The lasting war : society and identity in Britain, France and Germany after 1945 / edited by Monica Riera and Gavin Schaffer.

Format:

• Book

Contributor:

• Riera, Monica, 1960-
• Schaffer, Gavin, 1976-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

• World War, 1939-1945--Influence.
• Reconstruction (1939-1951).
• Collective memory--Great Britain.
• Collective memory--France.
• Collective memory--Germany.
• Collective memory.
• Germany.
• National characteristics, British.
• National characteristics, French.
• National characteristics, German.
• France.
• Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xii, 277 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York, N.Y. : Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Summary:

• The Second World War brought suffering and trauma to the people of Europe on an unprecedented scale. While Europeans were not strangers to the harsh realities of international conflict, the war galvanised a new range of destructive forces that shook the continent to its intellectual, psychological and material foundations.
• The Lasting War explores the Second World War as a common European trauma, focusing on key transnational developments in post-war Britain, France and Germany. Acknowledging the importance of all experience, The Lasting War invites the reader to reflect on the role that trauma and expectations play in our relation with others and ourselves, abandoning the traditional categories of victor, perpetrator and victim in favour of a broader humanistic reading of wartime Europe. Ultimately, this is a book which attempts to encourage a fresh reading of the post-war years, offering new insights into civilian war experience and identity in twentieth-century Europe.

Contents:

• 1 When Europe Was New: Liberation and the Making of the Post-War Era / Geoff Eley 17
• Part II Reconfiguring the Self
• 2 'That rubble heap near Potsdam': Pre-War Visions and Early Post-War Urban Development in Berlin / Monica Riera 47
• 3 Creating 'a nation of Resisters'? Improving French Self-Image, 1944-6 / Simon Kitson 67
• 4 Dad's Army, the Home Guard and the Memory of the British War Effort / Penny Summerfield 86
• 5 An Awkward Sense of Grief: German War Remembrance and the Role of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgraberfursorge / Gerd Knischewski 100
• 6 France: A People's History, 1944-6 / Hilary Footitt 120
• 7 French Catholics and the Liberation: Political and Religious Values / Emmanuel Godin 133
• Part III Reconfiguring the Other
• 8 Confronting Nazi Atrocities at the End of the War: A Transnational Perspective / Donald Bloxham 157
• 9 Instrumentalisation - Marginalisation - Re-Evaluation: Flight and Expulsion after the Second World War in Post-War German Collective Memory / Rainer Schulze 173
• 10 The Church of England and the German Past, Present and Future 1944-5: A Case Study in the International Search for a 'Usable Past' / Tom Lawson 188
• 11 Victims or Enemies? Italians, Refugee Jews and the Reworking of Internment Narratives in Post-War Britain / Wendy Ugolini, Gavin Schaffer 207
• 12 Belsen for Beginners: The Holocaust in British Heritage / Tony Kushner 226
• 13 France and Her African Empire: The Second World War and the Colonial Imagination / Tony Chafer, Martin Evans 248.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

• 0230506712
• 9780230506718

OCLC:

213407403

Online:

Publisher description