Twice within 40 years Germans attempted to create a racial state; twice they intended to order society on the basis of (perceived) racial categories; twice this involved ethnic cleansing and genocide; and twice this took place in the context of empire-building. This recurrence of ethnic politics within almost the lifespan of a single generation cannot be explained by contingency alone. It suggests a deeper relationship between the ideas of race and the concept of space in German history which needs to be explored in more detail. This would contribute not only to a better understanding of German history in the twentieth century, but also to the global history of colonialism and the transnational study of mass violence. If the new paradigm of transnational and global history is to be taken seriously, we have to move beyond a merely comparative exercise in entangled history. We have to simultaneously situate any given historical phenomenon in a synchronic and diachronic perspective. We have to globalise national histories. For that we need concepts that span the globe and stretch over centuries. Colonialism is one such paradigm.