Advertise on podcast: New Books in German Studies

In The Human Rights Dictatorship: Socialism, Global Solidarity and Revolution in East Germany (Cambridge UP, 2020), Ned Richardson-Little exposes the forgotten history of human rights in the German Democratic Republic, placing the history of the Cold War, Eastern European dissidents and the revolutions of 1989 in a new light. By demonstrating how even a communist dictatorship could imagine itself to be a champion of human rights, this book challenges popular narratives on the fall of the Berlin Wall and illustrates how notions of human rights evolved in the Cold War as they were re-imagined in East Germany by both dissidents and state officials. Ultimately, the fight for human rights in East Germany was part of a global battle in the post-war era over competing conceptions of what human rights meant. Nonetheless, the collapse of dictatorship in East Germany did not end this conflict, as citizens had to choose for themselves what kind of human rights would follow in its wake. Jill Massino is a scholar of modern Eastern Europe with a focus on Romania, gender, and everyday life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

The Holocaust in Croatia (U Pittsburgh Press, 2016) recounts the history of the Croatian Jewish community during the Second World War, with a focus on the city of Zagreb. Ivo and Slavko Goldstein have grounded their study on extensive research in recently opened archives, additionally aided by the memories of survivors to supplement and enrich the interpretation of documents. The authors' accessible narrative, here available in English for the first time, has been praised for its objectivity (including rare humane acts by those who helped to save Jews) and is complemented by a large bibliography offering an outstanding referential source to archival materials. As such, The Holocaust in Croatia stands as the definitive account of the Jews in Croatia, up to and including the criminal acts perpetrated by the pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, adding significantly to our knowledge of the Holocaust. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

The Balkans provided the escape route for tens of thousands of German Jews, and remained a place of refuge until the Nazis brutally shut it off with the mass murder of Jewish refugees on the so-called Kladovo transport starting in September 1941, which can be considered as the beginning of the Holocaust in Europe.  Responding to publications about the Western European and American exile experience of the Jews after 1933, Bojan Aleksov's book Jewish Refugees in the Balkans, 1933-1945 (Brill, 2023) offers comparative insights into the less trodden paths of the persecuted, illuminating the cultural and political context of the Balkan host countries, the response of local Jewish communities, and the reactions of common people and assorted criminals. The Balkans, often marginalized and loathed, emerges in hundreds of personal accounts of survivors gathered here, supplemented by extensive archival research, as a welcoming getaway, where thousands survived thanks to the Italian occupiers, illiterate peasants, and Communist-led Partisan resisters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

Since the Enlightenment, the question has arisen as to how it is possible to think of the “unity of the human race” as a multiplicity. How can the promise of universal equality be combined with the claim to diversity? In Vielheit: Jüdische Geschichte und die Ambivalenzen des Universalismus (Hamburger Editionen, 2022), Till van Rahden takes up this central theme of European modernity through the example of Jewish history. The more the ideal of equality gained in importance, the fiercer the dispute over cultural and religious difference became. This is illustrated by the debates about the emancipation of the Jews and the Jewish experiences of equal rights and discrimination since the late 18th century. Through the history of contentious concepts such as assimilation, minority or majority, ethnicity, and roots, this book tells a story of plurality that extends to the present day. It describes a reality full of contradictions, in which it is necessary to endure the tension between equality and freedom. Paul Lerner is Professor of History at the University of Southern California where he directs the Max Kade Institute for Austrian-German-Swiss Studies. He can be reached at plerner@usc.edu and @PFLerner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

In his new book, Democracy, Nazi Trials, and Transitional Justice in Germany, 1945-1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2020), Dr. Devin O. Pendas examines how German courts conducted Nazi trials in the immediate postwar context. His work combines close readings of legal discourses in conjunction with very human stories to present a narrative of both irony and tragedy. In a masterful comparison of all four occupation zones, this book successfully musters historical data to challenge and overturn standard conceptualizations of “transitional justice.” It thus belongs definitively in the repertoire of legal scholars, political scientists, historians, and international relations theorists. Eric Grube is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Boston College. He studies modern German and Austrian history, with a special interest in right-wing paramilitary organizations across interwar Bavaria and Austria."Casualties of War? Refining the Civilian-Military Dichotomy in World War I", Madison Historical Review, 2019. "Racist Limitations on Violence: The Nazi Occupation of Denmark", Essays in History, 2017. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

Today I talked to Mara Josi about her new book Rome, 16 October 1943: History, Memory, Literature (Legenda, 2023). Rome. Saturday 16 October 1943. This is where and when the largest single round-up and deportation of Jews from Italy happened. 1259 people were arrested by the German occupiers and gathered in a temporary detention centre for two days. They were eventually deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau from a local railway station, Stazione Tiburtina. From December 1944, literary texts of this event have facili-tated a national and international understanding and recollection of 16 October 1943. They have been bearers of historical awareness, channels of memory; not only outcomes of remembrance but also active ingredients in the process of forging cultural memory.  In this pioneering interdisciplinary study drawing from literary and cultural memory studies, Mara Josi shows how 16 ottobre 1943 by Giacomo Debenedetti, La Storia by Elsa Morante, La parola ebreo by Rosetta Loy, and Portico d'Ottavia 13 by Anna Foa have operated on the personal and the collective level: in other words, on the reader and on society. Mara Josi obtained her PhD at the University of Cambridge. Before joining the University of Ghent as an FWO Post-doctoral Fellow, she was an IRC Postdoctoral Fellow at University College Dublin and a lecturer at the University of Manchester. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

In his new book, Transnational Nazism: Ideology and Culture in German Japanese Relations, 1919-1936 (Cambridge University Press, 2019), associate professor of history at Carnegie Mellon University Ricky W. Law examines the cultural context of Tokyo and Berlin’s political rapprochement in 1936. This study of interwar German-Japanese relations is the first to employ sources in both languages. Transnational Nazism was an ideological and cultural outlook that attracted non-Germans to become adherents of Hitler and National Socialism, and convinced German Nazis to identify with certain non-Aryans. Because of the distance between Germany and Japan, mass media was instrumental in shaping mutual perceptions and spreading transnational Nazism. This work surveys the two national media to examine the impact of transnational Nazism. When Hitler and the Nazi movement gained prominence, Japanese newspapers, lectures and pamphlets, nonfiction, and language textbooks transformed to promote the man and his party. Meanwhile, the ascendancy of Hitler and his regime created a niche for Japan in the Nazi worldview and Nazified newspapers, films, nonfiction, and voluntary associations. Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

What can we learn from the financial crisis that brought Hitler to power? How did diplomatic deadlock fuel the rise of authoritarianism? Tobias Straumann shares vital insights with 1931: Debt, Crisis, and the Rise of Hitler (Oxford University Press, 2019). Through his fast-paced narrative, Straumann reveals how inflexible treaties created an inescapable debt trap that spawned Nazism. Caught between investor confidence and domestic political pressure, unrealistic agreements left decision makers little room for maneuver when crisis struck. 1931 reminds us of hard lessons relevant to designing resilient agreements today. Tobias Straumann is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Zurich and teaches economic history both to historians and economists. His research interests span numerous contributions to contemporary European business, monetary, and financial history. 1931 is his fourth book. Ryan Stackhouse is a historian of Europe specializing in modern Germany and political policing under dictatorship. His book exploring Gestapo enforcement practices toward different social groups is nearing completion under the working title A Discriminating Terror. He also cohosts the Third Reich History Podcast and can be reached at john.ryan.stackhouse@gmail.com or @Staxomatix. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

In Martin Buber: A Life of Faith and Dissent (Yale University Press, 2019), Paul Mendes-Flohr, professor emeritus at the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, paints a detailed and compelling portrait of one of the twentieth century's most versatile and influential thinkers. Tracing Buber's personal and intellectual biographical arcs, Mendes-Flohr helps us understand Buber as an accomplished scholar, a reverent student of Judaism, and a proponent of genuine engagement on the personal, cultural, and political levels -- but also as a person at times deeply affected by loss, dislocation, and marginalization. David Gottlieb earned his PhD, studying under Professor Mendes-Flohr in the History of Judaism at the University of Chicago Divinity School, in 2018. He teaches at Spertus Institute in Chicago, and is the author of the forthcoming Second Slayings: The Binding of Isaac and the Formation of Jewish Memory (Gorgias Press). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

My Father's War: Confronting Norway's Nazi Past (U Wisconsin Press, 2023) is simultaneously a history of the Nazi occupation of Norway in World War II and a son's sincere attempt to understand the silences, motivations, and experiences of an estranged father. In this carefully researched book, combining family memoir and historical retelling, Bjørn Westlie uncovers his father's actions as a volunteer soldier for the Waffen-SS, the military wing of the infamous Schutzstaffel (SS), in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Balancing his role as both son and critical investigator, Westlie unflinchingly interrogates his father's fascist convictions, which speak to the appeal Hitler's ideology held for a small, disgraced segment of Norway's mid-century population. A story of collaboration, tragedy, and treason, My Father's War reveals the little-known history of Norway's frontkjempere (front fighters), the atrocities the Waffen-SS committed against Ukrainian Jews, and the complex legacies of ethnonationalism in Norway. With an insightful introduction from translator Dean Krouk, My Father's War is a contemporary classic of war literature. Committed to genuine understanding without falling into undue sympathizing, this sober and reflective book presents an eye-opening, moving, intense, and necessary account of the allure of fascism in a world at war--and its personal costs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

In her new book Hitler’s Northern Utopia: Building the New Order in Occupied Norway (Princeton University Press, 2020), Despina Stratigakos investigates the Nazi occupation of Norway. Between 1940 and 1945, German occupiers transformed Norway into a vast construction zone. This remarkable building campaign, largely unknown today, was designed to extend the Greater German Reich beyond the Arctic Circle and turn the Scandinavian country into a racial utopia. From ideal new cities to a scenic superhighway stretching from Berlin to northern Norway, plans to remake the country into a model “Aryan” society fired the imaginations of Hitler, his architect Albert Speer, and other Nazi leaders. In Hitler’s Northern Utopia, Despina Stratigakos provides the first major history of Nazi efforts to build a Nordic empire—one that they believed would improve their genetic stock and confirm their destiny as a new order of Vikings. Drawing on extraordinary unpublished diaries, photographs, and maps, as well as newspapers from the period, Hitler’s Northern Utopia tells the story of a broad range of completed and unrealized architectural and infrastructure projects far beyond the well-known German military defenses built on Norway’s Atlantic coast. These ventures included maternity centers, cultural and recreational facilities for German soldiers, and a plan to create quintessential National Socialist communities out of twenty-three towns damaged in the German invasion, an overhaul Norwegian architects were expected to lead. The most ambitious scheme—a German cultural capital and naval base—remained a closely guarded secret for fear of provoking Norwegian resistance. A gripping account of the rise of a Nazi landscape in occupied Norway, Hitler’s Northern Utopia reveals a haunting vision of what might have been—a world colonized under the swastika. Despina Stratigakos is vice provost and professor of architecture at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York. Craig Sorvillo is a PhD candidate in modern European history at the University of Florida. He specializes in Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust. He can be reached at craig.sorvillo@gmail.com or on twitter @craig_sorvillo.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies

Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. This book provides a hitherto untold chapter of the Holocaust by exploring a prequel to the gas chambers: the face-to-face mass murder of Jews in Galicia by bullets. The summer of 1941 ushered in a chain of events that had no precedent in the rapidly unfolding history of World War II and the Holocaust. In six weeks, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews were forcefully deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate of these Hungarian Jews and their local coreligionists, A Summer of Mass Murder: 1941 Rehearsal for the Hungarian Holocaust (Purdue UP, 2022) transcends conventional history by introducing a multitude of layers of politics, culture, and, above all, psychology--for both the victims and the executioners. The narrative presents an uncharted territory in Holocaust scholarship with extensive archival research, interviews, and corresponding literature across countries and languages, incorporating many previously unexplored documents and testimonies. Eisen reflects upon the voices of the victims, the images of the perpetrators, whose motivation for murder remains inexplicable. In addition, the author incorporates the long-forgotten testimonies of bystander contemporaries, who unwittingly became part of the unfolding nightmare and recorded the horror in simple words. This book also serves as a personal journey of discovery. Among the twenty thousand people killed was the tale of two brothers, the author's uncles. In retracing their final fate and how they were swept up in the looming genocide, A Summer of Mass Murder also gives voice to their story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/german-studies