The Polish-German borderland of Upper Silesia has attracted much attention in nationalism studies during recent years. In her article, “Imagined Noncommunities: National Indifference as a Category of Analysis,” Tara Zahra called the Upper Silesians “the most famously [nationally] indifferent population in twentieth-century central Europe” (Slavic Review 69, no. 1, 2010, 99). Brendan Karch's book adds new insights to previous studies primarily in three respects. Firstly, it embraces a period of more than one century and, thereby, covers the epoch of nationalism from its beginning in the region until its most destructive phase during and after World War II. Secondly, the study focusses on the city of Oppeln/Opole and its surroundings, located in a linguistically mixed area but northwest of the strongly industrialized and urbanized part of Upper Silesia that, except for the period after 1945, has been the focus of most earlier research. Finally, Brendan Karch goes beyond previous research by choosing “loyalty” as a key concept. Earlier studies asked for “national indifference” and limits of the nationalization of Upper Silesian society or focused on national discourses and competing constructions of national identities.

In a first chapter covering the period from the 1840s until 1890, the author highlights the strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church and political Catholicism in Upper Silesia. Political mass mobilization took place here mostly in a bilingual, Catholic context and resulted into the political hegemony of the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrumspartei) since the anti-Catholic “Kulturkampf” of the German and Prussian governments during the 1870s.

The next chapter explores how Polish national activists challenged the political dominance of the Centre Party since the 1890s. The author focusses here on Bronisław Koraszewski and his Gazeta Opolska, the first Polish newspaper in the Oppeln region. Karch describes Koraszewski as a “value-driven” (18) nationalist activist for whom the nation was a value in itself and to whom it appeared natural that the Polish-speaking people should support Polish national aims. Karch argues that the fact that Koraszewski and also later Polish nationalist activists largely failed to achieve a lasting, strong support for Polish national politics in this region resulted into a “feedback loop” (5) of the nationalists’ increasing radicalization that in turn rather alienated large segments of the population even more. In later periods, the nationalists’ increasing frustration led to calls for separating the population into Germans and Poles by force. Similar frustrations of establishing clearly defined national groups existed on the German side, as Karch argues, and resulted into similar mechanisms of radicalization.

When after World War I Upper Silesia was divided between Germany and Poland, Oppeln and its surroundings remained within Germany. In the chapter on the interwar period the author finds his thesis of a “feedback loop” confirmed. Polish national activists radicalized when their support among the population declined and the number of those who declared German as their mother tongue rose. More people filled the ranks of the Polish organizations after Hitler came to power in 1933. Mostly, this was the result of the forced dissolution of the Centre Party and other Catholic organizations in 1933 and 1934. Karch calls this and similar behavior “instrumental nationalism” (19) because the support of nationalist organizations originated from other than purely nationalist aims. He contrasts it with the “value-driven nationalism” of the national activists. Also in the last major chapter of the book on the post-1945 period when also the Oppeln/Opole region was incorporated into Poland, Karch applies this term as a description for the attitude of several hundred thousand inhabitants of that area who during the Polish “verification” of the population declared their Polishness primarily in order to avoid forced resettlement.

Overall, Brendan Karch's study presents a concise exploration of more than a century of Upper Silesian history. It would need more research with a strong comparative element for assessing the explanatory value of the author's key concepts of “loyalty,” a “value-driven” versus an “instrumental nationalism,” and of a “feedback loop” beyond the Oppeln/Opole part of Silesia. But doubtlessly, Brendan Karch's study will be of great importance for further research on Upper Silesia and, more generally, on nationalism in central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.