In the introduction of her monograph, Between States: The Transylvanian Question and the European Idea during World War II, Holly Case sets her book in dialogue with the work of the “new generation of historians” of east central Europe. While she acknowledges the importance of returning agency to the east central European people in the larger continental context, she aims at refocusing historical attention toward small states (Hungary and Romania) in shaping the idea of Europe through state policy and everyday practices linked to Transylvania. This claim seems to me less of a departure than other authorial choices, which indeed suggests that Case is part of a new generation of scholars of east central Europe. The most important novel aspect of this book is the honest and thorough attempt on the part of the author to offer a comparative analysis of the “Transylvanian Question” by paying attention to many of the actors involved in the political, military, diplomatic, and cultural debates over the identity and political fate of this region. For non-specialists this might seem like a doable feat; but for anyone who has tried in earnest to represent the dazzling variety of linguistic, political, and cultural aspects of all the relevant factors involved in this issue, constructing an evenhanded and clear representation of the Transylvanian Question has been notoriously difficult, especially since ethno-nationalism on the part of both Romanians and Hungarians (both in Transylvania and especially beyond) still has a great deal of traction. The book is indeed careful and quite successful in moving back and forth between the positions of politicians, intellectuals, scientists, clergy, army personnel, and on rare occasions, average people who claimed allegiance to Romania or Hungary.

Unfortunately, the comparison suffers from inadequacies as well. Glancing at the sources consulted by the author, it becomes apparent that, while thorough and very engaged with archival research in Hungarian collections, she relied much more on the work of other people in the Romanian archives. This point is not minor, in my view, for it suggests a few important assumptions about what constitutes sufficient evidence for a case study as complex and riddled with uncertainty as that of Transylvania during World War II. In relying primarily on materials collected by others, Case implicitly suggests that the research in the Romanian Central Archives has been sufficiently exhausted to permit syntheses based on this existing body of primary sources. On this matter, I beg to differ. I have had the opportunity on many occasions to find out first hand that I was the first or at most the second person looking at many materials produced by Romanian state institutions during World War II with great relevance for this book. Most of these materials have not been published. Therefore, as much as I would like to see the historiography on Romania and Hungary arrive at the kind of synthetic point attempted in this book, I do not think we are there yet. The reliability of other historians' research, of selection of published primary sources, and of analytical emphasis still needs to be verified through deep immersion into the relevant archives, especially when the subject is to a great extent the policy of the central government. Case's goal of offering a balanced view would have been better bolstered if such deep immersion had been more evident.

Another important element in this book is to offer both the perspective of the state/statesmen and that of the population. Overall, there is quite a bit of success here, especially in connection with the Hungarian perspective. Some of the novel and most interesting material comes in chapters three and four, for instance the discussions over curbing overt anti-Hungarian and respectively anti-Romanian sentiment during the war. Equally interesting and novel is the emphasis of the author on the degree to which both states wanted their co-ethnics to remain put, rather than travel across the border and abandon their homes after the Vienna Award in August 1940. By the same token, such a discussion begs the question of just how many (in terms of percentage) Hungarians took off from Southern Transylvania in September 1940 and how many Romanians crossed the border (or attempted to do so) in the opposite direction. In my own oral history research in one area affected by anti-Romanian violence in Northern Transylvania (Ip and Treznea) in September 1940, I found out that most witnesses and survivors of the events stayed in their village during the war without anyone forcing them, and that many found the rest of the war, until the summer of 1944, uneventful in terms of anti-Romanian tensions. In other words, the policy of the state is interesting in itself, but it sometimes tells us very little about the actual behavior of the population on the ground.

Overall, Between States seems a compromise between a worthy agenda and the limits of the author's own research and choices in illustrating the points she makes. The way in which the book is framed historiographically has merit and points toward important directions of research and reassessment: comparativeness; relating the east central European experiences in World War II to the larger tropes about Europe and the war, including the Holocaust; and greater nuance in understanding the intentions and outcomes of ethno-nationalist violence in this region. At the same time, the evidence brought to support arguments is uneven. Some subjects have been visited by other scholars before and are merely summarized, sometimes without clarity, as is the case with the impact of biopolitics on the Transylvanian Question. Other themes bring fresh insights, as is the case with the court case presented at the beginning of chapter four. And there are occasional moments when the author uses evidence out of context, as is the case with quoting Iuliu Maniu's words from World War II to demonstrate the position of Romanian “statesmen” during the war. Since Maniu held no official position during the war, I am not sure how his wartime correspondence represents evidence of the position held by the Romanian state toward Transylvania during the war (p. 87). While he was a passionate supporter of Romania's rights over Transylvania, he did so as a person of international reputation rather than as a state representative.

These criticisms aside, Between States is an impressive book in breadth of coverage, the author's careful balancing of perspectives and evenhandedness of presentation, as well as in terms of readability. It will certainly become a book read and discussed by specialists in east European history, and it will contribute to moving the field of World War II historiography toward a more comparativist transnational perspective.