Books & ideas

Raised Among the Ruins

Charlotte Canizo — 2026-03-05T09:00:00Z

By adopting a child's perspective, Camille Mahé shows that younger children perceived the Second World War differently than adults.

An awareness of danger

Emmanuel Droit — 2025-07-01T21:06:29Z

How did French Jews view Nazism? Beginning in 1933, they organized and prepared for war with a lucid yet often resigned outlook on Hitler's Germany.

Pius XII, the Holy See, and the Jews

Charlotte Canizo — 2025-03-06T09:00:00Z

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.

Digging Up Cataclysms

Boris Valentin — 2024-11-14T07:32:01Z

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.

Being a Man Under Nazism

Élisa Goudin — 2024-06-04T13:19:00Z

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.

The Jews and Bulgaria's “rescue” narrative

Mathilde Zederman — 2023-06-13T07:00:00Z

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.

On Earth (Not) As in Heaven

André Loez — 2023-05-16T15:13:46Z

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 lost worlds of the Cold War

Yohann Morival — 2023-04-11T11:43:40Z

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.

Operation Pied Piper: Britain's Forgotten War Children

Marilyn Johnston — 2021-12-23T09:29:16Z

On the eve of the Second World War, more than a million British children were evacuated to the countryside for their protection. Hailed as a patriotic success, the ‘Operation Pied Piper' was actually marred by accusations of abuse. Despite growing media coverage and public awareness, survivors still await reparation.

A Flu that Left a Hundred Million Dead

Étienne Forestier-Peyrat — 2020-05-28T07:00:00Z

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.