world war

The Vatican’s attitude during the Holocaust and the persecution of the Jews has been at the heart of numerous debates and controversies. Nina Valbousquet analyses the ambivalent position of the papacy during the pontificate of Pius XII (1939-1958) and provides a sensitive history of the Holocaust through the archives.

A new archaeology has emerged whose contributions to our understanding of twentieth-century mass violence oscillate between history and memory. A specialist in the field provides an impressive overview that sounds very much like a plea.

A history of masculinity and a history of men, this collective volume shows that while “ideal” Nazi masculinity was opposed to that of Jews and homosexuals, it was also contested and fragmented, both in the private sphere and on the battlefield.

During the Second World War, 48,000 Bulgarian Jews avoided being deported. By analyzing a wide-range of previously unavailable sources, Ragaru shows how a collective narrative was constructed around this fact—one that has been used for political purposes down to the present.

In her study of the fate of the 100,000 or so airmen who fell during the Second World War, Claire Andrieu challenges the separation between civilians and soldiers, regular and irregular combatants, wait-and-see attitudes and active resistance, frontline and rear, through an empirical investigation that is destined to become a landmark work.

The Cold War is often interpreted as a moment when international cooperation was paralyzed due to the rivalry between the western and eastern blocs. Against this view, Sandrine Kott shows how the Cold War in fact stimulated multilateralism.

Caught between the great epidemics of the past and the horrors of the world war, the 1918-1919 flu has long struggled to be recognized as a major health disaster. Reactions to the current epidemic testify to the persistence of denial in the face of troubling outbreaks of disease.

During the first years of World War II, an escape route allowed political refugees to travel from France to Martinique. On the island, the interactions between exiles and the local population resulted in a rich intellectual cross-fertilization. E.T. Jennings’ book is the first account of this exodus.

When did Holocaust survivors start speaking about their experiences? Were their voices heard? A prevailing myth states that witnesses remained silent during the postwar years. However, Judith Lindenberg’s edited volume argues that the “urgency to say and make known was present from the beginning of the genocide”.

Two men, the lawyer Raphael Lemkin and the resistant Jan Karski, realized early on what fate the Nazis had decided for Europe’s Jews. Why did their struggle for the political and legal recognition of a crime against an entire people encounter so many obstacles?

The experience of the Second World War prompted the in-depth reform of psychiatry, as social factors were included in the explanation of psychic illnesses. It also served as a justification for the psychiatric and political re-education of political opponents—as Ana Antic shows, based on patient files from a Yugoslav institute.

From a “minor event”, the execution of two traitors from the Aosta Valley in 1943, Sergio Luzzatto offers us an extensive depiction of the history and memory of the Resistance against a backdrop of Jew hunts, denunciations, and civil war.

A meticulous historical enquiry reveals the liberties taken by the author of Journey to the End of the Night in recounting his war experience. These flattering inventions made it possible for him to disseminate his pamphlets in the 1930s and clear his name in the purge.

Did French soldiers really experience a union sacrée (“sacred union”) in the trenches of the First World War, or did intellectuals simply erase their memories of the social distinctions they encountered at the front? Through an analysis of intellectuals’ discourse about other social classes, Nicolas Mariot revisits the myth of the Great War as a patriotic melting pot—an analysis which merits further exploration, on the eve of the First Armistice’s anniversary.

In a new biography, Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings recount the decisive moments of Walter Benjamin’s life – his work on tragic drama and allegory, his friendship with Gershom Scholem and Bertolt Brecht, his flight from Germany in 1933 and subsequent years in Paris –, focusing on his fascination with the messianic meaning of the everyday.

Historical episodes of collective violence in the 20^th century have given rise to a series of debates which can be seen as “crises of memory”, according to Susan Rubin Suleiman. As these crises of memory unravel, they have an impact not only on collective memory but also on literature and the public sphere.

In a text which will be remembered as his masterpiece, historian Saul Friedländer recounts the enactment of the “final solution to the Jewish question in Europe”. His book is a monumental piece of historical work, but also a choral narrative which allows the voices of all the witnesses to resonate, and a personal quest for this child who lost his parents in the Shoah.

In this interview with Books&Ideas, specialist of German economic history Adam Tooze answers questions on the history of the Third Reich : was there such a thing as a Nazi economic policy ? what were the economic reasons for Hitler’s total war against Europe ? what were the legacies of this experience for the post-1945 German economy ?

Since its publication in 2010 and its recent translation into French, Timothy Snyder’s book, Bloodlands, has attracted many comments from historians. Jacques Sémelin provides an overview of the recent criticisms leveled at the book, and the debates it fostered.

In his analysis of the literature on peace initiatives from the Middle Ages to the current day, B. Arcidiacono documents the different notions of peace that have guided the human race in its attempts to end conflict between nations.

While some Arabs supported the Nazi regime for a variety of reasons, others sided with the Allies and rose up against anti-Semitism. Gilbert Achcar’s timely book brings new depth to a historiographic field that is still prone to caricatures.