New Books in Genocide Studies

Dan StoneView on AmazonI don't think it's possible anymore for someone, even an academic with a specialty in the field, let alone an interested amateur, to read even a fraction of the literature written about the Holocaust.  If you do a search for the word "Holocaust" on Amazon (as I just did), you get 18,445 results.  That's just in English, and just books available right now on Amazon.  Admittedly this is a poor search strategy to use if constructing a bibliography, but it gives you a decent approximation of the challenge you face in trying to learn about the Holocaust. Dan Stone, then, has done the field a great service in writing his book Histories of the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2010.  In this work, Stone attempts to provide a critical guide to the questions and interpretations most important to the field at this moment.  In doing so, he summarizes an enormous amount of reading and learning into a couple hundred pages while offering his own thoughtful interpretations.  This book is one of the first places to start if you want to get an overview of recent scholarship on the holocaust. A brief note about the sound quality of the interview.  Skype was a bit wonky (to use the technical term) the day we did the interview, so the sound during the first ten or twelve minutes or so is just a bit fuzzy.  After that it clears up and the remainder of the interview is crystal clear. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Christopher PowellView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Global Conflict] What exactly is genocide? Is there a fundamental difference between episodes of genocide and how we go about our daily life? Or can it be said that the roots of the modern world, or civilization itself, has the potential to produce genocide? If the latter is true, then what does is say about us and the society we have constructed for ourselves? Christopher Powell, in his illuminating new book Barbaric Civilization: A Critical Sociology of Genocide (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2011) provides new insights into these and related questions. For Powell, the idea that genocide is something that happens when civilization fails, or is something that should be understood as fundamentally different or wholly alien or outside of our day-to-day life, is suspect. Rather, he links genocide and the human potential for atrocity to civilization itself. In other words, there are clues present in the modern world, as well as the modern state structure, that can help us better understand the process of genocide and what makes atrocities possible. To understand genocide as "bad" and civilization as "good", according to Powell, continues to confuse the issue. If civilization can produce genocide, he argues, "then civilization is not the unmitigated good that we often take it for." The resulting book is a theoretically sophisticated journey through a difficult, and all-too-frequently, misunderstood and controversial topic. Thanks for listening. You can find Christopher Powell's blog here.

View on AmazonHitler famously said about the Armenian genocide "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?" For much of the last 75 years, few people did in fact speak of it.  When they did, the discussion largely revolved around the question of whether the killing deserved the label of genocide.  Scholarly analysis did exist.  But, in the public mind, it was largely swallowed up in a bitter debate about how to label, remember and interpret these events.  Tuning out the vitriolic rhetoric, many of my students thought about Armenia only in the context of the lessons Hitler apparently drew from it. This has gradually begun to change as historians and social scientists such as Taner Akça and Vahakn Dadrian have turned their attention to Armenia.  The book that forms the subject of today's interview–A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire (Oxford University Press, 2011), edited by Ronald Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman Naimark– is an outstanding example of this new scholarship.  All three have a deep and long-lasting engagement with the subject and have played an important role in creating a dispassionate dialogue about the genocide. A Question of Genocide forms one of the important outcomes of this dialogue.  Its essays are  models of careful analysis and research.  Rather than attempting to present a complete narrative of events, they engage specific locations, questions or subjects.  They demand careful attention and reflection.   But, put together, they offer an excellent synopsis of the state of research and opinion on the period and subject.

Robert GerwarthView on AmazonFew history books sell better than biographies of Nazi leaders. They attract anyone even tangentially interested in World War Two or Nazi Germany.  It's not surprising, then, that there are dozens of biographies of Himmler, Goering, and Hitler himself. Oddly, though, Reinhard Heydrich is relatively understudied.  Robert Gerwarth's wonderful new biography of Heydrich, titled Hitler's Hangman: The Life of Heydrich (Yale UP, 2012), fills this gap admirably.  Gerwarth's book is part of a new wave of serious biographies that have appeared in the last years.  All are characterized by a thoughtful engagement with recent research on the Holocaust.  All devote considerable attention to their subjects' lives in the period before the Nazi takeover.  All emphasize the choices made by their subjects and the way these choices were not predetermined.  Hitler's Hangman is an outstanding example of this new scholarship. Gerwarth's work, in particular, is distinguished by its particularly effective writing.  He synthesizes a great deal of information gracefully, a demanding task in a biography this concise.  At the same time, he preserves space for anecdotes and details that illuminate his topic and add color to his narrative. Hitler's Hangman has been widely praised by reviewers across the spectrum.  It is praise that is richly deserved.

Christopher BrowningView on AmazonChristopher Browning is one of the giants in the field of Holocaust Studies.  He has contributed vitally to at least two of the basic debates in the field:  the intentionalist/functionalist discussion about when, why and how the Germans decided to annihilate the Jews of Europe, and the question of why individual perpetrators killed. His new book, then, seems like something of a departure.  Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave Labor Camp (W. W. Norton, 2010), examines the labor camp at Starachowice, Poland.  Starting before the Nazi invasion, Browning tracks the members of the Jewish community in the region throughout the war, from their  initial encounters with Nazi presence through their deportation to Auschwitz  to their eventual return (or not) to their homes after the war.   The book engages deeply questions of survival, resistance and community and family in the life of the Jewish captives. But, as Browning suggests during the interview, the book is really a continuation of his previous strategy of using case studies to shed light on questions of broad significance.  This time, by studying a labor camp, Browning is able to examine both the captives and those wo held them prisoner.  The result is  every bit as rich as his previous work. Browning speaks as carefully and thoughtfully as he writes.  We talked both about the story he tells in the book and some of the methodological issues he confronted in writing it.   There's more in the book than we could get to in an hour.  I hope you'll listen to the interview and then go out and read the book.

Paul MojzesView on AmazonI was a graduate student in the 1990s when Yugoslavia dissolved into violence.  Beginning a dissertation on Habsburg history, I probably knew more about the region than most people in the US about the region.  Yet I was just as surprised as anyone else at the scale of the hatred and violence that erupted.  With the part of the world I studied enduring atrocity after atrocity, I spent quite a bit of time wondering if graduate study in history was really the best profession to pursue.  And I spent a lot of time devouring various accounts to try to understand how such violence could come out of what seemed like nowhere. Paul Mojzes' new book Balkan Genocides:  Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the 20th Century (Rowman and Littlefield, 2011)ably addresses the second concern.   A native of the region, Paul brings a deep understanding of the long-term roots of Balkan violence that many of the initial responses lacked.  At the same time, he recognizes the significant changes that accompanied the twentieth century.  Moreover, he brings an even-handedness that is rare in discussions of the region. The result is careful, even-handed examination of history of mass violence in the Balkans.  It treats widely-discussed incidents with sensitivity and draws attention to other, little-known persecutions.  And it does so with a sensitivity drawn from Paul's long engagement in interfaith dialogue.   While the book clearly functions within the norms of a scholarly work, Paul's ethical sensibility lies behind it and illuminates his discussion.  All in all, his book is a fine contribution to the literature on the subject. My interview with Paul was just as interesting as his book.  I hope you enjoy it.

James DawesView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Big Ideas] This week a Syrian rebel ripped the heart out of a loyalist fighter and ate part of it. You can see it on YouTube. Many people asked "How can people do things like this?" In his new book Evil Men (Harvard UP, 2013), James Dawes explores why people commit horrible atrocities. To get to the root of unbelievable human cruelty, he interviewed Japanese war criminals, asking them why and how they did what they did. The results are surprising, as you will learn in the interview. By the way, James wrote an excellent op-ed on the Syrian incident here.

Richard RashkeView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] You may have heard of a fellow named Ivan or John Demjanuik. He made the news–repeatedly over a 30 year period– because he was, as many people probably remember, a Nazi war criminal nick-named "Ivan the Terrible" for his brutal treatment of Jews (and others) in the Sobibor death camp. The trouble is, as Richard Rashke points out in his new book Useful Enemies: John Demjanjuk and America's Open-Door Policy for Nazi War Criminals (Delphinium, 2013), Demjanuik was not a Nazi, was not "Ivan the Terrible," and, though he was certainly a guard at Sobibor, it's not entirely clear what he did (though it was likely very bad). Again and again he was brought to trial for his alleged crimes. Again and again the courts failed to agree on what he had done. Demjaniuk was and remains something of a mystery, a vital mystery that we badly want to solve but cannot. After all, we need to know who is a war criminal and who is not. What's most interesting about Demjaniuk–at least to this reader–is the moral complexity of his story. As Rashke shows, he was repeatedly compelled to make life and death choices as he tried to stay survive in Stalinist Russia, in Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe, and even after the war. He had options, but they were almost always bad ones, and often deadly ones. He was a "collaborator" to be sure. But, Rashke asks, what exactly is a "collaborator"? Could he have chosen differently and hoped to survive? Could he have acted "morally" in the context within which he found himself? Rashke says "yes." Listen in and find out why.

Donald BloxhamView on AmazonThe end of the Cold War dramatically changed research into the Holocaust.  The gradual opening up of archives across Eastern Europe allowed a flood of local and regional studies that transformed our understanding of the Final Solution.  We now know much more about the mechanics of destruction in the East, about the interaction between center and periphery in planning and carrying out mass killings, and about the interaction between Germans, local inhabitants and Jews. Twenty years later, historians have begun to integrate these new studies into broad reexaminations of the Holocaust.  Donald Bloxham has written one of the best of these.  His book, The Final Solution: A Genocide (Oxford UP, 2009), is a remarkable attempt to put the Holocaust into the broader context of global history.  It's analytical rather than narrative. Its arguments are careful and always attentive  to nuance and complexity.  And Bloxham demonstrates a deep understanding of research on the Holocaust and in the broader field of Genocide Studies.  Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, you will come out of this book having reconsidered what you thought you knew about the Holocaust and about European history in the first half of the Twentieth Century.

View on AmazonWhile reading about genocide and mass violence should always be be disturbing, a certain numbness sets in over time.  Every once in a while, however, a book breaks through that numbness to remind the reader of the horror inherent in the subject. The new book Rape: Weapon of War and Genocide, edited by John Roth and Carol Rittner (Paragon House, 2012) is one of these books.  While individuals have always committed or fell victim to sexual violence during conflicts, only recently have armies and states begun to use large-scale rape as a tactic to help them achieve their broader war aims.  Rittner and Roth set out to explore why and how this is happening and to identify possible solutions to the problem.  Some of the essays are academic, some personal, but they all contain horrifying reminders of the intensely personal experience of rape and sexual violence.  Aimed at students as well as professionals, the book offers a broad survey of the state of research rather than overarching conclusions.  In doing so, it sears its way into your consciousness. John and Carol have the kind of easy familiarity that comes from having worked together for decades.  The result is more a conversation than an interview.  I threw in some guiding questions, but mostly sat back and enjoyed the chance to hear two experts talk with each other about a subject of pressing importance.  I hope you'll appreciate the chance to do the same.  

Lee Ann FujiiView on AmazonThe question Lee Ann Fujii asks in her new book Killing Neighbors: Webs of Violence in Rwanda (Cornell University Press, 2009) is a traditional one in genocide studies. Her research builds on earlier scholars such as Christopher Browning, James Waller and Scott Strauss.  Her eye for nuances and for the complexities of local relationships allows her to extend this earlier research in helping us to understand why neighbors killed neighbors in Rwanda. However. The metaphor she uses to help illuminate her explanations is both new and remarkably insightful. She argues that genocide must be viewed as a script. This script has directors and producers. but it also has actors. And the actors, far away from the directors, are able to interpret the script in ways that makes genocide make sense to their own lives and circumstances. sometimes this leads them to kill more people than they had been ordered to kill. But sometimes it leads individuals to ignore or save people who logically should have been targeted, sometimes in startling ways. It gives individual actors the ability to alter the desired pace and nature of the killings. And, as Fujii says, it casts traditional categories of perpetrators, bystanders and victims into question. Fujii's emphasis on genocide as process and on genocide as a script transformed the way I talk about mass killing. That makes this an important book.

Mary FulbrookView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] The question of how "ordinary Germans" managed to commit genocide is a classic (and troubling) one in modern historiography. It's been well studied and so it's hard to say anything new about it. But Mary Fulbrook has done precisely that in A Small Town Near Auschwitz: Ordinary Nazis and the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 2012). In the book she examines the career of a single Nazi administrator in "the East", Udo Klusa, in minute detail day by day, week by week, month by month while the Germans were improvising what became known as the "Holocaust." Klausa was not a big wig; he was a functionary, a part of a (particularly awful) colonial machine. He believed in the Nazi mission to "Germanize" Poland, but he was by no means a "fanatical" Nazi. He followed orders (by our standards horrendous ones), but he did not do so mindlessly. He wanted to build a career, but he was not–apparently–willing to do anything to do so. Fullbrook investigates just how far Klausa was willing to go, what he found acceptable and what he found (or seemed to find) objectionable. It's a tricky subject because Klausa himself tried to cover his tracks after the war. He seems to have seen that policies he once found quite sensible were, after the war, not so. Fullbrook does a masterful job of using archival sources to show where Klausa's memory becomes particularly selective. Though it would be too much to call Fullbrook's portrait of Klausa "sympathetic," it is certainly both historically and psychologically nuanced and therefore helps us understand his mentality both during the war and after.

Marek Jan ChodakiewiczView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] On July 10, 1941, Poles in the town of Jedwabne together with some number of German functionaries herded nearly 500 Jews into a barn and burnt them alive. In 2000, the sociologist Jan Gross published a book about the subject that, very shortly thereafter, started a huge controversy about Polish participation in the Holocaust. In the furor that followed, many simply took it for granted that Gross's interpretation of what happened–that radically anti-Semitic Poles murdered the Jews with little prompting from the Germans–was simply correct. But was it? This is the question Marek Jan Chodakiewicz tries to answer in The Massacre in Jedwabne, July 10, 1941: Before, During, After (Columbia University Press; East European Monographs, 2005). After an exhaustive and meticulous investigation of the sources (which are imperfect at best), Chodakiewicz concludes that we don't and will never know exactly what happened on that horrible July day in Jedwabne, but it was certainly more complicated and mysterious than Gross imagines. Chodakiewicz puts the massacre in its wider context or, perhaps more accurately, contexts. These include: Jedwabne itself, Polish life there, Jewish life there, the interaction between the two communities in the town, the Soviet occupation, the coming of the Germans, German policies toward Poles and Jews, the Polish resistance, Polish anti-Semitism, Polish anti-Communism, and the intersection of the two ("Zydokomuna"). No punches are pulled: Chodakiewicz places much of the blame for the atrocity squarely on the Poles (or, rather, some faction of them) in Jedwabne. But he puts their actions–insofar as we can know them–into a much wider frame and therefore helps us understand why they did what they did.

View on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in Native American Studies] Brendan C. Lindsay's impressive if deeply troubling new book centers on two concepts long considered anathema: democracy and genocide. One is an ideal of self-government, the other history's most unspeakable crime. Yet as Lindsay deftly describes, Euro-American settlers in California harnessed democratic governance to expel, enslave and ultimately murder 90% of a population on their ancestral homelands in the mid-to-late 19th century. Murder State: California's Native Genocide, 1846-1873 (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) is difficult but vital reading for residents of any state. Culling evidence from newspapers, public records, and personal narratives, Lindsay's lays out an ironclad case that "genocide" is precisely the word to describe to the process faced by Native people in California, despite its rarified usage in academic and public discourse.

Ben KiernanView on Amazon[Cross-posted from New Books in History] Chimps, our closest relatives, kill each other. But chimps do not engage in anything close to mass slaughter of their own kind. Why is this? There are two possible explanations for the difference. The first is this: chimps are not programmed, so to say, to commit mass slaughter, while humans are so programmed. The second is this: chimps do not make their own history and therefore cannot make the conditions conducive to genocide, while humans do, can, and repeatedly have. In the former case, human genocidal behavior is part of our evolved "nature"; in the latter case, it is a historical artifact. After reading Ben Kiernan's sobering (Yale UP, 2007) I've come to believe that it is a bit of both. Much of what we know about the evolution of human psychology and the history of human genocide suggest that we have an ingrained, genetically-encoded, largely unalterable drive to want to kill one another in large numbers. That drive, however, seems to be triggered by particular historical circumstances, these being largely of our own making. In Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (Yale UP, 2007), Ben explores the  nature of these triggering circumstances by looking at the history of genocide over the past five or so centuries. He finds unmistakable commonalities among modern genocides, primarily in the world of ideology. When modern people begin to believe that there is something sacred about their "blood"–that is, their own kind–and "soil"–that is, the plowed fields that sustain their kind–they have taken the first step toward the creation of the above-mentioned triggering conditions. When they believe, further, that their "blood and soil" are threatened by another "kind," or they see an opportunity to extend the reach of their "blood and soil," the conditions are almost complete. All that remains is for elites in the community to mobilize the force necessary to launch a genocidal attack. At this point what was merely necessary for genocide becomes, with the addition of a will and a way, sufficient and our innate genocidal tendencies are enacted. The challenge, of course, is to avoid creating the conditions that foster "blood and soil" ideologies and set us on the road to ruin. Alas, thus far we have not been able to accomplish that important task. Please become a fan of "New Books in History" on Facebook if you haven't already.