Histories of the Aftermath

Frank Biess is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Princeton UP, 2006), and he is currently working on a history of fear and anxiety in postwar Germany.

“The editors and contributors have created a volume that is easily accessible for graduate students and upper-level undergraduate seminars. Professional historians will also benefit greatly because so few of us have tried to understand this period without the blinders of Cold War dichotomies.”  ·  Slavic Review“Frank Biess' introduction perfectly sets the tone for this book by reviewing where present-day post- 1945 historiography stands following the scholarship of the late Tony Judt… The structure of the book is impressive; five parts and sixteen essays…[The essays in this collection are] extraordinarily well thought-through…Histories of the Aftermath compares with any scholarly masterpiece about reconstruction after the American Civil War… For this reason this book is essential reading for any European history course.”  ·  Canadian Journal of History"With [this volume] Frank Biess and Robert G. Moeller have assembled a fine set of essays. Offering thematic and geographic breadth, the collection presents stimulating and rewarding ways of thinking about the legacies of the war in Europe…What is unusual is the cross-pollination of theoretical frameworks and topical emphases in ways that shed genuinely new light on the subject… It is tempting to suppose that little remains to be said about Europeans’ ‘coming to terms with their past’. This volume shows how fruitful this line of inquiry still can be"  ·  English Historical Review“This is an excellent collection. In its thematic breadth and its broad geographical coverage it is quite distinctive.”  ·  Mark Roseman, Indiana University, Bloomington

• Introduction Frank BiessI. Defining the Postwar Chapter 1. The Persistence of "the Postwar": Germany and PolandNorman NaimarkChapter 2. Feelings in the Aftermath: Toward a History of Postwar EmotionsFrank BiessChapter 3. In the Aftermath of CampsSamuel MoynII. Public and Private Memories Chapter 4. Nothing Is Forgotten: Individual Memory and the Myth of the Great Patriotic WarLisa KirschenbaumChapter 5. Erased nor Remembered: Soviet “Women Combatants” and Cultural Strategies of Forgetting In Soviet Russia, 1940s-1980sAnna KrylovaChapter 6. Generations as Narrative Communities: On the Private Sources of Official Cultures of Remembrance in Postwar GermanyDorothee WierlingIII. Mass-Mediating War: How Movies Shaped Memories Chapter 7. ‘When Will the Real Day Come?’ War Films and Soviet Postwar CultureDenise YoungbloodChapter 8. “Winning the Peace at the Movies:” Suffering, Loss, and Redemption in Postwar German Cinema”Robert MoellerChapter 9. Italian Cinema and the Transition from Dictatorship to DemocracyRuth Ben-GhiatIV. The Reconstruction of Citizenship Chapter 10. War Orphans and Post-Fascist Families: Kinship and Belonging after 1945Heide FehrenbachChapter 11. Manners, Morality and Civilization: Reflections on Postwar German Etiquette BooksPaul BettsChapter 12. From the “New Jerusalem” to the ‘Decline’ of the “New Elizabethan Age:” National Identity and Citizenship: Britain, 1945-56Sonya RoseChapter 13. “We are Building a Common Home:” The Moral Economy of Citizenship in Postwar PolandKatherine LebowV. 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 WarKlaus NaumannChapter 15. Soviet Military Culture and the Legacy of the Second World WarMikhail TsypkinChapter 16. 1945-1955: The Age of Total WarPieter LagrouNotes on ContributorsIndex