History & Area Studies / Thematic History / Social & Cultural History

How Maps Were Weaponized for Mass Murder: Terrortimes Explained

Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide

Michael Mayer

Slide 1: Violence is never an accident of history. It is planned on a map. Think mass terror just erupts out of nowhere? Historical evidence proves violence is engineered into physical space long before the first shot is fired. Slide 2: Borders are not lines. They are kill zones. Regimes invent contested spaces to justify ethnic cleansing. When a state demands a pure, homogeneous territory, minorities on the edge are always marked as targets. Slide 3: The dark truth: terror outlives the dictators who created it. Systematic persecution does not start or stop with a single regime. Long before and long after totalitarian regimes fall, local institutions and ordinary neighbors keep the machinery of discrimination alive. Slide 4: Memory is not the past. It is an active weapon. Governments rewrite national trauma to transform perpetrators into victims and prime populations for future conflict. About the Book and Authors: This presentation explores insights from Terrortimes, Terrorscapes: Continuities of Space, Time, and Memory in Twentieth-Century War and Genocide, edited by Michael Mayer and Volker Benkert. Michael Mayer is a prominent German historian specializing in the history of National Socialism and comparative genocide studies. Volker Benkert is an Associate Professor of History at Arizona State University, focusing on modern European history, spatial humanities, and the politics of memory. Their collaborative work reveals how violence takes root in geography, survives through state systems, and shapes the modern world.