Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Extremely violent societies
- Part I Participatory violence
- Part II The crisis of society
- 4 From rivalries between elites to a crisis of society: Mass violence and famine in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1971–77
- 5 Sustainable violence: Strategic resettlement, militias, and ‘development’ in anti-guerrilla warfare
- 6 What connects the fate of different victim groups? The German occupation and Greek society in crisis
- Part III General observations
- Notes
- Index
6 - What connects the fate of different victim groups? The German occupation and Greek society in crisis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction: Extremely violent societies
- Part I Participatory violence
- Part II The crisis of society
- 4 From rivalries between elites to a crisis of society: Mass violence and famine in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1971–77
- 5 Sustainable violence: Strategic resettlement, militias, and ‘development’ in anti-guerrilla warfare
- 6 What connects the fate of different victim groups? The German occupation and Greek society in crisis
- Part III General observations
- Notes
- Index
Summary
The fact that there are a variety of victimized groups in one country – which is a key trait of an extremely violent society – suggests that there are complex interlocking processes at work. While Chapter 4 on East Pakistan/Bangladesh arguably dealt with violence within one country and Chapter 5 on anti-guerrilla warfare placed less emphasis on the diversity of victims, this chapter is a brief study of the impact of imperialist violence on various groups. It examines the influence of foreign aggression on a society already ridden by political, ethnic, and social conflicts. It exemplifies relationships between the persecutions of multiple victims by glancing at one of the countries most thoroughly devastated by German policies and actions in World War II – Greece. On one level, this revolves around the German treatment of various collectivities; however, Axis violence and the extraction of resources aggravated conflicts among the local population which led to infighting during famine and finally to civil war, aside from armed resistance against the invaders from Bulgaria, Italy, and, from 1942, also from Germany. This crisis of Greek society in the early 1940s can be related to upheavals stretching from the Balkan Wars of 1912–13 to the end of the military dictatorship in 1974. I try to point to these long-term processes and conflicts in the final section, but begin with some general observations on the multitude of victims of German policies.
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- Information
- Extremely Violent SocietiesMass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World, pp. 235 - 252Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010