The reason why a fuller understanding of the significance of the Hitler dictatorship did not emerge in prewar democracies remains a question of enduring historical interest. This article examines the way in which Unilever, one of the earliest multinational corporations, responded to the challenges of political risk posed by the Third Reich, and how aspects of business activity that gave rise to moral issues were weighed against the need to survive commercially. The realisation that Unilever could be seen as an unwitting accomplice in the dictatorship's criminal activities seems to have come late to the company. While corporate culture reflected the values of contemporary society, multinational business was partly responsible for the failure to sound the alarm over the unique dangers inherent in National Socialism.

Archive-based regional studies can contribute much that is new to the economic, political and social history of the Second World War. This paper considers the process of industrial mobilisation in Northern Ireland, a politically divided region which was part of the United Kingdom but which had its own government. It examines the changing administrative framework of war production, the debate on military and industrial conscription, the role of women and the economic implications of geographical remoteness from London. The paper adds to our limited knowledge of regional mobilisation and contributes to a neglected aspect of the history of Northern Ireland.

Vladko Maček (1871–1964) became the leader of the Croatian Peasant Party (HSS) in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the assassination of Stjepan Radić (1871–1928). In this capacity, he played a pivotal role in Croatian and Yugoslav politics during the critical years 1928–41, when the clouds of war were gathering over Europe, and during the first phase of World War Two. Today he is best remembered for having negotiated the Cvetković-Maček Sporazum (agreement) in August 1939; the Sporazum created a so-called banovina (province) of Croatia with considerable autonomy, and was intended to contribute to the calming of Serb–Croat frictions in royal Yugoslavia. The Banovina comprised 26.6 per cent of the territory of Yugoslavia and had some 4.4 million inhabitants, 28.6 per cent of the total population of the kingdom.1 However, it lasted only until April 1941, when an Axis invasion resulted in the occupation and partition of Yugoslavia.

The Croat Peasant Party was arguably the most important Croatian political party during the existence of the first Yugoslavia (1918–41). Under the leadership of Vladko Maček (1879–1964), it entered the most difficult period of its history: it was forced to contend with the royal dictatorship (1929–34) of King Aleksandar Karadjordjević, the Great Depression, growing nationality tensions and an increasingly volatile political climate in which the extremes of the right and left, represented in Croatia by the Ustaša and Communist parties respectively, contended for power. This article examines the contentious relationship between Maček's Croat Peasant Party and the fascist Ustaša movement between 1929 and 1941, and assesses Maček's legacy and his place in Croatia's 20th-century political history.

In the years 1936–41, the Croatian Peasant Party, led by Vladko Maček, operated two militias – the Croatian Peasant Defence (HSZ) in the villages and the Croatian Civil Defence in the cities. The HSZ was intended to protect Croatian peasants from attacks by Serb Chetniks as well as by communists, and was thus itself a symptom of the lawlessness prevailing in the interwar Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The HSZ also formed part of Maček's efforts to compete with the fascistic Ustaša movement, an armed organization behind the so-called ‘Velebit uprising’ of 1932.

In summer 1936 Vladko Maček's priorities lay with rebuilding the Croatian Peasant Party after its six years of illegality under King Aleksandar's dictatorship in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Yet the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) was to have a polarising and radicalising effect on Croatian society. Both communists and supporters of the fascist Ustaša movement looked to Spain as a model for resolving the ‘Croat question’ at a time when Croats were becoming increasingly frustrated with Maček's passivity. As a propaganda war raged in the press of the radical left and right, the Croatian Peasant Party tried to ignore the conflict. Maček's failure to realise the impact of the war in Spain on the political situation in Croatia is indicative of some of his weaknesses as a leader in difficult times. The Croatian Peasant Party missed the opportunity to take a strong moral stance against fascism during the Spanish conflict, and Maček's fence-sitting from the 1930s onwards permitted the more extreme ideological movements in Croatia to take advantage of the rapidly changing conditions of a Europe engulfed in war.

These seven books reflect the great diversity and dynamism of contemporary scholarship on the Second World War. They encompass a broad range of genres, including analytical monographs, vivid and compelling memoirs, an edited conference collection and a work that makes hitherto classified archival material available to a wider audience. Together they demonstrate the vitality and breadth of recent Second World War scholarship, reflecting that the war remains a subject of significant scholarly and popular interest.

The historical connection between war and genocide is clear and apparent. Scholars of mass killing have repeatedly pointed out the linkages between the First World War and the Armenian genocide of 1915, between the Second World War and the Holocaust, between the 1993–4 war and the genocide in Rwanda, and between the war in Bosnia and the genocide in Srebrenica. Scholars of war, most often military historians, have been less ready to tie what they see as two distinct social phenomena – war and genocide – into the same bundle. This was especially the case, until recently, for the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, and the subsequent mass murder of the Jews. The Wehrmacht, the German fighting forces, were seen to be implementing an enormously ambitious military campaign against the Soviet Union, which, in the end, they lost. Meanwhile, the Nazi security organs – the SS, the SD, and the Einsatzgruppen – carried out the ‘Final Solution’, inspired primarily by Hitler and the Nazi hierarchs.