Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe’s Edge
by Dan Diner translated by William Templer and Joel Golb
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-0-299-22353-3 | Cloth: 978-0-299-22350-2 Library of Congress Classification D421.D5613 2008 Dewey Decimal Classification 909.82
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Cataclysms is a profoundly original look at the last century. Approaching twentieth-century history from the periphery rather than the centers of decision-making, the virtual narrator sits perched on the legendary stairs of Odessa and watches as events between the Baltic and the Aegean pass in review, unfolding in space and time between 1917 and 1989, while evoking the nineteenth century as an interpretative backdrop.
Influenced by continental historical, legal, and social thought, Dan Diner views the totality of world history evolving from an Eastern and Southeastern European angle. A work of great synthesis, Cataclysms chronicles twentieth century history as a “universal civil war” between a succession of conflicting dualisms such as freedom and equality, race and class, capitalism and communism, liberalism and fascism, East and West.
Diner’s interpretation rotates around cataclysmic events in the transformation from multinational empires into nation states, accompanied by social revolution and “ethnic cleansing,” situating the Holocaust at the core of the century’s predicament. Unlike other Eurocentric interpretations of the last century, Diner also highlights the emerging pivotal importance of the United States and the impact of decolonization on the process of European integration.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Dan Diner is Professor of Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University.
REVIEWS
“Dan Diner’s intriguing and learned forays into the destructiveness of modern European history should attract a wide readership. This fast paced interpretative study of the axis of national and civil strife over the course of the twentieth century shows again why he is considered one of the continent’s most respected and interesting historians.”— Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University
“Diner, an enticingly unorthodox and persuasive historian, felicitously shuttles back and forth between philosophic-speculative analysis and a well-informed account of individual actors and events. An important work.”—Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known
TABLE OF CONTENTS
<new recto>
Contents
Acknowledgements 000
Introduction 000
Contingencies and Periodizations / Re-established Spaces and Revived Times / Peripheral Perspectives and Pivotal Events /Continuous Narrations and Intentional Omissions
1. Interpretations: Two Varieties of Universal Civil-War 000
War and Civil War / America and Europe / Balance and Hegemony /Constitution and Nationality / Freedom and Equality /Warfaring Virtues and Mechanized Death / Two Kinds of Anti-Bolshevism /Race and Class / Sea Power and Land Power / Demos and Ethnos /
Self-Government and Self-Determination / Fascism and Anti-Fascism /West and East
2. Conversions: Nation and Revolution 000
War and Revolution / Society and Ethnicity / Expansion and Intervention /Red Nations and White Nations / Patriotic Wars / Borders and Minorities /Hungary and Rumania / Greeks in Odessa / Poles and Soviets /Stalin and Tuchachevsky / Germany and Russia / Revision and the Status Quo
Hitler's Wars / Poland's Frontiers / Germany's Unity
3. Regimes: Democracy and Dictatorship 000
Weimar Lessons / Hermann Müller and Ramsay MacDonald /Tradition and Contingency / Stability and Crisis / England and France /Social Democracy and Radical Republicanism / Parliamentarianism and Authoritarianism / Cabals and Intrigues / Papen and Schleicher /
Hitler and Hindenburg / Access to the Ruler / Emblematics of Contingency /Dictatorship and Dictatorship
4. Cataclysms: Genocide and Memory 000
Eastern Questions / Ethnic Cleansing / Greeks and Turks /Armenian Catastrophies / Poland's Demography / Germany's Ideology /Eastern Expansion and Holocaust / Opposing Perspectives /
Memory and Narrative / Hierarchy of Remembrance /Nazism and Stalinism / Labor and Death /
Genocide and Class-Extinction / Comparison and Perception
5. Dualisms: Decolonization and the Cold War 000
Translatio Imperii / Britain and America / Geography and Ideology /Greek Questions-Far-Eastern Answers / Asian Crisis and Western Freedoms /Worlds Divided-Worlds Apart / Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek /Dulles and Mendès-France / Dien Bien Phu and European Integration /History Neutralized-History Revived
Notes 000
Index 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe’s Edge
by Dan Diner translated by William Templer and Joel Golb
University of Wisconsin Press, 2007 eISBN: 978-0-299-22353-3 Cloth: 978-0-299-22350-2
Cataclysms is a profoundly original look at the last century. Approaching twentieth-century history from the periphery rather than the centers of decision-making, the virtual narrator sits perched on the legendary stairs of Odessa and watches as events between the Baltic and the Aegean pass in review, unfolding in space and time between 1917 and 1989, while evoking the nineteenth century as an interpretative backdrop.
Influenced by continental historical, legal, and social thought, Dan Diner views the totality of world history evolving from an Eastern and Southeastern European angle. A work of great synthesis, Cataclysms chronicles twentieth century history as a “universal civil war” between a succession of conflicting dualisms such as freedom and equality, race and class, capitalism and communism, liberalism and fascism, East and West.
Diner’s interpretation rotates around cataclysmic events in the transformation from multinational empires into nation states, accompanied by social revolution and “ethnic cleansing,” situating the Holocaust at the core of the century’s predicament. Unlike other Eurocentric interpretations of the last century, Diner also highlights the emerging pivotal importance of the United States and the impact of decolonization on the process of European integration.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Dan Diner is Professor of Modern European History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and director of the Simon Dubnow Institute for Jewish History and Culture at Leipzig University.
REVIEWS
“Dan Diner’s intriguing and learned forays into the destructiveness of modern European history should attract a wide readership. This fast paced interpretative study of the axis of national and civil strife over the course of the twentieth century shows again why he is considered one of the continent’s most respected and interesting historians.”— Norman M. Naimark, Stanford University
“Diner, an enticingly unorthodox and persuasive historian, felicitously shuttles back and forth between philosophic-speculative analysis and a well-informed account of individual actors and events. An important work.”—Fritz Stern, author of Five Germanys I Have Known
TABLE OF CONTENTS
<new recto>
Contents
Acknowledgements 000
Introduction 000
Contingencies and Periodizations / Re-established Spaces and Revived Times / Peripheral Perspectives and Pivotal Events /Continuous Narrations and Intentional Omissions
1. Interpretations: Two Varieties of Universal Civil-War 000
War and Civil War / America and Europe / Balance and Hegemony /Constitution and Nationality / Freedom and Equality /Warfaring Virtues and Mechanized Death / Two Kinds of Anti-Bolshevism /Race and Class / Sea Power and Land Power / Demos and Ethnos /
Self-Government and Self-Determination / Fascism and Anti-Fascism /West and East
2. Conversions: Nation and Revolution 000
War and Revolution / Society and Ethnicity / Expansion and Intervention /Red Nations and White Nations / Patriotic Wars / Borders and Minorities /Hungary and Rumania / Greeks in Odessa / Poles and Soviets /Stalin and Tuchachevsky / Germany and Russia / Revision and the Status Quo
Hitler's Wars / Poland's Frontiers / Germany's Unity
3. Regimes: Democracy and Dictatorship 000
Weimar Lessons / Hermann Müller and Ramsay MacDonald /Tradition and Contingency / Stability and Crisis / England and France /Social Democracy and Radical Republicanism / Parliamentarianism and Authoritarianism / Cabals and Intrigues / Papen and Schleicher /
Hitler and Hindenburg / Access to the Ruler / Emblematics of Contingency /Dictatorship and Dictatorship
4. Cataclysms: Genocide and Memory 000
Eastern Questions / Ethnic Cleansing / Greeks and Turks /Armenian Catastrophies / Poland's Demography / Germany's Ideology /Eastern Expansion and Holocaust / Opposing Perspectives /
Memory and Narrative / Hierarchy of Remembrance /Nazism and Stalinism / Labor and Death /
Genocide and Class-Extinction / Comparison and Perception
5. Dualisms: Decolonization and the Cold War 000
Translatio Imperii / Britain and America / Geography and Ideology /Greek Questions-Far-Eastern Answers / Asian Crisis and Western Freedoms /Worlds Divided-Worlds Apart / Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek /Dulles and Mendès-France / Dien Bien Phu and European Integration /History Neutralized-History Revived
Notes 000
Index 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE