By Mary Fulbrook. In this powerful and revelatory new work, historian Mary Fulbrook takes on one of the most fraught issues in modern times: the role of ordinary Germans in enabling the rise of Nazism and with it the exclusion, persecution, and then extermination of millions of people across Europe. The question often asked of…

Edited by Martina Bitunjac and Julius H. Schoeps. Complicated Complicity is about the forms, motives, and spectrum of actions of European collaboration with the Nazis. State authorities, local military organizations, and individual players in different countries and areas including France, Scandinavia, Lithuania, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Greece, Italy, Portugal and the countries of the former Yugoslavia…

By Doris L. Bergen. During the Second World War, approximately 1000 Christian chaplains accompanied Wehrmacht forces wherever they went, from Poland to France, Greece, North Africa, and the Soviet Union. Chaplains were witnesses to atrocity and by their presence helped normalize extreme violence and legitimate its perpetrators. Military chaplains played a key role in propagating…

By Jaber Baker and Ugur Ümit Üngör. An estimated 300,000 people have been detained or have died in prison since the Syrian uprising broke out. Syrians can be arrested for liking a post on Facebook or for the political activities of a distant relative. They are imprisoned without trial, and tortured and starved, often to…

By Alexandra Przyrembel. Ilse Koch war die Ehefrau des SS-Kommandanten von Buchenwald und eine der wenigen verurteilten NS-Täterinnen. Die Historikerin Alexandra Przyrembel skizziert in einer fundierten Spurensuche ihren Lebensweg, beschreibt den Prozess und die internationale Berichterstattung sowie die Zeit im Frauengefängnis in Aichach und die Unterstützung durch das Netzwerk der »Stillen Hilfe«. Bereits 1932 wurde…

By Jayne Persian. Fascists in Exile tells the extraordinary story of the war criminals, collaborators and fascist ultranationalists who were resettled in Australia by the International Refugee Organisation between 1947 and 1952. It explores the far-right backgrounds and continuing political activism of these displaced persons in Australia, adding to our knowledge of the development of Australian…

Edited By Cassandra Falke, Victoria Fareld, Hanna Meretoja. Representations of violence surround us in everyday life – in news reports, films and novels – inviting interpretation and raising questions about the ethics of viewing or reading about harm done to others. How can we understand the processes of meaning-making involved in interpreting violent events and…

By John Silverman and Robert Sherwood. The controversial 1991 War Crimes Act gave new powers to courts to try non-British citizens resident in the UK for war crimes committed during WWII. But in spite of the extensive investigative and legal work that followed, and the expense of some GBP11 million, it led to just one…

By Randle C. DeFalco. This book explores the ways aesthetic considerations shape how international crimes are recognized and categorized. It identifies a dominant aesthetic model of atrocities as horrific spectacles and identifies various forms of mass violence, from the enforcement of famine conditions to socio-economic oppression, that fail to conform to this model. International criminal…

By Grant T. Harward. Romania’s Holy War rights the widespread myth that Romania was a reluctant member of the Axis during World War II. In correcting this fallacy, Grant T. Harward shows that, of an estimated 300,000 Jews who perished in Romania and Romanian-occupied Ukraine, more than 64,000 were, in fact, killed by Romanian soldiers. Moreover, the Romanian…