Lieberman surveys various episodes of ethnic cleansing and argues that these episodes are not isolated but rather interconnected within the historical process of state and nation formation. As states sought to align borders with ethno-national identities, they frequently resorted to forced homogenization—either through legal frameworks, such as treaties, or through violence.

Lieberman sees the expulsions of Jews and Muslims from Spain and later from Portugal as early precursors of ethnic cleansing, driven by a nascent sense of national-religious identity. Later examples include the expulsion of the Christian populations from the Ottoman Balkans and of the Muslim populations following the Habsburg reconquests.

Lieberman discusses the rise of nationalist ideologies, such as pan-Germanism, pan-Slavism and Romantic nationalism, as key drivers of ethnic homogenization.

The desire for ethnic homogenization led to population exchanges in the Balkans during the decline of Ottoman rule, in particular the Greco-Turkish population exchange (1923), as required by the Treaty of Lausanne. Lieberman discusses the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Czechoslovakia and Poland after World War I. He also describes in detail what happened to the Armenians (1915–1917), which he calls a “paradigmatic case” of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Lieberman situates the Nazi Holocaust within a broader pattern of European ethnic cleansing, while acknowledging its distinctive characteristics.

Lieberman then details the post-World War II expulsions of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe, an event that he considers to be one of the most consequential acts of ethnic cleansing in modern history. He then analyzes the forced population movements in the early Cold War period, such as the resettlements in Poland, Ukraine and the Soviet Union.

The book culminates with the 1990s Balkan wars, in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. It was during those years that the term “ethnic cleansing” acquired popular coinage.

Lieberman treats the post-World War II mass expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern and Central Europe--primarily from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia--not not simply as a response to the wartime atrocities perpetrated by Nazi Germany, but as the culmination of a longstanding European desire for ethnic homogeneity. The author emphasizes how the seeds of the expulsions were planted well before World War II. After the Treaty of Versailles, large German minorities remained outside of Germany. These groups often retained strong German national consciousness.

The Allied Powers condoned and even coordinated these expulsions of the ethnic Germans. At the Potsdam Conference, the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union agreed that the transfer of Germans should be carried out in an "orderly and humane" manner. In practice, the expulsions were often chaotic and brutal. Families were forced to leave their homes with little notice. Deportees traveled in freezing cattle cars. Many died of starvation, exposure or violence along the way.

Postwar leaders in Poland and Czechoslovakia argued that only by removing German populations could their newly reconstituted states function safely and peacefully. The expulsion of Germans allowed Poland to shift westward--absorbing former German lands like Silesia and East Prussia--while the Soviet Union absorbed Polish lands to the east. This was not simply a border adjustment but a mass ethnic reengineering, actions that Lieberman identifies as key to the construction of the post-1945 European order.

When it comes to the Armenians, Lieberman begins with the 1908 Young Turk revolution and focuses in particular on the 1913 coup by the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), which embraced the idea of a homogenous Turkish-Muslim nation, and thus adopted an exclusionary nationalist ideology. When the Ottomans entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers, they faced the Russian army on the Eastern Front that was located near Armenian-populated regions. The Ottomans accused the Armenian population en masse of being potential collaborators with the Russians, especially after some Armenian volunteer units joined the Russian army.

In April 1915, the Ottomans arrested and executed hundreds of Armenian community leaders, intellectuals, and clergy were arrested and executed. Subsequently, Armenians were ordered to leave their towns and villages across Anatolia, supposedly for resettlement. In reality, they were forced into death marches, often through the Syrian desert, with no food or shelter.
The aim was not relocation, but eradication.

Lieberman describes camps like those in Der Zor (in present-day Syria) as concentration camps, where survivors of the marches were left to die in massive numbers. Estimates of the death toll vary, but Lieberman cites the consensus of 1–1.5 million Armenians killed. The Armenian presence in Anatolia, which had lasted for over 2,000 years, was virtually extinguished. The genocide, he argues, was not about wartime security; the goal was the permanent reshaping of Anatolia, ensuring it was Turkish and Muslim.

Lieberman's coverage of the wars in Yugoslavia during the 1990s is however superficial and disappointing. He goes through the familiar routine of blaming most of the violence on the Serbs. As he recounts the story, when Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence, Bosnian Serb forces, backed by the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) and the Belgrade government of Slobodan Milošević launched a brutal campaign to seize and “cleanse” territory. In doing so, the Serbs carried out “ethnic cleansing,” which involved massacres; mass rapes in detention camps; deportations of entire villages; and destruction of cultural and religious sites. Lieberman naturally accepts all of these claims at face-value.

Unsurprisingly, he also asserts without much by way of evidence, other than the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, that the “ethnic cleansing” campaigns were systematic and involved modern nationalist ideology, wide-scale bureaucratic coordination, state planning and military logistics.

To be sure, while the author identifies the Serbs as the main perpetrators of crimes in the wars, he does also cover Croatian operations, such as “Operation Storm”, which resulted in the mass expulsion of more than 200,000 Serbs from the Krajina region. Lieberman is thus able to argue that no side was entirely free from the logic of ethnic homogenization, though the magnitude of the atrocities naturally greatly differed.

Lieberman's account, like most accounts, takes no account of the causes of the war. The Serbs strongly opposed the disintegration of Yugoslavia that was being forced on them. Lieberman ignores the fact that Croat and Slovene independence declarations were made unilaterally and without mutual agreement of the other peoples of Yugoslavia. He ignores the role played by Germany, which rushed to recognized Croatian and Slovene independence, thereby guaranteeing the further disintegration of Yugoslavia and therefore the war that followed. Lieberman does not address the very real fear Serbs felt about becoming minorities in the newly formed successor ethno-national states--such as Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina--where Serb memories of persecution and mass murder carried out by the wartime Ustaše regime in Croatia were still very vivid.

Lieberman thus follows the familiar liberal narrative, according to which which nationalist violence is monstrous and diabolical when committed by the side the West considers its enemy, but tolerable or forgivable or not on the same scale when committed by the West's allies. Serb nationalism is pathologized, and portrayed as uniquely dangerous. Other nationalist projects (Croat, Muslim, Albanian) are treated sympathetically, portrayed as defensive, even when engaging in mass murder, terror and expulsions.

There is another drawback to "Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing and the Making of Modern Europe." If, as the author argues, the heart of the modern European project is the creation of ethnically homogeneous states for the sake of permanent peace and stability, why have the elites of modern Europe embraced the destabilizing notion of multiculturalism? If ethnic homogeneity is supposedly so important to the states of modern Europe, why are the rulers of these states inviting in millions of immigrants from all over the world? Why are they welcoming in populations that the rulers know perfectly well can never--and will never--be assimilated?

Still, with all these drawbacks and caveats, "Terrible Fate" is an interesting read and adds to our knowledge of some of the darker chapters of recent history.