Investigation of the causes of twentieth-century mass violence worldwide beyond terms such as 'genocide' and 'ethnic cleansing'.

1. Introduction: extremely violent societies; Part I. Participatory Violence: 2. A coalition for violence: mass slaughter in Indonesia, 1965-66; 3. Participating and profiteering: the destruction of the Armenians, 1915-23; Part II. The Crisis of Society: 4. From rivalries between elites to a crisis of society: mass violence and famine in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), 1971-77; 5. Sustainable violence: strategic resettlement, militias and 'development' in anti-guerrilla warfare; 6. What connects the fate of different victim groups? The German occupation and Greek society in crisis; Part III. General Observations: 7. The ethnization of history: the historiography of mass violence and national identity construction; 8. Conclusions.

Christian Gerlach is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Bern. His award-winning titles in German include Calculated Murder: The German Economic and Extermination Policy in Byelorussia (third edition, 2001), War, Food, Genocide: German Extermination Policies in the Second World War (second edition, 2001), and The Last Chapter: The Murder of Hungarian Jews, 1944-45 (with Götz Aly, second edition, 2004).