Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima: Historians and the Second World War, 1945-1990

By Richard J.B. Bosworth

Book Overview

Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima explores the way in which the main combatant societies of the Second World War have historicised that experience. Since 1945, debates in Germany about the past that would not fade away' have been reasonably well-known. But in this book, Richard Bosworth maintains that Germany is not unique. He argues that in Britain, France, Italy, the USSR and Japan, as well as in Germany the traumatic history of the long Second World War' has remained crucial to the culture and the politics of post-war societies. Each has felt a compelling need to interpret this past event and thus to explain' Auschwitz' and Hiroshima'. Bosworth explores the bitter controversies that have developed around a particular interpretation of the war, such as disputes over A.J.P. Taylor's, Origins of the Second World War, Marcel Ophul's film, The Sorrow and the Pity, Renzo De Felice's biography of Mussolini in the 1970s or in post- Glasnost debates about the historiographies of the Commonwealth of Independent States. Richard Bosworth's book is a wide-ranging and thoughtful excursion into comparative history.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 041510923X
• ISBN13: 9780415109239
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 1.18 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Eye opening

I had the privilege of taking an undergraduate history course taught by Richard Bosworth in 1988. This book is based on a part of that course, but was only published some years later. It is a book about historiography, that is, about the writing of history. It is not about chronology. It is a country-specific survey of the way historians, journalists, novelists, film-makers, politicians and others have thought of and portrayed the Second World War and their country's role in it. It is beautifully written, provocative, amusing and totally absorbing - not at all what you might expect of a "textbook". You do not need a detailed knowledge of the history of the war or of any particular country to appreciate it. It has been on my bookshelf for many years now and I have come back to it again and again, sometimes for a chapter, sometimes to re-read it cover-to-cover.