New Books in Genocide Studies

Susan ThomsonView on AmazonThis spring, I taught a class loosely called "The Holocaust through Primary Sources" to a small group of selected students. I started one class by asking them the deceptively simple question "When did the Holocaust end?" The first consensus answer was "1945." After some discussion, the students changed their answer. The new consensus was simple. It hasn't yet. This came to mind when reading Susan Thomson's powerful new book Whispering Truth to Power: Everyday Resistance to Reconciliation in Postgenocide Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). While writing the book,  Thomson talked at length with a variety of 'ordinary' people in Rwanda.  Their stories remind us that recovery, both societal and personal, from the events of 1994, has been both halting and problematic.  Her account, like that of Jennie Burnet, also draws our attention to the ways governments' efforts to shape and reshape cultures of remembrance impact individuals decades after violence is over. With historians and others paying more and more attention to the aftermaths of mass violence, Thomson's book sheds light both on issues specific to Rwanda and more generally to the history of remembrance and reconciliation.

View on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] This book tells a remarkable and–to me at least–little known but very important story. In Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale UP, 2014), Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz trace the many connections between Germany–Imperial and Nazi–and the Arab world. Their particular focus is on a fellow named Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem between from 1921 to 1948. Both Al-Husseini and, a bit later, Hitler inherited a project hatched by the German officials in World War I, namely, to start an Islamist Jihad against the Western Powers in the Middle East. The two found common cause in this project: al Husseini wanted the French and British out and Hitler wanted to Germany to dominate the region. But they were also united by another cause: eliminationist Jew-hatred. Al-Husseini and Hitler worked together throughout the war to murder and plan the murder of as many Jews as they could get their hands on. After the war al-Husseini denied any connection with Hitler, yet he continued their common anti-Western, anti-Jewish project. Al-Husseini enlisted many former Nazis for just this purpose. In the late 1940s al-Husseini remained influential, not only among Palestinian Arabs, but widely in the Middle East. That influence, so Rubin and Schwanitz show, can be seen in the actions of many post-war Arab nationalist and Islamist leader–right down to today.

Richard WeikartView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] For many years now, historians have wondered whether Hitler had any sort of consistent ideology. His writings are rambling and confusing. His speeches are full of plain lies. His "table talk" reflects a wandering, impulsive mind distinguished by a remarkable disconnection from reality. There are obvious themes: strident German nationalism, radical racialism, vicious anti-semitism, and militarism. Do these themes add up to an internally consistent "worldview"? Richard Weikart argues that they do. In his excellent book Hitler's Ethic: The Nazi Pursuit of Evolutionary Progress (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), Weickart points out that Hitler, like so many of his generation, was powerfully influenced by a particular reading of Darwin's theory of evolution. By this interpretation, human "races" were seen as species and, as such, deemed to be in eternal struggle for life itself. "Nature," according to these theorists (usually called "Social Darwinists"), selected the most fit races and destroyed the less fit. Weikart shows that Hitler held very fast to this idea, as can be seen both in his pronouncements and actions. He also shows that Hitler–in contrast to many other Social Darwinists–had no trouble leaping over the distinction between "is" and "ought." According to the Fuhrer, the "fact" that the "races" were subject to evolutionary process meant that they should struggle with all their might. Here, might was ethically right by what Hitler believed was irrefutable "natural law." It was a recipe for madness and, of course, immense tragedy. Listen in.

Donna-Lee FriezeView on AmazonIt's hard to overestimate the role of Raphael Lemkin in calling the world's attention to the crime of genocide.  But for decades his name languished, as scholars and the broader public devoted their time and attention to other people and other things. In the past few years, this has changed.  We now have a greater understanding of Lemkin's role in pushing the UN to write and pass the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.  Moreover, researchers have a newfound appreciation for the depth and insights of his research.  Genocide scholars talk about their field experiencing a 'return to Lemkin' It seems an appropriate time, then, to reexamine Lemkin's ideas and career. We're doing so in a special, two-part series of interviews with scholars who have edited and published Lemkin's writings.  Earlier this month, I posted an interview with Steve Jacobs, who carefully edited and annotated an edition of Lemkin's writings about the history and nature of genocide, simply titled Lemkin on Genocide. This time, I talked with Donna-Lee Frieze, who has meticulously edited Lemkin's unpublished autobiography Totally Unofficial: The Autobiography of Raphael Lemkin (Yale University Press, 2013).  The book gives us a new appreciation for Lemkin's work.  It offers us a deeper insight into who he was and how he fit into his times.  And it shows how his experiences shaped his lifelong crusade to create an framework within international law that would protect persecuted ethnic and religious groups. One brief note about the sound.  We taped this interview in what was late winter in Wichita.  Bizarrely enough, New York that day was evidently much warmer than Wichita.  Donna accordingly taped this interview sitting next to an open window.  Occasionally, you can hear the passing traffic in the background.  If you're not in New York, consider this local color.  If you are, feel free to brag that spring comes early in your town.  You don't get that chance often.

Steven L. JacobsView on AmazonIt's hard to overestimate the role of Raphael Lemkin in calling the world's attention to the crime of genocide.  But for decades his name languished, as scholars and the broader public devoted their time and attention to other people and other things. In the past few years, this has changed. We now have a greater understanding of Lemkin's role in pushing the UN to write and pass the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide.  Moreover, researchers have a newfound appreciation for the depth and insights of his research.  Genocide scholars talk about their field experiencing a 'return to Lemkin.' It seems an appropriate time, then to reexamine Lemkin's ideas and career.  We'll do so in a special two-part series of interviews with scholars who have edited and published Lemkin's writings.  Later this month, I'll post an interview with Donna Lee Frieze, who has meticulously edited Lemkin's unpublished autobiography, Totally Unofficial. First, however, I'll talk with Steven L. Jacobs.  Steve recently published a carefully edited and annotated edition of Lemkin's writings about the history and nature of genocide, simply titled Lemkin on Genocide (Lexington Books, 2012).  This work was written during the 1940s, but never published.  Through it, we gain a new appreciation for the depth of Lemkin's theoretical understanding and the breadth of his research.  In addition, reading Jacob's book provides us a richer sense of how Lemkin fit into the ideological currents of his time.  In editing this work, Steve has done a great service to all those interested in genocide.

Virginia Garrard-BurnettView on AmazonI have a colleague at Newman who takes students to Guatemala every summer.  Since I arrived she's encouraged me to join her.  I would stay with the order of sisters who sponsor our university. I'd learn at least a few words of rudimentary Spanish.  And, she says, if I'm really interested in genocide, I must visit this complicated, conflicted country. I've always declined (granted, I'm usually taking students to Europe, so I have a good excuse).  However, after reading Virginia Garrard-Burnett's excellent description of Guatemala in the early 1980s, I may have to say yes the next time. Burnett does an extraordinary job of making the complex politics of Guatemala understandable. Terror in the Land of the Holy Spirit: Guatemala under General Efrain Rios Montt 1982-1983 (Oxford University Press, 2011) is at least partly a biography of Rios Montt, and an excellent one.  Burnett's explanation of Rios Montt's complicated personality and the influence religion played on his rule is superb.  But the book moves beyond that to explain briefly the broader context that brought the president to power and the ways in which repression turned into open violence. Before doing this interview, I probably knew less about Guatemala than any other case of genocidal violence.  After the interview, I intend to make sure this is no longer true. One note:  Garrard-Burnett's time was relatively limited, so today's interview is a bit shorter than normal.  I encourage you to read the book to appreciate fully the richness of her analysis.

Nitzan LebovicView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Intellectual History] Thomas Mann referred to Ludwig Klages (1872-1956) as a "criminal philosopher," a "Pan-Germanist," "an irrationalist," a "Tarzan philosopher," "a cultural pessimist… the voice of the world's downfall." Yet, Walter Benjamin urged his friend Gershom Scholem to read Klage's latest book in 1930, at a time when Klages was increasingly bending his anti-Semitic philosophy of life (Lebensphilosophie) in a political direction. It was, Benjamin wrote, "without a doubt, a great philosophical work, regardless of the context in which the author may be and remain suspect." Nitzan Lebovic, historian at Lehigh University, has set himself the task of unfolding the ways in which Klages's philosophy became both an inspiration for Nazi cultural politics and a subterranean source in the history of critical philosophy from Benjamin to Giorgio Agamben. In this podcast, we discuss his book The Philosophy of Life and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Biopolitics (Palgrave Studies in Cultural and Intellectual History, 2013).

Olga GershensonView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Jewish Studies] Fifty years of Holocaust screenplays and films -largely unknown, killed by censors, and buried in dusty archives – come to life in Olga Gershenson's The Phantom Holocaust: Soviet Cinema and Jewish Catastrophe (Rutgers UP, 2013). As she ventures across three continents to uncover the stories behind these films, we follow her adventures, eager to learn what happened, why, when – and what comes next. This page-turning exploration begins with the first-ever films made about the Nazi threat to Jewish life in the 1930s – artistically successful movies released to crowded theaters in the USSR, Europe, and the US. The power of film being what it is, some 1930s viewers learned the lesson of Nazi hatred and fled to safety when Germany invaded the USSR in 1941. Immediately after the war, Soviet filmmakers again broke new ground when in 1945 they portrayed the Holocaust in "The Unvanquished." The war just over, Soviet censors, Gershenson discovered, had no set policy and hardly knew how Stalin wanted them to respond. But the respected filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein supported the film, a movie featuring Jewish victims filmed on site in Kiev; it became one of the few Soviet movies that identified the Holocaust with Jews. Thereafter, the Holocaust would be a universal problem sans Jews that occurred anywhere but in the USSR. Among the stories that Gershenson relates, she raises the curtain on "Ordinary Fascism," a blockbuster when it was released in the USSR in 1966.  The three-hour black-and-white documentary montage, narrated by its famous director Mikhail Romm, apparently drew 20 million Soviets to cinemas before it was withdrawn. Gershenson describes Ordinary Fascism as "a real breakthrough," "stunning," and an explosion." Romm's irreverent, casual commentary to Nazi newsreels, footage, photos, and art explored the psychology of Nazism – and, viewers recognized, made Soviets reflect on themselves. Why did Soviet censors refuse to permit a book on the subject to be released? Censors explained that a film would be seen once and forgotten. A book, on the other hand, would start people thinking! As Gershenson explains: "Half of all Holocaust victims…were killed on Soviet soil, mostly in swift machine-gun executions. And yet, watching popular Holocaust movies…the impression is that Holocaust victims were mainly Polish and German Jews killed in concentration camps."  Her stories explain why Soviet filmmakers almost never shared the Soviet Holocaust experience on the screen. Gershenson's book has a partner website. Here you can find video clips of featured films, with subtitles.

Adam JonesView on AmazonBeing an academic is usually a forward-looking career.  You are generally focused on the next book or the next project (or perhaps the next class period).  Certainly, there may be times when you rethink an old judgment or return to a subject you've ignored for years.  But this re-engagement is usually limited.  Even a  festschrift (a volume of essays published in honor or in memory of a well-known researcher) is written by other people and usually offers new insights rather than reflections. So Adam Jones' self-described mid-career retrospective is pretty unusual.  And valuable.  Jones, as many of the readers know, has contributed enormously to the study of genocide in the past decade.  The Scourge of Genocide:  Essays and Reflections (Routledge, 2013) is a combination of reprints of previously published articles and reviews and original writing.  The original writing is fascinating.  And the essays reprinted here complement each other in ways they almost certainly didn't when scattered in a variety of publications.    The result is to give us a much fuller sense of Jones' ideas and opinions.  In particular, Jones' reflection on the choices he made when writing and revising his widely used textbook (Genocide:  A Comprehensive Introduction) should inspire all textbook authors to undertake a similar project. The book is well worth reading.  I hope the interview gives you the flavor of the book and Jones' ideas and persuades you to read more deeply in his work.

Robert J. RichardsView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Science, Technology, and Society] In his new collection of wonderfully engaging and provocative set of essays on Darwin and Darwinians, Robert J. Richards explores the history of biology and so much more. The eight essays collected in Was Hitler a Darwinian?: Disputed Questions in the History of Evolutionary Theory (University of Chicago Press, 2013), include reflections on  Darwin's theories of natural selection and divergence, Ernst Haeckel's life and work, the evolutionary ideas of Herbert Spencer, the linguistic theories of August Schleicher, and the historical tendency to relate Hitler's Nazism to Darwinian evolutionary theory. Individually, the essays are models of close and careful reading of the documentary traces of the life and work of Darwin, Haeckel, and others, and include some exceptionally affecting and tragic moments. Many of them touch on evolutionary theory's moral character, its roots in Romanticism, and its conception of mankind. In addition to offering a fascinating set of case studies in the history of biology, the essays and appendices also collectively raise some important questions about how historians understand the past and bring it into narrative existence. What kind of thing is the past? What sets the history of science apart from other historical disciplines? Is it reasonable to use contemporary science to help construe the past? What is a scientific theory and where is it located? What does it mean to ask (and what might it look like to carefully answer) a question like, Was Hitler a Darwinian? The essays in Richards' collection are wonderfully reflective considerations that reward the time and attention of both specialists in the history of biology and thoughtful general readers alike.

View on AmazonWe spend a lot of time arguing about the meaning and implications of words in the field of genocide studies. Buckets of ink have been spilled defining and debating words like genocide, intent, 'in part,' and crimes against humanity. Philip Dwyer and Lyndall Ryan are certainly invested in the process of careful definitions and descriptions.  Theaters of Violence: Massacre, Mass Killing, and Atrocity through History (Berghahn Books, 2012)and the special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research that form the basis of our discussion are both a plea for and a move toward a thorough, theoretically sound understanding of the concept of a massacre.  In doing so, they offer a thoughtful commentary on the notion of genocide and its relationship to massacres and atrocities. But these volumes are more than a theoretical engagement with a concept.  They are a rich exploration of the nature of mass killing, as the subtitle puts it, throughout history.  The essays here range from individual case studies to attempts to discover patterns and consistencies from the fractal landscape of violence that has typified human existence.  They offer readers a chance to come to grips with the disturbing reality that human beings have always been willing to destroy other humans at exactly the moment when they are most vulnerable. A brief note for those listeners unfamiliar with the Journal of Genocide Research.  The journal is one of the leading venues for researchers from a variety of academic disciplines to report on their research about genocide and related topics.  It offers scholars from across the world a chance to propose new ideas, publicize new discoveries, and launch new conversations about important books or developments in the field.  As such, it is a must read for those interested in new research on genocide studies. This podcast begins an attempt to expand our coverage slightly beyond the 'new book' format of the channel.  Most interviews will remain focused on new books published in the field.  But the Journal publishes special issues periodically that function much like books in their focus on specific issues or events.  So the podcast will occasionally feature the editors of these special issues. I hope you'll find these interviews as interesting and as important as you do those with books you can get at the library.  

Waitman BeornView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] The question of Wehrmacht complicity in the Holocaust is an old one. What might be called the "received view" until recently was that while a small number of German army units took part in anti-Jewish atrocities, the great bulk of the army neither knew about nor participated in the Nazi genocidal program. In other words, the identified cases were isolated exceptions. Who was at fault? Why, the SS of course. This view was spread by German generals in post-war memoirs, by the German government and courts, and by the German press and the public that read it. The "Good Wehrmacht" image was influential: many people–including scholars of the war–in countries that had fought Germany could be found rehearsing it. In his eye-opening book Marching into Darkness: The Wehrmacht and the Holocaust in Belarus" (Harvard UP, 2013), Waitman Beorn challenges the "Good Wehrmacht" image. By focusing on a few units that participated in the invasion and occupation of Belarus in the late summer and fall of 1941, he is able to show without any doubt whatsoever that regular Wehrmacht forces not only participated in executions of Jews and others, but initiated them. The leaders of these units ordered them to aid the Einsatzgruppen in organizing mass murder and to actively hunt down "partisans" who were nothing but innocent Jews. Waitman does an excellent job of not only documenting Wehrmacht complicity, but also of trying to explain it. Listen in.

Jennie BurnetView on AmazonIn our fast-paced world, it is easy to move from one crisis to another.  Conflicts loom in rapid succession, problems demand solutions (or at least analysis) and impending disasters require a response. It is all we can do to pay attention to the present moment.  Lingering on the consequences of the past seems to take too much of our finite attention. Jennie Burnet's fantastic new book Genocide Lives in Us:  Women, Memory and Silence in Rwanda (University of Wisconsin Press, 2012), offers a useful corrective to this fascination with the immediate.  Jennie is interested primarily in what it means to live in a society ruptured by violence.  She writes about how people try to speak, or not speak, about the killing that destroyed their families or those of their neighbors.  She reflects on how the government's decision to try to forestall future violence by eliminating ethnic categories affects individuals' efforts to shape their own identity and self-understanding.  She analyzes the way practices of memorialization reflect changing ways of understanding and narrating past atrocities.  And she allows her subjects to share the challenges of living in a world where the past is always present. Jennie, both in print and in the interview, is thoughtful, articulate and compassionate.  I hope the interview gives you a taste of the richness of her book. Genocide Lives in Us won the 2013 Elliot Skinner Book Award from the Association for Africanist Anthropology. It also received an honorable mention for the 2013 Melville J. Herskovits Award from the African Studies Association.

View on AmazonWe've talked before on the show about how hard it is to enter into the field of Holocaust Studies.  Just six weeks ago, for instance, I talked with Dan Stone about his thoughtful work analyzing and critiquing the current state of our knowledge of the subject. This week is a natural follow-on to that interview.  Peter Hayes and John Roth have edited a remarkable compilation of essays about the Holocaust.  The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (Oxford University Press, 2010) surveys the field, but does so in a significantly different way than Stone.   Hayes and Roth have recruited dozens of the brightest young researchers to offer a summary of and reflection on what we now know about many of the most important topics in Holocaust Studies.  Each entry is relatively short (12-15 pages) and packed with information useful to newcomers and veterans alike.  Each offers some sense of the trajectory of our knowledge and understanding of the topic.  Almost all are immensely readable.   If you are looking to get a comprehensive understanding of the discipline or simply trying to brush up on a specific subject, this is a wonderful resource.  And, unusually for reference books, it is priced at a level that allows individuals  to add it to their personal libraries. John, Peter and I had a great conversation.  I hope you enjoy the interview.

View on AmazonGenocide studies has been a growth field for a couple of decades.  Books and articles have appeared steadily, universities have created programs and centers and the broader public has become increasingly interested in the subject. Nevertheless, there remain some aspects of the field and some geographic regions that remain dramatically understudied. Deborah Mayersen and Annie Pohlman's new edited collection Genocide and Mass Atrocities in Asia:  Legacies and Prevention (Routledge, 2013)  is an excellent step toward filling one of these gaps. The book adds greatly to our understanding of mass violence in East and Southeast Asia. As the title suggests, Mayersen and Pohlman focus not the violence itself, but on its long-term impact on Indonesia, East Timor and other regions in Asia. Deborah and Annie are, besides being solid scholars, delightful conversationalists. The result, I hope, is an interview well worth listening to.