The Second World War is omnipresent in contemporary memory debates. As the war fades from living memory, this study is the first to systematically analyze how Second World War museums allow ...prototypical visitors to comprehend and experience the past. It analyzes twelve permanent exhibitions in Europe and North America – including the Bundeswehr Military History Museum in Dresden, the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk, the House of European History in Brussels, the Imperial War Museums in London and Manchester, and the National WWII Museum in New Orleans – in order to show how museums reflect and shape cultural memory, as well as their cognitive, ethical, emotional, and aesthetic potential and effects. This includes a discussion of representations of events such as the Holocaust and air warfare. In relation to narrative, memory, and experience, the study develops the concept of experientiality (on a sliding scale between mimetic and structural forms), which provides a new textual-spatial method for reading exhibitions and understanding the experiences of historical individuals and collectives. It is supplemented by concepts like transnational memory, empathy, and encouraging critical thinking through difficult knowledge.
War at the Margins offers a broad comparative view of the impact of World War II on Indigenous societies. Using historical and ethnographic sources, Lin Poyer examines how Indigenous communities ...emerged from the trauma of the wartime era with social forms and cultural ideas that laid the foundations for their twenty-first century emergence as players on the world’s political stage. With a focus on Indigenous voices and agency, a global overview reveals the enormous range of wartime activities and impacts on these groups, connecting this work with comparative history, Indigenous studies, and anthropology. The distinctiveness of Indigenous peoples offers a valuable perspective on World War II, as those on the margins of Allied and Axis empires and nation-states were drawn in as soldiers, scouts, guides, laborers, and victims. Questions of loyalty and citizenship shaped Indigenous combat roles—from integration in national armies to service in separate ethnic units to unofficial use of their special skills, where local knowledge tilted the balance in military outcomes. Front lines crossed Indigenous territory most consequentially in northern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands, but the impacts of war go well beyond combat. Like others around the world, Indigenous civilian men and women suffered bombing and invasion, displacement, forced labor, military occupation, and economic and social disruption. Infrastructure construction and demand for key resources affected even areas far from front lines. World War II dissolved empires and laid the foundation for the postcolonial world. Indigenous people in newly independent nations struggled for autonomy, while other veterans returned to home fronts still steeped in racism. National governments saw military service as evidence that Indigenous peoples wished to assimilate, but wartime experiences confirmed many communities’ commitment to their home cultures and opened new avenues for activism. By century’s end, Indigenous Rights became an international political force, offering alternative visions of how the global order might make room for greater local self-determination and cultural diversity. In examining this transformative era, War at the Margins adds an important contribution to both World War II history and to the development of global Indigenous identity.
We thank Ekman & Co AB and Gadelius Holding Ltd for their kind and generous support, making this research available online for free. Lottaz and Ottosson explore the intricate relationship between ...neutral Sweden and Imperial Japan during the latter’s 15 years of warfare in Asia and in the Pacific. While Sweden’s relationship with European Axis powers took place under the premise of existential security concerns, the case of Japan was altogether different. Japan never was a threat to Sweden, militarily or economically. Nevertheless, Stockholm maintained a close relationship with Tokyo until Japan’s surrender in 1945. This book explores the reasons for that and therefore provides a study on the rationale and the value of neutrality in the Long Second World War. Sweden, Japan, and the Long Second World War is a valuable resource for scholars of the Second World War and of the history of neutrality.
Drawing from archival documents, periodicals, and relevant literature, this paper analyzes the role and significance of educational programming broadcast by the Radio Belgrade within the broader ...propaganda efforts of Milan Nedić’s government. The paper begins with a theoretical explanation of how media functions in education. This will be followed by the use of radio as an instructional tool in Serbian schools during the first half of the twentieth century. The analysis includes talks given during what was called Prosvetni čas (Educational Hour), a radio program broadcast in early 1944. Research has shown that, in a time of strong ideological influence on the educational process, the state educational authorities encouraged the use of any available means to achieve their political and propaganda-based ideological goals. Radio shows were produced for students during the 1930s and during the Second World War according to a similar model that made use of different content.
This article examines attitudes of the Croatian final grade high school students towards the burdensome legacy of the Second World War and Croatian war for independence (1991–1995). Following the ...theoretical framework of memory studies, and implementing the concept of postmemory, we have developed a structural model connecting ideology and legacy of the wars. In addition, we have further modelled postmemory and its reliance on democratic values, namely political attitudes, trust in state institutions and political knowledge. Individualised predictors offered more nuanced analysis away from the binary understanding of pro-collaborationist and anti-fascist divide, in line with wider European trends and political culture(s).
Las monografías dedicadas al frente del este publicadas desde el inicio del presente siglo han incidido sobre aspectos de la memoria de la guerra, la capacidad armamentística de las fuerzas alemanas ...y soviéticas y la violencia en la retaguardia, entre otros aspectos. Tratamos de ofrecer en este capítulo algunas de las novedades presentadas en esta bibliografía para entender mejor aquella fase trascendental del conflicto mundial.
This article provides a detailed account of the British - American Bermuda Conference on Refugees, held in April 1943, and re-evaluates its effect on Jewish refugee organizations and the ...international migration regime. It argues, firstly, that the delegates' inaction had a profound effect on Jewish organizations and their humanitarian efforts, and secondly, that the decision to revive the dormant Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees - a measure intended to cover for the failure to agree on any decisive rescue operation for European Jewry - provided the foundations for the international migration regime of the post-war era.
Between 1966 and 1980, the War History Office of the National Defense College of Japan (now the Center for Military History of the National Institute for Defense Studies) published the 102-volume ...Senshi Sōsho (War History Series). The present book completes the trilogy of English translations of the sections in the Senshi Sōsho series on the Japanese operations against the former Dutch East Indies (Indonesia). The first volume (The Invasion of the Dutch East Indies, 2015) details the army operations, the second volume (The Operations of the Navy in the Dutch East Indies and the Bay of Bengal, 2018) the navy operations, and this third volume the army air force operations. The three volumes provide an unparalleled insight into the Japanese campaign to capture Southeast Asia and the oil fields in the Indonesian archipelago in what was at that time the largest transoceanic landing operation in the military history of the world. It was also the first time in history that air power was employed with devastating effect over such enormous distances, posing complex technical and logistical problems.
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