Elissa Mailänder Koslov

Workaday Violence: Female SS Guards at Lublin/Majdanek Concentration Camp, 1942-1944

Cultural historian Elissa Mailänder Koslov retraces the work of female civilians employed by the SS as concentration camp guards in Lublin/Majdanek. Her reconstruction of motives and mechanisms probes how »ordinary« women could quickly adapt to a microcosm of violence, in which brutality was a ubiquitous element of workaday life.

Regina Mühlhäuser

Conquests: German Soldiers’ Involvement in Sexual Violence and Intimate Relations in the Soviet Union, 1941–1945

Nazi Germany’s attack on and occupation of the Soviet Union created a space in which other kinds of »conquests« could occur: the many forms of sexual encounters involving Wehrmacht soldiers or SS men and local women. This comprehensive study dispels the myth that military leaders, in adhering to Nazi ideology that officially condemned relations between »Aryans« and allegedly »racially inferior« Eastern Europeans, strictly repressed soldiers’ sexuality.

Gerd Hankel

The Leipzig Trials: German War Crimes and Their Legal Consequences after World War I

»[T]his is a pioneering study, and an essential monograph for anyone working on the many important issues of war crimes and the laws of war.« ––Alan Kramer, Trinity College Dublin

Gerd Hankel

Limits to Killing in Today's Wars

War cannot be waged without killing. Yet even in antiquity, rules and customs of wartime conduct defined the limits to violence on the battlefield and, more recently, have been codified in international accords. But as legal scholar Gerd Hankel asserts, today’s wars differ fundamentally from those fought when the Hague and Geneva Conventions were negotiated. International accords and humanitarian law fail to deal adequately with the grey zones that have become characteristic of today’s war zones.

Malte Rolf

Soviet Mass Celebrations

»Rolf provides a brilliant analysis of the way mass celebrations were designed, planned, and orchestrated at the party center and then transformed, modified, and reinterpreted on the peripheries of the Soviet Union. [….] The most valuable part, from a comparative point of view at least, is the section in which the author provides an assessment of the export of Soviet 'celebration culture' to the 'peoples’ democracies' of Central and Eastern Europe after 1945.«---Balázs Apor, Kritika, Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History

Bernd Greiner/Christian Th. Müller/Claudia Weber (eds.)

The Economics of the Cold War

In this volume, twenty-five authors from various fields and continents offer a much-needed assessment of the economic dimensions of the Cold War. Case studies and macroanalyses converge to reflect the balance sheets of the two main adversaries. They explore why the »economic war« between the rival blocs was waged from the outset with blunt weapons and unwilling »comrades-in-arms«, why merchants were more persevering than the Cold War warriors, and why »Third World« countries paid the highest price of all.

Jan Philipp Reemtsma

Trust and Violence: An Attempt to Understand a Unique Constellation in Modernity

* Awarded the translation funding prize Geisteswissenschaften International 2008
* Shortlisted in the category »Non-fiction / Essay«, Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2008
* First place 2008, best book in the category »Food for Thought«, historical journal Damals
* Second place, April 2008, Best Non-Fiction Book (Börsenblatt / Buchjournal / NDR / SZ)

Maren Lorenz

Vandalism as an Everyday Phenomenon

»In this slim, elegantly argued volume…Lorenz examines a phenomenon that has always existed and has always been subject to diverse interpretations. […] One can hardly praise Maren Lorenz’s succinct book enough for having dissected these discursive mechanisms.«---Thomas Wörtche, Freitag

Bettina Greiner

Repressed Terror: History and Perceptions of Soviet Special Camps in Germany

Verdrängter Terror is the first historical study of Soviet special camps in Germany that offers a comprehensive account of the objectives of the camp system, the conditions and realities of internment, and the way German society has dealt with—and ignored—these sites of Stalinist terror to the present day.

Bernd Greiner

War without Fronts: The USA in Vietnam

Shortlisted in the category non-fiction/essay for the Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2008

Best Historical Book of 2008, historical journal Damals

Best Historical Book 2008, Non-European History, H-Soz-u-Kult, historians’ internet medium

First place in November 2007, Best Non-Fiction Book (Börsenblatt / Buchjournal / NDR / SZ)