Local Dimensions of the Second World War in Southeastern Europe

Xavier Bougarel, Hannes Grandits, Marija Vulesica (eds.)

Local Dimensions of the Second World War in Southeastern Europe (Routledge, 2019).

This book deals with the Second World War in Southeastern Europe from the perspective of conditions on the ground during the conflict. The focus is on the reshaping of ethnic and religious groups in wartime, on the “top-down” and “bottom-up” dynamics of mass violence, and on the local dimensions of the Holocaust. The approach breaks with the national narratives and “top-down” political and military histories that continue to be the predominant paradigms for the Second World War in this part of Europe.

INTRODUCTION

Local Approaches to the Second World War in Southeastern Europe: An Introduction

Xavier Bougarel, Hannes Grandits, Marija Vulesica

PART I – GROUP-MAKING AS A PROCESS

Chapter 1 – Heirs of the Roman Empire? Aromanians and the Fascist Occupation of Greece (1941-1943)

Paolo Fonzi

Chapter 2 – “The Task of the Century:” Local Dimensions of the Policy of Forced Conversion in the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1942)

Daniela Simon

Chapter 3 – Forced Identities: The Use of the Category “Yugoslav” to Classify Inmates in the Mauthausen, Buchenwald and Dachau Nazi Concentration Camps (1941-1945)

Thomas Porena

PART II – LOCAL DYNAMICS OF VIOLENCE

Chapter 4 – Controlling Space and People: War, Territoriality and Population Engineering in Greece during the 1940s

Polymeris Voglis

Chapter 5 – Spatial and Temporal Logics of Violence: The Independent State of Croatia in the Districts of Glina and Vrginmost (April 1941-January 1942)

Drago Roksandić

Chapter 6 – Dynamics of Unrestrained Violence: The Massacre of Distomo (10 June 1944)

Janis Nalbadidacis

PART III – LOCAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE HOLOCAUST

Chapter 7 – The Madding Clocks of Local Persecution: Anti-Jewish Policies under Bulgarian Occupation (1941-1943)

Nadège Ragaru

Chapter 8 – Resistance or Collaboration? The Greek Christian Elites of Thessaloniki facing the Holocaust (1941-1943)

Leon Saltiel

Chapter 9 – Being a Jew in Zagreb in 1941: Life and Death of Lovoslav Schick

Marija Vulesica

PART IV – EVERYDAY LIFE UNDER OCCUPATION

Chapter 10 – Escape into Normality: Entertainment and Propaganda in Belgrade during the Occupation (1941-1944)

Dejan Zec

EPILOGUE

(Re-)Scaling the Second World War: Regimes of Historicity and the Legacies of the Cold War in Europe

Sabine Rutar

Index

Xavier Bougarel is Researcher at the Centre d’études turques, ottomanes, balkaniques et centrasiatiques (CETOBaC), CNRS, Paris, France.

Hannes Grandits is Professor of Southeast European History, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.

Marija Vulesica is Researcher at the Zentrum für Antisemitismusforschung at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany.

Author: Aisseco

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