. Furthermore, the unequal treatment of Jewish and non-Jewish people violated the treaty-based equal treatment clauses enshrined in bilateral settlement agreements, according to which the contracting states were obligated to treat the nationals of the other party equally regarding certain legal positions as their own citizens. Nazi Germany justified the inhumane and discriminatory treatment of foreign Jews by claiming that it ensured they were treated equally to German Jews (but not to non-Jewish Germans).
To protect their own citizens, the respective countries of origin had consular and diplomatic protection at their disposal. However, as the Swiss legal scholar and diplomat Peter Anton Feldscher explained as early as 1930, Switzerland had no "obligation to grant protection […] and responsibility for the proper fulfillment of the protective task exists only towards the people as a whole and not towards the Swiss citizen as an individual." Thus, according to the understanding at the time, it was "ultimately a matter of political consideration" how "the representation of Swiss interests vis-à-vis foreign countries could best be carried out."
In practice, the question of diplomatic protection ultimately took place within the tension between "higher national interests," such as maintaining proper diplomatic relations, and the defense of the sense of justice recognized in international law on aliens as well as in the respective legal system.
The conference "Citizenship and National Socialist Persecution," which will take place on 11 and 12 June 2026, at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), addresses questions that have received remarkably little attention in research to date. It mainly focuses on the analysis of state interventions to protect foreign citizens in Germany and the territories occupied by Germany during the Second World War. Furthermore, it examines the reactions of the German bureaucracy as well as collaborationist governments to foreign interventions and the resulting conflict between "pragmatic foreign policy", the goals of National Socialist ideology, and the willingness to collaborate.
Following questions will be at the center of analysis during the conference.
Germany and its Allies
How did Nazi Germany or collaborationist regimes treat foreigners? What differences in persecution practices can be observed regarding citizens of neutral, allied, or enemy states? Which tensions surfaced between racial persecution and international relations? And what scope for action was utilized or left untapped at the bureaucratic level?
International Reactions to Persecution
How did neutral countries and allies of the Nazi regime react to the persecution of their respective citizens, and how did they decide on intervening? What negotiation processes can be observed within individual states, and which practices prevailed in each country? Were initiatives from other states assessed, and what conclusions were drawn? Were there joint strategies/interventions of multiple states, and how was the exchange of information structured? What role did the relationship with Nazi Germany play for neutrals, and how did this influence the possibilities/scope for intervention? What leeway did individual government representatives (ambassadors, envoys, consuls) have in handling individual cases? What was the range of intervention options? Which of these options were adopted and why? What was the nature of the relationship between foreign representatives and German authorities, and what role did the relationship of individual representatives to their German counterparts play?
Longue Durée Developments
What consequences did the gradual implementation of increasingly restrictive laws in Germany have on interventions, and how did perceptions and possibilities for (diplomatic) intervention change between 1933 and 1945? What consequences did antisemitism and antisemitic legislation in Germany have for the protection of foreign citizens by their representatives? Can antisemitic reflexes in dealing with German legislation also be observed in other countries?
Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short biography of no more than 200 words. Please also include your institutional affiliation, contact information, and a list of up to three key publications.
Participants will be notified of the outcome of the selection process by 15 March 2026.
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