Unborn in the USA: Inside the War on Abortion

Unborn in the USA traces the activities of antiabortion activistsin thirty-five states, documenting a range of antichoice activism,from exhibiting photo displays of aborted fetuses to a folkartist who creates life-sized sculptures of fetuses at variousdevelopmental stages. It offers only one side in the abortionwar—those opposed to the procedure—and only thosewho attempt to derail support for abortion by presenting imagesof aborted fetuses, even though, curiously, the     

Chicanas in Charge: Texas Women in the Public Arena

Chicanas in Charge is a collection of individual profiles ofsignificant women in Texas politics and activism from the 1940sto the present. The book is arranged in four parts—"Adelitas:Warrior Trailblazers," "The Chicano Movement Activists," "Puentesy Lazos: The Hispanic Connectors," and "Twenty-first CenturyEntorchas/Torchbearers." Each part features a short introductionthat identifies the period's historical zeitgeist, identifiessimilar themes in the women's stories, and points out uniqueaspects of the leaders followed by from five to eight individualprofiles. The profiles of each woman are somewhat concise: they includea sketch of the background     

'For a Genuine and Noble Nakedness'? German Naturism in the Third Reich

This essay, based on primary sources from the privately-runInternationale FKK-Bibliothek and a growing body of secondaryliterature, examines some of the myths and misconceptions regardingthe fate of naturism in the Third Reich. It shows that despiteGoering's decree of 3 March 1933, which described the ‘nakedculture movement’ as ‘one of the greatest dangersfor German culture and morality’, naturism did not cometo an abrupt halt after the Machtergreifung. While officialhistories of German naturism talk proudly of the movement's‘persecution’ and ‘non-violent resistance’,there was little concerted effort to close down naturist associationsor to arrest individual activists. In fact, without a definitiveorder from the Führer, Germany's naturists existed in asemi-legal limbo for much of the 1930s. Many National Socialistsregarded the clothes-free lifestyle with contempt, but therewere elements within the Nazi state—and particularly theSS—which could see significant benefits from celebrating‘the instinct for bodily nobility and its beauty in ourVolk’. A mutual desire to de-eroticize nudity helped cementthe bond between Heydrich, Himmler and naturist leaders. Asa result, German Freikörperkultur passed some of its mostimportant landmarks in the years of Nazi rule, including itsvery first book with photographs in full colour, a full-lengthfeature film, and a new, more permissive Bathing Law. Thus whileGeorge Mosse's Nationalism and Sexuality claims the Nazis ‘forbadenudism after their accession to power’, a closer examinationof the fate of naturism after 1933 reveals a more complex picture,which serves to highlight not only the limits of the régime'stotalitarian aspirations, but also the naturist movement's owndisparate and problematic heritage.     

Renewing the Countryside: Wisconsin

New York's junior senator Hillary Clinton, around this timelast decade, gave a speech entitled "It Takes a Village to Raisea Child," which became a book, It Takes a Village and OtherLessons Children Teach Us (1994). As I read Renewing the CountrysideWisconsin—both the profiles of the local, regional, andcommunity businesses and organizations and the afterword explaininghow Wisconsin's contribution to the      

Touch and Go

"Oh, to be remembered—isn’t that what this is allabout?" (216). This, claims historian, actor, radio and televisionpioneer Terkel, is the source of his success as an oral historian:logorrhea—the inability to stop talking. And yet Terkel'smemoir, written in collaboration with his longtime friend andassociate Lewis, is nothing short of incredible in its representationas The Oral History of The Oral Historian. Terkel's mesmerizingrecollection of everything from the history of silent filmsto Chicago politics and the impact of reality television, writtenat the age of ninety-four, is a unique and pioneering text. Touch and Go is in effect the     

The Annaberg as a German--Polish Lieu de Memoire

This essay analyses a fiercely contested transnational lieude mémoire in twentieth-century Polish—German history:the Annaberg. Historiography has thus far largely neglectedthe role played by this ‘holy mountain’ of UpperSilesia, a symbol that has stood at the heart of a number ofcompeting identity-forging narratives. The competition overthe Annaberg as a site for multiple collective memories occurredon three distinct but often overlapping levels: first betweennation-states, secondly between ideological camps, and thirdlybetween national- and local-level actors. Drawing on a substantialbody of primary sources, this article contributes both to thescholarly investigation of a political myth that cast a longshadow over German—Polish relations and to the growingacademic interest in transnational ‘realms of memory’.     

Growth Cultures: the global bioeconomy and its bioregions * Philip Cooke

As a consequence of reviewing books for journals, I now readacknowledgements and prefaces with a degree of interest thatis perhaps unwarranted by normal standards, but which I havefound increasingly important when seeking to understand whathas inspired scholars in their work and how they develop theirideas. This is especially evident in Phil Cooke's new book GrowthCultures that brings together several years worth of researchon the bioeconomy—as the commercial exploitation of thelife sciences is now commonly defined. It is well worth readingthe preface to this volume to ground the rest of the book inthe evolving thinking about this important ‘industry’. Growth Cultures collects together in one volume much of Cooke'sprolific output from the late 1990s onwards     

Commerce before crusade? France, the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates (1661-1669)

French and Islamic forces clashed with an unprecedented frequencyduring the first decade of Louis XIV's personal rule. This articleexamines France's troubled relations with the Ottoman Empireand the Barbary States in the 1660s, with the aim of sheddinglight on the real motives of Louis XIV in sending his forcesagainst those of the ‘Infidel’. It finds that farfrom having a single policy towards their Muslim neighboursin the Mediterranean, the French government's behaviour wasin fact characterized by chronic inconsistency. In essence,French strategy was driven by the Bourbon government's long-termobjective of developing commerce in the eastern and southernMediterranean, but this programme of commercial expansion wasfrustrated—and repeatedly jeopardized—by issuesof power politics, in particular the king's avid pursuit ofprestige and personal gloire.     

Agents of casualization? The temporary staffing industry and labour market restructuring in Australia

This article presents a study of the Australian temporary staffingindustry. It explores how temporary staffing markets are manufacturedthrough the interactions between industrial relations and regulatorysystems, on the one hand, and the structures and strategiesof domestic and transnational temporary staffing agencies onthe other. The article draws on secondary datasets and semi-structuredinterviews with government departments, labour unions, staffingagencies and their trade bodies to analyse the size, structureand characteristics of the Australian temporary staffing market.It argues that the Australian market differs in important waysfrom those other ‘neoliberal’ labour market regimes—suchas those in Canada, UK and USA—with which it is oftencompared. The article argues for an approach that seeks to explorethe (often gradual) mutual transformation of temporary staffingorganizations and the institutional and regulatory systems inwhich they are embedded, rather than privileging one at theexpense of the other.     

The Joint Polish--German Commission for the Revision of School Textbooks and Polish Views of German History

The Joint Polish–German Commission for the Revision ofSchool Textbooks was set up in 1972, bringing together historiansfrom Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany in view of reopeninga scholarly dialogue after decades of almost complete noncommunication.Until the late 1980s, the commission played a prominent roleas a forum for cross-national discussions on Polish-German Beziehungsgeschichte,and most of the leading Polish experts in German history participatedin its proceedings. For the development of Polish historiographyon Germany the work of the commission seems to have been relevantin at least two respects. The commission's regular conferenceson controversial or methodologically complex issues of Polish-GermanBeziehungsgeschichte contributed, on the one hand, to defininga new agenda for Polish historiography on Germany. The interestin explicitly comparative approaches to German and Polish historyincreased, and the focus shifted from specifically ‘Polishinterests’ in German history to more general issues. Onthe other hand, these conferences provided Polish historianswith the opportunity to make their research more visible toGerman historians (even outside the field of specialised EastEuropeanists)—a fact that encouraged Polish historiographyon Germany to pursue more ambitious tasks.     

The Tolsdorff Trials in Traunstein: Public and Judicial Attitudes to the Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic, 1954-60

This article uses the prosecution of former GeneralleutnantTheodor Tolsdorff before the Landgericht Traunstein on threeseparate occasions (June 1954, September 1958 and May/June 1960)as a means of examining both press and judicial attitudes towardsthe Wehrmacht in the Federal Republic from 1954 to 1960. Whatis most surprising about the case is that, while the press reactionsto the first hearing in June 1954 were uniformly critical ofthe guilty verdict, the first retrial in September 1958 provokedattacks on the accused in newspapers, and the abandonment ofthe case under the provisions of the Amnesty Law provoked intensecriticism of the court. The reasons for the differing reactionsin June 1954 and September 1958 are not only to be sought inthe fact that the 1958 verdict came shortly after the closeof the Ulmer Einsatzgruppenprozeβ, but rather in the upsurgein anti-militarism which occurred between September 1954 andFebruary 1955 and the effects on public opinion of the 1957Schörner trial in Munich. When examined against the backgroundof the 1957 Schörner trial and the 1959 Manteuffel trial,the Tolsdorff case indicates not only that attitudes towardsthe Wehrmacht became much more critical during the second halfof the 1950s, but also that these three ‘generals’trials' were part of a broader pattern of proceedings for ‘crimesof the final period’ which played an important psychologicalpart in paving the way for a more honest confrontation withthe mass murder committed during the Third Reich.     

Secrets, Lies, and Misremembering: Take II

In the editing of Sticking to the Union: An Oral History ofthe Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila, discrepancies emergedbetween what Ruuttila told author Sandy Polishuk and what others—inparticular her brother—had to say. Polishuk was forcedto figure out which version she believed and to understand whyRuuttilla had told her what she had when it did not appear accurate.It then became Polishuk's responsibility to inform readers whereRuuttila was embellishing, as well as why she did so. Ruuttilawrote fiction and poetry, and on at least one occasion the authorbelieves she used her fiction as the basis for a story she toldabout herself. The author feels it possible to honor her storyand to tell it and, when necessary, let readers know where Ruuttilaembroidered and where she just plain made it up.     

Commemoration versus Vergangenheitsbewaltigung: Contextualizing Austria's Gedenkjahr 2005

This essay explores the politics of memory in post-1945 Austrianpolitical culture, focusing on the shift between the fiftiethanniversary of the Anschluss and the sixtieth anniversary ofthe end of the Second World War. Postwar Austrian society experienceda particular tension associated with the Nazi past, manifestedin communicative and cultural forms of memory. On the one hand,the support of many for the Third Reich—expressed throughactive or passive complicity—threatened to link Austriawith the perpetrator status reserved for German society. Onthe other, the Allies' Moscow Declaration (1943) created a mythof victimization by Germany that allowed Austrians to avoidconfronting difficult questions concerning the Nazi era. Consequently,discussion of Austrian involvement in National Socialism becamea taboo subject during the initial decades of the Second Republic.The 2005 commemoration is notable insofar as it marked a significantbreak with this taboo. New forms of cultural memory expressedin 2005 are examined here as the culmination of two things:first, criticism from the centre and left of the Austrian politicalspectrum that began during the Waldheim Affair of the mid-1980sand the 1988 commemoration; second, efforts by successive SocialDemocratic chancellors and certain federal party leaders, beginningin the early 1990s, to break the pervasive silence that madeVergangenheitsbewältigung difficult, and to challenge theAustrian right wing's glorification of elements of the Nazipast. This process included the novel step of acknowledgingthe Nazi skeletons in the Social Democratic Party's own cupboard.     

'Pomorze' or 'Preussen'? Polish Perspectives on Early Modern Prussian History

The attitudes of Polish historical scholarship towards the historyof early modern Prussia has been deeply marked by the partitionsof Poland and the anti-Polish coalition between Prussia, Russiaand Austria, which denied Poland its own statehood for wellover a century. In contrast to nineteenth-century German ‘Landesgeschichte’,which focused on local research and archival resources, historiansfrom Poland have usually opted to stay more within patternsof national history-writing. When the Polish state was reconstitutedafter the First World War, hostilities built up between Germanand Polish historical schools on Prussia, expressed in the NationalDemocratic-influenced myl zachodnia (Western thought) on thePolish side, and a not less expansionist Ostforschung on theother side of the border. It was only after the catastropheof the Second World War, the redrawing of national borders ineast central Europe, and under the influence of Marxist historicalconcepts in the People's Republic of Poland that nationalistapproaches as well as the ‘black legend’ of thePrussia's past were temporarily suppressed and finally replacedby a more research-led scholarship. During the second half ofthe twentieth century, Polish historiography was in fact muchquicker and more thorough than its German counterpart to forgethe history of Prussia into a major academic subject. Sincethe 1980s, if not earlier, an extremely fruitful dialogue hasdeveloped between scholars—a dialogue which does not alwayspenetrate journalistic and public awareness, as recent polemicssurrounding the controversially planned ‘Centre for Expulsions’in Berlin have shown.     

'Stop the Flapper Vote Folly': Lord Rothermere, the Daily Mail, and the Equalization of the Franchise 1927-28

This essay re-examines the Daily Mail's campaign in 1927–8against the Baldwin government's decision to equalize the franchiseby lowering the female voting age to 21. It argues that theMail's hostility to the ‘flapper vote’ was largelya product of the passionate anti-socialism of its proprietor,Lord Rothermere, and not, as has been suggested, the culminationof a decade of anti-feminism. Rothermere was convinced thatyoung women would vote overwhelmingly for the Labour Party andentrench it in government for a generation. But attacks on the‘flapper’ in 1927–8 were generally confinedto the paper's editorial and political columns, and contrastedwith the much more positive portrayal of young women that hadbeen typical of the Mail's output since 1918. The example ofthe Daily Express, which supported franchise equalization, isused to demonstrate that it was Rothermere's idiosyncratic politicalpinions, rather than the ‘typical’ anti-feminismof the Conservative press, that explained the Mail's stance.The article concludes that the gender discourse of interwarnewspapers has been unfairly stereotyped by historians, andthat media hostility to young, unmarried women in these yearshas been exaggerated.     

The Six Fevrier 1934 and the 'Survival' of the French Republic

The Paris riots of the six février 1934 are rememberedchiefly as the event that provided the initial spark and theeventual rationale for the anti-fascist Popular Front. However,most French historians have tended to downplay the importanceof the riots themselves, arguing that the Republic was not underserious threat, and that the Left at the time greatly exaggeratedthe danger. Indeed, the fact that the regime ‘survived’these events has often been cited as proof of its resilience,of France’s deep-rooted ‘democratic political culture’,and its inbuilt ‘immunity’ to fascism. This historiographicalreview argues that the standard interpretation of the six févrieris deeply flawed, especially in its tendency to deduce the intentionsof the actors from the outcome of the events. The six févrierconstituted a serious challenge to the regime, and created adangerously fluid situation in which a variety of ‘outcomes’became possible. It should be analysed not as a discrete andtemporally circumscribed event but as a key moment in an ongoingprocess of political radicalization on the French Right.     

Innovative Trends in Women's and Gender Studies of the National Socialist Era

The text is less a review of the new literature than a reflectionon significant and innovative current trends in the historiographyon women and gender in the National Socialist era. The firstpart deals with various women's activities within milieus andprofessions, including their room for manoeuvre: midwives, socialworkers, female Nazi functionaries, and female auxiliary workersof the Nazi Wehrmacht. The second part of the article addressesspecific features of biopolitics, targeted not only againstJews but also against asocial women, homosexuals and prostitutes.It also looks at visual images of bodies. Although the Nazistried to create strongly determined binaries to categorize ‘we’and ‘the others’ in the arts and other propagandamaterial, there existed, in fact, a broad spectrum of body images,especially among media stars. A third trend in the history ofthe Third Reich deals not only with the politics of exclusionbut also of inclusion, as found in the concept of Volksgemeinschaft(national community), a concept that had many facets, such asthe Volksfamilie, comradeship and home front. And it was themedia that had the task of ‘translating’ this conceptto the people in many appealing ways. The fourth part considersthe gendering of memories after 1945 and the dominance of malenarratives and points of view. The four parts of the articleare intended to contribute to intersectional history and thehistory of social engineering.     

Dog Wars and Human Rights: Perceptions of Political Despotism at the End of the Ancien Regime

During the political crisis in the Salzburg archiepiscopacyat the end of the eighteenth century there was an increase inthe number of violent clashes between huntsmen and poachersin the forest areas. The huntsmen exacerbated the anger of therural communities by shooting dead any farm dogs they foundrunning free. The farmers, for their part, ignored the decreewhich had been in force since the sixteenth century that theyshould either chain their dogs up or restrict their freedomwith a Knüppel, a large piece of wood attached to the neckto hinder their chasing after game. These attacks by the huntsmenwere felt by the peasants to be an arbitrary abuse of politicalpower, and a threat to their farms. They were angered both thatthis limited the ability of the dogs to do their duty in guardingthe farms, and also by the way the dogs' natural guarding instinctswere being undermined. They thought of men and their animalsas different creatures, but they were forced to acknowledgethat the restriction of the dogs' freedom was also an attempton their own liberty. The Dog Wars crystallized a conflict aroundtraditional feudal symbols of subjugation. They show how theimages that the ruling and the ruled had of each other beganto crumble and give way to mutual mistrust. The Salzburg farmershad no need of revolutionary agitators to see that the archiepiscopalstate was moribund. They had their own yardsticks, first andforemost poaching, with which to measure the effective limitsset to their freedom by the state. They were not party to thecontemporary intellectual debates on human rights, but the violenceto their dogs was a clear sign to them of the revolutionaryspirit of the times. The notion of human rights did not enjoylinear growth, but itself progressed by way of conflict. Andthis notion should not be limited to the human condition only—itmust be extrapolated beyond the ideological fixations of thenineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the context of the historyof dogs—man's longest-standing companion, after all—‘human’rights take on a different hue, relativized and yet somehowmore clearly defined.