Wolfgang Seibel – författare

Drawing on German and French sources, Wolfgang Seibel traces the twisted process of political decision-making that shaped the fate of the Jews in German-occupied France during World War II. By analyzing the German-French negotiations, he reveals the underlying logic as well as the actual course of the bargaining process as both the Vichy Regime and the Germans sought a stable relationship. Yet that relationship was continually reshaped by the progress of the war, Germany’s deteriorating prospects, France’s economic and geopolitical position, and the Vichy government’s quest for domestic political support. The Jews’ suffering intensified when the Germans had the upper hand; but when the French felt empowered, the Vichy Regime stopped collaborating in the completion of the “final solution.” Persecution and Rescue: The Politics of the “Final Solution” in France, 1940–1944 demonstrates the ways in which political circumstances can mitigate—or foster—mass crime.

The persecution and mass-murder of the Jews during World War II would not have been possible without the modern organization of division of labor. Moreover, the perpetrators were dependent on human and organizational resources they could not always control by hierarchy and coercion. Instead, the persecution of the Jews was based, to a large extent, on a web of inter-organizational relations encompassing a broad variety of non-hierarchical cooperation as well as rivalry and competition. Based on newly accessible government and corporate archives, this volume combines fresh evidence with an interpretation of the governance of persecution, presented by prominent historians and social scientists.

This volume’s focus on establishing a direct exchange between History and International Relations is unique in the contemporary literature on international institutions. While there have been attempts in both disciplines to engage with the other and to integrate their respective insights, a direct, focused exchange on core issues of international institutional development has rarely taken place.

The volume takes this lacuna as a starting point. The structure of the volume is strictly symmetrical. In each of the four main sections, one historian and one IR scholar elaborate their views on one of four main aspects of conference diplomacy: inclusion/exclusion, effectiveness, legitimacy, and international order. This approach allows the authors to tackle the more general role of institutions in international order in a long-term historical perspective. The diagnosed crisis of contemporary, liberal order appears in a different light when viewed before the background of continuity and change in the past 200 years. This book has the potential to become essential reading for scholars and practitioners alike.