Inside Hitler′s Greece – The Experience of Occupation 1941–1944 (Paper): The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44 - Softcover

Mazower, Mark

4.21

376 ratings by Goodreads

9780300065527: Inside Hitler′s Greece – The Experience of Occupation 1941–1944 (Paper): The Experience of Occupation, 1941-44

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0300065523 ISBN 13: 9780300065527

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1995

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In April 1941 the German army invaded Greece, leading to four years of hideous barbarism and to a civil war that tore the country apart. Inside Hitler's Greece explores the impact of the Occupation upon the lives and values of ordinary Greeks. Drawing on a wealth of first-hand accounts and previously untapped archival sources Mark Mazower offers a vividly human picture of the experiences of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers. He shows how war threw traditional family roles into question as women became breadwinners and children took up arms. The moral complexities of life under foreign rule are linked to the unfolding political tragedy that brought the civil war. The book describes the economic exploitation of Greece and the resulting famine - the disintegration of an entire society and the origins of mass resistance. It offers an unsentimental account of the realities of guerrilla life in the mountains, covering the psychological as well as the material effects of total war. But the war is also seen through German eyes: soldiers, diplomats, and SS officials speak in their own words, allowing us to understand the beliefs and values that underlay Nazi policies of violence, terror, and extermination. From staff officers like the young Kurt Waldheim to ordinary Bavarian conscripts, the German Occupation apparatus is brought to life in unprecedented detail. A world of ruined villages and stirring revolutionary utopias, abandoned Jewish homes and starving islanders - the world of Hitler's New Order - is comprehensively analyzed and set in its historical context.

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Review:

"Fascinating. . . . [Mazower] succeeds in getting under the skin of the occupation. . . . [This book] conjures up, in vivid detail, life under an occupation that had shattered old certainties and replaced them with painful choices, cynical compromises and hopes undercut by the daily death toll."--Mark Almond, The Times

"[An] important book . . . sharply focused."--C.M. Woodhouse, Times Literary Supplement

"Mark Mazower's account of the Italo-German seizure of Greece . . . should make sense to anyone with a feel for truthful documentation. . . . An objective study."--Nigel Spivey, Financial Times

"This is the first thorough account in English of almost every aspect of life in Axis-occupied Greece. It draws on a mass of material, including Greek wartime newspapers and German military archives. All of this is absorbed into a highly readable narrative and illustrated with sometimes heartbreaking contemporary photographs."--Noel Malcolm, The Sunday Telegraph

"[A] notable study . . . the first of its kind in English."--Publishers Weekly

"His documentation is overwhelming. . . . A grinding, horrific experience, intimately explored."--Kirkus Reviews

"Using the vast German military archive, Mazower draws a vivid picture of the German occupier's mind and actions. . . . Mazower's arguments are always fair."--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A well-researched and riveting study of life under Nazi occupation; and essential addition to any modern history collection."--Elizabeth Shostak, Wilson Library Bulletin

"Already acknowledged (the British edition) as one of the best books on modern Greece, this finely produced study surveys in depth the vicissitudes of WWII in modern Greece. . . . This book, whose scholarship is exceeded perhaps only by its elegant style, is a sine qua non for anyone interested in WWII in general and modern Greece in particular. Highly recommended for all libraries."--Choice

"A terrific read. . . . A remarkable achievement, one of those rare works of history which no reader will soon forget. It combines analysis and narrative in unobtrusive and elegant ways and makes a major contribution to our understanding of modern Greece. There is nothing remotely like it in English or any other language. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of the Second World War as a social reality."--Jonathan Steinberg, Bulletin of Judeo-Greek Studies

"A superb book on the horrors afflicting wartime Greece. . . . [Mazower] has done vast archival research and emerged with a gripping, readable and human account, setting every moment of a tragic period in appropriate context. . . . Richly illustrated and made more valuable by judgments explicitly relevant to the history of World War II."--Fritz Stern, Foreign Affairs

"This outstanding study provides a detailed, sensitive, and complex view of Greece under Italian and German occupation. . . . A major contribution to the growing literature on the impact of war and occupation on European society. . . . A wonderful achievement; it may tell us more than we would like to know about human folly and brutality."--Omer Bartov, The Historian

"A well-conceived study and invaluable resource for scholars seeking insights into the conditions of life in and popular responses to wartime occupation with its accompanying hardships and brutalities. . . . Mazower's 'bottom up' approach, with its emphasis on social and economic conditions in occupied Greece and its comprehensive treatment of them, makes his study one of the most important additions to Greek historiography in recent years."--S. Victor Papacosma, American Historical Review

"Mark Mazower's book is crisp, clear, and learned; and the analysis he offers of the transformation of Greek society under the hammer blows of conquest, famine, mounting civil violence, and Nazi mismanagement is masterly. . . . No one has told the story so well before, and . . . this book clearly supersedes all earlier accounts of the occupation years."--William H. McNeill, Journal of Modern History

Joint Winner of the 1993 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History

"One of the very best books in any language, to have been written on wartime Greece. Indeed . . . one of the most significant books to have been written on modern Greece as a whole."--Richard Clogg

"Mark Mazower's compelling and scholarly account of the occupation of Greece by the axis is doubly invaluable . . . Dr. Mazower's study of occupied Greece is based on an impressive range of archival and secondary sources in several languages. It is not only both comprehensive and readable but also topical."--Tim Kirk

"Mazower's crisp, dramatic presentation of all aspects of life in occupied Greece is a model of clarity and compactness. The politics of occupation, collaboration, resistance, and plain survival are elaborated in vivid detail. There is a brightness of vision in this work, which is as unyielding and unsentimental as the craggy beauty of Greece."--Ivo Banac

From the Back Cover:

This book is the first full exploration of the experience of occupation- from the perspective of those that endured it and from those that imposed it -it tells the stories of resistance fighters and black marketeers, teenage German conscripts and Gestapo officers, Jews and starving villagers.

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