| Abstract |
"For most of the population of Europe and East and Southeast Asia, the most persistent and significant aspect of their experience of the Second World War was that of occupation by one or more of the Axis powers. In this ambitious and wide-ranging study, Aviel Roshwald brings us the first single-authored, comparative treatment of European and Asian responses to German and Japanese occupation during the war. He illustrates how patriotic, ethno-national, and internationalist identities were manipulated, exploited, reconstructed and reinvented as a result of the wholesale dismantling of states and redrawing of borders. Using eleven case studies from across the two continents, he examines how behavioral choices around collaboration and resistance were conditioned by existing identities or loyalties as well as by short-term cost-benefit calculations, opportunism, or coercion. Aviel Roshwald is Professor of History at Georgetown University. His previous books include The Endurance of Nationalism: Ancient Roots and Modern Dilemmas (2006), Ethnic Nationalism and the Fall of Empires: Central Europe, Russia and the Middle East, 1914-1923 (2001) and Estranged Bedfellows: Britain and France in the Middle East during the Second World War (1990)"-- Provided by publisher. |
