War Commemorations Research Articles

War Commemorations of Russian Orthodox Church as the Mechanism to Construct Civil Religion in Modern Russia

The article considers war commemorations and memorial practices of the Russian Orthodox Church in the context of the formation of civil religion in contemporary Russia. It is emphasized that the relations between the army and the church are the most institutionalized, including those concerning the politics of memory. The factors which determine the centrality of images of war in historical representations, including religious actors, are considered. The main specificity of the representation of the wars of the past within the framework of religious discourse is highlighted.

A pacifist critique of the red poppy: reflections on British war commemorations’ increasingly hegemonic militarism

ABSTRACT The red or ‘Flanders’ poppy has become the ubiquitous emblem of British war commemorations, yet it is also becoming more hegemonic and militaristic: the poppy’s meaning has always been contested, but its dominant interpretation has become increasingly intolerant. Building on literature on the poppy and war commemorations, on pacifist approaches to security studies and on militarism, this article sketches a pacifist critique of the poppy’s increasingly hegemonic militarism. It starts by sketching out a history of the poppy’s contested meaning. A first-order critique then reflects on the hegemonic poppy narrative’s internal dissonances, on the selective memory which it reveals, and on the blinkered horizon of compassion and identification which it promotes. A second-order critique exposes the broader political and ethical consequences including for the military-industrial-entertainment complex, for liberal institutionalist projects, and for veterans. The final section reflects on the resulting unease that can be triggered by the poppy’s hegemonizing function in British civil religion and calls for poppy commemorations to better accommodate deeper reflections on the causes of war, militarism, and the potentially complicit role played by war commemorations.

The Effect of War Commemorations on Support for Diplomacy: A Five-Nation Study.

We remember the past in order not to repeat it, but does remembrance of war in fact shape support for military or diplomatic approaches to international conflict? In seven samples from five countries (collected online, total N = 2,493), we examined support for military and diplomatic approaches to conflict during war commemorations (e.g., Veterans Day). During war commemorations in the United States, support for diplomacy increased, whereas support for military approaches did not change. We found similar results in the United Kingdom and Australia on Remembrance Day, but not in Germany, or France, nor in Australia on Anzac Day. Furthermore, support for diplomacy was predicted by concern about loss of ingroup military lives during war, independently of concern about harm to outgroup civilians. These studies expand our understanding of how collective memories of war may be leveraged to promote diplomatic approaches to contemporary geopolitical conflict.

Representing indigenous soldiers at the Australian War Memorial: a political analysis of the art exhibition For Country, For Nation

ABSTRACT The article examines the latest exhibition commemorating Indigenous soldiers produced by the Australian War Memorial titled For Country, For Nation. It suggests that the exhibited material maps and visualises a neglected aspect of Indigenous history and as such expresses Indigenous resurgence and sovereignty. And yet, these artworks are not outside of colonial structures of power. While the article views the artworks of For Country, For Nation as an expression of Indigenous visual sovereignty, it also examines how they operate within setter colonial mentalities that disavow Indigenous sovereignty to legitimise settler authority. The Australian War Memorial operates in this order by refusing to commemorate the Frontier Wars. The article argues that despite the inclusion of Indigenous soldiers in official war commemorations is a sign of Indigenous recognition, as long as the Memorial refuses to include the Frontier Wars, this recognition legitimises colonial authority and contributes to ongoing settler colonialism.

A dance performance for D-Day celebrations: reflections on the aesthetic of war commemorations in France

A dance performance for D-Day celebrations: reflections on the aesthetic of war commemorations in France

Commemorating Britishness during the centennial of the First World War: a comparative analysis of political commemorative speeches in Northern Ireland and in Scotland

ABSTRACT Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP MP for Lagan Valley, told Westminster on June 26th, 2014: “The future of Ireland was shaped not on the streets of Dublin in 1916, but on the muddy, blood-soaked battlefields of the Western front.” Two years later, Brexit negotiations started. These two seemingly unrelated events have strong implications for the definition of Britishness in the 21st century since the “Brexit question” provided the backdrop for the centenary of World War One. In Northern Ireland, the memory of the conflict has been deeply sensitive, and the question of the nationalist “amnesia” regarding the Irish soldiers involved alongside the British forces has been only recently addressed. May 1st, 2013 marked the start of the Decade of Commemorations in Ireland. This opportune time was supposed to be marked by inclusiveness and openness. This article aims to explore how discourse on Britishness as an overarching identity can accommodate co-existing nationalist narratives while preserving a common historical heritage. Comparing political commemorative speeches in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom, with a special emphasis on Scotland (where the Great War commemorations coincided with the referendum on independence), should provide an insight into the modern definition of Britishness.

Spanish Civil War commemorations in Northern Ireland, The Republic of Ireland and Spain: political, spatial and generational relations between Irish anti-fascists and Spanish historical memory activists

ABSTRACT This article attempts to analyse the distinctive nature of the commemorations of the Spanish Civil War that have been taking place in the North and the Republic of Ireland, and the partnerships of the memorial groups with Spanish correspondents. Using press archives and interviews, I argue that the commemorations are part of a delayed process of recovery of Ireland’s historical memory of people who were often exiled or forgotten, as well as a contribution to cross-community reconciliation in Northern Ireland. This process of rediscovery takes place through the creation of lieux de mémoire in the form of plaques, stone monuments of various forms, artworks, murals and repeated commemorations across Ireland and Spain. Although this process has its roots in Irish republican groups, trade union and community activists, it has expanded sufficiently to attract attention in Spain and to put down roots in the Madrid area and in Catalonia, most notably through regular visits by the Friends of the International Brigades Ireland group. The commemorations seem to remain more informal than in the United Kingdom, perhaps reflecting their recent development in the wake of the all-consuming Troubles that previously left less space for such activities.

A war that stopped a war? The necropolitics of (Northern) Ireland’s First World War centenary

The recent ‘recovery’ of First World War memory in Ireland has been much discussed and widely celebrated. What has been represented as Ireland’s centennial reacquaintance with its Great War heritage has been framed by a wider ‘Decade of Centenaries’: a policy construct through which a more reconciliatory approach to commemorating the violent events which gave birth to the two states on the island of Ireland has been promoted. The Decade has seen the ascendance of joint British–Irish First World War commemorations, and attempts have been made to use commemoration to bridge the ‘communal’ divide between unionism and nationalism. In this article, I interrogate this new commemorative dispensation and the assumptions that underwrite it. I argue that the reconciliatory reorientation of commemoration in Ireland during the Decade of Centenaries is based on an ethically contradictory and militaristic reframing of the First World War as ‘a war that stopped a war’. Eliding the ways in which the War has actually long been remembered in nationalist Ireland, this reframing is representative of and acts to reinforce the wider anti-political project in which the British and Irish states have been jointly involved since the advent of the peace process. Arguing that the (necro)politics of Ireland’s First World War centenary have represented the slaughter of Irishmen on Flanders’ fields as a symbolic sacrifice for a particular, neoliberal ‘peace’ in (Northern) Ireland, I will conclude that the limits of this project have been radically revealed by recent political events which have called its future hegemony into doubt.

Lest We Forget: The Effect of War Commemorations on Regret, Positive Moral Emotions, and Support for War

Why do societies commemorate war? The persistence of war commemorations suggests they serve a purpose in society. We examine one possibility: Commemorating past sacrifices may serve an “inspirational” function, by evoking pride and gratitude for soldiers’ actions and promoting a willingness to endure future sacrifices for the group. We contrast this with the (popularly espoused) “preventative” function, whereby commemorations decrease support for war by evoking regret. Drawing on one correlational study (N = 500) and two experimental studies (N = 600, 621) with U.S. residents, we show that although war commemorations inconsistently induce regret for the country’s actions, they consistently elicit emotions such as pride and admiration in response to the costly sacrifice of soldiers. While war commemorations neither increased nor decreased support for war directly, the inspirational account received greater support overall. We discuss implications of these findings in light of the ubiquity of war commemorations.

Finland 1917 – a centenary in the shadows of independence celebrations and civil war commemorations

Finland 1917 – a centenary in the shadows of independence celebrations and civil war commemorations

First World War Commemorations in Belgium and the Netherlands: comparative perspectives

Memory of the First World War is refracted through that of other conflicts. Although these are the first ‘global’ commemorations, national narratives and politics loom large. Commemoration is still dominated by national framing. If the role of war commemoration is to create an affective link between state and citizen, then on the evidence of contestation derived from Belgium, the Netherlands and beyond, we may conclude that it operates more at an individual, local and national level than a consciously European or global one. This article is part of the forum 'Commemorating War 100 years after the First World War'.

First World War Commemorations in Belgium and the Netherlands: comparative perspectives.

First World War Commemorations in Belgium and the Netherlands: comparative perspectives.

Een kleine parade naar de Grote Oorlog

Abstract A small parade towards the Great War. The cultural militarization of Remembrance Day in Belgium, 1870-1914This paper presents a new perspective on Belgian civil-military relations in the decades before World War One. ‘Brave little Belgium’ played a central role in the war effort, but it is seldom connected to pre-war militarization in western Europe. On the contrary, Belgium has been categorized as an antimilitaristic nation. By mapping the civil-military interactions during Remembrance Day, this article aims to shed light on forgotten militarization processes in the cultural domain. The assessment of military elements in the ceremonial landscape nuances the traditional perspective of a broad civil-military gap in Belgian society. It is indeed true that an official military cult was virtually absent from the national festivities. Nonetheless, this research unveils a process of civilian militarization that was previously overlooked. From 1890 onwards militaristic associations and local authorities jointly instigated promotion of the military through parades, war commemorations, and demonstrations.

‘We Will Re‐Member Them’: Muslims in the Great War Semi‐Centenary

AbstractIn August 1964, the semi‐centenary of the First World War's onset coincided with uncertainty about Britain's future: decolonization had resulted in a diminished role in the international sphere, and migration had begun to alter the dominant ethnic and religious character of the metropolis. Britons increasingly confronted the question of what it meant to belong to the postcolonial nation. In this context, First World War commemorations served a twofold purpose: first, they revised prior representations of colonial subjects in the war, in light of contemporary realities; and second, they served as an outlet for imperial nostalgia. This article considers the relationship between race, nation, and collective memory by analysing representations of Muslim colonial subjects in the 1964 BBC documentary, The Great War. A content analysis aims to explain how Britain's evolving collective memory reveals its dominant national identity and, by extension, its willingness to accommodate postcolonial newcomers.

Memories of War and Peace in Flanders Fields: The Great War Centenary and the Memory Boom

Abstract The centenary commemoration of the First World War in 2014-2018 will generate an overwhelming interest, not only on the part of audiences but also of governments. In light of the ‘memory boom’ and the growing popularity of heritage in the last decades this should come as no surprise. At the same time, we can expect that the centenary will raise a number of criticisms and critical discussions not only about the politics of memory, but also about remembrance tourism, the commercial aspects of memory and heritage, and the relations of commemoration with historiography. Starting from the case of Flanders in Belgium, where the regional government has set up a large-scale project for the centennial, this paper takes a closer look at these discussions. Stressing the ambivalence of war commemorations, in its analysis of the centenary the paper suggests moving from a position of mere criticism which denounces certain political and commercial uses of war history to a critique of commemoration, which not only criticises practices but also recognises possibilities and merits of public commemorations of war. Keywords: War Commemoration – First World War centenary – Memory Boom ----- Bibliography: Van Alstein, Maarten: Memories of War and Peace in Flanders Fields: The Great War Centenary and the Memory Boom, ERIS, 2-2014, pp. 31-49. https://doi.org/10.3224/eris.v1i2.16502

Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture by Benjamin Ziemann (review)

Reviewed by: Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture by Benjamin Ziemann Stefan Goebel Contested Commemorations: Republican War Veterans and Weimar Political Culture. By Benjamin Ziemann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Pp. xi + 313. Cloth $99.00. ISBN 978-1107028890. Soon it will be twenty years since Cambridge University Press launched the series Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare with the publication of Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning (1995). Focusing on the efforts of the bereaved to come to terms with the experience of loss, Winter’s monograph was essentially a study of the emotional legacy of World War I—with the politics left out. Yet in this latest addition to the burgeoning series, Benjamin Ziemann foregrounds the agency of war veterans and the political dimension of their commemorative practices in the aftermath of World War I, which suggests that the pendulum of interpretation might be swinging the other way. If this is indeed the case, it is not made explicit in Ziemann’s excellent new book, for the author has a different agenda. Contested Commemorations takes issue principally with another seminal work, Fallen Soldiers by George Mosse (1990), which argues that the war’s legacy of “brutalization” had played into the hands of extremist forces that thus managed to instrumentalize the memory of the world war. A congenial discourse to rightwing politics, war commemoration eventually became subsumed in rehearsals for fascism in Germany. Ziemann effectively demolishes the idea of a German special path in commemorative affairs. Stressing the multivocal and highly contested nature of war remembrance in the Weimar Republic, he argues that historians of the Weimar Republic have exaggerated the prevalence of nationalist veterans, on the one hand, and the weakness of the republican settlement, on the other. Ziemann draws our attention to one of Weimar’s “eminent organisational success stories” (67): the much neglected republican veterans’ associations, above all the Reichsbanner Black-Red-Gold and, to a lesser extent, the Reichsbund of disabled war veterans. Numerically much stronger than the rightwing veterans’ leagues, these officially nonpartisan but de facto Social Democratic organizations represented a powerful alternative voice that campaigned for peace, international reconciliation (notably with French veterans), and the defense of the republic. The bulk of the literature on war commemorations has focused on the building and ritualistic use of war memorials. While Ziemann discusses the aborted project of a national memorial (Reichsehrenmal), he also considers a vast range of other media and modes of memory such as personal testimony, official histories, visual images, military insignia, and signifying practices. Ziemann attaches particular importance to the performance of memory—although he takes a less radical performative turn in the substantive chapters than the introduction implies. Successful though the Reichsbanner was in recruiting members (some 2.75 million in 1925) and in establishing local branches (5,618 within just months after its establishment in 1924), the [End Page 454] veterans’ performative celebration of republican citizenship was ultimately marred by several “systematic ambivalences” (270). Even though they were moderate pacifists who aimed for international reconciliation, members of the Reichsbanner cultivated a distinct military style, something that their French counterparts found off-putting. Moreover, there was no place for women in this exclusively male league, apart from occasional guest appearances of Ehrenjungfrauen during flag consecrations. In addition, the Reichsbanner’s socialist rhetoric of class alienated a vast army of potential supporters, especially Catholic workers. The organization’s underlying problems were thus of its own making. There is a further inherent ambivalence in the Reichsbanner commemorations that deserved more emphasis in this study. Republican veterans devised their own language and practices of war commemoration, yet without involving the bereaved: they remembered the war, yet had little to say about death. The slogan “no more war” and calls for reconciliation with the former enemies must have been little consolation for those who were in mourning. Republican veterans regarded the war as futile and interpreted the military defeat as a moment of political liberation from a corrupt and oppressive regime of Etappenschweine. In essence, they remembered the war in order to learn the lessons of the past. These were activists in the heat of...

"A Moment of History"

This article outlines the twentieth-century preservation, interpretation, and commemoration efforts at North Carolina's Civil War remnant of Fort Fisher. The history of Fort Fisher's preservation and eventual dedication as a North Carolina State Historic Site during America's Civil War centennial observances in the 1960s demonstrates how traditional modes of Civil War interpretation have evolved at the site. However, while these traditional narratives exist at Fort Fisher, there are also several instances in which site interpretation contradicts prevalent scholarly views about the impact of Civil War commemorations on the public landscape, as well as on the nation's collective memory of that episode in American history. This fact becomes increasingly important when viewed in the context of the ambitious interpretive goals set forth by the Civil War sesquicentennial committees for the 2011-2015 observances.

Renaming Men: the politics of memory and the commemoration of war at the Baltic–Russian Crossroads

The aim of this article is to discuss the role of war commemorations in the politics of collective memory and the ways in which rites and practices of commemoration contributed to the production of normative ideals of masculinity in specific post-Soviet contexts. The analysis draws upon some examples of present-day commemorations concerning the cult of the fallen soldier in the Baltic countries and in Russia. The author explores the different post-Soviet—Baltic and Russian—discourses and ways of reconstructing the value of military masculinity through commemorations, and argues that combat masculinity as a particular form of military masculinity is dominant in commemorative rituals, practices and sites. The image of the fallen soldier has become a common source of inspiration for the discourse of reciprocity between the body of the soldier and the body of the (trans)nation. It sustains nationalist politics in different post-Soviet contexts and is a central component in the construction of masculinity.

Heroes and victims: remembering war in twentieth-century Romania

Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Memory Traces: On Local Practices of Remembering and Commemorating 1. Death and Ritual: Mourning and Commemorative Practices before 1914 2. Mourning, Burying, and Remembering the War Dead: How Communities Coped with the Memory of Wartime Violence, 1918-1940 3. Remembering the Great War through Autobiographical Narratives 4. The Politics of Commemoration in Interwar Romania, 1919-1940: Dialogues and Conflicts 5. War Commemorations and State Propaganda under Dictatorship: From the Crusade against Bolshevism to Ceausescu's Cult of Personality, 1940-1989 6. Everyone a Victim: Forging the Mythology of Anti-Communism Counter-Memory 7. The Dilemmas of Post-Memory in Post-Communist Romania Notes Selected Bibliography Index

Of Crosses, Winged Victories, and Eagles: Commemorative Contests between Official and Vernacular Voices in Interwar Romania

AbstractThis essay examines contests between local practices and central institutions over the meaning and cultural practices linked to the nation, focusing in particular on commemorations of the war dead after 1918. The analysis shows that the ability of the state to control how nationalism was celebrated through commemorations of the Great War was by no means determined or even successfully mediated from the center. In fact, local voices in rural settings often had their own rituals for mourning those that died in war and also for commemorating heroism in localized versions of what sacrifice for the nation and mourning heroes might have meant. In discussing vernacular-official contests over commemorating war heroes, this essay will present several important aspects: the relationship between traditional religious symbols and the new secular official symbols in representing nationalism; the relationship between rural and urban settings for understanding the unsuccessful attempts of the state to impose its version of war commemorations; and the relationship between the Romanian majority and other ethnic groups in these contests.