Emily Greble has written an enthralling history of Sarajevo under Nazi occupation, contributing very usefully to the historiography of World War II and the former Yugoslavia. Mastering a wealth of archival sources and focusing specifically on Bosnia and Herzegovina's capital, Greble argues that a unique sense of community helped the city pull together and persist through the hardships of one of the worst ordeals in its history. Although not all readers will be convinced by her central thesis, there can be no doubt that Greble's book can serve as an inspiring template for future studies of cities in wartime.

In the first two chapters, Greble provides an introduction to the multicultural landscape of Sarajevo before World War II. She expertly situates the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish communities, describing the customs and norms that defined the relationships among them. It is Greble's contention that the continually iterated intercommunal relationships, by generating an intense form of civic and local identity, acted as a buffer against the Fascist assault on multiculturalism that began with the dual German and Croat Ustasha occupation of Sarajevo in April 1941. Very helpfully, Greble's introductory chapter maintains a constant dialogue with a broad array of debates on nationalism and identity, referencing many salient secondary works in the broader European historiography. Enough context is provided to ensure that the topic is accessible to readers who are not experts on Yugoslav history, though this context is not always presented in an entirely coherent manner. However, insufficient space is devoted to the 1930s, a period of pronounced political radicalization in Bosnia and Yugoslavia. It should also be noted that the elimination of Bosnia and Herzegovina's separate administrative identity took place during the dictatorship of King Aleksandar in 1929, not in 1924.

The bulk of the book delivers a closely narrated account of how Sarajevo's inhabitants dealt with an occupation that started off relatively benignly but thereafter relentlessly plumbed ever greater depths of depravity. Although the increasingly turgid currents of the Serb, Croat, and Yugoslav national projects tugged at Sarajevo's Lokalpatriotismus, Greble asserts that Sarajevo maintained a remarkable sense of community that survived World War II. Her treatment of identities allows for their multifaceted character, and she never succumbs to the simplistic views of Serb, Croat, Muslim, and Jewish identities peddled by the nationalist historiographies of the former Yugoslavia.

Greble shows the fluid spectrum of collaboration and resistance that informed the behavior of the city's inhabitants. In confronting the catastrophe of occupation, the factions in these communities constantly calibrated their tactics, even while maintaining strategies that prioritized self-preservation. At the same time, Greble insists that none of the constituent communities of Sarajevo ever stooped to the level of focusing exclusively on survival, but rather always sought to protect the city's cherished special identity against outsiders. Greble delivers countless examples of Sarajevan Croats who, when confronted with situations that forced them to choose between the toxically Croat nationalism of the Fascist Ustasha state and the interests of Sarajevo and its diverse inhabitants, chose the latter. In this way, the inhabitants of Sarajevo were able to push back against the occupation.

Greble's description of the regime imposed upon Sarajevo by the puppet Independent State of Croatia lays the brutal, dysfunctional, and incompetent nature of the Ustasha state bare. She delights in skewering the Ustasha state's ideology, whose perverse absurdities often repelled the very Croats and Muslims whose allegiance the state coveted. Less evident is how much of the resistance to Ustasha rule stemmed from a fundamental disagreement with Fascism or Nazi Germany's plans for a new European order.

Greble consistently reads her sources in a manner that vindicates Sarajevo's multicultural identity. Yet her analysis leaves the skeptical reader wondering to what extent the occupation would have looked differently had the occupying forces exhibited greater competence and less disregard for the local Muslim and Croat elites, or if the city had from the outset been subjected solely to German rule. While there are many examples in which Sarajevans risked their livelihoods and lives to save citizens of the city of other faiths and ethnicities, it is not clear that this makes Sarajevo substantially different from Berlin, Budapest, or other European cities with similar stories. While it is tempting to show empathy for Sarajevo and its inhabitants, this reader believes that Greble somewhat weakens an otherwise laudable book by overselling the city as a “multicultural idyll.”