Dismembered Policing In Postwar Berlin

"An exploration of the attempt to rebuild a shattered, divided and occupied postwar Berlin and what this meant for policing, law and order"--

Assessing the impact of Germany's defeat on the policing of Berlin, this book addresses the reconstruction of the police force as a crucial component of four-power government. As Mark Fenemore shows, getting four nationalities to work together to administer a complex major city was a unique undertaking, never before attempted. The situation was made even more difficult by the conditions of hunger and desperation that caused a spike in crime. The stage was a city in ruins, the capital of a defeated, divided, prostrate, occupied country. The audience the administrations were playing to was a population deeply scarred by Nazism, total war, cold, hunger and mass rape. Dismembered Policing explores postwar Berlin from the perspective of all four occupiers and of ordinary Berliners. Fenemore discusses how each occupation government sought to act as an advertisement for its country's respective cultural values, mores and system of governance. As an international, multi-archival study, the book draws on evidence in French and German as well as in English. Using law enforcement as a lens, it examines issues like mass rape, the black market, interracial sex and political violence. With hunger, sexually motivated assault and dismembered body parts featuring prominently, it is reminiscent of Ian McEwen's novel The Innocent, but based on real police files.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany in March 1939 helped to precipitate Europe's descent into World War II sis months later. The move, supposedly to protect the Sudeten Germans, shocked many in Europe, who saw it as a clear statement of intent by Hitler. Here, Patrick Crowhurst argues that occupation of the Sudetenland and the Czech lands was also crucial to the Nazi war machine. The armaments, factories and raw materials that Hitler seized accelerated Germany's capabilities; Czech tanks would prove crucial in the Ardennes and, as the Wehrmacht fought at Stalingrad, Armaments Minister Albert Speer was corralling Czech industrial machinery to produce engines, aircraft and equipment in support. In addition, new Slovakian and Czech primary material are used to give a new in-depth account of the German reaction to the assassination of Reinhardt Heydrich on the streets of Prague in June 1942. The recriminations were brutal, and dovetailed with Hitler's plans for the genocide of Czech Jewry. This is a new side of the History of Nazi Europe, and argues for the centrality of the Czech occupation in the overall narrative of World War II.

After the German and Soviet attack on Poland in 1939, vast swathes of Polish territory, including Warsaw and Krakow, fell under Nazi occupation in an administration which became known as the 'General Government'. The region was not directly incorporated into the Reich but was ruled by a German regime, headed by the brutal and corrupt Governor General Hans Frank. This was indeed the dark heart of Hitler's empire. As the principal 'racial laboratory' of the Third Reich, it was the site of Aktion Reinhard, the largest killing operation of the Holocaust, and of a campaign of terror and ethnic cleansing against Poles which was intended to be a template for the rest of eastern Europe. This book provides a thorough history of the General Government and the experiences of the Poles, Jews and others trapped in its clutches. Employing previously underused sources, Martin Winstone provides a unique insight into the occupation regime which dominated much of Poland during World War II.

A British Fascist in the Second World War presents the edited diary of the British fascist Italophile, James Strachey Barnes. Previously unpublished, the diary is a significant source for all students of the Second World War and the history of European and British fascism. The diary covers the period from the fall of Mussolini in 1943 to the end of the war in 1945, two years in which British fascist Major James Strachey Barnes lived in Italy as a 'traitor'. Like William Joyce in Germany, he was involved in propaganda activity directed at Britain, the country of which he was formally a citizen. Brought up by upper-class English grandparents who had retired to Tuscany, he chose Italy as his own country and, in 1940, applied for Italian citizenship. By then, Barnes had become a well-known fascist writer. His diary is an extraordinary source written during the dramatic events of the Italian campaign. It reveals how events in Italy gradually affected his ideas about fascism, Italy, civilisation and religion. It tells much about Italian society under the strain of war and Allied bombing, and about the behaviour of both prominent fascist leaders and ordinary Italians. The diary also contains fascinating glimpses of Barnes's relationship with Ezra Pound, with Barnes attaching great significance to their discussion of economic issues in particular. With a scholarly introduction and an extensive bibliography and sources section included, this edited diary is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in learning more about the ideological complexities of the Second World War and fascism in 20th-century Europe.

With its battlefields paved over and its bunkers crumbled, the Third Reich of Nazi Germany nevertheless lives on in countless photographs that record an era of extraordinary brutality. This collection of more than 500 photographs taken by amateurs and professional propagandists provides a panoramic overview of Nazi Germany, offering intimate glimpses into living rooms and killing grounds, kitchens and concentration camps, movie theaters and battle fronts. The explanatory text explores the context of the images. Together, these photographs, most never before seen, create a time capsule, capturing the faces of Hitler's soldier's as well as those who suffered under the Nazi onslaught on humanity.

On 14 January 1930, Horst Wessel, a young and ambitious member of the SA was shot at close range at his home in Berlin. Although the crime was never completely solved, the murder was most likely committed by a group of communists with close ties to the city's gangland. Wessel later died from his injuries. Joseph Goebbels, whose attention had already been drawn to Wessel as a possible future Nazi leader, was the first to recognize the propaganda potential of the case. 'A young martyr for the Third Reich' he wrote in his diary on 23 February 1930 immediately after receiving the news of Wessel's death. This was the beginning of the myth-making that transformed an ordinary individual into a masculine role model for an entire generation. Two months later, thousands of people lined the streets for Wessel's funeral parade and Goebbels delivered a graveside eulogy. In the years that followed - and as Nazi power increased - Horst Wessel became the hero of the Nazi movement - with his elaborate memorial quickly becoming a site of pilgrimage. The song Die Fahne Hoch for which Wessel had written the lyrics (and which subsequently became popularly known as the Horst Wessel Song) became the official Nazi party anthem and the Berlin district of Friedrichshain, where Wessel was murdered was renamed Horst-Wessel-Stadt in his honour. Numerous biographies and films followed. Using previously unseen material, Daniel Siemens provides a fascinating and gripping account of the background to Horst Wessel's murder and uncovers how and why the Nazis made him a political hero. He examines the Horst Wessel 'cult' which emerged in the aftermath of Wessel's death and the murders of revenge, particularly against Communists, committed by the SA and Gestapo after 1933. At the same time, the story of Horst Wessel provides a portrait of the Nazi propaganda machine at its most effective and most chilling.

This groundbreaking work is the most detailed, carefully researched, and comprehensive analysis of the evolution of Nazi policy from the persecution and "ethnic cleansing" of Jews in 1939 to the Final Solution of the Holocaust in 1942.