Perpetrator Studies Network

Books

Stormtroopers: A New History of Hitler’s Brownshirts

By Daniel Siemens. The first full history of the Nazi Stormtroopers whose muscle brought Hitler to power, with revelations concerning their longevity and their contributions to the Holocaust Germany’s Stormtroopers engaged in a vicious siege of violence that propelled the National Socialists to power in the 1930s. Known also as the SA or Brownshirts, these…

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Traitors, Collaborators and Deserters in Contemporary European Politics of Memory: Formulas of Betrayal

Edited by Gelinada Grinchenko and Eleonora Narvselius. This volume offers a multidisciplinary approach to shaping and imposition of “formulas for betrayal” as a result of changing memory politics in post-war Europe. The contributors, who specialize in history, sociology, anthropology, memory studies, media studies and cultural studies, discuss the exertion of political control over memory (including…

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The Army and the Indonesian Genocide: Mechanics of Mass Murder

By Jess Melvin. For the past half century, the Indonesian military has depicted the 1965-66 killings, which resulted in the murder of approximately one million unarmed civilians, as the outcome of a spontaneous uprising. This formulation not only denied military agency behind the killings, it also denied that the killings could ever be understood as…

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Killing Orders: Talat Pasha’s Telegrams and the Armenian Genocide

By Taner Akçam. The book represents an earthquake in genocide studies, particularly in the field of Armenian Genocide research. A unique feature of the Armenian Genocide has been the long-standing efforts of successive Turkish governments to deny its historicity and to hide the documentary evidence surrounding it. This book provides a major clarification of the often blurred lines…

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Argentina Betrayed: Memory, Mourning, and Accountability

By Antonius C. G. M. Robben. The ruthless military dictatorship that ruled Argentina between 1976 and 1983 betrayed the country’s people, presiding over massive disappearances of its citizenry and, in the process, destroying the state’s trustworthiness as the guardian of safety and well-being. Desperate relatives risked their lives to find the disappeared, and one group…

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The Justice Facade: Trials of Transition in Cambodia

By Alexander Hinton. Is there a point to international justice? Many contend that tribunals deliver not only justice but truth, reconciliation, peace, democratization, and the rule of law. These are the transitional justice ideals frequently invoked in relation to the international hybrid tribunal in Cambodia that is trying senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime for…

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Healing from Hate: How Young Men Get Into—and Out of—Violent Extremism

By Michael Kimmel. What draws young men into violent extremist groups? What are the ideologies that inspire them to join? And what are the emotional bonds forged that make it difficult to leave, even when they want to? Having conducted in-depth interviews with ex–white nationalists and neo-Nazis in the United States, as well as ex-skinheads…

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Emotions and Mass Atrocity: Philosophical and Theoretical Explanations

Edited by Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang. The study of genocide and mass atrocity abounds with references to emotions: fear, anger, horror, shame and hatred. Yet we don’t understand enough about how ‘ordinary’ emotions behave in such extreme contexts. Emotions are not merely subjective and interpersonal phenomena; they are also powerful social and political forces,…

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Women in European Holocaust Films: Perpetrators, Victims and Resisters

By Ingrid Lewis. This book considers how women’s experiences have been treated in films dealing with Nazi persecution. Focusing on fiction films made in Europe between 1945 and the present, this study explores dominant discourses on and cinematic representation of women as perpetrators, victims and resisters. Ingrid Lewis contends that European Holocaust Cinema underwent a…

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Perpetrators and Perpetration of Mass Violence: Action, Motivations and Dynamics

Edited by Timothy Williams and Susanne Buckley-Zistel. As the most comprehensive edited volume to be published on perpetrators of mass violence, the volume sets a new agenda for perpetrator research by bringing together contributions from such diverse disciplines as political science, sociology, social psychology, history, anthropology and gender studies, allowing for a truly interdisciplinary discussion…

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