Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe

Published by Berghahn Books 2010

Histories of the Aftermath

The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe

Edited by: Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781845459987

Overview
Contents

About this book

In 1945, Europeans confronted a legacy of mass destruction and death: millions of families had lost their homes and livelihoods; millions of men in uniform had lost their lives; and millions more had been displaced by the war’s destruction, and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. From a range of methodological historical perspectives—military, cultural, and social, to film and gender and sexuality studies—this volume explores how Europeans came to terms with these multiple pasts. With a focus on distinctive national experiences in both Eastern and Western Europe, it illuminates how postwar stabilization coexisted with persistent insecurities, injuries, and trauma.

Author / Editor information

Frank Biess is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Princeton UP, 2006), and he is currently working on a history of fear and anxiety in postwar Germany.

Robert G. Moeller is Professor of modern European and German history at the University of California, Irvine. He has published widely on the social, cultural, and political history of Germany in the twentieth century.

Frank Biess is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Princeton UP, 2006), and he is currently working on a history of fear and anxiety in postwar Germany.

Reviews

“The editors and contributors have created a volume that is easily accessible for graduate students and upper-level undergraduate seminars. Professional historians will also benefit greatly because so few of us have tried to understand this period without the blinders of Cold War dichotomies.” · Slavic Review

“Frank Biess' introduction perfectly sets the tone for this book by reviewing where present-day post- 1945 historiography stands following the scholarship of the late Tony Judt… The structure of the book is impressive; five parts and sixteen essays…[The essays in this collection are] extraordinarily well thought-through…Histories of the Aftermath compares with any scholarly masterpiece about reconstruction after the American Civil War… For this reason this book is essential reading for any European history course.” · Canadian Journal of History

"With [this volume] Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller have assembled a fine set of essays. Offering thematic and geographic breadth, the collection presents stimulating and rewarding ways of thinking about the legacies of the war in Europe…What is unusual is the cross-pollination of theoretical frameworks and topical emphases in ways that shed genuinely new light on the subject… It is tempting to suppose that little remains to be said about Europeans’ ‘coming to terms with their past’. This volume shows how fruitful this line of inquiry still can be" · English Historical Review

“This is an excellent collection. In its thematic breadth and its broad geographical coverage it is quite distinctive.” · Mark Roseman, Indiana University, Bloomington

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
INTRODUCTION Histories of the Aftermath Frank Biess Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Defining the Postwar
CHAPTER 1 The Persistence of “the Postwar” Germany and Poland Norman M. Naimark Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
CHAPTER 2 Feelings in the Aftermath: Toward a History of Postwar Emotions Frank Biess Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	30
CHAPTER 3 In the Aftermath of Camps Samuel Moyn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
PART II Public and Private Memories
CHAPTER 4 Nothing Is Forgotten: Individual Memory and the Myth of the Great Patriotic War Lisa A. Kirschenbaum Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	67
CHAPTER 5 Neither Erased nor Remembered: Soviet “Women Combatants” and Cultural Strategies of Forgetting in Soviet Russia, 1940s–1980s Anna Krylova Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
CHAPTER 6 Generations as Narrative Communities: Some Private Sources of Public Memory in Postwar Germany Dorothee Wierling Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
PART III Mass-Mediating War: How Movies Shaped Memories
CHAPTER 7 “When Will the Real Day Come?” War Films and Soviet Postwar Culture Denise J. Youngblood Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
CHAPTER 8 Winning the Peace at the Movies: Suffering, Loss, and Redemption in Postwar German Cinema Robert G. Moeller Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	139
CHAPTER 9 Italian Cinema and the Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy Ruth Ben-Ghiat Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
PART IV The Reconstruction of Citizenship
CHAPTER 10 War Orphans and Postfascist Families Kinship and Belonging after 1945 Heide Fehrenbach Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
CHAPTER 11 Manners, Morality, and Civilization: Reflections on Postwar German Etiquette Books Paul Betts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	196
CHAPTER 12 “We Are Building a Common Home” The Moral Economy of Citizenship in Postwar Poland Katherine Lebow Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	215
CHAPTER 13 From the “New Jerusalem” to the “Decline” of the “New Elizabethan Age” National Identity and Citizenship in Britain, 1945–56 Sonya O. Rose Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	231
PART V In the Shadow of the Bomb: Military Cultures
CHAPTER 14 The Great Tradition and the Fates of Annihilation: West German Military Culture in the Aftermath of the Second World War Klaus Naumann Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
CHAPTER 15 The Soviet Military Culture and the Legacy of the Second World War Mikhail Tsypkin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
CHAPTER 16 1945–1955 The Age of Total War Pieter Lagrou Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Select Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	297
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 326
Keywords: History: World War II

eBook

Published: July 1, 2010
ISBN: 9781845459987