During the First World War, thousands of Welsh women became involved in the production of munitions and food for the war effort. This thesis examines attitudes towards and experiences of women workers employed in munitions and agricultural production in Wales during the war. It explores the organisation and recruitment of women in these areas, the employment of women in both fields, the organisation of welfare and leisure within and outside the workplace, and women’s experiences of demobilisation. Throughout, it considers women’s motivations for undertaking war work, as well as their experiences, including their involvement in strike action and in sporting activities, and how these were affected by class, age, and locality. The thesis argues that while the war lasted, women gained greater self-confidence and started to forge a collective identity as workers, but their contribution to the labour market was always viewed as temporary and valued less than men’s work. After the Armistice, women were forced back to the home or to traditional ‘feminine’ occupations. This thesis therefore contributes to long-standing historiographical arguments about the extent to which the war brought about lasting social change for women. It makes a significant contribution to the under-researched field of Welsh women’s experiences in the First World War.

The Manchester Blitz was relatively short, lasting two nights in December 1940, when around 1,000 people were killed and more than 3,000 injured in the city centre, Salford and the residential areas near Old Trafford. This thesis focuses on the reaction to this heavy bombing by the local and regional newspapers of Manchester, which was Britain’s second press centre at the time. The newspapers, the Manchester Guardian, Manchester Evening News and Evening Chronicle, are studied over an eight-week period from mid December 1940. According to these editions, Mancunians were unbowed by the death and destruction wrought by the Luftwaffe and had a steely determination to win the war. Contemporary writing, including individual diaries and reports from Mass Observation and Home Intelligence, tells a more complicated and nuanced story. The thesis finds that the Manchester newspapers submitted their coverage to more self-imposed censorship than was being demanded even by a government desperate to maintain morale. They did so partly because they feared they would be closed down if they offended the censor, but also because they felt that patriotism had a greater priority than maintaining the news values of the time. The newspapers could have exposed local authority incompetence and shortcomings in the emergency services but chose instead to paint a rosy picture of defiance by omission, distortion and, in some cases, deceit. They did not do so independently, but in accordance with the reporting norms in Fleet Street and other British provincial cities during the Second World War. Circulations rose for both national and local newspapers during the war, but the cost was a further severing of the confidence people had in their press. When readers themselves became the story by being the victims of the Blitz they discovered there was often a gap between the truth and what appeared in print. It is a trust that has not been recovered to this day.

This thesis integrates archaeological survey, aerial photographs and historical documents to undertake the first analysis of the conflict landscapes and military history of some of the most important German logistics facilities in northern France during the Battle of Normandy in 1944. Post-war survival of features has been remarkably good in this forested setting and this likely constitutes one of the best- preserved and most extensive examples of a non-hardened WWII archaeological landscape yet documented in northwest Europe. Over 900 discrete archaeological earthworks have been mapped and interpreted with the aid of primary source material from both Allied and German archives to characterise munitions, fuel and rations depots in the Forêt Domaniale des Andaines around Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, Orne Département, Basse-Normandie. These landscapes also preserve bomb craters associated with air raids on the facilities by the US Ninth Air Force and these have been mapped and analysed to show that despite 46 separate attacks by over 1000 aircraft, and the dropping in excess of 1100 tons of bombs in the forest during the spring and summer of 1944, the depots continued to function and to support German Army operations until the area was occupied by American forces in August 1944. In some areas of the forest it has been possible to link discrete arrays of bomb craters to individual air raids and even specific flights of aircraft. This work is yielding new perspectives on the character and operation of fixed depots in the German logistics system in Normandy both before and during the battles of 1944, while also permitting a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of Allied intelligence gathering, targeting and bombing operations against forest-based supply facilities. In doing so it is making a unique contribution to the newly-emerging record of WWII conflict archaeology to be found in the forests of northwest Europe.

This thesis examines patterns of German memory and identity construction as reflected in historical debates around the Rosenstraße protest in 1943 and cultural representations of it since 1990. It positions them within the wider context of debates in Germany on resistance on the one hand and shifting conceptions of national identity on the other. It argues that although the increase in public interest in the protest may appear to be a consequence of unification and the ensuing shift in coming to terms with the past, it in fact precedes them. Drawing on the work in cultural memory theory of Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann, Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm and others, arguments about the social construction of memory and identity are employed to show how and why patterns of memory, attitudes and ideas about the Nazi past, as expressed through different media of memory, have shifted and how these are tied to conceptions of national identity. This thesis focuses first on debate amongst historians, before moving on to discuss popular history, biography, film and the different forms of memorialisation. It asks why the protest has become a more prominent feature of cultural memory since unification, and demonstrates that its increased currency is a product of trends in resistance historiography and in Holocaust discourses. It argues that cultural memories are multi-layered and developed in relation to one another. The interplay between these different media is therefore analysed, with particular attention given to who is involved in shaping memories of the protest and why, how these memories and surrounding debates have altered over time, and what this indicates about continuing impact of, and attitudes towards the past. This allows for a consideration of the multiple notions of national identity which these representations foster, and an exploration of how conceptions of identity influence what is remembered. The question is asked whether the Rosenstraße resistance narrative has, since the 1980s, facilitated the emergence of a more inclusive and a more nuanced remembering, particularly as this narrative highlights the complexities of opposition and attempts to integrate conceptions of Jewish and non-Jewish suffering, centring them within the one narrative. It asks whether these notions are juxtaposed, and whether either victimhood or German responsibility is relativised. The thesis explores how Germans’ relationship with Jews is reconfigured, how German-Jewish solidarity is foregrounded, who is represented as victim, and of what. At the same time, the extent to which a more hybrid sense of identity, one that transcends national and ethnic boundaries, is promoted through the representations of the Rosenstraße protest is also considered. Lastly, it is argued that the competing representations of events in Rosenstraße which are examined here exemplify the fraught, complex and politicised dynamics of Germany’s historical memory, which is characterised by tension between the wish for normalization and the desire to maintain a critical awareness of the past in which opposition may be recognised but accountability is not relativised. The thesis explores which view predominates and speculates whether this is likely to shift in the near future.

On June 7, 2000, the Holocaust’s position as an official part of British history and memory became solidified with the opening of a permanent Holocaust exhibition within London’s Imperial War Museum. This important national museum embodies Britain's cultural memory of war, of which the Holocaust has become a central part. Situated within debates of museology and memory, this thesis offers a compelling case study on the performative role of the museum in the construction of an official Holocaust memory within Britain and its relationship to national identity. While the Holocaust has become a ‘moral touchstone’ of contemporary society it seems urgent we raise questions of not only why we remember the Holocaust, but what, exactly, it is we are remembering. The oft cited dictum to 'never forget' requires remembrance of the Holocaust to serve a purpose; so that events of Nazi Europe may never be repeated. This ambition has proven hollow, yet countries invest millions of pounds in official Holocaust remembrance, commemoration and education. What purpose does the Holocaust serve in twenty-first century Britain? Questions of Holocaust narrative, material culture and testimony dominate the study, underpinned through wider concepts of history, memory, identity and museology in a British context. Using the Imperial War Museum as a case study, this thesis presents a challenge to the place of the Holocaust within British memory of war and questions how this limiting framework affects the way the Holocaust is remembered and understood throughout British society more broadly. Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of the Holocaust exhibition and its display. A history of the exhibition provides detail on how and why the Holocaust became a central theme for the Imperial War Museum, while a study of the photographic, object and testimony displays in each dedicated chapter draws conclusions on how the Holocaust is shaped within this specific context. The relationship between the exhibition displays and Holocaust education more broadly throughout Britain is explored in detail in the final chapter of the thesis. Beyond the Imperial War Museum, this study points towards the future of Holocaust memory in Britain with an aim to highlight a limited understanding of the wider context of Britain and the Holocaust within popular narratives. How Britain connects to Holocaust history and memory remains central to this research, but it also considers how Britain could connect in more meaningful ways beyond learning the 'lessons' of the Holocaust.

This project seeks to explore representations of Holocaust perpetrators in literature. Such texts, often rather controversially, seek to undo the myth of “pure evil” that surrounds the Holocaust and to reconstruct the perpetrator in more “human” terms. Accordingly, significant questions of “how” and “why” are centralised and explored, providing fertile ground for examinations of the intersections between ethics, literature and history, and enabling ongoing discussions about the characteristics and obligations of perpetrator literature as a whole. Of central concern, these humanising discourses place emphasis on the contextual or situational factors that led up to the genocide. Following these issues through to their logical conclusion, this project takes the question of determinism seriously. This is not to suggest that it disavows individual responsibility, merely that it engages fully with the philosophical problems that are invoked through allusions to external influences, especially as they relate to ideas of contingency. A significant consequence of these discussions is the impact that they have on the reader. That is because, since situational aspects are featured so heavily in these narratives, questions are raised about his or her own capacity for wrongdoing. Consequently, the reader is drawn into the narrative as a potential perpetrator. The tensions that this creates constitutes the second major focus of this work. Ultimately, I hope to expose the challenges that face the reader when they encounter perpetrator narratives, and the ways in which these tensions impact upon our understandings of these figures, and of the Holocaust more generally. In order to provide a more comprehensive overview this project makes use of a large number (in excess of sixty) primary sources, examining both fictional and non-fictional accounts. My aim is not to offer close literary analyses of each of the texts under consideration but, rather, to trace paradigms across the full spectrum of perpetrator literature. In this way, I hope to contribute to the growing body of literature that engages with this topic.

During World War II, agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) infiltrated into Japanese-occupied Malaya. They worked with Malayan guerrilla groups, including the communist-sponsored Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Army (MPAJA). The MPAJA is regarded as the precursor of the communist insurgent army of the Malayan Emergency, and has been examined from that perspective, but its relationship with SOE and with other Malayan guerrilla groups remains poorly understood. Using SOE and related sources as a route into the Malayan interior during a pivotal period, this thesis traces the development of SOE’s Malayan operations, before analysing the interactions between SOE and the various guerrilla groups, and their relationships with each other. It explores the extent of Malay disillusionment with Japanese rule, and demonstrates how guerrilla service acted as a nursery for some later Malay leaders of the independent nation. Furthermore, it contributes to our knowledge of wartime Malaya by revealing the existence of a proto-state in northern Malaya ruled by guerrillas allied to the Chinese Nationalist Party. The destruction of this proto-state by the MPAJA, coupled with the communists’ acquisition of jungle-fighting weapons from SOE and their actions during the lawless period following the Japanese surrender, provides clear insights into the long-term ambitions of the Malayan Communist Party. However, the reports written about the MPAJA by SOE operatives just after the war failed to draw out the likely future threat posed by the communists to the returning colonial administration, foreshadowing the intelligence failure in the lead-up to the Malayan Emergency. In both cases, the British possessed a wealth of local information, but failed to catalyse it into active intelligence. This thesis leads us to re-assess the impact of SOE on Malayan politics, to reconsider the nature of Malayan communism’s challenge to colonial rule, and to rethink British post-war intelligence in Malaya.

Cette thèse est consacrée à l’étude de la protection des sources de renseignement britanniques pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, en enrichissant cette analyse grâce à des éléments de comparaison avec les pratiques privilégiées aux États-Unis et en Allemagne. Dans ces trois pays, des approches très différentes sont adoptées afin de s’assurer de la durabilité des sources et de pouvoir continuer à exploiter ces données précieuses, témoignant d’appréhensions variées de l’impératif de préserver ces sources et de politiques diverses à l’égard du choix complexe entre utilisation d’un renseignement et préservation de son origine, entre exploitation à court terme et bienfaits sur une échéance plus longue dans un contexte de guerre. En s’appuyant sur de nombreux documents d’archives civils et militaires des trois pays, cette étude présente leurs attitudes divergentes et permet de faire la lumière sur les véritables performances des services de renseignement des trois pays. Il est nécessaire de s’interroger sur le bien-fondé de la réputation de secret qui semble caractériser les agences britanniques, par opposition à leurs homologues américains, et sur le véritable succès des services allemands dans un pays marqué par de profondes divisions.Cette recherche détaille la coopération équivoque entre le Royaume-Uni et les États-Unis, qui a posé quelques-uns des premiers jalons de la « special relationship », la « relation spéciale » entre les deux pays, toute d’ambiguïté. Cette association est le théâtre de l’inversion du rapport de forces des deux puissances dans ce domaine comme dans bien d’autres. De plus, l’analyse des échanges des agences britanniques avec leurs homologues français et soviétiques permet d’adopter une nouvelle perspective dans l’étude de leurs relations internationales et de ces alliances complexes aux contours fluctuants. / This thesis investigates the protection of British intelligence sources during World War Two, and includes a comparison with American and German practices. In these three countries, intelligence officers adopted very different approaches to preserve these sources and to ensure that the latter could be used in the long term. Each country had a different perception of the balance between the immediate use of intelligence and the protection of its sources, between the short-term benefits and long-term preservation of these assets in the context of the war. Drawing on a vast amount of archival material, both civilian and military, this research presents these three countries’ various approaches and uses this analysis to reflect on their concrete achievements. This study interrogates the preconceived ideas about these countries’ intelligence practices, in particular the reputation of secrecy of the British agencies, as opposed to the lack of discretion of their American counterparts. Moreover, this thesis emphasises the particular situation of German secret services in a very divided country.The ambiguous cooperation between Britain and the United States during the Second World War helped pave the way for their « special relationship ». During the war, the balance of power between the two nations shifted dramatically, in the intelligence field as in many others. Moreover, the analysis of the exchanges between the British intelligence officers and their French and Soviet colleagues opens new research avenues in the study of their international relations and on these complex and fluctuating alliances.

In World War II, millions of men found themselves at one time or another in war captivity. Their daily lives in captivity have been documented in memoirs and historical studies, but despite the abundance of detail, the experience of war captivity as an experience of exclusion remains in-theorised. Western POWs held by Germany in particular were excluded not only from further involvement in direct combat, but also from the states of exception associated with the foreign slave labour and the racial persecutions particular to Germany at the time. While all around them people were killed for a number of reasons, their lives were protected – and in the case of Jewish soldiers extraordinarily so – for no other reason than to keep them alive. The first part of the thesis uses Carl Schmitt’s work on sovereignty and nomos to situate the POW camp within the framework of an international order where war is bracketed – gehegt. This order reveals itself as an order of war, in which law takes the role of the sovereign in guaranteeing the order. The second part then turns to the exception to this order, the POW camp, analysing its juridicopolitical situation on the example of Jewish POWs from Western forces held by Germany in the Second World War. The third part of the thesis looks at the wartime experiences of Emmanuel Levinas, who spent five years as a POW in Germany. The struggle Levinas’s work exhibits with the experience of captivity exemplifies this experience’s ultimate meaninglessness, and raises questions about the possibility of subjectivity without engagement.

Since unification the memorial landscape of Berlin and its surrounding territories has shifted and expanded exponentially. The majority of this change has occurred within the past ten years, as commemoration of the Holocaust and educational programmes on the National Socialist period have become not only prevalent, but a necessary and expected contribution to the shaping of German identity and memorial culture. In the past decade memorial museums and sites of remembrance, such as the House of the Wannsee Conference, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, and the former Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps, have contributed to and been impacted by the formation of a globalised memory of the Holocaust. As major and internationally renowned institutions, these sites offer unique insight into the nature of current memorial culture and recent approaches to memorialising and commemorating the past. Through an analysis of their exhibition spaces (online, permanent, temporary) and educational programmes (guided tours, seminars, and workshops), this dissertation will attempt to identify how these sites contribute to the formation of a globalised memory. Though each of these four sites possesses a different connection to the history of the Holocaust, and their own alternative approach to presenting and commemorating this history; this variation will provide insight into the divergent landscape of memorialisation within Germany, while also highlighting the common approaches, and practical issues that are of concern to these institutions. Overall the main aim of this thesis will be to demonstrate how memorialisation of the Holocaust, at sites within Berlin and Brandenburg, is no longer defined and shaped solely by the nation state, but rather is influenced by and contributes to international trends of remembrance and a globalised memory of the Holocaust.