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© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

undoubtedly in headlong decline during this period, it remained an importantrhetorical forum for the Spanish Republic. Indeed, we are told that by 1937 thePortuguese regarded Geneva as ‘Stalin’s second capital’ (p. 248). It would alsobe interesting to extend the analysis to cover non-state organizations such ashumanitarian bodies, businesses and banks. The role of the latter two, in particular,has long been demonized, but rarely subjected to detailed research.Kellogg College, Oxford TOM BUCHANAN

Genocide and Resistance in Hitler’s Bosnia: The Partisans and the Chetniks 1941–1943. By M. A. Hoare. Oxford University Press. 2006. xiv + 386pp. £55.00.

This is an instructive work for the history of the Second World War, morespecifically for the partisan struggle not only in Yugoslavia but also more generally.Furthermore, this book looks toward post-1945 tensions in eastern Europe.Rivalry between the Chetniks and the Partisans is carefully related to ethnic,religious and political tensions in Bosnia-Hercegovina. Hoare argues that thePartisan movement there at its inception involved the fusion of a modernrevolutionary organization with a traditional peasant rebellion. He sees theBosnian Chetniks as a Serb-nationalist reaction against the communist leadershipof the Serb uprising which was threatening to arm Croats and Muslims andthwart the establishment of a Great Serbia. Thus, there was a tension between apeople’s liberation struggle and a Serb liberation struggle. The Partisans arepresented as upholding the model of a multinational Bosnia-Hercegovina,although this does not answer the rather different question of the failure of thismodel to win much support in Kosovo where, instead, there was appreciablesupport for the Germans. Hoare offers an instructive account of the conflict aswell as the politics of the struggle. He argues that the capitulation of Italy wasthe turning point in the Partisans’ effort to build a mass movement among theCroats, Slovenes and Bosnian Muslims, for the Axis was exposed as the losingside and Italian military support for its allies was lost.University of Exeter JEREMY BLACK

The Changing Face of the Channel Islands Occupation: Record, Memory and Myth.By Hazel R. Knowles Smith. Palgrave Macmillan. 2007. xxiii + 288pp. £55.00.

An arresting discussion of the Channel Islands during the occupation, thiswork substantiates its claim that it overwhelmingly supports an honourablenarrative of occupation history, albeit with a few blemishes. It also is of value asan example of the discussion of individual and collective memory of the SecondWorld War. Furthermore, Smith captures the nature of life during the occupation.Gas, electricity and coal supplies eventually stopped, as did wood rations. AsSmith notes, ‘To those who have never known a food shortage so severe thatfood becomes an obsession, the feelings of the population at this juncture maybe a mystery. But this was a society living under such privation that the loss ofa potato could represent a tragedy, and the sight of a cup of tea, or some otherlong-forgotten item, could trigger almost hysterical rejoicing or weeping.’ Despiteprivations, few took part in collaboration and fraternization. The divisionswithin some other societies that led to large-scale collaboration were absent inthe Channel Islands. Instead there was a widespread ‘resistance of opinion’: the

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© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 The Historical Association and Blackwell Publishing.

general lack of armed resistance is understandable given the nature of the militarycontext. The discussion extends to the subsequent presentation of the occupation,for example the Jersey War Tunnels. The usefulness and value of this book islimited by its high price.University of Exeter JEREMY BLACK

The East German Leadership and the Division of Germany: Patriotism andPropaganda 1945–53. By Dirk Spilker. Oxford University Press. 2006. xi +296pp. £55.00.

Dirk Spilker’s account of the Soviet Zone and the early GDR concentrateson whether there were any possibilities from 1945 to 1953 for a unitary Germanstate, at least west of the Oder–Neisse. Through meticulous analysis of theGerman documentation and reference to work on the Soviet material, his basicanswer is that there were not. Throughout, he contests the arguments of WilfriedLoth’s Stalin’s Unwanted Child (1998; German original 1994) that there weredifferences of purpose between the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party ofGermany (SED) and its Soviet sponsor. Instead, explains Spilker, there wererarely significant disputes between Moscow and East Berlin on this issue.This is not to say that the outcome of two German states from 1949 to 1990 wasinevitable. Spilker provides a fine exposition of the complex interplay betweenStalin, Ulbricht and the other SED leaders, the Communist Party of Germany(KPD) in the west, the other political parties and the western occupying powers.He leaves no doubt that ‘the national issue’ was one which figured prominentlyin the minds of the Soviet and East German players, but also that there wasnever any realistic prospect of German unity, particularly after the founding ofthe two republics. Spilker engages with the debate about SED proposals in theearly 1950s and the Stalin Note of 1952, and concludes that these were seriouspolitical manoeuvres, but not pursued in any real expectation of a unified Germangovernment. There was just the possibility that Beria might have followed adifferent course, but he did not last long enough for anyone to find out.

Spilker’s interpretations are familiar, but he deserves credit for his very carefulattention to the detail in the documentation from the Federal Archive in Berlin,and for his engagement with the secondary literature, most of which is onlyavailable in German. In particular, there is fascinating insight into the wishfulthinking of the SED and KPD that capitalism in the western zones was onthe verge of collapse. Grotewohl in 1946 thought that federalism would bringeconomic disaster in the west, and Ulbricht in 1948 took a ‘national’ view thatthe western economy could not survive the disruption of Germany’s ‘extremelycomplex division of labour’ (pp. 151–2). ‘Social explosions’ were predicted, thecurrency reform of 1948 was thought to be creating massive unrest, and Americanassistance through the Marshall Plan was perceived as colonization destructiveof German culture. Spilker is fair, however, in allowing that there were indeedserious social, food-supply and employment problems in the west, and that theeconomic miracle was some way off. Only a few aspects do not ring quite true.Repeated reference to the two ‘halves’ of Germany misrepresents the dimensions.The Weltfestspiele of 1951 comprised primarily political and cultural events, ratherthan the sports implied by the translation ‘World Festival Games’ (p. 234).And crop failures in 1952 were scarcely ‘exacerbated by the collectivization of