Conflict & Legality

Conflict & Legality – Policing mid-twentieth century Europe

Edited by Gerard Oram

Paperback 218 pages with 12 illustrations
ISBN 978 1 903427 20 0

’transitional studies on European policing are still rare... the book offers a nice collection of studies.’

Guys Meershoek, Crime, History & Society Vol 13, No 2, 2009

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The book

This important collection of essays by noted European historians examines the history of policing in Britain, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Weimar and Nazi Germany and the Nazi-occupied territories of the Soviet Union in mid twentieth century Europe – an age of political extremes and brutal conflict. The book deals with methods of policing and perceptions of the police – the British ’Bobby’, the German ’Friend and Helper’ – as well as the changes in police work wrought by war, occupation and other emergencies, probing definitions of legality and the relationship between the state and its citizens in totalitarian regimes and liberal democracies alike. It is produced in association with the European Centre for the Study of Policing at the Open University.