Table of Contents

Preface: ix
The Memory of Politics in Postwar Europe / Richard Ned Lebow 1
From Victim Myth to Co-Responsibility Thesis: Nazi Rule, World War II, and the Holocaust in Austrian Memory / Heidemarie Uhl 40
The Legacy of World War II in France: Mapping the Discourses of Memory / Richard J. Golsan 73
Losing the War, Winning the Memory Battle: The Legacy of Nazism, World War II, and the Holocaust in the Federal Republic of Germany / Wulf Kansteiner 102
Italiani brava gente: The Legacy of Fascist Historical Culture on Italian Politics of Memory / Claudio Fogu 147
New Threads on an Old Loom: National Memory and Social Identity in Postwar and Post-Communist Poland / Annamaria Orla-Bukowska 177
What Is So Special about Switzerland? Wartime Memory as a National Ideology in the Cold War Era / Regula Ludi 210
Past as Present, Myth, or History? Discourses of Time and The Great Fatherland War / Thomas C. Wolfe 249
The Politics of Memory and Poetics of History / Claudio Fogu and Wulf Kansteiner 284
Bibliography 311
Contributors 355
Index 357

Promotional Information

Considers intersection between history and memory in seven European countries with emphasis on social narratives that have emerged surrounding World War II and implications of that process for the development of democracy.

About the Author

Richard Ned Lebow is James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. He is the author of many books, including The Tragic Vision of Politics: Ethics, Interests, and Orders.

Wulf Kansteiner is Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Binghamton University. He is the author of In Pursuit of German Memory: History, Television, and Politics after Auschwitz.

Claudio Fogu teaches in the French and Italian Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the author of The Historic Imaginary: Politics of History in Fascist Italy.

Reviews

"A stimulating addition to the literature on the intersection between memory and history, this collection is an intelligent and robust engagement with issues that simply won't go away. One of its advantages is that it takes seriously the need to sharpen the conceptual tools we need to handle a subject as protean as memory."--Jay Winter, author of Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History "This is not the first collaborative volume on post-World War II memory in Europe to appear in recent years, but it is the best and most important. Two qualities that set it apart are the integration of excellent historical writing with a stimulating social-science framework and the broadly humanistic cultural sensibilities embodied in the country-specific chapters. The book will be read with benefit by students of history and political psychology, as well as by those interested in the comparative politics of the past."--Martin O. Heisler, University of Maryland