Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Troublesome heroes: the post-war treatment of resistance veterans
- Part II Repatriating displaced populations from Germany
- Part III The legacy of forced economic migration
- Part IV Martyrs and other victims of Nazi persecution
- 11 Plural persecutions
- 12 National martyrdom
- 13 Patriotic memories and the genocide
- 14 Remembering the war and legitimising the post-war international order
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
12 - National martyrdom
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I Troublesome heroes: the post-war treatment of resistance veterans
- Part II Repatriating displaced populations from Germany
- Part III The legacy of forced economic migration
- Part IV Martyrs and other victims of Nazi persecution
- 11 Plural persecutions
- 12 National martyrdom
- 13 Patriotic memories and the genocide
- 14 Remembering the war and legitimising the post-war international order
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Victors of military conflicts often retroactively legitimise their war effort by denouncing the particular atrocities committed by the defeated enemy. After the First World War charges of the use of poison gas, the destruction of the library of Leuven in Belgium or the brutal murder of civilians in Dinant singled out the German enemy as much more than an ordinary military enemy. Extraordinary deaths and destruction weighed heavier in post-war representations of the enemy than the millions of casualties and victims of conventional warfare, particularly in Belgium and in neutral countries. Since after the Second World War the liberated countries of Western Europe had few of the latter to mourn, it could be expected that the weight given to extraordinary, civilian victims would be even greater. Yet reactions to the experience of persecution of tens of thousands of their citizens expressed much more than the predictable level of moral indignation and victor's justice. France, Belgium and the Netherlands had a tradition of individual liberties, rule of law and habeas corpus that was even older than the progressive adoption of political democracy. Despite national collaboration and complicity, the persecutions were a brutal import by the Nazi occupier that wounded the moral sensibilities of the indigenous populations much more than, for example, the progressive establishment of persecution and terror in Nazi Germany itself since 1933, in a country with, moreover, an illiberal tradition even before that date compared to its western neighbours.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Legacy of Nazi OccupationPatriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965, pp. 210 - 250Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1999