Even more than seventy years after the Second World War, German exile literature continues to wait with surprises. This is true in particular for the estates of those writers who fled across less 'privileged' routes to remote places such as Shanghai. Mark Siegelberg (1895–1986) was one of them. The nowadays almost forgotten Austrian Jewish journalist, novelist and playwright set out on the long route to East Asia in 1939, after being released from Buchenwald concentration camp, where he had been interned the previous year. His Shanghai period lasted until the beginning of December 1941, when he was evacuated to Australia. His final destination of exile was Melbourne; there he would live for 27 years before returning to Austria in 1968. Siegelberg deserves distinction as the only German-language author who ever addressed the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7th, 1941 as the topic of a literary work, and, moreover, as one who did so in the immediacy of the historic events on the Pacific Front. The unique result of this commitment is the play Das zweite Gesicht/The Face of Pearl Harbor (1942). The piece, in which Siegelberg displays a complex world political scenario against the backdrop of the militarized city of Shanghai held in check by the Japanese, attests to the author's indignation over the escalation of violence in East Asia during the turbulent phase leading up to the outbreak of the Pacific War. While an English translation of the piece appeared in Australia in 1944, supposedly as an anti-Japanese propaganda initiative, the original text in German is published in this volume for the very first time.
Even more than seventy years after the Second World War, German exile literature continues to wait with surprises. This is true in particular for the estates of those writers who fled across less 'privileged' routes to remote places such as Shanghai. Mark Siegelberg (1895–1986) was one of them. The nowadays almost forgotten Austrian Jewish journalist, novelist and playwright set out on the long route to East Asia in 1939, after being released from Buchenwald concentration camp, where he had been interned the previous year. His Shanghai period lasted until the beginning of December 1941, when he was evacuated to Australia. His final destination of exile was Melbourne; there he would live for 27 years before returning to Austria in 1968. Siegelberg deserves distinction as the only German-language author who ever addressed the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7th, 1941 as the topic of a literary work, and, moreover, as one who did so in the immediacy of the historic events on the Pacific Front. The unique result of this commitment is the play Das zweite Gesicht/The Face of Pearl Harbor (1942). The piece, in which Siegelberg displays a complex world political scenario against the backdrop of the militarized city of Shanghai held in check by the Japanese, attests to the author's indignation over the escalation of violence in East Asia during the turbulent phase leading up to the outbreak of the Pacific War. While an English translation of the piece appeared in Australia in 1944, supposedly as an anti-Japanese propaganda initiative, the original text in German is published in this volume for the very first time.
A groundbreaking interpretation of the intellectual origins of the United Nations No Enchanted Palace traces the origins and early development of the United Nations, one of the most influential yet perhaps least understood organizations active in the world today. Acclaimed historian Mark Mazower forces us to set aside the popular myth that the UN miraculously rose from the ashes of World War II as the guardian of a new and peaceful global order, offering instead a strikingly original interpretation of the UN's ideological roots, early history, and changing role in world affairs. Mazower brings the founding of the UN brilliantly to life. He shows how the UN's creators envisioned a world organization that would protect the interests of empire, yet how this imperial vision was decisively reshaped by the postwar reaffirmation of national sovereignty and the unanticipated rise of India and other former colonial powers. This is a story told through the clash of personalities, such as South African statesman Jan Smuts, who saw in the UN a means to protect the old imperial and racial order; Raphael Lemkin and Joseph Schechtman, Jewish intellectuals at odds over how the UN should combat genocide and other atrocities; and Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, who helped transform the UN from an instrument of empire into a forum for ending it. A much-needed historical reappraisal of the early development of this vital world institution, No Enchanted Palace reveals how the UN outgrew its origins and has exhibited an extraordinary flexibility that has enabled it to endure to the present day.
A majestic narrative reckoning with the forces that have shaped the nature and destiny of the world’s governing institutions The story of global cooperation is a tale of dreamers goading us to find common cause in remedying humanity’s worst problems. But international institutions are also tools for the powers that be to advance their own interests. Mark Mazower’s Governing the World tells the epic, two-hundred-year story of that inevitable tension—the unstable and often surprising alchemy between ideas and power. From the rubble of the Napoleonic empire in the nineteenth century through the birth of the League of Nations and the United Nations in the twentieth century to the dominance of global finance at the turn of the millennium, Mazower masterfully explores the current era of international life as Western dominance wanes and a new global balance of powers emerges.
Draw ing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research, Hitler?s Empire sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion?and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain. Yet the Nazis? lack of political sophistication left them unequal to the task of ruling what their armies had conquered, despite a shocking level of cooperation from the overwhelmed countries. A work as authoritative as it is unique, Hitler?s Empire is a surprising?and controversial? new appraisal of the Third Reich?s rise and ultimate fall.
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