scholarly journals Either with Us or Against Us: British Perceptions of the Irish in World War Two

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katherine Kimber-Alldridge

Literature on Anglo-Irish relations in the Second World War has suggested that in British popular and political discourse the neutral Irish were felt complacent, shortsighted, stubborn, stupid, and cowardly. Extreme opinion held them treacherous. However, there was significant Anglo-Irish intelligence collaboration, many Irish served in the British Forces and a significant contribution was made by Irish immigrant labour during the war. Yet ambivalent and dismissive perceptions of the Irish continued and grew during World War Two. This thesis will examine the ways in which contemporarypopular perceptions of “Irishness” were affected by cultural antipathy, the actions of the Irish state, the influx of immigrant Irish workers and the recruitment of Irish volunteers into the British Armed Forces, during the years of 1939-1945. Key questions that appear here are whether the shifting circumstances of war changed attitudes to the Irish, and further if, at time of extreme threat to Britain and her Empire, was Ireland, though neutral, considered an enemy.Concentrating on the public discourse on the Irish states conduct during the war, attitudes towards Irish people and British experiences of Irish immigrant workers and Irish people in the British Forces, this survey will illuminate the depth and breadth of ambivalence towards Eire and its people. It is found that the key to British understanding was acquiescence to British influence, even if this was against the wishes of the Irish people. It is the main contention of this thesis that, because of non-acquiescence, the Second World War was the point when Britain psychically ejected ‘Irishness’ from its national identity, casting the Irish as irredeemably ‘other’, even before Ireland seceded from the Commonwealth. It is also concluded that due to influence of this ejection, for many Eire, though neutral, was perceived as if she were an enemy to Britain.

2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 573-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
HARUKO TAYA COOK ◽  
THEODORE F. COOK

We examine the strata of memory in Japan’s recollections of the wartime experience and explore the shaping and releasing of memory in Japan, seeking to penetrate and recover individual Japanese experience. Individual memories that seemed tightly contained, when released were told with great emotional intensity and authenticity. That there has been little public discourse does not mean that individual Japanese have forgotten that war, but that the conflict – a war with no generally accepted name or firmly fixed start or end – seems disconnected from the private memories of the wartime generation. Japan was defeated thoroughly and completely, and in the history of memory we see no well-established narrative form for telling the tale of the defeated. In Japan's public memory of the war, War itself is often the enemy, and the Japanese its victims. Such a view is ahistorical and unsatisfactory to nations and peoples throughout Asia and the Pacific. The prevailing myths during Japan's war, developed and fostered over 15 years of conflict, and the overwhelming weight of more than three million war dead on the memories of the living forged a link between a desire to honour and cherish those lost and the ways the war is recalled in the public sphere. Enforced and encouraged by government policies and private associations, protecting the dead has become a means of avoiding a full discussion of the war. The memorials and monuments to the Dead that have been created throughout Japan, Asia, and the Pacific stand silent sentry to a Legend of the war. This must be challenged by the release into the public sphere of living memories of the War in all their ambiguity, complexity, and contradiction without which Japan’s Memory can have no historical veracity. Moreover, the memories of the Second World War of other peoples can never be complete without Japan’s story.


2017 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 131-150
Author(s):  
Marcin Poprawa

World of scientific discoveries in Polish popular press 1918–1939. The main strategies of popularization of knowledge in media discourseThe author of the article has two research objectives. The first one is to describe and analyse main strategies of popularization of science in Polish press 1918–1939. The article also highlights some aspects, tendencies and reception of media text media discourse: picture of the world of science and achievements, strategies used by journalists to write about difficult topics e.g. translating difficult problems into easier stylistic form, used by them rules of “Plain Language”. The second purpose of the article is to overview historical, cultural context and hidden implications persuasive strategies in the public discourse about the role of science in Poland before the Second World War.


2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-47
Author(s):  
Ranka Gašić

The debate over Yugoslav nationalism versus Serbian nationalism and the structure of the new Yugoslav state came to occupy a prominent place in the public discourse of the Belgrade political and intellectual elite at the end of the First World War and again before the start of the Second World War. The considerable prewar interest in Yugoslavism and some sort of Yugoslav state had not focused on the realistic challenges of including a large Croatian and Slovenian representation. The focus of this article is on the reaction of the Belgrade elite to these challenges, their major lines of division and agreement around the questions of centralism vs. federalism, and the national identity of Serbs, first in the new state and then in the later 1930s. Only then, after the efforts of King Aleksandar’s royal dictatorship to impose integral Yugoslavism had ended with his assassination, did the Belgrade elite turn to integral Serbian nationalism.


2013 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Åsa M. Larsson

AbstractWhile other fields of the humanities have often brought forth intellectuals taking part in public discourse, influencing politics and society, archaeologists have been wary of sticking their necks out after the Second World War. However, the tradition of leaving it to others to connect prehistoric narratives to current politics or new scientific results is damaging both to the public understanding of our past and to our own discipline. In this article I argue that preconceptions of human past are guiding much decision making both locally and globally, and that it is therefore our responsibility to take an active part and to problematize this. Failing to do so only means that other people will cherry-pick our research for their own ends. More specifically, it will also lead to a drying up of funding in these difficult economic times, as archaeology takes a back seat to anthropology and sociology. I draw on personal experience to offer suggestions on how one could go about becoming part of the public debate and, in the long run, perhaps carve out a position as a public intellectual.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-126
Author(s):  
Hans Levy

The focus of this paper is on the oldest international Jewish organization founded in 1843, B’nai B’rith. The paper presents a chronicle of B’nai B’rith in Continental Europe after the Second World War and the history of the organization in Scandinavia. In the 1970's the Order of B'nai B'rith became B'nai B'rith international. B'nai B'rith worked for Jewish unity and was supportive of the state of Israel.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Grzybowski

The books presents the life of archbishop brygadier general Sawa (Sowietow). The author explores its successive stages: young years during the First World War, priesthood in the Second Polish Republic, wanderings during the Second World War, service in Polish Armed Forces in the West (as the chief military chaplain of the Orthodox Church), and religious service among Polish citizens abroad after the Yalta Conference.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 171
Author(s):  
Wojciech Bal ◽  
Magdalena Czałczyńska-Podolska

The Worker Holiday Fund (WHF) was set up just after the Second World War as a state-dependent organization that arranged recreation for Polish workers under the socialist doctrine. The communist authorities turned organized recreation into a tool of indoctrination and propaganda. This research aims to characterize the seaside tourism architecture in the Polish People’s Republic (1949–1989) against the background of nationalized and organized tourism being used as a political tool, to typify the architecture and to verify the influence of politics on the development of holiday architecture in Poland. The research methodology is based on historical and interpretative studies (iconology, iconography and historiography) and field studies. The research helped distinguish four basic groups of holiday facilities: one form of adapted facilities (former villas and boarding houses) and three forms of new facilities (sanatorium-type, pavilion-type and lightweight temporary facilities, such as bungalows and cabins). The study found that each type of holiday facility was characterized by certain political significance and social impact. Gradual destruction was the fate of a significant part of WHF facilities, which, in the public awareness, are commonly associated with the past era of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) as an “unwanted heritage”.


2021 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 180-199
Author(s):  
Regina M. Frey

At present, there is no societally relevant political newspaper in Germany that is based on a Christian worldview. The Rheinischer Merkur, founded in 1946 shortly after the end of the Second World War and shut down by the German Bishops’ Conference in 2010, was a newspaper of this kind. It went beyond the Christian milieu in the fulfilment of its mission in the public arena. The closure of the Rheinischer Merkur obscures even today the decisive role it played in the elaboration of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany and the substantial quality of the paper. This essay sketches the history of the Rheinischer Merkur and its self-understanding, as well as its decline, locating these in the context of the journalistic autonomies and media-ethical tensions to which every journalistic medium is subject.


Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković ◽  
Klaus Schmider

The Second World War in Yugoslavia is notorious for the brutal struggle between the armed forces of the Third Reich and the communist-led Partisans. Less known is the fact that the two sides negotiated prisoner exchanges virtually since the beginning of the war. Under extraordinary circumstances, these early contacts evolved into a formal exchange agreement, centered on the creation of a neutral zone—quite possibly the only such area in occupied Europe—where prisoners were regularly exchanged until late April 1945, saving thousands of lives. The leadership of both sides used the contacts for secret political talks, for which they were nearly branded as traitors by their superiors in Berlin and Moscow. This book is the first comprehensive analysis of prisoner exchanges and the accompanying contacts between the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans. Specifically, the book will argue that prisoner exchange had a decisive influence on the POW policies of both sides and helped reduce the levels of violence for which this theater of war became infamous. It will also show that the contacts, contrary to some claims, did not lead to collusion between these two parties against either other Yugoslav factions or the Western Allies.


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