Abstract

This article uses social-movement analysis to understand the rituals, memory-work and spatialties of Waffen-SS veterans and their sympathizers. Most social-movement analysis focuses on left-wing protesters; our concern is with the marginalized counter-narratives, rituals and -spaces produced by the self-proclaimed misunderstood “heroes” of World War Two. This counter-hegemonic self-definition is essential to these former world-war soldiers who, despite an internal mythology of idealistic self-sacrifice, are vilified in West-European master narra-tives. We discuss how, during the 1990s, veterans and their sympathizers sought to replace rituals of memory-work in the newly-opened East. We look at how the Waffen-SS’s ritual memory-work is “replaced” in alternative settings, including – perhaps surprisingly – Russia itself. Here, Waffen-SS veterans use new, official, semi-sacred places to anchor both an alternative identity and an alternative definition of the central meanings of modern European history.

Highlights

  • This article uses insights furnished by social-movement analysis to understand how a group of ostracized World War Two veterans uses ritual places to challenge hegemonic understandings of European identity

  • Our subject is the memory work done by European Waffen-SS (W-SS) veterans, with particular focus on ritual and place

  • No West European country tolerates public W-SS demonstrations, nor are W-SS veterans invited to participate in official World War Two memorial ceremonies

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Summary

Introduction

This article uses insights furnished by social-movement analysis to understand how a group of ostracized World War Two veterans uses ritual places to challenge hegemonic understandings of European identity. No West European country tolerates public W-SS demonstrations, nor are W-SS veterans invited to participate in official World War Two memorial ceremonies.

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