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…

Edited By Hülya Adak, Fatma Müge Göçek, Ronald Grigor Suny. The study of genocide has been appropriate in emphasizing the centrality of the Holocaust yet other preceding episodes of mass violence are of great significance. Taking a transnational and transhistorical approach, this volume redresses and replaces the silencing of the Armenian Genocide. Scholarship relating to the history of…

Edited by Stephanie Bird, Mary Fulbrook, Stefanie Rauch, and Bastiaan Willems. This edited collection analyses perpetration and complicity under National Socialism and beyond. Contributions reflect on self-understandings, representations and narratives of involvement in collective violence both at the time and later – a topic that remains highly relevant today. Using the notion of ‘compromised identities’…