New Books In Genocide Studies

During the mid- to late 1930s, a small but socially prominent group of right-wing Britons took a public stance in support of the Nazi regime in Germany. While many of them curtailed their activities upon Britain’s declaration of war in 1939, as Richard Griffiths reveals in his book What Did You Do During the War? The Last Throes of the British Pro-Nazi Right, 1940-45 (Routledge, 2016) some of them continued to support their nation’s declared enemy in a variety of ways. Refuting ex post facto justifications of their actions, Griffiths punctures the myth of wartime national unity by demonstrating how Oswald Mosley and others sought to erode Britons’ support for the war effort in the early months of the conflict by joining pacifist organizations and criticizing openly the motivations behind Britain’s participation in the conflict. Though many of these prominent pro-Nazis were locked up by the authorities in May 1940, several far-right advocates for Germany among the upper class were spare