This thesis will examine the British way of war as experienced by two British Infantry Divisions - the 43rd ‘Wessex’ and 53rd ‘Welsh’ - during the Overlord campaign in North West Europe in 1944 and 1945. The main locus of research centres on the fighting components of those divisions; the infantry battalions and their supporting regiments. In order to understand the way the British fought this part of the war, the thesis will consider the British Army’s history since 1918: its level of expertise at the end of the First World War; the impact of inter-war changes, and the experience of the early part of the Second World War, as these factors were fundamental in shaping how the British Army operated during the period covered in this study. These themes will be considered in the first chapter. The following seven chapters will study each of the two infantry divisions in turn, to maintain a chronological order. This is so that the experiences of each division can be examined in a logical way, from their initial experiences of combat in late June 1944 through to March 1945. Naturally, their major battles will be considered but so will their minor engagements and day-to-day experiences, as this will give a good, detailed, overview of each division’s campaign. This layout of chapters is also convenient for allowing comparisons between the two divisions as the campaign progressed. This thesis contains several strands of enquiry which will consider how Montgomery’s prosecution of the war actually translated to the smaller units of the division (the battalions, 4 companies, platoons and sections). The historiography for this campaign tends to suggest that the British Army fought the war in a cautious way, and that this approach was characterised by the use of overwhelming material superiority and rehearsed set piece attacks; tactics that were designed not only to destroy the enemy, but also to avoid the heavy casualties of the major battles of the First World War; a factor that was perceived to be vital to the maintenance of fragile infantry morale. Although the basic premise of a ‘cautious’ British way of war is generally accepted (along with its attendant emphasis on consolidation of objectives rather than exploitation of opportunities, and a reliance on adherence to lengthy orders), this study will conclude that the way the war was fought at sub-divisional levels was frequently at a pace that did not allow for such caution. Instead, it was characterised by command pressure to achieve results quickly, hasty planning and a reliance on massive artillery and mortar contributions to compensate for deficiencies in anti-tank and armoured support. This thesis will further conclude that a conscious policy of casualty conservation appears not to have been a priority at divisional command level, but was instead a consideration for company, platoon and section commanders and the men that they led.

The Swedish refugee policy during the 1930’s and during the beginning of the Second World War can be described as restrictive. In the year 1939 the number of refugees in Sweden was about 4000. By the year 1945 the number was approximately 200 000. The responsibility for the reception of the refugees was mainly the governments. Since the late 1920’s, Swedish politics where largely formed by the Social Democratic party’s idea of the welfare state. Central to this idea and embodied in society was labour as almost a moral obligation. This thesis examines the relationship between the refugees, government bodies and the labour market policies in Sweden during the years for the Second World War. The purpose is to explore the government’s labour markets bodies’ relationship to refugees and labour by studying the government’s state officials. How was this relationship organized? Much of the previous research in the related area has focused on the government’s bodies rather than their state officials. Therefor this thesis adds a new perspective to this research area. The main questions of interest are how the labour market government bodies and their state officials where organized, and the challenges they were put before in the meeting with the refugees.A hypothesis for the thesis is that refugee reception and labour market politics are linked. A natural step in the reception of refugees is for government bodies to mediate them to the labour market. Refugees tend over time to transfer to labourers. A sociological theoretical approach in the thesis is that the individual is subordinated to the governing structure. In this regard, the state officials are to be seen as acting agents through the governing structure. Hence, two following questions regarding their autonomy in this structure are interesting: where the state officials to be regarded as agents acting out the policies directed to them? Where they also able to form policies? The primary source material consists of memorandums, reports and correspondence written by state officials. The research methodology is qualitative.The thesis results show that much of the government bodies’ work was made up by compromise and the ability to adapt to the current circumstances, dictated by the war. The state officials also seem to have been able to, in smaller cases, form policies. But mainly their actions should be regarded as part of a collective larger formative element (“formativt moment”) - the war itself dictated their options and formed Swedish labour market policies. The thesis also points to new areas of research. Could the same research model be applied on other, for example neutral, countries during the same period? Keywords: The Second World War, refugee reception, refugees, labour market policies, state officials

Le champ littéraire belge francophone du second après-guerre n'a jamais fait l'objet d'une étude approfondie et exhaustive. Après avoir rappelé les conditions littéraires et culturelles de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, nous étudions l'épuration du champ littéraire, à savoir la réorganisation de celui-ci, par des instances qui lui sont extérieures. Nous analysons ensuite les rapports entre les écrivains et les institutions publiques et littéraires, avant de nous atteler à la description du champ littéraire de l'après-guerre. Nous tentons d'y décrire la position et les prises de positions des différents agents en présence. Se déploie alors en filigrane l'image d'une institution littéraire faible, incapable de faire émerger un nombre conséquent des auteurs de l'époque.

Many historians have presented the narrative of Canada’s Second World War experience as a “good” war. Individuals and communities came together in patriotism and a common purpose to furnish the national war effort with military manpower, labour, financial contributions, and voluntary efforts. As the dark years of the Great Depression gave way to unprecedented levels of industrial and economic growth, falling unemployment rates, increased urbanization, and a wealth of social programs, Canada’s future was bright. However, this optimistic picture is not representative of Canada as a whole. Some regions fared better than others, and industrial Cape Breton was one of those that benefited the least from the opportunities presented by the war. Glace Bay, Cape Breton’s largest mining town and long-time hotbed of industrial strife and labour radicalism, serves as an ideal case study of the region’s largely unprofitable and unchanging wartime experience. Long plagued by poverty, poor living conditions, and underdeveloped industry, and desperately seeking to break free of its destitution, Glace Bay tried and failed to take advantage of wartime opportunities for industrial diversification and local improvement.

The Kindertransport brought close to 10,000 unaccompanied minors to Britain on a trans-migrant basis between 1938 and 1939. The outbreak of war turned this short-term initiative into a longer-term episode. This PhD is a study of Scotland’s Kindertransport story and an evaluation of the Kindertransportees’ experiences of reception, care and nurture between 1938 and 1945. It also considers the wider implications of the Kindertransport upon the Kindertransportees’ broader life stories after 1945, namely further migration and resettlement. This thesis will unite a number of disparate areas of research, including British philanthropy and welfare, Anglo/Scottish Jewry, Zionism and migrant/refugee studies. It will be shown that Scotland’s reception of the Kindertransportees was highly varied and marked by many different agendas. These were fundamentally responsive to British interests. Growing up in Scotland exposed the Kindertransportees to a variety of different types of care. These were strongly tied to their Scottish context and mirror experiences of the Scottish child in care. Kindertransportees’ nurture invited important changes in their connection to Judaism. Nonetheless, an epitaph to a lost Jewish generation is inappropriate. Zionism emerges as an important Jewish connection. Nevertheless, Kindertransportees did not en-masse adopt Zionist goals or make Aliyah. Yet, at the same time, they did not usually remain in Scotland. Resettlement patterns show that there was a mass exodus of Kindertransportees across the Scottish borders. However, these Kindertransportees still exhibit a connection to Scotland as well as to Scottish communities in the diaspora. They express a profound fondness to all things imagined to be Scottish.

The use of classical music as a tool of propaganda in Britain during the War can be seen to have been an effective deployment both of the German masters and of a new spirit of England in the furtherance of British values and its point of view. Several distinctions were made between various forms of propaganda and institutions of government played complementary roles during the War. Propaganda took on various guises, including the need to boost morale on the Home Front in live performances. At the outset of the War, orchestras were under threat, with the experience of the London Philharmonic exemplifying the difficulties involved in maintaining a professional standard of performance. The activities of bodies such as the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts played a role in encouraging music, as did the British Council’s Music Advisory Committee, which co-operated with the BBC and the government, activities including the commissioning of new music. The BBC’s policies towards music broadcasting were arrived at in reaction to public demand rather than from an ideological basis and were developed through the increasing monitoring of German broadcasts and a growing understanding of what was required for both home and overseas transmission. Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony became an important part of the Victory campaign and there was even an attempt at reviving the Handel Cult of the Nineteenth Century. German music was also used in feature film but pre-eminent composers such as William Walton and Ralph Vaughan Williams contributed to the War effort by writing film music too. The outstanding example is Vaughan Williams’ music for Powell and Pressburger’s Ministry of Information sponsored 49th Parallel, in which the relationship between music and politics is made in a reference to Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain. Vaughan Williams’ non-film output included the greatest British orchestral work to have come out of the War, his Fifth Symphony; a work that encapsulated all the values that the institutions of public life sought to promote.

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.

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