In a new interpretation of the history of the Balkans during the Second World War, Alfred J. Rieber explores the tangled political rivalries, cultural clashes, and armed conflicts among the great powers and the indigenous people competing for influence and domination. The study takes an original approach to the region based on the geography, social conditions, and imperial rivalries that spans several centuries, culminating in three wars during the first half of the twentieth century. Against this background, Rieber focuses on leadership - personified by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Tito - as the key to explaining events.

In a new interpretation of the history of the Balkans during the Second World War, Alfred J. Rieber explores the tangled political rivalries, cultural clashes, and armed conflicts among the great powers and the indigenous people competing for influence and domination. The study takes an original approach to the region based on the geography, social conditions, and imperial rivalries that spans several centuries, culminating in three wars during the first half of the twentieth century. Against this background, Rieber focuses on leadership - personified by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Churchill, and Tito - as the key to explaining events. For each one the Balkans represented a strategic prize vital for the fulfilment of their ambitious war aims. For the local forces the destabilization of the war offered the opportunity to reorder societies, expel ethnic minorities, and expand national borders. Storms over the Balkans during the Second World War illustrates how the leaders of the external powers were forced to improvise their tactics and compromise their ideologies under the pressure of war and the competing claims of their allies and clients. Neither the Axis nor the Allied camps were uniform blocs, and deep divisions ran through the ranks of the resistance and those collaborating with the occupying powers. These tensions contributed to the failure of all the participants in the struggle to achieve their aims. The complexities of the wartime experiences help to explain the persistence of memories and unfulfilled aspirations that continue to haunt the region. The study is based on extensive research in new sources in seven languages.

The leading expert on Soviet military history resurrects a failed World War II campaign that the official Russian history seeks to erase from memory. Reconstructing the Red Army's first invasion of Romania in the spring of 1944, Glantz shows that despite the campaign's abysmal failure, it provided a clear indication of Stalin's strong interest in the Balkans and further damaged the German army's ability to stop the Soviet war machine in its drive toward Berlin.

In 1951, an ad hoc consortium of Jewish organizations received, together with the State of Israel, an invitation to negotiate with West Germany for "moral and material amends" for Nazi-era damages. The consortium became the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany, known as the Claims Conference. Over a half-century, the Conference's vigorous pursuit of claims against Germany led to compensation for hundreds of thousands of victims of Nazism. The activities of the Conference expanded from support of individual victims to allocations to special goals, including support for Righteous Gentiles, commemoration of the Holocaust, study and research, etc. Dwells on problems faced by the Conference in dealing with the governments of East Germany and Austria, which before the 1990s did not recognize their countries as successors of the Nazi state, as well as with big companies in West Germany, which did not recognize their responsibility for their part in the Nazi program of "annihilation through work", and thus did not want to compensate their former workers.

Annihilation argues that World War II evolved into a war of annihilation—a total war—that engulfed militants and civilians alike. The book challenges the "good war" thesis by showing that the "strategy of annihilation" was employed by all sides in the conflict. Moving from the onset of hostilities to the final days of battle, the narrative provides a global perspective that links all theaters of the war.