Politics of Memory in Postwar Europe

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.

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

“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