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.

Since its rise to prominence in the 1920s, Canadian radio drama has become a topic of growing interest among scholars in the fields of media studies, communications, and literature. During the Second World War, radio drama became an important medium of entertainment for home front civilians, and was utilized as propaganda by the CBC to garner support for the Canadian war effort. At this time, radio drama also became an important artistic outlet for wartime artists to express their political and social values and beliefs during the war. While scholars have examined the art of radio drama in light of its artistic, dramatic and literary value, few have yet to examine the music composed for these dramas. This thesis draws on these scholars as well as archival materials from the John Weinzweig fonds and the CBC Music Library fonds located at Library and Archives Canada, and the CBC radio drama script collection located at the Concordia Centre of Broadcasting and Journalism Studies to examine the incidental music written by John Weinzweig for CBC wartime radio dramas. By considering how composing for this artistic medium impacted his musical language at this time, this thesis examines his scoring for the series New Homes for Old. Specifically, I problematize the modification and simplification of the serial technique in his incidental works, and consider the challenges that informed Weinzweig’s approach to radio drama composition. I propose that Weinzweig’s simplification of his serial technique may be understood in relationship to the social and political climate of the 1930s and 1940s, and within the context of leftist socialist movements, notably the Popular Front. I argue that Weinzweig’s engagement with radical socialism during this period may have prompted him to adopt a simpler and more accessible musical language that reflected and embodied the cultural, political, and aesthetic ideals of the Popular Front. Le théâtre radiophonique canadien est devenu un sujet très prisé parmi les chercheurs dans les domaines des médias, des communications, et de la littérature. Pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, le théâtre radiophonique est devenu une forme de divertissement populaire pour les Canadiens et était souvent utilisé comme un outil de propagande par la CBC. À cette même époque, le théâtre radiophonique est aussi devenu une forme d’expression pour les artistes du temps de guerre pour exprimer leurs valeurs sociales et politiques. Bien que plusieurs chercheurs aient examiné l’art du théâtre radiophonique sous l’angle de sa valeur artistique, dramatique, et littéraire, peu ont examiné la musique qui a été composée pour ces drames. En se servant des matériaux d’archives trouvés dans les fonds “John Weinzweig” et les fonds “CBC music library” situés à la Bibliothèque et Archives Canada (BAC), ainsi que la collection “CBC Radio Dramas” située au Centre for Broadcasting and Journalism Studies (CCJBS) à l’Université Concordia, cette thèse examine la musique de scène écrite par John Weinzweig pour les émissions de théâtre radiophoniques présentées par la CBC pendant la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. En considérant comment le genre radiophonique a influencé le langage musical de Weinzweig, cette thèse examine ses oeuvres pour la série New Homes for Old. Plus précisément, cette thèse examine la modification et simplification de la technique sérielle utilisé par Weinzweig dans ses oeuvres radiophoniques, et considère les défis qui ont influencé son approche compositionnelle. Je suggère que la simplification de la technique sérielle utilisée par Weinzweig peut être étudiée en fonction des conditions politiques des années 1930 et 1940, et aussi en fonction des mouvements politiques de gauche et plus particulièrement du Front populaire. Je soutiens que l’engagement de Weinzweig avec les valeurs socialistes lui a permis d’adopter un langage accessible qui reflète les idéaux culturels, politiques, et esthétiques du Front populaire.

This research examines British intellectual debates on warfare throughout the mid-20th century. The thesis identifies different discourses that emerged as a result of the changes in international relations and military technology at this time. It posits that intellectual contribution on the whole had a more significant impact than many historians have previously accredited. The thesis examines the work of specific intellectuals that made significant and detailed input into these debates and identifies their role in framing these discourses, as individuals and as part of a larger intellectual community. It also highlights the involvement of these intellectuals within the state apparatus and links their intellectual contribution to their role in government. The subject of war and its perception by intellectuals is conspicuously absent in the historiography on British intellectuals. Some of the most important studies of British intellectuals, including Stefan Collini’s Absent Minds, have engaged only slightly or not at all with the intellectual discourse surrounding international relations and warfare. This thesis attempts to fill this gap for the middle of the 20th century and demonstrates that warfare became a prolific and highly visible part of the contribution of intellectuals to British life. Recent literature has attempted to discuss the British state as a warfare state, rejecting arguments on British declinism. The thesis engages with this debate, and while it focuses on Britain’s approach to warfare, it also challenges the interpretation of Britain as either a welfare or a warfare state. The study of intellectuals does not feature heavily within this historiography on British warfare. While historians, such as David Edgerton, engage with specific intellectuals and their writings, a discussion of intellectual discourse does not appear within these analyses. This thesis argues that intellectuals as a group developed ideas and arguments on warfare and the British state in conjunction with one another, creating an intellectual discourse which influenced political decision making and public opinion. The thesis also examines a more modern understanding of the intellectual: the expert. Using both scientific and military thinkers, the thesis explores how experts became intellectuals in response to the growing threat of warfare and the rise of a military-industrial complex. Using intellectuals that conform to the classic definition alongside expert intellectuals, the thesis highlights the importance of analysing both groups as part of the larger whole, and discusses the similarities and differences between the works generated by these intellectuals. The thesis spans the years from 1932 to 1963 and discusses the continuities between intellectual debates across this period. The post-war years and the nuclear conflict feature heavily within this analysis, but the thesis highlights the importance of the 1930s in influencing later intellectual perceptions of the nuclear age and the fight against communism. The majority of this research resulted from sources published within the public domain including monographs, newspaper and periodical articles, public speeches and radio broadcasts. The research also uses the personal archives of the individual intellectuals and political documents from the time, including papers from the Ministry of Defence located in the National Archives, Defence White Papers and the Hansard House of Commons official reports.

This dissertation explores Irish and English fiction before, during, and shortly after the Second World War, a period of complex change in the relations between England and Ireland as British imperial control in Ireland ended. Ireland's neutrality in response to England's declaration of war intensified the nations' apparent differences, yet as my study brings to light, the War also fostered new affinities between England and Ireland, despite each country's inclination to define itself against the other by contrast. Each country's tendency toward xenophobic self-definition gave rise to policies and perspectives that resemble thinking and life in a fascist state. The fiction that I discuss responds to those tendencies by revealing possibilities for collectives that are more dynamically constituted around forms of vision and engagement involving shared responsibility and individual freedom. Chapter 1 reads Virginia Woolf's novel Between the Acts (1941) as a working through of contrasting responses to dictators from a 1938 diary entry and her manifesto Three Guineas, published the same year. I argue that character interactions and self-reflection in response to a play performed in the novel allow characters to recognize fascist tendencies in their own thinking and discover collective visions contrary to the total allegiance prized in Nazi spectacle and English propaganda. Against the mostly ahistorical critical treatments of Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman (written 1939-1940, published 1966), Chapter 2 traces affinities between the narrator's deluded belief in his own superiority in a milieu of suppressed violence and the psychological environment Irish neutrality created. Focusing on Elizabeth Bowen's novel The Heat of the Day (1948) and wartime short fiction, Chapter 3 argues that her characters' behavior challenges stereotypes about English and Irish residents promoted by the other country. Rather than offering the escape from the War that some English visitors desire, Ireland provides a vantage point for seeing their London lives in new ways. Chapter 4 takes Nazi narratives of German history as reference points for interpreting Samuel Beckett's Watt (written 1942-1945, published 1953) and Molloy (1955), in particular the narrators' attempts to hide their control over the narratives they shape and the collectives that surround them.

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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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