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This diploma thesis deals with Czechoslovak-Soviet realtions and influence of czechoslovak ambassador in USSR Zdeněk Fierlinger had on their formation. Its aim is to properly describe the course of events between 1939 and 1945, which most affected the specific nature of diplomatic relations between Czechoslovakia and Soviet Union during the World War II and to evaulate how much Zdeněk Fierlinger intervened in these events. The secondary aim of the thesis is to characterize the diplomatic activity of Zdeněk Fierlinger, to verify or refute the common idea that he was a traitor of the state and finally to find out whether his political and diplomatic steps were motivated by the vision of personal gain or ideological causes.

L’objectif de cette thèse est de faire ressortir dans le cadre d’une comparaison historique les différences et les points communs dans l’évolution des attitudes et des comportements dans des sociétés française et belge sous l’occupation. Le focus thématique se concentre sur la perception de l’occupant, des alliés, de l’évolution de la guerre, des dirigeants politiques et du destin de la population juive, tout en distinguant entre des tendances d’opinion dans la bourgeoisie, dans les classes moyennes, chez les ouvriers et dans la population rurale. Des documents des services allemands, notamment ceux des administrations militaires, des représentations diplomatiques et des « Instituts allemands » sont la base des sources pour les pays étudiés. Nous utilisons également les analyses d’opinion des services britanniques chargés de la propagande et du renseignement. Pour la France ce sont les rapports des préfets et des forces de l’ordre de quelques départements représentatifs qui forment la base du travail, complété par des documents de la France Libre et des documents personnels comme des journaux intimes. Pour la Belgique ce sont surtout les rapports de la partie de l’administration belge restée sur place pendant l’occupation, des rapports du gouvernement belge en exil à Londres et les fonds des réseaux de renseignent travaillant pour lui. / The thesis deals with a comparison of the evolution of people’s opinion in France and Belgium during the Second World War. The focus of this study lies on the perceptions of the German occupier, the Allies, and the development on the different theatres of war, by the French and Belgian populations. Furthermore, the reactions of these two peoples towards their own political leaders and the fate of the Jewish population are studied. Special attention is given to opinion variations in different social groups such as the bourgeoisie, the middle class, the working class or the rural population. The study is based on an extensive analysis of documents of the various German authorities in occupied France and Belgium, especially the military administration, the German embassies in Paris and Brussels as well as the “German institutes”. We also make use of documents from British services, especially those in charge of propaganda and intelligence gathering. For France, the detailed reports of French prefects, police and postal control services are used in a representative sample of départments, reflecting regional differences in mentality, population composition and occupation. These documents are complemented by observations from the Free French Forces and personal testimonies such as diaries. In Belgium, reports of the Belgian authorities in the occupied territory were used as well as of those in exile in London and documents from some of the resistance networks.

The anti-cult movement, or ACM, in the United States is a counter-movement to the wide variety of new religions which developed in the years following the Second World War. The anti-cult movement is opposed to new religions because it perceives in them a threat to the American family, traditional values and morals, and way of life which it is attempting to protect. This perception reflects a nativistic response to new religions. Nativism is understood to be a conscious attempt on the part of a society's members to protect that society's culture from the threat posed by contact with other cultures. The anti-cult movement is attempting to protect those elements of American culture which it perceives as being threatened by new religions. The sections of American society which feel most threatened, and which make up the body of the anti-cult movement, are family groups and Evangelical Christian and Jewish religious groups. The nature of the anti-cult movement, its methods, motivations, and possible implications of its existence, are all illuminated by the theory of nativism as it applies to the ACM. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This study will explore how East German films released from the 1940s to the 1980s played a central role in both reinforcing and chipping away at the national foundational narrative of the German Democratic Republic. This narrative looked back at the memory of the Third Reich and classified communists as heroes, Nazis as villains, and the majority of Germans as dangerously apolitical while also emphasizing the contemporary Cold War division between the east and the west. This thesis argues that DEFA films utilized the memory of the Third Reich to support, question, and expand this dynamic foundational narrative which remained malleable and contested throughout the state’s existence.

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This thesis examines the presence of American military personnel in Australia during the Second World War. Around one million US soldiers spent some time in the country. This American occupation resulted in several areas of tension between US military personnel and Australian civilians. Areas of conflict, that have hitherto received little attention from historians, are examined in this dissertation. Jurisdictional and policing disputes between the US military and Queensland officials, American criminal behaviour, and problems between Australian labourers and American authorities are all examined. Other "fault lines," such as race and gender relations, which have been looked at by other historians, are also examined; this thesis provides new insights into these areas. How senior authorities on both sides managed crises and coordinated efforts to manage relations between civilians and Gls are also studied. Sexual relations were directed towards certain associations (prostitution), whilst other associations (marriage) were discouraged. Authorities increased efforts to manage interracial sexual relations, as both countries had a history of discouraging and even outlawing miscegenation. Ultimately, this thesis argues that problems between American personnel and Australians during the occupation did not threaten to upset the war effort or the alliance between the United States and Australia, but there were everyday problems between allies and concurrent efforts to manage relations in the context of a global war. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

The classically idyllic, carefree world of childhood would appear to be diametrically opposed to the horrors of war and world-wide conflict. However, throughout film history, filmmakers have continually turned to the figure of the child as a prism through which to examine the devastation caused by war. This thesis will investigate the representation of childhood experience of the Second World War across six fiction films: Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan (1946) and Germany Year Zero (1947), René Clément’s Forbidden Games (1952), Andrei Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (1962), Jan Nemec’s Diamonds of the Night (1964) and Elem Klimov’s Come and See (1985). Spanning forty years, I will examine how these films, whilst sharing many thematic and formal concerns, are unquestionably diverse. They are products of specific socio-cultural milieux, but are also important works in the evolution of cinematic style in art cinema. The films can be aligned to various trends such as neorealism (Paisan, Germany Year Zero), Modernism (Ivan’s Childhood, Diamonds of the Night) and Neo-expressionism (Come and See). Structured in four parts – on witness, landscape, loss and play – I will suggest that just filmmakers utilise childhood experience – often fragmented and chaotic in terms of temporality - to reflect the chaos of war. The first part of my study focuses on the child as witness, the child as Deleuzian seer. I draw on the writings of Gilles Deleuze as well as post-Deleuzian interventions of Tyrus Miller and Jaimey Fisher to argue that whilst Deleuze’s characterization of the child figure as passive is somewhat problematic when applied to the neorealist works, it can, however, be more rigorously applied to Come and See, a film in which, I suggest, the child embodies a much purer form of the Deleuzian seer. In the second part of my study, drawing on the work of Martin Lefebvre and Sandro Bernardi amongst others, I discuss the representation of landscape and its relation to the figure of the child. The third part will examine the representation of loss as well as the symbolic quality of water and its links to the maternal with reference to psychoanalytic theory and the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. The fourth and final part also draws on psychoanalysis in examining the role of play in the six films with particular reference to the work of D.W Winnicott and Lenore Terr. My study seeks to contribute to the comparatively under-explored subject of the child in film through close analysis of film aesthetics including mise-en-scène, editing, and film sound.