After a century that has been described as the most violent in the history of humanity, Professor Richard Bessel has written an intelligent and fascinating book on the history of our violent world and how we have become obsessed about violence. He critiques the great themes of modern history from revolutionary upheavals around the globe, to the two world wars and the murder of the European Jews, to the great purges and, more recently, terrorism. Violence, it seems, is on everyone's mind. It constantly is in the news; it has given rise to an enormous historical, sociological, and philosophical literature; it occupies a prominent place in popular entertainment; and it is regarded as one of the fundamental problems affecting social, political and interpersonal relations. Bessel sheds light on this phenomenon and how our sensitivity towards violence has grown and has affected the ways in which we understand the world around us - in terms of religious faith, politics, military confrontation, the role of the state, as well as of interpersonal and intimate relations. He critiques our modern day relationship with violence and how despite its continuing and inevitable nature, we have become more committed to limiting and suppressing it. Both historically questioning and intensely evocative of the most vicious and brutal violence enacted by mankind, this book shows how the place of violence in the modern world presents a number of paradoxes and how it is an inescapable theme in human history.

1945 was the most pivotal year in Germany's modern history. As World War II drew to a devastating and violent close, the German people were confronted simultaneously with making sense of the horrors just passed and finding the strength and hope to move forward and rebuild. Richard Bessel offers a provocative portrait of Germany's emergence from catastrophe, and he astutely portrays the defeated nation's own sense of victimhood after the war, despite the crimes it had perpetrated. Authoritative and dramatic, Germany 1945 is groundbreaking history that brilliantly explores the destruction and remarkable rebirth of Germany at the end of World War II. Ultimately, it is a success story; a story of life after death.

Over the past thirty years social scientists and particularly social historians have stressed the need to take popular protest seriously. The corollary of this, the need to take the policing of protest seriously, seems to have been less well acknowledged. The aim of this volume is to redress this situation by probing, in depth, a limited number of incidents of public disorder and focusing particularly on the role of the police. In doing so, this collection will draw out general patterns of police provocation and public responses and suggest general hypotheses. The incidents explored range across Europe and the United States, involve different kinds of political regime, and are drawn from both the interwar and the postwar years. They pose important questions about the effects of riot training and specialist equipment for the police, about the reality and roles of "agitators" and of "rotten apples" amongst the police, and about the role of the media and the courts in fostering certain kinds of undesirable and counterproductive police behavior.

Over the past thirty years social scientists and particularly social historians have stressed the need to take popular protest seriously. The corollary of this, the need to take the policing of protest seriously, seems to have been less well acknowledged. The aim of this volume is to redress this situation by probing, in depth, a limited number of incidents of public disorder and focusing particularly on the role of the police. In doing so, this collection will draw out general patterns of police provocation and public responses and suggest general hypotheses. The incidents explored range across Europe and the United States, involve different kinds of political regime, and are drawn from both the interwar and the postwar years. They pose important questions about the effects of riot training and specialist equipment for the police, about the reality and roles of "agitators" and of "rotten apples" amongst the police, and about the role of the media and the courts in fostering certain kinds of undesirable and counterproductive police behavior.

Richard Bessel is Professor of Twentieth-Century History at the University of York. His publications include Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism and Germany after the First World War.

Clive Emsley is Professor of History at the Open University and Co-Director of the European Centre for the Study of Policing. His publications include Crime and Society in England, 1750-1900 and The English Police: A Political and Social History. Since 1995 he has been President of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice.

Originally published in 1981 and comprising research and interpretation from American, German and British scholars deals with many of the most salient facets of the Weimar period, including the revolutionary events following the First World War; the development of the Reichswehr; the role of heavy industry in shaping foreign policy, and the dissolution of the bourgeois party system during the last years before 1933. Each contribution examines the inter-relationships between social and economic change on the one hand, and political developments on the other.

In 1945, Germany experienced the greatest outburst of deadly violence that the world has ever seen. Germany 1945 examines the country's emergence from the most terrible catastrophe in modern history. When the Second World War ended, millions had been murdered; survivors had lost their families; cities and towns had been reduced to rubble and were littered with corpses. Yet people lived on, and began rebuilding their lives in the most inauspicious of circumstances. Bombing, military casualties, territorial loss, economic collapse and the processes of denazification gave Germans a deep sense of their own victimhood, which would become central to how they emerged from the trauma of total defeat, turned their backs on the Third Reich and its crimes, and focused on a transition to relative peace. Germany's return to humanity and prosperity is the hinge on which Europe's twentieth century turned. For years we have concentrated on how Europe slid into tyranny, violence, war and genocide; this book describes how humanity began to get back out.

Originally published in 1981 and comprising research and interpretation from American, German and British scholars deals with many of the most salient facets of the Weimar period, including the revolutionary events following the First World War; the development of the Reichswehr; the role of heavy industry in shaping foreign policy, and the dissolution of the bourgeois party system during the last years before 1933. Each contribution examines the inter-relationships between social and economic change on the one hand, and political developments on the other.

The Second World War was the defining event of the twentieth century, leaving millions dead and redrawing the political map in ways that continue to affect nearly the entire human race. What was unprecedented, however, was not simply the war's scale, but its causes. Unlike previous territorial or political clashes, the war launched by Nazi Germany was an ideological one, waged to wipe entire peoples and cultures from the face of the earth.
In "Nazism and War, " Richard Bessel, one of the preeminent authorities on the social and political history of modern Germany, demonstrates how racial hatred was the driving force behind-and not a by-product of-Nazism. War was the anvil on which Hitler's worldview was forged; to him, war was "the most memorable period of my life," and "all the past fell away into oblivion." German National Socialism was born in war, emerging triumphant over a country deeply scarred by defeat and eager to reclaim its greatness and to punish those who had usurped it. As a political philosophy, Nazism glorified struggle and conflict, viewing them as the purpose of a nation and a measure of its overall condition. As a political movement and state system, Nazism made its ideology real, plunging the European continent into a war of annihilation and a sea of blood. Nazism-inseparable from war-destroyed the old Europe, and thus helped to create the world in which we live.
Incisive, authoritative, and immensely readable, this is an incendiary and forcefully argued work of scholarship that will rank with the most influential historical analyses of our time.

"From the Hardcover edition."

Can Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany be compared? Not long ago, the answer seemed obvious: they could be and they were. Nationalist rhetoric, hostility to the left and to parliamentary government, and the glorification of violence seemed to invite comparison. More recently, doubts have arisen. As more attention is paid to the consequences of Nazi racism, it has been questioned whether Nazi Germany can be compared with anything. This collaborative volume meets the challenge of comparing the two movements. It contains ten essays, two each on five central themes: the rise of the Fascist and Nazi movements; the relation of the regimes to workers, women, and war; and how the regimes may be viewed in a long-term perspective. The essays take stock of recent research, advance fresh theories about the histories of Nazism and Fascism, and provide a basis for informed comparison of two regimes central to twentieth-century history.

This collection of essays does not perceive the impressive economic and political stability of the postwar era as a quasi-natural return to previous patterns of societal development. It approaches this stability as an attempt to establish "normality" upon the lingering memories of experiencing violence on an unprecedented scale. While the history of post-war Germany looms large in this collection, the essays cover countries across Western and Central Europe. They offer comparative perspectives and draw upon a wide range of primary and secondary source material.

This collection of essays does not perceive the impressive economic and political stability of the postwar era as a quasi-natural return to previous patterns of societal development. It approaches this stability as an attempt to establish "normality" upon the lingering memories of experiencing violence on an unprecedented scale. While the history of post-war Germany looms large in this collection, the essays cover countries across Western and Central Europe. They offer comparative perspectives and draw upon a wide range of primary and secondary source material.

Can Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany be compared? This collaborative volume explores the parallels and contrasts between the two regimes. Its ten essays examine the rise of the Fascist and Nazi movements; the relation of the regimes to workers, women, and war; and how the regimes may be viewed in a long-term perspective. The essays take stock of recent research, advance fresh theories about the histories of Nazism and Fascism, and provide a basis for informed comparison of two regimes central to twentieth-century history.

The Third Reich examines how the lives of ordinary German people of the 1930s and 1940s were affected by the politics of Hitler and his followers. Looking beyond the catalogue of events, this book reveals the perpetual daily struggle to withstand the complex mixture of extortion and concession, barbarity and appeals made to conventional moral values, employed by the party to maintain a grip upon society. No historical subject is more apt to arouse passion and interest than the Third Reich. This collection of essays by eight leading historians presents valuable new approaches to the study of Nazi Germany.