Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Historians and the Second World War, 1945-1990 / Edition 1

by Richard J. B. Bosworth

Overview

Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima explores the way in which the main combatant societies of the Second World War have historicised that experience. Since 1945, debates in Germany about ‘the past that would not fade away' have been reasonably well-known. But in this book, Richard Bosworth maintains that Germany is not unique. He argues that in Britain, France, Italy, the USSR and Japan, as well as in Germany the traumatic history of the ‘long Second World War' has remained crucial to the culture and the politics of post-war societies. Each has felt a compelling need to interpret this past event and thus to ‘explain' ‘Auschwitz' and ‘Hiroshima'. Bosworth explores the bitter controversies that have developed around a particular interpretation of the war, such as disputes over A.J.P. Taylor's, Origins of the Second World War , Marcel Ophul's film, The Sorrow and the Pity , Renzo De Felice's biography of Mussolini in the 1970s or in post- Glasnost debates about the historiographies of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Richard Bosworth's book is a wide-ranging and thoughtful excursion into comparative history.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415109239
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	04/28/1994
Series:	The New International History
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)
Lexile:	1520L (what's this?)

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. The Second World War and the Historians 2. The Origins of World War III and the Making of English Social History 3. Germany and the Third, Second, and First World Wars 4. The Historikerstreit and the Relativisation of Auschwitz 5. The Sorrow and the Pity of the Fall of France, and the Rise of French Historiography 6. The Eclipse of Anti-Fascism in Italy 7. Glasnost reaches Soviet Historiography 8. Hiroshima, mon amour : Under Eastern Eyes

Editorial Reviews

‘... thought-provoking and widely researched study of history-writing since 1945.' - Contemporary European History

‘It is a very witty and erudite discussion of what historians in the combatant countries have made of the horrors of the Second War World.' - Scotland on Sunday

‘This is an extremely valuable, thought-provoking book. It undertakes an ambitious task of relating the study of history in many countries to the cataclysmic developments of the Second World War - not just the battles fought, but including the rise of fascism, domestic divisions, and atrocities committed at home and abroad ... This is an enormously complex story, but the author presents it thoughtfully and imaginatively, always asking the crucial question, how history affects a historian, and how a historian shapes history.' - Akira Iriye, Harvard University

From the Publisher