Although almost all of Europe was under royal rule for most of the nineteenth and much of the twentieth century, very little effort has so far been dedicated to explaining this phenomenon. By examining royal photographs the author is able to shed light on some of the central mechanisms leading to this remarkable royal success. By analysing the production, distribution and perception of royal photographs in a variety of European countries, this article shows that these images were a crucial means by which royal families were turned into powerful symbols of modern nations. Regularly made by the most renowned portrait photographers and widely distributed via the press and as postcards and personal commemorative gifts, royal photographs allowed monarchies to acquire an absolutely vital asset for their survival at the head of modern European societies, namely strong emotional bonds between individual members of the general public and royal families.

This article considers the role of music among German, Polish and Jewish prisoners in Sachsenhausen, the Nazi concentration camp. It focuses primarily on the songs that were composed and sung in the camp, of which at least 350 are known. The article uses song as a lens through which to examine the diversity of the camp's social landscape, and places particular emphasis on the distinctive ways in which prisoner groups chose to interpret and respond to the experience of incarceration.

This article explores the meaning and impact of the Nazi concept of a ‘New Order’ for Europe on German-occupied Denmark. The first German civil authority in power in Denmark was the Foreign Ministry, which struggled to conclude an economic union with Denmark in summer 1940. Then Goering's Four-Year Plan and the Reich Economics Ministry took command and economic union was abandoned by Berlin, since a pragmatic, day-to-day approach now prevailed. Other initiatives were taken in order to facilitate Denmark's incorporation in the European New Order, such as the setting up of a ministerial Eastern Committee with the purpose of re-establishing Danish industry in the occupied USSR. The article shows how, in Denmark, German short-term politics actually coincided with long-term plans. Germany's ideas of becoming the economic centre of a self-sufficient continental Europe were closely connected to the idea of securing foodstuffs from its neighbours, and this idea, too, was implemented in spring and early summer 1940, when, after the swift occupation of Denmark and the subsequent severance of its trade with Britain, agricultural exports were diverted to the German market.

After 1950, at least 23,000 German POWs remained in Soviet captivity as ‘war criminals’, and they were pardoned and released in several amnesties from 1950 to 1956. This article examines the political and propagandistic reactions of the ruling SED to the return of those prisoners. It analyses how the SED's attempts to reintegrate ‘war criminals’ into a socialist society related to the official politics of the past (Vergangenheitspolitik) and the construction of a memory of the Nazi past in East Germany. The SED's key strategy in dealing with these returnees – avoiding the question of individual and collective responsibility – is put into the context of the party's central ideological objective, namely to dissociate the socialist GDR from the legacy of Nazi Germany. On the basis of newly accessible documents from the archives of the former Ministry for State Security, the article also describes the intensive involvement of the Stasi in repatriation and reintegration matters at all levels of society.

Anthony Alofsin, The Struggle for Modernism. Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and City Planning at Harvard (New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company, 2002), 311 pp., $60.00 (hb), ISBN 0–393–730484.

Hélène Jannière, Politiques éditoriales et architecture ‘moderne’. L'émergence de nouvelles revues en France et en Italie (1923–1939) (Paris: Éditions Arguments, 2002), 377 pp., €24.50 (pb), ISBN 2–909109–26–7.

Paolo Nicoloso, Gli architetti di Mussolini. Scuole e sindacato, architetti e massoni, professori e politici negli anni del regime (Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1999), 239 pp., €19.63 (pb), ISBN 88–464–1305–9.

Robert Gildea, Marianne in Chains – In Search of the German Occupation, 1940–1945 (Henry Holt: New York, 2002) 524 pp., £20.00 (hb), ISBN 0-33-378230-5.

Michael Curtis, Verdict on Vichy: Power and Prejudice in the Vichy France Regime (Arcade Publishing: New York, 2003) 419 pp., $27.95 (hb), ISBN: 1-55-970689-9.

Julian Jackson, France: The Dark Years, 1940–1944 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 690 pp., £12.99 (pb), ISBN 0-19-925457-5.

Andrew Shennan, The Fall of France, 1940 (Harlow: Longman, 2000), 181 pp., $22.99 (pb), ISBN 0-582-29081-3.

Henry Rousso, The Haunting Past. History, Memory, and Justice in Contemporary France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 136 pp., $29.95 (hb), ISBN 0-8122-3645-9.

Paloma Aguilar, Memory and Amnesia. The Role of the Spanish Civil War in the Transition to Democracy (Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 2002), 330 pp., $27.95 (pb), ISBN 1-571-814965.

Pilar Ortuño Anaya, European Socialists and Spain: The Transition to Democracy (London: Palgrave, 2002), 273pp., $69.95 (hb), ISBN 0-333-94927-7.

Julio Crespo MacLennan, Spain and the Process of European Integration, 1957–85. Political Change and Europeanism (London: Palgrave, 2000), 240 pp., £52.50 (hb), ISBN 0-333-928865.

S. P. Mangen, Spanish Society after Franco: Regime Transition and the Welfare State (London: Palgrave, 2001), 254 pp., $65.00 (hb), ISBN 0-333-65462-5.

Luis Moreno, The Federalization of Spain (London: Frank Cass, 2001), 192 pp., £17.50 (hb), ISBN 0-714-681644.