Gerwarth, Robert Die Besiegten. Das blutige Erbe des Ersten Weltkriegs

The war after the war: why the end of the First World War did not bring peace to Europe. The armistice of 11 November 1918 ended the deaths on the battlefields of the First World War, but peace did not return to large parts of Europe with this date. Above all, the losers of the war sank into a spiral of violence. In his widely researched and grippingly written book, Robert Gerwarth makes clear the extent of the wars and conflicts after the end of the First World War and shows why the fate of the defeated is the key to understanding the 20th century.

The brutality of the First World War is firmly anchored in Europe's collective memory. Almost completely forgotten, on the other hand, is the suffering that the numerous (civil) wars, expulsions, pogroms and violent conflicts brought to large parts of the continent after the end of the First World War. From Russia, Ukraine and the states of Eastern Europe, from Germany and Austria to the Balkans and the Middle East, people fought over the legacy of the breaking empires and killed for a new order. The never-ending battles of the interwar period, as Robert Gerwarth shows in his comprehensive study, not only cost millions of lives, they also left an explosive legacy among the survivors: weak states, traumatised and hateful populations, and politicians and military leaders who were only waiting for the next opportunity to take revenge.

Robert Gerwarth, born in 1976, studied history in Berlin and earned his doctorate at Oxford. After posts at Harvard and Princeton Universities, Gerwarth now teaches as Professor of Modern History at University College, Dublin, and is the founding director of the Centre for War Studies there, which is funded by the European Research Council and the Guggenheim Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the author of numerous publications. His book "The Bismarck Myth. Die Deutschen und der Eiserne Kanzler" (2007) was awarded the prestigious Fraenkel Prize. Siedler recently published his highly acclaimed biography of Reinhard Heydrich.