Dr Ben Shepherd

Reader in History

T: +44 (0) 141 331 8156

I was awarded my PhD in German History by the University of Birmingham in December 2000. I was a teaching fellow in the School of History, University of Birmingham before beginning a lectureship in History at Glasgow Caledonian University in September 2002. I became a reader in 2009.

Specialisms & Interests

German and Austrian military history, 1914-1945
Guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency, 1939-1945
German Army health and medical services, 1939-1945
Currently exploring further research areas in post-1945 German social and political history

Professional Memberships & Activities

Member of staff at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare (http://www.gcu.ac.uk/cshhh/)

Member of the Arbeitskreis Militärgeschichte, the German History Society and the German Studies Association

Current Research

Having recently completed a monograph for Harvard on German anti-partisan warfare in the Balkans, published April 2012, my main research activities divide across two areas. The first continues my engagement with German and Austrian military history 1914-1945, with particular focus on the Third Reich, primarily through two projects designed with general as well as scholarly appeal:

a general, single-authored work on the German Army under the Third Reich, provisionally titled Army of the Reich: Soldiers, Criminality and War in the Nazi Empire (contract with Yale University Press).
co-edited with Dr. Philip Cooke (University of Strathclyde): The European Resistance in World War Two (contract with Pen and Sword).

I am also researching the area of German Army medical services during World War Two, through a collaborative article with Dr. Alex Flucker (Glasgow Caledonian University), which was submitted to the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences in February 2012.

My engagement with World War Two continues with a chapter on guerrilla warfare and counter-insurgency warfare to be published in Robert Citino and Evan Mawdsley, eds., The Cambridge History of the Second World War. Volume One: Strategies, Operations, Armed Forces (Cambridge: CUP, 2015, forthcoming).

In terms of the second main research area, I am currently considering potential areas of post-1945 German social and political history in which to develop my expertise. The resulting study will form the basis of a primary research-based monograph.

Selected Publications

Monographs

Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012)

Please note: The following link enables you to access further data and references relating to my monograph Terror in the Balkans: German Armies and Partisan Warfare, which was published by Harvard University Press in April 2012. Terror in the Balkans additional data file

War in the Wild East: The German Army and Soviet Partisans (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004)

Edited books and special edition journals

Co-edited with Juliette Pattinson: War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe 1939-1945, based on papers from the conference Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in German-occupied Europe 1939-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

Co-edited with Juliette Pattinson: Journal of Strategic Studies, October 2008, special volume: Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in German-occupied Europe, based on papers from the conference Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in German-occupied Europe 1939-1945, held at Glasgow Caledonian University, June 2007

Articles

‘The Nazi Occupation of the Soviet Union 1941-4: Extermination, Exploitation and Propaganda’, English Historical Review, April 2011, 386-94

‘The Clean Wehrmacht, the War of Extermination, and Beyond’, Historical Journal, May 2009, 455-73

‘With the Devil in Titoland: A Wehrmacht anti-partisan division in Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1943’, War in History, January 2009, 77-97

With Juliette Pattinson: ‘Partisan and Anti-Partisan Warfare in German-occupied Europe: Views from Above and Lessons for the Present’, Journal of Strategic Studies, October 2008, 675-93

‘Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in German-occupied Europe 1939-1945’ (conference report), German Historical Institute Bulletin, May 2008, 106-8

‘Wehrmacht Security Regiments in the Soviet Partisan War, 1943’, European History Quarterly, October 2003, 493-529

‘The Continuum of Brutality: The German Army and the Soviet Partisan War, 1942’, German History, January 2003, 49-81

‘Hawks, Doves and Tote Zonen: A Wehrmacht Security Division in Central Russia, 1943’, Journal of Contemporary History, July 2002, 349-69

Book chapters

‘Bloodier than Boehme: The 342^nd Infantry Division in Serbia, 1941’ in Ben Shepherd and Juliette Pattinson, eds., War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe 1939-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

With Juliette Pattinson: ‘Introduction: Illuminating a Twilight World’ in Ben Shepherd and Juliette Pattinson, eds., War in a Twilight World: Partisan and Anti-partisan Warfare in Eastern Europe 1939-1945 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)

‘“Unprecedented, merciless and unrelenting harshness”: Fanaticism and brutalization in Wehrmacht anti-partisan warfare in the Soviet Union’, in Matthew Hughes and Gaynor Johnson (eds.), Fanaticism and Conflict in the Modern Age (London: Frank Cass, 2005)