Europe on trial
Subtitle: the story of collaboration, resistance, and retribution during World War II
By: István Deák, Columbia University ; foreword by Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 257
ISBN-13: 9780813347899
Subjects: Reparations; Occupied territories; Underground movements; World War, 1939-1945; Collaborationists
Description: In Europe on Trial, acclaimed historian Istvan Deak presents the comparative history of collaboration, retribution, and resistance during World War II. Deak explores these three themes through the Western and Eastern European countries that suffered at the hands of German military occupation. The occupied countries had to face the question of whether to cooperate with their German occupiers, try to survive the war without any political involvement, or risk their lives by opposing the Nazis. Deak delves deep into the decisions that various countries and individuals made during this critical time. Following the brutal war, Deak discusses the purging of the ancient regime through lynching, acts of private vengeance, denunciation, firings, forced retirements, deprivation of citizens' rights, expulsions, mass deportations, arbitrary internment, and judicial proceedings including the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal from 1945-1946, which judged the principal German war criminals. Europe on Trial helps us to understand the many moral consequences both during and immediately following World War II.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: From brutality to international conventions to renewed brutality: foreign occupations in European history; title: Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland: the first German conquests; title: Defeat and submission: Europe's honeymoon with Hitler, 1939-1941; title: The invasion of the Soviet Union and east European collaboration; title: Germany's many allies: a blessing or a curse?; title: The beginnings of German decline: the growth and many dilemmas of the resistance movements; title: Resistance and civil war in eastern, southern, and southeastern Europe; title: Freedom fighters or terrorists: case studies of resistance and reprisal; title: The end of the war, the apparent triumph of the resistance movements, and the first retributions; title: Purging Hitler's Europe; title: The long aftermath of collaboration, resistance, and retribution.