New Books in Genocide Studies

Benjamin Martin’s The Nazi-Fascist New Order for European Culture (Harvard University Press, 2016) examines the attempt by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy to forge a European cultural empire out of their military conquests during World War II. Martin shows that the idea of Europe as a discrete political and cultural entity did not come from the postwar period (much less the European Union of the 1990s), but owes much to the cultural discourses of the 1930s. Germany in particular pushed for a kind of authentic “volkisch” cultural nationalism with a basis in folk traditions of central and eastern Europe. Germany’s initiatives in music, film, and literature appealed to the cultural sensibilities of Europe’s conservative cultural elite, offering a third way between American commercialism (epitomized by jazz and Hollywood films) and Soviet Bolshevism. With the Fall of France in 1940, the Nazi-fascist new order aimed to replace Anglo-French Civilization the universalist basis of European culture since the Enlightenment, with Kultur, a vision of culture that was transcendent and deeply rooted in national specificity. Nazi Germany’s attack on modernism created friction between its ally fascist Italy. Mussolini’s government promoted modernist experimentation in music and art as well the unconventional style of the futurists. Unlike Hitler, who abhorred modernism, Mussolini was a patron to modernism as well as more traditional artistic styles. Both coexisted in the fascist state. Martin shows that although Italy could scarcely compete with Germany militarily, the Italians believed they could export their culture in such a way as to build a kind of Italian-focused cultural hegemony in Europe, supplementing and even competing with Germany. James Esposito is a historian and researcher interested in digital history, empire, and the history of technology. James can be reached via email at espositojamesj@gmail.com and on Twitter @james_esposito_ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

Why does the UN intervene in some cases of mass violence and not others? Why and how have public attitudes toward humanitarian intervention changed over the past decades? And how do the stories we tell each other about cases of violence and civil war impact our decisions about when intervention is appropriate? Carrie Booth Walling’s recent book, All Necessary Measures: The United Nations and Humanitarian Intervention (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) sets out to answer these questions. She looks at a series of international crises in the 1990s in the 1990s and early 2000s, beginning with Iraq in 1991-2 and concluding with the recent conflict in Syria. In each case, she examines how member-states in the UN characterize the conflict and how that characterization shapes their preferred responses. The conclusion is simple: narratives matter. They determine how people describe the conflict. They determine the kind of responses countries are willing to consider. And they determine, at least in part, whether the UN chooses to intervene in conflicts, and if so, how and to what end. Walling’s research is careful and her conclusions measured and well-supported. She joins an increasing emphasis in genocide studies on the importance of narratives of all kind. Readers will come away with an increased understanding of why the international community sometimes seems to care about mass violence and sometimes does not. This podcast is the last in our summer/fall series on research about genocide prevention. If you find this interview interesting, I encourage you to listen to previous interviews in the series as well. The series includes interviews with Scott Straus, Bridget Conley-Zilkic and James Waller. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

During the Second World War millions of Britons tuned in nightly to hear the broadcasts of Lord Haw-Haw coming from Nazi Germany. Though the label was broadly applied to a number of English-speaking broadcasters, it was most famously associated with William Joyce. In Searching for Lord Haw-Haw: The Political Lives of William Joyce (Routledge, 2016), Colin Holmes provides a study of Joyce’s life that unravels many of the mysteries and misconceptions surrounding it. He chronicles Joyce’s early years in Ireland, where his work as an informer and his family’s association with the British during the War of Independence led to his relocation to London after the Irish won their independence. There he quickly found a home in the embryonic Fascist movement, in which became a leading figure. His clashes with Oswald Mosley in the mid-1930s brought about Joyce’s purge from the British Union of Fascists in 1937 and the formation of his own National Socialist League. Yet it was Joyce’s relocation to Germany on the eve of war in 1939 that won him the attention he long craved, as he quickly established himself as the Nazi’s leading English-language propagandist. As Holmes shows, however, this fame came at a price, as Joyce’s efforts on behalf of Germany led after the end of the war to his arrest and execution for treason the last person in British history to face such an ignominious end. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

In this lively memoir, We’re In America Now: A Survivor’s Stories (Holy Cow! Press, 2016), Fred Amram offers a series of stories documenting his childhood in 1930s Germany through his coming-of-age in New York City, after his family’s successful immigration to the United States in 1939. With clarity and a touch of humor, Amram provides well-crafted portraits of family members and a vivid sense of what it meant to be a child in Nazi Germany and a refugee in World War II America and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

I serve on a planning committee for the annual Holocaust Commemoration in Wichita, where I live and teach. Every year when we convene, we remind ourselves that we need to invite survivors to speak. With survivors aging, the time is quickly approaching when we will no longer be able to hear about their experiences firsthand. But of course this isn’t quite true. For more than a quarter century, organizations have devoted time, attention and resources to preserving the memories of survivors. In this way, those of us interested in hearing these stories–whether academic researchers or ‘ordinary’ people–can access the power and authenticity of survivor narratives through recorded video testimony. All of this is a good thing. But as Noah Shenker reminds us, the appearance of authenticity can distract us from the very real impact of the ways interviews are staged. Previous scholarship has alerted us to the need to consider the dynamics between the interviewer and interviewee in. In Reframing Holocaust Testimony (Indiana University Press, 2016), Shenker presents a compelling argument that we need to move beyond this to include the mechanics and institutional dynamics of the interviews as well. The training of interviewers, the kinds of scripts used in conducting them, the ways in which images are created, filed, and distributed and many other factors shape the way in which survivors recall and represent their experiences. Shenker looks specifically at three repositories–the Fortunoff Video Archive, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Shoah Foundation. He demonstrates that each had different goals, emphases and methods of conducting interviews. And, in a close reading of the testimony of several survivors who gave testimony to each of these institutions, he shows how the differences in approaches created a different kind of testimony. It’s a valuable reminder of the need to honor the memories of survivors by asking the questions necessary to truly understand their testimony. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

In Survivors and Exiles: Yiddish Culture after the Holocaust (Wayne State University Press, 2015), Jan Schwarz, Associate Professor of Yiddish studies at Lund University, Sweden, reveals that in the two and a half decades after the Holocaust, Yiddish writers and cultural organizations maintained a staggering level of activity in fostering publications and performances, collecting archival and historical materials, and launching young literary talents. He examines seven major Yiddish writers and traces a transnational post-Holocaust network. This book is a compelling contribution to our understanding of Yiddish and Jewish cultures in the post-War era. Max Kaiser is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne. He can be reached at kaiser@student.unimelb.edu.au. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

Today is the third of our occasional series on the question of how to respond to mass atrocities. Earlier this summer I talked with Scott Straus and Bridget Conley-Zilkic. Later in September I’ll talk with Carrie Booth Walling. I’m teaching a class on the Historical Method this semester. As part of this we’ve talked quite a bit about the question of whether historians have ethical imperatives as part of their writing. As you might expect, the students have disagreed, sometimes emotionally, about this issue. Within the field of genocide studies, this question is considerably less contentious. No one expects to be completely neutral in the face of studying mass atrocities. Each of the books in this occasional series on our response to mass atrocities has examined the topic carefully, thoroughly and objectively. Yet, each has an ethical imperative manifested in a tangible urgency that underlays the careful scholarly analysis. James Waller’s new book Confronting Evil: Engaging Our Responsibility to Prevent Genocide (Oxford University Press, 2016) shares this passion. Building on his earlier work, Waller is most interested in how we should respond to genocide and similar crimes. His answer is aimed at academics, but especially at non-specialists. The result is a superb survey of the existing literature on prevention understood broadly. Read in conjunction with Straus and Conley-Zilkic, it reminds us of the importance of acting before crises strike and of recognizing both the opportunities and the limitations of intervention. It’s a must read for anyone interested in the topic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

If you want to know how to bring future mass atrocities to an end, the best place to start is to examine how past mass atrocities have ended. This simple piece of logic is at the heart of Bridget Conley-Zilkic’s new edited collection titled How Mass Atrocities End: Studies from Guatemala, Burundi, Indonesia, the Sudans, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq (Cambridge University Press, 2016). As Conley points out in her introduction, leaders choose to engage in mass atrocities because the rewards for doing so seem greater than the cost. They end either because they have achieved their goal or because the balance of rewards and costs has changed. So, for people interested in preventing or stopping mass atrocities, the challenge lies in changing that balance. This book, then, examines a variety of different case studies to understand how the changing calculus of rewards and cots has occurred historically. The case studies are superb, the range of cases broad and the analysis perceptive. It is a sobering book to read, one that avoids easy answers or platitudes. But behind it lies a determination to make a difference. This is one of an occasional series of podcasts that address the question of preventing or responding to mass atrocities. Earlier this summer I interviewed Scott Straus about his book Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention. In the next couple months I’ll also speak with Jim Waller and Carrie Booth Walling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

I teach at a Catholic university and last semester co-taught (with a theologian) a class titled The Holocaust and its Legacies. Once my students became comfortable with me, they began to pepper me with questions about the role of the Catholic church during the Holocaust. Some of these questions–about the church and antisemitism, about the role of the Pope–I was able to answer effectively. But when they started asking me about the behaviors and beliefs of the bishops and priests-the people in the church who interacted with ordinary people on an everyday basis–I was at a loss. Thanks to Lauren Faulkner Rossi’s new book Wehrmacht Priests: Catholicism and the Nazi War of Annihilation (Harvard University Press, 2015), I can now give a much more informed and thoughtful answer to these questions. While Rossi spends some time looking at the macro level, she devotes most of her book to ‘ordinary’ priests who served in the German army. Some of these men were chaplains specifically entrusted with the pastoral care of the men in their units. Many others were priests who served in the army in other roles, who were specifically prohibited from offering such care to their fellow soldiers. Her book offers a nuanced, well-researched and convincing portrait of ordinary people trying to integrate their religious faith and their positions in the church with their service in a nazified army. It’s a compelling story, one that Rossi tells well. I will be recommending it to my students for a long time to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

This podcast is the first of a new occasional series of interviews addressing the question of responding to mass atrocities and genocide. Later in the summer I’ll interview Bridget Conley-Zilkic, James Waller and Carrie Booth Walling. First up, however, is today’s interview with Scott Straus. Whenever I teach classes on genocide or on the Holocaust, students most want to know the answer to a simple question: How can we make sure this doesn’t happen again? Straus’ new book, Fundamentals of Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2016), surveys the recent research to try and answer this question. In part, it’s a resource for practitioners, summarizing the consensus on best practices. But it’s much more than that. It’s a succinct but subtle conversation with the research–pointing out complexities, interrogating common assumptions and pointing to places where more research is needed. The result is a book that professionals, academics and interested citizens should read. It’s a book that has interesting resonances with the other books of this series as well. I hope you’ll listen to the entire series and read the books. I know that doing so has made me think hard about how I teach the subject in my classes.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies