The book begins with a description of the historical situation after the First World War. Europe’s brutalization through colonial wars and inter-European conflicts, carried out using means of mass extermination, led to fractures in civilized cultures. What follows in the second section is another state-by-state organized design of the transition from countries that were fascist (and countries that were made fascist) into communist states established in accordance with the Soviet model. The third part of the book is devoted to the history of the “Eastern Bloc” states from 1953 to 2013.
Katarzyna Stokłosa is Associate Professor in the Department of Border Region Studies at the University of Sønderborg, Denmark. She finished her PhD at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) and her habilitation thesis at the University of Potsdam. She has published various books and articles on European border regions in comparison, on European history and nationalism.