Profile

Biography

BA (Antioch), DPhil (Oxon), FRHistS

Richard Bessel is Professor of Twentieth Century History. He works on the social and political history of modern Germany, the aftermath of the two world wars and the history of policing. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of German History and History Today.

He is currently a Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies.

Research

Overview

Richard Bessel's early research concerned the rise of the Nazi movement in eastern Germany. He was particularly concerned to explore the nature and role of political violence in the Nazi takeover, and was among the first western scholars to use materials in Polish archives to investigate themes in modern German history.

Subsequently he turned his attention to the First World War and its aftermath, producing a major study of the demobilisation in Germany and the extent to which the legacy of the War affected politics and society during the Weimar Republic. He also became increasingly interested in the forces of 'order', first examining the police in Weimar Germany and more recently embarking on research on the police in East Germany after 1945.

His most recent book is about Germany in 1945, and more generally on the emergence of the German people from the violence and trauma of Nazism and war. As such, this forms part of a broader research interest on the social, cultural and psychological legacies of the violence of the Second World War across Europe. He is currently working on a 'brief history of violence.'

Publications

Selected publications

Authored books

• Germany 1945: From War to Peace (Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins, 2009).
• Nazism and War (Random House, 2004).
• Germany after the First World War (Oxford University Press, 1993, paperback edition 1995).
• Political Violence and the Rise of Nazism. The Storm Troopers in Eastern Germany 1925-1934 (Yale University Press, 1984).

Edited books

• (with Nicholas Guyatt and Jane Rendall) War, Empire and Slavery, 1770-1830 (Palgrave, 2010)
  
• (with Claudia Haake) Removing Peoples. Forced Removal in the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• (with Dirk Schumann) Life after Death. Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (With the German Historical Institute, Washington, Cambridge University Press, 2003).
• Life in the Third Reich (Oxford University Press, 1987; revised edition, 2001).
• (with Clive Emsley) Patterns of Provocation. Police and Public Disorder (Berghahn, 2000).
• Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany: Comparisons and Contrasts (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
• (with Ralph Jessen) Die Grenzen der Diktatur. Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996).

Articles (selected)

• 'Murder amidst Collapse: Explaining the Violence of the Last Months of the Third Reich', in Paul Betts and Christian Wiese (eds), Years of Persecution, Years of Extermination: Saul Friedlander and the Future of Holocaust Studies (Continuum, 2010).
  
• 'The First World War as Totality', in Richard Bosworth (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Fascism (Oxford University Press, 2009).
• 'Disintegration and Integration after "Zero Hour" in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Germany', Forschungsberichte aus dem Duitsland Instituut Amsterdam 4 (2008).
• 'The Shadow of Death in Germany at the End of the Second World War', in Paul Betts, Alon Confino and Dirk Schumann (eds.), Between Mass Death and Individual Loss. The Place of the Dead in Twentieth-Century Germany (New York and Oxford, 2008).
• 'Gewalterfahrung und Opferperspektive: Ein Rückblick auf die beiden Weltkriege des 20. Jahrhunderts in Europa', in Jörg Echternkamp and Stefan Martens (eds.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg in Europa. Erfahrung und Erinnerung (Paderborn, 2007).
• 'The War to End All Wars. The Shock of Violence in 1945 and its Aftermath in Germany', in Alf Lüdtke (ed.), The No Man's Land of Violence. Extreme Wars in the 20th Century (Göttingen, 2006).
• 'Hatred after War: Emotion and the Postwar History of East Germany', History and Memory 17:1-2 (autumn 2005).
• 'The Nazi Capture of Power', in Journal of Contemporary History 39:2 (2004).
• 'Catastrophe and Democracy. The Legacy of the World Wars in Germany', in Anthony McElligott and Tim Kirk (eds.), Working Towards the Führer. Festschrift for Ian Kershaw (Manchester, 2004).
• 'Policing in East Germany in the Wake of the Second World War', in Crime, History and Societies, 7:2 (2003).
• 'Functionalists versus Intentionalists: The Debate Twenty Years On or Whatever Happened to Functionalism and Intentionalism?, in German Studies Review 26:1 (2003).
• 'Leben nach dem Tod: Vom Zweiten Weltkrieg zur Zweiten Nachkriegszeit', in Bernd Wegner (ed.), Wie Kriege enden (Paderborn, 2002).
• 'The People's Police and the People in Ulbricht's Germany' in Patrick Major and Jonathan Osmond (eds.), The 'Workers' and Peasants' State: Communism and Society in East Germany under Ulbricht 1945-71 (Manchester, 2002).
• 'European Society 1900-1945', in Julian Jackson (ed.), The Short Oxford History of Europe (Oxford, 2002).
• 'Was bleibt vom Krieg? Deutsche Nachkriegsgeschichte(n) aus geschlechtergeschichtliche Perspektive - Eine Einführung', in Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift 60 (2001).
• 'European Dictatorships in Comparative Perspective', in Edward Acton and Ismail Saz (eds.), La transición a la politicá de masas (Valencia, 2001).
• '"Besonders schwierig ... weltanshlaulich zu schulen". Volkspolizistinnen in der SBZ und frühen DDR, 1945-1952', in Gerhard Fürmetz, Herbert Reinke and Klaus Weinhauer (eds.), Nachkriegspolizei. Sicherheit und Ordnung in Ost- und Westdeutschland 1945-1969 (Hamburg, 2001).
• '1918-1919 in der deutschen Geschichte', in Dieter Papenfuß und Wolfgang Schieder (eds.), Deutsche Umbrüche im 20. Jahrhundert (Bohlau Verlag, Cologne, Weimar and Vienna, 2000).
• 'The "People's Police" and the Miners of Sallfield, August 1951', in Richard Bessel and Clive Emsley (eds), Patterns of Provocation: Police and Public Disorder (Berghahn, New York and Oxford, 2000).
• 'Mobilizing German Society for War', in Roger Chickering and Stig Foerster (eds.), Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization in the Western Front, 1914-1918 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000).
• 'Die Volkspolizei und das Volk. Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 1945 bis 1952', in Damian van Melis (ed.) Sozialismus auf dem platten Land,Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 1945-1952 (Thomas Helms Verlag, 1999).
• 'Der Arbeiter', in Ute Frevert and Gerhard Haupt (eds.), Der Mensch 1914 bis 1995 (Campus, 1999).
• 'Les limites d'une dictature. Police et societe en Allemagne de l'Est, 1945-1953', in Jean-Marc Berliere and Denis Peschanski (eds.), Pouvoirs et polices aux XX siecle Europe, Etats-Unis Japon (Editions Complexe, 1997).
• 'Germany from War to Dictatorship', in Mary Fulbrook (ed.), German History since 1800 (Arnold, 1997).
• 'Mobilisation and Demobilisation in Germany, 1916-1919', in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilisation in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
• 'The Making of a Border: Policing East Germany's Western Border, 1945-1952', in Christian Baechler and Carole Fink (eds.), The Establishment of European Frontiers after the Two World Wars (Peter Lang, 1996).
• 'European Society in the Twentieth Century', in T.C.W. Blanning (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 1995).
• 'The "Front Generation" and the Politics of the Weimar Republic', in Mark Roseman (ed.), Generations in Conflict. Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany 1770-1968 (Cambridge University Press, 1995).
• 'The Formation and Dissolution of a German National Electorate, from Kaiserreich to Third Reich', in James Retallack and Larry Eugene Jones (eds.), Elections, Mass Politics and Social Change in Modern Germany: New Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
• 'Policing, Professionalisation and Politics in Weimar Germany', in Clive Emsley and Barbara Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe: Politics, Professionalisation and Public Order 1850-1940 (Greenwood, 1991).
• '1933: A Failed Counter-Revolution', in E.E. Rice (ed.), Revolution and Counter-Revolution (Blackwell, 1991).
• 'Why did the Weimar Republic Collapse?', in Ian Kershaw (ed.), Weimar and Hitler: Why Did German Democracy Fail? (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1990).

Teaching

Undergraduate

• Germany From War To Dictatorship, 1914-1933
• The Modern City
• European Migration, 1870-2000
• Food
• Citizens, Comrades and Consumers: The Making of the Modern World, c.1650-2010