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Extreme violence in the 20th century in the perspective of history and anthropologyIn highly diverse ways, Europeans during the “Second Thirty Years’ War” (1914-1935) experienced extreme violence, one of the more perplexing subjects faced by the social sciences. This paper examines new and better ways of approaching extreme violence, and focuses on innovative methodological approaches that combine anthropology and history.After considering just why scholars traditionally have been reluctant to study extreme violence during this period, the paper assesses anthropological scholarship as applied to practices of warfare and extreme violence, in western as well as non-western societies. It examines the notion of “invariables” or “universals”, the problems which this notion can pose to historians, and the manner in which it can convey a measure of intelligibility on the question of extreme violence (the opposition between “us” and “them”, and notably how this opposition relates to practices of atrocity). Such practices can evolve into a particular kind of language, intelligible as such. Finally, the paper analyzes the question of corporality —the body as the site on which extreme violence is deployed and performed. The fundamental question here is exploring how, through privileging the exploration of why.