New Books In European Studies

Gordon Brown, the British PM, came calling to Washington recently. He jumped the pond, of course, to have a chat with his new counterpart, President Barack Obama. They had a lot to talk about, what with the world economy melting down, the Afghan War heating up, and Iraq coming apart. But he had another purpose as well. In his speech before Congress Mr. Brown intoned: “Madam Speaker, Mr Vice-President, I come in friendship to renew, for new times, our special relationship founded upon our shared history, our shared values and, I believe, our shared futures.” The “special relationship,” that’s what Churchill called it and every PM and President since has followed his lead. But what exactly is “special relationship,” and how has it and does it impact British and American politics and policy? The answer is found in Robert Hendershot’s insightful new book Family Spats: Perception, Illusion and Sentimentality in the Anglo-American Special Relationship (VDM Verlag, 200

When we speak of the “Age of Discovery,” we usually mean the later fifteenth and sixteenth century. You know, Columbus, Magellan and all that. But the “Age of Discovery” continued well into the seventeenth century as Europeans continued to travel the globe in search of riches, fame and adventure. And after they made port at home, they often “wrote” books about their travels for readers eager to hear about what was “out there”–or at least what these travelers said was “out there.” Take the subject of Kees Boterbloem new book The Fiction and Reality of Jan Struys. A Seventeenth-Century Dutch Globetrotter (Palgrave MacMillan, 2008). Sturys was an illiterate, itinerant, indefatigable Dutch sail maker. He went everywhere, did everything, and when he got back from his adventures he was asked by some profit-seeking Dutch publishers to “contribute” his tales to a book about his travels. Of course Stuys could neither read nor write, but that

It’s curious how historical images become stereotyped over time. One hears the word “Nazi,” and immediately the Holocaust springs to mind. This reflexive association is probably a good thing, as it reminds us of the dangers of ethnic hatred in an era that knows it too well.  But in another way the Nazi = Holocaust equation obscures part of the story of Hitler’s insanity and that of all genocidal madness. For as Mark Mazower points out in his excellent new book Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (Penguin, 2008), Hitler’s homicidal aims went well beyond the Holocaust. Of course the Jews would have to go. But that was hardly to be the end of it. The Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, and other residents of the East would have to go too. They were all to be eliminated and replaced by “Aryan” settlers. That was the goal, anyway. That it went unrealized was not due to any lack of effort or nerve. As Mazower shows, the Nazi occupiers uprooted, enslaved, and murder

Much has been written about Winston Churchill recently. Some love him, some hate him. But few understand him, at least as well as John Lukacs. That’s hardly a surprise as Lukacs has been thinking and writing about Churchill for over fifty years. He’s written a wonderful book focusing on one of Churchill’s best known speeches, namely the one he gave upon becoming Prime Minister on May 13, 1940. In it, Churchill uttered the memorable and ringing statement that he had nothing to offer the British people but “blood, toil, tears and sweat.” Hence the title of Lukacs’ book: Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat. The Dire Warning (Basic Books, 2008). Things were bad, very bad, in May of 1940. Churchill knew it. We, as Lukacs points out, seem to have forgotten it. Britain was not only losing the war, but according to many had already lost it. For most, Churchill included, the question was not simply how to make the best of a bad situation, but whether the UK, the Empire, Europe and the caus

Today we’re pleased to feature an interview with Robert Gellately of Florida State University. Professor Gellately is a distinguished and widely read historian of Germany, with a particular focus on the Nazi period. He’s the author of a number of path-breaking books, including The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, 1890-1914 (Sage Publications, 1974), The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 1990), and Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). Today we’ll be discussing his most recent work Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007). Richard Pipes says of the book: “A most impressive account of the tragedies that befell the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Not the least merit of the book is that, unlike most historians who treat Lenin as a well-meaning idealist, he places him along side Stalin an