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Serbia occupied a particular place in Hitler’s “New Order” in the Balkans. In April 1941 it was made into a rump condominium ruled by the German military and exploited as a strategic base and a source of raw materials and cheap labour force. Such objectives entailed the utilization of Serbia’s economy and manpower with a minimal effort and spending on the part of Germany. Therefore, the German political and military leadership was willing to side-line the Nazi ideological-racial criteria in favour of more restrained occupation policies. This book, therefore, addresses several interrelated topics such as German occupation as impacted by the political-military situation in the Balkans; rivalries between different German branches, each pursuing their own objectives; the role of native collaboration in the occupation system; the civil war, which reflected the conflict between Serbs of different political orientations in Serbia, and the life of the population at large, which found itself caught between the forces or occupation and resistance. The examination of these issues would enhance an ongoing discussion about the mechanisms of German rule in occupied Europe and the dynamics of national resistance and collaboration.

Between 1945 and 1957, West Germany made a dizzying pivot from Nazi bastion to Britain's Cold War ally against the Soviet Union. Successive London governments, though often faced with bitter public and military opposition, tasked the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR) to serve as a protecting force while strengthening West German integration into the Western defense structure. This book charts the BAOR's fraught transformation from occupier to ally by looking at the charged nexus where British troops and their families interacted with Germany's civilian population. Examining the relationship on many levels, the book ranges from how British mass media representations of Germany influenced BAOR troops to initiatives taken by the Army to improve relations. It also weighs German perceptions, surveying clashes between soldiers and civilians and comparing the popularity of the British services with that of the other occupying powers. As the book shows, the BAOR's presence did not improve the relationship between British servicemen and the German populace, but it did prevent further deterioration during a crucial and dangerous period of the early Cold War. An incisive look at an under-researched episode, this book sheds new light on Anglo-German diplomatic, political, and social relations after 1945, and evaluates their impact on the wider context of European integration in the postwar era.

Small and isolated in the Colony of Natal, Fort Napier was long treated like a temporary outpost of the expanding British Empire. Yet British troops manned this South African garrison for over seventy years. Tasked with protecting colonists, the fort became even more significant as an influence on, and reference point for, settler society. This book reveals the unexamined but pivotal role of Fort Napier in the peacetime public dramas of the colony. Its triumphalist colonial-themed pageantry belied colonists' worries about their own vulnerability. As the book shows, the cultural, political, and economic methods used by the garrison compensated for this perceived weakness. Settler elites married their daughters to soldiers to create and preserve an English-speaking oligarchy. At the same time, garrison troops formed the backbone of a consumer market that allowed colonists to form banking and property interests that consolidated their control.

In contrast to its brutal seizure of the Balkans, the Italian Army’s 1940–1943 relatively mild occupation of the French Riviera and nearby alpine regions bred the myth of the Italian brava gente, or good fellow, an agreeable occupier who abstained from the savage wartime behaviors so common across Europe. Employing a multi-tiered approach, this book examines the simultaneously conflicting and symbiotic relationship between the French population and Italian soldiers. At the grassroots level, the book asserts that the cultural proximity between the soldiers and the local population, one-quarter of which was Italian, smoothed the sharp angles of miscommunication and cultural faux-pas at a time of great uncertainty. At the same time, it encouraged a laxness in discipline that manifested as fraternization and black marketeering. The book’s analysis of political tensions highlights how French prefects and mayors fought to keep the tatters of sovereignty in the face of military occupation. In addition, it reveals the tense relationship between Fascist civilian authorities eager to fulfill imperial dreams of annexation and army leaders desperate to prevent any action that might provoke French insurrection.

The South African War (1899–1902), also called the Boer War and Anglo-Boer War, began as a conventional conflict. It escalated into a savage irregular war fought between the two Boer republics and a British imperial force that adopted a scorched-earth policy and used concentration camps to break the will of Afrikaner patriots and Boer guerrillas. This book delves into the agonizing choices faced by Winburg district residents during the British occupation. Afrikaner men fought or evaded combat or collaborated; Afrikaner women fled over the veld or submitted to life in the camps; and black Africans weighed the life or death consequences of taking sides. The book’s sensitive analysis showcases the motives, actions, and reactions of Boers and Africans alike as initial British accommodation gave way to ruthlessness. Challenging notions of Boer unity and homogeneity, the book illustrates the precarious tightrope of resistance, neutrality, and collaboration walked by people on all sides. It also reveals how the repercussions of the War’s transformative effect on Afrikaner identity plays out in today’s South Africa. The book provides a dramatic account of the often overlooked aspects of one of the first “modern” wars.

This book offers an institutional history of the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS), the department tasked with improving the Army's ability to use and defend against chemical weapons during and after World War I. Taking the CWS's story from the trenches to peacetime, the book explores how the CWS's work on chemical warfare continued through the 1920s despite deep opposition to the weapons in both military and civilian circles. As the book shows, the advocates for chemical weapons within the CWS allied with supporters in the military, government, and private industry to lobby to add chemical warfare to the country's permanent arsenal. Their argument: poison gas represented an advanced and even humane tool in modern war, while its applications for pest control and crowd control made a chemical capacity relevant in peacetime. But conflict with those aligned against chemical warfare forced the CWS to fight for its institutional life—and ultimately led to the U.S. military's rejection of battlefield chemical weapons.

Contemporary world history has highlighted militarization in many ways, from the global Cold War and numerous regional conflicts to the general assumption that nationhood implies a significant and growing military. Yet the twentieth century also offers notable examples of large-scale demilitarization, both imposed and voluntary. This book fills a key gap in current historical understanding by examining demilitarization programs in Germany, Japan, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Costa Rica. The chapters outline each nation's demilitarization choices and how they were made. The book investigates factors such as military defeat, border security risks, economic pressures, and the development of strong peace cultures among citizenry. Also at center stage is the influence of the United States, which fills a paradoxical role as both an enabler of demilitarization and a leader in steadily accelerating militarization. The book explores what true demilitarization means and how it impacts a society at all levels, military and civilian, political and private. The examples chosen reveal that successful demilitarization must go beyond mere troop demobilization or arms reduction to generate significant political and even psychological shifts in the culture at large. Exemplifying the political difficulties of demilitarization in both its failures and successes, it provides a possible roadmap for future policies and practices.

On the eve of the War of 1812, the Illinois Territory was a new land of bright promise. The new territory ran from the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers north to the U.S. border with Canada, embracing the current states of Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Michigan. By 1812 pioneer farmers had gathered in the wooded fringes around prime agricultural land, looking out over the prairies with longing and trepidation. Six years later, a populous Illinois was confident enough to seek and receive admission as a state in the Union. What had intervened was the War of 1812, which ultimately broke the power and morale of the Indian tribes and deprived them of the support of their ally, Great Britain. Until and even after the War was concluded by the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, there were massacres by both sides, laying the groundwork for later betrayal of friendly and hostile tribes alike and for ultimate expulsion of the Indians from the new state of Illinois. This new history, published upon the War's bicentennial, underlines the crucial importance of the War of 1812 in the development of Illinois as a state. The history of Illinois in the War of 1812 has never before been told with so much attention to the personalities who fought it, the events that defined it, and its lasting consequences.