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2 - Memories of Exile: An Alsatian Woman in German Occupied Alsace, 1939–1945
- Edited by Mark J. Crowley, Sandra Trudgen Dawson
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- Book:
- Women's Experiences of the Second World War
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 03 June 2021
- Print publication:
- 16 April 2021, pp 29-42
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Summary
Few historical events have reverberated as fully in modern European culture as the Second World War. With the passing of the generation that experienced the conflict, direct memory is fading. Nevertheless, the communal remembrance of the War continues to reverberate in twenty-first century European culture. The countless anniversaries, tributes, and other acts of commemoration taking place are attempts to establish a link between a fast-changing contemporary world and a common past. Many European nations have used the war years to re-define themselves in the post-war period. In France, for example, the collective memory of the war revolved for a long time around resistance. This is a collective memory that has been challenged and undermined by questions about collaboration which began to air after 1968. Since the 2000s, French scholars of the war have focused on the German control and occupation of Eastern France including Alsace. This is a unique area because of both the geographical proximity to and the shared history with Germany. While Strasbourg remained a free city, the population spoke German.
In 1871, during the Franco-Prussian War, the German army occupied Alsace. Alsatian, French, and German cultures clashed under the occupation. Approximately three quarters of all Alsatians were Catholic and pro-French, and the Protestant minorities were pro-German. The majority of Alsatians, including some middle-class Protestants, did not wish to be ruled by Germans. Many Alsatian Catholics believed that, on the condition that the French repented for their sins, the Virgin Mary would actively participate in French affairs. Sins in the 1870s, according to these French/Catholics, included revolution, republicanism, absence of fidelity to the Church, and a failure to support the Pope. They believed the Prussian victory over France was the penalty for these sins. According to T. A. Keselman, author of Miracles and Prophesies in Nineteenth-Century France, in October 1872, pilgrims from Metz and Strasbourg carrying Alsatian banners led a procession to Lourdes where they asked the Virgin to return Alsace-Lorraine to France. The following year another group of pilgrims went to Paray-le Monial to the Church of Sacré-Coeur carrying a banner with the caption, ‘Sacred Heart of Jesus, redeem France. Give us back our homeland!’ At that time, most Alsatians were antagonistic to the Germans.
4 - Nation-Building and Nationalism in Bengali Children's Literature during the 1940s and 1950s
- from Part One - Consumption on the Home Front
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- By Nupur Chaudhuri, teaches British and European History at Texas Southern University.
- Edited by Mark J. Crowley, Sandra Trudgen Dawson, University of Maryland, College Park
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- Book:
- Home Fronts - Britain and the Empire at War, 1939–45
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 76-90
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Summary
NATIONALISM and nation-building in various countries have been the focus of many books and articles in recent decades. These works show that, in modern times, the strong force of nationalism catalysed the emergence of new nations within the global landscape, providing the framework for the future growth of the nations that gained independence from Britain after the Second World War, and subsequently the fertile ground for the development of nationalism. However, nationalism is a complex concept. It can be expressed in different ways and styles, and can occur at different times before finally becoming grounded. The complexities of nationalism were intensified by the Second World War. It destabilized colonialism and left imperial states such as Britain fractured and weakened. However, in some circles, nationalism has been defined as resisting domination or the dominant beliefs of the established elites. Quite often, the growth of nationalism in the context of imperialism complicates the concept of nationalism by introducing categories of gender and race. This was the case in the Indian subcontinent, where resistance to domination and dominant beliefs was quite common. The histories of resistance impacted nation-building in India after independence from the British after the Second World War.
The nation-building that follows the success of nationalism is a vitally important phase in the growth of a nation. A sense of nationalism remains active in this phase and throughout the nation's life. The active nationalism in the nationbuilding process, at the nascent stage of the nation, is at least in part defined by the socio-cultural experiences of the people involved in its ‘grand plan’. How the nation-building process is shaped may well be traced by considering numerous contemporary published literary documents, each of which may project different lights on the constitutive organs of the body of nationalism that continue as a viable force in the development of the nation. A fruitful insight into the force of nationalism at play that shaped the very early phase of a nation's growth may be gained by examining specific writings that appeared in some regions of India immediately following independence from the British on 15 August 1947.