Why do ordinary individuals participate in mass violence perpetrated against civilians? That is the question I will attempt to answer in the following paper. I consider these men ordinary to the extent that the majority was not socially deviant. Looking at the case of Nazi Germany, two groups stand out as good case studies: the SS Einsatzgruppen and the SS cadres in the Death camps. The following analysis will focus on the motivations of these men to commit mass murder. I argue for a causal sequence of action, beginning with the onset of Nazi ideology, further followed by the dehumanization of the victim and the brutalization of the perpetrator. I will demonstrate how the ideology present during German interwar society influenced these men into participation. Dehumanization and brutalization are complimentary factors that push these men into action.

My novel The Heaven I Swallowed tells the story of Grace Teresa Mary McAllister, a World War II widow who decides to “save” a young Aboriginal girl, Mary, by adopting her into her home, believing she will be able to redeem the child by giving her all the benefits of white society. In Part I of the novel Mary arrives and it soon becomes obvious that her presence is bringing back the deceptions in Grace’s past. In Part II five years have passed and Grace is struggling to cope with the way she treated Mary. Exploring the myth of “for their own good” The Heaven I Swallowed is a tale of the Stolen Generations, told from the perspective of the white perpetrator. The exegesis accompanying the novel, ‘Whose Shoes? Writing The Heaven I Swallowed’, is also divided into two parts. Part I traces my awareness of the Stolen Generation stories and the reasoning behind the decision to narratively take the perspective of a white woman who steals an Aboriginal child. In Part II, I turn to two contemporary literary texts – Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and Gail Jones’s Sorry – to examine different strategies that the non-indigenous writer might employ to counter-act stereotypical representation of Aboriginality. Further analysis of the novel in the lead up to the final draft is then aided by another two texts: Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well and Joyce Carol Oates’s Black Girl/ White Girl. Using these as models – one in regards to a Gothic re-rendering of the work and the other in regards to the depiction of ambiguous race relations – I find a way to reconcile myself with the representation of Aboriginality in The Heaven I Swallowed. Finally, I come to the conclusion that the novelist might often travel a great deal away from their original intent but that these footsteps have to be taken to ensure motivations are justified and one’s conscience is at ease. / Thesis (Ph.D. ) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

'Hungry Ghosts' is an account of thirty-six hours of a young woman's life following her arrival in Singapore. Sarah, the protagonist of the novel, is accompanying her partner Paul on a business conference. It is increasingly apparent that Sarah's motives for leaving her home town, Adelaide, have more to do with her need to escape than her commitment to Paul. A room in an international hotel offers Sarah the comforts of a cocoon, where signs of previous occupation and ties to the past are erased on a daily basis. But Sarah is obviously dislocated from her surroundings, which are in turn out of step with the external environment: the air-conditioning is freezing; the orchids are plastic and nod in an artificial breeze. In this sterile environment Sarah is troubled by flashbacks of what she has left behind. Sarah begins to emerge from her cocoon, venturing into a big city that, for her, could be anywhere. She recognizes places generic to big cities as well as a few unique landmarks, becoming aware of the continual and universal tensions of progress and the past. In this way the novel becomes a study of the role of memory, ghosts and the absent dead, all of which play a part in informing Sarah's present and her understanding of the future. At the hotel Sarah encounters a group of war ‘pilgrims'. A mother, her son Bradley and an elderly British Army Major are all on a 'pilgrimage', and, in their different ways, all trying to make peace with the past and its insatiable ghosts. As Sarah learns their stories and witnesses the battles they wage, she is forced to challenge her own beliefs about being able to leave traumatic events behind. Her absent mother haunts her on the sun-drenched streets of fast-moving Singapore. A bond begins to form between herself and Bradley who, like Sarah, has been left out-of-whack by a recent calamity. 'Hungry Ghosts' explores several dualities: the claims of the past, both cultural and personal, balanced against the demands of the future; private memories that must be reconciled with the demands of public living and progress; the world of the mind that is dependent on the physical body occupying 'real' space. The novel examines the strangely transitory spaces that people can find themselves in: the liminal areas of grief, travel, dislocation, the unfamiliar. It asks why, in an age of globalisation, the claims of place, and in particular of home, remain so strong. My exegesis, written as three essays, addresses three aspects of my manuscript, ‘Hungry Ghosts’. In the first essay I look at the importance of ‘place’ in my novel, and the different types of ‘places’ I explore. In the second essay I look at how contemporary theories on war commemoration, coupled with my own research and witnessing of ‘actual’ events, have informed my depiction and treatment of the theme of war memory. In my final essay I reflect on the role mourning has played in the development of my manuscript, considering both the challenges it has presented to my narrative and the ways in which it has strengthened it. / Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Adelaide, School of Humanities, 2009

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin, Madison, 2006. / Typescript. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 94-102).

This project seeks to explore representations of Holocaust perpetrators in literature. Such texts, often rather controversially, seek to undo the myth of “pure evil” that surrounds the Holocaust and to reconstruct the perpetrator in more “human” terms. Accordingly, significant questions of “how” and “why” are centralised and explored, providing fertile ground for examinations of the intersections between ethics, literature and history, and enabling ongoing discussions about the characteristics and obligations of perpetrator literature as a whole. Of central concern, these humanising discourses place emphasis on the contextual or situational factors that led up to the genocide. Following these issues through to their logical conclusion, this project takes the question of determinism seriously. This is not to suggest that it disavows individual responsibility, merely that it engages fully with the philosophical problems that are invoked through allusions to external influences, especially as they relate to ideas of contingency. A significant consequence of these discussions is the impact that they have on the reader. That is because, since situational aspects are featured so heavily in these narratives, questions are raised about his or her own capacity for wrongdoing. Consequently, the reader is drawn into the narrative as a potential perpetrator. The tensions that this creates constitutes the second major focus of this work. Ultimately, I hope to expose the challenges that face the reader when they encounter perpetrator narratives, and the ways in which these tensions impact upon our understandings of these figures, and of the Holocaust more generally. In order to provide a more comprehensive overview this project makes use of a large number (in excess of sixty) primary sources, examining both fictional and non-fictional accounts. My aim is not to offer close literary analyses of each of the texts under consideration but, rather, to trace paradigms across the full spectrum of perpetrator literature. In this way, I hope to contribute to the growing body of literature that engages with this topic.

During World War II the British Royal Air Force undertook a campaign of area bombing of German cities, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties. The debate over the ethics of this policy began at the time and has continued to the present. Area bombing clearly violated the traditional Just War norms of discrimination and noncombatant immunity. Apologists for the bombing have argued that such norms are no longer applicable in conditions of modern total war; critics of the bombing disagree. This dissertation defends the continuing relevance and applicability of these norms, and argues that area bombing constituted a violation of the moral laws governing the conduct of warfare. The dissertation also shows that the seeming intractability of the ethical debate on area bombing results from the participants' positions being informed by distinct and often incompatible ethical traditions. To understand and evaluate the different positions in the debate, it is necessary to engage critically with these underlying traditions. The dissertation shows how five ethical traditions touching on the norm of noncombatant immunity conditioned the positions taken by protagonists in the debate. The ethical traditions are Holy War / Crusade; Classical Realism; Christian Realism; Christian Just War / Jus in Bello; and Christian Pacifism. The first part of the dissertation explores the theoretical background and historical development of each of these traditions. The second part examines five protagonists in the British debate during World War II and analyzes how their positions were informed by the ethical traditions considered in the first part. The participants examined are Lord Vansittart (Holy War / Crusade), Captain Basil Liddell Hart (Classical Realism), Archbishop William Temple (Christian Realism), Bishop George Bell (Just War / Jus in Bello), and Vera Brittain (Christian Pacifism). The dissertation evaluates the strengths, weaknesses, and contributions of each of these traditions. By considering the voices raised against the area bombing at the time - especially those of Bishop Bell and Vera Brittain - the dissertation seeks to encourage theologically and ethically informed opposition to potential violations of the jus in bello norms in present and future conflicts.

This dissertation investigates the U.S. military presence in World War II-era China, Americans’ first attempt to forge a nominally equal military alliance with a non-Western nation. Drawing on overlooked Chinese and English-language sources from archives in six countries, it recasts how we view that relationship. Other studies attribute the wartime deterioration of Chinese-American relations to the contentious relationship between Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek and U.S. General Joseph Stilwell, or to conflicting wartime and postwar strategic aims. This study, by contrast, shows how the success and failures of the alliance turned upon the actions of a far larger cast of characters: GIs and Chinese soldiers, ordinary civilians, interpreters, hostel workers, farmers, prostitutes, thieves, bandits, and smugglers. It argues that the power asymmetries between these various actors permeated all levels of Sino-American interaction, undermining the Guomindang government, stoking American feelings of superiority, exacerbating Chinese sensitivities about unequal treatment, and making these allies into adversaries even after Stilwell left China but also long before Cold War animosities solidified. A military occupation, friendly or otherwise, required a daunting set of arrangements that are rarely examined in detail. Beginning in 1941, as some 70,000 U.S. troops trickled into China, American commanders and their Chinese hosts set about solving knotty problems of alliance management related to providing food, lodging, and interpreters. Interactions between GIs and Chinese civilians nevertheless proved fraught, particularly in relation to issues of money, legal privileges, cultural norms, and sex. As theft, misconduct, and violent encounters snowballed, military-to-military relations also deteriorated. From Chinese perspectives, the alliance became an occupation. From American perspectives, the Chinese became impediments—rather than partners. The wartime alliance marked a key turning point in how the United States projected power around the world as well as a seminal moment for modern Chinese perceptions of Americans. After Japan’s surrender, Chinese Communists would exploit local resentment against American servicemen to attack the Chinese Nationalists and seize and consolidate power. Meanwhile, the U.S. military’s legal, cultural, economic, political, and sexual impact on China set recurring patterns of American military behavior that have complicated U.S. policy down to the present day. / 2020-12-03T00:00:00Z

This dissertation challenges the idea that the United States “home front” in World War II escaped the violence and disorder visited upon overseas cities by military forces. It examines American “liberty ports”— from San Francisco and Los Angeles to New York and Boston— where millions of GIs and other Allied servicemen took leave and liberty. Emboldened by the privilege of their uniforms and near immunity from civilian laws and authorities, these troops caroused, fought with locals, rioted in the streets, and assaulted women. A near constant presence in many large ports and transportation hubs, servicemen effectively occupied entire urban districts, routinely provoking civil-military conflicts. Though many historians imagine that most troops spent the war abroad, in fact many of them remained stateside for the duration. Before the spring of 1944, when preparations for D-Day accelerated, 65-75% of all soldiers were stationed domestically. 25% of the U.S. Army’s forces never left the country at all. Friendly invasions and other occupations by troops not only impacted places such as Britain, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan; they fundamentally reshaped American cities and civilian life as well. To solve a number of manpower and training problems, U.S. military officials encouraged and inculcated in their recruits an aggressive, heterosexual masculinity that mocked civilian life as effeminate and weak. Many GIs embraced this vision of soldiering and took advantage of the military’s lenient stance toward “blowing off steam” in boom towns and liberty ports. Fist fights with civilian men, pursuing and cornering women, and rampant drunkenness went mostly unpunished as the Armed Forces struggled to mobilize for a two-front war. Nearby women faced many dangers, but they also found ingenious ways of defending themselves. Meanwhile, local politicians and businesses struggled to protest the militarization of their neighborhoods, even while doing their part for the war effort. This wartime militarization of civilian American life is a crucial but almost entirely forgotten factor in the rise of the military as a key institution of American society, as well as the postwar “civil-military divide.” / 2020-10-08T00:00:00Z

From the first post-war trials to the recent libel trial in the London High Court brought by Holocaust denier David Irving against Penguin Books and American academic Deborah Lipstadt the real-life courtroom has provided more than a legal judgment in respect of the Holocaust. As legal scholar Lawrence Douglas has shown in The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (2001), this formal, institutionalised and controlled setting has also been the forum for an increasingly nuanced, often intentionally pedagogic, examination of the Holocaust. After nearly sixty years of trials there is a corpus of judicial proceedings that chronicles not only society's desire for justice but also the changing understanding of the Holocaust, how it is remembered and how that memory is to be safeguarded. Analogous to this sequence of trials, American film has consistently utilised the law and the dialectic of the courtroom in its own attempts to represent, understand and explain the horror of the Holocaust, hi this thesis I provide a cultural history of these films (a generic term that encompasses both cinema releases and television movies/miniseries) to examine how the depiction, pertinence and understanding of the Holocaust in American life have altered since the 1940s. It is a thesis grounded in the tension between film and history as it explores how the fictive courtroom has represented the real-life trials as well as the Holocaust. This explores how the cinema has used different strategies of representation to bear witness in the cinematic courtroom to an event which is said to defy representation. In conclusion it argues that the courtroom is a setting with its limitations in respect of Holocaust representation, but it is these very limitations which are the reason for the courtroom genre's continued appeal.

This essay aims to deal with prevailing beliefs about men and women's responsibilities during the Second World War in Sweden. This has been done through a case study of the female organization Fredrika Bremerförbundet in the town of Karlstad. The aim has been to determine whether the members of Fredrika Bremerförbundet had a will to work within the areas considered to belong to the men during the period. In order to answer this, the paper has examined how the preparedness period influenced the organizations attitude to female work outside of the home and also how the organization discussed female political influence. The theoretical approach has been Yvonne Hirdman's theory that there has been a gender contract at various times through history. The contract stands for the current agreement with regards to the responsibilities of men and women in a society. The point of interest has been the housewife contract that she sees as current during the Second World War. The housewife contract refers to the fact that the women's responsibilities during this period consisted of household duties and social work, while their husbands spent their time in the public life and held the political power. The study has shown that Fredrika Bremerförbundet in Karlstad had an ambition to break the housewife contract, both with regards to trying to make women work in public and also to have influence in politics. However, as shown in previous research, that will also be discussed, it has been seen that the housewife contract remained. For example, women's work in the home and with children limited their opportunities to engage outside the household. In summary, it has nevertheless been possible to see a seed for a new contract where the women also has a place in public life outside of their home and to take part in politics. As a result it is possible to see, already during the period of 1939-1945, traces of a contract that is closer to equality.