New Books in Genocide Studies

Alon Confino‘s A World Without Jews: The Nazi Imagination from Persecution to Genocide (Yale University Press, 2014) begins with a vivid and devastating scene in the small German town of Fürth on November 10, 1938: Jews are forced from their homes and assembled in the main square.Many are made to stand for hours at the local community center; the men are beaten, humiliated, and transported to Dachau.There is a good deal of symbolic violence, too.The synagogue and all its contents are vandalized and then destroyed.The Torah scrolls are rolled out, stamped on, and set ablaze. Book burning was a common ritual during the Third Reich but Confino ponders: why did the Nazis burn the Hebrew Bible?Historians’ standard explanations for the Holocaust – racial ideology, administrative, technologically-driven processes of extermination, the brutalization of war, and the dynamics of competition between Stalin and Hitler — cannot fully account for why this foundational text of European-Christian civilization was desecrated and set on fire repeatedly in Germany in the years leading up to World War II.  Nor can such explanations render or lend insight into the hatred, murderous resentment, and sadism expressed by Germans toward their Jewish neighbors during this time.A number of groups were persecuted under National Socialism but Jews were special, contradictory figures, and both inferiority and awesome powers were attributed to them.Confino ask how Nazis fantasized about Jews — the place the Jew came to occupy in the Nazi imagination – and seeks to show the ways such fantasies set the context for and enabled mass deportations and death camps. The answers provided in Confino’s book unfold within an apparent paradox.On the one hand, the Nazis wanted to eradicate the Jews from the story of Aryan origins — to expunge Jewish memory, sever the tie between Judaism and Christianity, and take the place of the Jews in historical time.This is why some burned the Torah and even attempted to excise all references to Jews in the New Testament. Others, however, especially in the years after Kristallnacht, became obsessed with preserving synagogues and all sorts of books and judaica in museums – with making Jews the objects of commemoration and rewriting their past.Since Nazis linked the murder of the Jews to redemption and strove to weave their victory over Jewish influence into a narrative of a new Aryan civilization, Confino argues that the impulse to commemorate Jews while simultaneously destroying Jewish life is not as paradoxical as it might initially seem. A World Without Jews pays careful attention to the imaginings as well as emotions of both Germans and Jews, tracing outbursts of obscene violence to unbearable intimacies.Through contemporaries’ diaries, letters, and photographs Confino attempts to get at the feelings and sensibilities undergirding ritual mockery and guilt-driven denials and to capture what many conventional social and political histories miss: that communities are built (and destroyed) not only on beliefs, narratives, and economies but affects, too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

As a graduate student at Ohio State in the early 1990s, I remember watching the collapse of Yugoslavia on the news almost every night and reading about it in the newspaper the next day.The first genocidal conflict covered in real time, dozens of reporters covered the war from the front lines or from a Sarajevo under siege. Not surprisingly, the media coverage was accompanied by a flood of memoirs and histories trying to explain the wars to a population that, at least in the US, knew little to nothing about the region. These were valuable studies–informative, interesting and often emotionally shattering. Istill assign them in classes today. But histories of the present, to steal a phrase from Timothy Garton Ash, are always incomplete and impressionistic.They lack both the opportunity to engage primary sources and the perspective offered by distance. Twenty years on, we’re now in a position to begin to reexamine and rethink many of the conclusions drawn in the midst of the conflict. Robert J. Donia‘s new book Radovan Karadzic: Architect of the Bosnian Genocide (Cambridge University Press, 2014)is an excellent step in this direction. Donia takes advantage of a remarkable depth of sources, including wiretap records of the phone calls Karadzic made with leading officials in Bosnia and Yugoslavia, to paint a compelling picture of a man transformed by conflict. His argument is simple, that it was the events of the late 1980s and especially early 1990s that made Karadzic into a nationalist willing to employ ethnic cleansing and genocidal massacres in his quest to secure safety and power for his people. In elevating Kardzic, Donia revises our understanding of the role and guilt of Slobodan Milosevic. His argument is detailed and well-supported, made even more compelling by Donia’s recollections of his encounters with Karadzic when Donia was a witness at before the ICTY. It’s a book anyone interested in understanding what happened in the former Yugoslavia will have to read and engage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

Last month on New Books in Geography, historian Susan Schulten discussed the development of thematic maps in the nineteenth century. Such maps focused on a particular topic such as disease, immigration, or politics and raised questions about society and geography. In many ways, these nineteenth-century maps were the predecessors to the maps made through Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In the past decade, geographers and historians have begun using GIS for innovative historical research. Among the most innovative scholars using this technology is Anne Knowles, professor of geography at Middlebury College. Her new books Mastering Iron: The Struggle to Modernize an American Industry, 1800-1868 (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and Geographies of the Holocaust (co-edited with Tim Cole and Alberto Giordano) are superb examples of how scholars can use GIS to better understand the past. In this podcast, Professor Knowles discusses the iron industry in Antebellum America, the Holocaust, and how GIS can help illuminate previously unknown facets of both. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

In his biography of Jozef Tiso, Catholic priest and president of independent Slovakia (1939-1944), James Ward provides a deeper understanding of a man who has been both honored and vilified since his execution as a Nazi collaborator in 1947. Priest, Politician, Collaborator: Jozef Tiso and the Making of Fascist Slovakia (Cornell University Press, 2013) is also a fascinating look at Catholicism, nationalism and human rights as moral standards in 20th century East Central Europe. The book explores both the political and social contexts that shaped Tiso and the choices he made in attempts to shape the country in which he lived – whether Habsburg Hungary, interwar Czechoslovakia or a Slovak republic.  Ward reveals, as well, how the fight over Tiso’s legacy in post-communist Slovakia mirrored the polarization of Slovak politics at the end of the 20th century. Priest, Politician, Collaborator was the 2014 Honorable Mention for the Reginald Zelnik Book Prize in History from the Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

As a teenager, I heard or read or saw (in films or on television) story after story about the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. Despite the occasional ‘corrective’ offered by Hogan’s Heroes, the impression given was that the Gestapo were all knowing and ever present. We now know differently, of course. But knowing that the Nazi state functioned as much or more through consensus as coercion has led historians to think again about the way in which this consensus was created and sustained. And it has produced a series of books addressing the question of what this consensus meant for policy making and execution. Thomas Kuehne‘s fabulous new book has contributed greatly to this discussion. Belonging and Genocide: Hitler’s Community, 1918-1945 (Yale University Press, 2013), looks hard at the role belonging played in the emergence and success of the Nazi Party. He tells us how important the desire for a sense of community was in the way people responded to the the crises of the 20s and 30s. And he tells us how this desire for community shaped efforts to exclude people who were not part of the community, whether through isolation, removal, or destruction. It’s a great book. Skype was not as cooperative as I would have liked during the interview and there’s a low buzz present at times. The sound is not ideal, but it shouldn’t be too disruptive, and Kuehne’s work and words are fascinating. So I hope you’ll give it a listen.You’ll be glad you did. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

The field of genocide studies is surprisingly young. As Sam Totten and I discussed in an interview earlier this year, it dates back to the late 1980s or early 1990s. That makes the field about 25 years old. That’s about the time it takes for a generation of scholars to lay out their ideas and to train new researchers to follow in their footsteps. And, as it usually goes, that new generation often takes issue with past assumptions and conclusions. It shouldn’t surprise us, then, that a variety of debates have emerged in the past decade. Scholars have clashed over the canon of genocide studies, about the degree to which the Holocaust should be viewed as an ideal type against which other genocides are measured, over the proper balance between academic research and activism and many other issues. Joyce Apsel and Ernesto Verdeja have taken this opportunity to compile a survey of the state of the field at this contested time. Their book Genocide Matters: Ongoing Issues and Emerging Perspectives (Routledge, 2013) offers its contributors a chance to chart the future course of the field. And it offers its readers the opportunity to engage these debates themselves. I spoke with Ernesto about all of this in today’s interview, which was recorded earlier this fall. He’s an engaging speaker with lots to say on the topic. I hope you enjoy the interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

What is justice for a man who supervised the interrogation and killing of thousands? Especially a man who now claims to be a Christian and to be, at least in some ways and cases, repentant for his crimes? Thierry Cruvellier has written a fascinating book about the trial of ‘Duch’ the director of the S-21 prison and interrogation center in Cambodia during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. Cruvellier watched virtually the entire trial and interviewed many of the participants and observers. The Master of Confessions: The Making of a Khmer of Rouge Torturer (Ecco, 2014) is both history and philosophy, a deeply moving attempt to understand Duch and his actions. Cruvellier offers the reader an finely crafted narrative of S-21, of the life of Duch and of the place Duch occupied in a genocidal structure. But he also wrestles with deeply philosophical questions about our ability to really understand other people’s actions, about the nature of justice in the aftermath of mass violence, and about the role of courts and trials. It’s a book that gets under your skin in the best kind of way. A journalist, Cruvellier earlier wrote a similar account of witnessing the trial of perpetrators from the Rwandan genocide. As we discuss in the interview, the experience of listening to accounts of atrocities day after day has taken a toll on him, as it would on anyone. But the book that resulted is profoundly moving and unsettling. I hope our discussion offers a taste of the ideas and understanding his book offers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

I live and work in the state of Kansas in the US.  We think of ourselves as living in tornado alley and orient our schedules in the spring around the weather report.  Earthquakes are something that happen somewhere else. Recently, however, our southern neighbor, Oklahoma, has been rocked repeatedly by minor earthquakes.  Why this is so has been the subject of endless speculation.  In the midst of this speculation, one occasionally hears reference to the fact that major earthquakes are frequently preceded by a series of minor earthquakes that can, after the fact, be seen as signs that something big is coming.  All too often, however, this is only recognizable in retrospect. Genocide studies has something of an earthquake problem.  Countless books (well, I suppose you could count them, but you get the point) have proposed theories of causation and prediction.  Many of these books lay out a thoughtful, historically rich set of signs that indicate genocide is possible.  All too often, however, these theories suggest ways of predicting when genocides are likely, but not ways of predicting the speed at which conflicts accelerate or die down, nor a way to discern which crises will explode and which will be resolved more or less peacefully. Deborah Mayersen has set out to try to move us toward a solution of the earthquake problem. In her new book On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined (Berghahn Books, 2014), she lays out a theory explaining what makes political crises explode and to identify key points at which the pace of events accelerates dramatically.  Using Rwanda and Armenia as her case studies, she examines a rich set of causal factors to craft a thoughtful explanatory framework.  Her work is careful, historically informed and theoretically elegant.  It may not be the end of the story.  But it is an important step in helping expand our understanding of the ways crises become genocide. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

In 1994 I was in graduate school, trying hard to juggle teaching, getting started on my dissertation and having something of a real life. The real life part suffered most of all.  But every once in a while, the world around me would startle me out of my cave and remind me that life was proceeding without me. The genocide in Rwanda was one of these events. Along with the ongoing ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, it made me question whether academics was a meaningful career choice and what I could and should do right then, in the midst of massive violence against innocents. And then, by the time I had actually started thinking hard about it, the genocide in Rwanda was over.  As most people now know, something like 800,000 people were killed in about a hundred days. July was the 20th anniversary of the end of the genocide.  To mark that occasion, we’re going to depart from the usual format of the show.  Instead of interviewing an author about his or her book, we’re going to spend an hour or so thinking more broadly about events in Rwanda and how we now understand them.  Three experts on the Rwandan genocide will help us do so:  Lee Ann Fujii, Scott Straus and Lars Waldorf.  During the discussion we’ll move from the motivations of the killers to the ways in which the genocide has been remembered (or not) to what movies and books they would recommend for people who want to learn more. The podcast is, however, to some degree inspired by a single book, Alison des Forges remarkable Leave None to Tell the Story, published in 1999.  The book is a tour de force of careful research and analysis and set the direction for research on Rwanda.  Nevertheless, it is fifteen years old.  Since then, we’ve had hundreds of studies examining the genocide and its aftermath. So today w’re going to spend a few minutes assessing that new research, using the broad question of “What do we know about Rwanda 20 years after the genocide?”  I hope you enjoy the discussion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies

Works in the field of genocide studies tend to fall into one of a few camps.  Some are emotional and personal.  Others are historical and narrative.  Still others are intentionally activist and aimed at changing policy or decisions. Martin Shaw‘s works fit into a fourth category.  A historical sociologist, Shaw brings the very best of the social sciences to bear on the subject.  His work is carefully reasoned, theoretically informed and intensely analytical.  He’s driven to understand how the incidents of mass violence fit together into particular categories and into the broader context of a changing world. His thinking about genocide studies has influenced the field immensely.  A decade ago, he began considering the question of the relationship between war and genocide.  Four years later, he provided a theoretically rich discussion of the nature of genocide as a term and as an event. Now he moves on to consider the way in which the changes in the organization of the modern world have shaped the prevalence and nature of mass killing.  In Genocide and International Relations: Changing Patterns in the Transitions of the Late Modern World (Cambridge University Press, 2013), Shaw surveys centuries of world history to understand the patterns and relationships that drive genocide and mass violence.  Packed with observations and insight, the book demands and rewards attentive reading and reflection.  It’s a short book, but one that lingers long after you’ve finished reading. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/genocide-studies