Political Purges in the Twentieth Century (Military History)

Introduction

The 20th century began as the old world order ended. Empires fell at the end of World War I, and new states emerged from their ashes. The unsettled political atmosphere was rife with ideological revolutionaries, who seized their chances to establish novel types of regimes. The new communist, fascist, and National Socialist systems thrived, capitalizing on the fears of uprooted populations—mostly riding waves of popular approval. The rulers wasted no time using all manner of modern bureaucratic and technological advances to purge their real or perceived political enemies. In a political purge, states or elites in power use military and police forces to remove people they consider disloyal, dangerous, or otherwise undesirable from influential positions in government or the economy, or from society as a whole. The armed forces conducting purges may be loyal to a national government, an occupying power, or a political movement trying to replace the government. Political purges, which can be peaceful or violent, can result in simple removal from office, imprisonment, exile, or death of members of political organizations or governments, or adherents of political ideologies. Another form of removal of undesirables from state or society is genocide. While a state or dominant group that engages in genocide might have political motives, its victims share communal traits such as nationality, ethnicity, race, or religion. In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly’s Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (United Nations General Assembly 1948, cited under “General Overviews”) defined what constituted genocide and provided the legal basis for prosecution of these crimes. Accordingly, genocide is the intent to destroy a national, ethnical, racial, or religious group by killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to its members; deliberately inflicting living conditions that lead to its physical destruction; imposing measures to prevent births; or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. Not mentioned in the provisions of the convention were groups persecuted for political reasons. Historians have speculated about the abysmal human rights records of some of the signatory states, most prominently the Soviet Union, as motivation for the exclusion. For several decades after the convention went into effect in 1951, the distinction between genocide and political purges remained vague. In the mid-1990s, research into political purges adopted a new category to distinguish politicides, defined as mass killing of groups of people who are targeted because of position in society or political opposition to the government, from genocides. Still, clear differentiation in every case remains elusive, because victim groups are often ethnically defined and politically active. The concept of politicide serves as the guiding principle for the selection of works in this article.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US government, the Department of Defense, the Department of the Army, or the US Army Corps of Engineers.

General Overviews

A number of works in historical sociology and political science provide the theoretical underpinnings of the study of political purges. While Fein 1993 advances understanding about the causation and prevention of genocides, Harff and Gurr 1988 develops a typology that distinguishes between genocides and politicides. Harff and Gurr 1998 expands on the typology and develops theoretical models as a basis for systematic early warning of future incidents. Licklider 1995 concentrates on the increased risks of mass killings of victim groups at the end of civil wars. Rummel 1994 defines “democide” broadly as encompassing genocide, political purges, and mass murder. Rummel argues that the risk of democide increases commensurately with the concentration of power in a regime. Krain 1997 disagrees with Rummel’s conclusion, instead making a case for “political opportunity structures” as causes for genocide. United Nations General Assembly 1948 provided the legal basis for the prosecution of genocide.

Fein, Helen. Genocide: A Sociological Perspective. London: SAGE, 1993.
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This work outlines the nature and history of genocide, summarizing the existing state and understanding of its definition, causation, and prevention. The author analyzes examples of genocide from around the world to provide a critical review of genocide scholarship.
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Harff, Barbara, and Ted Robert Gurr. “Toward Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides: Identification and Measurement of Cases since 1945.” International Studies Quarterly 32.3 (1988): 359–371.
DOI: 10.2307/2600447Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Groundbreaking article on a typology of mass killings by state actors. It distinguishes between genocide (victim groups share communal characteristics) and four different types of politicide (victim groups are defined by political status and level of opposition to the state). Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Harff, Barbara, and Ted Robert Gurr. “Systematic Early Warning of Humanitarian Emergencies.” Journal of Peace Research 35.5 (1998): 551–579.
DOI: 10.1177/0022343398035005002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The authors establish two theoretical models to analyze background conditions, intervening conditions, and predetermined accelerators of genocide and politicide. They aim to “operationalize” the data to provide a basis for systematic early warning of future victimization of communal and political groups. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Krain, Matthew. “State-Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocides and Politicides.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41.3 (1997): 331–360.
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The author uses binary logic models to provide evidence that “political opportunity structures” rather than levels of concentration of power serve to predict the onset and severity of state-sponsored mass murder. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Licklider, Roy. “The Consequences of Negotiated Settlements in Civil Wars, 1945–1993.” American Political Science Review 89.3 (1995): 681–690.
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Empirical study expanding on a theory of increased likelihood of genocides or political purges at the end of civil wars. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Rummel, Rudolph J. Death by Government. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994.
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The author argues that the more power regimes have, the more likely they are to use it against their own people. He supports his theory with a wide variety of mass killings that he selected according to his own concept of “democide,” which emphasizes killing of people (Greek demos) rather than a specific kind of people.
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United Nations General Assembly. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. (New York, 9 December 1948). 78 U.N.T.S. 277.
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The convention provided the legal basis for prosecution of genocides. Article 2 defined genocide as “intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.”
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Comparative Historical Studies

Building on sociological and psychological findings, five comparative historical essay collections stand out as major contributions to the understanding of political purges. Bushnell, et al. 1991 examines political purges in the context of state-organized terror. Chalk and Jonassohn 1990 traces sociological aspects of the history of genocide back to antiquity. Deák, et al. 2000 focuses on retributive justice in post–World War II European countries, while Elster 2006 and Kritz 1995 examine and compare the behaviors of emerging democracies after the demise of dictatorships worldwide. Mazower 2002 compares historical examples of political purges and genocides in search of motivational patterns. Courtois, et al. 1999 explores political mass killings in communist countries worldwide. Totten and Parsons 2009 details causes and ramifications of genocides and political violence in the past century.

Bushnell, P. Timothy, Vladimir Shlapentokh, Christopher K. Vanderpool, and Jeyaratnam Sundram, eds. State Organized Terror: The Case of Violent Internal Repression. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991.
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The book offers a general theoretical framework of the structural sources of state-organized terror, terror as an instrument, and the social and political psychology of terror. Comparative case studies from Central and South America, Eastern Europe, Afghanistan, China, Cambodia, Nazi Germany, Jonestown, and the Soviet Union serve to examine the framework.
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Chalk, Frank, and Kurt Jonassohn. The History and Sociology of Genocide: Analyses and Case Studies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990.
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A comprehensive survey of the history and sociology of genocide, this study presents more than two dozen examples of mass slaughter of peoples, spanning the centuries from antiquity to the present.
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Courtois, Stéphane, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panné, et al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Translated by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
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Originally published as Le livre noir du communisme: Crimes, terreur, répression (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1997). Contributions examine the criminal dimensions of communist regimes in Russia, Europe, and Asia; in the developing nations of Africa and Latin America; and in Afghanistan.
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Deák, István, Jan Tomasz Gross, and Tony Judt. The Politics of Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000.
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A comparative history of the transition from war to peace and ensuing retributive justice in the countries liberated from the Nazi yoke of occupation. This controversial book critically examines the narratives European governments and peoples developed to hide or gloss over their responsibility for crimes against humanity.
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Elster, Jon, ed. Retribution and Reparation in the Transition to Democracy. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511584343Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A collection of rigorously argued essays that describe and analyze how emerging democracies deal with members and supporters of fallen autocratic or occupation regimes. Examples range from post–World War II Germany to post-Apartheid South Africa.
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Kritz, Neil J. ed. Transitional Justice: How Emerging Democracies Reckon with Former Regimes: Country Studies. 3 vols. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1995.
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Collection of case studies ranging from Germany after World War II to Lithuania after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Volume II comprises twenty-one country studies, and Volume III deals with laws, rulings, and reports governing the transitions.
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Mazower, Mark. “Violence and the State in the Twentieth Century.” American Historical Review 107.4 (2002): 1158–1178.
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The short study examines the causes—for example, totalitarian regimes and civil wars—of political purges and genocides worldwide.
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Totten, Samuel, and William S. Parsons, eds. Century of Genocide: Critical Essays and Eyewitness Accounts. New York: Routledge, 2009.
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Now in its third edition, this collection of essays details the causes and ramifications of genocides and political violence in the 20th and 21st centuries. Examples range from genocides in South-West Africa in 1904 to Rwanda (1994). New chapters include the genocide in the former Yugoslavia and mass killings in Iraq, Darfur, and Guatemala.
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Communist and Nationalist Ideologies in Europe

With the emergence of socialist movements at the end of the 19th century in Europe and the 1917 October Revolution in Russia, which led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, many governments in Europe were in the grip of fear of a communist takeover. People belonging to or suspected of sympathizing with these dangerous new movements became targets of purges. Under post–World War I authoritarian regimes, the number of political prisoners and mass executions increased rapidly. Hodgson 1967 examines the persecution and killing of “reds” in 1918. While Sakmyster 1994 focuses on Horthy’s role as the leader of the state in Hungary’s “White Terror,” Bodó 2006 concentrates on the instruments of terror. Delzell 1961 is the seminal study on the resistance to Mussolini’s regime in Italy. Carbone and Grimaldi 1989 uses archival sources to reconstruct the Fascist system of internment of political opponents in Sicily. Ebner 2011 proves the centrality of violence to Fascist rule. Ruiz 2005 and Preston 2012 explores the methods of repression in Franco’s Spain.

Bodó, Béla. “Militia Violence and State Power in Hungary, 1919–1922.” Hungarian Studies Review 33.1–2 (2006): 121–156.
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Based on thorough analysis of Hungarian archival sources and relevant secondary sources, the author explores the recruitment and social dynamics of the Prónay Battalion, the most brutal instrument of Hungarian state repression.
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Carbone, Salvatore, and Laura Grimaldi, eds. Il popolo al confino: La persecuzione fascista in Sicilia. Rome: Ufficio centrale per i beni archivistici, 1989.
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Between 1977 and 1994 the Italian State Archive published a series of five volumes of files Fascist authorities kept on internment colonies and small villages in southern Italy. Carbone and Grimaldi reconstruct Fascist persecution of the Sicilian population as a microcosm of Italian life under fascism, based on police reports, denunciations, letters written by detainees, and medical records.
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Delzell, Charles F. Mussolini’s Enemies: The Italian Anti-Fascist Resistance. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.
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Seminal study of Italian resistance movements against Mussolini’s Fascist regime. Based on exhaustive archival research.
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Ebner, Michael R. Ordinary Violence in Mussolini’s Italy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
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The book analyzes the Fascist system of political confinement and its effects on Italian society. It reveals the centrality of violence to Fascist rule, arguing that the Mussolini regime projected its coercive power deeply and diffusely into society through confinement, imprisonment, low-level physical assaults, economic deprivations, intimidation, discrimination, and other everyday forms of coercion.
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Hodgson, John. Communism in Finland. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.
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Though dated, the book is still the standard work on the evolution of the Finnish Communist Party. It makes extensive use of Finnish sources and provides a balanced interpretation of the Finnish Civil War of 1918, which led to the imprisonment and death of thousands of “reds.”
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Preston, Paul. The Spanish Holocaust: Inquisition and Extermination in Twentieth-Century Spain. New York and London: Norton, 2012.
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The author went to great lengths in his archival and secondary research to establish the most accurate possible estimates of numbers of Spanish victims. He proves that Franco’s reign of terror was carefully planned and systematically executed.
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Ruiz, Julius. Franco’s Justice: Repression in Madrid after the Spanish Civil War. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.
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Using recently available archival material, this study shows the methods of postwar Francoist repression. Though not exterminatory, Franco’s regime executed thousands of “rebels” between 1939 and 1944.
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Sakmyster, Thomas L. Hungary’s Admiral on Horseback: Miklós Horthy, 1918–1944. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.
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Based on an exhaustive study of primary sources in Hungary and of archives across Europe, this biography is a good source on the “White Terror” in post–World War I Hungary.
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Stalin’s Purges

In the Soviet Union and the “People’s Republics” of Eastern and Central Europe under Stalin, the phenomenon of political imprisonment grew to unprecedented levels. A wave of terror that had already begun in 1934 gained momentum in 1937 and 1938. In a first wave, former party members and powerful party officials who could pose a threat to Stalin were targeted as “enemies of the people.” A second wave of mass arrests followed a Politburo order of 31 July 1937 that extended the circle of suspects to former kulaks, members of anti-Soviet parties, White Guards, gendarmes and officials of tsarist Russia, bandits, returned émigrés, members of anti-Soviet organizations, churchmen, sectarians, and recidivist criminals. The prison population of “counterrevolutionaries” rose from about 100,000 in 1937 to roughly half a million in 1939. More than 600,000 persons sentenced for “counterrevolutionary and state crimes” were shot.

The Great Terror

Between the early 1930s and his death in 1953, Joseph Stalin had more than a million of his own citizens executed. Millions more fell victim to forced labor, deportation, famine, massacres, and detention and interrogation by Stalin’s henchmen. This period of state-organized bloodshed became known as the “Great Terror.” Conquest 2008 has set the standard for the study of Stalinist purges for forty years. Getty 1985 contests Conquest’s findings and offers an alternative explanation centered on the Communist Party. Rogovin 2009 offers yet another approach concentrating on the resistance to the party. Naimark 2010 makes a case for the genocidal nature of the purges. Berlatsky 2012 sums up controversies about the purges. Parrish 1996 focuses on the later years of the purges and Getty and Naumov 2008 on Stalin’s executioner Yezhov. Goldman 2007 sheds light on the fate of groups and individuals.

Berlatsky, Noah, ed. Stalin’s Great Purge. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2012.
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A unique collection of essays on the historical background of the purges, controversies surrounding them, and personal narratives of survivors.
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Conquest, Robert. The Great Terror: A Reassessment. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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The fortieth anniversary edition of the author’s definitive work on Stalin’s purges incorporates newly available archival material and features a new foreword.
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Getty, J. Arch. Origins of the Great Purges: The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered, 1933–1938. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511572616Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based upon archival and published sources, the work is a study of the structure of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1930s. Its controversial hypothesis is that the Great Purges occurred not as the end product of a careful Stalin plan, but rather as the bloody but ad hoc result of Moscow’s incremental attempts to centralize political power.
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Getty, J. Arch, and Oleg V. Naumov. Yezhov: The Rise of Stalin’s “Iron Fist.” New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
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Based on records in Communist Party archives and Yezhov’s personal archives, this book portrays the life and career of the enigmatic man who administered Stalin’s Great Terror.
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Goldman, Wendy Z. Terror and Democracy in the Age of Stalin: The Social Dynamics of Repression. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
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Using new, formerly secret, archival sources, the author gives a vivid account of the unions and the factories and how ordinary people moved through clear stages toward madness and self-destruction. The book is also of interest to political scientists and sociologists interested in political violence, popular mobilization, and populist components of terror.
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Naimark, Norman M. Stalin’s Genocides. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.
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The author argues that Stalin’s purges constituted genocide as defined by the United Nations.
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Parrish, Michael. The Lesser Terror: Soviet State Security, 1939–1953. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996.
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The book offers a wealth of new information on the later years of the Stalinist terror. While it is comprehensive and indicates exhaustive primary and secondary research, it lacks sufficient historiographical and historical context.
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Rogovin, Vadim Z. Stalin’s Terror of 1937–1938: Political Genocide in the USSR. Translated by Frederick S. Choate. Oak Park, MI: Mehring, 2009.
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Written by a Russian historian, the book examines the bloodiest period of the Stalinist repression of political opposition in the Soviet Union. The author tries to prove his theory that the ferocity of the mass repression was directly proportional to the intensity of resistance to Stalin within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Originally published as Partiya rasstrelyannykh (Moscow, 1997).
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Gulag

The Glavnoye upravleniye ispravitelno-trudovykh lagerey (Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps), called the Gulag, was a system of Soviet labor camps that grew into an “archipelago” of several hundred complexes with thousands of individual camps under Stalin. In them, millions of convicts toiled to support the Soviet economy and more millions died. Solzhenitsyn 1985 is the first historical account of the Soviet concentration camp system. Critchlow and Critchlow 2002 offers a selection of gulag literature, including a work by Solzhenitsyn. Applebaum 2003 and Khlevniuk 2004 are based on extensive archival research and scores of personal accounts. While Applebaum 2003 focuses on life in the camps, Khlevniuk 2004 analyzes the camp system. Larina 1993 is the memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s widow. It is an uncensored look at the Bolshevik revolutionaries and of twenty years spent in gulags. Viola 2007 and Werth 2007 focus on the horrible fate two groups of victims suffered in the gulags. Viola documents the internal displacement of two million landowning peasants, while Werth examines the forced deportation of “socially dangerous elements.”

Applebaum, Anne. Gulag: A History. New York: Doubleday, 2003.
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Based on Soviet archival sources, oral history interviews with survivors, and camp memoirs, this book details all aspects of camp life and strategies for survival.
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Critchlow, Donald T., and Agnieszka Critchlow. Enemies of the State: Personal Stories from the Gulag. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002.
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A reader offering a selection of excerpts from nine widely read authors of gulag literature, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
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Khlevniuk, Oleg. The History of the Gulag: From Collectivization to the Great Terror. Translated by Vadim Staklo. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
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A thorough analysis of personal accounts and official documents provides the foundation for a detailed depiction of the Gulag, the horrific Soviet prison camp system.
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Larina, Anna. This I Cannot Forget: The Memoirs of Nikolai Bukharin’s Widow. Translated by Gary Kern. New York: Norton, 1993.
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First published uncensored in the journal Znamya in 1988 at the height of glasnost [openness] in the Soviet Union, this book offers a unique perspective on the fall from grace of one of the founding fathers of the Bolshevik Revolution and the author’s twenty years of life in the Gulag that followed. First book publication as Nezabyvaemoe (Moscow: APN, 1989).
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Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I. The Gulag Archipelago, 1918–1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation. Translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney (Parts I–IV) and Harry Willetts (Parts V–VII); abridged by Edward E. Erickson Jr. New York: Harper & Row, 1985.
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The author wrote this three-volume work, subdivided into seven parts, over a ten-year period beginning in 1958 and first published it in the West in 1973. The narrative relies on eyewitness testimony and primary research material and on the author’s own experiences as a prisoner in a Gulag labor camp.
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Viola, Lynne. The Unknown Gulag: The Lost World of Stalin’s Special Settlements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
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A careful documentation of the liquidation of about two million Soviet peasants, the so-called kulaks. Driving them from their homes and villages into the tundra, Stalin’s security apparatus forced them to build new “special settlements” that laid the foundation for the Gulag. Almost a half million of them would die as a result of disease, starvation, or exhaustion.
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Werth, Nicolas. Cannibal Island: Death in a Siberian Gulag. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.
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Reconstructing the way in which Soviet officials and institutions operated in the 1930s using new documents from previously classified Soviet archives, the book examines the forced deportation of “socially dangerous elements”—such as former tsarist civil servants, former officers of the White Army, participants in peasant rebellions, members of the clergy, persons deprived of voting rights, former members of non-bolshevik parties, ordinary criminals, ex-convicts, and vagrants—from Moscow and Leningrad to the forbidding island of Nazino where two-thirds of them died.
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Hitler’s Purges

Between 1933 and 1945, concentration camps (Konzentrationslager)—detention sites for the incarceration and killing of political enemies—were an integral feature of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime in Germany. The first camps were established soon after Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in January 1933. A year later, a centralized administration of the concentration camps formalized them into a system. From as early as 1934, concentration camp commandants deployed prisoners as forced laborers for the benefit of SS construction projects, including the construction or expansion of the camps themselves. During World War II, the original function of the camps continued, but they also served as holding centers for expanding numbers of forced laborers deployed on SS construction projects, on SS-commissioned extractive industrial sites, and, by 1942, in the production of armaments, weapons, and related goods for the German war effort. Broszat and Krausnick 1970 is a dated but still valid introduction to the concentration camp system. Kogon 2006 is a classic account by a former political prisoner. Goeschel, et al. 2012 is a documentary history of the early years of the Nazi camp system. Herbert, et al. 1998 and Bracher, et al. 1983 are anthologies offering good overviews and analyses of the concentration camp system within the Nazi apparatus of oppression. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2012 is a website that offers detailed information about the Nazi German concentration camp system. Wachsmann 2004 is a critical examination of the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich.

Bracher, Karl Dietrich, Manfred Funke, and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, eds. Nationalsozialistische Diktatur, 1933–1945: Eine Bilanz. Düsseldorf, Germany: Droste, 1983.
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Collection of essays by prominent German historians provides analyses of the components of the Nazi apparatus for systemic oppression and persecution.
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Broszat, Martin, and Helmut Krausnick. The Anatomy of the SS State. Translated by Dorothy Long and Marian Jackson. London: Granada, 1970.
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This edition comprises two of the five essays published in 1968 under the title Anatomy of the SS State. Broszat provides a detailed introduction to concentration camps, 1933–1945. Originally published as Anatomie des SS-Staates: Gutachten des Instituts für Zeitgeschichte (Olten, Switzerland: Walter-Verlag, 1965).
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Goeschel, Christian, Nikolaus Wachsmann, and Ewald Osers. The Nazi Concentration Camps, 1933–1939: A Documentary History. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2012.
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Collection of documents that provides valuable insight into the origins of the Nazi concentration camp system in the prewar years between 1933 and 1939.
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Herbert, Ulrich, Karin Orth, and Christoph Dieckmann, eds. Die nationalsozialistischen Konzentrationslager: Entwicklung und Struktur. 2 vols. Göttingen, Germany: Wallstein, 1998.
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Extensive collection of articles on a wide range of aspects of Nazi concentration camps.
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Kogon, Eugen. The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German Concentration Camps and the System behind Them. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
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First published in German as Der SS-Staat: Das System der deutschen Konzentrationslager (Munich: Kindler, 1974), this book is a classic account by a former political prisoner of life inside Buchenwald concentration camp.
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. “Concentration Camps, 1933–1939.” In Holocaust Encyclopedia. 2012.
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The website offers detailed information about the Nazi German concentration camp system and political purges, including maps, photographs and historical film footage, personal histories, and links to explore the topic in depth.
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Wachsmann, Nikolaus. Hitler’s Prisons: Legal Terror in Nazi Germany. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
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A critical examination of the operation and function of legal terror in the Third Reich. Drawing on a vast array of archival materials, the book traces a series of changes in prison policies and practice that led to racial abuse, brutal violence, slave labor, starvation, and mass killings.
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Allied Purges after World War II

During wartime conferences and again in Potsdam in 1945, the Allies vowed to punish war criminals and purge Nazis and fanatic militarists from the societies of the former Axis powers. In the four national occupation zones in Germany, the Allies purged according to their standards, which varied greatly in severity and numbers of people affected. Niethammer 1972 is the seminal study on the denazification of the US zone of occupation in Germany. Naimark 1995 is the most detailed account of Soviet purges in post–World War II East Germany. Von Plato, et al. 1998 offers a comprehensive examination of “special internment camps” in the Soviet occupation zone. Adams 2009 is a regional study that sheds light on the widely diverging US and British denazification practices in the city of Bremen. Baerwald 1977 is a firsthand account of the failures of the American purge of Japan. Dower 1999 explores the contradictory nature of the American attempt to purge Japan of militarists.

Adams, Bianka J. From Crusade to Hazard: The Denazification of Bremen Germany. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2009.
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A concise and well-documented regional study of the chaotic processes and mixed results of successive American and British military government attempts to denazify the population of Bremen, a US enclave within the British occupation zone.
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Baerwald, Hans H. The Purge of Japanese Leaders under the Occupation. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1977.
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First published in 1959, this book by a former language officer at General MacArthur’s headquarters is a succinct study of the serious flaws in the American purge of Japan.
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Dower, John W. Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. New York: Norton, 1999.
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Drawing on a vast range of Japanese sources, the book has become a modern classic about the American occupation of Japan. It goes into great detail about seemingly contradictory American efforts to purge militarists while at the same time granting the emperor immunity and keeping him in place.
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Naimark, Norman M. The Russians in Germany: A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, 1945–1949. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.
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Based on newly accessible Soviet archival sources, this book set the standard for the study of policies and denazification practices in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany.
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Niethammer, Lutz. Entnazifizierung in Bayern: Säuberung und Rehabilitierung unter amerikanischer Besatzung. Frankfurt: Fischer Verlag, 1972.
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Though dated, this is still the seminal work on the American attempt to purge the entire population of the United States–occupied zone in Germany of its Nazi elements.
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von Plato, Alexander, Sergei Mironenko, and Lutz Niethammer, eds. Sowjetische Speziallager in Deutschland 1945 bis 1950. Band 1, Studien und Berichte. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1998.
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The volume offers a comprehensive examination of Soviet “special internment camps,” also called “silent camps” because former inmates were prohibited from speaking about their imprisonment, for suspected Nazis and war criminals in the Soviet-occupied zone of Germany.
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Triple Purges in Post–World War II Europe

In Europe, political purges between 1945 and 1950 were interrelated, simultaneous events: the purge of Nazi collaborators, especially in countries that were former allies of Nazi Germany; the establishment of communist governments; and the impact of revolutionary social change in countries where communists tried to push their way into government—in some cases by violent means.

East and Central Europe

Political purges and great numbers of political prisoners in the People’s Republics of Eastern and Central Europe resulted from the confluence of the end of wartime alliances and the forced installation of Soviet-style governments. In Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, which had been allies of Nazi Germany, the first priority was the purge of Nazi collaborators from positions of influence in government, army, and political parties. Other waves of purges followed during the course of establishing communist governments. Gsovski and Grzybowski 1959 is a unique examination of the legal instruments of repression in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Fejtö 1974 is an early assessment of the societies of the Eastern Bloc countries. Naimark and Gibianskii 1997 and Berend 1996 provide general overviews of the social structure of the former Soviet satellite. Cesereanu 2006 explores the Romanian deportation and forced labor system as tools of repression. Kersten 1991 sheds light on the use of concentration camps and militias in the establishment of communist rule in post–World War II Poland. Frommer 2004 examines the prosecution of more than 100,000 suspected war criminals and collaborators in Czechoslovakia. Dulić 2004 concentrates on communist terror in former Yugoslavia at the end of World War II.

Berend, Ivan T. Central and Eastern Europe, 1944–1993: Detour from the Periphery to the Periphery. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511581748Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A political, economic, and social history of the region based on a vast array of archival sources from most Central European countries, although Hungarian sources are overrepresented. As one of the first historical works about the former Eastern Bloc after the demise of the Soviet Union, this book pays attention to social upheaval and political purges.
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Cesereanu, Ruxandra, ed. Comunism și represiune în România: Istoria tematică a unui fratricid național. Iași, Romania: Polirom, 2006.
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A Sighet Memorial for the Victims of Communism project, the book is a collection of seventeen articles on various themes ranging from the communist takeover to terror, deportation, and forced labor camps.
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Dulić, Tomislav. “Tito’s Slaughterhouse: A Critical Analysis of Rummel’s Work on Democide.” Journal of Peace Research 41.1 (2004): 85–102.
DOI: 10.1177/0022343304040051Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Meticulous analysis of Rummel’s calculation methods in his Death by Government using the example of Yugoslavia’s communist leader Josip Broz Tito’s purges at the end of World War II. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Fejtö, François. A History of the People’s Democracies: Eastern Europe since Stalin. Translated by Daniel Weissbort. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974.
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An early account of power struggles and abuses of power in Soviet satellite states in Europe. Based almost entirely on secondary sources such as newspaper accounts, this book by a Hungarian journalist remained the most comprehensive history of the Soviet Bloc countries until the fall of the Iron Curtain. Originally published as Histoire des démocraties populaires (Paris: éditions du Seuil, 1969).
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Frommer, Benjamin. National Cleansing: Retribution against Nazi Collaborators in Postwar Czechoslovakia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
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The book examines the prosecution of more than 100,000 suspected war criminals and collaborators by Czech courts and tribunals after World War II. Based on newly accessible archival sources, it demonstrates the central role of retribution in the postwar power struggle and the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans.
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Gsovski, Vladimir, and Kazimierz Grzybowski, eds. Government, Law and Courts in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. 2 vols. New York: Praeger, 1959.
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A rare examination of the Soviet legal system. Collaborating with twenty-nine lawyers, the editors explain in detail how Soviet states used their criminal legislation to justify incarcerating, interning, and ultimately eliminating real or perceived enemies of the system.
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Kersten, Krystyna. The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948. Translated by John Micgiel and Michael H. Bernhard. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991.
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Based on extensive archival material, the book describes how the new communist regime used concentration camps and militias as instruments of the Ministry for Public Security to deal with members of the anti-communist underground. Originally published as Narodziny systemu władzy Polska 1943–1948 (Poznan, Poland: Krąg, 1984).
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Naimark, Norman, and Leonid Gibianskii, eds. The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, 1944–1949. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997.
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This book is a collaborative effort of scholars from Russia and the United States. Based on material from newly opened archives in Russia and Eastern Europe, it reevaluates the history of postwar Yugoslavia, Poland, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and the Soviet zone of Germany from 1944 to 1949. Though all different, their societies were shaped by systematic assaults on individual rights and social institutions.
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Western and Southern Europe

After the liberation of France from Nazi occupation, collaborators and sympathizers of the hated regime became subject to purges. In Greece, a civil war between the government and communists and other leftists who had been in the resistance against the Nazi occupiers followed the end of World War II. The Greek government responded to the communist pressure with repression and incarceration of real and perceived political enemies. Novick 1968 focuses on mass executions of Nazi collaborators and Vichy sympathizers by members of the French resistance. Baruch 2003 concentrates on the legal campaigns to exclude large numbers of suspected collaborators from regaining their positions in French society. Knapp 2007 examines France’s break with Marshal Pétain’s regime. Voglis 2002 sheds light on the plight of political prisoners in the Greek civil war that followed World War II. Woller 1996 explores the five-year process of furious Italian retribution against Fascists that ended abruptly with a general amnesty in 1948.

Baruch, Marc-Olivier, ed. Une poignée de misérables: L’épuration de la société française après la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Paris: Fayard, 2003.
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The author examines the French campaign to “purify” the bureaucracy, the professions, and the ranks of the captains of industry of Nazi collaborators.
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Knapp, Andrew, ed. The Uncertain Foundation: France at the Liberation, 1944–47. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
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This collection of essays analyzes France’s decisive but untidy break with the Vichy regime and the prewar Third Republic.
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Novick, Peter. The Resistance versus Vichy: The Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1968.
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The book examines how the French underground settled scores with Vichy collaborators—those supporting a fascist government ruled by Marshal Philippe Pétain—through summary executions.
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Voglis, Polymeris. Becoming a Subject: Political Prisoners during the Greek Civil War. New York: Berghahn, 2002.
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The study examines the plight of Greek communist prisoners in the years immediately following World War II.
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Woller, Hans. Die Abrechnung mit dem Faschismus in Italien 1943 bis 1948. Munich: Oldenbourg, 1996.
DOI: 10.1524/9783486594362Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The book is a comprehensive study of Italian efforts to purge Fascists from all positions of influence in government and society.
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Mao’s Cultural Revolution

In 1966, Mao Zedong set in motion the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to enforce communism in the country by removing old capitalist habits, old traditions, old cultural treasures such as books and art objects, and soon also officials and intellectuals in positions of authority in government or universities that were perceived as “bourgeois elements” from Chinese society, and to impose Maoist orthodoxy within the Party. Teiwes 1993 is the standard work on the Chinese Communist Party structure, and it explains the origins of the Cultural Revolution. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals 2006 shows how Mao masterminded the violence of the Cultural Revolution. Thurston 1987 uses oral history interviews to describe the brutality of the Red Guards. Lubell 2002 is a study of tensions within the founder generation of the Communist Party using the example of the lives of a group of sixty-one cadres. Luo 2003 is an anthology that reconsiders the Cultural Revolution from the perspective of the current economic and political climate. Brown 2006 is a regional study of the purge of a suspected separatist party in Inner Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution.

Brown, Kerry. The Purge of the Inner Mongolian People’s Party in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 1967–69: A Function of Language, Power and Violence. Folkestone, UK: Global Oriental, 2006.
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This study looks at the purge of what was claimed to be a separatist party in the Inner Mongolian region during the Chinese Cultural Revolution through an analysis of contemporary documents.
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Lubell, Pamela. The Chinese Communist Party and the Cultural Revolution: The Case of the Sixty-One Renegades. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2002.
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The study reveals the tensions within the founder generation of the Chinese Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution using the example of the “Sixty-One Renegades,” a group of high-ranking cadres who “recanted” their communism to trick the Nationalists into releasing them from prison. After thirty years of working for the Party, they were imprisoned again—only this time by Mao’s Red Guards.
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Luo, Jinyi, ed. The Chinese Cultural Revolution Reconsidered: Beyond Purge and Holocaust. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
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Contributions from leading international scholars in this book reconsider the Chinese Cultural Revolution from the perspective of the current economic and political climate.
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MacFarquhar, Roderick, and Michael Schoenhals. Mao’s Last Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
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During the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards humiliated, tortured, and even killed tens of thousands of Communist Party officials. This book explains why Mao launched the Cultural Revolution and shows his role in masterminding it.
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Teiwes, Frederick C. Politics and Purges in China: Rectification and the Decline of Party Norms, 1950–1965. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1993.
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The book is the standard work on the organization and structure of the Chinese Communist Party. While it does not concentrate on the violence committed during the Cultural Revolution, it explains how it developed.
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Thurston, Anne F. Enemies of the People: The Ordeal of the Intellectuals in China’s Great Cultural Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1987.
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Drawing on oral history interviews, this book examines the years of brutality, torture, humiliation, and betrayal during the last ten years of Mao’s leadership.
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Purges under South American Dictatorships

The military regimes that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, Brazil from 1964 to 1985, Chile from 1973 to 1990, and Uruguay from 1973 to 1984 all used violence to crush dissent and the law to regulate and legitimate that violence. Archdiocese of Sao Paulo 1998 is a document collection on the torture practices of the Brazilian military dictatorship. Pereira 1998 focuses on the role of Brazilian military courts during the military dictatorship. Lewis 2002 examines the “dirty war” in Argentina. Timerman 2002 is the personal account of an Argentinean political prisoner. Spooner 1994 analyzes political repression in Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship. Servicio Paz y Justicia 1992 documents the atrocities of the Uruguayan military regime.

Archdiocese of Sao Paulo. Torture in Brazil: A Shocking Report on the Pervasive Use of Torture by Brazilian Military Governments, 1964–1979. Translated by Jaime Wright. Austin: Institute of Latin American Studies, University of Texas, 1998.
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Originally published in Portuguese as Brasil: Nunca mais (Petrópolis, Brazil: Vozes, 1985), this extensive collection of records documents the torture of thousands of victims of Brazil’s military dictatorship.
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Lewis, Paul H. Guerrillas and Generals: The “Dirty War” in Argentina. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002.
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The book is a comprehensive examination of Argentina’s Dirty War. It analyzes the causes, describes the ideologies that motivated both sides, and explores the consequences of all-or-nothing politics.
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Pereira, Anthony W. “‘Persecution and Farce’: The Origins and Transformation of Brazil’s Political Trials, 1964–1979.” Latin American Research Review 33.1 (1998): 43–66.
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The study focuses on the role of Brazilian military courts in the persecution of “subversive” enemies of the regimes. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Servicio Paz y Justicia. Uruguay nunca más: Human Rights Violations, 1972–1985. Translated by Elizabeth Hampsten. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.
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Based on interviews, surveys of ex-prisoners, and published testimonials, this book documents the atrocities committed during the military dictatorship in Uruguay from 1973 to 1985. Describing some twenty forms of torture, disappearances, and other mechanisms of repression, the report documents how the population at large was subjected to abuse, terror, and lies, amid economic depression and social upheaval.
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Spooner, Mary Helen. Soldiers in a Narrow Land: The Pinochet Regime in Chile. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
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Using personal testimonies from the victims of political repression during the Pinochet regime, the book provides an inside look at the rise and slow disintegration of a brutal dictatorship.
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Timerman, Jacobo. Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number. Translated by Toby Talbot. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002.
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In this personal account, the author describes his thirty months of imprisonment, torture, and anti-Semitic abuse at the hands of Argentinean security forces. Originally published as Preso sin nombre, celda sin número (New York: Random House, 1981).
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Democratization after Communism and Dictatorship

In Portugal, democratic reforms began in 1975 after the abrupt end of the Salazar dictatorship. Pinto 2008 discusses the purges of the military, administration, police, and economic sectors in Portugal. In the early 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the former satellite states in East and Central Europe found themselves released into an uncertain future and having to establish a new political system. Most chose to abolish their one-party states and to replace them with democratic structures. Borneman 1997 is a good overview of treatment of former communist and socialist functionaries in European countries after the demise of the Soviet Union. David 2011 discusses institutional innovations in Central Europe designed to deal with officials tainted by their complicity with communist regimes. Letki 2002 compares varying degrees of “lustration” and “democratization” in post-communist states. Linz and Stepan 1996 is a study of how democracies developed in Europe and South America after the fall of dictatorships. In early summer 2003, the regime of Iraq dictator Saddam Hussein fell soon after the United States–led invasion. As part of the democratization effort, the United States ordered “de-Baathification” of the bureaucracy. Barakat 2005 is an early analysis of the effects of the purge on reconstruction efforts. Pfiffner 2010 is a critical assessment of the negative impact of “de-Baathification” on Iraq’s ability to develop democratic institutions.

Barakat, Sultan. “Post-Saddam Iraq: Deconstructing a Regime, Reconstructing a Nation.” Third World Quarterly 26.4–5 (2005): 571–591.
DOI: 10.1080/01436590500127800Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article analyzes the difficult nature of the reconstruction in Iraq, made even more difficult by purging the civil service of Baath Party loyalists. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Borneman, John. Settling Accounts: Violence, Justice, and Accountability in Postsocialist Europe. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997.
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A sweeping overview of the treatment of former communist and socialist functionaries in European countries—with a focus on the German Democratic Republic—after the demise of the Soviet Union.
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David, Roman. Lustration and Transitional Justice: Personnel Systems in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.
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The book analyzes major institutional innovations devised in Central Europe to deal with officials tainted by their complicity with prior regimes. It examines the historical origins, social meanings, and political effects of personnel systems based on dismissal, exposure, and confession in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland.
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Letki, Natalia. “Lustration and Democratisation in East-Central Europe.” Europe-Asia Studies 54.4 (2002): 529–552.
DOI: 10.1080/09668130220139154Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comparative analysis of the varying degrees of “lustration” and “democratization” as practiced in the former communist states of East and Central Europe. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Linz, Juan J., and Alfred Stepan. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
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A good introduction to the study of how democracies develop after the fall of dictatorships. The book analyzes democratic transitions and processes in fifteen countries of southern Europe, South America, and post-communist Europe.
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Pfiffner, James P. “US Blunders in Iraq: De-Baathification and Disbanding the Army.” Intelligence and National Security 25.1 (2010): 76–85.
DOI: 10.1080/02684521003588120Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Based largely on memoirs and oral history interviews with participants, the article is a critical assessment of the US de-Baathification policies and practices in Iraq. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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Pinto, António Costa. “Political Purges and State Crisis in Portugal’s Transition to Democracy, 1975–76.” Journal of Contemporary History 43.2 (2008): 305–332.
DOI: 10.1177/0022009408089034Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The article discusses in detail the purges of the military, administration, police, and economic sectors after the fall of Salazar’s dictatorship in Portugal. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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