This special issue of Contemporary European History is devoted to the impact of the two world wars on civilian population displacement in Europe. Each contributor has brought fresh material to bear on specific instances of involuntary migration that are either unfamiliar or poorly understood. The contributors seek to establish the origins of population displacement and the assistance provided by governments, non-government organisations and individuals and, where possible, also to reflect on the ways in which displacement was understood both at the time and subsequently.

The reason why a fuller understanding of the significance of the Hitler dictatorship did not emerge in prewar democracies remains a question of enduring historical interest. This article examines the way in which Unilever, one of the earliest multinational corporations, responded to the challenges of political risk posed by the Third Reich, and how aspects of business activity that gave rise to moral issues were weighed against the need to survive commercially. The realisation that Unilever could be seen as an unwitting accomplice in the dictatorship's criminal activities seems to have come late to the company. While corporate culture reflected the values of contemporary society, multinational business was partly responsible for the failure to sound the alarm over the unique dangers inherent in National Socialism.

Recent studies of Italian Fascism have focused on ritual, spectacle, commemoration and myth, even as they also take seriously the totalitarian thrust of Fascism. But whereas this new culturalist orientation has usefully pointed beyond earlier reductionist approaches, it has often accented style and myth as opposed to their opposites, which might be summed up as ‘substance’. Some of the aspirations fuelling Fascism, responding to perceived inadequacies in the mainstream liberal and Marxist traditions, pointed beyond myth and style as they helped to shape the Fascist self-understanding – and Fascist practice. This article seeks to show how the interplay of substance, style and myth produced a particular – and deeply flawed – totalitarian dynamic in Fascist Italy.

The Christian Social Union's domination of Bavarian state and society is such that it has justifiably been described as Bavaria's ‘official and hegemonic party’ (Staats- und Hegemonialpartei). However, it is important not to take the CSU's regional identity as an historical given. This article examines how the CSU set about constructing an integral Bavarian (gesamtbayerisch) identity during the 1950s and early 1960s by articulating the diverse historical experiences of the region-state's localities and sub-regions as a common Bavarian heritage. Drawing on articles about Bavarian cities, reports on historical re-enactments and commemorative speeches by party leaders, the article explores the celebration of this heritage in terms of ‘political character’, culture and Christianity.

Archive-based regional studies can contribute much that is new to the economic, political and social history of the Second World War. This paper considers the process of industrial mobilisation in Northern Ireland, a politically divided region which was part of the United Kingdom but which had its own government. It examines the changing administrative framework of war production, the debate on military and industrial conscription, the role of women and the economic implications of geographical remoteness from London. The paper adds to our limited knowledge of regional mobilisation and contributes to a neglected aspect of the history of Northern Ireland.

In the wake of the German invasion of Belgium and France in August 1914, four million persons went into exile. While such a displacement of population testified to a dramatic change in the character of war in western Europe, historiography and collective memory alike have so far concurred in marginalising the experience of refugees during the First World War. This article examines their unprecedented encounter with host communities in France and Great Britain. It demonstrates that the refugees' plight reveals the strengths as well as the tensions inherent in the process of social mobilisation that was inseparable from the First World War.

The history of western Europe and of European integration has been explained primarily with reference to internal political and economic factors, or to its relations with the United States. This article argues that decolonisation and the emergence of the Third World as a political and economic actor had a profound influence on western Europe, mainly contributing to a further weakening of the role of the nation-state. The impact of the Third World was particularly strong in the period from the global revolution of 1968 to the high point of détente in 1975.

On 11 October 1941 the Vichy government passed legislation mandating the dismantling and smelting of French bronze statues and monuments in the public domain. Crippled by copper shortages and bound by the terms of the Franco-German armistice, the etat français sought to ‘mobilise’ all potential sources of non-ferrous metals, including public statuary. The statue of Mistral in Arles was one of the monuments that were dismantled. The destruction of this tribute to the Provençal poet and founder of the Félibrige sparked considerable protest and opposition, but from an unusual quarter – supporters of Pétain's National Revolution. The case of the destruction of the statue of Mistral in Arles reveals the intersection of regionalism and resistance in wartime France and challenges many of our perceptions about both these movements.

Ame de Mon Pays
Ame éternellement renaissante
Ame joyeuse, fière et vive
Qui hennis dans le bruit du Rhône et de son vent!
Ame des bois pleins d'harmonie
Et des calanques pleines de soleil
De la patrie, âme pieuse
Je t'appelle! Incarne-toi dans mes vers provençaux!

Vladko Maček (1871–1964) became the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the assassination of Stjepan Radić (1871–1928). In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in Croatian and Yugoslav politics during the critical years 1928–41, when the clouds of war were gathering over Europe, and during the first phase of World War Two. Today he is best remembered for having negotiated the Cvetković-Maček Sporazum (agreement) in August 1939; the Sporazum created a so-called banovina (province) of Croatia with considerable autonomy, and was intended to contribute to the calming of Serb–Croat frictions in royal Yugoslavia. The Banovina comprised 26.6 per cent of the territory of Yugoslavia and had some 4.4 million inhabitants, 28.6 per cent of the total population of the kingdom.1 However, it lasted only until April 1941, when an Axis invasion resulted in the occupation and partition of Yugoslavia.

This article explores what kind of ‘Europe’ was produced in the processes of transnational infrastructure building. It focuses on international organisations dedicated to Europe's infrastructural integration as a promising research site, where infrastructural collaborations (or the lack thereof) were articulated and negotiated. Case studies of the Bureau International des Autoroutes (1931), the Union for the Coordination of Production and Transport of Electricity (1951) and the European Conference of Transport Ministers (1953) explore the challenges of transnational system building. They also suggest that Europe's infrastructural interlacing was a contested process, producing, if successful, multilayered networks in which corporate, national and meso-regional borders remain clearly discernable.

This article deals with the forms of assistance given to refugees in Italy during the First World War. The entire subject has been neglected because of the dominant myth of a victorious nation. The Italian situation was peculiar because of the high level of migration and the multi-ethnic origin of people in the border areas. By pinpointing the pattern of relocation in Italy during the war this article seeks to explain the policies pursued by the state and by aid agencies, the rationale behind that aid and the continuities and discontinuities in the assistance given to the refugees. Significant political, juridical and social issues evolved around the image of the refugee, including the protection that the state owed to its citizens.

The methods used by the Nazis to control elements of German society have been the focus of intense historical debate. This paper attempts to analyse the implementation of Sippenhaft (family liability punishment) after the 20 July 1944 assassination plot against Hitler. Sippenhaft was advocated for use against the families of the conspirators involved in this plot and also against members of the armed services. Consequently, its implementation became the personal domain of the Reich leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, as well as local army commanders, army courts and the Nazi party itself. This article will argue that the inadequacies of its imposition were largely compensated for by its effectiveness as a device of fear.

After the destruction of the Polish state by the invading Nazi and Soviet armies in the autumn of 1939, about 30,000 Polish nationals fled to eastern Lithuania. This article examines the relationship between population displacement and ethnic rivalry in Lithuania at the onset of the Second World War. As ‘war victims’ in need of help and protection, over time these Polish refugees became increasingly ‘ethnicised’, socially differentiated and isolated from Lithuanian society, and vilified as a potential political threat. Furthermore, the official decision to create a legal category of so-called ‘newcomers’ deprived those Poles who had settled in Vilnius between the wars of citizenship and residence rights in Lithuania. This policy inflated the number of ‘refugees’ to more than 100,000. Various other official measures, such as the creation of camps, forced labour schemes, deportations and repatriations, show how the government manipulated the refugee crisis for its own political purposes.

Using a theoretical approach that takes into consideration the options available to small states in international relations as well as those factors that influence foreign policy decision making, this article tests the usefulness of the approach on a specific case study, the so-called Mosul crisis in northern Iraq in 1924–5. From the perspective of the alternatives opened to small states in the international arena in the aftermath of the First World War and on the basis of Sweden's stated foreign policy doctrine, Sweden's actions in the Mosul crisis were understandable and consistent with the basic premises of the suggested theoretical approach.

This article explains the position of Portugal during the first attempt to enlarge the European Economic Community in 1961–3. It first makes clear the motives behind the Portuguese government's policy option in favour of EEC associate membership and future entry. Next, it analyses the attitude of the EEC members and Portugal's EFTA partners to this policy option. The article concludes that such a policy was condemned to failure, due to the authoritarian nature of the Portuguese regime and the country's colonial policy, and that, had the negotiations progressed, Lisbon would probably have had to opt in favour of a provisional agreement.

The Croat Peasant Party was arguably the most important Croatian political party during the existence of the first Yugoslavia (1918–41). Under the leadership of Vladko Maček (1879–1964), it entered the most difficult period of its history: it was forced to contend with the royal dictatorship (1929–34) of King Aleksandar Karadjordjević, the Great Depression, growing nationality tensions and an increasingly volatile political climate in which the extremes of the right and left, represented in Croatia by the Ustaša and Communist parties respectively, contended for power. This article examines the contentious relationship between Maček's Croat Peasant Party and the fascist Ustaša movement between 1929 and 1941, and assesses Maček's legacy and his place in Croatia's 20th-century political history.