This thesis engages with the intersection between the British state and corporations, governmentality, conflict and corporate power and historical geographies of networked communications during the Second World War From its formation in 1928 to nationalisation in 1946, Cable and Wireless were the overseas communications service for the British Government. Throughout the 1930s, intersecting sociopolitical networks were fostered between senior members of Head Office staff and representatives of various government departments – from the Cabinet, the Foreign Office and the intelligence services. Through these networks, an ostensibly private communications company was drawn into a close relationship with the British state that blurred the boundary between government and business. By utilizing the archival holdings of the Company, held at the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum, Cornwall, Cable and Wireless’ war work will be detailed by examining three discrete but interrelated aspects. Theses are: first, overseas mobilization; second, domestic mobilization; and, finally, the mobilization of the body – of individual members of staff. In this thesis Cable and Wireless is configured as an institution in the Foucauldian sense and an examination of the exercise of governmental power follows. The physical network of Cable and Wireless is then configured as the conduit through which this power was exercised and disseminated. The central methodological contribution that this thesis makes is to discourses surrounding the notion of secrecy: how this is created and maintained, and how it shatters space into regions of knowledge and ignorance. Secrecy in this context also serves to empower some and dominate others. The final aspect of the research is to define and explore an alternative narrative to the Second World War: the central role that a private communications company played in furnishing the British Government with intelligence – of both a strategic and tactical nature – that was gleaned from the overseas network.

Recently, narrating the experience of the underage soldier in the Second World War has become a major part of the discourses about the Second World War. Particularly, an empathetic approach to the experience of the underage soldier during the war is a new means of understanding the war. This thesis examines this development in two novels comparing and contrasting the German and the African collective memories of the war: Ralf Rothmann’s "Im Frühling Sterben" (2015) and Biyi Bandele’s "Burma Boy" (2006). Whereas, the thesis can show differences in how the child soldier topic contributes to each cultural memory of the war, e.g. it allows for the entry of the West African story of the war into public discourse, the child soldier topic links both discourses by emphasizing universal human tendencies in war, which can be seen in concepts such as sympathy and empathy, guilt and responsibility, as well as multidirectional memory. / February 2017

This essay is about women's role during the second world war, which occurred 1939-1945.Throughout the beginning of the war Sweden was one of the few countries that remainedneutral. Women in Sweden had an important part in the war effort, and a large number ofmarried and unmarried women recruited into different jobs, left by men. Throughout the warwomen were expected to mobilize themselves on the homefront. The purpose of this essay isto understand women's role in a popular swedish women's magazine, Husmodern.Advertisement and other kind of propaganda was provided during the war, one of the reasonwas to target women on the home front. But it was also a way to reach women and placeresponsibilities on them. My aim is to understand how the swedish magazine Husmodernportrayed women's role and responsibilities during the war. The conclusion of my study isthat women had an important role in Sweden, during the war. Women were expected to doeverything but in other terms. Already when the war was coming to an end, women whorecruited into different jobs and the women who worked diligently on the homefront, wereexpected to take the role and responsibilities of a housewife.

This study examines Ferdinand Porsche’s activities during the Third Reich. Ferdinand Porsche (1875-1951) was an engineer who became best known as the founder of Porsche AG, one of the most profitable car manufacturers in the world. Between 1933 and 1945, Porsche collaborated closely with the National Socialist regime in Germany. Prior to the start of the Second World War in September 1939, Porsche designed the Volkswagen Beetle on behalf of Adolf Hitler, and oversaw the factory dedicated to manufacturing the Volkswagen. During the Second World War, Porsche transformed the Volkswagen factory into an important site for armament production, and designed various military vehicles; with both undertakings, his company exploited involuntary workers. After the Second World War, Porsche was interrogated by American and British occupying forces and imprisoned by the French government. After his release from France in August 1947, he went on to design the first sports car displaying the Porsche marque and help build an automotive empire. This study emphasizes Ferdinand Porsche’s relationships to leaders of the National Socialist regime, namely Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, and Hermann Göring. Porsche utilized such relationships to further his personal interests. This study also considers the limited response of Porsche AG to this challenging history.

This project seeks to examine the ways in which the media of Holocaust photography and videography are represented in museums in Canada and Germany. Specifically, this project analyzes the Topography of Terror (Berlin), the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (Winnipeg), and the German Military History Museum (Dresden). The media of video- and photography are integral to a comparative examination of the intentional and unintentional effects and knowledge produced by these museums, since both media tend to be seen as more ‘authentic’ than text and remain somewhat outside the control of the museums; photographs and videos are often more than just a mouthpiece for museal goals. In order to adequately compare these representations in each of the three museums, they are analyzed simultaneously through the lens of distance and proximity between visitor and subject, and whether one is able to feel empathy for historical persons (and with whom) or not. / October 2016

II Title History interpretation in Fred Wander's literary works Abstract The topic of this diploma thesis is an interpretation of events during the Second World War in Fred Wander's literary work, an important representative of German written literature in the past century. The first chapter presents Fred Wander's life and work and is based on Wander's own autobiography and interviews. The following chapters are dedicated to individual analysis of his three writings: Der siebente Brunnen, Ein Zimmer in Paris and Hotel Baalbek. Wander especially focuses on mediating concrete personal life stories during that epoch. Hotel Haalbek work captures a situation during the first years of the war in the southern France. Der siebente Brunnen describes prisoners' lives in a concentration camp. Wander dedicates Ein Zimmer in Paris work to the topic of how to cope with war experience. The main target of this diploma thesis is about an interpretation of selected themes which are crucial for the mentioned works. It also points to the importance of history rendering in the writings by the author. Keywords Fred Wander, holocaust literature, the Second World War, judaism

This thesis deals with the guerrilla group Brdy - do not like and Francis Holman action within its organization. Resistance group Brdy - Displeasure was established in 1938. Beginning of its activities is associated with John Strap quantified from the village. In the first phase, which lasted until the summer of 1941, members of the organization materially and financially assist families of detainees. In June 1941 he fled from Prague Hořovice displeasure at Jaroslav, who came to arrest by the Gestapo because of his Communist activities in the First Republic. He was one of the accused in spy scandal in the Škoda factories. I do not like the end of 1941, hiding in the Joseph Paška quantified, then a connection with him II. illegal Communist Party central leadership, it becomes the active Member, in his resistance work continues on III bootleg central party leadership. It builds on the cover Újezd of which was controlled by guerrilla activity around Podbrdy. In November 1944 he was arrested by the Gestapo Jaroslav displeasure. In January 1945 is disposed újezdský bunker. The exact date of death of Jaroslav displeasure is not known, probably been beaten to death in early 1945. Francis Holman was one of the Members Horovice Brdy cells - do not like. Together with his colleagues performed the action between...

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / The Second World War internment of the West Coast Issei and Nisei remains a tragic moment in American history. It has long been viewed by historians as a singular act of mass social and political pressure to remove a racially constructed social group from the area, but it was carried out by the United States Army under the direction of the War Department. This dissertation studies the formation of the military policy that led to the Second World War internment of Japanese-Americans and the transformation of a reluctant American Army into an agent of a xenophobic West Coast civilian populace through external pressure, poor planning, and false assumptions. This study focuses on several aspects of civil-military relations associated with the Second World War internment of the Issei and Nisei. This includes the history of militancy and mob rule in the West Coast urban landscape and the borders of civil-military relations on the West Coast as they applied to the region’s xenophobic legislative government. Likewise, the relationship between the military and the militia, urban race relations, and the role of intelligence analysis play a central role in determining the distortion of facts, which shaped the American military’s internment policy. Finally, the disconnects between the East and West Coast arms of the federal government and the Justice and War Departments play an equally pivotal role steering the military’s response to the devolving state of affairs on the West Coast in the months following Pearl Harbor, resulting in the internment of over 110,000 Issei and Nisei in the following months.

This dissertation analyzes visual representations of Canadian women war workers during the Second World War, examining the intersections of labour, gender, beauty culture, bodies, media, consumer culture, advertising, class, whiteness, and sexuality featured in these images. It argues that without considering each of these themes, it is impossible to fully understand wartime representations of women workers. In examining these intersections, the dissertation highlights the power of visual representations and demonstrates the key roles of beauty culture and heterosexuality in munitions plants. By comparing images of women war workers in nationally-circulated magazines and advertisements, locally-produced newsletters from three southern Ontario war plants, archival photos, and newspaper coverage of the Miss War Worker beauty contest, this study shows that the beautiful woman war worker was a visual icon who symbolized the tensions, worries, and hopes around labour, beauty, and femininity, in wartime as well as in the postwar period, when war workers’ presumed next step into white motherhood was of particular importance to the national project. Women workers were constantly encouraged and pressured to engage with beauty culture and participate in self-fashioning. Probing the relationship between how war workers were depicted and what they experienced points to the power of images as well as the opportunities women had to exercise agency by pushing back against visual ideals as well as by emulating them. / Graduate / 2017-08-29

Après la tragédie de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les mots semblent ne plus suffire pour désigner le réel. La littérature du XXe siècle invente alors un langage nouveau, qui tend vers le silence. C’est ainsi que, traumatisé par l’Histoire, Georges Perec se tourne vers une écriture du silence, manière pour lui de réfléchir au langage et à ses limites, et cette démarche est perceptible surtout dans Un homme qui dort, La Disparition et W ou le souvenir d’enfance. La première partie de cette thèse s’ouvre sur les définitions du silence, puis se propose d’examiner sa rhétorique et ses motivations, et enfin de traiter les divers aspects du blanc, l’équivalent visuel du silence. La deuxième partie se concentre quant à elle sur l’examen des techniques narratives servant à la mise en place d’une écriture du silence : les jeux de la narration liés à la présence ou l’absence du narrateur, le morcellement narratif où le silence réside à chaque arrêt, et le patchwork intertextuel dont les voix remplacent celle de l’auteur. La troisième partie aborde enfin la question de la quête autobiographique que Perec a menée de manière plus ou moins oblique. Les thèmes de l’étrangeté à soi et de l’oubli se présentent comme des éléments essentiels car c’est la perte de mémoire et d’identité qui entraîne une perte de la parole. Puisque l’écrivain ne peut pas témoigner de l’expérience concentrationnaire qu’il n’a pas vécue, il assimile cette histoire collective, écho de son histoire individuelle, à une histoire fictive. Enfin, l’écriture perecquienne est un travail de deuil : l’auteur se sert du silence comme thème et technique d’écriture pour parler de la disparition de la mère, victime de la Shoah. / After the tragedy of the Second World War, words seem insufficient to represent reality. The authors of the 20th century have invented a new language that tends towards silence. Traumatized by history, Georges Perec thus turns to writing about silence. Through writing about silence, Perec contemplates the language and its limits; this approach is noticed particularly in Un homme qui dort, La Disparition and W ou le souvenir d’enfance. The first part of this thesis deals with the definitions of silence, then examines the rhetoric and motivations of silence. The different aspects of “the blank”–visual equivalence of silence–are also taken into account. The second part focuses on the narrative techniques implemented for the writing of silence. These techniques include the dynamic of narrative voices connected to the narrator’s both presence and absence; a fragmented narrative where silence exists after certain breaks; and the replacement of the author’s voice by an intertextual patchwork. The third part investigates Perec’s autobiographical elements which are more or less obliquely presented. Perec’s own alienation and forgetfulness are employed as key factors contributing to the uniqueness of silence as loss of memory and identity undermines the ability to speak. Since the author could not testify the trauma in the concentration camp through first-hand experience, he transforms collective history, echoing his individual history, into fictional history. Finally, Perec’s writings can be regarded as a literature of mourning: the silence, deployed as themes and literary techniques, is an instrument for recounting the loss of Perec’s own mother—a Shoah victim.