Unemployment was perhaps the major problem confronting European society at the time in which this book was first published in 1987, and is arguably still the case today. This collection of essays by British and German historians contributes to the debate by taking a close look at unemployment in the Weimar Republic. What groups were most severely affected, and why? How did they react? How effective were welfare and job creation schemes? Did unemployment fuel social instability and political extremism? How far was unemployment a cause of the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the triumph of the Third Reich? Did the Nazis solve the unemployment problem by peaceful Keynsianism or through massive rearmament? This book is ideal for students of history, sociology, and economics.

The book lies at the intersection of history and politics, with Cold war themes sitting alongside those of the war on Terror as well as radicalisation and power. The author published a paper on the First World War and video games that garnered thousands of hits on social media. The book studies how the business elements of the Star Wars franchise have impinged upon the message behind the films.

WINNER OF THE HWA NON-FICTION CROWN A TIMES AND SPECTATOR BOOK OF THE YEAR 'Britain's wartime story has been told many times, but never as cleverly as this.' Dominic Sandbrook In the bleak first half of the Second World War, Britain stood alone against the Axis forces. Isolated and outmanoeuvred, it seemed as though she might fall at any moment. Only an extraordinary effort of courage - by ordinary men and women - held the line. The Second World War is the defining experience of modern British history, a new Iliad for our own times. But, as Alan Allport reveals in this, the first part of a major new two-volume history, the real story was often very different from the myth that followed it. From the subtle moral calculus of appeasement to the febrile dusts of the Western Desert, Allport interrogates every aspect of the conflict - and exposes its echoes in our own age. Challenging orthodoxy and casting fresh light on famous events from Dunkirk to the Blitz, this is the real story of a clash between civilisations that remade the world in its image.

This book examines European history and politics between two very well-known but flawed treaties: The Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Maastricht. Taking the Treaty of Versailles, signed following World War I, as a starting point, the volume argues that while it was well-intentioned to the point of being utopian, it was also totally impractical, rearranging the map of Europe in a way which led to the tragic descent into conflict and barbarism in World War II. The volume then moves through the post war period, the outcome of the war producing the uneasy stability of a Cold War divided continent, and with the establishment of NATO in 1949, the process of European integration ushered in the era of cooperation. Under the influence of Charles de Gaulle, the newly created European Community acted as an association of sovereign states led by France and Germany, spurring economic growth and encouraging other countries to apply to join. After de Gaulle's retirement in 1969, this approach was progressively abandoned in favour of a federal model of integration in which member states transferred their sovereignty to the institutions of what became the European Union. Europe was to be transformed from a continent to a country. The book concludes by analysing the Maastricht treaty, which enshrined this process, as being as fatally flawed as the Versailles Treaty and charts the post-Maastricht slow decline of the European Union giving way to widespread Euroscepticism. From the Treaty of Versailles to the Treaty of Maastricht will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in European history, politics and World War I and II.

This book posits a new theory of fascism as a radical political community of experience. The author engages with a range of thinkers both critical of and inspiring fascism including Walter Benjamin, Albert Camus, Ernst Junger, Carl Schmitt, Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger. This book will be of interest to scholars of the history of political thought, fascism and Nazism.

Between the two world wars, thousands of European antifascists were pushed to act by the political circumstances of the time. In that context, the Spanish Civil War and the armed resistances during the Second World War involved particularly large numbers of transnational fighters. The need to fight fascism wherever it presented itself was undoubtedly the main motivation behind these fighters' decision to mobilise. Despite all this, however, not enough attention has been paid to the fact that some of these volunteers felt they were the last exponents of a tradition of armed volunteering which, in their case, originated in the nineteenth century. The capacity of war volunteering to endure and persist over time has rarely been investigated in historiography. The aim of this book is to reconstruct the radical and transnational tradition of war volunteering connected to Giuseppe Garibaldi's legacy in Southern Europe between the unification of Italy (1861) and the end of the Second World War (1945). This book seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the long-term, interconnected, and radical dimensions of the so called Garibaldinism.

This edited volume analyses European socialist countries' strategy of engagement with the West and the European Economic Community in the long 1970s. The book focuses on a time when the socialist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe banked their hopes for prosperity and stability on enhanced relations with the West. Crossing the traditional differences among diverse fields of historiography, it assesses the complex influence of European and global processes of transformation on the socialist elites' reading of the international political and economic environment and their consequent decision-making. The volume also explores the debate in each country among and within the elites involved in policymaking as they elaborated this strategic view and coped with shortcomings and unexpected turns. A comparative analysis of national cases shows a shared logic and common patterns, together with national variations and a plurality of views on the desirability of exchanges with their capitalist neighbours and on the ways to promote them. The multinational coverage of seven countries makes this volume a starting point for anyone interested in each socialist state's foreign policy, intra-bloc relations, economic strategy, transformation and collapse, relations with the European Community and access to the EU. This book will be of much interest to students and researchers of Cold War Studies, European history, and International Relations. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.routledge.com/European-Socialist-Regimes-Fateful-Engagement-with-the-West-National-Strategies/Romano-Romero/p/book/9780367356170, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.

History in a Post-Truth World: Theory and Praxis explores one of the most significant paradigm shifts in public discourse. A post-truth environment that appeals primarily to emotion, elevates personal belief, and devalues expert opinion has important implications far beyond Brexit or the election of Donald Trump, and has a profound impact on how history is produced and consumed. Post-truth history is not merely a synonym for lies. This book argues that indifference to historicity by both the purveyor and the recipient, contempt for expert opinion that contradicts it, and ideological motivation are its key characteristics. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, this work explores some of the following questions: What exactly is post-truth history? Does it represent a new phenomenon? Does the historian have a special role to play in preserving public memory from 'alternative facts'? Do academics more generally have an obligation to combat fake news and fake history both in universities and on social media? How has a 'post-truth culture' impacted professional and popular historical discourse? Looking at theoretical dimensions and case studies from around the world, this book explores the violent potential of post-truth history and calls on readers to resist.

Education in Revolutionary Struggles introduces us to the fascinating world of Latin American educational thought in the third quarter of the 20th century. It discusses the contributions of three of the most distinguished intellectuals of the period - Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and Ernesto Guevara - and more specifically their answers to the eternal challenge: What is - or should be - the role of education in the profound structural and/or revolutionary transformation of our societies? The first part of the book identifies the cultural, economic and political context of the revolutionary years in Latin America. This historical framework is of particular interest because it is the setting for the intellectual and educational debates in which these three thinkers took part. The second part, the heart of the book, expounds in depth how Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and Ernesto Guevara contributed to understanding of how education is linked to the transformation of society. The third and final part highlights the most fertile dimensions of the educational thought of Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and Ernesto Guevara - deschooling, liberation education and revolutionary education respectively - and analyses the points where their conceptions of "education in revolutionary struggles" converged, complemented one another or diverged.

The Great War of 1914-1918 was fought on the battlefield, on the sea and in the air, and in the heart. Museums Victoria's exhibition World War I: Love and Sorrow exposed not just the nature of that war, but its depth and duration in personal and familial lives. Hailed by eminent scholar Jay Winter as "one of the best which the centenary of the Great War has occasioned", the exhibition delved into the war's continuing emotional claims on descendants and on those who encounter the war through museums today. Contributors to this volume, drawn largely from the exhibition's curators and advisory panel, grapple with the complexities of recovering and presenting difficult histories of the war. In eleven essays the book presents a new, more sensitive and nuanced narrative of the Great War, in which families and individuals take centre stage. Together they uncover private reckonings with the costs of that experience, not only in the years immediately after the war, but in the century since.

In Rereading German History, first published in 1997, Richard J. Evans draws together his seminal review essays on the political, economic, cultural and social history of Germany through war and reunification. This book provides a study of how and why historians - mainly German, American, British and French - have provided a series of differing and often conflicting readings of the German past. It also presents a reconsideration of German history in the light of the recent decline of the German Democratic Republic, collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of Germany. Rereading German History re-examines major controversies in modern German history, such as the debate over Germany's 'special path' to modernity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the discussions in the 1980s on the uniqueness or otherwise of Auschwitz. Evans also analyses the arguments over the nature of German national identity. The book offers trenchant and important analytical insights into the history of Germany in the last two centuries, and is ideal reading material for students of modern history and German studies.

The Cold War is often considered to be the quintessential intelligence conflict. Yet secret intelligence remains the 'missing dimension' of Britain's Cold War history. This volume offers an authoritative picture of Britain's clandestine role in the development of the Cold War focusing upon the key issues of intelligence and strategy.

This title presents an authentic voice for the experiences of the Americans who volunteered for the Republic in the Spanish Civil War.

Develops the tradition of heroization in women's history and challenges and develops from it using historical examples in an archetype framework - this is something students will find engaging Women's history is a strong topic at most universities and this is an interesting take on it that should interest students. Most of the competition is hagiographic or biographical - this takes a different, thematic and engaging approach

In this riveting real-life thriller, Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of senior Nazi SS Brigadeführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter and his wife, Charlotte. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, as a fugitive on the run in the Alps and then in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter while he was preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline', assisted by a Vatican bishop, and what was the explanation for his sudden and unexpected death?

Donald Hankey was a writer who saw himself as a 'student of human nature' and peacetime Edwardian Britain as a society at war with itself. Wounded in a murderous daylight infantry charge near Ypres, Hankey began sending despatches to The Spectator from hospital in 1915. Trench life, wrote Hankey, taught that 'the gentleman' is a type not a social class. In one calm, humane, eyewitness report after another under the byline 'A Student in Arms', Hankey revealed how the civilian volunteers of Kitchener's Army, many with little stake in Edwardian society, put their betters to shame nonetheless. A runaway best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic, Hankey's prose vied in popularity with the poetry of Rupert Brooke. After he was killed on the Somme in another daylight infantry charge, Hankey joined Brooke as an international symbol of promise foregone. British propaganda backed publication in the-then neutral United States, yet at home Hankey had to dodge the censors to tell the truth as he saw it. This, the first scholarly biography, has been made possible by the recovery of Hankey papers long thought lost. Dr Davies traces the life of an Edwardian rebel from privileged birth into a banking dynasty that had owned slaves to spokesman for the ordinary man who, when put to the test of battle, proves to be not-so-ordinary. This study of Hankey's life, writing and vast audience - military and civilian - enlarges our understanding of how throughout the English-speaking world people managed to fight or endure a war for which little had prepared them.

The definitive new biography of Her Majesty The Queen by one of Britain's leading royal authorities. With original insights from those who know her best, new interviews with world leaders and access to unseen papers, bestselling author Robert Hardman explores the full, astonishing life of our longest reigning monarch in this compellingly authoritative yet intimate biography. Elizabeth II was not born to be queen. Yet from her accession as a young mother of two in 1952 to the age of Covid-19, she has proved an astute and quietly determined figure, leading her family and her people through more than seventy years of unprecedented social change. She has faced constitutional crises, confronted threats against her life, rescued the Commonwealth, seen her prime ministers come and go, charmed world leaders, been criticised as well as feted by the media, and steered her family through a lifetime in the public eye. Queen of Our Times is a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal, spanning abdication, war, romance, danger and tragedy. It is a compelling portrait of a leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne aged twenty-five.

Recent controversies about Pearl Harbour have highlighted the need for a new assessment of British policy towards Japan during the period leading up to the Pacific War. Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbour provides a thorough and authoritative account of British efforts to avert conflict with Japan, and makes use of the most recently released material from British archives, including information from intelligence sources. This is the most comprehensive study so far of British policy towards East Asia in this period. It illustrates the extent of British weakness in the region and the degree to which the constant need to appease American opinion hamstrung Britain's ability to achieve an understanding with Japan.

This is not a book about Laurie Lee, still less a biography. It is about the spirit of the man and the spirit of a place. A Thousand Laurie Lees is a poetic reassessment of the Slad Valley, a memoir from a different age rooted in the same idyllic landscape that inspired Cider with Rosie. A year after Lee's death in 1997, a handful of locals dressed up as him for an epic, drunken cycle ride right through the heart of Laurie Lee country. They called it The Night of a Thousand Laurie Lees and stopped off at all the pubs on the way, signing books, singing and carousing. Taking this as a starting point, poet Adam Horovitz reaches back through myth, memory and literature to explore Laurie Lee's impact on the Slad Valley and its people. Lyrically evoking his own childhood there sixty years after Lee, he explores the connections between family, the valley and learning to write, and examines what has changed since Lee's day and what remains the same.

The Sunday Times top 10 bestseller With a foreword by King Charles III. 'A stunningly moving book about the power of hope and love to overcome the very worst of mankind' - Piers Morgan When Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert was liberated in 1945, a Jewish-American soldier gave her a banknote on which he'd written 'Good luck and happiness'. And when her great-grandson, Dov, decided to use social media to track down the family of the GI, 96-year-old Lily found herself making headlines round the world. Lily had promised herself that if she survived Auschwitz she would tell everyone the truth about the camp. Now was her chance. In Lily's Promise she writes movingly about her happy childhood in Hungary, the death of her mother and two youngest siblings on their arrival at Auschwitz in 1944 and her determination to keep her two other sisters safe. She describes the inhumanity of the camp and the small acts of defiance that gave her strength. From there she and her sisters became slave labour in a munitions factory, and then faced a death march that they barely survived. Lily lost so much, but she built a new life for herself and her family, first in Israel and then in London. It wasn't easy; the pain of her past was always with her, but this extraordinary woman found the strength to speak out in the hope that such evil would never happen again. 'Utterly compelling, heartbreaking, truthful and yet redemptive, a memoir of the Holocaust, a testimony of irrepressible spirit and an unforgettable family chronicle, written in lucid prose by a truly remarkable woman about her life from Hungary to Auschwitz, Israel to London. I couldn't stop reading it.' - Simon Sebag Montefiore

The communists of East Central Europe came to power promising to bring about genuine equality, paying special attention to achieving gender equality, to build up industry and create prosperous societies, and to use music, art, and literature to promote socialist ideals. Instead, they never succeeded in filling more than a third of their legislatures with women and were unable to make significant headway against entrenched patriarchal views; they considered it necessary (with the sole exception of Albania) to rely heavily on credits to build up their economies, eventually driving them into bankruptcy; and the effort to instrumentalize the arts ran aground in most of the region already by 1956, and, in Yugoslavia, by 1949. Communism was all about planning, control, and politicization. Except for Yugoslavia after 1949, the communists sought to plan and control not only politics and the economy, but also the media and information, religious organizations, culture, and the promotion of women, which they understood in the first place as involving putting women to work. Inspired by the groundbreaking work of Robert K. Merton on functionalist theory, this book shows how communist policies were repeatedly undermined by unintended consequences and outright dysfunctions.

This book, first published in 1967, examines the circumstances and events that led to the dropping of two atomic bombs on Japan, devastating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The death of President Roosevelt three weeks before the end of the European war led to an incoming President, Truman, who had heard nothing of the project before taking office. He and his advisers had no precedents to guide them as they considered what to do, and withing their closely drawn circle there were genuine differences of opinion about the use of atomic weapons. This book traces the course of the discussions between the politicians and their technical advisers, the part played by personal relationships, and the attempt by some of the scientists to stop the bomb being used without warning. In addition, it supplies a thorough analysis of developments abroad, and in particular the situation in Japan. It shows that the debate in Washington and the atomic plants was careful and wide-ranging, and that issues are no less complex for being supremely important. The result is to provide both a study of decision-making and a valuable contribution to our understanding of the closing months of the Second World War.

This book, first published in 1970, examines the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, when an entire industrial city was devastated and the bulk of its population killed or wounded. Coming days after the bombing of Hiroshima, Nagasaki has largely been forgotten. This book traces the decision by the US to use the second bomb, and the choice of Nagasaki as its target. It follows the bomber to the skies over Nagasaki, and the terrible events that unfolded. Using diaries, written accounts and the testimonies of hundreds of Japanese civilians who survived the bombing, this book provides the definitive text on the Nagasaki atomic bomb.