scholarly journals FROM FOE TO FRIEND? VETERANS AS A DRIVING FORCE OF INTERNATIONAL RECONCILIATION AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

2017 ◽  
pp. 49-58
Author(s):  
Jörg Echternkamp
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
German Society ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
World War ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
World War Ii Veterans ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

Povzetek V 50. letih so veterani druge svetovne vojne postali pionirji mednarodne sprave. V članku so z osredotočanjem na nemške in francoske vojake analizirane okoliščine, pojavitev in funkcije tega procesa v kontekstu zunanje in notranje politike Zahodne Nemčije. Postavljena je teza, da so organizirani vojni veterani sprejeli vzorce razlage in argumentiranja povojne družbe v Zahodni Nemčiji ter jih prilagodili svojemu konceptu zgodovine, da bi pridobili zgodovinsko samozavest. Predvsem pa so svoje mednarodno delovanje predstavljali kot evropsko pobudo o dogovoru. V nasprotju z 20. in 30. leti prejšnjega stoletja so bila prizadevanja nemških vojaških veteranov v 50. letih skladna z vladno politiko. Na temelju pluralističnega kulturno-zgodovinskega ozadja so veterani vzpostavili stike na lokalni, območni in regionalni ravni v procesu, ki ga lahko poimenujemo sprava. Ključne besede: veterani, sprava, 50. leta, Nemčija, Francija. Abstract In the 1950s, World War II veterans became pioneers of international reconciliation. Focusing on former German and French soldiers, this article analyses the conditions, manifestations, and functions of this process within the context of West Germany’s foreign and domestic policies. The thesis is that organised war veterans accepted the patterns of interpretation and argumentation of post-war West German society, and adapted them to their concept of history for the purpose of gaining historical self-assurance. Most of all, they presented their international activity as a European initiative for a better understanding between nations. In contrast to the 1920s and 1930s, the efforts of German war veterans in the 1950s were in accordance with the policy of the government. Against the backdrop of a pluralistic cultural-historical background, the veterans established contacts at the local, district and regional levels in a process that can be called reconciliation. Key words Veterans - Reconciliation - 1950s - Germany - France.

From Reconstruction to ‘Leisure Society’: Free Time, Recreational Behaviour and the Discourse on Leisure Time in the West German Recovery Society of the 1950s

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Schildt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
German Society ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Expert ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Industrial Standards ◽  
Second World

Little more than a decade after having lost the Second World War, the society of the western part of Germany, the Federal Republic, had changed fundamentally in the eye of the observer. The economic expert Henry C. Wallich was not the only one to speak of the ‘German miracle’. Not only had the previously achieved industrial standards long been regained and surpassed, but also a boom had set in – as in all of Western Europe – which came to an end only in the 1970s. Simultaneously, both economy and society had been modernised in the process of reconstruction. The transition to a new stage of modernity, ‘society in affluence’, was discussed animatedly. The emergence of new leisure lifestyles in particular was considered a mark of present times. However, in current reviews it is often forgotten that the West German society of the 1950s was to a far greater extent determined by continuity with the interwar period and by the consequences of the war and post-war years than a first glance at the spectacular novelties suggests.

Metamorphoses of memory of the the Russian-Serbian Brotherhood of War in Modern Serbia

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 142-156
Author(s):  
A. Yu. Timofeev
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Party System ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Second World

The article considers the perception of World War II in modern Serbian society. Despite the stability of Serbian-Russian shared historical memory, the attitudes of both countries towards World wars differ. There is a huge contrast in the perception of the First and Second World War in Russian and Serbian societies. For the Serbs the events of World War II are obscured by the memories of the Civil War, which broke out in the country immediately after the occupation in 1941 and continued several years after 1945. Over 70% of Yugoslavs killed during the Second World War were slaughtered by the citizens of former Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The terror unleashed by Tito in the first postwar decade in 1944-1954 was proportionally bloodier than Stalin repressions in the postwar USSR. The number of emigrants from Yugoslavia after the establishment of the Tito's dictatorship was proportionally equal to the number of refugees from Russia after the Civil War (1,5-2% of prewar population). In the post-war years, open manipulations with the obvious facts of World War II took place in Tito's Yugoslavia. In the 1990s the memories repressed during the communist years were set free and publicly debated. After the fall of the one-party system the memory of World War II was devalued. The memory of the Russian-Serbian military fraternity forged during the World War II began to revive in Serbia due to the foreign policy changes in 2008. In October 2008 the President of Russia paid a visit to Serbia which began the process of (re) construction of World War II in Serbian historical memory. According to the public opinion surveys, a positive attitude towards Russia and Russians in Serbia strengthens the memories on general resistance to Nazism with memories of fratricide during the civil conflict events of 1941-1945 still dominating in Serbian society.

scholarly journals The national camp and the concept of a federation during the Second World War

1970 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 256-276
Author(s):  
Dariusz Miszewski
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Global Level ◽  
World War ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

During the Second World War, the national camp preached the idea of imperialism in Central Europe. Built peacefully, the Polish empire was supposed to protect the independence and security of countries in Central Europe against Germany and the Soviet Union, and thus went by the name of “the Great Poland”. As part of the empire, nation-states were retained. The national camp was opposed to the idea of the federation as promoted by the government-in-exile. The “national camp” saw the idea of federation on the regional, European and global level as obsolete. Post-war international cooperation was based on nation states and their alliances.

Containment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Preston
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
World War ◽  
Land War ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Cold War Consensus

Assessing the application of the liberal consensus idea to postwar foreign policy, this chapter contends that myths about the bipartisan spirit of U.S. foreign policy have too long found ready acceptance from historians. Politics did not stop at the water’s edge, even when bipartisanship was at its supposed zenith during World War II and the early Cold War. While there was unanimity during the post-war era that the growth of international communism was a threat to U.S. interests, this did not mean that foreign policy was free of political conflict, and partisan charges that the government of the day was losing the Cold War were commonplace. Meanwhile, non-elite opinion evinced little support for confrontation with the main Communist powers, reluctance to engage in another land war like Korea, and concern about survival in the nuclear era. The divisiveness wrought by Vietnam was supposed to have brought an end to the “Cold War consensus,” but uncertainty over its meaning was evident well before this.

Children born of war during and after the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Lee
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Final Part ◽  
World War ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
East And West ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

This chapter explores the relationship between soldiers and local women in various theatres of war during World War II, tracing in particular nationalistic and racial undercurrents in the development of national policies vis-à-vis,military-civilian relations. It traces in particular Nazi policies in both East and West with view to eugenics, as well as Allied policies in preparing for and implementing post-war occupations in Germany and Austria, including guidance for soldiers on relations with the (former) enemy. The final part of the chapter gives a voice to children born of war themselves. Using a variety of sources ranging from ego-documents including autobiographies and memoirs as well as interviews and narratives as well as contemporary media reports, it analyses the CBOW reflections on their lifecourses.

Irish Girls in Liverpool (2)

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-182
Author(s):  
Samantha Caslin
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Irish Immigration ◽  
Irish Women ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

This chapter focuses on the LVA’s efforts to engage with Irish women in Liverpool during the Second World War and post-war years. Despite a reduction in Irish immigration during the war, which saw the LVA’s staff reduced, the organisation was quick to raise concerns about the moral wellbeing of Irish young women once peace was resumed. As such, the LVA continued, throughout the 1950s and into the 1960s, to provoke concerns about the supposed moral vulnerability of Irish young women in Liverpool in a bid to generate support for their patrols.

Colossus, Codebreaking, and the Digital Age

Colossus ◽  
2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Budiansky
Keyword(s):  
Digital Age ◽  
General Purpose ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
The People ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

The paths that took men and women from their ordinary lives and deposited them on the doorstep of the odd profession of cryptanalysis were always tortuous, accidental, and unpredictable. The full story of the Colossus, the pioneering electronic device developed by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC & CS) to break German teleprinter ciphers in the Second World War, is fundamentally a story of several of these accidental paths converging at a remarkable moment in the history of electronics—and of the wartime urgency that set these men and women on these odd paths. Were it not for the wartime necessity of codebreaking, and were it not for particular statistical and logical properties of the teleprinter ciphers that were so eminently suited to electronic analysis, the history of computing might have taken a very different course. The fact that Britain’s codebreakers cracked the high-level teleprinter ciphers of the German Army and Luftwaffe high command during the Second World War has been public knowledge since the 1970s. But the recent declassification of new documents about Colossus and the teleprinter ciphers, and the willingness of key participants to discuss their roles more fully, has laid bare as never before the technical challenges they faced—not to mention the intense pressures, the false steps, and the extraordinary risks and leaps of faith along the way. It has also clarified the true role that the Colossus machines played in the advent of the digital age. Though they were neither general-purpose nor stored-program computers themselves, the Colossi sparked the imaginations of many scientists, among them Alan Turing and Max Newman, who would go on to help launch the post-war revolution that ushered in the age of the digital, general-purpose, stored-program electronic computer. Yet the story of Colossus really begins not with electronics at all, but with codebreaking; and to understand how and why the Colossi were developed and to properly place their capabilities in historical context, it is necessary to understand the problem they were built to solve, and the people who were given the job of solving it.

Methamphetamine use in Japan after the Second World War: Transformation of narratives

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-746 ◽  
Author(s):  
Akihiko Sato
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Control Law ◽  
World War ◽  
Methamphetamine Use ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Second World

Scholars have argued that post-World War II domestic disorder in Japan caused a serious methamphetamine problem, which directly led to the establishment of the Stimulant Control Law of 1951. This paper examines the process through which that Law came into effect to argue the central significance of shifting discourses surrounding methamphetamine use, especially by users themselves, and nationalist dialogue concerning secret production and the smuggling of methamphetamine. These factors worked together in the 1950s to transform contemporary understandings of methamphetamine use, and to foster state efforts to regulate it.

scholarly journals World War II and the Rebirth and Death of Canada’s Merchant Marine

2006 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-241
Author(s):  
Michael A. Hennessy
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The State ◽  
Invisible Hand ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
World War ◽  
Merchant Marine ◽  
Post War ◽  
National Flag ◽  
Second World

Abstract Twice before the Second World War the Canadian merchant marine had collapsed in the face of competing conceptions of empire and commercial interest. Though once home to a thriving merchant fleet, the passing of the age of sail marked Canada's decline as a maritime nation. Most of the surviving merchant fleet sailed under British registry, employing British crews and officers. During the Second World War, Canada rebuilt its merchant marine. As the war drew to a close, the state, labour and enterprise supported the framing of a Canadian maritime policy to preserve the merchant shipping capacity developed during the war. The fleet's ambiguous origins, conflicting national trade policy, the absence of a laissez-faire international shipping market, the rise of cold-war tensions and the very peculiar problems of trade to the sterling bloc savaged post-war efforts to maintain the fleet. The timing and nature of the collapse were particularly Canadian. Barriers to currency convertibility, carriage restrictions, and high labour and production costs, proved formidable obstacles which representatives of the Canadian state were very largely powerless to overcome. In combination, these elements, rather than some invisible hand, explain why Canadian ship owners led the way in abandoning their national flag and why the state helped them. Sole attribution for the death of the merchant marine should no longer fall to unfavourable labour costs or union activism.

‘Putting Animals into Politics’: The Labour Party and Hunting in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Rural History ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
MICHAEL TICHELAR
Keyword(s):  
Rural Community ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Government ◽  
Post War ◽  
Second World

This article will discuss the background to opposition to hunting within the Labour Party before the Second World War, and in particular the role of the Humanitarian League and its successor the League Against Cruel Sports. It will highlight internal tensions of class and ideology that are still current today. It will examine the fate of two private members bills introduced in 1949 designed to prohibit hunting and coursing. Both bills were heavily defeated after the intervention of the Labour Government. This article will examine the reasons the post-war Labour Government used to oppose the bills before drawing some general conclusions about the Labour movement and blood sports. It will be argued that the primary reason why the bills were defeated was the strong desire of the Government to preserve its relationship with the farmers and the wider rural community.

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