From its earliest years, South Australia was the most German of the Australian colonies.

As they contributed to the founding and consolidation of a British colony, Germans observed the processes of dispossession and subjugation that changed the lives of First Nations peoples around them forever. More than that, they participated in those profound and tragic changes. Importantly, German settlers and visitors left behind records of the events they witnessed.

This volume collects those precious records and makes them available - most for the first time in English - to a modern Australian readership. It charts the course of German-Australian encounters from first contacts, through the ruptures and violence of a relentlessly expanding European presence and into the twentieth century. As it documents the astounding cultural wealth and complexity of Indigenous peoples under siege, it also lays bare the grim logic of the forces driving their world towards destruction.

(Greek edition of Battle on 42nd Street)

Σε ποιο σημείο η θέληση για επιβίωση έδωσε τη θέση της στη δίψα για αίμα; Η Μάχη της
Κρήτης ήταν μία από τις πιο θεαματικές στρατιωτικές εκστρατείες του 20ου αιώνα. Για πρώ-
τη φορά στην ιστορία, οι γερμανικές δυνάμεις διεξήγαγαν μία εισβολή εξ ολοκλήρου από τον
αέρα ενώ οι ανεπαρκώς εξοπλισμένοι Αυστραλοί, Νεοζηλανδοί, Βρετανοί και Έλληνες στρα-
τιώτες, μαζί με τους ντόπιους Κρητικούς υπεράσπιζαν το νησί.
Μία μάχη εξέχει για την αγριότητά της στη διάρκεια της εκστρατείας. Όταν οι Γερμανοί προ-
σέγγισαν την αμυντική γραμμή των Συμμάχων –γνωστή ως η 42η Οδός- στις 27 Μαΐου 1941,
οι άνδρες των αυστραλιανών ταγμάτων 2/7 και 2/8, οι Νεοζηλανδοί από διάφορα τάγματα,
και οι Βρετανοί στρατιώτες εξαπέλυσαν μία τρομερή έφοδο με εφ’ όπλου λόγχη.
Στο τέλος, το πεδίο της μάχης απέμεινε σπαρμένο με πτώματα. Αργότερα, ένας Γερμανός
γιατρός θα ανέφερε ότι πολλά από τα πτώματα των Γερμανών στρατιωτών είχαν ακρωτηρια-
στεί. Ο διακεκριμένος ιστορικός Peter Monteath μελετά σε βάθος τα αρχεία και τις αναμνή-
σεις των Αυστραλών, Νεοζηλανδών, Βρετανών, Γερμανών και Κρητικών με σκοπό να απο-
καλύψει την αλήθεια πίσω από μια από τις πιο φρικτές μάχες του Β΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου.

Translated by: Yannis Chronopoulos

Questo libro racconta le vicende di Johnny Peck, un ragazzo australiano che, a 17 anni, falsificò la sua data di nascita per arruolarsi, diventando così soldato di fanteria del 2/7° Battaglione dell’esercito inglese. Fu gettato per la prima volta in battaglia contro le forze italiane in Africa occidentale; seguirono le campagne contro la Wehrmacht e la Luftwaffe hitleriane in Grecia. Quando Creta cadde in mano ai tedeschi, alla fine di maggio del 1941, Peck rimase intrappolato sull’isola con centinaia di altri uomini e fu fatto prigioniero prima dai tedeschi e poi dagli italiani. Trasferito in un carcere piemontese, venne liberato in seguito all’Armistizio del 1943, e da allora si dedicò ad aiutare i prigionieri di guerra evasi ad attraversare le Alpi per mettersi in salvo. Catturato ancora una volta, Peck fu condannato a morte e detenuto nella prigione di San Vittore a Milano, gestita dalla Gestapo, fino a quando non riuscì a fuggire nuovamente, questa volta in Svizzera.

Translated by: Annalisa Marchianò

Before the Japanese Imperial Navy Air Service staged its surprise strike on Pearl Harbor, Miyakatsu Koike lived the privileged life of a Japanese expatriate in the Dutch East Indies. Through the working week he was a conscientious employee of the Yokohama Specie Bank in Surabaya. The rest of his time he could devote to playing golf and tennis, to indulging his hobby photography, and to exploring Java with his wife Fumiko. When his countrymen committed themselves to the 'Greater East Asia War', however, that world came to an abrupt and painful end.

Four Years in a Red Coat presents for the first time in English translation Miyakatsu Koike's wartime diary. It is a keenly observed record of his arrest, his hellish voyage to distant South Australia, his endurance of years in the Loveday Internment Camp, and his return ultimately to a war-ravaged homeland. More than that, it is a testament to one man's calmly stoic triumph over sustained adversity. The scars of his war are indelible, yet Koike emerges from it with his humanity not just intact but enhanced.

Auch 50 Jahre nach Ausbruch des Spanischen Bürgerkrieges erweist sich die Forschung zur Spanienkriegsliteratur als lückenhaft. Dieses Buch versucht, zwei Forschungslücken zu schliessen. Im I. Teil wird erstmalig die Literatur aus dem Dritten Reich zum Krieg untersucht. Der II. Teil besteht aus einer Bibliographie der internationalen Spanienkriegsliteratur, deren ca. 1300 Titel politisch-publizistische, belletristische, historisch-fachwissenschaftliche wie auch literaturwissenschaftliche Werke zum Krieg bzw. zur Kriegsliteratur umfassen.

This book examines the international literature of the Spanish Civil War across the entire range of the political spectrum, from anarchism to nazism. Using this approach, it is able to highlight the extraordinary creative potential of a period in which political and aesthetic practice were almost inseparable.

It is widely recognised that there was an extraordinarily high level of political commitment in the literature of the 1930s in general, and of the Spanish Civil War in particular. Writers as well as the general public seemed to interpret the world very much in political terms, and they sought in political ideologies, such as fascism and communism, the answers to the pressing problems of the age. Writing the Good Fight examines the fiction, non-fictional prose texts, poetry, and drama of the period across the entire range of the political spectrum to assess the impact of political commitment on literature.

Diese Sammlung bietet eine breit angelegte Neubewertung des Lebens und der historischen Rolle von Ernst Thälmann, dem Vorsitzenden der Deutschen Kommunistischen Partei in der Zeit 1925 bis zu seiner Verhaftung von den Nazis 1933. Eine bedeutende Figur zu Lebzeiten - Thälmann war KPD-Fährer während einer schicksalsschweren Zeit in der deutschen Geschichte - Thälmanns politische Rolle war keinesfalls auf die Zeit vor seinem Mord im Jahr 1944 begrenzt. In der DDR wurde er zum unangreifbaren Märtyrer im antifaschistischen Kampf erhoben.

Die Beiträge in der ersten Hälfte des Bandes unternehmen anhand erst neulich zugänglicher Materialien aus den Archiven eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit der historischen Figur Thälmann, von seiner Jugend bis hin zu seiner Haftzeit. In der zweiten Hälfte richtet sich das Augenmerk auf die politisch motivierte Bildung und Instrumentalisierung des Thälmann-Mythos in der offiziellen Geschichtsschreibung, im Film, in Denkmälern und in der Kunst der DDR.

Der Band wird allen Wissenschaftlern, die auf den Gebieten moderne deutsche Geschichte und Geschichte der DDR arbeiten, von Interesse sein.

This collection offers a wide-ranging re-evaluation of the life and the influence of Ernst Thälmann, the leader of the German Communist Party from 1925 through to his arrest and imprisonment by the Nazis in 1933. Significant in the context of his own life-time - Thälmann was KPD leader through a fateful period of German history - Thälmann's political influence was by no means confined to the period before his murder in 1944. In the GDR he was promoted to the status of unassailable martyr to the antifascist cause.

The contributions in the first half of the volume re-examine critically and on the basis of newly accessible archival material the historical figure of Thälmann, from his early years through to the period of his incarceration. The second half of the collection then turns to the GDR's politically motivated creation and manipulation of the Thälmann myth, as it found representation in official history, in film and in art.

The volume will be of interest to scholars working in the area of modern German or East German history.

This bibliography is the first attempt to establish a comprehensive list of secondary material relating to the Spanish Civil War in literature, film, and art. It includes books, articles, and chapters in a wide range of languages, including Spanish, English, Russian, French, German, and Italian.

Monteath begins the work with an introductory essay surveying the breadth of the scholarship on the cultural manifestations of the war, which he places in its broader cultural-historical context. The bibliography is organized alphabetically within sections devoted to literature, film, and art, and a general subject index completes the work. Anyone interested in the fiction of Hemingway, the film of Ivens, the art of Picasso, and many of the key figures in Western culture of the 1930s will find this work of value.

The fall of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989 signalled the beginning of the end of a divided Germany. More than any other event, it also symbolised the end of the so-called postwar era. The period in which not just European but global politics had been framed by the Cold War and the East-West divide was consigned to the past, to be replaced by an era whose contours have not yet clearly formed. The essays collected here offer a sober, informed, and stimulating reassessment of Germany and its past by internationally recognised scholars working from within and outside the new Germany. They all proceed from the recognition that the perspective from which the German past is viewed has changed irrevocably. Unification meant that the German Democratic Republic became history and its history, historiography, and its collapse are re-evaluated. The essays examine the possibility of history being used, and possibly abused, in the service of the creation of a new national identity and question the legitimacy of the notion of Germany having followed a "special path" of development?one that could hardly be viewed positively in the wake of the Third Reich?but which suggested that Germany had claims to being a "normal nation." They then go on to consider some of the radical changes to the institutional circumstances within which history is practiced in the united Germany.

In the wake of the break-up of the Soviet Empire in Europe’s East, and at a time of  hesitant steps toward a supranational Europe in the West, questions of identity have been raised with an urgency recalling more troubled periods of European modernity. Then, as now, it was history that provided the architects of identity with their building blocks. Will the structures built with such blocks prove any more solid in the next millennium?

This collection unites wide-ranging essays by scholars from many countries dealing with histories and identities in Europe from the French Revolution to the present. From multiple perspectives they cast light on some of European history’s enduring controversies as well as introduce some new ones.