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The 'Savage Continent'? Everyday Violence in 1940s Europe

Module description

The module explores the most turbulent decade of twentieth-century European history, and analyses the multiple axes of extreme violence - political, ethnic, racial, personal - which marked this period and instigated momentous changes in the history of the continent. The course aims to explore how such unprecedented violence against civilians, women and children was experienced by ordinary citizens of European countries, and how it transformed and affected their everyday lives, political choices and social attitudes both before and after 1945. We will trace the process by which fierce political and ideological struggles of the 1940s enveloped ever broader sections of the European populations, and examine how different categories of people behaved under these circumstances, what motivated or deterred them, and how they attempted to make sense of (and survive) the whirlwind of the 1940s. The war disrupted prewar collective identities and networks by relocating millions of people – the module will analyse how these migrations of soldiers, refugees, forced labourers, prisoners and prisoners of war re-shaped the continent and influenced personal and national identities.

Module aims - intentions of the module

The module will offer you an opportunity to explore in depth a new field of historical study, and analyse and employ a variety of relevant historiographical approaches. It, moreover, employs a plethora of materials (academic, literary, archival), interpretive issues and methodological approaches to the topic. In doing so, it will broaden and improve your analytical and research skills and experience.

The module begins by addressing the Third Reich's euphoria of the summer of 1940 and its plans for the New European Order of the Community of Peoples, and moves on to discuss the following themes: collaboration and policing, wars within wars in the borderlands, civil wars in Eastern and Southern Europe, resistance and opposition, violence against women and children, experiences of surveillance, the Holocaust and genocide. The module looks at the 1940s as a whole, and questions the significance of 1945 as a watershed moment, focusing instead on important continuities across the 'year zero.' It compares Eastern and Western European experiences, and explores how mass violence against civilians fundamentally reshaped societies on both sides of the emerging Iron Curtain. The early Cold War years continued to be marked by the extreme forms of violence known from the wartime years, and the class will explore the concept of postwar Europe as a 'savage continent', and analyse the significance of various theories of brutalisation. It examines postwar conflicts over the meaning of justice, retribution and victimhood, and traces different forms of violence that emerged from these disagreements in both Western and Eastern Europe.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Have a detailed knowledge of the main themes in the subject, together with a very close knowledge of the areas selected for essay and presentation work
• 2. Trace the changing nature of, and approaches to, mass violence and everyday violence in mid-twentieth-century Europe, and an in-depth understanding of how the 1940s shaped European history in crucial ways

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Analyse the key developments in the social and cultural history of the 1940s
• 4. Handle profoundly different approaches to the microhistory of violence and reflect on the complexity of interpretation in regard to highly politicised contemporary periods
• 5. Understand and deploy complex historical concepts which frame the history of WWII in Europe and its legacy

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 6. Independently study and also work within a group, including the presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 7. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 8. Present arguments orally, and to work in a group

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• War, society and everyday life: historiographical approaches
• The summer of 1940: Volkergemeinschaft and limitations of racial utopias
• Germany's allies: Living in the age of Axis internationalism
• Anatomy of collaboration and collaborationism
• War of annihilation: Soviet experiences of invasion and occupation
• Wars within wars in the borderlands: 'Bloodlands' in a European perspective
• The economics of destruction: the peculiar case of forced labourers
• Resistance: France, Italy and the Balkans
• Ivan's and Tommy's war: Soldiers and partisans  
• Everyday life under occupation: opposition, surveillance and participation
• The Final Solution: Orchestration, administration, execution
• The Final Solution: Experiencing genocide
• Civil wars:  Yugoslavia as the microcosm of Europe
• War as a social revolution
• The savage continent: vengeance, justice and retribution of 1945
• Violent peace: ethnic cleansing and re-settlement
• Political violence and social reform: survivors, policemen, Communists
• Heroes in disgrace: Resistance veterans and the reconstruction of Europe
• Revolutionary justice: Experiences of Sovietization in the East

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

The re-assessment consists of a 3,000 word essay and 2-hour exam, as in the original assessment, but replaces participation in the group presentation with a written script that could be delivered in such a presentation and which is the equivalent of 10 minutes of speech.

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

• Mark Mazower, Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis ruled Europe.
• Holly Case, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European idea during World War II.
• Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War: Life and death in the Red Army, 1939-1945.
• Tomislav Dulic, Utopias of Nation: Local mass killing in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1941-1942.
• Karel Berkhoff, Harvest of despair: Life and death in Ukraine under Nazi rule.
• Stathis Kalyvas, The logic of violence in civil wars.
• Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist and Alexander Martin, eds, The Holocaust in the East: Local perpetrators and Soviet responses.
• Christopher Browning, Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi slave-labor camp.
• Zygmunt Klukowski, Diary from the Years of Occupation, 1939-1943.
• Jochen Hellbeck, Stalingrad: The city that defeated the Third Reich (and website facingstalingrad.com).
• Michael Ebner, Ordinary violence in Mussolini's Italy.
• Jan Gross, Neighbors: The destruction of the Jewish community in Jedwabne, Poland.
• Robert Gildea, Anette Warring and Olivier Wieviorka (eds.), Surviving Hitler and Mussolini: Daily Life in Occupied Europe.
• Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941-1945: The German Troops and the Barbarization of Warfare.
• Davide Rodogno, Fascism's European Empire: Italian occupation during the Second World War.
• Istvan Deak, Jan Gross and Tony Judt, eds, The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath.
• Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956.
• Ben Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War.
• Megan Koreman, The Expectation of Justice: France, 1944-46.

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=7011

Key words search

Fascism, Nazi occupation, violence, resistance, soldiers, civil war