Military Review English Edition November-December 2014 | Page 126

MR BOOK REVIEW SPECIAL - GENOCIDE
We offer four student reviews of books on genocide at the recommendation of Michael Weaver, assistant
professor and instructor of the Mass Atrocity Response Operations Course at the U.S. Army Command and
General Staff College. The course, part of the college’s Genocide and Mass Atrocity Studies Program, educates
students on response to and prevention of genocide. In contrast to our regular book reviews, you will notice
references to other reviews of each book. Besides providing their own critical analyses of their selected books, the
students refined their critical-thinking skills by examining analyses of those books by two other scholars in the
field of genocide and mass atrocity studies. I hope you enjoy reading these reviews.

From the Editor-in-Chief

FIRES OF HATRED:
Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
Norman M. Naimark, Harvard University Press,
Boston, 2002, 256 pages, $26.50

N

orman Naimark’s Fires of Hatred; Ethnic
Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe is a
comprehensive study of genocide and ethnic
cleansing in Europe from the Armenian Genocide
(1915-1918) through the Wars of Yugoslav Succession
(1991-1999). The author tells the story in such a way
that if one studied this book and no other, one would
have a firm understanding of the causes, definitional
parameters, and appropriate attitudes towards the issue.
True to his title, Naimark spends less than a page
in the book referring to genocides outside of Europe,
even by way of contrast or comparison. His treatment
of ethnic cleansing within the designated century and
continent, however, is complete and detailed.
Some critics disagree with this approach. For example, University of Michigan’s Ara Sanjian, Ph.D., considers lack of treatment outside of Europe a weakness in
Naimark’s work.
Sanjian states, “ his argument would certainly have
…
benefited further had he also briefly analyzed some
pre-twentieth century instances of ethnic cleansing to
show how the absence of elements of modernity gave
them a character different from the ones described in
this book.”1
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However, I disagree with Sanjian. By confining his
study to a specific time and space, Naimark implicitly
sends the message that there is ample material for the
study of genocide and ethnic cleansing on a “civilized”
continent in a century we still remember. For many, the
atrocities are relatively recent, immediate, and real to
the reader.
Naimark skillfully fleshes out the concept by commencing his discussion of genocide with examination
of the 1894-96 Turkish massacres of Armenian highlanders, a harbinger of the 1915 Armenian genocide.
Though the Turks killed or wounded over 200,000
Armenians at that time, Naimark does not consider the
initial massacres as an attempt at genocide. Naimark
distinguishes the early massacres from genocide by
asserting that “the goal was severe punishment, not
extermination. Nor do the events of 1894-96 share the
general characteristics of ethnic cleansing; no attempt
was made to remove Armenians from their homes
or to deport them.” Commenting on this proposition,
Nick Baron, Ph.D., University of Nottingham’s associate professor of history asserts that ethnic cleansing
and genocide are not the same, “characterized by their
different objectives.”2 Baron makes the distinction by
asserting that “genocide is the intentional killing off of
part or all of an ethnic, religious or national group; the
murder of a people or peoples … is the objective. The
intention of ethnic cleansing is to remove a people and
often all traces of them from a concrete territory.”
Adopting the same semantic framework, Naimark
makes the useful technical distinction between a
November-December 2014  MILITARY REVIEW