Histories of the Aftermath

The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe

Frank Biess, Robert G. Moeller, Frank Biess, Robert G. Moeller

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2010
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781845459987
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Histories of the Aftermath
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction — Histories of the Aftermath
• Part I — Defining the Postwar
• Chapter 1 — The Persistence of "the Postwar": Germany and Poland
• Chapter 2 — Feelings in the Aftermath: Toward a History of Postwar Emotions
• Chapter 3 — In the Aftermath of Camps
• Part II — Public and Private Memories
• Chapter 4 — Nothing Is Forgotten: Individual Memory and the Myth of the Great Patriotic War
• Chapter 5 — Neither Erased nor Remembered: Soviet "Women Combatants" and Cultural Strategies of Forgetting in Soviet Russia, 1940s–1980s
• Chapter 6 — Generations as Narrative Communities: Some Private Sources of Public Memory in Postwar Germany
• Part III — Mass-Mediating War: How Movies Shaped Memories
• Chapter 7 — "When Will the Real Day Come?": War Films and Soviet Postwar Culure
• Chapter 8 — Winning the Peace at the Movies: Suffering, Loss, and Redemption in Postwar German Cinema
• Chapter 9 — Italian Cinema and the Transition from Dictatorship to Democracy
• Part IV — The Reconstruction of Citizenship
• Chapter 10 — War Orphans and Postfascist Families: Kinship and Belonging after 1945
• Chapter 11 — Manners, Morality, and Civilization: Reflections on Postwar German Etiquette Books
• Chapter 12 — "We Are Building a Common Home": The Moral Economy of Citizenship in Postwar Poland
• Chapter 13 — From the "New Jerusalem" to the "Decline" of the "New Elizabethan Age": National Identity and Citizenship in Britain, 1945–46
• 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
• Chapter 15 — The Soviet Military Culture and the Legacy of the Second World War
• Chapter 16 — 1945–1955: The Age of Total War
• Select Bibliography
• Notes on Contributors
• Index