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The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective
Focusing on the twentieth century, this collection of essays by leading international experts offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and analysis of multiple cases of genocide and genocidal acts. The book contains studies of the Armenian genocide; the victims of Stalinist terror; the Holocaust; and Imperial Japan. Contributors explore colonialism and address the fate of the indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia. In addition, extensive coverage of the post-1945 period includes the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Bali, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala. Robert Gellately is Professor and Strassler Family Chair for the Study of Holocaust History at Clark University, where he teaches a variety of courses in modern German history, modern European history and the history of the Holocaust with a concentration on the study of Nazi Germany and the Gestapo. In Backing Hitler (Oxford, 2001), Gellately uses new evidence to demolish long-held beliefs about what ordinary Germans knew of the concentration camps. His internationally acclaimed book, The Gestapo and German Society (Oxford, 1990) challenges conventional concepts of the Gestapo and daily life in Nazi Germany. He has won numerous fellowships, and awards, most recently from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany. Ben Kiernan is A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History and Director of the Genocide Studies Program at Yale University and Convenor of the Yale East Timor Project. Kiernan is the author of The Pol Pot Regime (Yale, 1996), How Pol Pot Came to Power (Verso Books, 1985) and three other works and over a hundred scholarly articles on Southeast Asia and the history of genocide. Choice called him "the most knowledgeable observer of Cambodia anywhere in the Western world." Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge "indicted" and then "sentenced" him as an "arch war criminal." Kiernan is a member of the Editorial Boards of Human Rights Review, the Journal of Human Rights, and the Journal of Genocide Research. He is currently writing a global history of genocide since 1500.
408 pages, Paperback
First published September 3, 1999
16 people are currently reading
166 people want to read
About the author
Robert Gellately
14 books40 followersRobert Gellately (born 1943) is a Newfoundland-born Canadian academic who is one of the leading historians of modern Europe, particularly during World War II and the Cold War era. He is Earl Ray Beck Professor of History at Florida State University. He often teaches classes about World War II and the Cold War, but his extensive interest in the Holocaust has led to his conducting research regarding other genocides as well. He is occasionally known to give lectures on specific genocides. Gellately has very strict guidelines for what he will deem a genocide, and has had several televised debates regarding his somewhat controversial views.
Gellately's most recent work is Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Knopf (March 5, 2013) Gellately recently published a set of original documents by Leon Goldensohn dealing with the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials of war criminals in The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With The Defendants and Witnesses (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
His other books include Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). It has been published in German, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, and Italian. Japanese and French translations are in press. Backing Hitler was chosen as a main selection for book clubs in North America and the United Kingdom.
In the book Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Gellately argues that the Gestapo were not in fact all-pervasive and intrusive as they have been described. The Gestapo only numbered 32,000 for the entire population of Germany, and this clearly limited their impact. In the city of Hanover there were only 42 officers. Instead, Gellately says that the atmosphere of terror and fear was maintained by 'denunciations' from ordinary Germans, whereby they would inform any suspicious 'anti-Nazi' activity to the local Nazi authority. According to Gellatley, these denunciations were the cause of most prosecutions, as in Saarbrücken 87.5 per cent of cases of 'slander against the regime' came from denunciations. This diminished the Gestapo's role in maintaining fear and terror throughout the Third Reich, however they still proved to be a powerful instrument for Hitler and continued to provide the security apparatus needed for the Nazi Regime.
His first book was The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers in German Politics, 1890-1914 (London, 1974). In 1991 he published The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press.) It has been translated into German and Spanish.
In addition, Gellately has co-edited a volume of essays with Russian specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick, Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (University of Chicago Press, 1997). With his colleague Nathan Stoltzfus (also at Florida State University) he co-edited a collection called Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press, 2001). With Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies program at Yale, he recently co-edited The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Professor Gellately has won numerous research awards, including grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Many of the books written or edited by him are used as textbooks in college classrooms across America.
Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
Gellately's most recent work is Stalin's Curse: Battling for Communism in War and Cold War (Knopf (March 5, 2013) Gellately recently published a set of original documents by Leon Goldensohn dealing with the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials of war criminals in The Nuremberg Interviews: An American Psychiatrist's Conversations With The Defendants and Witnesses (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004).
His other books include Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2001). It has been published in German, Dutch, Spanish, Czech, and Italian. Japanese and French translations are in press. Backing Hitler was chosen as a main selection for book clubs in North America and the United Kingdom.
In the book Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945, Gellately argues that the Gestapo were not in fact all-pervasive and intrusive as they have been described. The Gestapo only numbered 32,000 for the entire population of Germany, and this clearly limited their impact. In the city of Hanover there were only 42 officers. Instead, Gellately says that the atmosphere of terror and fear was maintained by 'denunciations' from ordinary Germans, whereby they would inform any suspicious 'anti-Nazi' activity to the local Nazi authority. According to Gellatley, these denunciations were the cause of most prosecutions, as in Saarbrücken 87.5 per cent of cases of 'slander against the regime' came from denunciations. This diminished the Gestapo's role in maintaining fear and terror throughout the Third Reich, however they still proved to be a powerful instrument for Hitler and continued to provide the security apparatus needed for the Nazi Regime.
His first book was The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers in German Politics, 1890-1914 (London, 1974). In 1991 he published The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945 (Oxford University Press.) It has been translated into German and Spanish.
In addition, Gellately has co-edited a volume of essays with Russian specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick, Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (University of Chicago Press, 1997). With his colleague Nathan Stoltzfus (also at Florida State University) he co-edited a collection called Social Outsiders in Nazi Germany (Princeton University Press, 2001). With Ben Kiernan, Director of the Genocide Studies program at Yale, he recently co-edited The Specter of Genocide: Mass Murder in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2003).
Professor Gellately has won numerous research awards, including grants from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Many of the books written or edited by him are used as textbooks in college classrooms across America.
Credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_...
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
October 30, 2024
this book was conceived in the context of continuing reports of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and a wide range of other mass crimes still occurring
in various parts of the globe. genocide, mass murder, and human rights abuses are arguably the most perplexing and deeply troubling aspects of recent world history.
even the study about this matter was considerate new comparing to other studies and the urgencies when we are looking back at the history of the world. the twentieth century has been well described as an “age of extremes.”. there were two world wars, cold wars, major revolutions, colonial and anticolonial conflicts, and other catastrophes. all too often mass murder of noncombatant civilians marred these conflicts. the murders were usually state-sponsored
or officially sanctioned. when we are talking about genocide and mass murder, there is plenty of room for discussion and for varying approaches and different methods.
this book giving us a thorough history regarding of the matters and even giving us the agenda behind all the cases that happened in the past. some cases can led us to some questions; "who initiated this?", "who made this decision?", "what's the benefit?". these questions seems to be simple and useless. but this is could be the baseline, that can let us to dig deeper. these questions are particularly relevant if we want to hold leaders responsible for genocide or other grave human rights abuses before international courts.
truly, when we are looking back at the history i can really see the pattern behind the agenda. people in charge, name it whoever they were, tend to solve the problem with the easiest and the quickest way possible. doesn't matter if it's caused more and more problem in the future. the book giving us so much example about the past and where we are about to head on the future.
in most cases, colonial atrocities and massacres remained particular events. in contrast, a final solution is a conscious, universal goal: it seeks a total, permanent end to a “problem.” It is preemptive, for it seeks to eliminate
even the possibility or potential of the “problem” arising or recurring. final
solutions are therefore utopian and ideal. their vastness makes it unlikely
they will be pursued by any organization less powerful than a government. applied to human society, final solutions dictate the disappearance of the problem population, which may occur via cultural assimilation, deportation,
or physical annihilation (genocide). this is certainly not the most ideal/effective way ti solve the matter. beside causing too much damage, they don't really solved the problem until the root. genocide is therefore the most radical
but not the only form of a final solution back in the past.
i believe that understanding how genocide develops is easier if one focuses not on the killing but on the
final, or total, aspect of the goal. the question then becomes, Under what
conditions does a government or its agents arrive at such a destructively
utopian policy?
in various parts of the globe. genocide, mass murder, and human rights abuses are arguably the most perplexing and deeply troubling aspects of recent world history.
even the study about this matter was considerate new comparing to other studies and the urgencies when we are looking back at the history of the world. the twentieth century has been well described as an “age of extremes.”. there were two world wars, cold wars, major revolutions, colonial and anticolonial conflicts, and other catastrophes. all too often mass murder of noncombatant civilians marred these conflicts. the murders were usually state-sponsored
or officially sanctioned. when we are talking about genocide and mass murder, there is plenty of room for discussion and for varying approaches and different methods.
this book giving us a thorough history regarding of the matters and even giving us the agenda behind all the cases that happened in the past. some cases can led us to some questions; "who initiated this?", "who made this decision?", "what's the benefit?". these questions seems to be simple and useless. but this is could be the baseline, that can let us to dig deeper. these questions are particularly relevant if we want to hold leaders responsible for genocide or other grave human rights abuses before international courts.
truly, when we are looking back at the history i can really see the pattern behind the agenda. people in charge, name it whoever they were, tend to solve the problem with the easiest and the quickest way possible. doesn't matter if it's caused more and more problem in the future. the book giving us so much example about the past and where we are about to head on the future.
in most cases, colonial atrocities and massacres remained particular events. in contrast, a final solution is a conscious, universal goal: it seeks a total, permanent end to a “problem.” It is preemptive, for it seeks to eliminate
even the possibility or potential of the “problem” arising or recurring. final
solutions are therefore utopian and ideal. their vastness makes it unlikely
they will be pursued by any organization less powerful than a government. applied to human society, final solutions dictate the disappearance of the problem population, which may occur via cultural assimilation, deportation,
or physical annihilation (genocide). this is certainly not the most ideal/effective way ti solve the matter. beside causing too much damage, they don't really solved the problem until the root. genocide is therefore the most radical
but not the only form of a final solution back in the past.
i believe that understanding how genocide develops is easier if one focuses not on the killing but on the
final, or total, aspect of the goal. the question then becomes, Under what
conditions does a government or its agents arrive at such a destructively
utopian policy?
June 22, 2024
A great collection of essays on the subject of genocide, and to expand the title I would in fact suggest that this is a study of genocide also on a semantic level. Raises some great points about how "secularisation" of the Holocaust amidst other genocides can in fact serve an epistemological purpose, whereas an isolation of the genocide of the Jews as historically unique can reversely be abused, as described in Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry" (Elazar Barkan). Argues both for why limiting the concept of genocide to ethnicity rather than class can exclude from redress and justice the victims of such classicides as seen in 1965 Indonesia (Leslie Dwyer and Degung Santikarma), and for why there is nevertheless a functional differences between the massacres of Cambodia's Khmer Rouge and Ethiopia's Dergue (Edward Kissi) - one that should also caution us to differentiate between the killings under Mao and Stalin and the killings under Hitler (Nicholas Werth). Also greatly enjoyed Marie Fleming's more theoretical integration of genocide as an expression of ultimate Foucauldian biopower and Greg Grandin's argument that genocide can be genocide without genocidal intent, which he tests in the Guatemalan case, as genocidal intent is in fact rather difficult to prove at an individual level between perpetrator and victim.
May 26, 2021
It’s a fantastic textbook discussing the modernity of genocides. This book does a great job comparing functionalism and intentionalism within genocide and how genocidal policies evolve. My one issue with this book is the clear and expressed stance the author(s) take within each chapter. Each chapter reads more like individual essays as opposed to a cohesive book. But factual and thought provoking nonetheless. Worth the read for historians of genocide and political scholars.
September 24, 2007
here is the deal...this is not for entertainment, obviously. For information purposes. I read this in the context of a history class "Comparative Genocide". That class and this book changed my view of what genocide is as well as my place in the world as a bystander.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews