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For most of the population of Europe and East and Southeast Asia, the most persistent and significant aspect of their experience of the Second World War was that of occupation by one or more of the Axis powers. In this ambitious and wide-ranging study, Aviel Roshwald brings us the first single-authored, comparative treatment of European and Asian responses to German and Japanese occupation during the war. He illustrates how patriotic, ethno-national, and internationalist identities were manipulated, exploited, reconstructed and reinvented as a result of the wholesale dismantling of states and redrawing of borders. Using eleven case studies from across the two continents, he examines how behavioral choices around collaboration and resistance were conditioned by existing identities or loyalties as well as by short-term cost–benefit calculations, opportunism, or coercion.
‘Wide-ranging while sharply focused, limpidly written while attuned to complexity and nuance, this confident comparative study of European and Asian societies’ reactions to Axis occupation should be read by anyone interested in 20th-century global history.’
Sophie De Schaepdrijver - Penn State University
‘The topic of wartime occupation remains fascinating and controversial, but there has been little study to date of where the European and East Asian experiences resembled each other or differed. Aviel Roshwald breaks new ground by examining occupation in wartime Greece, Italy and France and providing parallels with China and Thailand. This is comparative history at its most stimulating and suggestive.’
Rana Mitter - University of Oxford
‘A masterful synthesis of the Axis occupations and a true global history of World War II. Told with great clarity and interpretive verve, this book makes sense of the diversity of political responses to wartime occupation across Europe and Asia. A must-read!’
Jeremy A. Yellen - The Chinese University of Hong Kong
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