NIOD Rewind Podcast on War & Violence

In this episode of NIOD Rewind Anne van Mourik speaks with Ralf Futselaar about his inaugural lecture Born under a bad sign. The indelible Marks of Total War on Twentieth Century Lives (November 2021). Ralf warns against focusing too much on individual lives in historical narratives that suppose to ‘give history a face’. Instead, he advocates to investigate warfare and its long-term consequences on large, specific groups of people. What are the drawbacks of making history relatable by telling individual life stories to represent violent episodes? How can computational analysis of large data sets help us understand group effects of violent episodes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries? Can such analyses further our understandings of the Dutch Hunger Winter, for example?

Photo: Collectie Fries Verzetsmuseum, Leeuwarden

How did Germany and the Netherlands deal with violent political groups of the 60s and 70s? How can we compare this with Dutch reactions to violent political groups? And how to understand current far right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politics? Anne van Mourik speaks with professor Jacco Pekelder about the dynamics of violence in Germany and the Netherlands in the long twentieth century. In 2021 Jacco got assigned as head of the Centre of Netherlands-Studies and in his work deals with the relationship between Germany and the Netherlands. What are his plans for future research?​

In the interview, Jacco spoke about the film 'Buongiorno notte' (2003) directed by Marco Bellochio.

Picture: Rob Bogaerts/ Dutch National Archives/ Anefo

How and why did the rules of war come about? To what extent and how can the 1949 Geneva Conventions be operationalised in both past and contemporary war? In this episode Anne van Mourik and Thijs Bouwknegt talk with historian Boyd van Dijk about his brand-new book Preparing for War: The Making of the Geneva Conventions (Oxford University Press, 2022). Van Dijk takes us through rationales for the Conventions, by placing them in world historical context and highlighting the role played by some remarkable people. Also, he discusses how the Geneva Conventions could provide a prism through which to perceive the Dutch colonial war in Indonesia between 1945 and 1949, and today’s Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Image: ICRC Audiovisual Archives, V-P-HIST-03538-05.

What is the value and meaning of political apologies across cultures? In this episode Anne van Mourik speaks with historian Marieke Zoodsma, who researches how apologies are expressed and received across the world. How do political authorities across the world address or redress past wrongdoings in these accounts? How can we understand the large number of political apologies in the recent past? And can political excuses effectively help processing suffering or lead to reconciliation?

https://www.politicalapologies.com/

Photo: visitors paying their respects at the 2019 commemoration of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising, Jeju, Republic of Korea. By Marieke Zoodsma.

Audio fragment: NOS Koningspaar in Indonesië (2020)

How did the First World War transform the lives of ordinary people all over the world? In the latest episode of NIOD Rewind, Anne van Mourik interviews Maartje Abbenhuis and Ismee Tames about their new book Global War, Global Catastrophe: Neutrals, Belligerents and the Transformations of the First World War. Conventionally, the history of The First World War is predominantly one of Western belligerents and battlefields. Maartje and Ismee, however, turn this traditional history inside out and focus on the histories of those who are often marginalised in the narratives on the war. What did the war mean for people and societies in colonies and neutral states? How did this innovative idea for the book came about? And what is it that we can learn from the book for our present-day society?

What did it mean to live in Europe under German occupation?

(Image: Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe Marburg, Image Archive)

In deze speciale editie van Niod Rewind zitten Anne van Mourik en Thijs Bouwknegt aan de directeurstafel van het Niod. Ze spreken met Martijn Eickhoff en Frank van Vree. Martijn volgde op 1 september 2021 Frank op als directeur. Wat dreef hen om de Tweede Wereldoorlog, de Holocaust en wereldwijd massaal geweld te gaan onderzoeken? Hoe reflecteert Frank op zijn voorbije directeurschap? En hoe ziet Martijn de toekomst van het instituut voor zich?

Muziek intro: Roy van Rosendaal

Anne van Mourik and Thijs Bouwknegt interview historian Kylie Thomas and journalist Michael Schmidt, discussing forced disappearances under Apartheid South Africa.

Michael is the author of Death Flight: Apartheid's secret doctrine of disappearance, which investigates and tells the history of Apartheid’s chilling tactic of throwing people, dead or alive, from airplanes so that their remains cannot be found. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission on human rights violations during the Apartheid years was established in 1995. Kylie Thomas researches and writes about the 2017 reopening of the Apartheid cases.

Who exactly were the people who were targeted for ‘disappearance’? And how come cases of activists who were imprisoned, tortured and murdered, are only now being reinvestigated and reopened?

Websites mentioned in the episode:

Foundation for Human Rights Unfinished Business of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: https://unfinishedtrc.co.za

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Music: Alastair Douglas

What are the problems of genocide and how to rethink mass death? In this episode Anne van Mourik and Thijs Bouwknegt interview historian Dirk Moses, whose book The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression just came out. How does the legal concept of genocide distort our thinking about civilian destruction? What does genocide, as the ‘crime of crimes’ still mean for other types of humanly caused civilian death, like bombing cities and drone strikes?

Cover book by Murad Subay: https://muradsubay.com/

War, mass violence and its consequences are not a thing of the past. They are very much present in the world of today and tomorrow.

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The people in this episode:

Ismee Tames

Sophie de Schaepdrijver

Siniša Malešević

Avi Sharma

Ville Kivimäki

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This podcast was made with the help of: Bethany Warner and Alex Strete