War commemoration in Western Europe: changing meanings, divisive loyalties, unheard voices

Abstract

One of the central tasks of the nation-state in war commemoration is to maintain or secure the unity of the ‘imagined community’, and its associated narratives and rituals, in the face of sometimes acute social divisions. The dominant focus of the most solemn public commemoration soon centred on the bereaved and their concerns. The nature and ideological complexities of the Second World War posed far more profound difficulties in the way of any composure of national memory for most Western European countries. Many of those Irish veterans whom Jane Leonard interviewed had been ambivalent, retaining loyalties to both Britain and Ireland; they were, though, especially angered by the use of demobilized British troops to fight the Irish Republican Army during the independence struggle. The work of Porteiii on Italian war memory, like that of Alistair Thomson on Australia, suggests some of the ways in which hidden transcripts might be uncovered.