This thesis analyses international state behaviour by countries that share a historic legacy, and examines the delicate relations between West Germany, Austria and Israel in the wake of the Second World War as a case study. In it I propose a model - 'diplomacy of memory' - for this currently untheorized form of diplomatic conduct in order to explain how countries use official memories of their past on the international stage. Linking the interdisciplinary concept of collective memory with International Relations, my study characterizes the practice of 'diplomacy with memory' as a distinct policy undertaking that shapes and broadcasts historical narratives internationally for strategic foreign policy objectives. To empirically test the diplomacy of memory model, this thesis investigates the two cases of West German-Israeli and Austrian-Israeli relations in the aftermath of World War II. Within these selected pairs, four core bilateral debates are analysed: first, reparation payments to Israel in 1951/52; second, the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem in 1960/61; third, the Six-Day War in 1967 and fourth, the Yom Kippur War and oil crisis of 1973. While the first two cases explore how the memory of the Nazi past is leveraged as part of later diplomatic strategies, the latter two, which concern West Germany's and Austria's reaction to the Middle East conflict, reveal a more subtle connection between national memories and foreign policy choices around key international conflicts. This study engages in historical inquiry, based on archival documents and other primary sources in all three countries, to demonstrate how a country's collective memory is invented and deployed on the international stage. Combining the theoretical aim of specifying the link between national narratives and diplomacy with the qualitative analysis of two historic cases, this thesis rests at the intersection of International Relations and History.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:757909 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Bachleitner, Kathrin |
| Contributors | Penslar, Derek ; Betts, Paul |
| Publisher | University of Oxford |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8e9b772b-704c-4db0-af96-2fe7c65bf4ee |
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