The Lasting War Society and Identity in Britain, France and Germany after 1945 [Hardcover]

The Second World War brought suffering and trauma to the people of Europe on an unprecedented scale. This volume addresses World War II as a common European trauma by focusing on key trans-national developments and comparing the different wars as experienced by three similar civilian populations.Introduction: M.Riera & G.Schaffer PART I: SETTING THE SCENE When Europe Was New: Liberation and the Making of the Postwar, G.Eley PART II: RECONFIGURING THE SELF 'That rubble heap near Potsdam': Pre-War Visions and Early Post- War Urban Development in Berlin; M.Riera Creating 'a nation of Resisters'? Improving French Self-Image, 1944-1946; S.Kitson The Home Guard and the Memory of the British War Effort; P.Summerfield An Awkward Sense of Grief: German War Remembrance and the Role of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgr??berf??rsorge; G.Knischewski France: A People's History: 1944-46; H.Footitt French Catholics and the Liberation: Political and Religious Values; E.Godin PART III: RECONFIGURING THE OTHER Confronting Nazi Atrocities at the End of the War: a transnational perspective; D.Bloxham Instrumentalisation - Marginalisation - Re-evaluation: Flight and Expulsion after the Second World War in Post-War German Collective Memory; R.Schulze The Church of England and the German Past, Present and Future 1944-45: A Case Study in the International Search for a 'Usable Past'; T.Lawson Victims or enemies? Italians and refugee Jews and the re-working of internment narratives in post-war Britain; W.Ugolini & G.Schaffer The Holocaust& History: Memory and Heritage, 1945 to 2005; T.Kushner France and her African Empire: The Second World War and the Colonial Imagination; T.Chafer & M.Evans

'All the articles in the book...provide a lot of insights and understandings and will be a good starting point for both academics and students who want to begin research in this still fashionable field.' - Contemporary British History

'The power of the war's memory,l3–