ABSTRACT

This volume takes a comparative approach, locating totalitarianism in the vastly complex web of fragmented pasts, diverse presents and differently envisaged futures to enhance our understanding of this fraught era in European history. It shows that no matter how often totalitarian societies spoke of and imagined their subjects as so many slates to be wiped clean and re-written on, older identities, familial loyalties and the enormous resilience of the individual (or groups of individuals) meant that the almost impossible demands of their regimes needed to be constantly transformed, limited and recast.

chapter 1|20 pages

Beyond the Delusion

New Histories of Totalitarian Dictatorship
ByDaniela Baratieri, Mark Edele, Giuseppe Finaldi

chapter 2|18 pages

Cold Empathy

Perpetrator Studies and the Challenges in Writing a Life of Reinhard Heydrich 1
ByRobert Gerwarth

chapter 3|25 pages

The Life and Death of Colonel-General Blaskowitz

ByChristopher Clark

chapter 4|19 pages

Stalin and the World of Culture

BySheila Fitzpatrick

chapter 5|20 pages

The Great Manipulator

Francisco Franco
ByPaul Preston

chapter 6|20 pages

Blueblood and Blacksmith

A Comparative View of Churchill's and Mussolini's Speeches
ByGiuseppe Finaldi

chapter 7|15 pages

“A Place in the Sun”

The Conquest of Ethiopia in 1935-1936 as Seen in Contemporary Diaries
ByChristopher Duggan

chapter 8|19 pages

“Wrapped in Passionless Impartiality?”

Italian Psychiatry during the Fascist Regime
ByDaniela Baratieri

chapter 10|18 pages

Peasants into Nationals

Violence, War, and the Making of Turks and Greeks, 1912-1922
ByNicholas Doumanis

chapter 11|22 pages

Learning from the Enemy?

Entangling Histories of the German-Soviet War, 1941-1945 1
ByMark Edele

chapter 12|20 pages

Genocide in a Multiethnic Town

Event, Origins, Aftermath
ByOmer Bartov

chapter 13|19 pages

Memories of an Exodus

Istria, Fiume, Dalmatia, Trieste, Italy, 1943-2010
ByJohn Foot