title: Fires of Hatred: Ethnic Cleansing in Twentieth-Century Europe
author:  Norman M. Naimark 
description: As <b>Norman M. Naimark</b> observeswith broad enough standards the ethnic cleansing label can be affixed to events as disparate as the destruction of Carthage, the crusade against the Albigensians, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, the Spanish conquest of the Incas and Aztecs, and the expulsion of Indians from tribal lands in the United States He objects that such a catchall approach fails to explain current events in useful terms Naimark providesdisturbing detailsand much other cause for sad reflection. (Anatole Shub <i>New Leader</i> 2001-01-01)<br /><br />What strands link the last centurys bloody spasms of ethnic cleansingfrom the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust to Bosnia and Kosovo? Stanford University historian <b>Naimark</b> argues ethnic cleansing is a profoundly twentieth-century phenomenon, not a product of ancient hatreds The ugliness of ethnic cleansingits violence and brutality, its misogyny and totality, its effort to eradicate every trace of the otherposes unique challenges to an international community reluctant to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation state. (Mary Carroll <i>Booklist</i> 2001-01-01)<br /><br />A needed measure of clarity [<b>Naimark</b>] embeds ethnic cleansing in the history of 20th-century Europe[and] undercuts the standard wisdom that holds ancient enmities responsible for atrocities perpetrated in the modern era Students of history and international relations are indebted to professor Naimark for [his] sobering insights. (James R. Holmes <i>Library Journal</i> 2000-11-15)<br /><br />As a contribution to the study of mass violence in this century, this book is very reliable, eminently readable, and highly educational. <b>Naimark</b> emphasizes that ethnic cleansing is a profoundly modern experience and the international community, which has sometimes encouraged and more usually ignored large-scale atrocities, is responsible. (Stanley Hoffmann, Harvard University)<br /><br />During the last decade, Americans and Europeans rediscovered the horrors of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo. <b>Norman Naimark</b>s important research demonstrates that it was hardly an invention of the l990s, but has had a long history, often shrouded in silence because it was easier to live with the results. This is an immensely relevant and anguishing study. (Charles Maier, Harvard University)
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  > _‘Never trifle with Johnny Turk. He’s a dangerous beast.’_
  
  Winston Churchill, 1915
  
  **Author’s Note**
  
   _Ethnic cleansing_ is the buzz word of the 1990s. Right across the world,
  from Asia, through the former Soviet Union, right up to Western Europe’s
  doorstep in Yugoslavia, tribe massacres tribe, creed slaughters creed.
  Already, in the year in which I write, thousands of innocent men, women and
  children have been killed or forced ruthlessly out of their homelands.
  
  But there is nothing new about ethnic cleansing. Over seventy years ago now,
  with the break-up of the German, Russian and Turkish empires, the same
  terrible thing was happening. Race murdered race, religion slaughtered
  religion. Hundreds of thousands of innocents were tortured, starved, forced
  from their homes at gunpoint. Chaos and cruelty reigned supreme in many parts
  of Southern Europe and Asia.
  
  In his diary for February 1922, Lt de Vere Smith, known to the popular press
  of the time as ‘Co