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The First World War did not end in Central Europe in November 1918. The armistices marked the creation of the Second Polish Republic and the first shot of the Central European Civil War which raged from 1918 to 1921. The fallen German, Russian, and Austrian Empires left in their wake lands with peoples of mixed nationalities and ethnicities. These lands soon became battle grounds and the ethno-political violence that ensued forced those living within them to decide on their national identity.
Civil War in Central Europe seeks to challenge previous notions that such conflicts which occurred between the First and Second World Wars were isolated incidents and argues that they should be considered as part of a European war; a war which transformed Poland into a nation.
List of contents
- List of Illustrations and Maps
- Introduction
- 1: Nations, States, and Conflict in Central Europe
- 2: How to Mobilize the Polish Nation
- 3: The Central European Civil War
- 4: Violence and Crimes Beyond the Battlefields
- Conclusion
- Epilogue
About the author
Jochen Böhler is a Research Fellow at the Imre Kertész Kolleg in Jena, where he teaches courses on the history of early twentieth-century Central and Eastern Europe. His most recent publications include, War, Pacification, and Mass Murder, 1939: The Einsatzgruppen in Poland (2014) alongside Jurgen Matthäus and Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe's First World War (2014) with Joachim von Puttkamer and Wlodzimierz Borodziej and The Waffen-SS. A European History (2016) with Robert Gerwarth.
Summary
Civil War in Central Europe argues that Polish independence after the First World War was forged in the fires of the post-war conflicts which should be collectively referred to as the Central European Civil War (1918-1921). The ensuing violence forced those living in European border regions to decide on their national identity - German or Polish.
Additional text
According to Böhler, "self-determination" was an unsuitable recipe for structuring a multi-ethnic region. This becomes particularly clear in his fourth chapter "Violence and Crimes Beyond the Battlefields", in which Böhler draws a panorama where anti-Semitic pogroms, skirmishes, violent oppression of the rural population and death blend into each other. Hunger, disease and other hardships plagued the country. [...] Böhler has presented a differentiated description of these violence scenarios, largely reconstructed on the base of a variety of sources.
Report
...[T]he book is definitely very important and valuable: it shows the formation of the Polish state in a new light that undermines traditional nationalist historiography and popular ideas...The book allows us to go beyond nationalist conventional wisdom. Krzysztof Jaskulowski, SWPS University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Nationalities Papers
