Total War and Genocide: Reflections on the Second World War

This paper draws on the findings of a series of international conferences on the question of “total war” in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries to investigate possible connections between “total war” and the problem of genocide. Both “total war” and genocide appear to have reached a terrible culmination in the years 1937‐1945, raising the question of the connection between the two phenomena. This paper considers the usefulness of concepts such as “total war” and “genocide” as social‐scientific ideal types, before going on to reflect on the state of research on the linkage between Nazi Germany's drive for “total war” and its implementation of policies of genocide.     

Intelligence and Counter-Intelligence Activities in Iran during the Second World War

This article deals with the exile of Husayn ibn Ali, ex-sharif of Mecca and ex-king of the Hijaz, in Cyprus (1925–1930). It was not politics, but the adversities of everyday life that shaped the ex-king’s stay in the British colony. Loss of prestige, estrangement, uncertainty about the future, lawsuits, financial problems and the death of his wife contributed to failing health which ultimately led to his relocation to Amman. A special, perhaps unique feature of Husayn’s enforced residence in the island is that the power which exiled him also granted him asylum. This article examines his living conditions, experience with and image in the local community, relations with his sons as well as his dealings with British authorities. In this way the progressive isolation and marginalization of an ex-monarch in exile becomes evident.     

A City Living through Crisis: Jerusalem during World War I

This article aims to contribute to the literature on World War I in Palestine while studying the experience of the inhabitants of Jerusalem during the war. By focusing on a city and its residents, this article offers an analysis of the war from a dimension and lens yet to be explored in the history of Palestine. More specifically, the article will use relief networks in order to analyze not only the ways people experienced the war, but also as a way of exposing inter-communal dynamics between the different communities living in this mixed urban center.     

Regimes of truth: Australian combat photography in the Second World War

This paper examines the policies and directions framing the professional practice of Australian combat photographers in the Second World War. It argues that while their endeavours to offer an account of the nation at war were constrained by predictable considerations of politics and censorship, their commitment to truth was also framed and constricted by an array of cultural considerations. The nation’s ongoing engagement with the history of the First World War, the contrasting organisational cultures of the bureaucracies that the photographers served, and Australian culture’s visual inarticulacy concerning death on the battlefield played key roles both individually and collectively in shaping the photographers’ practices and outputs. The paper will trace the operations of these influences and contend that, as a result, the photographers’ visual record of the Second World War, particularly as it related to the death of Australian servicemen, served to conceal rather than reveal the ultimate truth about the Australian experience of the war.     

二战前日本的现代化与法西斯化

二战前的日本经过明治维新后之所以迅速走上对外扩张之路并法西斯化,从现代化的角度来看其原因包括：以农业和农村发展滞后为特点的日本经济现代化的不平衡,以依托天皇封建传统为特点的日本文化思想现代化的胎变,以军人干政为特点的日本政治现代化的畸形,以纵向关系为本质、横向关系为表象的国际体系判断与选择。因而,具备现代化外壳但其现代化又严重畸变的日本,全面冲击并试图构建东亚区域秩序后终归失败。     

The Special Operations Executive and Cyprus in the Second World War

Cyprus, together with Gibraltar and Malta, constituted the ‘crown jewels’ of British sea power in the Mediterranean during the Second World War. Being deployed on Cyprus the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force could fight the Germans and Italians in the Southeast Mediterranean, thus inhibiting the continuous supply with troops and war material of the Africa Corps of Field Marshall Ervin Rommel. This article aims to shed light on the activities of the Special Operations Executive on the island. Citing recently declassified files we assess the espionage and propaganda as well as the guerrilla warfare contingencies in case of an Axis invasion of Cyprus. We provide a critical assessment of the British guerrilla warfare strategy, arguing that the SOE and the 25th Army Corps based on Cyprus had not been well prepared to counter aggression due to inter-service rivalries, bad planning and lack of manpower. Besides, the SOE distrusted the Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriots to the extent that the training of guerrillas was planned to commence only after a successful invasion and the occupation of the island. Finally, SOE officers considered the Cypriot communists with their anti-colonialist declarations as another threat to be confronted with special operations.     

Turkey's Application of the Montreux Convention in the Second World War

The primary aim of this article is to examine the policies of the elite in Iran in relation to political parties and organizations that have emerged between 1979 and 2009. It also attempts to argue that the politics of factionalism has proven to be incapable of creating a viable political system. On the other hand, it has been difficult to anticipate the emergence of a system based on party politics in Iran more than three decades after the revolution. The findings of this article demonstrate how determined the elite were in shaping politics in Iran, and will also show that the move away from factionalism to a system based on party politics between 1997 and 2009 faced stiff opposition from the conservative elite. The situation polarized politics in Iran and further increased intra-elite factionalism. This article relies mostly on Iranian primary sources, accessing opinions that have not yet been published or discussed. The focus is on examining the relationship between high-ranking members of the elite and organizations representing different interests within the system that came to existence either before or immediately after the revolution in 1979.     

简析日据时期马来亚印度人的独立运动

二战初期和日据时期前期,马来亚印度人的民族主义情绪高涨.在与日本人的互相利用下,马来亚印度人的独立运动兴起.马来亚印度人参加独立运动,有着复杂的现实因素.独立运动期间,印度人与日本人之间产生了矛盾与分歧;印度人内部也存在分裂与内斗.日据时期后期,印度独立同盟和临时政府对马来亚印度人的领导和统治变得日益暴虐.马来亚印度人的独立运动是一场失败的民族主义运动,它的性质较为复杂,不过还是具有较为强烈的正义性和积极意义.     

Australian POW in German Captivity in the Second World War

When history has taken an interest in the Australian POW experience in the Second World War, the focus has been largely on those in Japanese captivity, where suffering was immense and mortality rates high. Popular culture has reinforced the perception that those who fell into German hands had it easy, living fairly comfortable existences punctuated with adventurous episodes, typically in the form of escape attempts. This essay seeks to correct the misperceptions arising from the “Colditz myth” by examining the Australian experience of captivity in Germany, drawing on both Australian and German sources. Two aspects of that experience are highlighted, namely the experience of work, as it was required of the vast majority of POW, and that of the strange phenomenon of “holiday camps”.     

New Democracy and Alternative Culture: Jazz in West Germany after the Second World War

The American Forces who occupied Germany in 1945–46 had hoped that popularising jazz music might assist in the redemocratisation of Germans under the age of thirty. The Amerika‐Häuser established by the US State Department to build a cultural foundation for democracy amongst younger Germans, and American Forces Network radio each contributed to the gradual emergence of a West German jazz culture which was marked by a series of jazz festivals and the development of a viable recording industry. However most strata of German society neither understood nor cared about jazz. Jazz became confused with — and diluted by — rock ‘n’ roll. Both were rejected as unwanted “Americanization”. Fewer than ten percent of teenagers acquired any taste for jazz. Its appeal was confined to the more privileged and educated. Hence the jazz culture which did recruit itself from the surviving remnants of the Third Reich did not provide an impetus toward democracy.     

Croatian Anti‐Fascism in the Second World War: An Australian Perspective

The historiography of the Second World War in Yugoslavia rests on the dichotomous resistance/collaboration paradigm pitting “Yugoslav” resisters against extreme nationalist collaborators. This historiography also presents us with a Balkanist interpretation of the war as exceptionally savage and brutal. The collapse of Yugoslavia led to the collapse of the Partisan Epic. It also led to the rise of nationalist historiographies of the war and the rehabilitation of collaborators, notably the Serbian Chetniks. A corrective to the exceptionalism of many standard studies of the war in Yugosalvia may be found in an analysis of the experiences of Australian Yugoslavs and their perceptions of resistance and collaboration. Based almost entirely on hitherto underutilised archival sources, this article traces the differences between two rival Yugoslav groups in Australia: (mostly Serbian) royalist supporters of the Chetniks and the old centralist regime, and Croatian supporters of Tito's Partisans and the idea of a new, federative Yugoslavia. It demonstrates that both groups were adept at mobilising opinion and actively engaging in the political process to advance their cause. However, the Croats and their organisational structures had a wider reach. Furthermore, they were able to demonstrate that they were contributing more to the Allied cause — which was their own — than their rivals. This had an impact on their standing in Australian society and on attitudes towards Yugoslavs and Yugoslavia. Finally, this article sheds new light on the Australian home‐front, revealing the generally civil and tolerant attitude of state and commonwealth governments towards “friendly aliens” in their desire both to be connected to their country of birth and integrated into their adopted homeland.