This volume deals with the field of Belgian-German cultural relations during the Nazi occupation of Belgium (1940-1944) from the perspective of the cultural transfer paradigm. Considering the highly political charged context of a totalitarian regime, which is, in this case, simultaneously occupying and waging war with its cultural ‘partnersâ€, we are obviously dealing with large asymmetries of power and a censorship system that ‘blocks, manipulates and controls [.] crosscultural communication’.1 We can therefore assume that the terms of the cultural ‘dialogue’ were unilaterally determined by the Nazi German censorial institutions for the purposes of both promoting their ideological world views and realizing the foreign policy goals of the regime. The approach of cultural transfer research allows us to differentiate this assumption without relativizing the overtly repressive and destructive nature of Nazi dictatorship. With its focus on individual agency and interactions, it enables us to further analyse the intricacy of the politically dominated cultural exchange. More specifically, it helps to reveal the – often competing – factors that shaped the transfer and transformation of cultural products, while also displaying the marked tension between the highly repressive totalitarian system and the actual agency of cultural agents.