Beginning in the fall of 1920, Aleksandr Antonov led an insurgency that became the largest armed peasant revolt against the Soviets during the civil war. Yet by the summer of 1921, the revolt had been crushed, and popular support for the movement had all but disappeared. Until now, details of this conflict have remained hidden. Erik Landis mines recently opened provincial and central Soviet archives and international collections to provide a depth of detail and historical analysis never before possible in this definitive account of the uprising. Landis examines both sides of the conflict, probing the testimonies of the insurgents, their opponents, and those caught in between. We witness firsthand the frustrations, failures, and internal conflicts of the Bolsheviks and the spirit of rebellion that drove the insurgents and helped drive a localized dispute into a well-organized mass rebellion that struck fear in the hearts of Communist leaders. This political and military threat was influential in bringing about Lenin's conciliatory New Economic Policy, which allowed farmers and villages to sustain themselves in a quasi-market economy. Bandits and Partisans presents a gripping tale of brutality, domination, and revolt, placing readers at the frontlines of the complex and rich history of the Russian civil war and the consolidation of the new Soviet state.

During World War II nearly every Wehrmacht soldier outside of Germany came into contact, either directly or indirectly, with the nearly one-million partisans throughout Europe. Operations against these "bandits" usually fell outside the rules of war and those who fought saw image of incredible cruelty. Those German soldiers and police members who fought against the partisans were qualified to receive the anti-partisan badge. This concise book discusses the award's three grades and includes rare documents and war-era photographs.

An in-depth look at a crucial, little-known World War II episode—the failed Allied policy in Yugoslavia and its ramifications in the Balkans and beyond Winston Churchill called it one of his biggest wartime failures—the shift of British and U.S. support from Yugoslavia's Draža Mihailovic and his royalist resistance movement to Tito and his communist Partisans. This book illuminates the complex reasons behind that failure through the incredible story of what has been called the greatest rescue of Allied airmen from behind enemy lines in World War II history, a rescue executed, incredibly, with minimal official support from the United States and none such support from Great Britain. Recounts an unknown chapter of World War II history and the single largest rescue operation of the war Starting with Serbia's tragedy and triumph in World War II through civil war in Yugoslavia during World War I, focuses on the history of the Balkans, a tragically misunderstood part of the world Sheds new light on the OSS-SOE relationship and manipulations of intelligence that profoundly altered policy decision making Reveals how failed Allied policy set the stage for Yugoslavia's breakup in the 1990s Details the wartime camaraderie of unlikely warriors who became fast friends, outcasts, and heroes in executing the rescue Written with the drama of a novel and the insight of serious history, Shadows on the Mountain is essential reading for anyone interested in World War II, European history, and the Balkans.

"Ben Shepherd ... uses Austro-Hungarian Army records to consider how the personal experiences of many Austrian officers during the Great War played a role in brutalizing their behavior in Yugoslavia. A comparison of Wehrmacht counter-insurgency divisions allows Shepherd to analyze how a range of midlevel commanders and their units conducted themselves in different parts of Yugoslavia, and why"--Jacket.

Using private and archival sources spanning three continents the authors have written the definitive study on the history of collaboration and the anti-partisan war in White Russia during World War II. In addition, the history of the Shoah (holocaust) in White Russia is fully covered. The text is supported by close to 2,000 fully documented footnotes, as well as 125 rare photographs, many never before published, 97 battle maps (33 in full color), 12 color plates, 40 tables, 9 appendices, 9-page glossary of German political and military terms, and a 30-page index which facilitates research. The authors used materials from the Minsk archives, Bundesarchiv, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, US National Archives, Museum of Modern History, Ljubljana and the Yad Vashem Archives in Israel in addition to employing items from private sources. This is truly a monumental study on a little known subject.

This study of the Polish resistance movement chronicles the operations of various factions from WWII through the postwar battle for power. The Polish partisan army famously fought with tenacity against the Wehrmacht during World War II. Yet the wider story of the Polish underground movement, which opposed both the Nazi and Soviet occupying powers, has rarely been told. In this concise and authoritative study, historian David Williamson presents a major reassessment of the actions, impact and legacy of Polish resistance. The Polish resistance movement sprang up after the German invasion of 1939. As the war progressed, it took many forms, including propaganda, spying, assassination, disruption, sabotage and guerrilla warfare. Many groups were involved, including isolated partisan bands, the Jewish resistance, and the Home Army which confronted the Germans in the disastrous Warsaw Uprising of 1944. Going beyond the Second World War, Williamson's graphic account chronicles the clandestine civil war between the Communists and former members of the Home Army that continued until the Communist regime took power in 1947.

How do states and societies confront the legacies of war and occupation, and what do truth, guilt, and justice mean in that process? In Ghosts of War, Franziska Exeler examines people's wartime choices and their aftermath in Belarus, a war-ravaged Soviet republic that was under Nazi occupation during the Second World War. After the Red Army reestablished control over Belarus, one question shaped encounters between the returning Soviet authorities and those who had lived under Nazi rule, between soldiers and family members, reevacuees and colleagues, Holocaust survivors and their neighbors: What did you do during the war? Ghosts of War analyzes the prosecution and punishment of Soviet citizens accused of wartime collaboration with the Nazis and shows how individuals sought justice, revenge, or assistance from neighbors and courts. The book uncovers the many absences, silences, and conflicts that were never resolved, as well as the truths that could only be spoken in private, yet it also investigates the extent to which individuals accommodated, contested, and reshaped official Soviet war memory. The result is a gripping examination of how efforts at coming to terms with the past played out within, and at times through, a dictatorship.

During the Holocaust, 99 percent of all Jewish killings were carried out by members of state organizations. In this groundbreaking book, Stefan Kühl offers a new analysis of the integral role that membership in organizations played in facilitating the annihilation of European Jews under the Nazis. Drawing on the well-researched case of the mass killings of Jews by a Hamburg reserve police battalion, Kühl shows how ordinary men from ordinary professions were induced to carry out massacres. It may have been that coercion, money, identification with the end goal, the enjoyment of brutality, or the expectations of their comrades impelled the members of the police battalion to join the police units and participate in ghetto liquidations, deportations, and mass shootings. But ultimately, argues Kühl, the question of immediate motives, or indeed whether members carried out tasks with enthusiasm or reluctance, is of secondary importance. The crucial factor in explaining what they did was the integration of individuals into an organizational framework that prompted them to perform their roles. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust by demonstrating the fundamental role played by organizations in persuading ordinary Germans to participate in the annihilation of the Jews. It will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of organizations, violence, and modern German history, as well as for anyone interested in genocide and the Holocaust.

In August 1942, Hitler directed all German state institutions to assist Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS and the German police, in eradicating armed resistance in the newly occupied territories of Eastern Europe and Russia. The directive for "combating banditry" (Bandenbekämpfung), became the third component of the Nazi regime's three-part strategy for German national security, with genocide (Endlösung der Judenfrage, or "the Final Solution of the Jewish Question") and slave labor (Erfassung, or "Registration of Persons to Hard Labor") being the better-known others. An original and thought-provoking work grounded in extensive research in German archives, Hitler's Bandit Hunters focuses on this counterinsurgency campaign, the anvil of Hitler's crusade for empire. Bandenbekämpfung portrayed insurgents as political and racial bandits, criminalized to a greater degree than enemies of the state; moreover, violence against them was not constrained by the prevailing laws of warfare. Philip Blood explains how German forces embraced the Bandenbekämpfung doctrine, demonstrating the equal culpability of both the SS police forces and the "heroic" Waffen-SS combat arm and shattering the contrived postwar distinctions between them. He challenges the traditional view of Himmler as an armchair general and bureaucrat, exposing him as the driving force behind one of the most successful security campaigns in history, and delves into the contentious issue of the complicity of ordinary German police, soldiers, and citizens, as well as the citizens of occupied territories, in these state-sponsored manhunts. This book provokes new debates on the Nazi terrorization of Europe, the blind acquiescence of many, and the courageous resistance of the few.