New Books in Genocide Studies

View on AmazonI'll be leaving soon to take students on a European travel course. During the three weeks we'll be gone, in addition to cathedrals, museums and castles, they'll visit Auschwitz, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and a variety of other Holocaust related sights.  And I'll ask them to think about what we can say about how people in East-Central Europe remember the Holocaust based on the places they've visited. This is not simply a matter of historical reckoning.  The responses to the recent op-ed by FBI director James Comey show how important the question is in contemporary politics.   They also show how limited our understanding of the dynamics of memory in Eastern Europe has been. My answers to the students' questions will be enormously more sophisticated and thoughtful after having read the work of John-Paul Himka and Joanna Beata Michlic.  Their recent edited collection titled Bringing the Dark Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe (University of Nebraska Press, 2013) is a remarkable collection of essays.  The book surveys the state of memory and memorialization in each of the countries of the former Soviet Block.  It highlights broadly similar responses while explaining differences between the countries.  And the editors explain why they believe it is so important to, as they say, bring the dark past to light.  In doing so, they begin the process of bringing our understanding of the memory of the Holocaust in this region to the same level of sophistication we now bring to the subject in Western Europe.

Daniel FeiersteinView on AmazonSo I should start out with a confession. I don't know much about the  history of Argentina (I said something similar about Guatemala a year or so ago on the program).  And I don't think it would have occurred to me to do a comparative study Argentina and Nazi Germany.  Fortunately, Daniel Feierstein was more imaginative than I.  The resulting study, recently translated into English as Genocide as Social Practice: Reorganizing Society under the Nazis and Argentina's Military Juntas (Rutgers University Press, 2014), offers a provocative and insightful rethinking of the nature of genocide and genocidal regimes Feierstein is a prominent member of the genocide studies community and currently serves as the president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.  But he also has a personal connection with his material, having participated in the demonstrations that brought Argentina's junta down.  Genocide as Social Practice is intellectually rigorous but informed by a deep personal passion for his subject.  In the book, he offers an important expansion of our understanding of genocide, one which links seemingly disparate phenomenon and extends the concept into the period after physical destruction has ended.  It's an important observation, one which will challenge any reader to rethink his or her previous assumptions.  That in itself makes it an worthwhile book.  It goes without saying that it has also convinced me that I need to pay more attention to Latin American history.

Abdelwahab El-AffendiView on AmazonGenocide studies is one of the few academic fields with which I'm acquainted which is truly interdisciplinary in approach and composition.  Today's guest Abdelwahab El-Affendi, and the book he has edited, Genocidal Nightmares: Narratives of Insecurity and the Logic of Mass Atrocities (Bloomsbury Academic 2014), is an excellent example of how this works out in practice. The question this book addresses is not that unusual:  How it is that societies and individuals come to a place where they feel it necessary to commit mass atrocities.  But El-Affendi has assembled a set of authors remarkably varied in their background and approach. Indeed, his is one of the very few books in the field to draw on African and Middle Eastern scholars.  And the case studies he examined go well beyond the usual canon of genocide studies. His conclusions clearly emerge out of this interdisciplinary cooperation. The book focuses on what he calls narratives of insecurity.  These are stories people tell themselves about their relationships with others, stories that both reflect and further the securitization of relationships between people.  These narratives, he argues, play a key role in moving people to commit acts they would earlier have believed unnecessary and even criminal. The book offers a variety of well-written and considered essays.  And, if you're like me, it will acquaint you with an area of international relations theory I knew nothing about. After we concluded the interview, Abdelwahab realized he had not mentioned in our discussion one of the key contributors to the book, the UN's Special Adviser to the Secretary General on the Prevention of  Genocide..  Deng authored the books forward and richly deserve the thanks Abdelwahab wanted to give him.  I hope this will serve as an adequate substitute for a verbal appreciation from Abdelwahab.

Ervin StaubView on AmazonAfter "Schindler's List," it became customary for my students, and I, to repeat the slogan "Never Again."  We did so seriously, with solemn expressions on our faces and intensity in our voices. But, if I'm being honest, I also uttered this slogan with some trepidation.  For, while I believed absolutely in the necessity of such a commitment, I didn't really know how to carry it out.  Looking at Bosnia and Rwanda, then the Sudan and the Congo, such affirmations confronted the messy reality of our world. Ervin Staub's recent book Overcoming Evil: Genocide, Violent Conflict and Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2010), offers a refreshing hint of possibility.  Staub has been working on the question of why people participate in mass violence for decades (his earlier book The Roots of Evil is one of the foundational texts in the field of perpetrator studies). In his most recent book, he offers concrete guidelines and strategies for reducing the possibility and frequency of mass violence in our world.  Staub is not a dreamer–he has no illusions that genocide and terrorism can be eliminated immediately.  But he believe both that it is everyone's obligation to try and create a world in which mass violence is less prevalent and that such a world is in fact possible. The book offers both a comprehensive summary of what psychology can tell us about the behavior of perpetrators and a lengthy set of recommendations.  It should be an important resource for both scholars and practitioners for years to come. Update:  Overcoming Evil has won the 2012 Alexander George Book Award of The International Society of Political Psychology for the Best Book Published in 2011 in the Field of Political Psychology, and also won the the 2013 Ursula Gielen Global Psychology Book Award of the International Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association for significant and fundamental contributions to psychology as a global discipline.

Robert J. DoniaView on AmazonAs 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.  I still 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 Karadžič: 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.

James Mace WardView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Eastern European 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.

Thomas KuehneView on AmazonAs 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.

View on AmazonThe 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.

Thierry CruvellierView on AmazonWhat 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.

Deborah MayersenView on AmazonI 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.

Martin ShawView on AmazonWorks 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.

Michael BryantView on AmazonMy marginal comment, recorded at the end of the chapter on the Belzec trial in Michael Bryant's fine new book Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966 (University of Tennessee Press, 2014), is simple:  "!!!!"  Text speak, to be sure, but it conveys the surprise I felt. One can ask many questions about the trials of the German guards and administrators of Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka.  Why did it take so long to put them on trial?  How did the German public and government respond to the trials?  What do the trials say about German memory of the Holocaust? Bryant answers all of these questions thoughtfully and persuasively.  But, the heart of his book is a close study of the prosecution of a few dozen German soldiers, most of whom clearly had dirty hands.  He takes us step by step through the process of locating the accused and those who could testify against them, through the complexities of the German legal code, and through the testimony and eventual convictions.   And he explains why many of the accused were convicted of lesser crimes, or not convicted at all. Bryant, trained as both a lawyer and an historian, is uniquely qualified to lead us on this journey.  He does so with the verve of someone writing in the true crime genre,  integrating life stories of the accused and the courtroom strategies of their trials with a thoughtful analysis of the legal code and culture that shaped their fates. By the time I finished the book, my initial response had turned into a reluctant understanding. I'm not sure what the right solution is to the problems of transitional justice.  But Bryant makes it abundantly clear why these trials turned out in this way, however uncomfortable that might make us.

Wendy LowerView on AmazonIt seems quite reasonable to wonder if there's anything more to learn about the Holocaust.  Scholars from a variety of disciplines have been researching and writing about the subject for decades.  A simple search for "Holocaust" on Amazon turns up a stunning 27,642 results.  How can there still be uncovered terrain? Wendy Lower shows it is in fact possible to say new things about the Holocaust (to be fair, she's following a handful of other scholars who have focused on gender and the Holocaust).  Her questions are simple.  What did the approximately 500,000 women who went East to live and work in the territories occupied by the German armies know about the killing of Jews (and other categories of victims)?  To what degree did they participate in the killing?  How did this experience affect them after the war? Her answers are disturbing, to say the least.  For Lower uncovers ample evidence that women both witnessed and participated in the so-called "Holocaust by Bullets" in Eastern Europe.  The patterns of participation varied, as did their acknowledgement of their actions.  But the evidence is undeniable that women played a significant role in facilitating the Final Solution. Lower, along with people writing about Rwanda, about the frontiers of Australia and the United States, and a variety of other moments in time and space, illustrates our need to pay more attention to women and to gender in our study of mass violence.  Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013), is an admirable contribution to the discussion, well-researched, well-written and emotionally compelling.  I can't think of a better place to start in examining these issues.

Benjamin LiebermanView on AmazonWhat do you say to someone who suggests that genocide is not just destructive, but constructive? This is the basic theme of Benjamin Lieberman's excellent new book Remaking Identities:  God, Nation and Race in World History (Rowman and Littlefield, 2013). The book surveys two thousand years of history to explain how people have used violence to reconstruct identities.  This obviously involves death and destruction.  But it also involves recasting the identities of survivors.  It involves evangelism and religious conversion.  It entails education and persuasion.  It sometimes requires forced separation from one's community and integration into a new community and a new way of viewing the world.  In doing so, Lieberman reminds us, many perpetrators intended to create a new world, not just destroy an old one.  It's an important insight, one Lieberman explores through a variety of case studies ranging from the Islamic expansion of the 700s to the violence of the 20th century. Lieberman was not content, however, to write just one book.  At almost the same time, he published a textbook titled The Holocaust and Genocides in Europe (Bloomsbury Press, 2013). The book is a study in brevity and in the choices facing the author in compressing such a large topic into a couple of hundred pages.  The result is an excellent text, well worth reading, whether as a college student or as an interested reader. We managed to talk about both books in one regular-length interview. I trust you'll enjoy the result.

Mark LeveneView on AmazonI imagine one of the greatest compliments an author of an historical monograph can receive is to hear that his or her book changed the way a subject is taught. I will do just that after reading Mark Levene's new two volume work The Crisis of Genocide (2 Vols. Devastation:  The European Rimlands, 1912-1938; Annihilation and The European Rimlands, 1938-1953) (Oxford University Press, 2014).  These books, a continuation of Mark's earlier volumes titled Genocide in the Age of the Nation State, offer a rich and thought-provoking analysis of the ways in which the changing expectations and culture of the international system interacted with local events and personalities to drive mass violence.  The work is more analytical than narrative.  It is complex and requires careful attention to argument and evidence.  But it amply repays this effort with a reading of modern European history that made me rethink how I understood the period.  I learned much from the book about the details of violence in Anatolia and the Balkans.  But it was his broader treatment of the changing norms  of international relations that really made me think hard. Levene's earlier volume established his work as a must-read for historians of genocide and mass violence.  His new volumes deserve equal praise.