12/25/2023 0 Comments European war 2![]() It was jointly financed by the Centre interdisciplinaire d’études et de recherches sur l’Allemagne (CIERA, Paris), the Chair for Southeast European History at the Humboldt University (Berlin), the Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin), the Centre d’Études Turques, Ottomanes, Balkaniques et Centrasiatiques (CETOBAC, Paris), the École française d’Athènes and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS, Regensburg). This special issue is a result of the German-French network project ‘New Approaches to the Second World War in Southeastern Europe’ (2015-2016), which focused on Yugoslavia, Greece, and Albania. To that end Greece has largely ignored the histories of its neighbours, preferring to look outwards intellectually only towards the western hemisphere, thereby encouraging strongly self-referential thinking about its own history. Greece, the only non-postsocialist society featuring here, has contributed its share by its urge to be perceived as ‘non-Balkan’, or ‘western’. In effect, over the span of a single generation, intellectual spheres of interest have been reduced by processes which have all too often done little else than raise the hurdles traditionally in place and which have prevented the proper perception of anything beyond scholars’ own national ‘backyards’. In addition, postsocialist historiographies everywhere have evolved within state-induced nationalizations of research agendas. Indeed, access to archive material has not always improved over the last three decades, and what is more, archival materials are themselves endangered because money for their proper maintenance has been lacking. As these authors show, more often than not academic budgets have been too parsimonious to allow scholars to do the sort of travelling necessary to consult the archives that would enable them to achieve certain standards. The reasons are multilayered and cannot be attributed only to the region’s ‘usual’ role as one of the most neglected areas of Europe. Nevertheless, in global scholarly debate and following transformations that have occurred over the last twenty or so years, historians working on matters pertaining to wider Southeastern Europe have remained somewhat on the side lines. It has been spearheaded both by local historians and those working in western Europe or the United States, and the contributors to this special issue are living proof of the process. To be sure, ever since the early 1990s a new historiography of World War Two has been emerging, more concerned with economic, social and cultural history and more focused on local, ‘bottom-up’ approaches. ![]() Black-and-white narratives, simple yet a-historical ‘truths’ have been put forward in the service of sociopolitical interests, and have contributed to sharpening existing divisive lines. The authors have all made quite clear that the current societies in Southeastern Europe continue to be permeated by questions of what the Second World War meant-among matters at stake are identities, memory politics and commemorative structures how historical studies have been (re-)institutionalized and how individuals and societies relate to others, from both domestic and international perspectives. This special issue’s central aim is therefore to provide a foundation on which may be built further differentiation of perspectives and agendas for research designed to do greater justice to the complex, multidimensional, and often parallel social dynamics triggered in the region by the global conflagration of 1939-1945. In what follows I shall attempt to integrate some of the core topics that bind their contributions together as much as to illustrate how their findings address international research on the Second World War and the Holocaust.Ĭompellingly, the work of all the authors reveals how, since the political changes of the 1990s, things have not automatically evolved towards comprehensive improvement in comparison with the preceding era. Polymeris Voglis and Ioannis Nioutsikos provide the state of the historiographical art and the public debate for Greece Slovenia is considered by Nevenka Troha Gentiana Kera looks at Albania, while Moldova receives close attention from Svetlana Suveica. Gathered here are detailed overviews by Milan Ristović of the historiography of the German occupying forces in the Balkans, and by Paolo Fonzi of the Italians Marija Vulesica deals with the Holocaust in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia, while Nadège Ragaru examines its effects in Bulgaria and Bulgarian-occupied Macedonia. It is likely that the authors of this special issue have accomplished something never before seen, for rarely if ever has a similarly comparative overview been provided of the historiographical state of the art and concomitant scholarly and public debates pertaining to the Second World War in Southeastern Europe.
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