The Battle for Bodies, Hearts and Minds in Postwar Greece

Social Worker Charles Schermerhorn in Thessaloniki, 1946–1951

Buch | Hardcover

266 Seiten

2023
Routledge (Verlag)
978-1-032-28174-2 (ISBN)

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The previously unpublished memoir of social worker Charles Schermerhorn offers new and eye-opening source material pertaining to the epicenter of the early Cold War: northern Greece. This book brings this memoir to light to enrich the discussion about the Greek Civil War and the late 1940s, through the highly perceptive views of a firsthand observer of the turmoil. Schermerhorn’s writings speak most compellingly to the power of human agency amid adverse sociopolitical circumstances. His memoir takes a child-centered and social-historical approach to controversial events, filling a great void in our knowledge.

This book looks at a single mid-twentieth-century crisis in multidimensional ways, as a moral, material, social, and institutional calamity that mobilized a motley crew of actors, from new humanitarian aid organizations to press agents, from soldiers to destitute repeat-refugees, from fledgling modern missionaries to foreign diplomats and economic strategists. It was Schermerhorn’s unique achievement to interact with them all, seeking common ground in the arduous task of trying to improve living conditions for children and rural families. But he also realized how easily foreign aid could become a tool of political power and expediency.

Focusing on the Greek Civil War, this book will interest readers studying the Cold War, the heated peripheries of proxy wars, and the devastating social fallout of conflicts raging in areas hidden from public view. The global history of humanitarian crises is a burgeoning field, and Schermerhorn was the first to place Greek children and villagers, who themselves left hardly any sources behind, at the center of this urgent and ever-relevant debate.

Gonda Van Steen holds the Koraes Chair of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language, and Literature in the Department of Classics at King’s College London. She is the author of five books: Venom in Verse: Aristophanes in Modern Greece (2000); Liberating Hellenism from the Ottoman Empire (2010); Theatre of the Condemned: Classical Tragedy on Greek Prison Islands (2011); and Stage of Emergency: Theater and Public Performance under the Greek Military Dictatorship of 1967–1974 (2015). Her latest book, Adoption, Memory, and Cold War Greece (2019), takes the reader into the uncharted terrain of Greek adoption stories that become paradigmatic of Cold War politics and history.

List of Figures and Maps / Foreword / Preface and Acknowledgments / Maps / Introduction / Charley in Greece: 1946 to 1951 / References / Index

Erscheinungsdatum	12.12.2023
Reihe/Serie	Publications of the Centre for Hellenic Studies, King's College London
Zusatzinfo	15 Halftones, black and white; 15 Illustrations, black and white
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	684 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Neuzeit (bis 1918)
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► 1918 bis 1945
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Militärgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-032-28174-X / 103228174X
ISBN-13	978-1-032-28174-2 / 9781032281742
Zustand	Neuware