It is with great regret that we announce the death in May this year of Heide-Irene Schmidt. She was the Reviews Editor for Contemporary European History for eleven years, responsible for the first issue in March 1992 to that of May 2003. She established the tradition of the impartiality and rigour in book reviews required for a first-class journal, as well as fostering the journal's reputation for commissioning notable review articles from a wide range of scholars working in several languages and in a number of countries. Her knowledge of the work being done in contemporary history around the world was immensely impressive, and the journal benefited enormously.

In ‘Interpretations’ the editors invite scholars to explore and debate central issues or concepts encountered in the study of contemporary European history. Recent sections have dealt with political violence (14:1), Europe and its historians (12:3) and fascist-era dictatorships (11:3). Here, David Roberts discusses the merits of the term ‘political religion’, and Carl Levy has responded. Although authors have the right of reply, David Roberts has declined to do so on this occasion.

This article seeks to clarify the uses and disadvantages of the concept of ‘political religion’, which has recently returned to currency, especially to account for the liturgy and the sense of world-historical mission central to Italian fascism, German Nazism and Soviet communism. But the category leads us to inflate abiding, suprahistorical impulses at the expense of historical specificity and novelty. And by making the phenomena in question seem relatively familiar, it diverts us from the deeper challenge they constitute. Still, the objections of critics often miss dimensions that ‘political religion’ at least approximates. Essential to the requisite synthesis is a recast notion of totalitarianism, understood as a novel frame of mind leading to a new mode of collective action.

David Roberts has published widely on Italian fascism and more recently a significant comparative study of totalitarianism in Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union. The short essay published here is a useful compression of the arguments presented in the longer work. Unfortunately, this piece represents all that is problematic and frustrating in totalitarian/political religion studies. Roberts gives us a useful review of the growth and evolution of totalitarianism and political religion from the inter-war period through the Cold War until we reach the sunny postmodern uplands of the cultural turn. A review of the arguments of Gentile, Griffin, Morgan, Kershaw, Eatwell, Payne, Burrin and Voegelin is helpful to the reader who is unfamiliar with a series of complex arguments, which straddle decades.

This article examines the use of forced labour in Republican Spain during the civil war. Although much has recently been written on Francoist camps, very little research has been undertaken on their Republican counterparts. As a consequence the significance of Republican camps has not been recognised. Although some historians argue that the Republicans used forced labour only in a desperate attempt to avoid military defeat, this article demonstrates that labour camps were an integral aspect of Republican ‘popular justice’. Work, it was argued, would redeem ‘fascists’ by allowing them to contribute to the economic reconstruction and transformation of Spain.

This article evaluates the interplay between international sport and international politics during the cold war through an examination of the two Germanys and the Olympics from a British perspective. Germany was at the centre of Olympic and cold war politics between 1945 and the early 1970s, and the two German states competed fiercely over questions of national legitimacy. West Germany was initially successful in denying international recognition to the ‘other’ German state. East Germany countered this by developing a strategy that utilised international sport, particularly the Olympic Games, to further its claims for statehood. While recognising the flaws in the West German case against East Germany, British policy was constrained by the need to accommodate Bonn's sensibilities, given that the Federal Republic was a major ally. An examination of this ‘Olympian’ struggle from a British perspective tells us much about the West's cold war strategy and casts new light on this arena of East–West competition.

During the 1930s the Dutch social democratic party changed into a party which sought to reform rather than to abolish capitalism. This transformation was accompanied by a change in tactics and strategy intended to meet the challenges of economic and political crises. Henceforth, the Sociaal-Democratische Arbeiderspartij tried to establish co-operation with social groupings well beyond its traditional rank and file of industrial labourers. A new generation of voluntarist politicians proposed to adopt the methods of propaganda, and turned for inspiration to activities undertaken by Belgian and German socialists, as well as the world of commercial advertising.