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The story of the friends and allies of the Chinese RevolutionChina's resistance to Imperial Japan was the other great internationalist cause of the ‘red 1930s', along with the Spanish Civil War. These desperate and bloody struggles were personified in the lives of Norman Bethune and others who volunteered in both conflicts. The story of Red Friends starts in the 1920s when, encouraged by the newly formed Communist International, Chinese nationalists and leftists united to fight warlords and foreign domination.John Sexton has unearthearthed the histories of foreigners who joined the Chinese revolution. He follows Comintern militants, journalists, spies, adventurers, Trotskyists, and mission kids whose involvement helped, and sometimes hindered, China's revolutionaries. Most were internationalists who, while strongly identifying with China's struggle, saw it as just one theatre in a world revolution.The present rulers in Beijing, however, buoyed by China's powerhouse economy, commemorate them as ‘foreign friends'who aided China's ‘peaceful rise'to great power status.Founded on original research, it is a stirring story of idealists struggling against the odds to found a better future. The author's interviews with survivors and descendants add colour and humanity to lives both heroic and tragic.

An fiktionalen und nicht-fiktionalen Texten von André Malraux, George Orwell, Gustav Regler, Simone Téry, Arturo Barea und Joan Sales untersucht Julia Auweiler in ihrer komparatistischen Studie sowohl die Motivation für das Engagement im Spanischen Bürgerkrieg als auch die Gestaltung von Feindbildern. Die Autorin zeigt, dass sich hinter der geläufigen und Homogenität suggerierenden Formulierung vom „Kampf gegen den Faschismus'deutlich komplexere und widersprüchlichere Beweggründe für den Kriegseintritt verbergen. Ebenso unterlaufen die Werke der antifaschistischen Zeitzeugen bisweilen übliche Feindbildmechanismen und stellen somit dichotomische Freund-Feind-Konstruktionen infrage.

Welche Vorteile erhoffen sich Menschen, wenn sie mit Okkupationsregimes zusammenarbeiten? Welche Nachteile drohen ihnen, wenn sie es nicht tun? Diese Fragen lassen sich wie ein Prisma auf die Rekrutierungen für die Waffen-SS während des Zweiten Weltkrieges in Südosteuropa anwenden und auffächern. Die vorliegende Studie erklärt Absichten, Strategien und Handlungsspielräume der Besatzungsmächte, nationaler und lokaler Eliten sowie Motivation und Handlungszwänge einzelner Individuen vor dem jeweiligen lokalen Hintergrund. Im Fokus stehen dabei die drei südosteuropäischen Waffen-SS-Divisionen'Handschar','Skanderbeg'und'Kama'und die aus ethnischen Deutschen rekrutierte Division'Prinz Eugen'. Die Rekrutierungen für diese vier Divisionen umfassten sechs Staaten und weitere Grenzgebiete. In ihnen dienten Angehörige aus bis zu fünfzehn Nationen. Diese multikulturelle Zusammensetzung hatte Auswirkungen auf Rekrutierung und Alltag, aber auch auf Operationen und die Austragung interethnischer Konflikte.

This is the first systematic pan-European study of the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who fought -- either voluntarily or under different kinds of pressures -- for the Waffen-SS (or auxiliary police formations operating in the occupied East). Building on the findings of regional studies by other scholars -- many of them included in this volume -- The Waffen-SS aims to arrive at a fuller picture of those non-German citizens (from Eastern as well as Western Europe) who served under the SS flag. Where did the non-Germans in the SS come from (socially, geographically, and culturally)? What motivated them? What do we know about the practicalities of international collaboration in war and genocide, in terms of everyday life, language, and ideological training? Did a common transnational identity emerge as a result of shared ideological convictions or experiences of extreme violence? In order to address these questions (and others), The Waffen-SS adopts an approach that does justice to the complexity of the subject, adding a more nuanced, empirically sound understanding of collaboration in Europe during World War II, while also seeking to push the methodological boundaries of the historiographical genre of perpetrator studies by adopting a transnational approach.

Die jüngere Vergangenheit der Deutschen im östlichen und südöstlichen Teil Europas ist in den letzten Jahren wiederholt Gegenstand von Auseinandersetzungen gewesen. Was aber ist wirklich über das Verhalten der Deutschen in diesen Regionen Europas bekannt? Für das Gebiet von Rumänien bietet das Buch von Paul Milata Antworten auf diese Frage.

“A moving, beautifully-written tale… Rachel Cox has produced a masterpiece of storytelling, infused with romance, danger, adventure, humor, and heartbreaking loss. It is, hands down, the best description of the transformation of untested young men into soldiers that I have ever read.” — Lynne Olson, New York Times Bestselling Author of Last Hope Island The untold story of five young American friends who left the ivory towers at Harvard and Dartmouth to take on Rommel's Panzers under the blazing sun of North Africa. In the spring of 1941, with Europe consumed by war and occupation, Britain stood alone against the Nazi menace. The United States remained wary of joining the costly and destructive conflict. But for five extraordinary young Americans, the global threat of fascism was too great to ignore. Six months before Pearl Harbor, these courageous idealists left their promising futures behind to join the beleaguered British Army. Fighting as foreigners, they were shipped off to join the Desert Rats, the 7th Armoured Division of the British Eighth Army, who were battling Field Marshal Rommel's panzer division. The Yanks would lead antitank and machine-gun platoons into combat at the Second Battle of El Alamein, the twelve-day epic of tank warfare that would ultimately turn the tide for the Allies. A fitting tribute to five men whose commitment to freedom transcended national boundaries, Into Dust and Fire is a gripping true tale of idealism, courage, camaraderie, sacrifice, and heroism. INCLUDES PHOTOS

In Hitler's Foreign Executioners, Heinrich Himmler's secret master plan for Europe is revealed: an SS empire that would have no place for either the Nazi Party or Adolf Hitler. His astonishingly ambitious plan depended on the recruitment of tens of thousands of ‘Germanic'peoples from every corner of Europe, and even parts of Asia, to build an ‘SS Europa'. This revised and fully updated book, researched in archives all over Europe and using first-hand testimony, exposes Europe's dirty secret: nearly half a million Europeans and more than a million Soviet citizens enlisted in the armed forces of the Third Reich to fight a deadly crusade against a mythic foe, Jewish Bolshevism.Even today, some apologists claim that these foreign SS volunteers were merely soldiers ‘like any other'and fought a decent war against Stalin's Red Army. Historian Christopher Hale demonstrates conclusively that these surprisingly common views are mistaken. By taking part in Himmler's murderous master plan, these foreign executioners hoped to prove that they were worthy of joining his future ‘SS Europa'. But as the Reich collapsed in 1944, Himmler's monstrous scheme led to bitter confrontations with Hitler – and to the downfall of the man once known as ‘loyal Heinrich'.

Motivated by anti-communist zeal and a burning desire for Flemish self-rule, the men of the SS Langemarck answered Himmler's call to arms and earned a reputation for steadfastness in battle from friend and foe alike, right through to their eventual destruction by the Soviets in 1945. The exploits of key figures such as the famous Flemish Knight's Cross winner Remy Schrijnen are covered in detail. Written by a former captain in the British Army, this is the second in Spellmount's new series on Hitler's foreign Legions, following the best-selling Hitler's Gauls.

Cet ouvrage décrit la genèse et les brèves années d'existence de la Division Handschar dans la Yougoslavie des années 1940, composée pour l'essentiel de musulmans bosniaques et d'Allemands, mais aussi de Croates et d'Albanais ; ce fut la première élaborée sans tenir compte de facteurs raciaux ou ethniques. Voici un des rares écrits en français mettant en évidence les raisons de cette création par les autorités nazies, les causes de son relatif succès parmi les musulmans de l'ancienne Yougoslavie et les difficultés qu'elle rencontra loin de son milieu d'origine.