Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-century Europe - Hardcover

A needed measure of clarity... Naimark imbeds ethnic cleansing in the history of 20th-century Europe... and undercuts the standard wisdom that holds ancient enmities responsible for atrocities perpetrated in the modern era...Students of history and international relations are indebted to professor Naimark for his sobering insights. -- James R. Holmes "Library Journal" (11/15/2000) provides...disturbing details--and much other cause for sad reflection. challenges to an international community reluctant to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation state. modern era...Students of history and international relations are indebted to professor Naimark for [his] sobering insights. What strands link the last century's bloody spasms of ethnic cleansing--from the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to Bosnia and Kosovo? Stanford University historian Naimark argues ethnic cleansing is a profoundly twentieth-century phenomenon, not a product of 'ancient hatreds'...The ugliness of ethnic cleansing--its violence and brutality, its misogyny and totality, its effort to eradicate every trace of 'the other'--poses unique challenges to an international community reluctant to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation state.--Mary Carroll"Booklist" (01/01/2001) A needed measure of clarity...[Naimark] imbeds ethnic cleansing in the history of 20th-century Europe...[and] undercuts the standard wisdom that holds ancient enmities responsible for atrocities perpetrated in the modern era...Students of history and international relations are indebted to professor Naimark for [his] sobering insights.--James R. Holmes"Library Journal" (11/15/2000) As Norman M. Naimark observes...with broad enough standards the 'ethnic cleansing' label can be affixed to events as disparate as the destruction of Carthage, the crusade against the Albigensians, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the Spanish conquest of the Incas and Aztecs, and the expulsion of Indians from tribal lands in the United States...He objects that such a catchall approach fails to explain current events in useful terms...Naimark provides...disturbing details--and much other cause for sad reflection.--Anatole Shub"New Leader" (01/01/2001)

Of all the horrors of the last century - perhaps the bloodiest century of the past millennium - ethnic cleansing ranks among the worst. The term burst forth in public discourse in the spring of 1992 as a way to describe Serbian attacks on the Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina, but as this book attests, ethnic cleansing is neither new nor likely to cease in our time. Here Norman M. Naimark, distinguished historian of Europe and Russia, proides an insightful and heartbreaking history of ethnic cleansing and its relationship to genocide and population transfer. Focusing on five specific cases, he exposes the myths about ethnic cleansing, in particular the commonly held belief that the practice stems from ancient hatreds. Rather, Naimark shows that this face of genocide had its roots in the European nationalism of the late 19th century but found its most virulent expression in the 20th century as modern states and societies began to organize themselves by ethnic criteria. The most obvious example, and one of Naimark's cases, is the Nazi attack on the Jews that culminated in the Holocaust. Naimark also discusses the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the expulsion of Greeks from Anatolia during the Greco-Turkish War of 1921-22; the Soviet forced deportation of the Chechens-Ingush and the Crimean Tatars in 1944; the Polish and Czechoslovak expulsion of the Germans in 1944-47; and Bosnia and Kosovo. In this harrowing history, Naimark reveals how over and over, as racism and religious hatreds picked up an ethnic name tag, war provided a covre for violence and mayhem, an evil tapestry behind which nations acted with impunity.