This chapter explores the impact that war victories and war defeats have on the character of dominant nationalist discourses. Scholars of nationalism have extensively analysed how military defeats shaped the collective memories of different nations. However, there has not been much comparative analysis of the relationship between nationalisms that transpire in the context of war victories and those that emerge in the environment of war defeats. This chapter zooms in on both phenomena. It argues that the scale and direction of nationalist narratives is rarely determined by war winning or losing but by the ability of social organisations to institutionalise a particular interpretation of war. Instead of victories or defeats, it is the coercive-organisational, ideological, and micro-interactional grounding that shapes the character of nationalism. This key argument is illustrated with a paired analysis of Croatia’s memorialisation of the war victory in the 1991–1995 War of Independence and Ghana’s commemoration of the war defeat in the 1900 War of the Golden Stool.