In its totality, the Long Second World Warextending from the beginning of the Spanish Civil War to the end of hostilities in 1945has exerted enormous influence over European culture. Bringing together leading historians, sociologists, and literary and film scholars, this broadly interdisciplinary volume investigates Europeans individual and collective memories and the ways in which they have shaped the continents cultural heritage. Focusing on the major combatant nationsSpain, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, and Russiait offers thoroughly contextualized explorations of novels, memoirs, films, and a host of other cultural forms to illuminate European public memory.

Peter Tame is Reader in French Studies at Queens University Belfast. His principal research interests lie in the areas of war literature, literature and politics in twentieth-century France, and especially fictional representations of Fascism and Communism. His new bookIsotopias (2015) looks at places and spaces in French war fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

List of Illustrations    Acknowledgements

Foreword: Between World Wars: Remembering War in Europe before 1945Richard Overy

Introduction: The Long Aftermath of the Long Second World WarManuel Bragança and Peter Tame

PART I: SPAIN

Chapter 1. Violence and the History and Memory of the Spanish Civil War: Beyond the Crisis of Inherited Narrative FrameworksPablo Sánchez León

Chapter 2. Poetry and Silence in Post-Civil War Spain: Carmen Conde, Lucía Sánchez Saornil and Pilar de ValderramaJean Andrews

Chapter 3. On Civil-War Memory in Spanish Womens Narratives: The Example of Cristina Fernández CubasCosas que ya no existenAlison Ribeiro de Menezes

PART II: THE UNITED KINGDOM

Chapter 4. Narrating Britains War: A Four Nations and More Approach to the Peoples WarDaniel Travers and Paul Ward

Chapter 5. Dont Lets Be Beastly to the Germans: the Representation of Germans in British Second World War FilmsRobert Murphy

Chapter 6. Memory and Nation in British Narratives of the Second World War after 1945Mark Rawlinson

PART III: FRANCE

Chapter 7. A Capital Problem: The Town of Vichy, the Second World War, and the Politics of IdentityKirrily Freeman

Chapter 8. Tracking the Past in the Places and Spaces of Patrick Modianos Early FictionPeter Tame

Chapter 9. Vercors and the Second World WarCristina Solé-Castells

PART IV: GERMANY

Chapter 10. Reconstructing D-Day Memory: How Contemporary Politics made Germans Victims of the WarHarold J. Goldberg

Chapter 11. Memories of World War II in German Film after 1945Christiane Schönfeld

Chapter 12. Ilse Aichingers NovelThe Greater Hope. Poetic Narrative to Deal with TraumaMarko Pajevi

PART V: ITALY

Chapter 13. Victimhood Asserted: Italian Memories of World War IIRichard J. B. Bosworth

Chapter 14. Re-picturing the Myth: American Characters in Post-War Popular Italian CinemaDaniela Treveri Gennari

Chapter 15. Italian Resistance Writing in the Years of the Second RepublicPhilip Cooke

PART VI: POLAND

Chapter 16. The Second World War in Present-Day Polish Memory and PoliticsAndrzej Paczkowski

Chapter 17. Wounded Memory. Rhetorical Strategies Used in Public Discourse on the Katy MassacreUrszula Jarecka

Chapter 18. The Second World War in Recent Polish Counterfactual and Alternative (Hi)storiesMarzena Sokoowska-Pary

PART VII: USSR / RUSSIA

Chapter 19. History Politics and the Changing Meaning of Victory Day in Contemporary RussiaMarkku Kangaspuro

Chapter 20. War and Patriotism: Russian War Films and the Lessons for TodayDavid Gillespie

Chapter 21. Russian Fiction at WarGreg Carleton

Afterword: Memories of War: From the Sacred to the SecularJay Winter

Index