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Open research questions in European history and politics

434 gap statements mined from European history and politics papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 6,322 papers on the topic — drawn mostly from each paper's own stated research gap, future-work, challenge and limitation notes, and its abstract. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one.

Choosing where to publish on European history and politics? See the ranked Social Science journals.

What the literature leaves open

  • There is a need to understand the experiences of child refugees in the context of socialist education. The paper identifies a gap in the literature regarding the construction of children's homes as socially constructed spaces.

    Children’s Homes as Refugee Spaces: Child Refugees and Institutional Care in Socialist Czechoslovakia · 2026 · DOI

  • There is a lack of comprehensive English-language accounts of Budapest's wartime history. The history of Budapest's wartime experience has often remained confined to Hungarian historiography.

    LeBor, Adam. The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance, 1940-1945. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. 2025, pp. 512 · 2026 · DOI

  • The paper's analysis is limited to the magazine "Die Freundin" and its content. The paper's analysis is also limited by the historical context of the Weimar Republic.

    Dzik i dama · 2026 · DOI

  • Future research could analyze other magazines and their representation of non-normative identities. Future research could also examine the impact of the magazine "Die Freundin" on the lesbian and trans community.

    Dzik i dama · 2026 · DOI

  • The lack of understanding of how social status affects survival in societies facing an existential threat. The gap in existing research on the relationship between social status and mortality in such societies. The need for a study that analyzes the effect of social status on survival in Nazi internment camps.

    Social status and Holocaust survival in Nazi internment · 2026 · DOI

  • While there is some evidence that governments respond to such petitions, little is known about the nature of this responsiveness: can petitions influence resource allocation and yield tangible improvements to citizens’ livelihoods? To answer this question, we assemble a novel panel of housing-related petitions to the government of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and all housing constructed between 1945 and 1989.

    Do Autocrats Respond to Citizen Demands? Petitions and Housing Construction in the GDR · 2025 · DOI

  • Despite his apparent prominence as one of the five ‘Young German’ writers whose work was banned by the Bundestagsbeschluß of December 1835, Heinrich Laube is an author whose Vormärz publications are underresearched and inadequately contextualized.

    Heinrich Laube’s European Moment · 2022 · DOI

  • Kelman (bio), Tony Michels (bio), and Riv-Ellen Prell (bio) Sensing that 1968 was a critical, but underexplored, turning point in the reenvisioning and reimagining of Jewish life in the United States, we organized a conference on "The Jewish 1968 and its Legacies.

    Introduction, The Jewish 1968 and its Legacies · 2018 · DOI

  • The article makes a clear distinction between the violent (and under-researched) offences of the self-styled neo-Nazi groups and the activities (which have been well documented) of the larger right-wing extremist political parties, namely Republikaner, Nationaldemokratische Partei Deutschlands (NPD) and Deutsche Volksunion (DVU).

    Much More Than a Phantom Menace! Assessing the Character, Level and Threat of Neo-Nazi Violence in Germany, 1977–2003 · 2006 · DOI

  • Based on an important source which has hardly been used to date, data drawn from the 1939 Nazi Party membership census, this article contributes to our limited knowledge of the sociography of the membership of the Nazi Party at the micro‐level and that of its most important specialist organisations during the Third Reich.

    The Sociography of the Nazi Party in a Catholic County: The 1939 Census of the Membership of the NSDAP in County Aachen · 2005 · DOI

  • It focuses on the open questions that addressing the Shoah in education raises—vis‐a‐vis the sequence of generations after 1945, political issues, moral philosophy, and Christian‐Jewish relationships.

    ‘EDUCATION AFTER AUSCHWITZ”— PERSPECTIVES FROM GERMANY · 2000 · DOI

  • The history of the Prussian political police has not yet been studied systematically. There is a lack of critical analysis of existing publications and personal accounts.

    The Genesis of the Gestapo · 1987 · DOI

  • Further research could examine the great transition in other sciences. The study of classical philology could be extended to other periods. The role of periodicals in shaping scientific discourse could be further explored.

    The great transition and the social patterns of German science · 1987 · DOI

  • The study examines how the ideology changed as the goals of the Regime changed.

    Disseminating Ideology in the SS: The Nazi SS-Junkerschulen · 2026 · DOI

  • Although Leningrad homosexuals had been under surveillance and selectively prosecuted by the secret service since the early 1930s, their consistent prosecution in the summer and autumn of 1933 was not only a result of growing and organized homophobia on the part of the Soviet state, but also connected to a little known campaign to establish a link between homosexuality and fascism.

    The Recriminalization of Homosexuality under Stalin: New Sources, New Answers · 2025 · DOI

  • Rarely studied by historians of the Holocaust, the questions brought to rabbis, and the advice and answers they gave, provide a close-up and rare glimpse into how Jewish communities responded at the time to the attacks on their lives, and provide telling witness of the Nazi attempt to make European Jews the agents of their own destruction.

    Rabbinic Responsa and Spiritual Resistance during the Holocaust: The Life-for-Life Problem · 2019 · DOI

  • The narrative describes in considerable detail the inevitable friction between citizens steeped in the ways of democracy and Nazi [End Page 122] administrators whose experience was limited to the blunt exercise of power.

    Occupied: Denmark's Adaptation and Resistance to German Occupation 1940-1945 by Nathaniel Hong · 2013 · DOI

  • If so much previous historical writing on this period has been limited by a heavy reliance on prescriptive, halachic sources that do not necessarily describe the dynamics of everyday Jewish life, we will not solve the problem of obtaining a more balanced and nuanced picture by switching our confidence to personal autobiographies, which have their own set of methodological difficulties.

    "She Sees That Her Merchandise Is Good, and Her Lamp Is Not Extinguished at Nighttime": Glikl's Memoir as Historical Source · 2004 · DOI

  • The days are gone when conferences on GDR studies were limited to a small community of cognoscenti gathered far from the bright lights of public scrutiny.

    Between “Investigative History” and Solid Research: The Reorganization of Historical Studies about the Former German Democratic Republic · 1995 · DOI

  • The classification of periodicals into categories may be inaccurate. The sample of periodicals may not be representative of all German science. The study relies on a limited dataset.

    The great transition and the social patterns of German science · 1987 · DOI

  • The JRU has remained a somewhat understudied body relative to other Jewish organizations active in DP camps and this article, based on personnel files and field reports archived at London’s Wiener Library and the London Metropolitan Archives, centres JRU aid workers as valuable objects of study in their own right, in line with increased historiographical interest in the backgrounds and world-views of postwar UNRRA…

    Anglo-Jewish Humanitarianism and the Jewish Relief Unit, 1943–1950 · 2022 · DOI

  • By examining his Geschichte der Ungleichheit der Stände unter den vornehmsten europäischen Völkern (1792), written in response to the French Revolution and the contemporary circumstances of the Holy Roman Empire, this article sheds new light on his work, as well as on an under-researched line of thought in the 1790s.

    BOURGEOIS MODERNITY VERSUS THE HISTORICAL ARISTOCRACY IN CHRISTOPH MEINERS'S POLITICAL THOUGHT · 2018 · DOI

  • More specifically, the book tries to understand what caused the different patterns of behavior adopted by the Holocaust’s Jewish victims in three important, but understudied communities—Minsk (USSR), Kraków (Poland), and Białystok (Poland 1922–1939, USSR 1939–1941).

    Choice and Survival Across Approaches and Disciplines · 2018 · DOI

  • The traditional negative view of propaganda activities in the United States. The underestimated role of propaganda as a permanent instrument of foreign policy.

    Voice of America's political propaganda for Austria ( 1945-1950) · 1987 · DOI

  • The study identifies a gap in understanding the Church's response to Nazism - It highlights the need to examine the adaptation and critique of Catholic theologians in Hitler's…

    Catholic Theologians in Hitler's Reich: Adaptation and Critique · 1987 · DOI

Most-cited papers in European history and politics

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Open questions raised by papers listed on this page include: (1) There is a need to understand the experiences of child refugees in the context of socialist education (“Children’s Homes as Refugee Spaces: Child Refugees and Institutional Care in…”, 2026); (2) There is a lack of comprehensive English-language accounts of Budapest's wartime history (“LeBor, Adam. The Last Days of Budapest: Spies, Nazis, Rescuers and Resistance,…”, 2026); (3) Future research could analyze other magazines and their representation of non-normative identities (“Dzik i dama”, 2026); (4) The lack of understanding of how social status affects survival in societies facing an existential threat (“Social status and Holocaust survival in Nazi internment”, 2026); (5) While there is some evidence that governments respond to such petitions, little is known about the nature of this responsiveness: can petitions influence resource allocation and yield tangible improvements to citizens’ livelihoods (“Do Autocrats Respond to Citizen Demands? Petitions and Housing Construction in…”, 2025). 434 gap statements have been mined from European history and politics papers in our 7.9M-paper local library, which holds 6,322 papers on the topic; the gaps come from whichever of those papers state one. They are mostly the research gaps the authors state and the papers' abstracts, plus future-work, limitations and challenges passages. The ones listed below are a selection still marked open; each names the study that raised it, with a DOI link where the paper has one, so you can read the original claim in context.

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