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

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. 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 Culture 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, 1945–56 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