Overview

How could it happen that continental Europe became a ""Europe of the Dictatorships"" in the twentieth century? It requires some effort to understand such processes. It is insufficient to observe merely the dictatorships and their mechanisms, one must also incorporate the seemingly harmless history leading up to that time and, above all, the transitions that took place.The book begins with a description of the historical situation after the First World War. Europe's brutalization through colonial wars and inter-European conflicts, carried out using means of mass extermination, led to fractures in civilized cultures. What follows in the second section is another state-by-state organized design of the transition from countries that were fascist (and countries that were made fascist) into communist states established in accordance with the Soviet model. The third part of the book is devoted to the history of the ""Eastern Bloc"" states from 1953 to 2013.

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9781443851299

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Writing a comparative history of twentieth-century European dictatorships is an ambitious undertaking, but it is one that Gerhard Besier and Katarzyna Stoklosa have completed with success. [...] The meat in the 612 pages of text is very rewarding. One will find within it a greater understanding of the historical processes that led to the fascist and socialist dictatorships that dominated much of Europe's twentieth century and how they contributed to some of the difficulties today. Porter R. Blakemore University of Mary Washington The Historian, 78: 1 (2016)

'Writing a comparative history of twentieth-century European dictatorships is an ambitious undertaking, but it is one that Gerhard Besier and Katarzyna Stoklosa have completed with success. [...] The meat in the 612 pages of text is very rewarding. One will find within it a greater understanding of the historical processes that led to the fascist and socialist dictatorships that dominated much of Europe's twentieth century and how they contributed to some of the difficulties today.'Porter R. BlakemoreUniversity of Mary WashingtonThe Historian, 78: 1 (2016)

Author Information

Gerhard Besier is a theologian, historian and psychologist. After professorships in Berlin, Heidelberg and Dresden he now is Director of the Sigmund Neumann Institute for the Research on Freedom, Liberty and Democracy in Dresden. He has published widely on the themes of German-Polish antagonisms, transformation processes in Europe since 1945, European dictatorships, confessional controversies in Germany, Europe and the USA, and on stereotypes and prejudices.Katarzyna Stokłosa is Associate Professor in the Department of Border Region Studies at the University of Sønderborg, Denmark. She finished her PhD at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and her habilitation thesis at the University of Potsdam. She has published various books and articles on European border regions in comparison, on European history and nationalism.

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