<p>The study follows the tradition of Cultural Studies, with a special interest in visual culture, and examines how history is being represented in different media, how these representations are interpreted by the audience, and how the outcome functions in the individual knowledge-building about this particular era. Here the notion of what is often called a collective, or cultural, memory, is important; both as a vehicle for a dominant discourse on memory and as a counterpart to individual memory, which might be more or less in agreement or opposition with the dominant. A central theme is the examination of how elements of the mythical enters a historical narrative, how they affect this, and how this is being interpreted by the audience. The media texts examined are mostly films (fiction and docudramas as well as documentaries) and computer games, although there are also some examples from role-playing games and alternative popular music. The audience part of the study consists of 11 in-depth interviews and a number of additional informants.</p><p>I propose that the media material indicates a convergence between myth in the traditional, religiously connected sense, and in the secularized sense of Roland Barthes. The former is made visible by the persistent use of elements of a clearly metaphysical nature, while the latter is made clear through the almost omnipresent authoritarian character of the media presentations. The material in its entirety clearly shows the importance of transmediality, transmedia storytelling and knowledge communities (cf Henry Jenkins) within the context. The audience examined expresses a highly critical attitude towards what is considered to be a “mainstream” media representation of World War II and Nazi Germany that – according to them – transforms the gruesome historical reality into cheap thrills and entertainment. Thus, it becomes fundamentally problematic to look upon the media representations of the theme as an expression of collective memory.</p>

The study follows the tradition of Cultural Studies, with a special interest in visual culture, and examines how history is being represented in different media, how these representations are interpreted by the audience, and how the outcome functions in the individual knowledge-building about this particular era. Here the notion of what is often called a collective, or cultural, memory, is important; both as a vehicle for a dominant discourse on memory and as a counterpart to individual memory, which might be more or less in agreement or opposition with the dominant. A central theme is the examination of how elements of the mythical enters a historical narrative, how they affect this, and how this is being interpreted by the audience. The media texts examined are mostly films (fiction and docudramas as well as documentaries) and computer games, although there are also some examples from role-playing games and alternative popular music. The audience part of the study consists of 11 in-depth interviews and a number of additional informants. I propose that the media material indicates a convergence between myth in the traditional, religiously connected sense, and in the secularized sense of Roland Barthes. The former is made visible by the persistent use of elements of a clearly metaphysical nature, while the latter is made clear through the almost omnipresent authoritarian character of the media presentations. The material in its entirety clearly shows the importance of transmediality, transmedia storytelling and knowledge communities (cf Henry Jenkins) within the context. The audience examined expresses a highly critical attitude towards what is considered to be a “mainstream” media representation of World War II and Nazi Germany that – according to them – transforms the gruesome historical reality into cheap thrills and entertainment. Thus, it becomes fundamentally problematic to look upon the media representations of the theme as an expression of collective memory.

<p>Faktagranskning: Mats Bergquist, Docent i Statsvetenskap</p>

The German Armed Forces were originally thought to be completely innocent of all war crimes associated with unethical Nazi racial policies. This has been proven not to be the case. History has adjusted itself to show that Wehrmacht forces were guilty of virtually every war crime except for the sexual violation foreign women. Due to the long-standing assumption that Nazi racial ideology prevented the intermingling of the “Aryan” race with the “unworthy” Eastern European races, this myth was rarely questioned. Given the lack of hard evidence proving that civilian women were raped by invading Wehrmacht troops, a firm conclusion is out of the question. However, with a concrete understanding of the Nazi attitude towards sexual relations, the components in the East that led to a breakdown in Wehrmacht discipline, and the resulting reaction of the Soviet Union in light of this brutality, one can surmise the type of violence women were forced to endure. Through the research conducted in this thesis, it is likely that the mass rape of Eastern European women did indeed occur. The silence that surrounds this issue is highly indicative of the cultural elements that prevent an open discussion of this topic. This thesis is meant to spark a discussion of the implications and reverberations of mass rape in a wartime setting.

Lietuvoje 2008-aisiais metais įsigaliojo Lietuvos Respublikos susirinkimų įstatymo 8 straipsnio 5 punktas bei Lietuvos Respublikos administracinių teisės pažeidimų kodekso 18818 straipsnis. Šios įstatyminės normos draudžia naudoti nacistinius ir komunistinius simbolius susirinkimuose, masiniuose renginiuose bei kitaip demonstruoti. Tokiu būdu siekiama apsaugoti demokratinės visuomenės narius nuo nacistinių ir komunistinių okupacinių režimų propagandos, užkirsti kelią kurtis antidemokratines idėjas propaguojančioms organizacijoms. Tačiau kai kurie draudžiami simboliai gali būti suprantami ne vien tik kaip nacistiniai ar komunistiniai, todėl ne visais atvejais jų demonstravimas ar naudojimas pažeis svarbias kitų asmenų teises ir laisves. Šio darbo tikslas yra įvertinti, ar šie draudimai neprieštarauja Lietuvos Respublikos Konstitucijos 25 straipsnyje įtvirtintai saviraiškos laisvei. Saviraiškos laisvė – viena iš pagrindinių žmogaus teisių, įtvirtinta daugumos demokratinių valstybių konstitucijose bei įvairiose konvencijose, tačiau ji nėra absoliuti. Siekiant įvertinti, ar draudimas demonstruoti nacistinius bei komunistinius simbolius neprieštarauja saviraiškos laisvei, analizuojami principai, kuriais remiantis galima riboti saviraiškos laisvę, taip pat vertybės, kurias siekiama apsaugoti nustatant saviraiškos laisvės apribojimus. Analizuojant principus bei saugomas vertybes, daugiausia remiamasi Lietuvos Respublikos Konstitucijos bei Europos žmogaus teisių ir pagrindinių... [toliau žr. visą tekstą] / In 2008 Lithuanian Parliament enacted new laws prohibiting use of Nazi and Communist symbols during meetings and other mass events or other kinds of demonstration (Article 8(5) of Law on Meetings of Republic of Lithuania and Article 18818 of Administrative Violations Code of Republic of Lithuania). The purpose of this prohibition is to protect members of democratic society from propaganda of Nazi and Communist occupation regimes and to prevent the establishment of organizations that propagates antidemocratic ideas. However, some of the prohibited symbols may be understood not only as of Nazis or Communists, therefore they would not breach fundamental rights and freedoms of other members of the society. Freedom of expression is one of the fundamental human rights. It is mentioned in most constitutions of most democratic states and international conventions. However, freedom of expression is not absolute. In order to be restricted it has to meet some requirements. The requirements are being analyzed in this master project according to provisions of the Constitution of Lithuanian Republic and the European Convention on Human Rights and case-law regarding freedom of expression of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Lithuania and the European Court of Human Rights. Laws prohibiting demonstration of Nazi and Communist symbols are being compared to some other European states’ laws of the same function. The purpose of this master project is to evaluate whether the... [to full text]

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

Of all fields of historical enquiry, Germany’s Third Reich is perhaps the richest in sources and historiography. Therefore, it is logical to assume that this is where we see history done at its best. The chief interest of this dissertation is how historians select their sources and how they use the evidence they find in their sources. I have taken relations between Jewish Germans and non-Jewish Germans as a case study because of the enormous quantity of primary source material and because so many historians have commented on the issue. I do not attempt to make any claims about what happened between Jewish Germans and their non-Jewish compatriots nor do I make a moral assessment of behaviours and attitudes among the ‘ordinary’ people of Germany under the Third Reich. Rather, this is a technical exercise to examine how well the historians have done history in this particular area. My systematic review of the historians’ methodologies reveals that many either distort the evidence they cite or put forward arguments that go well beyond what the evidence warrants, perhaps because of pre-conceived theories which shape their approaches to the evidence. Moreover, they fail to make the best possible use of some types of source such as personal narratives. In order to ascertain whether these sources can be better used, I systematically analyse a selection of personal narratives which are sometimes quoted by historians, in particular the 1933-1945 diaries of Victor Klemperer. My question is: Do these testimonies really say what the historians claim they say about relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans? And if not, how can we analyse them to determine what they actually do say? The two kinds of problems which emerge are how to select a balanced range of sources and how to use them properly. My argument is that there are six methodological principles that should underpin good historical practice. Because historians are not scrupulous to apply these common-sense rules, their arguments are methodologically flawed and they do not use some sources to the full extent of their value. This raises the question of whether these problems are confined to this particular field or whether they are endemic to the history profession as a whole.

For historians of twentieth-century British affairs, the decade of the 1930s is very significant. It was marked not only by a devastating economic crisis at the outset, but also by the rise of fascism in Europe and the onset of the Second World War at its close. These issues were problematic in themselves, but Britain’s response to them was complicated still further by the deep divisions between the Left and the Right over socialism and over the Soviet Union. The presence of the USSR in the East and its influence in Britain loomed over the internal debates that took place, affecting British responses to difficult situations in drastic and far-reaching ways. People of both anti-Soviet and pro-Soviet persuasions were forced to account for events that did not tally with their most strongly held beliefs, hopes or fears. This dissertation explores the ways in which British people of a variety of political leanings publicly processed and coped with the role of the Soviet Union in these debates. Using a range of sources including contemporary newspapers, books and pamphlets, I will trace the evolution of attitudes to the Soviet Union from 1929, the first year of the economic crisis, up until 1943, the high point of the Anglo-Soviet wartime alliance. My analysis will show how people with fundamentally different belief systems mirrored each other in their responses to intellectual challenges, and how interactions between different groups sustained or exaggerated each group’s response to the Soviet Union. I will also critique the analyses of some historians who have limited the parameters of their studies to take in only single groups or single events, and in so doing have become unfairly critical of individuals who struggled to process a large number of difficult and confusing events.

During the time of Nazism, arts and music were severely curtailed by the Nazi machinery. Two of the Reich’s foremost orchestras, the Berlin and the Vienna Philharmonics, were both part of the cultural Gleichschaltung that occurred within the German Reich. Dealing differently with their new patrons, the orchestras developed a mixture of political cooperation, opportunism and opposition. While at times the orchestras attempted to bypass Nazi ideology and policies, such as in the case of the forced layoff of their Jewish members, the high party membership in Vienna in particular underlines how ambivalent reactions and attitudes towards the Hitler regime could be. While both orchestras underwent significant internal structural changes, the history of both philharmonic orchestras resembles one of privileged status and preferential treatment during the Third Reich.

This thesis examines the historical problem of determining the relationship between a government's perception of public opinion and the decisions it takes. We introduce evidence for the social habits of the Cabinet in order to suggest new formulations of 'élite' and 'mass' public opinion. We argue that parliamentary opinion was generally more important in decision-making for the Cabinet, except at moments of extreme crisis when a conception of 'mass' opinion became equally significant. These characterization of mass opinion were drawn from a set of stereotypes about public opinion which academic and political theorization had produced. It is argued that this theorization was stimulated by ongoing debates about mass communication, the importance of the ordinary man in democracy and the outbreak of the first world war during the inter-war period. The thesis begins with an introduction to the methodological problems involved, followed by one chapter on theorization about public opinion in the inter-war period. Three diplomatic crises are considered in the case study chapters: the withdrawal of Germany from the Disarmament Conference in 1933, the German reoccuption of the Rhineland in 1936 and the threat of invasion of the Sudetenland in 1938. Two further chapters examine the role of public opinion in protests to Germany about the treatment of the Jews in 1933 and in 1938. It is argued that perceptions of public opinion played a much more important role in decision-making than has hiterto been thought. The most significant argument posits that perceptions of public opinion were equally as important as military considerations in the decision to refuse the Godesberg terms in 1938. More generally, the way in which politicians used public opinion rhetorically is described and the limits of the usefulness of the term for historians are suggested.