Memory Fragmentation From Below and Beyond The State

Memory Fragmentation from Below and
Beyond the State
This volume suggests a model of collective memory that distinguishes between

two conceptual logics of memory fragmentation: vertical fragmentation and
horizontal fragmentation. It offers a series of case studies of conflict and post-
conflict collective memory, shedding light on the ways various actors participate
in the production, dissemination, and contestation of memory discourses.
With attention to the characteristics of both vertical and horizontal memory
fragmentation, the book addresses the plurality of diverging, and often conflicting,
memory discourses that are produced within the public sphere of a given
community. It analyzes the juxtaposition, tensions, and interactions between
narratives produced beyond or below the central state, often transcending national
boundaries.
The book is structured according to the type of actors involved in a memory
fragmentation process. It explores how states have been trying to produce
and impose memory discourses on civil societies, sometimes even against the
experiences of their own citizens, and how this process has led to horizontal
and vertical memory fragmentation. Furthermore, it considers the attempts by
states’ representatives to reassert control of national memory discourses and the
subsequent resistances they face. As such, this volume will appeal to sociology and
political science scholars interested in memory studies in post-conflict societies.
Eric Sangar is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po Lille,

University of Lille, France, as well as a Fellow at the Marc Bloch Centre, Berlin,
Germany.
Valérie Rosoux is Research Director at the FNRS and Professor in Political

Science at the UCLouvain, Belgium.
Anne Bazin is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po Lille,

University of Lille, France.
Emmanuelle Hébert is Guest Lecturer in Political Science at the Université

Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.
Memory Studies: Global Constellations
https://www.routledge.com/sociology/series/ASHSER1411
Series editor: Henri Lustiger-Thaler, Ramapo College of New Jersey, USA and
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, France
The “past in the present” has returned in the early twenty-first century with
a vengeance, and with it the expansion of categories of experience. These
experiences have largely been lost in the advance of rationalist and constructivist
understandings of subjectivity and their collective representations. The cultural
stakes around forgetting, “useful forgetting” and remembering, locally,
regionally, nationally, and globally have risen exponentially. It is therefore
not unusual that “migrant memories”; micro-histories; personal and individual
memories in their interwoven relation to cultural, political, and social narratives;
the mnemonic past and present of emotions, embodiment and ritual; and finally,
the mnemonic spatiality of geography and territories are receiving more
pronounced hearings.
This transpires as the social sciences themselves are consciously globalizing
their knowledge bases. In addition to the above, the reconstructive logic of
memory in the juggernaut of galloping informationalization is rendering it
more and more publicly accessible, and therefore part of a new global public
constellation around the coding of meaning and experience. Memory studies as
an academic field of social and cultural inquiry emerges at a time when global
public debate ‒ buttressed by the fragmentation of national narratives ‒ has
accelerated. Societies today, in late globalized conditions, are pregnant with
newly unmediated and unfrozen memories once sequestered in wide collective
representations. We welcome manuscripts that examine and analyze these
profound cultural traces.
Titles in this series
22. Memory and Identity

Ghosts of the Past in the English-speaking World
Edited by Linda Pillière and Karine Bigand
23. Remembering the Liberation Struggles in Cape Verde: A Mnemohistory
Miguel Cardina and Inês Rodrigues
24. The Legacies of Soviet Repression and Displacement
The Multiple and Mobile Lives of Memories
Edited by Samira Saramo and Ulla Savolainen
25. Memory Fragmentation Below and Beyond the State
Uses of the Past in Conflict and Post-conflict Settings
Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux and Eric Sangar
Memory Fragmentation from
Below and Beyond the State
Uses of the Past in Conflict and
Post-conflict Settings
First Edition
Edited by Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux,

Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert.
First published 2023
by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2023 selection and editorial matter, Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert,
Valérie Rosoux, Eric Sangar; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, Eric Sangar
to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 9780367706210 (hbk)
ISBN: 9780367706227 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003147251 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of illustrations viii

Contributor biographies ix
Acknowledgments xiv
1 Introduction: “Memory fragmentation” as a new heuristic tool

to grasp the dynamics of political uses of the past in conflict
and post-conflict settings 1
ERIC SANGAR, VALÉRIE ROSOUX, ANNE BAZIN AND EMMANUELLE HÉBERT
PART 1
Civil society actors 17
2 Construction of victimhood and its fragmentation within

national frameworks 19
STIPE ODAK
3 Gender, memory, and peace: struggles between

homogenization and fragmentation 35
JOHANNA MANNERGREN SELIMOVIC
4 Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence:

From silencing to standardization 47
ÉLISE FÉRON
5 The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge: A century of

memory negotiations in Germany 61
ELISE JULIEN
vi Contents
6 Pluralism at stake: Rebelling provinces and the national
master narrative in German-Polish collective memories
after the Cold War 75
THOMAS SERRIER
7 The PSG Ultras’ annual commemoration of the 13 November

2015 terrorist attacks: a window on collective memory 89
DELPHINE GRIVEAUD AND SOLVEIG HENNEBERT
PART 2
Historians 107
8 The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia 109

SANDRA RIOS OYOLA
9 Transforming the Polish-German past: Towards a common

narrative? 123
EMMANUELLE HÉBERT
10 When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories:

The case of “Polish-Jewish relations” during World War II 139
VALENTIN BEHR
PART 3
Soldiers and military organizations 153
11 Understanding the fragmentation of the memory of the Allied

bombings of World War II: The role of the United States
Strategic Bombing Survey 155
MATHIAS DELORI
12 Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past

warsThe use of the Algerian War in the context of the French
deployment in Afghanistan 170
CHRISTOPHE WASINSKI
13 “Hurra, wir können’s noch!”: How NATO’s counterinsurgency

doctrine uncovered German civil-military memory fragmentation 186
ERIC SANGAR
Contents vii
14 “Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?The postcolonial
fragmentation of French military and political memory frames
during the Operation Serval in Mali (2013–2014) 204
ANTOINE YOUNSI
PART 4
Transnational organizations 223
15 Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”?:

Strategies against memory fragmentation in Rwanda 225
VALERIE ROSOUX
16 ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?

Uses of the past in the coverage of the Syrian civil war by
Russian-language media 239
THOMAS RICHARD
Conclusion: Overall findings and implications for the heuristic

and normative value of “memory fragmentation” 253
ANNE BAZIN, EMMANUELLE HÉBERT, VALÉRIE ROSOUX, AND ERIC SANGAR
Index 261
Illustrations
Figures
2.1 Victimhood identity and we constructions 27
7.1 “Fluctuat nec mergitur,” the slogan of the city of Paris, here on
a billboard on the sidewalk in front of the Bataclan concert hall,
on 13 November 2016 92
7.2 The PSG Ultras’ commemoration in front of the Bataclan, on 13
November 2018 95
7.3 A poster announcing the lantern ceremony organized by the
association 13onze15, in the 10th district of Paris, on 13
November 2016 98
7.4 Each year on the anniversary of the attacks, Life for Paris sets up
a balloon release ceremony in front of the city hall of the 11th
district of Paris 99
13.1 Cartoon published on the website of the magazine Titanic, 7
September 2009, showing the destruction of the Kunduz air
strike under the headline “Hurrah, we can still do it!” 187
13.2 On the left: War Merit Cross (Second Class) awarded by the
Wehrmacht; on the right: Cross of Honour for Valour awarded
by the Bundeswehr 195
13.3 Ehrenmal der Bundeswehr, Berlin 196
14.1 Engraving illustrating the Imouchar Tuaregs at Taqinbawt on 15
January 1894, before the attack by Lieutenant-Colonel Bonnier’s
troops, who had taken possession of Timbuktu a few days earlier 214
14.2 Colonial illustration of radio networks used in the French colonies 215
14.3 Zoom view of a military map of the Niger colony, showing the
axes of mobility linking the strategic points that were linking
Madama, Chirfa, Dirkou 216
Tables
1.1 Conceptual characteristics of horizontal and vertical memory
fragmentation6
7.1 Commemorations of the 13 November 2015 attacks 100
17.1 Comparative overview of the results of each chapter 256
Contributor biographies
Anne Bazin holds a PhD from Sciences Po Paris. She is Assistant Professor at
Sciences Po Lille and research fellow at CERAPS (University of Lille). She is
also associate research fellow at ISP (University of Paris-Ouest) and teaches
at Sciences Po Paris. Anne founded the master’s program “Conflict Analysis
and Peace Building” at Sciences Po Lille, now called “Peace, Humanitarian
Action and Development.” She teaches international relations, post-conflict
and transitional justice, external action of the EU as well as politics of history
and politics of memory in Eastern Europe. She is currently deputy-director
of Sciences Po Lille and director of the graduate program. Her work focuses
on the process of post-Cold War reconciliation in Central Europe, as well
as the memory of forced migrations and transitional justice. She is co-editor
and author of How to Address the Loss? Forced migrations, Lost Territories
and Politics of History in Europe and at its Margins in the XXth Century,
Brussels: Peter Lang, coll. « l’Allemagne dans les relations internationales »,
2018 (co-edited with Catherine Perron), and L’Union européenne et la paix.
L’invention d’un modèle européen de gestion des conflits, Paris: Presses de
Sciences Po, 2017 (co-edited with Charles Tenenbaum).
Valentin Behr holds a PhD in political science from the University of Strasbourg
(2017). He is a CNRS research fellow at the research centre CESSP/University
Paris 1. He was a research fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study in
2021‒2022. His research topics include history and memory politics, the soci-
ology of political elites, the sociology of intellectuals, and the history of ideas.
His work now focuses on the production and circulation of conservative (espe-
cially illiberal) ideas, in Europe and between Europe and the United States.
His latest publications include the book Powojenna historiografia polska jako
pole walki. Studium z socjologii wiedzy i polityki (Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu
Warszawskiego, 2021) and the special issue “The shaping power of anti-liberal
ideas”, European Politics and Society, 2021 (edited with Ramona Coman and
Jan Beyer).
Mathias Delori is a French political scientist. He is currently a CNRS research fel-
low at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin. His main field of expertise is the social
construction of the notions of friends and enemies in international relations.
x Contributor biographies
He has worked extensively on two cases: the relations between France and
Germany during the twentieth century (Peter Lang 2016; Myriapode 2015)
and contemporary Western wars (Editions Amsterdam 2021). Parallel to this,
Mathias has conducted some (critical) work on the positivist approaches to
social sciences (Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2009).
Élise Féron is a Docent and a senior research fellow at the Tampere Peace
Research Institute (Finland). She is invited professor at the Université
Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), the University of Turin (Italy), Sciences Po
Lille (France), and the University of Coimbra (Portugal). Her main research
interests include diasporas and conflicts, masculinities and conflicts, and femi-
nist peace research. She has published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles and
book chapters, 3 monographs, and 8 edited or co-edited books and special jour-
nal issues, including the Handbook of Feminist Peace Research. Routledge,
2021 (edited with Tarja Väyrynen, Swati Parashar, and Catia Confortini).
Delphine Griveaud is a teaching and research assistant at Université Paris
Nanterre. She has obtained a PhD with support from the Fund for Scientific
Research in Belgium, working under joint supervision of the Université
Catholique de Louvain and the Université Paris Nanterre. Written from a soci-
ological and political science perspective, her PhD unpacks the international
circulations of restorative justice, its structuring in France, its developmen-
tal trajectories within the French criminal justice system and explains how it
continues holding on within it. She is the author of “An empirical take on
the debates on peacebuilding’s failure: the case study of the Ivorian Dialogue
Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2011–2014)”, Peacebuilding, 2022
(OnlineFirst); and the co-author of “La justice transitionnelle, un monde-carre-
four. Contribution à une sociologie des professions internationales,” Cultures
& Conflits, n°119‒120, 2020.
Emmanuelle Hébert is an alumna from the College of Europe and the Institute
for European Studies (Université Libre de Bruxelles). She holds a PhD in polit-
ical sciences from the Université catholique de Louvain and Université Paris
Nanterre (cotutelle). She has been a guest lecturer at the Université de Namur,
Université catholique de Louvain, and Sciences Po Paris. Her publications
include Passé(s) recompose(s). Les Commissions d’historiens dans les proces-
sus de rapprochement (Pologne-Allemagne, Pologne-Russie), Brussels : Peter
Lang, 2020.
Solveig Hennebert is a PhD candidate in Political Science at Université Lumière
Lyon 2 (France). Her research focuses on contemporary collective memory
issues in France. For her master’s thesis, she studied the memory transmission
of two convoys of political prisoners, deported from France to Auschwitz-
Birkenau during World War II. Within the scope of her PhD thesis, Solveig
Hennebert studies the memory of antisemitic events among Jewish communi-
ties in France. She focuses on understanding Jewish remembrance and mem-
ory practices in their diversity.
Contributor biographies xi
Elise Julien is Assistant Professor in Modern History at Sciences Po Lille, France,
a member of the research center IRHiS, University of Lille, and currently a vis-
iting professor at the University of Wuppertal, Germany. She is vice-chair of
the Scientific Council of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge since
2015. She is a specialist in World War I and its memory. She authored among
others the monographs Paris, Berlin: la mémoire de la guerre 1914‒1933
(2010), Der Erste Weltkrieg, Kontroverse um die Geschichte (2014) and (with
Mareike König) Rivalités et interdépendances (1870‒1918), Histoire franco-
allemande vol. 7 (2018).
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer
at Södertörn University in Stockholm, Sweden. Her research is driven by a
keen interest in the makings of “everyday peace” in deeply divided societies.
Central topics concern transitional justice, politics of memory, gender, and
challenges of coexistence. She grounds her work in close ethnographic stud-
ies of everyday practices that are investigated using spatial analysis, narrative
analysis, and discourse analysis. Her work has been widely published in jour-
nals such as Memory Studies, Political Psychology, International Journal of
Transitional Justice, and International Feminist Journal of Politics.
Stipe Odak is Lecturer and postdoctoral researcher at the Université Catholique
de Louvain (Belgium). He graduated with master’s degrees in Sociology,
Comparative Literature and Theology from the University of Zagreb (Croatia).
Later, he received a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from UCLouvain
and a PhD in Theology from KU Leuven. His research focuses on religion,
conflicts, and collective memories. In 2019–2020, he worked as a Fulbright
fellow at Columbia University. He is a published poet and a member of
PEN International. His recent publications include Religion, Conflict, and
Peacebuilding: The Role of Religious Leaders in Bosnia and Herzegovina
(2020), and Balkan Contextual Theology (2022).
Thomas Richard holds his PhD from the University Clermont-Auvergne. His
work focuses on identities and cultural problematics in the Middle East, par-
ticularly in times of conflict. His dissertation was awarded the Michel de
l’Hospital Prize and has been published by LGDJ-Lextenso and the Presses
de l’Université Clermont-Auvergne under the title Du musée au cinéma, nar-
rations de guerre au Moyen-Orient. He has presented his research both in
France and abroad, through conferences and articles about war memories, cul-
tural representations of the borders, and identities as seen through films. His
most recent work deals with filmic images and terrorism, gender identities and
revolutions, and museums in the Middle East. As an associate researcher at
the Centre Michel de l'Hospital at University Clermont-Auvergne, he teaches
political science and cinema studies at the universities Paris-VIII, Paris-I and
ESPOL.
Sandra Rios Oyola is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Political Science
Louvain-Europe, University of Louvain. Sandra obtained a grant by the
xii Contributor biographies
National Fund of Scientific Research (Belgium) to conduct her research project
on “How Do Transitional Justice Measures Contribute to the Restoration of
Victims’ Human Dignity in Colombia?” Sandra explores the uses of memory,
exhumations, and reparations in the dignification of victims at a local level.
She is the author of the book Religion and Social Memory amid Conflict: The
Massacre of Bojayá in Colombia (Palgrave 2015) and co-editor of Time and
Temporality in the Study of Transitional Societies (Routledge 2018).
Valérie Rosoux is Research Director at the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research
(FNRS). She teaches International Negotiation and Transitional Justice at the
UCLouvain. She is a member of the Belgian Royal Academy and an External
Scientific Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg and Max Planck
Institute Halle. Since 2021, she has been a full Max Planck Law Fellow. She
holds a bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a PhD in Political Science. Her
research interests focus on post-war reconciliation and the uses of memory in
international relations. In 2010‒2011, she was a senior fellow at the United
States Institute of Peace.
Eric Sangar is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po Lille, a full
member of the research unit CERAPS (University of Lille), and a research fel-
low at the Marc Bloch Centre, Berlin. Having obtained his doctoral degree at
the European University Institute in Florence, he is studying the links between
collective memory and uses of history in foreign policy and conflict discourses,
the role of emotions in the justification of violence, and diffusion processes
in Franco-German relations. Eric has published in various journals such as
Political Psychology, Etudes internationales, or Contemporary Security
Policy. He is the author of two monographs, Historical Experience: Burden
or Bonus in Today’s Wars? The British Army and the German Bundeswehr in
Afghanistan (2014) and Diffusion in Franco-German Relations: A Different
Perspective on a History of Cooperation and Conflict (2020).
Thomas Serrier is Professor of Contemporary German History at the University of
Lille, France, and member of the research centre IRHiS (Institut de Recherches
historiques du Septentrion). In his research he is focused on German History of
the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, German-Polish and German-French
relations, the changing borders in Europe, and European memory cultures.
His latest main publication is: The European Way since Homer. History,
Memory, Identity. Coedited with Etienne François, Valérie Rosoux, Akiyoshi
Nishiyama, Pierre Monnet, Olaf B. Rader, Jakob Vogel, Mike Plitt. 3 volumes,
London, Bloomsbury, 2021.
Christophe Wasinski is Professor of Political Science (International Relations)
at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium, and a member of the
AU: Please pro- research centre Recherche et Etudes en Politique Internationale (REPI) in
vide location.
Brussels. He is the author of Rendre la guerre possible. La construction du sens
commun stratégique (P.I.E. Peter Lang, 2010). His articles were published in
Contributor biographies xiii
Critique internationale, Critical Military Studies, Cultures & Conflits, Etudes
Internationales, International Political Sociology, Stratégique, and Security
Dialogue.
Antoine Younsi is a PhD candidate in International Relations at the Université
libre de Bruxelles (ULB). He is a member of the Recherche et Enseignement
en Politique Internationale (REPI) centre. His main fields of research concern
French contemporary wars, soldiers’ narratives but also military technology.
Acknowledgments
This project started as a two-section panel at the 2019 Annual Congress of the
French Political Science Association (AFSP) in Bordeaux, during which we
started discussing the analytical potential of the concept of memory fragmenta-
tion with most contributors to this volume. Earlier versions of the chapters were
discussed during a workshop at Sciences Po Lille in December 2019 as well as
during an online workshop organized by ISPOLE / UCLouvain in July 2020.
This volume would not have been possible without the motivation and disci-
pline of all our contributors. We would like to thank them for their preparedness
to write and rewrite their texts in the interest of reaching some analytical “com-
mon ground” – but also for their patience throughout the publication process,
whose schedule has taken a toll from the pandemic as so many other projects.
Furthermore, we would like to thank our editor at Routledge, Neil Jordan, for
his enthusiastic support at the start of the project, his precious advice during the
preparation of the book proposal, and also his comprehension when the prepara-
tion of the final manuscript took longer than promised. We thank the series editor
Henri Lustiger Thaler for accepting our volume as part of the series Memory
Studies: Global Constellations. Last but not least, we would like to thank the two
anonymous reviewers of the book proposal for their constructive comments. They
helped us identify some empirical blind spots and analytical weaknesses before
preparing the final manuscript.
In these times of budget cuts in social science research funding, we are espe-
cially grateful for the financial support we have received from our home institu-
tions at various stages of the project. We have benefited from funding provided
by the research centre CERAPS at the University of Lille, Sciences Po Lille, the
research institute ISPOLE at UCLouvain, as well as the Max Planck Institute
Luxemburg.
In a period in which nostalgic and revisionist interpretations of the past appear
increasingly attractive to various political actors, we would like to dedicate this
volume to all human beings suffering from our collective inabilities to prepare for
an increasingly uncertain future.
1 Introduction
“Memory fragmentation” as a new heuristic
tool to grasp the dynamics of political uses of
the past in conflict and post-conflict settings
Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin and
Emmanuelle Hébert
Vladimir Putin citing the Yalta agreement to justify the annexation of the
Crimea peninsula (Kurilla, 2020, p. 506), Benjamin Netanyahu suggesting in
2016 that Iran was “preparing another Holocaust” (Middle East Eye, 2016),
or Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame blaming the Belgian colonial administra-
tion for creating the conditions which paved the way for “subsequent regimes
[that] tried genocide in their exercise of power” (Bentrovato, 2015, p. 233):
political claims about history seem to be a widespread feature of contemporary
discourses on intra- and interstate conflict. Indeed, already ten years ago, Eric
Langenbacher and Yossi Shain argued that “because memories are mobiliz-
ing, myth-making tools, how memories are nurtured and preserved is of vital
importance in generating and understanding policy” (Langenbacher & Shain,
2010, p. 11).
Such processes can be called instances of “memory politics,” which can be
defined as the “shaping of collective memory by political actors and institutions.
[…] politics of memory concerns debates about the past and how the past should
be recorded, remembered, and disseminated, more broadly, or else silenced and
forgotten” (Zubrzycki & Woźny, 2020, p. 176). While memory politics can occur,
of course, in any political and social context, conflict and post-conflict settings –
that is, settings of memory discourses relating to violent events and/or human
rights violations in the past – are a particularly interesting and relevant scene for
memory politics. This is because, on the one hand, these settings produce events
that can be either mobilized for the gleaning of historical lessons and analogies
or become themselves foundational sources of new political representations of
the past. On the other hand, as situations of political violence and massive human
rights violations typically imply a weakening or even suspension of day-to-day
politics, they create new opportunities for powerful or well-mobilized actors,
including non-state or transnational actors, to challenge established discourses
and practices of collective memory. Our understanding of collective memory
goes beyond a reductionist individualist perspective which conceives collective
memory as the mere “sum” of the memories of individual memories. Rather, we
follow Jeffrey Olick’s suggestion to conceive collective memory as the ways in
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-1
2 Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, and Eric Sangar
which social groups provide meanings and “frameworks” on what and how can
and should be remembered on the individual level. Consequently, as
contemporary circumstances provide the cues for certain images of the past
[…] collectivities have memories, just like they have identities, and that
ideas, styles, genres, and discourses, among other things, are more than the
aggregation of individual subjectivities; […] ideas and institutions are sub-
ject to pressures and take on patterns that cannot be explained by the interests,
capacities, or activities of individuals except in the most trivial sense.
(Olick, 1999, p. 342)
But we also acknowledge that individual beings are not just passive recepta-
cles of memories passed down by social groups and their institutions; rather, we
favour an understanding of collective memory as an “hourglass, with the collec-
tive and the individual at opposite ends and the sand of memories passing from
one to the other, filtered through family values and [institutional] representations”
(Cordonnier et al., 2022, p. 1).
Compared to contexts of “peaceful” stability, conflict and post-conflict settings
can be considered situations in which there is a higher probability of change but
also strengthening of specific collective memory discourses – in terms of con-
tents but also in terms of the emergence of new influential actors. Langenbacher
identifies four factors that can contribute to collective memory change: (1) the
magnitude of an actual event, including acts of war, mass violence, and genocide;
(2) the socio-psychological process of “coping” with the past, including prac-
tices of recognition, commemoration, reparation, or healing; (3) the communica-
tive dissemination of memories via specific media and agents within and across
civil societies; and (4) “perhaps the most important,” the relative power between
agents pursuing memory change and those resisting such change (Langenbacher,
2010, pp. 33–35). It appears plausible that all four factors are particularly present
in conflict and post-conflict settings, including the importance of social and mate-
rial power relations as stakeholders may have vital interests in imposing “their”
discourse on the past to increase legitimacy of their demands or mobilize their
followers.
If we look more specifically into the three key phases of any armed conflict
– the build-up of tensions, the actual use of violence, and attempts to build a post-
conflict political order – we can see that in each period, memory discourses may
play an essential role. Political leaders can promote idealized discourses on their
communities’ past in order to justify myths of specific historical missions or the
supposedly unchanging nature of their “enemies” (Bell, 2003; Buffet & Heuser,
1998; Buschmann & Langewiesche, 2003; Jeismann, 1992; Judt, 1992; Nolan,
2005). Such discourses facilitate the legitimation of the use of offensive violence
on a cognitive but also on an emotional level, for example as part of an audience’s
self-identification with the morally superior role of the “hero-protector” using
violence as a necessary means to stop a dehumanized barbaric enemy, or as part of
cost-benefit analysis valuing the protection of lives in liberal societies over “less
Introduction 3
grievable” ones in other societies (Clément et al., 2017; Delori, 2014; Jackson &
Dexter, 2014).
During armed conflict, the actual experience of violence can result in the for-
mation and/or transformation of collective memories. The underlying mechanism
has been theorized, for example by Frantz Fanon, highlighting that in the context
of colonial domination, the collective practice of violence can facilitate the for-
mation of collective identities of colonized communities (Fanon, 1963). Thus,
as Elsa Dorlin has recently argued for the case of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
in 1943, even hopeless and thus objectively futile acts of violent resistance can
empower individual and communities to develop a sense of political agency and
thus subjectivity, which can provide the base of collective memories later on
(Dorlin, 2019). By contrast, armed conflict can also result in traumatic collective
experiences such as guilt, loss, defeat, or even despair. These experiences can
radically alter the conditions of memory formation and transmission in political
communities. In some cases, such experiences favoured the emergence of pacifist
memory discourses limiting the ability of political leaders to produce consent for
future warfare, as happened in France and Britain after 1918 and in Germany after
1945 (Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2006; Mosse, 1990; Siegel, 2004; Zehfuss, 2007).
In the aftermath of armed conflict, memory discourses can have yet another
set of functions. Political leaders can use the memory of past conflict in order to
justify reconciliation with (some) former enemies but also to justify claims for
revenge or reparation towards some other former enemies (Rosoux, 2001). This
choice depends often on contemporary political needs, such as the changing alli-
ance constellations in post-1945 Europe or the need to legitimize a new political
order domestically as a “rupture” from a warlike past (Olick, 2016). Such external
and domestic priorities are not necessarily compatible, as in the continuously dif-
ficult relationship between South Korea and Japan despite their perceived com-
mon need to counterweigh China’s regional ambitions (Saito & Wang, 2014).
Although, as we have seen, the objectives and conditions of using memory
discourses within the context of armed conflict or post-conflict can greatly vary,
much of the existing scholarship agrees at least on one point by assuming an
essentially hierarchical relationship between collective representations of the past
and their political mobilization. Governments are perceived to “impose” or “con-
ceive” (more or less) dominating narratives of the past, which are “contested”
or “challenged” by subaltern social groups and memory entrepreneurs. In other
words, although governments cannot simply decide on their own which memory
discourses became part of national frames and which did not, they are most often
considered the reference actors that can legitimize or marginalize memory dis-
courses sustained by specific groups within society. Thus, governments are usu-
ally perceived as the central actors capable of defining “memory frameworks”
(Halbwachs, 1994 (1925)) on the national level which – by way of commemo-
ration practices, research funding, public discourses, and sometimes legislation
– define the boundaries between dominant and marginalized memory discourses
within societies. This does, of course, not mean that governments have the power
of altogether regulating or suppressing the circulation of collective memories that
are vivid in specific groups or individuals; rather, through a range of symbolic and
material resources, they can define which discourses are visible in the public and
political space, and which others are not.
In the contemporary context, however, as this book series observes, “public
debates, buttressed by the fragmentation of nation states and their traditional nar-
ratives, have greatly accelerated. Societies are today pregnant with newly unme-
diated memories, once sequestered in broad collective representations and their
ideological stances.”1 In other words, it may no longer be sufficient to conceive
memory dynamics exclusively as hierarchical struggles between “dominating”
and “dominated” social actors, struggling for power and recognition in national
memory frameworks. Instead, just as armed conflicts have become themselves
more horizontal and less governed by state actors, this book’s hypothesis is that
in those same contexts, collective memory dynamics have become much more
diverse and fluid, while governments’ capability of defining national memory
frameworks may have decreased, at least in democratic contexts (for a more elab-
orate discussion of this phenomenon, see Michel, 2010).
This book is about taking this hypothesis seriously and observing its potential
implications on the uses of the past within the context of armed conflict and post-
conflict. More concretely, we argue that conditions of the articulation and defini-
tion of social frameworks of memory in contexts of conflict and post-conflict have
changed as a result of a process – driven by a combination of contemporary and
well-established factors – that we call the “fragmentation of collective memory”
(Rosoux & Ypersele, 2012; Sangar, 2019, 2021). Reflecting larger trends, includ-
ing the densification of transnational memory discourses, and the increasing facil-
ity of disseminating hitherto marginalized memory discourses through media
such as social networks and critical historical research (Neiger et al., 2011), we
suggest an analytical model that differentiates two conceptual logics of memory
fragmentation: “vertical fragmentation” and “horizontal fragmentation.”
The category of “horizontal fragmentation” refers to phenomena of memory
fragmentation characterized by the occurrence of several, sometimes conflicting
memory discourses occurring within the public sphere or as a result of diverg-
ing uses of the past by the political institutions of a given political community.
Already in 1999, Daniel Levy argued that even in the cases of Israel and Germany,
which both share an arguably particularly active role of the state in the definition
of national frames of memory,
states no longer enjoy the same hegemonic power over the means of collec-
tive commemoration. In both countries, revisionists from the left and from
the right self-consciously struggle to provide historical narratives of their
nation’s past to suit their present political views of the future.
(Levy, 1999, p. 51)
For example, as governments’ capability of defining hegemonic frames of

national memory decreases, specific public institutions might find it easier to pub-
licly disseminate uses of the past that enables them to pursue their bureaucratic
Introduction 5
or collective agendas, including with regard to the use of force or to their rec-
ognition in commemoration and reconciliation processes (Gorin & Niemeyer,
2009; Ledoux, 2021). For example, during the US occupation of Iraq, the US
Army actively promoted the study of the British and French colonial counter-
insurgency campaigns in order to secure continued funding and equipment by
countering the public proliferation of analogies with the Vietnam War (Record,
2007; Sangar, 2012). Political parties may also have an increasing interest in
the promotion of “clientelist” memory discourses, even decades after the end
of violent conflict (Bancel et al., 2015; Bazin, 2003; Bertrand, 2006; Crivello-
Bocca et al., 2006). The increasing bureaucratic compartmentalization of public
memory activities (for example, due to the creation of dedicated departments
on the promotion of heritage tourism) may also increase the plurality of mem-
ory discourses produced and disseminated by public actors (Gensburger, 2014;
Gensburger & Lefranc, 2017).
The category of “vertical fragmentation” designates those memory discourses
that are produced “beyond” or “below” the central state, often transcending
national boundaries and sometimes in conflict with discourses promoted by the
state. These may include, on the sub-state level, civil society groups and activists
but also professional historians attempting to raise public awareness for memory
claims excluded or marginalized by national memory frames upheld by govern-
ments. Beyond the state, transnational actors, including diaspora movements,
NGOs, victim networks or transnationally renowned individuals (intellectuals,
artists, religious leaders, or even athletes), are increasingly participating in the
elaboration and dissemination of memory discourses that may challenge estab-
lished frames on the national level, including with regards to the recognition of war
crimes and mass violence in the past (Bachleitner, 2021; Bazin & Perron, 2018;
Beyen & Deseure, 2015; Ibreck, 2013). Despite their legal status of intergov-
ernmental actors, international organizations, including the UN, also participate
in the dissemination of universalist memory frames such as the commemoration
of the Holocaust (Kaiser & Storeide, 2018). The European Union, an interna-
tional actor sui generis, has been actively working towards the promotion of a
transnational European memory for over two decades (Calligaro & Foret, 2012;
Milošević & Perchoc, 2021; Rosoux, 2007; Sierp, 2014). The memory discourses
produced by transnational and international actors do not always “compete” with
those produced by national governments, there can be complementary agendas or
even alliances. But the fact remains that like in other policy areas, the emergence
of “multi-level politics” involving actor constellations that transcend national bor-
ders contributes to the phenomenon that the state’s “monopoly” on the definition
of a hegemonic memory framework is fragilized and that memory entrepreneurs
can turn to actors beyond the state in their struggle for public recognition.
The main characteristics of these two conceptual categories are summarized
in Table 1.1.
We do not claim that both categories capture entirely new processes; we
do argue, however, that their intensity has increased since the end of the Cold
War, as a result both of contextual change that enabled increased transnational
Table 1.1 Conceptual characteristics of horizontal and vertical memory fragmentation
Horizontal fragmentation Vertical fragmentation

Character Increasing number of diverging, Increasing number of parallel,
sometimes conflicting memory sometimes conflicting memory
discourses are articulated discourses that are no longer
from within individual public associated with the state but
institutions; decreasing either with subnational or
consensus on “national” myths transnational communities,
and foundational stories including “humanity”
Potential Bureaucratic rivalry; electoral Conflicting norms and agendas on
rationales politics; diverging organizational the international, national, and
objectives subnational level; politics of
international recognition
Potential Military organizations and other Civil society groups and
actors government departments; memory entrepreneurs,
political parties; professional international organizations;
historians working for specific local and transnational NGOs;
political institutions or parties international media; diaspora
interconnectedness and of the material and ideational weakening of the central

state because of the emergence of new modes of international governance, of new
communication media, and of politics of neoliberal reform.
More specifically, we theorize that the following factors have contributed to
memory fragmentation within the context of conflict and post-conflict settings:
First, transnational media, including social networks but also traditional TV
channels (in competition with private channels), websites, email, and messenger
services, have greatly facilitated the production and circulation of memory dis-
courses produced by individuals as well as social groups. These communication
tools have enabled the dissemination of contents (such as images and videos) that
aim at mobilizing an audience’s emotions (Grandjean & Jamin, 2011; Hoskins,
2003, 2011), sometimes by reducing the complexity of verbal narratives and mak-
ing a discourse more easily “consumable” by audiences. This is especially the
case in the context of armed conflict or post-conflict as these ways of communi-
cation have made it easier to visualize suffering and empathy even with distant
victims (Boltanski, 1993; Chouliaraki, 2004) and facilitated the construction of
transnational communities of perceived shared suffering in the past and in the
present. These communicative changes have had even more impact as the sta-
tus of the “victim” has in many societies become a powerful identity category
that is mobilized by multiple, sometimes even opposed, groups in their struggle
for recognition and access to material and symbolic reparation (Chaumont, 2002;
Lefranc et al., 2008). Second, in many contexts, a crisis of collective national
representation has been observed, illustrated by a decreasing trust in policymakers
and political institutions and a decreasing belief in the legitimacy of processes of
collective decision-making (Merkel, 2014; Rosanvallon, 2006; Rosenthal, 1998).
Introduction 7
Furthermore, we do not claim that the state has become just one actor among
(sub-national and transnational) others which would only be engaged in essen-
tially non-hierarchical memory politics. Indeed, states do retain privileged access
to some resources and instruments of memory discourses that enable them to
be at the centre of demands for recognition and commemoration from other
actors. Even in contexts of perceived state failure, states at least retain a power of
implementing or imposing national symbolic policies, such as the organization
of national commemorations, proclaiming national anniversaries, or instigating
the construction of national monuments. In some cases as diverse as Russia, the
UK, or Japan, states have also attempted to reclaim (part of) their lost authority
over the shaping of national memory by promoting “patriotic” history education,
multiplying the celebrations of past events symbolizing national unity, or pro-
moting positive views of national history in public museums or state-controlled
media. Thus, in most contexts, states can be seen as the ultimate instance of
“ratification” of memory agendas from beyond or below the state as without its
cooperation, an effective recognition and dissemination of discourses from sub-
state or transnational actors within the whole/entire society remain difficult. In
other words, the state could be seen as an interface in which diverging (and some-
times conflicting) memory discourses from different levels (civil society, but also
the transnational and international levels) meet, are negotiated and sometimes
filtered.
To this date, memory fragmentation is rarely studied in the context of armed
conflict and post-conflict, and little has been written about the extent to which this
concept is actually useful for understanding if and how uses of the past are chang-
ing as a result of fragmentation. Instead, many existing accounts, including those
produced in the tradition of critical scholarship, simply identified the state as the
most powerful and often oppressive memory actor, while civil society groups and
NGOs are often portrayed as marginalized actors of memory resistance. But what
if this rather dichotomic assumption were overly simplistic?
This book features a series of case studies in which researchers working on the
links between collective memory and armed conflict or post-conflict were invited
to explore and reflect on our conceptual framework of memory fragmentation in
its vertical and/or horizontal dimension. This research has developed through a
series of conference panels and workshops between 2019 and 2020. Rather than
just “testing” the applicability of our framework, contributors have been using it
as a point of departure to develop their personal analytical perspective on their
studied case. In some chapters, the concept of memory fragmentation clearly ena-
bles us to “see” new phenomena and implications that more established concepts
would overlook. This is especially the case in contemporary civil-military rela-
tions, as governments are increasingly subject to pressure from their civil socie-
ties to recognize colonial wrongdoings, while their military organizations see the
past as a source of useful lessons for the conduct of future war. In many con-
texts, subnational and transnational actors appear to become increasingly success-
ful in promoting their narratives – sometimes despite the resistance of national
governments.
Some contributions have also enabled us to detect the limits of the concept or
memory fragmentation. The contribution of the diverging commemorations of the
November 2015 attacks in France highlights the fact that while the state may be
less influential in shaping the remembering of the more distant national past, it is
still effective with regards to producing a basic discourse on recent violent events
(Nattiez et al., 2020), this state narrative becoming a reference for practices of
commemoration produced by specific social groups. Furthermore, the media that
challenges the memory authority of the state in some contexts can also strengthen
the state’s authority in other circumstances. This is what the case of the non-state
news network ANNA News confirms regarding the dissemination of patriotic
framings of the memory of the Russian intervention in the Syrian war.
The book is structured according to the types of actors identified with spe-
cific (potential) fragmentation processes. There are four main sections associated
with four types of actors shaping memory discourses, as suggested in the book
title, from “below” and “beyond” the state: (1) civil society actors from “below”
the state; (2) professional historians; (3) military organizations and officers from
“within” the state; and (4) transnational actors from “beyond” the state.
Civil society actors have often been analyzed as actors resisting and challeng-
ing memory discourses produced and promoted by governments (Szczepanska,
2014; Wüstenberg, 2017). It therefore appears plausible that in the aftermath
of armed conflict, civil society initiatives may alter governments’ capabili-
ties to produce unified, “national” memory frameworks. Stipe Odak’s chapter
thus shows how the victimhood discourse produces groups within civil socie-
ties who strive for recognition of their claims by other groups and the state.
These processes help to increase the visibility of the wrongdoings which are
usually excluded from any national framework. They may also contribute to
the hardening and fixation of binary we-them identities at the subnational level.
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic’s chapter focuses on the role of gender in mem-
ory discourses, arguing that women only have two functions in homogenized
post-conflict memory narratives promoted by the state; Selimovic shows how
civil society advocacy of women’s perspective by activists and artists has helped
to stimulate productive vertical fragmentation processes. With regards to the
“memoralization” of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in post-conflict
societies, Elise Féron argues that such activities, while contributing to the frag-
mentation and complexification of the established victim/perpetrator dichoto-
mies, do not only challenge memory discourses produced by the state but also
reflect tensions among civil society actors sometimes having diverging agen-
das. The remaining chapters in this section complexify the picture even further.
Thus, Elise Julien’s analysis of the historical evolution of a German associa-
tion dedicated to the memory of fallen soldiers during the world wars shows
that the association’s promotion of a “national” memory of the war dead proves
to be compatible with the memory agenda of successive German governments,
even during the Third Reich. A symbiotic relationship between the association
and the German governments evolved that was used to promote national frame-
works of memory. Civil society actors can also promote alternative narratives
Introduction 9
for a national memory, as Thomas Serrier shows in his chapter on the ‘memory
rebellion’ of Polish provinces that enabled a narrative of a multicultural and
multi-ethnic Polish nation to emerge, despite the resistance of old (socialist) and
new (right-wing nationalist) elites. At the end of this section, Delphine Griveaud
and Solveig Hennebert discuss yet another configuration of civil society actors
challenging governmental memory narratives: the “ultras” of the football club
Paris Saint Germain attempt to frame the memory of the November 13 attacks in
Paris as a lost first leg calling for a revanche, when the first official ceremonies
avoided naming the perpetrators and focused on mourning the victims and hon-
ouring the dead. Both sides were asking for united nation in the commemoration
of the attacks ‒ yet they differ regarding not only the style but also the normative
agenda this unity implies.
The second section of the book deals with the role of professional historians in
the process of post-conflict memory fragmentation. Of course, professional histo-
rians can be seen as almost natural adversaries of any type of hegemonic memory
discourses as their activity and their academic status are defined by the respect
of methodological standards, including the impartial reliance on sources and the
striving for nuance and complexity in the reconstruction of the past (Assmann,
2008). In France, the work of Robert Paxton (1973) successfully broke the silence
of French post-war governments on the complicity of the Vichy regime with Nazi
crimes and unleashed a lasting memory controversy termed by Henry Rousso as
the “Vichy syndrome” (Rousso, 1990). However, we also know how the discipline
of modern historiography, especially in the European context, has developed in a
symbiotic relationship with the state since the nineteenth century, often legitimiz-
ing rather than challenging political ideas about “national” history (Berger, 2007).
To what extent sould historians be considered independent agents of memory
fragmentation in contemporary post-conflict contexts? Sandra Rios Oyola pro-
vides a first answer based on her analysis of an institution staffed by professional
historians, the Historical Memory Group. While the group was created by the
government as part of efforts to facilitate a state-sponsored reconciliation initia-
tive, its members used a combination of oral history and academic research to
include civil society perspectives that challenged some of the government nar-
ratives. Emmanuelle Hébert’s chapter also highlights the role of historians as
agents of both vertical and horizontal fragmentation processes: her analysis of the
Polish-German Textbook Commission shows how historians were able to develop
new narratives even without the support of the government. She argues that the
existence of institutionalized procedures and the individual socialization of par-
ticipating historians can explain why Polish-German textbook reform could make
progress despite recent governmental efforts to promote its own “national” nar-
ratives. The third chapter in this section, by Valentin Behr, complexifies further
the role of professional historians. In his analysis of the implication of historians
in the fragmentation of Polish memory discourses on the Holocaust, Behr argues
that historians’ agency should be assessed according to their position in the aca-
demic field, where both “national” and “critical” perspectives coexist, and where
the already existing fragmentation within larger Polish society is reproduced.
The third section of the book covers the role of military organizations with
regard to the fragmentation of memory discourses. Although the use of history
by military organizations has already been analyzed (Abenheim, 1988; Cohen,
2005; Howard, 2003 (1962); Sangar, 2013; Snyder, 1984; Strachan, 2006), very
little is known about their involvement in the construction (or deconstruction)
of collective memories, including within the framework of the nation-state (for
historical perspectives, see for example Forrest, 2009; Vogel, 1997). This is even
more surprising as the concept of militarization has regained prominence in recent
years, including in the context of liberal democracies (Dixon, 2019; Jenkings et
al., 2012; Stavrianakis & Stern, 2018; Wette, 2008). Against this backdrop, the
four contributions in this section uncover a rather surprising scope of autonomous
memory agency of military organizations in four liberal states. Mathias Delori’s
chapter demonstrates that the US military was so concerned about the potential
institutional ramifications of the recognition of human suffering and military inef-
fectiveness of the allied bombing campaigns during World War II that it engaged in
memory agency on its own, commissioning the “United States Strategic Bombing
Survey” in order to “prove” the supposedly efficient impact of aerial bombing on
civilians’ moral. This campaign had a lasting effect as it nurtured a myth among
parts of the military and political US elites to legitimate the US bombing cam-
paigns during the Vietnam War. While the memory of the Algerian War has
long been recognized as a factor of vertical fragmentation in French collective
memories (Jansen, 2010; McCormack, 2007; Rosoux, 2016; Stora & Jenni, 2016),
Christophe Wasinski argues in his chapter that the French military has recently
initiated a process of horizontal fragmentation, benefitting from the revalorization
of the Algerian war as a source of lessons for the US counterinsurgency doctrine,
to challenge French governments’ attempts to pacify the conflicting memories
circulating within French society. In the German context, Eric Sangar shows that
the Bundeswehr mission to Afghanistan has seen attempts by individual officers
to challenge the status of the Nazi past in German collective memory, especially
with regard to civil-military relations, and to promote a “rediscovery” of military
virtues and sacrifice in contemporary society. Antoine Younsi discusses in his
chapter the fragmenting effects of internal uses of history within the French mili-
tary that valorize the perceived effectiveness of French colonial operations. The
military memory frames diverge from the national frames promoted by the French
government to legitimate the intervention in Mali of 2013as the “repayment” of a
blood debt inherited from the participation of Malian soldiers in the liberation of
France during World War II.
The last section of the book focuses on a fourth, even more underexplored cat-
egory of actors participating in memory fragmentation processes, namely trans-
national actors. Existing publications analyzing how transnational actors, such as
international organizations, participate in memory discourses tend to interpret their
agency in conformity with their profile. Thus, actors such as the UN are perceived
as promoting transnational, even cosmopolitan memory frameworks that may alter
the normative status of existing memories, including those promoted by national
governments (Kaiser & Storeide, 2018). Are transnational actors therefore per
Introduction 11
definition challenging memory frames promoted by governments? Once again,
the contribution here suggests that the reality is more complex. Valérie Rosoux’s
chapter examines how transnational NGOs have become agents supporting rather
than challenging the government’s attempts to build a national memory frame-
work that highlights the unity of the Rwandan nation and de-emphasizes the dif-
ferentiation between victims and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Looking at
the very peculiar case of ANNA News, a transnational news agency closely affili-
ated with the Russian political agenda, Thomas Richard shows how such actors
can be used by governments to promote memory fragmentation in other territo-
ries. Richard explains how the Russian intervention in Syria is framed both as a
heroic struggle against oppressive terrorists, and as a skilful implementation of
lessons learnt from the “failed” Western intervention in Afghanistan.
Finally, rather than introducing a definitive characterization of “memory frag-
mentation” in terms of universal causes and effects, this book suggests that the
concept has above all a heuristic function, highlighting the necessity for scholars
to focus not only on the contents of individual memory discourses but above all on
their purposes and potential effects resulting from the interaction with other dis-
courses and strategies. In other words, as for other social phenomena, it is through
interaction among social actors that collective memories evolve – however, as these
interactions are not always shaped exclusively by hierarchical domination, their
results are often less predictable than a purely materialist perspective could predict.
Note
1 https://www.routledge.com/Memory-Studies-Global-Constellations/book-series/
ASHSER1411
References
Abenheim, D. (1988). Reforging the Iron Cross: The search for tradition in the West
German armed forces. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Assmann, A. (2008). Transformations between history and memory. Social Research: An
International Quarterly, 75(1), 49–72.
Bachleitner, K. (2021). Legacies of war: Syrian narratives of conflict and visions of peace.
Cooperation and Conflict, 75(1), 43–64. doi:10.1177/00108367211032691
Bancel, N., Blanchard, P., & Boubeker, A. (2015). Le grand repli. Paris: La Découverte.
Bazin, A. (2003). Les décrets Benes: De l’usage du passé dans le débat européen. Critique
Internationale, 21(4), 42–49. doi:10.3917/crii.021.0042
Bazin, A., & Perron, C. (Eds.). (2018). How to address the loss? Forced migrations, lost
territories, and the politics of history, a comparative approach in Europe and at its
margins in the XXth Century. Bruxelles/New York: Peter Lang.
Bell, D. S. A. (2003). Mythscapes: Memory, mythology, and national identity. The British
Journal of Sociology, 54(1), 63–81. doi:10.1080/0007131032000045905
Bentrovato, D. (2015). Rwanda, twenty years on: Assessing the RPF’s legacy through
the views of the Great Lakes region’s new generation. Cahiers d’Études Africaines,
2015/2(218), 231–254. doi:10.4000/etudesafricaines.18095
Berger, S. (2007). Writing national histories in Europe: Reflections on the pasts, presents,
and futures of a tradition. In K. H. Jarausch, T. Lindenberger, & A. Ramsbrock (Eds.),
Conflicted memories: Europeanizing contemporary histories (pp. 55–68). New York:
Berghahn Books.
Bertrand, R. (2006). Mémoires d’empire: la controverse autour du “fait colonial”.
Bellecombe-en-Bauges: Éditions du Croquant.
Beyen, M., & Deseure, B. (Eds.). (2015). Local memories in a nationalizing and globalizing
world. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Boltanski, L. (1993). La souffrance à distance: morale humanitaire, médias et politique.
Paris: Editions Métailié.
Buffet, C., & Heuser, B. (Eds.). (1998). Haunted by history: Myths in international
relations. Providence, Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Buschmann, N., & Langewiesche, D. (Eds.). (2003). Der Krieg in den Gründungsmythen
europäischer Nationen und der USA. Frankfurt am Main/New York: Campus Verlag.
Calligaro, O., & Foret, F. (2012). La mémoire européenne en action. Politique Européenne,
2, 18–43.
Chaumont, J.-M. (2002). La concurrence des victimes: génocide, identité, reconnaissance.
Paris: La Découverte.
Chouliaraki, L. (2004). Watching 11 September: The politics of pity. Discourse & Society,
15(2–3), 185–198. doi:10.1177/0957926504041016
Clément, M., Lindemann, T., & Sangar, E. (2017). The “hero-protector narrative”:
Manufacturing emotional consent for the use of force. Political Psychology, 38(6),
991–1008. doi:10.1111/pops.12385
Cohen, E. A. (2005). The historical mind and military strategy. Orbis, 49(4), 575–588.
doi:10.1016/j.orbis.2005.07.002
Cordonnier, A., Rosoux, V., Gijs, A.-S., & Luminet, O. (2022). Collective memory: An
hourglass between the collective and the individual. Memory, Mind & Media, 1, e8.
doi:10.1017/mem.2022.1
Crivello-Bocca, M., Garcia, P., & Offenstadt, N. (Eds.). (2006). Concurrence des
passés: usages politiques du passé dans la France contemporaine. Aix-en-Provence:
Publications de l’Université de Provence.
Dalgaard-Nielsen, A. (2006). Germany, pacifism and peace enforcement. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Delori, M. (2014). Killing without hatred: The politics of (non)-recognition in
contemporary Western wars. Global Discourse, 4(4), 516–531. doi:10.1080/232699
95.2014.935102
Dixon, P. (2019). Frock coats against brass hats? Politicians, the military and the war
in Afghanistan 2001–2014. Parliamentary Affairs, 73(3), 651–691. doi:10.1093/pa/
gsz015
Dorlin, E. (2019). Se défendre: une philosophie de la violence. Paris: La Découverte.
Fanon, F. (1963). The wretched of the earth. New York: Grove Press.
Forrest, A. I. (2009). The legacy of the French revolutionary wars: The nation-in-arms in
French republican memory. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Gensburger, S. (2014). Comprendre la multiplication des “journées de commémoration
nationale”: étude d’un instrument d’action publique de nature symbolique. In H.
Charlotte, L. Pierre, & G. Patrick Le (Eds.), L’instrumentation de l’action publique:
Controverses, résistances, effets (pp. 345–365). Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
Gensburger, S., & Lefranc, S. (2017). À quoi servent les politiques de mémoire? Paris:
Sciences Po les presses.
Introduction 13
Gorin, V., & Niemeyer, K. (2009). Spectre du passé et enjeux géopolitiques du présent: La
mémoire américaine du Vietnam dans la guerre d’Irak. In R. g. Latouche, M. Mathien,
& G. r. Arboit (Eds.), Histoire, mémoire et médias (pp. 239–253). Bruxelles: Bruylant.
Grandjean, G., & Jamin, J. (Eds.). (2011). La concurrence mémorielle. Paris: Armand
Colin.
Halbwachs, M. (1994 (1925)). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel.
Hoskins, A. (2003). Signs of the Holocaust: Exhibiting memory in a mediated age. Media,
Culture & Society, 25(1), 7–22. doi:10.1177/0163443703025001631
Hoskins, A. (2011). Anachronisms of media, anachronisms of memory: From collective
memory to a new memory ecology. In M. Neiger, O. Meyers, & E. Zandberg (Eds.),
On media memory. Collective memory in a new media age (pp. 278–288). Houndmills,
Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Howard, M. (2003 (1962)). The use and abuse of military history. The Army Doctrine and
Training Bulletin, 6(2), 18–22. doi:10.1080/03071846209423478
Ibreck, R. (2013). International constructions of national memories: The aims and effects of
foreign donors’ support for genocide remembrance in Rwanda. Journal of Intervention
and Statebuilding, 7(2), 149–169. doi:10.1080/17502977.2012.714242
Jackson, R., & Dexter, H. (2014). The social construction of organised political
violence: An analytical framework. Civil Wars, 16(1), 1–23. doi:10.1080/1369824
9.2014.904982
Jansen, J. (2010). Politics of remembrance, colonialism and the Algerian war of
Independence in France. In M. Pakier & B. Stråth (Eds.), A European memory?
Contested histories and politics of remembrance (pp. 275–293). New York: Berghahn
Books.
Jeismann, M. (1992). Das Vaterland der Feinde: Studien zum nationalen Feindbegriff und
Selbstverständnis in Deutschland und Frankreich 1792–1918. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Jenkings, K. N., Megoran, N., Woodward, R., & Bos, D. (2012). Wootton Bassett
and the political spaces of remembrance and mourning. Area, 44(3), 356–363.
doi:10.1111/j.1475-4762.2012.01106.x
Judt, T. (1992). The past is another country: Myth and memory in postwar Europe.
Daedalus, 121(4), 83–118.
Kaiser, W., & Storeide, A. H. (2018). International organizations and Holocaust
remembrance: From Europe to the world. International Journal of Cultural Policy,
24(6), 798–810. doi:10.1080/10286632.2018.1433667
Kurilla, I. (2020). Reusing soviet history books: The role of World War II in Russian
domestic politics and academia. The Journal of Slavic Military Studies, 33(4), 502–507.
doi:10.1080/13518046.2020.1845079
Langenbacher, E. (2010). Collective memory as a factor in political culture and international
relations. In E. Langenbacher & Y. Shain (Eds.), Power and the past: Collective memory
and international relations (pp. 13–49). Washington, DC: Georgetown University
Press.
Langenbacher, E., & Shain, Y. (2010). Introduction: Twenty-first-century memories.
In E. Langenbacher & Y. Shain (Eds.), Power and the past: Collective memory and
international relations (pp. 1–12). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Ledoux, S. (2021). La nation en récit. Paris: Belin.
Lefranc, S., Mathieu, L., & Siméant, J. (2008). Les victimes écrivent leur Histoire.
Introduction. Raisons Politiques, 30(2), 5–19. doi:10.3917/rai.030.0005
Levy, D. (1999). The future of the past: Historiographical disputes and competing memories
in Germany and Israel. History and Theory, 38(1), 51–66. doi:10.2307/2505316
McCormack, J. (2007). Collective memory: France and the Algerian war (1954–1962).
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Merkel, W. (2014). Is there a crisis of democracy? Democratic Theory, 1(2), 11–25.
doi:10.3167/dt.2014.010202
Michel, J. (2010). Gouverner les mémoires: les politiques mémorielles en France. Paris:
Presses universitaires de France.
Middle East Eye. (2016, 16 May). Netanyahu says Iran “preparing another Holocaust”.
Retrieved from https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/netanyahu-says-iran-preparing
-another-holocaust-2060722432
Milošević, A., & Perchoc, P. (2021). Le Parlement européen et la politique de la mémoire:
explorer la constellation des acteurs. Politique Européenne, 71(1), 6–27. doi:10.3917/
poeu.071.0006
Mosse, G. L. (1990). Fallen soldiers: Reshaping the memory of the world wars. New York/
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nattiez, L., Peschanski, D., & Hochard, C. (2020). 13 novembre: des témoignages, un
récit. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Neiger, M., Meyers, O., & Zandberg, E. (Eds.). (2011). On media memory. Collective
memory in a new media age. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan.
Nolan, M. E. (2005). The inverted mirror: Mythologizing the enemy in France and
Germany, 1898–1914. New York: Berghahn Books.
Olick, J. K. (1999). Collective memory: The two cultures. Sociological Theory, 17(3),
333–348. doi:10.2307/370189
Olick, J. K. (2016). The sins of the fathers: Germany, memory, method. Chicago: The
University of Chicago Press.
Paxton, R. O. (1973). La France de Vichy 1940–1944. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Record, J. (2007). The use and abuse of history: Munich, Vietnam and Iraq. Survival,
49(1), 163–180. doi:10.1080/00396330701254628
Rosanvallon, P. (2006). La contre-démocratie: La politique à l’âge de la défiance. Paris:
Seuil.
Rosenthal, A. (1998). The decline of representative democracy. Washington, DC: CQ
Press.
Rosoux, V. (2001). Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales: le recours
au passé dans la politique étrangère de la France à l’égard de l’Allemagne et de
l’Algérie, de 1962 à nos jours. Bruxelles: Bruylant.
Rosoux, V. (2007). Mémoire (s) européenne (s)? Des limites d’un passé aseptisé et figé.
In G. Mink & L. Neumayer (Eds.), L’Europe et ses passés douloureux (pp. 222–232).
Rosoux, V. (2016). Le travail de mémoire dans les relations franco-algériennes. In O.
Ostriitchouk (Ed.), Mémoires de conflits, mémoires en conflits (pp. 209–226). Bern:
Peter Lang.
Rosoux, V., & Ypersele, L.v. (2012). The Belgian national past: Between commemoration
and silence. Memory Studies, 5(1), 45–57. doi:10.1177/1750698011424030
Rousso, H. (1990). Le Syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours. Paris: Editions Seuil.
Saito, H., & Wang, Y. (2014). Competing logics of commemoration: Cosmopolitanism and
nationalism in East Asia’s history problem. Sociological Perspectives, 57(2), 167–185.
doi:10.1177/0731121414524176
Sangar, E. (2012). The past stimulating the change? The use of historical experience
by the British and American armies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In B. Chiari (Ed.),
Auftrag Auslandseinsatz: neueste Militärgeschichte an der Schnittstelle von
Introduction 15
Geschichtswissenschaft, Politik, Öffentlichkeit und Streitkräften (pp. 355–365).
Freiburg: Rombach.
Sangar, E. (2013). Historical experience: Burden or bonus in today’s wars? The British
army and the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. Freiburg: Rombach.
Sangar, E. (2019). L’impact de la fragmentation des mémoires collectives nationales
sur la politique étrangère: le cas de la France. Études Internationales, 50(1), 39–68.
doi:https://doi.org/10.7202/1062816ar
Sangar, E. (2021). Die Fragmentation nationalstaatlicher kollektiver Erinnerung und
ihre Auswirkung auf strategische Narrative: Legitimationsschwierigkeiten deutscher
Außenpolitik seit dem Ende des Kalten Kriegs. In F. Kießling & C. Rothauge
(Eds.), Außenbeziehungen und Erinnerung: Funktionen, Dynamiken, Reflexionen
(pp. 153–172). Berlin: De Gruyter.
Siegel, M. L. (2004). The moral disarmament of France: Education, pacifism, and
patriotism, 1914–1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sierp, A. (2014). History, memory, and trans-European identity: Unifying divisions. New
York: Routledge.
Snyder, J. (1984). The ideology of the offensive: Military decision making and the disasters
of 1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Stavrianakis, A., & Stern, M. (2018). Militarism and security: Dialogue, possibilities and
limits. Security Dialogue, 49(1–2), 3–18. doi:10.1177/0967010617748528
Stora, B., & Jenni, A. (2016). Les mémoires dangereuses. Paris: Albin Michel.
Strachan, H. (Ed.) (2006). Big wars and small wars: The British army and the lessons of
war in the twentieth century. London: Routledge.
Szczepanska, K. (2014). The politics of war memory in Japan: Progressive civil society
groups and contestation of memory of the Asia-Pacific war. London/New York:
Routledge.
Vogel, J. (1997). Nationen im Gleichschritt: der Kult der “Nation in Waffen” in
Deutschland und Frankreich, 1871–1914. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
Wette, W. (2008). Militarismus in Deutschland: Geschichte einer kriegerischen Kultur.
Darmstadt: Primus.
Wüstenberg, J. (2017). Civil society and memory in postwar Germany. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Zehfuss, M. (2007). Wounds of memory: The politics of war in Germany. Cambridge/New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Zubrzycki, G., & Woźny, A. (2020). The comparative politics of collective memory.
Annual Review of Sociology, 46(1), 175–194. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-121919-054808
Part 1
Civil society actors

2 Construction of victimhood
and its fragmentation within
national frameworks
Stipe Odak
Introduction
“Erinnerung ist immer fragmentarisch und geschieht rekonstruktiv”
(“Remembering is always fragmentary and happens in a reconstructive way”),
states Goetz (2008, p. 55) in the opening lines of his essays on The dead as dis-
cursive (re)construction. This claim posits fragmentation not as an aberration
of remembering, but as the very nature of the memory-work. Fragmentation is,
therefore, a norm in the construction of individual as well as collective memories.
This, however, does not mean that products of collective memory are haphazard
or coincidental. In his critique of À la recherche du temps perdu, Barthes (2002,
p. 463) argues that Proust’s classical work is created “like a dress (…) the pieces,
the fragments are subjected to crossovers, arrangements, and reappearances: a
dress is not a patchwork, not any more than La Recherche is.”1 Remembering,
although fragmentary, retains its own inner logic, its own design that keeps the
fragments together. The integrating “design” of collective memories, however,
changes over time. When it comes to large tragedies, the dominant unifying
frameworks used to be the ones of nations. The situation is much different today
as we notice increasing “fragmentations” of those frameworks.
This chapter focuses on victimhood as a specific form of collective memory.
Fragmentation of victimhood, I argue, is essentially ambiguous. While it can
lead to a clearer articulation of previously understated group grievances, it often
results in distrust and competition between different victim groups. Though theo-
retical in nature, I utilize concrete examples, mostly from ex-Yugoslav countries,
AU: Please con-
to illustrate the major arguments. firm the changes
My chapter is divided in six subsections, which espouse the following argu- made in the
ments: (1) Memories of suffering have a significant role in collective memories structural outline
of the chapter.
and identity construction; (2) Development of a victimhood identity assumes past
suffering and humiliation, but it also favours the recovery of the group's agency
and self-image; (3) Nations used to be dominant frameworks for the organization
of the memory of suffering; (4) The importance of nations in the creation of a
victimhood identity is contested by an increased commemoration of non-national
tragedies, rise of civil wars, acknowledgments of state-crimes over minori-
ties, growing “individualization” of wars, and intersectional understanding and
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-3
20 Stipe Odak
analysis of victimhood; (5) Victimhood identity can be theoretically structured at
the intersection between three main forms of belonging and distinction, defined as
“We,” “They,” and “Them.”. (6) In the last part of my chapter (section 6), I out-
line both the positive and negative potentials of victimhood “fragmentation.” The
main challenge lies in finding a delicate balance between the desire for visibility
and the dangers of self-centeredness. If perceived as a part of “multidirectional
memory” (Rothberg, 2009) – I conclude – fragmentation can culminate in a deep-
ened understanding of the group’s identity and compassionate stance towards the
suffering of other groups.
1 Memories of suffering have an important role in

collective memories and identity construction
Cross-national studies show that tragedies are often in the center of collective
remembering and that they are particularly relevant to development of collec-
tive identities (Liu, 2005; Liu et al., 2012; Liu & Hilton, 2005; Liu & László,
2007). There are multiple interrelated factors that explain the prevalence of
tragedies in collective memories: (a) their evolutionary importance for the sur-
vival of the group and development of the sense of a continuity (Hirschberger,
2018); (b) fear being much more basic and “contagious” emotion than hope
(Bar-Tal, 2001); (c) adaptational, organizational, and mobilizing value of trau-
matic memories (Harris, 2006).
When it comes to national collective memories, memory of suffering (not the
suffering itself) is fundamental to its construction. If there were a massacre that
nobody remembered, the amount of suffering would still be enormous, but such
event would have little impact on a sense of community. Only when a past suf-
fering becomes shared and translated into “cultural trauma” (Alexander, 2004)
can a group develop solidarity around it. Suffering of Roma in the World War-II
Nazi-allied Independent State of Croatia exemplifies how a large amount of suf-
fering does not necessarily translate into a shared memory or solidarity. Subject
to racial laws, Roma people were systematically targeted for extermination
and sent, in large numbers, to concentration camps (Council of Europe, n.d.).
Demographically destroyed, deprived of social power and influence, the few
Roma survivors did not have the resources to develop narratives of their hardship
in the post-war period. Roma people also lacked a central government that could
have integrated their suffering into their national identity. Additionally, their suf-
fering in the Communist Yugoslavia was only sporadically mentioned and almost
entirely excluded from scientific research until the 1980s. Even now, Roma’s vic-
tims of World War II are largely “forgotten,” not just in Croatia but also in other
countries of Central Europe (Vojak, 2014). In short, only when a group has suf-
ficient material, political, and symbolic resources to share and develop narratives
of their suffering, can that group create solidarity and a victimhood identity from
that suffering (Alexander, 2004).
Jacoby (2015, p. 513) thus correctly observes that victimization is not the same
as victimhood since
Construction of victimhood 21 AU: Please
confirm the
victimisation is an act of harm perpetrated against a person or group, and shorten text made
in the running
victimhood is a form of collective identity based on that harm. The act and head?
the identity are neither linear nor even causally related, but rather fluid and
open-ended.
In other words, a group can experience numerous episodes of victimization with-

out ever developing a victimhood identity. The opposite case, however, is not
possible ‒ there cannot be a victimhood identity without a suffering “we.”
2 Development of a victimhood identity assumes past suffering

and humiliation, but it can also have positive effects on
the recovery of the group’s agency and self-image
Why would collectives prefer commemorating tragedies instead of forgetting
them? After all, it seems that victimization has numerous undesirable effects: it
undermines the sense of collective agency and self-respect, it disrupts established
systems of meaning, and weakens inner ties of belonging. These five elements
‒ meaning, belonging, respect, distinctiveness, and agency ‒ are generally rec-
ognized as salient psychological needs that propel the development of a common
identity. Memory of suffering additionally connotes that the group was not “strong
enough” to defend themselves or that they lack the abilities to organize coordi-
nated actions. Yet, despite all those undesirable effects, communities continue
to commemorate their tragedies. Therefore, in order to understand this apparent
paradox, we must explain how those potentially negative effects are mitigated.
While the status of a victim indeed implies disempowerment, harm, and
humiliation, research shows that it is also associated with the notion of innocence,
which produces increased moral credentials and even a sense of moral superior-
ity (Sullivan, Landau, Branscombe, & Rothschild, 2012). In Blatz and Ross’s
(2009, p. 230) conceptualization, remembrance of past tragedies enhances group
solidarity through common rituals; it unites group members, and distinguishes
them from other groups. A shared sense of victimhood also implies entitlements
for redress and attribution of moral debt to the perpetrator, where the victim-
group decides when and how that debt should be repaid (Noor, Shnabel, Halabi, &
Nadler, 2012). Victimhood narratives can also serve to national governments as a
justification for specific foreign policy choices, such as preference for preemptive
military actions (Canetti et al., 2018). The status of a “victim” can further yield
support from third parties and enhance the general standing of the group in the
international arena (Shnabel, Halabi, & Noor, 2013, p. 871).
The experience of social trauma thus disrupts social life but it also opens a pos-
sibility of social re-bonding through mutual reliance, shared trust, and post-trau-
matic growth (Cypress, 2021, p. 6). One specific form of symbolic capital that can
be developed only from the repeated experience of traumatization and survival is
a shared notion of the group’s superior resilience or even indestructibility. The
basic narrative would be the following: although numerous enemies have tried
to destroy the group, it has managed not only to survive but also to prosper after
22 Stipe Odak
every tragedy. Hence, while the group is a permanent victim, it is also a unique
hero-figure that has a special role in the world’s history.
A concrete instance of this mechanism is a poetic vision of Poland as “Christ
of nations,” popularized by Polish Romantic poems, particularly by Adam
Mickiewicz in his drama Dziady (Forefathers’ Eve). Poland, in analogy to Christ,
is presented as a country “crucified” by different world powers and is ultimately
destined for Resurrection. Similarly, a part of the nationalist propaganda under
Slobodan Milošević’s rule was the claim that Serbs were “heavenly people”
who, through the legacy of their saints and leaders, opted for celestial rather
than earthly belonging and justice. Serbian people’s suffering is then exempli-
fied by the martyrdom of their medieval Tzar Lazar who sacrifices himself at the
Kosovo Polje for the sake of the heavenly kingdom (Anzulovic, 1999, pp. 11–13).
More recently, Mersada Nuruddina Agović (2014) published a text in Bosnian-
Herzegovinian magazine Saff 365 contending that “Bosniaks are chosen people
because, in their genetic code, they do not have a tendency to do evil. Historically
speaking, Bosniaks have never done evil to anyone.” According to the author,
Bosniaks are victims of a “continuous genocide” throughout history, but they
are still selected for survival thanks to God’s will. As a sign of their superiority,
Agović also alleged that exhumed bodies of Bosniak victims do not stink but
have a pleasant smell (Agović, 2014; for a critique, see: Omerbegović, 2020).
Such imaginary amalgams of victims-heroes illustrate the prosocial potentials of
victimhood identity. Although victimized, the group uses their past to strengthen
their mutual bonds, recover their positive self-image, and gain political agency
through their sense of social superiority.
3 Nations used to be dominant frameworks for the

organization of the memory of suffering
When we talk about victimhood and identity, an immediate question arises ‒ who
should be the “we” that carries the memory of suffering? Large tragedies, in most
cases, involve people of different ethnic and national origins from various social
and cultural backgrounds. Therefore, it is not easy to provide a straightforward
answer to this question, either from a practical or a deontological point of view.
For a long time, national identity represented the prevailing frame that ordered
public remembrance. While the concept of collectivity was never synonymous
with a nation, it was the latter that provided both cultural and sentimental tools
for organizations of collective memories. As Misztal (2003, p. 38) argues, the
emergence of nationalist movements in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centu-
ries led to stronger political demands for national memories, which were forces
of political legitimization, symbols of national unity, and tools of consensus-
building. Operating with centralized political power, regulating education and
cultural production, most of the nation-states strengthen the link between collec-
tive memory and national identity. Anderson (2006) finds the most compelling
example for this in cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers. “The public cer-
emonial reverence accorded these monuments precisely because they are either
Construction of victimhood 23
deliberately empty or no one knows who lies inside them,” states Anderson, “has
no true precedents in earlier times. (…) Yet void as these tombs are of identifiable
mortal remains or immortal souls, they are nonetheless saturated with ghostly
national imaginings” (Anderson, 2006, p. 9). In other words, the appearance of
nations allows for the assimilation of the “unknown” or unidentifiable suffering
into national suffering.
In many parts of the world national narratives are losing their central role in
organization of collective memories of suffering. I will turn to the analysis of the
fragmentation later in this chapter, but let us first explore how victimhood and
nationhood relate to one another.
4 Importance of nations in the construction of victimhood

identity is increasingly contested
While nations remain significant centres of identification and framing of victim-
hood, their importance is becoming contested. There are at least five factors that
are important to that process.
First, growing memorialization of non-national tragedies requires integration
of additional frameworks for the articulation of victimhood. Second, the rise of
civil wars in the second half of the twentieth century implies that post-war vic-
timhood will be linked to sub-national identities of the involved groups. Third,
increased admission of guilt by national representatives for state-crimes over
minorities gives more space to those sub-national groups to formulate the speci-
ficity of their suffering. Fourth, changed views on war promote individualization
of victimhood as well as guilt. Consequently, victims stop being mere symbols
of national suffering and see themselves as carriers of “rights” to victimhood.
Finally, intersectional assessment of victimhood along multiple axes of identity
(national, sexual, racial, ethnic, class, etc.) brought attention to multiple factors at
play in the process of victimization. The “nation” is thus becoming an analytically
insufficient framework to articulate the complexities of victimhood. Five reasons
that may explain why nations have gradually lost their importance as master-
frameworks of victimhood identity are:
1. Increased memorialization of non-national tragedies: the first, and argu-

ably most important, reason is the internationalization of the Holocaust
memory. The earliest Holocaust memorials opened very soon after the end
of World War II (Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1947, Theresienstadt in the same
year). In the mid-1950s, we can see the appearance of musicological and
archival institutions in Israel and Europe (Yad Vashem, 1953; Mémorial
de la Shoah in Paris, 1956; The Buchenwald Memorial, 1958). The real
expansion of the Holocaust memorials began in the 1960s (Encyclopedia
Britannica, 2019). Today, Holocaust memorials are present in more than
40 countries all around the world. In this process, we cannot exclude the
role of global media, particularly Anglo-American cinema and TV (Levy &
Sznaider, 2006).
24 Stipe Odak
A similar trend can be observed with monuments and memorials dedicated to
the Armenian Genocide. Until the mid-1960s, they appear only sporadically.
Today, The Armenian National Institute has identified 200 monuments in 32
countries (Armenian National Institute, 2023). Commemorated suffering, there-
fore, is no longer synonymous with the remembrance of the suffering of one’s
own nation. This is not to say that international tragedies replaced national
ones but simply that they add another framework for the construction of tragic
memories.
2. Rise of the civil wars in the second half of the 20th century: from the early
1970s, there was a constant rise in civil wars, peaking in 1991 with 50
intrastate conflicts worldwide (Bosetti & Einsiedel, 2015, p. 3). It logically
follows that the framework of a nation-state will be of limited use in the
construction of memories that took place between sub-national groups. For
the articulation of group suffering and victimhood, other markers of group
belonging (such as ethnicity or religion) take precedence. Sri-Lanka, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, and Northern Ireland are but a few examples in which civil
wars led to the fragmentation of memories along ethnic/religious lines, thus
preventing creation of a unifying narrative of one suffering nation (Bosetti &
Einsiedel, 2015, p. 3).
3. Admission of state-crimes over minorities: global changes in memory cul-
ture and ethics were deeply consequential for the self-understanding of states
and their international presentation. Barkan (2000, p. xxiv) sees the resti-
tution agreement between Western Germany and Israel as “the moment at
which the modern notion of restitution for historical injustices was born.”
The admission of guilt in collaboration with the victimized side led to a new
phase of international relationships between Germany and Israel, but it also
promoted the international rehabilitation of Germany and set a precedent
later emulated by other countries. In the case of Germany, as Giesen (2004)
notices, admission of guilt also contributed to the sharper sense of national
community. The very admission of guilt, importantly, “has also become a
liberal marker of national political stability and strength rather than shame”
(Barkan, 2000, p. xxix).
The fact that the admission of guilt signals positive political developments also
demonstrates a change in the global ethos of nationhood. Nations do not have to
insist on an idealized version of their past. Instead, responsibility for past crimes
may be a sign of political maturity and stability. Obviously, this is not the case in
every region of the world. Barkan correctly observes that “non-democracies are
less inclined to admit guilt because tribal ideologues and fundamentalists view
the world through uncompromising lenses” (Barkan, 2000, p. xxix) but he nev-
ertheless detects “a new threshold of morality in international politics” (Barkan,
2000, p. xviii). In a similar vein, Levy (2010, p. 26) remarks, “the transition from
heroic nation-states to a form of statehood that establishes internal and external
legitimacy through its support for skeptical narratives challenging the kind of
foundational quasi-mythical pasts, which previously served as generation tran-
scending fixed points” (p. 26).
For our discussion, this change is particularly pertinent when it comes to the
admission of state-crimes over minorities, presented either through public apolo-
gies, judicial proceedings, truth commissions, historical commissions, or mate-
rials reparations. Concrete examples are US reparations to interned Japanese
Americans in the late 1980s and Canadian reparations for Aboriginal survivors of
residential schools that started in the late 1990s.
How is this shift pertinent to the fragmentation of national memories? It is rel-
evant because it reduces the top-down pressure coming from political leaders to
create idealized versions of national histories. It opens a discursive space to previ-
ously marginalized communities thus allowing for a stronger bottom-up – instead
of top-down – construction of national memories. More specifically, by admitting
their guilt over a section of their population, states facilitate the development of
sub-national cultural trauma and victimhood.
4. Increasing “individualization” of wars: The twentieth century brought

changes in global sentiments on wars. In his extensive study of wars since
1400, Luard claimed that World War I fundamentally transformed attitudes
towards war and their justification in a negative direction. Obviously, as
Mueller (1991, pp. 1–2) remarks, this was not to suggest that wars were about
to disappear, but that positive views on war either as a necessity or even
as a source of spiritual salvation or hope, became extremely rare. The rise
of victim-focused initiatives allowed for a more nuanced elaboration of war
suffering. Victims are no longer perceived merely as symbols of national suf-
fering but as individual voices that deserve to be heard. Good examples are
the Croatian Memories and Bosnian Memories online projects. Unlike pre-
vious historiographies of World War II, which documented the suffering of
the “Yugoslav people,” these projects focus primarily on individuals and the
complexities of their suffering, which cannot neatly fit into national frame-
works. The best examples for those complexities are the destinies of people in
inter-ethnic marriages and their children, who did not fit into “clear” national
matrices of belonging. As Žunec (2010, p. 145) remarks in the post-scriptum
to a book related to the Croatian Memories project,
[t]he key perspective on the war is no longer given from the position of
the community as a whole and its destiny, but from a standpoint of con-
crete persons. (…) War is reciprocally individualized: the same way that
victims (…) refuse to be nameless numbers, it is required that guilt also
be individualized, to avoid its transference to collectives.
Furthermore, broader acceptance of the idea that individuals and collectives have
inalienable rights has ramifications for the construction of victimhood. Instead of
being linked to the violation of rights, victimhood is increasingly seen as a part of
rights to self-expression. Being a victim, in other words, does not only mean that
26 Stipe Odak
somebody’s rights were violated; there is also a notion that one has a right to be a
victim. As per Confino (2005, p. 51), “[i]n the modern era of ‘rights’ (…) victim-
hood seems to have emerged as a major component of identity as well.” Having
the “right” on victimhood thus became one of the cultural and social needs.
How do these factors relate to fragmentations of memory? While still impor-
tant, narratives of national suffering, based on the opposition between “victors”
and “losers” are now challenged by the individualized perspectives of victims.
Those personal narratives cannot be reduced under a single denominator of
national suffering. Finally, the individualization of crimes makes it possible to
prosecute criminals on all sides of the war, thus questioning simple dichotomies
between entirely-innocent victims and all-guilty perpetrators.
5. Intersectional analyses of victimhood: The very understanding of victimi-

zation, oppression, and victimhood moved from one unifying element to
multiple axes such as gender, race, sexual identity, economic position, and
able-bodiedness. As a result, there are numerous configurations of victim-
hood within the same nation (e.g., along the racial or ethnic lines). A good
example is the cultural trauma of African-American soldiers in World War
I who were both victims of war and victims of racist policies in the United
States (cf. Barbeau & Henri, 1996). Their stories thus do not neatly fit under
a unitary narrative of one and common-to-all national tragedy.
These five factors represent processes that can help us explain the fragmentation
of nations as determining frames of victimhood identity. While the nation and
national victimhood did not become obsolete, they are now just one of many com-
peting frameworks for articulation of “cultural trauma” (cf. Alexander, 2004).
5 Modelling victimhood identity: We, They, Them

As was said before, victimhood implies some shared sense of “we.” Aside from
the sense of “we” the crucial element in the construction of identity are the out-
group members, those who are “not-we.” Both of these elements can have varying
degrees of salience and durability.
Take, for instance, a case of two rival national football clubs ‒ while their fans
can fiercely rally against each other during a football match, they can all support a
national football team. This shows how their senses of belonging to two different
football fan-groups can be combined under one bigger “we.”
Conversely, there are cases where a mutual sense of “we” is hard to achieve.
This is particularly the case when group members and/or their institutions define
themselves by strong juxtaposition to out-group members. The differences
between groups in such cases are perceived as essential and thus unchangeable.
This does not mean, however, that concrete disparities between two thus con-
trasted groups are insurmountable. Two denominations within the same religion,
for instance, might share many commonalities. Yet, their members can have
strong exclusionary views towards each other. Sökefeld (2008) uses the term
“master difference” to describe demarcation lines between Alevis and Sunnis,
both Islamic denominations, but with little sense of commonality. From the out-
side perspective, it might seem that groups in question have much in common
and that their attempts at differentiation are merely expressions of the “narcis-
sism of minor difference” (Ignatieff, 1994, pp. 21–22). For insiders, however,
specific differences can overpower all other and potentially broad elements of
commonality.
Perceptions of the salience of “we” and the nature of the distinctions towards
out-groups will be consequential for the prospects of shared senses of victim-
hood. I suggest two terms to differentiate the out-groups: They and Them. What
differentiates They and Them is the strong objectivization that is connected to
the latter category of Them. With They-groups, it is possible to make associative
links. Even if there is not one common “we” that arises between “us” and “they,”
there is still a sense of shared understanding and compassion. Conversely, Them-
groups are constantly seen as distant and thus beyond circles of solidarity.
Figure 2.1 suggests that the sense of “we” developed around the notion of
victimhood is not fixed, and it can occur on different levels. First-level victim-
hood denotes a victimhood established on the level of an immediate collectivity
(e.g., one’s nation/ethnic group). Conversely, second-level victimhood is created
between two groups that already have their own group-level victimhood (some-
times competitive). Let us take the example of Israelis and Palestinians. Both
groups can have their respective victimhood identities which are incompatible
on the first level. Israelis can consider themselves a victim of Palestinian enmity;
Palestinians can consider themselves victims of Israeli occupation. However, both
groups can see themselves as victims of the international politics in the Middle
East. This common sense of victimhood on the second level can thus be articu-
lated as follows: “we (both Israeli and Palestinians) are victims of international
politics in the Middle East.” Something similar can be said for Bosniaks and
Serbs. While on the first level they have opposed victimhood identities, they can
have a share sense of “we” as victims on the second level stating: “we (both Serbs
and Bosniaks) are victims of the international politics that pushed Yugoslavia into
bloody conflicts in 1990s.”
Figure 2.1 Victimhood identity and we constructions. Source: Author.

28 Stipe Odak
This implies that the second-level victimhood can be developed even between
groups that are generally seen as antagonistic. In such a process, one important
conceptual shift occurs. Namely, the outside group that was previously objectified
as Them switches to They-category. In other words, the outside group is no longer
considered beyond the circle of solidarity and at least some tentative mutual
understanding can take place. In a study conducted by Shnabel et al. (2013),
researchers explored whether the construction of a superordinate identity among
two groups engaged in intractable conflicts (Jews and Palestinians) would influ-
ence mutual attitudes towards forgiveness and reconciliation. This “superordinate
identity” correlates to the “second-level victimhood” terminology of this model.
The study showed that common victim identity, “successfully promoted a process
leading to reduced competitive victimhood and, ultimately, greater forgiveness”
(Shnabel et al., 2013, p. 870). However, the question remains as to what degree
the induced common victimhood identity (“We are both victims of the Middle-
East conflict”) is durable outside the experimental settings.
The “Them” category is outside the bounds of associations. When the outside
group is considered as Them, their suffering is either straightforwardly denied or
only tacitly recognized. Even if recognized, it is perceived as an accusatory form
of victimhood directed against in-group members. Obradovic-Wochnik (2009)
documents the evolution of Serbian attitudes towards Srebrenica in the post-
Milošević period from straightforward denial of events to “interpretative denial”
(Cohen, 2001). In contrast to the initial censorship of information about crimes in
Srebrenica, later periods were marked by struggles of interpreting inconvenient
knowledge that presented a cultural counterpoint and challenged people’s own
experience of suffering. In other words, the problem was “no longer availabil-
ity of knowledge, but the acceptance of that knowledge and its comprehension
within culturally acceptable parameters, and in such a way that they would not
invalidate one’s own experience of ethnic conflicts” (Obradovic-Wochnik, 2009,
p. 71). What Obradovic-Wochnik describes is precisely a transition from Them
to They in perceptions of the out-group. Them are always distant and their suffer-
ing carries merely an accusation to in-group members; it cannot be incorporated
with the image of their own suffering. This is why the reactions in Serbia to the
Srebrenica genocide, in the early years after the tragedy, was a direct denial ‒ the
suffering of Bosniaks was outside the bonds of solidarity, it was seen as a perma-
nent accusation against the Serbs, and incompatible with the notions of their own
victimhood and experiences of genocide in World War II. Over time, especially
among progressive circles in Serbia, this changed. A Serbian NGO, Women in
Black, commemorates the Srebrenica tragedy annually. In July 2020, they made
a live performance in the centre of Belgrade, carrying white scarfs in their hands.
In contrast to public denial of the tragedy, the women saw themselves as “liv-
ing memorials” to Srebrenica victims (Radio Slobodna Evropa, 2020). For the
Serbian chapter of Women in Black, many of whom lost their close ones during
the war, Bosniak victimhood is not an accusatory one; it does not detract anything
from their own sense of victimhood. Women in Black, therefore, can see Bosniaks
as They (on the first level) and develop a shared sense of We on the second level
of victimhood since both groups are victims of war conflicts. For denialist circles
in Serbia, this is not the case. For them, Bosniak suffering remains distant, it is
objectivized as the suffering of Them, always accusatory, and thus an integration
into a shared sense of We is beyond possible. So, the ultimate question in conflict
resolution can be framed as follows: how can we favour the passage from Them to
They and towards the shared sense of We? This example also illustrates well how
the victimhood identity is not unified within one political community. Different
groups within the same society can have very distinct and even opposite construc-
tions of their respective victimhood identities.
It is important to clarify that the absence of direct opposition to the out-group
victimhood does not automatically guarantee mutual understanding or solidarity.
In some cases, the victimhood of They-groups might be perceived as so remote,
vague, or overly sensitive that it does not have major consequences for the in-
group self-understanding. In that sense, we can speak of distant victimhood. Take,
for instance, victims of civil wars in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sri-Lanka ‒
while they may have many similar experiences, geographical and cultural dis-
tance make their exchange difficult. Also, some other groups who were targeted
based on their inborn characteristics might find numerous parallels with the suf-
fering of gay individuals during the Holocaust. Yet, they might refuse to make any
parallels for seeing LGBT+ topics as “too controversial.” An opposite case is the
associative victimhood, where two or more groups recognize their respective suf-
ferings and, starting from that recognition, develop mutual understanding, enrich
their own identity, and potentially build common coalitions – all this while not
negating the specificities of each tragedy.
To conclude, fragmentations of victimhood (and memory, more generally) do
not necessarily signal increased group-isolation or the absence of solidarity. On
the contrary, a fragmentation of memory can be a first step in creating solidarity
with other victim groups ‒ members of a specific subculture first need to under-
stand the specificities of their own tragedy in order to make connections with
other groups. Of course, this evolution can go in the opposite direction where
each group isolate themselves in their own suffering and engage in “competitive
victimhood” (Young & Sullivan, 2016) with other groups. In the section below, I
will present two contrasting examples of victimhood fragmentation.
6 Inclusive and exclusive forms of victimhood fragmentation

On the one hand, the aspiration to “break” from more generalized victimhood
stems from the irreducible specificity of an experience that a group has within its
larger national framework.
The Jewish community of ex-Yugoslavia that was particularly targeted during
World War II represent a prime example. The Yugoslav politics of “brotherhood
and unity” avoided singling out any ethnic or national group in favour of an over-
arching notion of national victimhood that united all “nations and nationalities.”
Ethnic specification of suffering was, therefore, politically controversial. When in
1980, as Byford (2013) reports, the Jewish community asked permission to issue
30 Stipe Odak
a postage stamp commemorating the tragedy of the “Jews in Yugoslavia,” they
were unequivocally refused. In the response of the Coordination Committee for
the Commemoration of Important Events from the History of the Yugoslav Peoples
it was stated that “singling out one constitutive nation or national minority as a
victim of genocide would represent a violation of the legacy of our Revolution
‒ the unity, or rather the equality of all the people of Yugoslavia” (Letter dated
19 January 1981, Archives of the Jewish Historical Museum, k-so 502., Quoted
in: Byford, 2013, pp. 526–527). In this case, the rationales for diverting from one
national narrative were motivated by a desire to commemorate jointly a specific
form of suffering of one national sub-group, without excluding others from that
commemoration (We-They mechanism).
A different process took place in the late 1980s when national tensions in ex-
Yugoslavia were growing higher. The previous “suffering of all” narrative now
represented an obstacle to nationalist politicians and opinion-makers who wanted
to emphasize antagonisms between Yugoslav peoples (Hoepken, 1998, pp. 210–
211; Žunec, 2007). While there was a similar reaction against state-narratives that
suppressed articulation of ethnic sufferings, the aim was different – the fragmenta-
tion of memory here served the purposes of war (We-Them mechanism).
Those two cases of fragmentations are radically different. The Jewish commu-
nity in Yugoslavia wanted to commemorate the particularity of their experience
of World War II. Due to racial laws and the extent of their destruction, it was
still specific and distinct from that of the other national groups. That articulation,
however, does not negate the suffering of others, nor does it compete with them.
It offers a possibility of developing broader associative victimhood.
Fragmentations of victimhood in the second case were much more ambiguous.
Nationalist circles in Croatia and Serbia in the late 1980s were also against strong
state control that prevented “fragmentation” of national memories. However,
unlike the Jewish community, those circles used ethnically based memories of
suffering as a tool in war propaganda.
In short, fragmentation of memory can exist in “benign” forms when a sub-
group attempts to articulate specificities of their own trauma while remain-
ing open to broader coalitions. A different scenario happens when sub-national
groups generate a more and more specific victimhood culture driven by a desire
to control social resources (both material and symbolic), obtain moral superiority,
incite violence, or use past suffering to deflect criticism.
Too strong an emphasis on one’s own group’s suffering without sufficient
views to creating common grounds and solidarity led to a phenomenon that
Martínez (1993) termed “Oppression Olympics.” When seen as a matter of com-
petition and a zero-sum game, victimhood becomes a discipline in which “groups
compete for the mantle of “most oppressed” to gain the attention and political
support of dominant groups as they pursue policy remedies, leaving the over-
all system of stratification unchanged” (Hancock, 2007, p. 68). Rothberg thus
laments “memory wars” in which “memories crowd each other out of the public
sphere” (Rothberg, 2011, p. 523) arguing instead for the need for “multidirec-
tional memories.” Therein, memory is seen “as subject to ongoing negotiation,
cross-referencing, and borrowing; as productive and not privative” (Rothberg,
2009, p. 3). Multidirectional memory does not negate specificities of the group’s
suffering, but it does question straightforward links between identity and mem-
ory as well as the understanding that collective memories compete in a zero-sum
game over scarce resources (Rothberg, 2009, pp. 3–5).
Fragmented memories: an island and an archipelago

Exploring different fragmentations of victimhood identity, I have argued in this
chapter that “fragmentation” is a deeply ambiguous phenomenon. First, we can
argue that it is a natural state of every collective memory since its contents are
always created from different fragments of historical experience. Second, national
frameworks that previously structured collective suffering are becoming con-
tested. Given the number of intrastate conflicts and changes in the perception of
victimhood, war, and human rights, this change is not surprising. “Grand” national
narratives are, by design, insufficient to articulate traumas of sub-national groups.
In addition, their emotional appeal based on heroic views of the common past has
given place to smaller, bottom-up communal memories. Third, the ethical assess-
ment of the fragmentation of memory should be predicated upon the analysis of
the underlying mechanisms that impel it. On the one hand, fragmentation can be
a product of a competition in which one victimhood faces another victimhood
in a struggle for limited resources. Such competition inevitably leads to ideali-
zation of “our suffering” and objectivization of the victimhood of other groups.
Conversely, in cases where the articulation of memory is driven by the desire both
to deepen both self-understanding of the group and acknowledge the suffering of
other groups, we can have fragmentation of memory that nevertheless does not
prevent communication or solidarity. Two similar yet radically different images
describe those situations – one of isolated islands, and another of an archipelago.
In both cases, we are dealing with “fragmented” forms of land surrounded by sea.
An archipelago, however, is defined not only by fragmentation but also unity. It
contains specific islands, but it also places them in larger interdependence where
territory is not seized but shared in a common living space.
Note
1 “L’œuvre se fait comme une robe (…) des pièces, des morceaux sont soumis à des
croisements, des arrangements, des rappels : une robe n’est pas un patchwork, pas plus
que ne l’est La Recherche.”
References
Agović, M. N. (2014). Bošnjaci su elitni narod. Retrieved from http://www.bosnjaci.net/
prilog.php?pid=51363.
Alexander, J. C. (2004). Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma. In J. C. Alexander, R.
Eyerman, B. Giesen, N. J. Smelser, & P. Sztompka (Eds.), Cultural Trauma and
Collective Identity (pp. 1–30). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
32 Stipe Odak
Anderson, B. R. O. (2006). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread
of Nationalism (Revised edition). London, New York: Verso.
Anzulovic, B. (1999). Heavenly Serbia: From Myth to Genocide. New York: New York
University Press.
Armenian National Institute. (2023). Memorials to the Armenian Genocide. Retrieved
from https://www.armenian-genocide.org/memorials.html
Barbeau, A. E., & Henri, F. (1996). The Unknown Soldiers: African-American Troops in
World War I. New York: Da Capo Press.
Barkan, E. (2000). The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating historical Injustices
(First edition). New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
Bar-Tal, D. (2001). Why Does Fear Override Hope in Societies Engulfed by Intractable
Conflict, as It Does in the Israeli Society? Political Psychology, 22(3), 601–627. https://
doi.org/10.1111/0162-895X.00255
Barthes, R. (2002). Oeuvres complètes: Vol. 5. Paris: Seuil.
Blatz, C. W., & Ross, M. (2009). Historical Memories. In P. Boyer & J. V. Wertsch
(Eds.), Memory in Mind and Culture (pp. 223–237). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Bosetti, L., & Einsiedel, S. von (2015). Intrastate-based Armed Conflicts: Overview of
Global and Regional Trends (1990–2013). Retrieved from https://collections.unu.edu/
eserv/UNU:3213/unu_cpr_intrastate_based_armed_conflicts.pdf
Byford, J. (2013). Between Marginalization and Instrumentalization: Holocaust Memory
in Serbia since the Late 1980s. In J.-P. Himka & J. B. Michlic (Eds.), Bringing the Dark
Past to Light: The Reception of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Europe (pp. 516–548).
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Canetti, D., Hirschberger, G., Rapaport, C., Elad-Strenger, J., Ein-Dor, T., Rosenzveig,
S., … Hobfoll, S. E. (2018). Collective Trauma From the Lab to the Real World:
The Effects of the Holocaust on Contemporary Israeli Political Cognitions. Political
Psychology, 39(1), 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12384
Cohen, S. (2001). States of Denial: Knowing about Atrocities and Suffering. Malden, MA:
Blackwell Publishers.
Confino, A. (2005). Remembering the Second World War, 1945–1965: Narratives of
Victimhood and Genocide. Cultural Analysis, 4, 46–75.
Council of Europe (n.d.). Factsheet on the Roma Genocide in Croatia. Retrieved from
https://www.coe.int/en/web/roma-genocide/croatia
Cypress, B. S. (2021). Collective Trauma: An Evolutionary Concept Analysis. Nursing
Forum, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1111/nuf.12550
Encyclopedia Britannica (2019). Holocaust Museum. Retrieved from https://www
.britannica.com/topic/Holocaust-museum#ref288156
Giesen, B. [Bernhard] (2004). Triumph and Trauma. Boulder, CO, London: Paradigm.
Goetz, T. (2008). Poetik des Nachrufs: Zur Kultur der Nekrologie und zur Nachrufszene
auf dem Theater. Wien: Böhlau.
Hancock, A.M. (2007). When Multiplication Doesn’t Equal Quick Addition: Examining
Intersectionality as a Research Paradigm. Perspectives on Politics, 5(1). https://doi.org
/10.1017/S1537592707070065
Harris, F. C. (2006). It Takes a Tragedy to Arouse Them: Collective Memory and
Collective Action during the Civil Rights Movement. Social Movement Studies, 5(1),
19–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742830600621159
Hirschberger, G. (2018). Collective Trauma and the Social Construction of Meaning.
Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 1441. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01441
Hoepken, W. (1998). War, Memory, and Education in a Fragmented Society: The Case
of Yugoslavia. East European Politics & Societies, 13(1), 190–227. https://doi.org/10
.1177/0888325499013001006
Ignatieff, M. (1994). Blood and Belonging: Journeys Into the New Nationalism. New York:
Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.
Jacoby, T. A. (2015). A Theory of Victimhood: Politics, Conflict and the Construction of
Victim-based Identity. Millennium ‒ Journal of International Studies, 43(2), 511–530.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829814550258
Levy, D. (2010). Changing Temporalities and the Internationalization of Memory Cultures.
In Y. Gutman, A. D. Brown, & A. Sodaro (Eds.), Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies.
Memory and the Future: Transnational Politics, Ethics and Society (pp. 15–30).
Houndmills, Basingstoke; Hampshire, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org
/10.1057/9780230292338_2
Levy, D., & Sznaider, N. (2006). The Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age.
Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Liu, J. H. (2005). Social Representations of Events and People in World History Across
12 Cultures. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 36(2), 171–191. https://doi.org/10
.1177/0022022104272900
Liu, J. H., & Hilton, D. J. [Denis J.] (2005). How the Past Weighs on the Present: Social
Representations of History and their Role in Identity Politics. British Journal of Social
Psychology, 44(4), 537–556. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466605X27162
Liu, J. H., & László, J. (2007). A Narrative Theory of History and Identity. In G.
Moloney & I. Walker (Eds.), Social Representations and Identity: Content, Process
and Power (pp. 85–107). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057
/9780230609181_6
Liu, J. H., Paez, D., Hanke, K., Rosa, A., Hilton, D. J., Sibley, C. G., … & Suwa, K. (2012).
Cross-Cultural Dimensions of Meaning in the Evaluation of Events in World History?
Perceptions of Historical Calamities and Progress in Cross-Cultural Data From Thirty
Societies. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 43(2), 251–272. https://doi.org/10
.1177/0022022110390926
Martínez, E. (1993). Beyond Black/White: The Racisms of Our Time. Social Justice, 201/2
(51–52), 22–34. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/29766729
Misztal, B. A. (2003). Theories of Social Remembering. Theorizing Society. Maidenhead,
Berkshire, Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press.
Mueller, J. (1991). Changing Attitudes Towards War: The Impact of the First World
War. British Journal of Political Science, 21(1), 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/
S0007123400006001
Noor, M., Shnabel, N., Halabi, S., & Nadler, A. (2012). When Suffering Begets Suffering:
The Psychology of Competitive Victimhood Between Adversarial Groups in Violent
Conflicts. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16(4), 351–374. https://doi.org
/10.1177/1088868312440048
Obradovic-Wochnik, J. (2009). Knowledge, Acknowledgement and Denial in Serbia’s
Responses to the Srebrenica Massacre. Journal of Contemporary European Studies,
17(1), 61–74. https://doi.org/10.1080/14782800902844719
Omerbegović, D. (2020). Deset ili jedanaest genocida nad Bošnjacima? Retrieved from
http://www.prometej.ba/clanak/povijest/deset-ili-jedanaest-genocida-nad-bosnjacima
-4376
Radio Slobodna Evropa (2020). Žene u crnom: Bele ruže za žrtve Srebrenice. Retrieved
from https://www.slobodnaevropa.org/a/30719911.html
34 Stipe Odak
Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of
Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Rothberg, M. (2011). From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory. Criticism,
53(4), 523–548. Retrieved from www.jstor.org/stable/23133895
Shnabel, N., Halabi, S., & Noor, M. (2013). Overcoming Competitive Victimhood and
Facilitating Forgiveness Through Re-Categorization into a Common Victim or
Perpetrator Identity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 49(5), 867–877.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2013.04.007
Sökefeld, M. (2008). Struggling for Recognition: The Alevi Movement in Germany and in
Transnational Space / Martin Sökefeld. New York: Berghahn Books.
Sullivan, D., Landau, M. J., Branscombe, N. R., & Rothschild, Z. K. (2012). Competitive
Victimhood as a Response to Accusations of Ingroup Harm Doing. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 102(4), 778–795. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026573
Vojak, D. (2014). Romi u doba Holokausta. Radovi Zavoda za Hrvatsku Povijest
Filozofskoga Fakulteta Sveučilišta u Zagrebu, 46(1), 423–427.
Young, I. F., & Sullivan, D. (2016). Competitive Victimhood: A Review of the Theoretical
and Empirical Literature. Current Opinion in Psychology, 11, 30–34. https://doi.org/10
.1016/j.copsyc.2016.04.004
Žunec, O. (2007). Goli život I. Zagreb: Demetra.
Žunec, O. (2010). Maloprodajna cijena rata. In K. Kardov, D. Lalić, & V. Teršelič (Eds.),
Suočavanje s prošlošću u Hrvatskoj: Stavovi i mišljenja aktera i javnosti u poraću (pp.
143–148). Zagreb: Documenta.
3 Gender, memory, and peace:
struggles between homogenization
and fragmentation
Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
Introduction
Gender and memory are intimately related and stand at the centre of struggles
around meaning, representation, and reconstitution of power in the post-conflict
realm. In this chapter, I reflect upon the relationship between gender, memory,
and peace and draw out some key mechanisms and paradoxes in gendered mem-
ory work in societies transitioning from war. The analytical lens of fragmenta-
tion is used to rethink memory politics as a site for the gendered constitution of
power, and it is proposed that vertical fragmentation processes may result in a
more gender-just peace.
I show that gender is a central organizing principle in memory work and
functions as a powerful trope used to weave a uniting, homogenizing collective
narrative for the new times and the new post-war state. Of particular interest is
the construction of the narrative trope of “women-as-victims.” Victimhood is of
increasing importance in memory politics (Odak in this volume) and the chap-
ter discusses how women have become key bearers of suffering. I pay particular
attention to the primary tropes of motherhood and the de/sexualized body. While
such gendered memory tropes are highly effective devices in struggles to create a
homogenized state narrative, they are increasingly (re)negotiated and challenged
in various ways, mainly by agents in civil society and within the arts. The chapter
thus juxtaposes homogenizing, gendered memory politics with such fragmenting
contestations.
The chapter departs from an understanding of gender as a social construct; a
system of meaning organized around “a familiar set of metaphors, dichotomies
and values which structure ways of thinking about other aspects of the world,
including war and security” (Cohn, 2013, p. 11). In 2016, Altinay and Petö made
an important contribution to the literature with an anthology on gender, war and
memory in which they pointed out that there was little work in memory studies
that focuses specifically on the nexus of gender and memory (Altinay & Petö,
2016). Writing this now a few years later, it is clear that the field of research is
still very much under development. This is a matter of some concern as we then
may miss important aspects of how collective memory is constructed, especially
concerning “the traumatic dimension of the political” (Edkins, 2003, p. 9). “Why
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-4
36 Johanna Mannergren Selimovic
are some traumas … perceived as more important than others?” Resende and
Budryte (2016, p. 2) ask. They contend that suffering is always hierarchically
ranked and that gender impacts rankings of suffering. Women’s experiences of
war and violence are often silenced, marginalized, or compartmentalized. At the
same time, such exclusions of women’s experiences are being challenged. In what
follows, I will first place this chapter in dialogue with some of the key writings
so far, and theoretically lay out the connections between gender, memory, and
peace and the homogenizing functions of gendered memory tropes. I identify key
tropes and discuss the paradox that although the representation of women is a
central ingredient in post-war memory politics, it is a highly circumscribed rep-
resentation, leaving out any multidimensional and complex stories of women’s
roles during and after war. With reference to a number of illustrative cases and
instances of commemoration in several societies transitioning from conflict, I dis-
cuss how women are constructed as victims. Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda are
of particular interest as these two countries both went through incredibly violent
conflicts in the 1990s and thus in the 25 years since then, a rich memory politics
have had time to unfold, but other examples are also provided. Two key func-
tions of women in memory politics are in focus: the woman-as-mother and the
woman-as-body. I then exemplify what is on the contrary not remembered regard-
ing women’s multiple roles and agency, and the homogenizing story is demasked
as a phantasy (Jacobs, 2008, see also Björkdahl & Mannergren Selimovic, 2015).
In a second move, I search for counter-memories and acts of commemoration that
challenge the gendered tropes of war and peace and offer an alternative politics of
commemoration that destabilizes fixed notions of femininity and masculinity; a
productive vertical fragmentation of collective memory. The chapter ends by dis-
cussing whether fragmented, multidimensional post-war memorialization is better
situated to contribute to an inclusive, gender-just peace.
Gender in homogenizing memory work

The role of memory politics in peacebuilding is increasingly recognized. How war
is remembered – and forgotten – affects peace in the present. In transitions from
war to peace, the nature of the post-conflict state is being negotiated and there is
AU: The refer- a strong political desire to establish who was a victim and who was a perpetrator
ence (White,
1996 Helms and thereby draw up a new stable identity in which peace can be grounded. As
2012, Jessee in all narrative work, this post-war story-telling strives to make meaning and cre-
2015, Bell and ate coherence in a temporal as well as in a moral sense (White, 1996). It means
O’Rourke 2010,
Zolkos, 2012, that commemoration is always political as stories are told that legitimate and
Yuval-Davis, de-legitimate certain actions and make some experiences more important than
2008) are cited others. Memory work thus demands “the coordination of individual and group
in text but not
provided in list. memories, whose results may appear consensual when they are in fact the product
Please check and of intense contest” (Gillis, 1994, p. 5). “We” are constructed as the good vic-
provide the refer- tims and “they” as the bad perpetrators. A great many actors may be involved
ence list entry or
delete the refer- in this “contest” including national governments, minority groups, international
ence citation. organizations, peacekeepers, and so on. All these diverse actors may embrace a
Gender, memory, and peace 37
number of different and sometimes divergent aims (e.g. Ibreck, 2010; Mannergren
Selimovic, 2013; Molden, 2016; Viebach, 2014).
One of the powerful devices for the work of homogenization is gender. The
discourse of the “nation-state” relies upon stable, gendered categories that are
used in order to enforce coherence and mask divergent experiences that may
threaten the construction of the new nation-state and the homogenized story of the
war (Yuval-Davis, 2008 and Enloe, 1990). Constructions of masculinity and fem-
ininity are discursive drivers that produce easily recognized stories. Historically,
the dominant figure in commemoration is male, often a soldier, central in patri-
otic renderings of noble struggles and sacrifices of lives. Commemoration thus
functions as an instrument for “privileging and perpetuating male narratives”
(McDowell, 2008, p. 338). Over the last couple of decades, the heroic narratives
have been complemented by narratives that on the contrary focus on victimhood
(Buckley-Zistel & Schäfer, 2014). In contemporary wars, there is often no clear
winner; meaning that these tropes gain even further in importance. The figure
of the victim evokes a different set of emotions than the traditional figure of the
hero; it is a positionality that produces power through grief and moral righteous-
ness (Winter, 2006, p. 61). While the hero narrative tends to rely on men and the
male body – the soldier ‒ the victim narrative rather uses women and women’s
bodies. Women emerge as grieving but proud icons of the nation, as pointed out
in a number of fascinating analyses of inter alia the world wars, Israel’s wars,
and socialist revolutionary aesthetics (Sherman, 1996), as well as in analyses of
the representation of women in Holocaust remembrance (see Jacobs, 2008 for
an overview). Jacobs’ analysis of the commemoration of women victims at the
museum/memorial at Auschwitz-Birkenau points out two main tropes: women as
mothers, and women as sexual objects and “embodied subjects of Nazi atrocities”
(Jacobs, 2008, p. 213, see also Jacobs, 2017). In what follows I will further dis-
cuss these two powerful tropes, motherhood and the de/sexualized body, as they
have a lot of leverage in contemporary memory processes.
Mothers and de/sexualized bodies

Regarding the first trope, the woman-as-mother, a poignant example concerns
commemoration of the genocide committed in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in
1995, when more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed by Bosnian Serb
forces. A highly visible presence in commemorative activities and sites linked
to the genocide is the grieving mother and widow. In the post-war realm, the
sons, fathers and husbands are absent, and the women survivors are collectively
represented as victims. The loss experienced by the women and their post-war
trauma is an embossment upon which the sacrifice of their husbands and sons
emerges all the more clearly. In Jacobs’ analysis of the memory politics around
Srebrenica, she points to “tragic motherhood as the primary trope of Srebrenica
remembrance” (Jacobs, 2017, p. 432). Exhibitions at the memorial in Potočari
and at the Srebrenica museum Galerija 11/07/95 in Sarajevo are centred around
the poignant black and white photographs by Tarik Samarah. Nearly all of them
depict rural women who are mourning, standing still, gazing into the distance; car-
riers of male trauma and death. Their mourning presence seems perpetual. Many
of them are praying, and many are dressed in traditional clothes including the
headscarf which in the Bosnian context gives signals of pious, traditional Bosnian
Muslim womanhood ‒ a fitting image of a nation increasingly reimagining itself
as a predominantly ethnonationalist state (Helms, 2012, p. 203).
Further, women in post-war commemoration are also increasingly construed
as victims themselves. In these cases, victimhood tends to become centred around
sexual violence. Narratives around female victims of this specific type of violence
seem particularly poignant with their affective connotations to (ethno)nationalist
narratives of feminizing the nation and metaphors of “raping the nation”. The
female body is here in focus and it is invariably connected to passivity. A fasci-
nating example is the monument raised on the grounds of Rwanda’s parliament
in commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the genocide, which I discuss in
detail elsewhere (Mannergren Selimovic, 2020). Situated on a several-metre-high
socket, several bronze figures loom large above the spectator. They depict a group
of men ‒ soldiers with guns, a soldier holding a baby, a civilian raising his fist
triumphantly as he is supported by soldiers. Behind the group a woman lies on the
ground. There is no telling if she is dead or alive, she is a passive body to mourn,
and her curves under disarrayed clothes signal femininity. The militaristic theme
is expressive, focusing on the heroic depiction of the military defenders; the patri-
otic army excelling in their roles of being defenders and saviours. Most strikingly,
there is a great difference between the two civilians in the monument: the man is
forward-looking with a raised fist and as much an agentive subject as his military
saviours, the woman is the passive body at the feet of the male subjects. She
represents the suffering and silent victim and, thus, the monument engages with a
long tradition of using images of the suffering female body as a reflective surface
of the courage and determination of male agential subjects. The monument tells of
the affective importance of the female body in the intertwined story of victimhood
and military glory. Further, it reflects the Rwandan narrative of gendered violence
around the genocide that contains both widely accepted knowledge that rape was
a violence perpetrated on a massive scale, and at the same time generally upheld
silence and shame surrounding the individual rape victims.
Marginalizations and erasures

The recurrence of these two key tropes in post-war memorialization hints at their
productive capability to bolster governments’ power to govern the post-war state.
The consequences are that women’s experiences of war and conflict often are
marginalized or erased. The examples above show that such narrative renderings
of women miss out on crucial aspects of women’s wartime experiences. One rea-
son is that patriotic and post-war mnemonic work is usually focused on political
and military spaces and processes in the public sphere. This means, as Dubrivny
and Poirot (2017, p. 200) note, women’s “gendered roles as private nurturers and
supporters are exactly what is not typically remembered in monumental forms of
memory.” Further, even when women’s multiple roles and activities go beyond
the private sphere they are still not noticed, cementing the cultural repertoire of
highly circumscribed roles for women in relation to war (Sjoberg & Gentry, 2007).
While men’s sacrifices to defend freedom or topple authoritarian regimes are rec-
ognized publicly, women’s contributions, for example, to independence struggles
are marginalized and often actively suppressed. The militarized masculinity trope
is easily activated and “fits” with stories of nation-building. The construction
of “women-as-victims” also means that their contributions to traditionally male
activities such as carrying arms and fighting are not recognized. Women cannot
be remembered as politically violent, it seems (Sjoberg and Gentry, 2007; Åhäll
and Shepherd, 2012). This has been noted in remembrance practices regarding
various violent conflicts, such as the anti-apartheid struggles in South Africa, the
liberation struggles in Eritrea, guerilla fighting in Nepal, and so on.
According to the same logic, the woman perpetrator is beyond our memory
frames. They are not understood as rational actors but as “monsters” (Sjoberg and
Gentry, 2007). A case in point is the former Rwandan Minister of Women and
Family Affairs Pauline Nyiramasuhuko who was the first woman convicted in an
international court for crimes against humanity including the ordering of multiple
rapes (ICTR, 2011). The multiple perpetrator agency of women in the Rwandan
genocide is often played down and excluded from the dominant narrative (Brown,
2014b) yet many women participated in the genocide with “enthusiasm” (Maier,
2012–2013). About 2000 of the 130,000 arrested for the genocide were women
(Jessee, 2015, p. 60); they were part of the core planning group and were members
of the militias (Sharlach, 1999, p. 392). Paradoxically neither are women work-
ing for peace recognized as political actors but tend to be understood as apolitical
“mothers” with an innate or even instinctive capacity for nurturing peace. The
ambitious female agent, a transformer towards good – or bad ‒ is erased in most
memory politics after war (e.g., Mageza-Barthel, 2015, p. 94).
When it comes to women-as-victims, the fact that conflict-related sexual vio-
lence has been recognized as a war crime is no doubt an accomplishment; a great
improvement from the silence that engulfed these war crimes up until the end
of the 20th century (Féron in this volume.). In the 1990s, as former Yugoslavia
imploded and genocide in Rwanda unfolded, conflict-related sexual violence was
made visible. Evidence gathered showed the incredibly high prevalence of rape
and other forms of sexual violence. However, what we can start to notice now
is the repetitive attachment of sexual violence to the bodies of women, meaning
that this violence is becoming the defining or “only significant harm that women
experience in conflict” (Mibenge, 2013, p. 7). The passive victim of violence thus
obscures the number of other harms that women suffer. It brings to mind the sharp
comment by Nadia Murad, survivor of the IS genocide against Yazidis in 2014.
She was kept hostage by IS, tortured and raped for several months. In 2018 she
received Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless campaigning in support of Yazidi vic-
tims. She criticizes the global discourse that swiftly used the suffering of women
at the hands of the ISIS to bolster a simplistic story around the woman-as-body
victim through the widely circulated representation of these women solely as “sex
slaves.” The homogenizing gendered trope of the sexualized victim is challenged
by Murad’s remembering of multiple harms:
“Sometimes it can feel like all that anyone is interested in when it comes to
the genocide is the sexual abuse of Yazidi girls, and they want a story of a
fight. I want to talk about everything – the murder of my brothers, the disap-
pearance of my mother, the brainwashing of the boys – not just the rape.”
(Murad, 2017, p. 162)
Murad puts the sexual abuse into a context of multilayered violence and thus uses
her narrative agency to add complexity to the story of the IS violence.
Challenges to homogenizing narratives

No doubt silences and marginalizations undermine work to construct a solid foun-
dation or inclusive narrative in the post-conflict period. When commemoration in
transitions from war to peace produces simplistic memory tropes in which indi-
vidual experiences are ignored or reduced to narrow representations, it follows
that political projects of homogenization and nation-building shut out memo-
ries that may be perceived as destabilizing. Nevertheless, while core gendered
memory tropes appeal to phantasies of essentialist femininity and masculinity,
they are in fact not unchallenged. Memory politics is in many aspects becoming
more diverse and fluid. Using the analytical lens of fragmentation, we can pay
attention to a number of contestations “from below” against homogenizing moves
in post-conflict societies that seek to construct peace and (re)build societies on
patriarchal foundational myths. Understanding fragmentation as a process that
works vertically through contending memory discourses that are produced locally
below or beyond the state, with the capacity to travel transnationally (Bazin et al.
in this volume), I will now bring forth examples of fragmenting mnemonic work,
mainly in the realms of civil society and the arts, that open up space for multi-
ple subject positions and plural narratives. It is possible to acknowledge multiple
harms suffered by women, and at the same time acknowledge them as agents with
multiple roles. One can detect a number of renegotiations of subjectivities that
challenge key homogenizing tropes of woman-as-mother and woman-as-body.
It is clear that when we critically look at who is asking questions about the past,
and how these questions are constructed, we can see that the narrative landscape
is changing.
These renegotiations can happen a long time after the atrocious event itself,
showing that we also need to pay attention to the longue durée of fragmentation.
Seemingly homogenized memories can be challenged after long stretches of time.
One example is the monument “Block of Women” in Berlin, which was installed
in 1995, belatedly celebrating the hundreds of German women who gathered dur-
ing World War II to successfully demand the release of their imprisoned (Jewish)
husbands. Another example of this work concerns the global campaign for recog-
nition of Comfort Women who were subject to systematic rape by the Japanese
military during World War II. Women activist organizations have lobbied for a
wide recognition of the comfort women’s suffering. Kimura (2008) highlights
how the victims after decades of silence took control over their own memories
and told their multiple stories, thereby challenging the Japanese state narrative
and disrupting deeply ingrained discourses of shame. Advocacy groups in both
Korea and Japan have participated in fundraising for the creation of museums and
the collection of artefacts, often having to negotiate stark or partial opposition
from their governments and other institutional bodies. Their advocacy has led to
the creation of the Women’s Active Museum on War and Peace in Tokyo and the
War and Women’s Human Rights Museum in Seoul (Ahn, 2020, p. 167).
A transnational phenomenon is the Statue for Peace that commemorates the
Comfort Women. The statue has been reproduced in different sizes and placed at a
number of sites in several countries. It depicts a young woman/girl seated sedately
on a bench. Just as the Rwandan woman in the monument at the Parliament
Square, this body is without marks, and it is seemingly without agency. Yet its
silent presence is more unsettling; there is a compelling tension between the pas-
sive and in many ways non-threatening young girl that shows up in unexpected
places, and her persistent, agential function. She is a witness to the long silence
about these crimes, so long so that the young girls who were taken as slaves
grew into old women before they could tell their stories and gain recognition
(Vartabedian, 2017, p. 256).
Nevertheless, despite these inroads and disturbances, it is safe to say that there
is still little space for renderings of women victims that do not fit with precon-
ceived notions of femininity. Too often, it is only the “perfect” or legitimate
female victim that is deemed worthy of recognition ‒ what Mibenge (2013) calls
the “price of inclusion,” meaning that if women are to be mourned and acknowl-
edged, their experiences and narratives have to be fitted into culturally accepted
frames.
In Bosnia-Herzegovina, there are no monuments that commemorate women
victims specifically. Narratives of sexual violence are seldom referred to in pub-
lic discourse. Nevertheless, women’s organizations organize manifestations and
petitions that regularly disturb the memoryscape. Indeed, an interesting topic con-
cerns how the tropes of motherhood in fact can be used by women themselves
as a powerful platform for change. For example, the civil society organization
Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves has reached many of its goals – such
as the creation of a memorial site at Potočari – through their strong moral narra-
tive around being the guardians of the memory of their male relatives. Their often
publicly displayed anger at the passivity of the international community and their
refusal to “move on” is an expression of agency that in itself disturbs the public
imagery of them as silently grieving. They follow in the footsteps of Argentinian
women, who have been fighting for decades to find out what happened to their
children and grandchildren. Civil society groups such as the Madres de Plaza de
Mayo and the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo have ceaselessly searched for truth about
the thousands of oppositionals who were tortured and killed by the military junta
that ruled from 1976 to 1983. They have gathered weekly in the central square of
Buenos Aires, demanding to know what happened to their children and grandchil-
dren who were appropriated by the military.
Art as a site for contestations

I now turn to the arts as a site for fragmenting contestations of circumscribed,
gendered collective memory. The realm of art is gaining increasing recognition
as a site for memory politics and certainly for challenges that make us see some
of the gendered assumptions engrained in post-war memory work. Art thus holds
a counter-memorial function. Bringing this paper to a close, I want to reflect
upon an artwork that has become widely known among the Bosnian public as
well as internationally, and in my opinion, is one of the most interesting com-
memorative interventions regarding gender and memory in relation to the war
in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It is a picture by the Bosnian artist Šejla Kamerić, based
upon graffiti that was found in one of the army barracks that housed the Dutch
UN peacekeepers near Srebrenica during the genocide that took place under their
auspices as part of the UN Protection Force (UNPROFOR). The graffiti reads
(sic): “No Teeth …? A mustache …? Smell like shit …? Bosnian girl!” Kamerić
artwork consists of a photo of herself, overlaid with the graffiti.
The image was distributed on billboards in the cityscape of the Bosnian capi-
tal Sarajevo and as magazine ads in 2003 (Helms, 2012). Since then the image
has been in circulation worldwide and hangs today in the Srebrenica museum in
Sarajevo, Galerija 11/07/95. In my mind, this image brings to the fore multifaceted
aspects of the memory of the war and about the Srebrenica genocide in particular.
Compared to other memory products discussed in this chapter, it speaks more
directly about violence directed against women’s bodies, especially in relation to
the other images of women in the museum, as discussed above. The abuse in this
particular instance is represented by the violent gaze that belongs to an interna-
tional peacekeeper. The artwork disturbs and fragments ideas about homogenized
collective memory; it questions who is considered a perpetrator, a victim, or a
helper. The frank presence of Kamerić in the image and her choice to use her own
individual body as part of the artwork makes visible the collectivizing epithet of
“Bosnian girl.” The work is an angry agential act that turns the victim into the
subject, challenging global understandings of the male peacekeeper as a saviour
and unmasking the gendered dynamics of the failed international intervention.
Concluding discussion: gendered memory production

through the lens of fragmentation
In this chapter, I have sought to make visible the tension between homogenization
and fragmentation tendencies in gendered post-conflict memory politics. I have
reflected upon how post-war memory discourses use gendered tropes as a produc-
tive way of upholding power and constructing a collective memory of the conflict
and how women’s experiences of war, as victims and agents, are homogenized
in order to be productive for the post-war state’s capability of governing. The
silencing and distortion of women’s experiences indicate that the idea of a foun-
dational, collective memory is a phantasy, given that so much is left out (Jacobs,
2008, p. 221). However, a gendered reading that critically scrutinizes the discur-
sive parameters within which the presence and participation of women is scripted,
can also identify the challenges and contestations that disturb these parameters.
A productive practice in order to access dynamics of power is to keep ask-
ing the key question posed by gender scholar Cynthia Enloe (2017, p. 62):
“Where are the women?” It is a question that has become shorthand for correcting
biased research that ignores, marginalizes or misunderstands women’s experi-
ences. Other subject positions that diverge from homogenizing narratives need
also to be acknowledged and woven into the fabric of peace. Intersectionalist and
decolonial scholarship have shown that there are many other questions that also
beg answers, and certainly there is a lot to explore when it comes to gender in
relation to, for example, silence around male rape victims, historical legacies of
colonialism, women perpetrators, and so on. In line with the idea of fragmenta-
tion as constitutive of power, productive questions to keep on asking in relation to
hegemonic, gendered memory politics are: Who is it that cannot hear, who is not
heard, who has to listen, who may want to keep silences, and where and by whom
are counter-discourses formed (Altinay and Petö, 2016, pp. 12–17).
These questions address the core of any analysis of memory politics in post-
conflict societies: how war is remembered has consequences for peace. Gendered
remembering not only affects how we understand the past but also affects the
present. Patriotic mnemonic practices that construct women as passive symbols
of suffering contribute to an ongoing exclusion of women from the peace process
and easily connects into patriarchal memory politics of (ethno)nationalism. Any
long-term political and social transformation is dependent upon breaking up the
excluding, discursive coupling of woman, and the passive victim. So far though,
commemoration tends to produce a politics of paradoxes: although the representa-
tion of women is a central ingredient in an affective memory politics, it is a highly
circumscribed representation, leaving out any multidimensional and complex sto-
ries of women’s roles during and after war. When women are in fact recognized as
victims, representations tend to focus on them as passive. Their agency is erased
and replaced with imaginations of a passive object, to be mourned in a de-individ-
ualized manner. Woman-as-mother and woman-as-body are two key tropes that
have been discussed in the chapter. An iconization of women may thus function
as a conservative rather than transformative force (Husanovic, 2015).
Thinking about this dynamic in relation to peace, I suggest that the margin-
alization of women’s experiences comes with the risk of the marginalization of
women’s rights. It is a well-established fact that women’s agency (that may expand
during times of upheaval), decreases as peace is negotiated (Bell & O’Rourke,
2010; Björkdahl and Mannergren Selimovic, 2015; Yuval-Davis, 2008, p. 171).
It comes as no surprise that many women feel that their contributions to end-
ing war and building peace are made invisible through commemoration practices
(McDowell, 2008, see also Brown, 2014a). By analyzing how women’s expe-
riences are memorialized as part of homogenizing national narratives, we can
understand more deeply what roles for women are deemed acceptable, encour-
aged, or discouraged in the post-war society.
How and to what extent is it possible for women agents to move beyond nar-
rowly constructed subject positions of being either sexualized bodies or grieving
mothers? This chapter has begun to search for an answer to this question by ana-
lyzing the emergence of counter-memorialization in national public spheres that
challenges core gender tropes, reading them as signs of a fragmentation process.
Civil society activism as well as the arts are two realms that may contribute to a
productive fragmentation of monolithic memory. It is a fragmentation process
that is intimately linked to rationales for peace that do not necessarily strive for
consensus. Ultimately, the fragmenting presence of much more messy and plural-
istic memories of women’s experiences and roles in the conflict may contribute to
a more gender-just post-conflict state (Björkdahl & Mannergren Selimovic, 2015;
Buckley-Zistel & Zolkos, 2012).
Vertical fragmentation of gendered memory also has important transnational
dimensions. As the examples from around the globe indicate, the work by civil
society activists and artists is often transnational through links between local pro-
cesses and global advocacy around norms regarding gender equality and women’s
participation in peace processes. The statue of the Comfort Woman is reproduced
at multiple sites, and the portrait by Šejla Kamerić has become world famous
and an inspiration for young feminists around the world. They are thus examples
of how memory narratives are produced locally and disseminated transnation-
ally (Björkdahl & Kappler, 2019). They impact transnational memory discourses
which then travel back to these and other local spaces and are used in order to
question hegemonic narratives of the past.
It is beyond the scope of this chapter to conduct a thorough analysis of how the
local and transnational dimensions of vertical fragmentation processes interact in
ways that may both bolster and impede transformation towards gender-just peace.
My aim here has been to take a first but crucial step in this process, demonstrating
that the concept of vertical fragmentation is a useful analytical lens when rethinking
memory politics as a site for the gendered constitution of power. Contestations from
below or beyond the nation-state, of homogenizing, gendered memory tropes that
circumscribe women’s agency, open up for gender-just peace. In this chapter verti-
cal fragmentation thus emerges as a process that holds promises of transformation.
References
Åhäll, L., & Shepherd, L.J. (Eds.). (2012). Gender, Agency and Political Violence.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Ahn, Y. (2020).Whose Comfort?: Body, Sexuality And Identity Of Korean ‘Comfort
Women’. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing.
Altinay, A.G., & Petö, A. (2016). Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories, Feminist
Conversations on War, Genocide and Political Violence. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bell, C. and O’Rourke, C. (2010). Peace agreements or ‘pieces of paper’? The impact of
UNSC Resolution 1325 on peace processes and their agreements. International and
Comparative Law Quarterly, 59(4), 941–980.
Björkdahl, A, & Mannergren Selimovic, J. (2015). Gendering Agency in
Transitional Justice. Security Dialogue, 46(2), 165–182. https://doi.org/10.1177
/0967010614552547
Björkdahl, A., & Kappler, S. (2019). The Creation of Transnational Memory Spaces:
Professionalization and Commercialization. International Journal of Politics, Culture,
and Society. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-019-09334-7
Brown, K. (2014a). Manicured Nails but Shackled Hands? The Representation of Women
in Northern Ireland’s Post-conflict Memory. In Buckley-Zistel, S. & Schäfer, S. (Eds.),
Memorials in Times of Transition (pp. 149–170). Cambridge; Antwerp; Portland, OR:
Intersentia.
Brown, S.E. (2014b). Female Perpetrators of the Rwandan Genocide. International
Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(3), 448–469.
Buckley-Zistel, S. and Zolkos, M. (2012). Introduction: Gender in Transitional Justice, in
S. Buckley-Zistel and R. Stanley (Eds.) Gender and Transitional Justice (pp. 1–33).
Basingstoke Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan.
Buckley-Zistel, S., & Schäfer, S. (Eds.). (2014) Memorial in Times of Transition.
Cambridge; Antwerp; Portland, OR: Intersentia.
Burnet, J.E. (2012). Genocide Lives in Us: Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda.
Madison, WI: Wisconsin University Press.
Cohn, C. (Ed.). (2013). Women and Wars. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Dubriwny, T.N., & Poirot, K. (2017). Gender and Public Memory. Southern Communication
Journal, 82(4), 199–202. https://doi.org/10.1080/1041794X.2017.1332448
Enloe, C. (1990). Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International
Politics. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Enloe, C. (2017). The Big Push. Exposing and Challenging the Persistence of Patriarchy.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Edkins, J. (2003). Trauma and The Memory of Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Gillis, J. R. (1994). Memory and Identity: The History of a Relationship. In J.R. Gillis
(Ed.), Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity (pp. 3–24). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Helms, E. (2008). ‘Bosnian Girl. Nationalism and Innocence through Images of Women’.
In D. Suber & S. Karamanic (Eds.), Retracing Images. Visual Cultures after Yugoslavia.
Leiden: Brill.
Husanović, J. (2015). Economies of Affect and Traumatic Knowledge: Lessons on
Violence, Witnessing and Resistance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Ethnicity Studies,
2, 19–35.
Ibreck, R. (2010). The Politics of Mourning: Survivor Contributions to Memorials in Post-
genocide Rwanda. Memory Studies, 3(4), 330–343.
ICTR. (2011). Prosecutor v Nyiramasuhuko et al. No.ICTR-98-42-T, TC III Judgment and
Sentence, 24 June. Available at: http://unictr.unmict.org/en/cases/ictr-98-42
Jacobs, J. 2017. The Memorial at Srebrenica: Gender and the Social Meanings of Collective
Memory in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Memory Studies, 10(4), 423–439.
Jacobs, J. (2008). Gender and Collective Memory: Women and Representation at
Auschwitz. Memory Studies, 1(2), 211–225.
Jessee, E. (2015). Rwandan Women no More: Female Génocidaires in the Aftermath of the
1994 Rwandan Genocide. Conflict and Society 2, 60–80.
Kimura, M. (2008). Narrative as a Site of Subject Construction. The “Comfort Women”
debate. Feminist Theory, 9(1), 5–24.
Lundqvist, M. (2019). Post-war Memorialization as Everyday Peace? Exploring Everyday
(Dis) engagements with the Maoist Martyr’s Gate of Beni Bazaar in Nepal. Conflict,
Security & Development, 19(5), 475–496.
Mageza-Barthel, R. (2015). Mobilizing Transnational Gender Politics in Post-genocide
Rwanda. Farnham: Ashgate.
Maier, D. J. (2012–2013). Women Leaders in the Rwandan Genocide: When Women
Choose to Kill. Universitas: the University of Northern Iowa Journal of Research,
Scholarship, and Creative Memory Studies. Available at: https://www.uni.edu/
universitas/article/women-leaders-rwandan-genocide-when-women-choose-kill
Mannergren Selimovic, J. (2013). Making Peace, Making Memory: Peacebuilding and
Politics of Remembrance at Memorials of Mass Atrocities. Peacebuilding, 1(3), 334–348.
Mannergren Selimovic, J. (2020). Gender, Narrative, Affect: Top-down Politics of
Commemoration in Post-genocide Rwanda. Memory Studies, 13(2), 131–145.
McDowell, S. (2008). Commemorating Dead ‘Men’: Gendering the Past and Present
in Post-conflict Northern Ireland. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist
Geography, 15(4), 335–354.
Mibenge, C.S. (2013). Sex and International Tribunals: The Erasure of Gender from the
War Narrative. Philadelphia, PA: University of Philadelphia Press.
Molden, B. (2016). Resistant Pasts Versus Mnemonic Hegemony: On the Power Relations
of Collective Memory. Memory Studies, 9(12), 125–142.
Murad, N. (2017). The Last Girl. My story of Captivity, and my Fight against the Islamic
State. New York: Tim Duggan House.
Newbury, C., & Baldwin, H. (July, 2000). Aftermath: Women in Postgenocide Rwanda.
Working Paper no. 303. Washington, DC: Center for Development Information and
Evaluation and U.S. Agency for International Development.
Resende, W., & Budryte, D. (2 December 2016). Using Gender Lenses to Decolonize
Trauma and Memory in IR. E- International Relations. Retrieved from https://www.e-ir
.info/2016/02/12/using-gender-lenses-to-decolonize-trauma-and-memory-in-ir/
Sharlach, L. (1999). Gender and Genocide in Rwanda: Women as Agents and Objects of
Genocide. Journal of Genocide Research, 1(3), 387–399.
Sherman, D. J. (1996). Monuments, Mourning and Masculinity in France after World War
I. Gender & History, 8(1), 83–107.
Sjoberg, L., & Gentry, C.E. (2007). Mothers, Monsters, Whores: Women’s Violence in
Global Politics. London: Zed Books.
Vartabedian, S. (2017). No Cause for Comfort Here: False Witnesses to “Peace”. Southern
Communication Journal, 82(4), 250–262. DOI: 10.1080/1041794X.2017.1332092
Viebach, J. (2014). Alétheia and the Making of the World: Inner and Outer Dimensions
of Memorials in Rwanda. In Buckley-Zistel, S. &., S. (Eds.), Memorials in Times of
Transition (pp. 68–94). Cambridge; Antwerp; Portland, OR: Intersentia.
White, H. (1990). The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Williamson, C. (2014). Breaking the Silence: Rwandan Women Survivors Give Testimony
and Find a Voice, 27 April. E-IR. Available at: http://www.e-ir.info/2014/04/27/
breaking-the-silence-rwandan-women-survivors-give-testimony-and-find-a-voice/
Winter, J. (2006). Notes on the Memory Boom: War Remembrance and the Uses of the Past.
In Bell, D., (Ed.), Memory, Trauma and World Politics: Reflections on the Relationship
between the past and the Present (pp. 54–72). Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan.
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997). Gender & Nation. London: SAGE.
Yuval-Davis, N. (2008). Gender & Nation. London: SAGE.
4 Conflict memories and sexual
and gender-based violence
From silencing to standardization
Élise Féron
Introduction
What kinds of violence are we likely to publicly remember and commemorate
after a conflict? Why do national authorities in post-conflict settings seemingly
tend to focus on some types of conflict-related violence, while silencing others?
The purpose of this contribution is to reflect on how institutionalized national
memories overlook, expunge, or standardize the experience of victims of sexual
and gender-based violence (SGBV) during conflicts, thereby leading to a wide
range of processes of memory fragmentation. This contribution is based on vari-
ous examples, illustrating different configurations and intensities in the use of
wartime sexual violence, from the Great Lakes region in Africa, to Northern
Ireland and Bosnia Herzegovina. This chapter primarily explores the memori-
alization of conflict-related SGBV, including for instance wartime rapes, sexual
torture, or forced enrolment. As we will see, memorialization initiatives related
to conflict-related SGBV are rare in post-conflict zones, sometimes in clear con-
tradiction with official and/or international discourses that increasingly mention
these types of violence, such as peace agreements which recognize sexual vio-
lence against women during conflicts (see for instance True and Riveros-Morales,
2019). It is on the basis of this tension between different public discourses about
violence committed during conflicts that this contribution examines, among other
things, how memories of SGBV are constructed in post-conflict societies, what
role official war memorials and discourses play in this memorialization, which
SGBV are memorialized or on the contrary overlooked, and what tensions this
memorialization work generates.
The concept of memorialization has been defined by De Yeaza and Fox (2013,
p. 347) as the “various efforts to keep the memory of the victims alive through
the creation of museums, memorials, and other symbolic initiatives such as the
renaming of public spaces.” While the objective of remembering violence perpe-
trated during conflicts and wars has become rather consensual, at least in western
countries, what should be included or not in these memorialization initiatives has
long been a factor of contestation. These debates can be more generally related
to a resistance to normalized ways of narrating history, a trend which has already
been well explored (see for instance Bhabha, 1990; Chatterjee, 1993, among
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-5
48 Élise Féron
others). Conflicting views on, and interpretations of, the past lead to processes of
both vertical and horizontal fragmentation of collective memories, whereby “hor-
izontal fragmentation” is characterized by the presence of conflicting discourses
on memory within the same public sphere, whereas “vertical fragmentation” per-
tains to the production of diverging discourses by actors located both beyond and
below the central state.
In order to understand these tensions and phenomena of fragmentation in
the case of conflict-related SGBV, the analysis notably builds on the notions
of “minority histories” and of “subordinated” or “subaltern pasts” developed
by Chakrabarty (1998). Chakrabarty explains that minority histories “refer to
all those pasts on whose behalf democratically-minded historians have fought
the exclusions and omissions of mainstream narratives of the nation” (1998, p.
15). These minority histories are often built in opposition to national narratives
about the past, and highlight the fact that official histories often silence and/or
ignore what happened to people who belong to national minorities. Some of these
minority histories, Chakrabarty argues, can eventually be integrated into national
narratives if they are adequately articulated and told, sometimes after a long strug-
gle to have them recognized. By contrast, subaltern pasts “resist historicization”
because they are irreconcilable with official memories, and inherently contradict
and challenge hegemonic ways of narrating history. They therefore remain mar-
ginalized (Chakrabarty, 1998, p. 18).
As we will see, multiple minority and subaltern histories appear through memo-
rialization work relating to wartime SGBV. These histories sometimes directly
contradict the hierarchies of victims and perpetrators appearing in official memo-
rialization discourses. In order to understand this fragmentation, and to unpack
the way these hierarchies are built and/or contested, the analysis relies upon an
intersectional analysis that looks not just at the gender of the victims, and also
at their assumed ethnic or religious belonging, their sexual orientation, or their
socio-economic status, among other factors. This chapter starts with a first section
analyzing how most memories of conflict-related SGBV tend to be silenced at the
national level, but commemorated at the local and international levels, leading to
a process of vertical fragmentation. In the second section, I examine how differ-
ent actors develop their own commemoration initiatives targeting various types
of SGBV and/or of victims, embodying complementary horizontal fragmentation
patterns. The last section focuses on tensions and resistances generated by SGBV
memorialization, sometimes originating from survivors themselves, and/or from
the broader societies to which they belong.
Patterns of silencing and vertical fragmentation of

SGBV memories
The issue of SGBV perpetrated during conflicts and wars has now been well
explored (see, among many others, Davis and True, 2015; Krause, 2015; Manjoo
and McRaith, 2011). It has given birth to countless publications and political ini-
tiatives, often initiated or supported by international organizations, governmental
Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence 49
or not, but also by civil society organizations in the concerned countries. Few peo-
ple today dispute the fact that conflicts and wars are characterized by significant
levels of SGBV. According to the UNHCR,
sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) refers to “any act that is perpe-
trated against a person’s will and is based on gender norms and unequal
power relationships. It encompasses threats of violence and coercion. It can
be physical, emotional, psychological, or sexual in nature, and can take the
form of a denial of resources or access to services. It inflicts harm on women,
girls, men and boys.”1
SGBV perpetrated during conflicts is notably characterized on the one hand by the
greater likelihood of men and boys being forcefully enrolled, imprisoned, killed,
injured, and exposed to sexual torture (Féron, 2018), and on the other hand by the
overexposure of women to sexual violence, including rape, forced marriages, and
forced abortions (see for instance Leatherman, 2011). While the memorialization
of male deaths and injuries is hardly a subject of controversy – as evidenced by the
countless national or local monuments celebrating fallen soldiers, almost always
represented as men – the memorialization of other types of SGBV in wartime is
much less consensual, as we will explore in this contribution (see also Mannergren,
this volume). In addition, the fact that wartime sexual violence usually occurs along-
side other types of conflict-related violence means that SGBV survivors belong at
the same time to the larger category of victims of war. How is this “double” victim
identity memorialized, if at all, by both survivors and national institutions?
In order to understand the context in which the potential memorialization of
SGBV can take place, it is important to remember that for many survivors of
such violence it is impossible or at the very least extremely difficult to talk about
what happened, especially when the violence they experienced targeted the core
of their gender identity, such as in the case of sexual violence. Since memoriali-
zation work entails a certain level of publicity, it is not necessarily welcomed by
survivors. For them, the risk of stigmatization, both socially and by their relatives,
the weight of trauma, and possibly the risk of revenge on the part of those respon-
sible for the violence, are daunting (see for instance Sharratt, 2013; Féron, 2015).
Survivors often only use metaphors or innuendos to speak about their experi-
ence of sexual violence. For instance, the female combatants in the Great Lakes
region I spoke with usually described rape, forced marriages, forced pregnancies,
or abortions as a kind of “corollary” to their involvement. They preferred to nar-
rate their military deeds, the difficulties they faced or the horrors they witnessed,
rather than the episodes of SGBV they have been victims of. Likewise, male sur-
vivors of sexual violence, whether combatants or civilians, are very reluctant to
speak about the SGBV they experienced, at least publicly (Féron, 2018). Male
and female survivors’ wish to silence some of their experiences of SGBV means
that they are not likely to initiate much memorialization work. This also explains
why the individual or collective mobilization of SGBV victims is often slow to
emerge.
50 Élise Féron
Interestingly, survivors’ reluctance to memorialize SGBV is often mirrored at
the national level. Nationally promoted memories of conflicts indeed tend to focus
on their political and military aspects, and reject gender-based and especially
sexual violence as apolitical, trivial, arbitrary, or even as belonging to the crimi-
nal realm. Admittedly there are cases, like in Bosnia Herzegovina or in Rwanda,
where national institutions foreground some SGBV experiences in their memori-
alization work. However, these constitute the exception rather than the rule and,
as we will see in the next section, even in these cases only very specific categories
of SGBV, and of victims, are talked about. Aside from these exceptions, official
memories seem to pay little attention to gender, and to the specific violence that
heterosexual men and women, or members of sexual minorities, may have experi-
enced. The focus is put on the suffering of the nation, on its sacrifice, its courage
and heroism. But most official memories have never really been “a-gendered.” In
fact, as McDowell (2008, p. 337) explains, places of remembrance tend to focus
on stereotypical gender roles (e.g., men represented as combatants carrying weap-
ons, sometimes wounded, while women are portrayed in supporting roles, or cry-
ing). These representations aim at visually connecting individuals to the nation,
and to the roles they officially played during the conflict. Therefore, it is not so
much that the masculine is the default gender of many conflict memorializations,
since women in typically “feminine” poses are often represented too, but rather
that the visions of masculinity and femininity that they convey do not capture the
diversity of gendered experiences during conflicts (Mannergren, this volume). As
a result, institutional memories tend to construct conflict narratives that are built
on normative gender roles, and that silence certain forms of SGBV which are seen
as shaming the nation, such as sexual violence.
However, cases like those of Burundi or of the DRC demonstrate that there
can be strong discrepancies between memories of the conflict pushed forward on
the one hand by local NGOs and by international actors, and on the other hand by
national actors, in particular by national governments. This vertical fragmenta-
tion of memories is particularly obvious when it comes to SGBV. For instance,
while SGBV figures prominently in international actors’ and researchers’ rep-
resentations of conflicts in the Great Lakes region, but also in local women’s
organizations’ discourses, it is almost never the case at the national level. In
the DRC in particular, there is a stark contrast between the international image
of “rape capital of the world” and the little attention paid to these themes in
national commemorations. The discrepancy is less obvious in Rwanda where
female survivors of SGBV are sometimes invited to take part in national com-
memorations of the genocide, but even there, it seems that SGBV memories fit
only awkwardly to the broader memorialization frame. As Yeaza and Fox (2013,
p. 366) remark, the types of memorialization favored in countries like Uganda
or Rwanda, such as physical memorials or guided tours, are not well suited for
commemorating SGBV.
In parallel, international tribunals such as the ICTY, ICTR, and ICC play a
central role in creating “counter-memories” focusing on sexual violence (Henry,
2011). The role played by international tribunals is doubly important, not only
to shed light on cases of SGBV that took place during specific conflicts, but also
more generally to ensure that SGBV is recognized as a war crime in the same
way as other atrocities committed during conflicts. This is what Nicola Henry
explains about wartime rape: “the prosecution of rape under IHL [International
Humanitarian Law] contributes to the preservation of post-conflict collective
memory by establishing a historical record of rape as a war crime” (2009, p. 115).
In some cases, transitional justice has also played an important role in the memo-
rialization of SGBV, especially with regard to sexual violence (UN, 2017, p. 6),
although there is still room for improvement in this area – as demonstrates the
case of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where SGBV
was not much discussed. How, and to what extent these international discourses
can influence national narratives and memorializations over the middle or long
term has however not yet been the focus of much research. This vertical fragmen-
tation of memories, opposing on the one hand some local actors and international
agencies, and on the other hand national governments, leads to the elaboration
of strikingly different narratives on the occurrence of SGBV during conflicts,
depending on where the speaker is located.
The standardization and horizontal fragmentation of

SGBV memories
It is at the group level, and in particular through the work of local and interna-
tional NGOs which help to build a collective discourse about SGBV, that most
memorialization initiatives related to SGBV can develop. However, because of
the survivors’ reluctance to publicly share their stories, this work usually does
not take place immediately after the end of the conflict,2 and depends on many
other factors, such as whether there has been a regime change, or whether the
perpetrators have been prosecuted. In most cases, such as in Bosnia Herzegovina,
individual testimonies continue to emerge in the public space and in public
accounts of the war, decades after its end. These testimonies concern more spe-
cifically the rapes and forced pregnancies suffered by Bosniak women, and to a
lesser extent Croatian and Serb ones (Močnik, 2018). Similarly, many “Comfort
Women” (women and girls used as sex slaves by the Imperial Japanese Army
during World War II) started to share their stories in the 1990s (Yap in Altınay
and Petö, 2016, p. 65).
Why and how do survivors speak up, and who are the memory entrepreneurs
who enable this memorialization “from below”? In Bosnia Herzegovina and in
other contexts such as in Nepal, Burundi, DRC, or Northern Ireland, it is mainly
women’s organizations from the civil society that are responsible for this “bot-
tom-up” memorialization of SGBV. Women’s groups allow and facilitate the col-
lection of survivors’ testimonies and, on this basis, build collective discourses on
SGBV that occurred during the conflict, and carry out lobbying actions (see for
instance Donahoe, 2017; Korac, 2006). However, these discourses tend to stand-
ardize experiences of SGBV, to ignore specific experiences, and to focus almost
exclusively on certain types of SGBV that are likely to attract the attention of
52 Élise Féron
international organizations, and therefore funding. This has notably led in the case
of the DRC to what Eriksson Baaz and Stern call the “commercialization of rape”
(2013), at the expense of other types of SGBV. Victims’ groups thus play a cen-
tral role in the constitution of unofficial memories, and sometimes, together with
international organizations, also influence official memories by pushing for the
inclusion of these themes in peace agreements, or in initiatives to commemorate
the conflict. They thus help to construct, to use Chakrabarty’s terminology (1998),
a minority history that may eventually be integrated into national narratives and
commemorations.
However, the extent and content of this memorialization work depend on the
type of SGBV, and on the victims’ identities, highlighting horizontal fragmenta-
tion patterns. Whether the concerned violence was of a sexual nature or not seems
to be a key discriminating factor between victims of SGBV, but the memoriali-
zation of sexual violence also depends on the gender, as well as on the ethnic or
national belonging of the victims. In Bosnia Herzegovina, for example, associa-
tions of former prisoners (mostly men) do not talk about these issues, even though
cases of sexual violence against male Bosniak prisoners in Serbian camps were
numerous and have been well documented (see for instance Bassiouni, 1994). In
this example, Bosniak men who were victims of the war both as prisoners, and as
survivors of SGBV, seem to primarily foreground their identity as former prison-
ers. Things seem simpler when it comes to talking about sexual violence perpe-
trated against women, notably because the issue of wartime rape of women, or of
rape of women as a weapon of war, has been receiving a lot of attention during
the past decades. In the case of the Great Lakes region and of Bosnia Herzegovina
in particular, the work of women’s associations, and/or of gender experts invited
to international events has finally brought to the forefront the issue of sexual vio-
lence against women during conflicts.
The scope of these discourses is also limited by the fact that not all types of
victims are recognized: civilian women are more likely to be recognized as vic-
tims of SGBV than female combatants, and there is a clear hierarchy of legitimacy
among civilian women too, often depending on their ethnicity or nationality. For
instance, in Bosnia Herzegovina female Bosniak survivors’ narratives have been
more easily heard than Bosnian Serb ones. Simić (2018, p. 1) notes that
the Bosnian Serb women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence were

silenced not because they did not want to tell their stories, but because their
stories were not really sought after; their experiences not readily fitting into
the constructed identity of a “Bosnian woman rape victim”.
Similar patterns have been observed in Rwanda with Hutu women who have
been denied the label of “genocide survivors” (Burnet, 2012, p. 7), or Tutsi wives
of Hutu men (Burnet, 2012, p. 138). Memorialization of SGBV thus seems easier
when the victims’ and/or the perpetrators’ identities display a clear intersection
with nationalist discourses. This is notably the case of discourses in Korea or in
China about Comfort Women used by the Japanese enemy during World War II.
These hierarchization processes lead to an horizontal fragmentation of memories,
and to the victims’ differentiated access to public memorialization.
It is worth underscoring the fact that the memory of the sexual violence suffered
by men is frequently erased because it contradicts the idea of glorified and trium-
phant masculinities upon which many post-conflict societies’ narratives are built
(Zarkov, 2001). In many ways, the memory of wartime sexual violence against
men is abjected, and can be considered as a “subaltern” history (Chakrabarty,
1998). The specific question of the memories of female combatants, who some-
times see themselves as “victims of peace,”3 is also particularly interesting; just
like with male victims of sexual violence, their profile is too dissonant with the
characteristics usually expected of a SGBV victim, to be recognized as such. In
order to be heard and to become visible, the narratives of victims of conflict-
related SGBV must therefore follow a specific script that respects certain gender
norms, and that therefore excludes dissonant experiences.
But even in the case of victims of SGBV whose suffering is recognized, official
memorializations carry out a work of standardization and ordering that results
in the erasure and/or distortion of individual memories. For example, discourses
on women’s experiences during wars often focus on their courage as mothers in
the face of adversity, or on their initiatives to help others (see also Mannergren,
this volume). These traditional images associate women with self-sacrifice, but
eschew the diversity of their experiences of war, such as those of female com-
batants who are subjected to rape or forced marriage. These “omissions” do not
only concern female combatants. In many cases, even the sexual violence suf-
fered by civilian women is overlooked. For example, Susan Risal (2019) speaks
of “denialism” on the part of the Nepalese government regarding cases of sex-
ual violence against women during the conflict. This example reminds us that
it is important not to be blinded by the cases of Bosnia Herzegovina or, more
recently, of Colombia, where episodes of conflict-related SGBV have been pub-
licly documented and discussed. Since the 1990s, Bosnia Herzegovina has been
shaping our perception of SGBV, and in particular of sexual violence, in wartime.
However, we must remember, on the one hand, that SGBV in Bosnia Herzegovina
followed very specific dynamics that were rarely found afterwards (for instance
rape camps) and, on the other hand, that the recognition of the existence of SGBV
in Bosnia Herzegovina, even partial, did not lead to the same movement in most
other post-conflict societies.
In many post-conflict settings, the way conflicts are memorialized retains
such a political importance today that it prevents “minority histories” related to
SGBV from being integrated in official commemorations. This is particularly
the case when the conflict experience is recent and still structures the political
scene. In Northern Ireland for instance, in the official memorialization initiatives
that have followed the signing of the 1998 Peace Agreement, the combatants’
memories have been foregrounded and flagged as the most significant, and as
the most representative of what both nationalist and unionist communities had
gone through. However, these memories are often ultra-masculinized and focus
on men’s military experiences (McAtackney, 2019). They often leave aside the
54 Élise Féron
important contribution of women’s groups or of female combatants, except for
some nationalist/republican community memorial sites. The specific experience
of non-activist women affected by the conflict has attracted even less attention.
For instance, the narratives of prisoners’ wives, particularly in the 1970s follow-
ing the British policy of internment without trial, or those of women brutalized
by law enforcement and/or by paramilitary groups, are almost completely ignored
in official commemorations, as well as in community memorials. What matters
most in these memorialization initiatives thus seems to be the nationalist/unionist
cleavage, itself pointing at different community memories. As Burnet explains
(2012, p. 8),
“when remembering becomes a collective process, the structuring effect of

hegemonic discourses overpowers the diversity of individual experience,
erasing difference or disguising it in such a manner as to preserve the broad
categories of social delineation, whether based on nationality, ethnicity, gen-
der, or class.”
As a consequence, and especially as far as traumatic and unspeakable memories

are concerned, horizontal fragmentation is likely to be particularly deep in the
immediate post-conflict period, leading to the eschewing of minority pasts, and to
the erasure of subaltern ones.
Tensions and resistances around SGBV memorialization

The silence of official memories regarding some types or victims of SGBV is
not without generating resistance, especially from survivors’ organizations, and
from organizations representing victims, which demand the inclusion of this type
of violence in national narratives about the conflict, and in the memorials set up
in public spaces. These initiatives to insert minority histories into national com-
memorations can lead to tensions. As Zarkov (2001) has shown, certain segments
of the population, the media, and the political class may be fiercely opposed to
such inclusions, especially when they feel that these memorializations are likely
to interfere with the image of a strong and steadfast post-conflict nation. Sexual
violence is particularly likely to generate such reactions.
In order to better understand these objections to the inclusion of some types
of SGBV in national memorializations of the conflict, we need to remember the
functions that these institutional memories fulfill in the post-war period. Evoking
certain types of SGBV which contradict the expectations held towards men for
example (as strong, able to defend themselves, but also their families), means
taking the risk of weakening the post-conflict nation’s strength by questioning the
models, values, and gender roles on which it is trying to (re)build itself: a nation
of strong, dignified, and courageous men and women, whose honorable character
has not been tarnished by the conflict but, on the contrary, has been strengthened.
To a certain extent, this also explains the reluctance to talk about the sexual vio-
lence that women have experienced at the hands of the “enemy,” because even if
such violence does not in itself contradict the traditional attributes of femininity
(submission, fragility, etc.), it nevertheless underlines the failure of men to protect
“their” wives, mothers, sisters, or daughters. As Väyrynen remarks (2014, p. 218),
“the encoding of female bodies as symbols of the nation is a multifaceted process
where some female bodies are uplifted to represent the nation and its honour, but
others are abjected.” This results in memory fragmentation, whereby some minor-
ity histories end up being inserted in national commemorations, while others are
being silenced.
It is also important to remember the relational nature of memories, and the
fact that these are inserted into wider spaces of meaning, within which they have
to make sense in order to be told and believed, as Altınay and Petö (2016, p. 27)
point out: “The Grammar of the discussion – how sexual violence is narrated – is
closely related to the issue of how it is remembered and acknowledged by others.”
Therefore, memorialization silences mostly reflect wider and dominant discourses
on SGBV, which tend to put the blame on victims and minimize the seriousness of
SGBV (Brown, 2013). Tensions can also arise between on the one hand the fact
that the memory of soldiers and combatants is often glorified in the post-conflict
period, particularly in statues, memorials, and murals, and on the other hand the
fact that a significant proportion of SGBV has been perpetrated by members of
the security forces or armed groups. Highlighting the plight of victims of SGBV
therefore means potentially accusing those who are otherwise celebrated as heroes
of a regained order and newly established peace.
More generally, resistance to the memorialization of SGBV can be triggered
by ideological reasons, such as in the case of some women raped by Red Army
soldiers in Central and Eastern European countries. Mark (2005) has for instance
shown that in Hungary, women belonging to groups that had particularly suf-
fered from Fascism, such as Jews, leftists, and liberals, downplayed or even
denied having been raped by Red Army soldiers because they did not want to
sully the reputation of the Red Army, which their community saw as their libera-
tor. Resistance to SGBV memorialization can also be explained by the way the
conflict is narrated and framed. In Northern Ireland for instance, the combination
of four factors explains why SGBV committed during the conflict has not, so far,
attracted much official attention: first, the conflict in Northern Ireland has been
essentially framed, both at the national and international levels, as an ideological
and/or politico-military one, leaving scarce space for paying attention to its con-
sequences on individuals, and to SGBV; second, and this point is related to the
previous one, in Northern Ireland most survivors of SGBV tend to remain silent or
to requalify the violence they have experienced: the violence they have been vic-
tim of becomes speakable only through using a political vocabulary, for example
by requalifying rape as torture, thus emphasizing the political, rather than sexual,
nature of the violence they suffered (Féron, 2019); third, the relatively low num-
ber of certain types of SGBV and especially of sexual violence as compared to
other types of violence, such as bombings, riots, and assassinations, has contrib-
uted to keep these issues relatively hidden; and finally, the continued domination
of paramilitaries (mostly men) in many poor Northern Irish neighborhoods tends
56 Élise Féron
to stifle survivors’ voices and experiences of SGBV (mostly women). However, it
is also interesting to note that SGBV memorialization, or lack thereof, tends to be
perceptibly different across concerned communities, here again underscoring pro-
cesses of horizontal memory fragmentation. In predominantly unionist or loyalist
neighborhoods for example, murals almost exclusively depict men in aggressive
poses (holding weapons, wearing combat gear, and so on), while in nationalist or
republican neighborhoods, many memorials evoke civilian men, but also women,
and children, who have been killed, injured, or tortured during the conflict. As
McAtackney remarks, in loyalist and unionist strongholds such as East Belfast
for example, memorialization is “firmly connected to a paternalistic view of men
working in and protecting the area” (2019, p. 6). McAtackney notes that the recent
proliferation of murals that are not directly related to the memory of the conflict,
and that are much celebrated in political and scientific academic circles, has not
necessarily led to a better representation of women’s or civilians’ experiences, at
least in unionist or loyalist neighborhoods (2019, pp. 7‒8). So while the temporal
variable certainly plays an important role in the commemoration of SGBV, it is
certainly not the only one, as others, for instance community ones, are also at play.
For civil society organizations, the work of resisting the imposition of official
memories is thus more complicated to put in place for some categories of victims
and of violence than for others. And even when resistance bears fruit, such as in
Bosnia Herzegovina with the recognition of the rapes of women for example, it
proves unsatisfactory for many victims, who do not necessarily recognize them-
selves in these memorialization initiatives (Močnik, 2018). Similar resistances
have been at play in Rwanda, where Burnet remarks that
“many Rwandan women refused to participate in genocide commemoration

ceremonies organized by survivor associations and the government. Some
women survivors explained that their memories of violence, loss, and trauma
were so deeply personal that they could not be shared “with strangers.”
(Burnet, 2012, p. 102)
These cases raise the issue of still unprocessed trauma, and of cultural norms
according to which “such matters are private” (Stefatos in Altınay and Petö, 2016,
p. 83). Finding ways to memorialize experiences of SGBV without generating
resistance from survivors is complicated, notably because of the inherently inti-
mate nature of many of these memories.
At the same time, constructing a collective discourse about SGBV seems to
be a required step to allow the rest of the society to acknowledge the existence
of such experiences, even if it means eschewing specificities related to individual
memories. Commenting on the case of women incarcerated by the military junta
in Turkey, Abiral explains that “collective endeavors of testifying and bearing
witness to political violence (…) suggest the necessity of constructing a collec-
tive subjectivity to render a traumatic past visible” (in Altınay and Petö, 2016, p.
102). Tensions thus seem to be inherent to memorialization work, and not just
because national hegemonic histories will always tend to resist the inclusion of
heterogeneous histories and memories (Väyrynen, 2016). In some cases however,
some memories are so abjected that there are almost no attempts to include them
in national narratives. For instance, while in most post-conflict societies contra-
dictions between official memories and those promoted by civil society groups
are particularly apparent for female victims of wartime sexual violence, tensions
are almost non-existent for male victims: in the latter case, national institutions
as well as civil society groups and individuals resist attempts at memorializa-
tion, largely because of the stigma and taboos surrounding this type of violence.
Groups of male survivors of wartime sexual violence, such as those supported by
the Refugee Law Project in Uganda (see for instance Edtsröm et al., 2016), may
offer different narratives, but they have so far been very isolated and not really
audible, including in the international arena.
Concluding thoughts
Understanding the very complex interplay between different levels and types of
SGBV memorialization, as well as the gap between national and international
narratives, requires using an intersectional analysis, paying attention not just
to the gender of the victims, but also to their ethnic or national belonging,
to their occupational status, and to the nature of the violence that was perpe-
trated. These various intersections define and explain the multiple vertical and
memory fragmentations in SGBV memorialization, as well as the existence
of minority and subaltern SGBV memories. SGBV memorialization is also
affected by temporality, as the memorialization of certain types of violence,
especially of a sexual nature, seems to become, at least in some cases, easier
with the passage of time.
But most importantly, what this exploratory overview of SGBV memorializa-
tion underscores is that, like other fields of memorialization, it is characterized by
the presence of multiple actors with different weights but also diverging interests,
whose interactions are characterized by tensions and resistance. Thus, memoriali-
zation does not necessarily reflect what happened during the war. Memorialization
patterns are the result of these multiple and intersecting relations of power, and of
the capacity of the concerned actors to frame the violence to be memorialized in
such a way that it can be reconciled with hegemonic national narratives and with
broader cultural constructs. In that sense, memorialization of wartime violence is
the direct outcome of balances and relations of power in post-conflict societies. It
is therefore no surprise that memories related to SGBV, as highlighting gendered
vulnerabilities of both men and women, and as complicating the victim/perpetra-
tor dyad, are often pushed back in an historical limbo.
Many issues regarding the memorialization of wartime SGBV need to be
further explored. For instance, would it be possible to better adapt national com-
memorations to the specific needs of victims and survivors of SGBV? How can
we acknowledge the diversity in experiences, their intimate nature, with the
standardization and publicity that national (or international) commemorations
entail? It would also be important to further explore the consequences of SGBV
58 Élise Féron
memorialization for survivors. As we have seen, many do not want to be associ-
ated to such initiatives, because they fear the stigma attached to SGBV, because
they do not want to speak about their experience, and/or because they do not
recognize their own story in these memorializations. Can SGBV memorializa-
tion be counterproductive for survivors themselves? It is equally essential to
question the temptation to memorialize SGBV as a specific, and separate, type
of wartime violence. As we have seen, SGBV usually happens alongside other
types of violence, which means that SGBV survivors are most of the time vic-
tims of other types of violence too. If we set up separate memorialization mech-
anisms for SGBV, won’t survivors have the feeling that they have to “choose”
between different aspects of their war experience and trauma? At the same time,
memorialization can be seen as necessary for breaking the feeling of isolation
felt by most survivors of SGBV. Can a sense of unity between survivors of
SGBV emerge without some sort of memorialization? Those questions, among
many others, require further exploration in order to push forward research on
the memorialization of wartime violence.
Notes
1 Definition retrieved at https://www.unhcr.org/sexual-and-gender-based-violence.html
(accessed on 22 June 2020).
2 This would suggest that time tends to facilitate the emergence of testimonies by sur-
vivors of SGBV. However, there is also some evidence, like in the Rwandan case,
that survivors can, with time, become less willing to share their stories (Burnet,
2012, pp. 79–86).
3 Bujumbura, Burundi, 17 April 2010, focus group with former female combatants.
AU: Should pub-

lisher locations References
be completed in
this list? Altınay, A. G., & Petö, A. (Eds.). (2016). Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories: Feminist
Conversations on War, Genocide and Political Violence. Routledge.
AU: Please Bassiouni, C. (1994). ‘Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts
provide publisher established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992).’ S/1994/674/Add.2 (1
city name for and 5) December 28.
reference Altınay Bhabha, H. (1990). DissemiNation: Time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation.
and Petö, 2016.
In H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and Narration (pp. 291–322). Routledge.
AU: Please Brown, C. (2013). Women’s narratives of trauma: (Re) storying uncertainty, minimization
provide publisher and self-blame. Narrative Works, 3(1), 1–30.
city name for ref- Burnet, J. E. (2012). Genocide Lives in Us. Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda.
erence Bhabha,
Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
1990.
Chakrabarty, D. (1998). Minority histories, subaltern pasts. Postcolonial Studies, 1(1),
15–29.
Chatterjee, P. (1993). The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Davies, S. E., & True, J. (2015). Reframing conflict-related sexual and gender-based
violence: Bringing gender analysis back in. Security Dialogue, 46(6), 495–512.
De Yeaza, C., & Fox, N. (2013). Narratives of mass violence: The role of memory and
memorialization in addressing human rights violations in post-conflict Rwanda and
Uganda. Societies Without Borders, 8(3), 334–372.
Donahoe, A. E. (2017). Peacebuilding Through Women’s Community Development: Wee
AU: Please
Women's Work in Northern Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan. provide publisher
Edström, J., Dolan, C., Shahrokh, T., & Onen, D. (2016). Therapeutic activism: Men of city name for ref-
hope refugee association Uganda breaking the silence over male rape in conflict-related erence Donahoe,
sexual violence. Institute of Development Studies, Evidence Report no. 182. 2017.
Féron, É. (2015). Suffering in silence? The silencing of sexual violence against men in war
torn countries. In R. Anderson (Ed.), World Suffering and Quality of Life (pp. 31–44).
AU: Please
Springer. provide publisher
Féron, É. (2018). Wartime Sexual Violence against Men. Masculinities and Power in city name for
Conflict Zones. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. reference Féron,
Féron, É. (2019). When is it torture? When is it rape? Discourses on wartime sexual 2015.
violence. In C. Confortini & T. Vaittinen (Eds.), Gender, Global Health and Violence:
Feminist Perspectives on Peace and Disease (pp. 159–178). Lanham, MD: Rowman
& Littlefield.
Henry, N. (2009). Witness to rape: The limits and potential of international war crimes
trials for victims of wartime sexual violence. The International Journal of Transitional
Justice, 3, 114–134.
AU: Please
Henry, N. (2011). War and Rape: Law, Memory and Justice. Routledge. provide publisher
Korac, M. (2006). Gender, conflict and peace-building: Lessons from the conflict in the city name for
former Yugoslavia. Women's Studies International Forum, 29(5), 510–520. reference Henry,
Krause, U. (2015). A continuum of violence? Linking sexual and gender-based violence 2011.
during conflict, flight, and encampment. Refugee Survey Quarterly, 34(4), 1–19.
Leatherman, J. (2011). Sexual Violence and Armed Conflict. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Manjoo, R., & McRaith, C. (2011). Gender-based violence and justice in conflict and post-
conflict areas. Cornell International Law Journal, 44, 11–31.
Mark, J. (2005). Remembering rape: Divided social memory and the red army in Hungary
1944–1945. Past & Present, 188(1), 133–161.
McAtackney, L. (2019). Where are all the women? Public memory, gender and
memorialisation in contemporary Belfast. In E. Crooke & T. Maguire (Eds.), Heritage
AU: Please
after Conflict (pp. 154–172). Routledge. provide publisher
McDowell, S. (2008). Commemorating dead ‘men’: Gendering the past and present in city name
post-conflict Northern Ireland. Gender, Place and Culture, 15(4), 335–354. for reference
Močnik, N. (2018). Sexuality after War Rape. From Narrative to Embodied Research. McAtackney,
2019.
Routledge.
Risal, S. (2019). “Defining” Justice and Dignity Through Gendered Peace Building: A AU: Please
Case Analysis of Women Who Faced Sexual Violence in the Time of Conflict in Nepal. provide publisher
city name for ref-
Tewa: Nagarik Aawaz. erence Močnik,
Sharratt, S. (2013). Gender, Shame and Sexual Violence: The Voices of Witnesses and 2018.
Court Members at War Crimes Tribunals. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing.
AU: Please
Simić, O. (2018). Silenced Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence. Routledge. provide publisher
True, J., & Riveros-Morales, Y. (2019). Towards inclusive peace: Analysing gender-sensitive city name for
peace agreements 2000–2016. International Political Science Review, 40(1), 23–40. reference Simić,
UN (2017). Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. New 2018.
York: Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence
in Conflict, S/2017/249, 15 April.
60 Élise Féron
Väyrynen, T. (2014). Muted national memory. When the Hitler’s brides speak the truth.
International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(2), 218–235.
Väyrynen, T. (2016). Rethinking national temporal orders: the subaltern presence and
enactment of the political. Review of International Studies, 42(4), 597–612.
Zarkov, D. (2001). The body of the other man: Sexual violence and the construction of
masculinity, sexuality and ethnicity in the Croatian media. In C. O. N. Moser & F. C.
Clark (Eds.), Victims, Perpetrators or Actors? Gender, Armed Conflict and Political
Violence (pp. 69–82). London: Zed Books.
5 The Volksbund Deutsche
Kriegsgräberfürsorge
A century of memory negotiations in
Germany
Elise Julien
Introduction
Throughout the twentieth century, the German state appears to have struggled to
impose a dominant representation of the nation’s past in relation to the world wars.
This is doubtless due to the problematic nature of these wars for Germany (nota-
bly, the question of its responsibility for their outbreak, the course of the fighting,
and the outcome of the conflicts). But in addition to this – and depending on the
period and regime – the German state has sometimes failed to effectively address
the issue of memory with regard to the national past (Julien, 2014). It is thus diffi-
cult to consider that a growing fragmentation has progressively challenged a state-
imposed dominant form of collective memory. This observation leads us to turn
our attention away from the state and onto another major “memory entrepreneur”
(Jelin, 2003) in the context of German conflicts and their consequences.
The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge, or VDK (literally “the
People’s Union for the Preservation of German War Graves”), is an association
founded on 16 December 1919 to maintain German war graves and establish a
national commemoration for the fallen. Similar organizations were also founded
in other countries at the end of World War I (Gilles & Offenstadt, 2014). But while
elsewhere the responsibility for the preservation of war graves almost always
fell to the state, in Germany a private association was set up for the task. This
immediately raised the question of how political and institutional actors would
be involved in constructing a collective memory of wartime. Following World
War I, Germany was extremely divided, both socially and politically. It needed to
move beyond the war and face its consequences, notably the revolution and the
advent of the Weimar Republic. Collective memories of the conflict were highly
fragmented across different socio-moral milieus, leading to a great polarization
of remembrance discourse and practices (Ziemann, 1999). From the start, there
was doubt as to the state’s ability to impose a dominant collective memory. Since
that time, the German state1 has displayed both proactive and reserved attitudes
to remembrance. Meanwhile, the VDK has had to adapt its missions, scope of
action, and values to changing contexts and political norms.
To understand this history, we must break away from a sort of mythology
constructed by the VDK itself through a (re)writing of its past, which has long
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-6
62 Elise Julien
prevailed within and beyond German borders. According to this myth, the VDK
was founded as a pioneering “citizens’ initiative” (Bürgerinitiative), responding
to a general call for war graves to be saved from deterioration, at a point in time
when the state was unable to fulfil this mission. It quickly became one of the few
institutions under the Weimar Republic that could unite citizens across all social
categories and partisan lines. Exploited by Nazis, the VDK nonetheless managed
to retain its independence, allowing it to resume its activities in the West after
1945. It then took on a mission of reconciliation with former enemies, eventually
becoming an executive arm of the state through its preservation of war graves and
promotion of a peaceful culture of remembrance (Dienst am Menschen, 1994; see
also the later editions of 2001, 2009, and 2019). Such a myth does not stand up to
critical analysis (Julien, 2010, Böttcher, 2018, Ulrich et al., 2019). This chapter
seeks to show that in reality, the VDK has had a very ambivalent role in creating a
German memory consensus, one which can only be understood through its inter-
actions with other memory entrepreneurs, both state and non-state, German and
international.
After World War I: an increasingly polarized political arena

and competing memories
The tendency to always provide individual graves for soldiers came to an end
with World War I (Becker & Tison, 2018). From 1916 onwards, the German
army began resorting to Gräberoffiziere, who were specialized officers in charge
of identifying and burying the dead, inventorying graves, and establishing cem-
eteries. When the war came to an end in late 1918, the German state‘s focus was
on the living, on everyday issues of organization and political decision-making.
A few months passed before the war dead appeared once again on the political
agenda. The question of mourning was brought to the fore, as was the humiliation
of defeat and of the peace treaty; it was thought that the fallen should not have
given their lives in vain.
The founding of the VDK was surprising on an institutional level. On the one
hand, the Treaty of Versailles (§ 225 and 226) required each state to take charge of
the remains of all fallen soldiers on its territory. This concerned roughly one mil-
lion Germans who died in France and Belgium, and who were therefore under the
legal responsibility of the French and Belgian governments. On the other hand,
public institutions sought to safeguard their own prerogatives. On 1 October 1919,
the German state established a “Central Inventory of War Losses and Graves”
(Zentralnachweiseamt für Kriegsverluste und Kriegsgräber, ZAK) within the
Interior Ministry, responsible for all matters relating to German war graves on the
national territory, and with the role of monitoring and collecting information on
the state of German graves in other countries (Julien, 2010, pp. 75–78).
But if we analyze the main private initiatives that emerged in the autumn of
1919 in this area, we can discern some of their primary motivations. The national-
racist (völkisch) circles and those of the nationalist right, in general, were very
eager to claim the legacy of the fallen. Private contractors like architects, sculptors,
The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge 63
and gardeners were also invested in the hope of gaining contracts. Finally, certain
initiatives were led by former Gräberoffiziere, who needed a new source of work
and income. Arising out of this last category, the VDK prevailed due to its strong
contacts at the Interior Ministry, and, thanks to a shrewd publicity campaign, the
support of a few important political and social actors. Three former officers took
the helm as the association’s directors and granted themselves notoriously high
salaries. They justified the VDK’s rationale in response to concerns about both
socio-economic and remembrance policies. The thinking was that war graves
must not be left to the care of the victors, nor to an unreliable government bound
by the Treaty of Versailles. Instead, a form of commemoration should be estab-
lished to give back to the people what was due: a right to honour their dead.
From this perspective, the choice of the name Volksbund is significant. The
notion of Volk was general enough to be accepted by all political camps – with
the notable exception of the socialist and communist left – but was employed
mostly by the nationalists, while republican organizations more often used the
term Reich, present in the Weimar constitution. Thus, despite appearing to be
pluralist, the VDK had a strong nationalist bent, particularly influenced by Martin
Mutschmann, its co-founder and secretary-general until 1933, then VDK presi-
dent until 1945. According to him, the German people had forgotten the fallen,
and the time had come to remedy this situation (Ulrich et al., pp. 68–69).
However, the sustainability of the VDK was not guaranteed; it largely
depended on broader circumstances and skillful tactics that ultimately bore fruit.
Far from being driven by popular will, the VDK was massively contested. In
addition to criticisms of its financial organization, it faced protests from rival pub-
lic institutions, like the ZAK who, throughout the 1920s kept repeating that the
VDK was working against German interests. The association also faced political
opposition as German society under the Weimar Republic fell far short of its
leaders’ völkisch fantasies of unity. For instance, the VDK’s intention to estab-
lish a “national day of mourning” (Volkstrauertag) came under fire. The idea
was to create a commemoration in the form of a “national monument to fallen
heroes” (Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF, 1928/3, p. 44). Rather than being focused on
mourning the past, a date at the very end of winter was chosen to highlight the
arrival of a new spring and thus a new beginning for the nation. In the second half
of the 1920s, the VDK considered the Volkstrauertag to be a national holiday
for the German people; yet it needed – and failed – to obtain a legal recognition
(Kaiser, 2010, pp. 146–175).
The VDK only managed to stabilize its situation by deftly carving out a space
for itself in the public arena, and by altering its organization and finances. In
both cases, it relied on highly effective communication: it launched vast cam-
paigns on the desecration of German graves in formerly enemy territory, to the
point of complicating the signing of bilateral agreements, which were finally
concluded on 6 March 1926 with Belgium and on 25 June 1926 with France.
From 1927, however, the VDK claimed credit for negotiating these agreements
and for the possibility of intervening in German cemeteries on the Western
Front, when it had merely been allowed to send an observer during the talks.
64 Elise Julien
The German state spent considerable sums on the upkeep of graves without any
real effect on public opinion, while the VDK successfully presented itself as the
sole actor in this arena.
The association also reorganized around a central Berlin office with regional
branches and launched a journal in 1921: Kriegsgräberfürsorge (“Preservation of
War Graves”). It communicated with the public through an increasing number of
exhibitions and conferences to recruit new members, encourage donations, and
promote the founding of local groups. It set up an individual patronage system as
well as cemetery sponsorships by associations or local groups (towns, parishes,
businesses, schools, regiments, etc.).
Since the deceased had to lie where they fell, the VDK organized visits to
graves at the former frontline. In addition to generating publicity, these trips were
probably where the VDK most closely reflected its members’ aspirations (Brandt,
2000). The visits nevertheless also supported an evolution in the association’s
rhetoric, in particular on the part of the VDK’s co-founder Siegfried Emmo Eulen.
According to him, these trips were less a question of mourning than a moral duty
to pay tribute to the heroes who consecrated the land in which they rested with
their own blood (Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF, 1921/12, p. 90).
The VDK’s other major area of action was the development of German cem-
eteries on the Western Front, as soon as these areas became accessible in 1926. In
early 1927, the VDK created an artistic commission that included representatives
of the Reich, which was supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This made
the distinction between private and public undertakings even more blurred while
ensuring a greater international recognition for the VDK. Robert Tischler, the
VDK’s landscape architect, was responsible for planning out most of the cemeter-
ies. He was completely free to apply his chosen principles: a clearly demarcated
cemetery with imposing architectural elements, uniform tombs, and accentuated
local characteristics, whether geographical or historical. A prime example of his
design principles is Langemarck cemetery, inaugurated in July 1932 and symbolic
for several reasons.2
While the VDK’s membership (138,000 members in 1930, low considering
the number of war dead) suggested a rather weak anchorage in society, through
the redevelopment of cemeteries the association nevertheless secured a growing
success and flourishing finances despite the economic crisis, becoming increas-
ingly present in the public sphere. The association developed its purpose in the
context of a horizontal fragmentation of the German collective memory as of
World War I, linked to the diverging interpretations of the war and its political
consequences that remained polarized between the different ideological and par-
tisan groups of German civil society. While the republican government failed
to impose a dominant interpretive discourse that provided a consensual narra-
tive encompassing both the world wars and the proclamation of the Weimar
Republic, the VDK as a private association proved to be more successful, albeit
with a clearly divergent approach. Even if its ambitions did not go unchal-
lenged, the VDK made strong progress between the early 1920s and the start
of the 1930s.
The Third Reich: the convergence of dominant discourse
around memory
Although Hitler’s appointment to the Chancellery on 30 January 1933 was a major
moment of fracture in German history, it was not an instant turning point for the
VDK. Since its foundation, the association continued to affirm its apolitical stance,
albeit acting just as much against the Treaty of Versailles as against the Republic
by claiming the legacy of the fallen. Before 1933, the VDK had paid little atten-
tion to the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), which could not
assist in its projects. However, Hitler’s rise to power was positively commented
on in the Kriegsgräberfürsorge journal of January 1933 (Kriegsgräberfürsorge
KF, 1933/1, p. 2), notably since some VDK officials were early Nazis, such as
Pastor Ludwig Müller. In addition, Martin Mutschmann, an NSDAP deputy and
Governor of Saxony, joined the VDK’s board in July 1933 (Ulrich et al., 2019,
pp. 186–188).
The VDK maintained its objectives and discourse with regard to
the Volkstrauertag. The commemoration of the nation’s heroes, already pro-
moted by Eulen under the Republic and now relayed by Mutschmann, finally
gained the support of the regime (Kaiser, 2010, pp. 178–185). From this per-
spective, the name change from “day of mourning” to “day in remembrance of
heroes” (Heldengedenktag) was a clear reflection of its advocates’ aspirations.
Mourning was proscribed and hope placed in national renewal with accompany-
ing military displays. The new date was set at the beginning of spring, and the
commemoration was immediately extended to include those lost as part of the
National Socialist rise to power. This celebration now had a martial tone and was
organized by the party and the state (Behrenbeck, 1996). Eulen was satisfied to
see the outcome of a commemoration project for which he had long laboured. But
while the VDK was represented, it was no longer the one organizing the event.
The association began its transformation.
Similar to many other German associations at the time, its statutes were
amended on 1 December 1933 to establish the Führerprinzip. They were adopted
by acclamation and Eulen was elected Bundesführer with extended powers. In
fact, by April 1933 all personae non gratae had been removed from the govern-
ing bodies. The regional branches became Gauverbände, headed by members of
the NSDAP or those close to the regime. Eulen’s efforts to create ties with the
regime (through its ministries, Hitler Youth, etc.) meant that the VDK was per-
ceived by the public as a National Socialist institution. Hitler was solicited to be
a patron, a request he declined, despite nevertheless openly supporting the aims
of the association.
All that remained was for Eulen to become a member of the NSDAP. The law
of 31 March 1933 required that the boards of all associations include a major-
ity of party members. But the NSDAP interrupted its membership process on
1 June 1933. Eulen therefore asked his friend Mutschmann to intercede on his
behalf, which he did on 1 July 1933, explaining that he himself had advised
Eulen not to adhere to the party straight away so as not to jeopardize his ties
66 Elise Julien
with the old system. His membership was given priority and he rapidly obtained
the (surprisingly low) membership number: 1,595,139.3 Of the ten people who
made up the VDK leadership, eight belonged to the NSDAP (Ulrich et al., 2019,
pp. 199–200).
Moreover, tensions persisted after 1933 concerning the VDK’s practices and
organization. Power struggles between the VDK, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and the ZAK resurfaced. In 1939, Eulen went so far as to declare that he had him-
self negotiated the 1926 agreements with Belgium and France. The VDK’s budget
was unprecedented (RM 9 million in 1943), thus amplifying resentments and
criticisms of its methods and spending (Ulrich et al., 2019, p. 270). Accusations
of corruption accumulated, especially against Eulen and Tischler: favouritism,
dubious awarding of contracts, a luxurious lifestyle, and even orgies on trips to
Verdun. But Eulen always found a way to counter such accusations, claiming that
his detractors were only old-fashioned Pan-Germanists and ill-suited to the new
system. He benefited from having joined the party as early as July 1933 and was
thought to be close to Hitler.
At the start of World War II, the VDK had the intention to take charge of the
graves resulting from the new conflict. But in 1941, Hitler decided otherwise:
the fallen of the ongoing war were to be taken care of by the Wehrmacht, under
the responsibility of architect Wilhelm Kreis, the main rival of the VDK archi-
tect Tischler. This decision reflected a desire to let the state look after new war
graves while ensuring that the VDK appeared neutral, especially on the interna-
tional scene. Tischler was nevertheless offended by this relative loss of power and
finally withdrew from his functions in March 1943. This opportunist departure
allowed him to present himself as a victim after the war (Ulrich et al., p. 263).
In the end, the VDK flourished under Nazism: it grew as an institution, greatly
broadened its activities, and saw its membership expand to somewhere around
2 million members in 1944. This can be seen as the result of converging notions of
memory between this powerful private association and the Nazi state. While the
latter relied heavily on the VDK’s networks and initiatives to develop its remem-
brance policy, the VDK obtained the creation of the Heldengedenktag and a legiti-
macy which, although indirect, nevertheless gave the association an institutional
foothold. Consequently, any memories of wartime that diverged from the newly
dominant interpretive framework were deemed to be dissenting and hence pro-
scribed. With this new balance of power, the fragmentation of memories follow-
ing the conflict became shrouded in a cloak of invisibility. Finally, even though
the Third Reich collapsed as the war ended, it was a period during which the role
of the VDK was impressed upon people’s minds, paradoxically helping its actions
to continue after 1945.
Since 1945: a strong continuum and gradual transformations

Eulen died in January 1945. The VDK archives were largely destroyed, its
employees dispersed. Manfred Zimmermann, who had been a loyal supporter of
Eulen since before the war and who was temporarily placed at the head of the
association since Eulen’s mobilization in 1939, was the one to undertake a revival
of the VDK.
Continuity despite a changing context

As early as 4 July 1945, Zimmermann wrote to the mayor of Berlin:
Since its founding, the VDK has devoted itself exclusively to ethical actions
and has always vehemently protested the NSDAP’s repeated attempts to
integrate the VDK as it did with other associations. Through its activities, it
understands the distress caused to the German people by two bitter wars, and
considers its duty to act in an anti-fascist spirit to avoid the misery of future
conflicts.
(Quoted in: Ulrich et al., 2019, p. 294)
Thus, the VDK portrayed itself as an anti-fascist organization and the two
world wars essentially as unfortunate strokes of fate against Germany.
In April 1946, the British occupation government allowed the VDK into its
zone and entrusted it with the inventory of war graves. Mistrust of the ZAK and
the Wehrmacht certainly swung the decision in favour of the VDK, as did the
association’s proximity to the British War Graves Commission since the 1930s.
In practice, the VDK’s focus continued to be caring for the graves of Wehrmacht
soldiers. From September 1947, it set up a centralized registry to inventory
all German war graves, in Germany and abroad. But after the creation of the
Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), a redistribution of tasks – confirmed by
the law on war graves of 27 May 1952 – placed the VDK in charge of graves
abroad and made state services responsible for graves in Germany. Nevertheless,
in the Soviet Occupation Zone and later in the German Democratic Republic
(GDR), the VDK was considered a militarist and vengeful association and thus
prohibited.
Before being authorized in the West, the VDK also had to undergo a process
of denazification. Its president, Wilhelm Alhorn, dismantled the structures that
emerged from the Nazi period, but figures active in the VDK since the 1930s and
more or less directly involved in Nazism continued to hold responsibilities within
the association.4 Ideologically, the VDK still saw itself as upholding the legacy
of the fallen, by which it meant German soldiers, a notion completely excluding
the victims of Nazism. In this context, the VDK insisted on the Volkstrauertag
as a mean to honour the war dead (Manig, 2004, Kaiser, 2010, pp. 228–232)
and rewrote the history of the event to claim that under the Weimar Republic,
all sections of society had come together to commemorate this day of reconcili-
ation between peoples. According to this portrayal, Nazism had perverted the
celebration, and it was now a question of restoring its original meaning. German
soldiers had faced disrepute through the process of denazification, and it was
time to once again recognize the depth of their sacrifice (Kriegsgräberfürsorge
KF, 1952/6, p. 122).
68 Elise Julien
In 1952, the Volkstrauertag was officially reintroduced with the support of
the federal state. Despite the VDK’s reluctance, a date in November was chosen
for the commemoration, which now encompassed civilians and victims of the
Nazi dictatorship. Nevertheless, there was a clear hierarchy to the commemora-
tions, with military victims (5 million German soldiers) taking pride of place,
before civilian victims (1 million Germans killed by the enemy). At the start of
the 1960s, the VDK was forced to clarify its notion of the war dead (Kriegstoten).
At a board meeting on 17 March 1961, it created a hierarchy between (1) German
soldiers from each world war; (2) other German war dead, including those in
concentration camps; and (3) soldiers from other nations. Non-German victims of
Nazism were not taken into account (Ulrich et al., 2019, p. 340).
In 1949, Tischler once again became the VDK’s head architect and resumed
his projects. He notably continued to “punctuate” the layout of cemeteries with
groups of crosses supposedly representing patrols in attack formation, ready to
rise up and resume combat. They are unexpectedly found in cemeteries bearing
the remains of both Wehrmacht soldiers and victims of Nazi crimes or prisoners
of war (Köhler, 2016). The VDK resumed its trips, especially from the 1960s
onwards, when cemeteries were redesigned to act as sites for tourism as well as
remembrance (Bauerkämper, 2017, Kolbe, 2017). In the late 1960s, VDK mem-
bership reached its post-war peak with almost 700,000 members (Böttcher, 2018,
pp. 210–212).
Finally, VDK officials spared no efforts to gain influence within the institutions
of the Federal Republic. Federal President Heuss even became a patron of the asso-
ciation in 1952. The VDK grew its networks of influence in Bonn and cooperated
with the Bundeswehr (created in 1955) by contributing to soldiers’ education. The
latter attended VDK commemorations in military garb, when the law of 24 July
1953 globally prohibited the wearing of such uniforms during public gatherings.
In the 1950s, a series of agreements were signed with Western European states
regarding German graves, all of which designate the VDK as the sole organisa-
tion charged with preserving war graves by the German Federal Government.5
The government had effectively abandoned the idea of recreating a public depart-
ment specifically responsible for war graves and orally entrusted the association
with the preservation of German war graves abroad, in close cooperation with the
ministry. This “agreement” was seen by the VDK as a quasi-delegation of public
service (Ulrich et al., 2019, p. 319). In reality, the VDK’s relationship to the state
remained uncertain and was constantly being renegotiated, navigating between
aspirations of independence and funding requirements.
National debates and the VDK’s slowly broadening concepts

If the VDK succeeded in once again establishing itself as a central memory entre-
preneur in the FRG, it was based on a national, traditional, and military notion of
wartime remembrance. But political and social pressure led to its growing aware-
ness of the problems and contradictions to which it was now exposed (Assmann
& Frevert, 1999).
The 1960s in West Germany were marked by efforts to broaden the concept of
the war dead and to remove all forms of hierarchy in their categorization. Certain
associations (especially the Hilfsstelle für Rasseverfolgte, Assistance Centre for
the Racially Persecuted), which strived to preserve the memory of all victims of
Nazism since the end of the war, campaigned for the latter to be recognized along
with other civil and military war deaths, both by the law (which only recognized
deaths resulting from acts of war) and in commemorative practices. The VDK
was ill at ease in the face of these demands: it would either have to admit that its
functions only covered the graves of soldiers, or accept a broader responsibility,
which it would then have to reflect in its rhetoric and actions.
The 1952 law on war graves was revised on 1 July 1965; it now gave equal
status to victims of war, those of the Nazi dictatorship, and those of illegal acts
perpetrated by the “Communist regime.” While this broader notion was finally
imposed by the government, it was contested by the VDK and by veterans’ asso-
ciations. Some of them took the opportunity to highlight that criminals had also
been put to death in concentration camps and that soldiers should not be used as
a pretext to pay tribute to them (Ulrich et al., 2019, pp. 343–344). Nevertheless,
during its conference in 1969, the VDK indicated that it was expanding its initial
objectives to pay homage not only to soldiers but to all those who lost their lives
to wars and dictatorships (Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF, 1969/6, p. 149). Although
this was increasingly the case for the main commemorations, helping develop
the image of a community of victims, local commemorations upheld a distinctly
military tradition (Kaiser, 2010, pp. 322–353). Moreover, until the 1980s, the
13 million non-German victims of war remained ignored.
This relative shift was also linked to the arrival of a new generation. From the
mid-1960s, the VDK sought to make more space for youth within its ranks. It
launched an educational working group and made great efforts to develop inter-
national youth camps. The VDK broadened its 1949 slogan “reconciliation across
graves” (Versöhnung über den Gräbern) and added “working for peace” (Arbeit
für den Frieden).
In doing so, it created tensions between a conservative wing made up of the
elders, who were attached to the graves of soldiers, and a progressive wing led
by the younger generations, critical of the traditional notion of war death. Yet
the VDK did not want to ostracize either of the two groups: on the one side the
people who had founded and developed the association, on the other those who
were likely to keep it alive in the future. Broadening the notion of war death was
supposed to reconcile these two divergent positions, but it led to a kind of moral
parity between culprits and victims which was not without its problems.
The “Mutual aid association of former Waffen-SS members” (Hilfsgemeinschaft
auf Gegenseitigkeit der ehemaligen Angehörigen der Waffen-SS, HIAG), founded
in 1952, can help illustrate this. In 1958, the HIAG joined the VDK, display-
ing strong support for its actions and regularly participating in Volkstrauertag
commemorations. In 1986, it sought to have its name change recorded in
the VDK registers, after it became the “Association of soldiers of the former
Waffen-SS” (Bundesverband der Soldaten der ehemaligen Waffen-SS). This
70 Elise Julien
initiative placed it in the spotlight and led to an intense public controversy (Ulrich
et al., 2019, pp. 330–331, Wilke, 2011). The VDK leadership refused to disclose
an official position. Faced with growing threats of boycott, its sole announcement,
three days before the Volkstrauertag, was that the Bundesverband was no longer
a member of the VDK.
In 1988, with the 50th anniversary of the so-called Night of Broken Glass
fast approaching, questions were publicly raised about the war graves of former
SS soldiers and war criminals more broadly. The VDK’s official statement was
as follows: “The deceased have the right to rest in peace. The VDK condemns
all those who committed crimes during the National Socialist regime. But the
deceased are neither good nor bad. Cemeteries are not courts of law” (Dienst
am Menschen, 2019, p. 146). Therefore, their position was that even tombs of
German war criminals should still be preserved.
It thus appears that the evolution – albeit slow and partial – of the positions
defended by the VDK largely occurred under external pressure, even if the
younger generations pushed for change from within. Associations defending the
victims of Nazism were the driving force behind such action. However, they only
became truly effective by gradually obtaining the support of the state, a powerful
relay for their demands towards the VDK.
Mounting pressure and difficulties reorienting the VDK’s missions

Following the phase of transformation of the 1960s and 1970s, issues of memory
evolved once again in Germany. After having integrated the commemoration
of all war dead – at least officially – and identified their categories, the VDK
was faced with the limits of such an inclusive approach to remembrance. From
now on, it would have to differentiate between victims and culprits. Yet such a
distinction clashed directly with the notion of the “fallen” (Gefallenen). On the
defensive, the VDK sought instead to maintain the compromise it had previously
reached. In the 1990s, it opposed the creation of a Holocaust Memorial Day and
the construction of a monument to deserters. It also fought vehemently against
the Wehrmachtausstellung,6 because it tarnished the image of the fallen soldiers
it continued to honour. However, from the 1980s on, the VDK was increasingly
confronted with the issue of the remains of SS criminals in different countries.
This led to new international controversies and diplomatic pressure, adding to the
existing tensions within the German national context.
Among others, the Costermano cemetery in Veneto was the focus of emblem-
atic debates over two decades (Ulrich et al., 2019, pp. 354–364). This cemetery
notably houses the graves of three Waffen-SS officers who were very involved in
the so-called T4 Programme7 and the Jewish genocide. After the affair broke out
in 1988, the German Foreign Ministry gave the VDK its full support when the
latter refused to exhume the bodies concerned, which would amount to sorting
good corpses from the bad. It was deemed that the slogan “reconciliation across
graves” should also apply to all Germans among themselves. As a conciliatory
gesture, the Italians proposed to anonymize the relevant tombstones. But this was
unacceptable to the VDK, since its purpose was to honour all war dead, and espe-
cially soldiers. Those who disagreed with the VDK position highlighted that the
SS had been judged as a criminal organization.
Sensitive to the diplomatic ramifications of this affair, in 1992, the German gov-
ernment asked the VDK to display a plaque in memory of the victims.8 But the
words on this plaque could lead people to believe that the cemetery only contained
the graves of victims. The German government then urged the VDK to remove the
names of the three officers from the cemetery’s registry of honour, or at least to
erase their rank in the Waffen-SS. The most the VDK agreed to do was to no longer
indicate the Waffen-SS rank in the future design of its cemeteries. It decided to do
likewise for the Wehrmacht, so as not to create second-rank soldiers. This announce-
ment led to loud objections from within the association, with threats of withdrawal
from members and donors, as well as associations of soldiers and the Bundeswehr.
Costermano remained at the heart of the debate as it was discovered that the
cemetery also housed the graves of deserters executed by the Wehrmacht, once
again raising the question of universal homage. In 2004, an open letter collecting
many signatures demanded that the VDK revise its position.9 Subsequently, the
association created a scientific committee to find a way out of the Costermano
dilemma, but also to stimulate a broader reflection.10 This committee proposed
a new course of action: leave all the dead buried; refrain from stating their
military ranks; renounce all honorary commemoration of the dead (ehrendes
Gedenken) in favour of a more conservative remembrance (bewahrendes
Gedenken); propose elements of historical contextualization; adopt a message
that blames past crimes and calls for peace. The VDK had to admit that it was
no longer enough to proclaim reconciliation across graves, but that a medita-
tion on history was required (Wernstedt, 2016). This approach was all the more
necessary since the 1990s, when the VDK turned its attention to the immense
challenge represented by war graves in Eastern Europe, until then unreach-
able due to the Iron Curtain. Differentiating between victims and culprits thus
became an even more burning issue.
In 2013, the scientific committee made new recommendations: on the one
hand, the VDK should bolster its actions in favour of all victim groups; on the
other hand, it should make cemeteries conducive to educational initiatives based
on bringing together different perspectives. The association’s board was neverthe-
less reluctant to stray too far from its initial objectives and transform the VDK
into an organization for political and democratic education.
It was not until the end of 2016 that the VDK adopted a new charter, spurred
by an increased need for state funding. In the “Göttingen declaration,”11 the VDK
recognizes World War II as a war of aggression initiated by Nazi Germany and
as a war of annihilation in the East; it renounces all heroic and nationalist forms
of commemoration; it now uses the formula of “deceased from war and tyr-
anny” (Toten von Krieg und Gewaltherrschaft); it proposes educational initiatives
in history and politics for young people and adults, centred on peace and based on
the preservation of all war-related graves; in doing so, it hopes to increase public
funding.
72 Elise Julien
The rhetoric has thus indeed changed, with the association seeking to reflect
upon its actions, which implies an honest confrontation with the past. This shift
was not unanimously welcomed within the VDK, in particular among the reserv-
ist associations in south-western Germany, which include many private funders.
Moreover, the VDK centenary commemorations showed that the association’s
history remains largely subject to traditional interpretations that tend to skim over
any unsettling aspects.12 Thus, while the rhetoric has evolved, it remains suffused
with staunch traditions and displays great difficulty in coming to terms with the
past. It then remains to be seen whether the new rhetoric can prevail without a
truly critical look at history.13
Since the end of World War II, tensions linked to remembrance have marked
Germany, the result of a fragmentation of collective memory that is constantly
being reconfigured. However, the discourse and practices of the VDK have
changed over time (notably in terms of its recognition of civilian victims of Nazism
and its critical treatment of war criminals’ graves). This evolution is occurring
under the increasing pressure of social and democratic expectations from German
civil society but also from the populations and governments of partner countries.
In reality, such demands lead to change especially when the German state imposes
them on the VDK by using an increasingly powerful incentive, namely the asso-
ciation’s public funding.
Conclusion: the convergence of memories,

an unfulfilled ambition?
In 1919, the VDK was formed to rival the republican state in crafting a dominant
discourse around remembrance. This ambition met with some success until the
state’s and the association’s respective positions on wartime memory largely con-
verged under Nazism. After World War II, the German state decided not to create
its own organizations in this field and relied instead on the VDK while also seek-
ing to retain some influence over it. The association then focused on Germany’s
war dead to carry a message of reconciliation, before broadening its scope to
actively work for peace. Today, the German state increasingly relies on the VDK,
not only to preserve its war graves, but also to organize public commemorations
and even for the education of its citizens in democracy and politics. This is pos-
sible thanks to a new convergence between the state and the association around a
national remembrance policy.
Nevertheless, the VDK is not immune to potential new tensions concerning
deaths from armed conflicts. Indeed, due to the Bundeswehr’s engagement beyond
German borders since the 1990s, the VDK is once again confronted with the death
of German soldiers. How can the association’s claim to “work for peace” make
room for such conflicts? The political sphere seeks to honour the fallen from these
recent conflicts, for example through the Bundeswehr monument (Ehrenmal)
erected in Berlin in 2009, which takes up the notion of honour (Ehre). Yet the VDK
has decided to no longer “honour” the dead, but rather to preserve their memory.
It finds itself torn between two missions: paying tribute to soldiers on behalf of the
German state, and acknowledging all victims of war as is its aim. This is not the
least of the challenges that the VDK will have to face in the future, in its idealistic
ambition to constantly embrace the interests of different memory entrepreneurs.
Notes
1 This term refers here to the successive German regimes that were internationally con-
sidered legitimate representatives of the German nation-state, including the Federal
Republic of Germany founded in 1949. The specific commemoration activities of the
German Democratic Republic between 1949 and 1990 are not discussed in this chapter.
2 The battle of Langemarck is a famous German defeat that preceded trench warfare,
practically transformed into a victory by the military communiqué of 10 November
1914, which claimed that the German youth had sacrificed their lives for the nation.
Krumeich, 2001. On the layout of the cemetery: https://kriegsgraeberstaetten.volks-
bund.de/friedhof/langemark (accessed on 12/01/21).
3 The lower the membership number, the earlier the person is supposed to have adhered
to the party, and therefore the higher its perceived political reliability in the eyes of the
Nazi regime.
4 Fritz Debus, Otto Margraf, Christel Eulen, and Klaus von Lutzau, among many oth-
ers. Zimmermann had to renounce a leadership position due to his membership in the
NSDAP, but was elected as assessor in 1946. In 1948, the denazification process estab-
lished that he was merely a sympathiser (Mitläufer), based on the argument that he had
joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) and the NSDAP only to prevent the VDK's integration
into the party.
5 These agreements concerned the following countries: Luxembourg (1952), Norway
(1953), Belgium and France (1954), Italy (1955), the UK (1956), Finland (1959),
Denmark (1962), and Greece (1963).
6 This exhibition on the crimes of the Wehrmacht during World War II was presented
from 1995 in Hamburg and across many German and Austrian towns. It sparked con-
troversy by profoundly questioning the idea of a “clean” Wehrmacht. A revised version
was presented from 2001, which has been housed in the German Historical Museum in
Berlin since 2004.
7 The T4 Programme was a Nazi policy aiming at the systematic killing of incurably ill,
physically or mentally disabled, emotionally distraught, and elderly people.
8 It reads: “We commemorate the victims of war, injustice and persecution. They commit
us to peace and friendship between peoples.”
9 Letter drafted by the Berliner Geschichtswerkstatt:
http://www. berliner- geschichtswerkstatt. de/ zwangsarbeit/ costermano. htm
(accessed on 12/01/21).
10 Rolf Wernstedt, a figure of the SPD, was its first president:
https://www.volksbund.de/volksbund/wissenschaftlicher-beirat.html (accessed on
12/01/21)
11 https://www.volksbund.de/fr/mediathek/mediathek-detail/goettinger-declaration-1
.html# (accessed on 12/01/21).
12 For example, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, president of the VDK, said in an interview with
Le Souvenir français on 2 December 2019: “The Volksbund was born from a citizens’
initiative with the support of a large part of the German population. (…) Over the
decades, the VDK has become an international humanitarian organisation, working
to create a shared understanding between peoples, and for peace.” https://le-souvenir
-francais.fr/trois-questions-a-wolfgang-schneiderhan/ (accessed on 12/01/21)
13 The central theme of the VDK’s activities for the period 2021‒2023 is “Heroes, cul-
prits, victims” (Helden, Täter, Opfer).
74 Elise Julien
AU: Should pub-
lisher locations References
be completed in
this list? Assmann, A., & Frevert, U. (1999). Geschichtsvergessenheit – Geschichtsversessenheit:
Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945. DVA.
AU: Please Bauerkämper, A. (2017). Reisen in die Vergangenheit: Westdeutsche Soldaten,
provide publisher Kriegsgräberfürsorge und “Schlachtfeldtourismus”. Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift,
city name for ref-
76/1, 104–131.
erence Assmann
and Frevert, Becker, A., & Tison, S. (Eds.). (2018). Un siècle de sites funéraires de la Grande Guerre.
1999. Nanterre: Presses de Paris Nanterre.
Behrenbeck, S. (1996). Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen,
AU: Please
provide publisher Riten und Symbole 1923–1945. Böhlau.
city name Böttcher, J. (2018). Zwischen staatlichem Auftrag und gesellschaftlicher Trägerschaft:
for reference Eine Geschichte der Kriegsgräberfürsorge in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert.
Behrenbeck, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
1996.
Brandt, S. (2000). Vom Kriegsschauplatz zum Gedächtnisraum: Die Westfront 1914‒1940.
Baden-Baden: Nomos.
AU: Please
provide publisher Dienst am Menschen, Dienst am Frieden: 75 Jahre Volksbund Deutsche
city name for Kriegsgräberfürsorge. (1994). Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge. Reissues:
reference Gilles - 2001, 2009, 2019.
and Offenstadt, Gilles, B., & Offenstadt, N. (Eds.). (2014). Mémoires de la Grande Guerre. In Matériaux
2014.
pour l’histoire (pp. 113–114). BDIC.
Jelin, E. (2003). State Repression and the Labors of Memory. Minneapolis, MN: University
of Minnesota Press.
Julien, E. (2010). Paris, Berlin, la mémoire de la guerre, 1914–1933. Rennes: Presses
universitaires de Rennes. AU: Please
Julien, E. (2014). Asymétrie des mémoires: Regard franco-allemand sur la Première Guerre provide
AU: Please publisher city
provide publisher mondiale. In Vision Franco-Allemande (Vol. 24). IFRI.
city name for Kaiser, A. (2010). Von Helden und Opfern: Eine Geschichte des Volkstrauertags. name for ref-
erence Julien,
reference Kaiser, Campus. 2014.
2010. Köhler, N. (2016). “Der Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V.” In Defrance, C.
& Pfeil, U. (Eds.), Verständigung und Versöhnung nach dem “Zivilisationsbruch”?
Deutschland in Europa nach 1945 (pp. 425–442). Bern: Peter Lang.
Kolbe, W. (2017). Trauer und Tourismus. Reisen des Volksbundes Deutsche
AU: Please
Kriegsgräberfürsorge 1950–2000. Zeithistorische Forschungen, 2017(1), 68–92. provide
Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF. (1921–1982). VDK (ed.). Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF, volumes publisher
1921–1982. city name
AU: Please Krumeich, G. (2001). Langemarck. In François, E., & Schulze, H. (Eds.), Deutsche for reference
provide publisher Krumeich,
city name for Erinnerungsorte (Vol. 3, pp. 292–309). Beck. 2001.
reference Ulrich Manig, B.-O. (2004). Die Politik der Ehre: Die Rehabilitierung der Berufssoldaten in der
et al., 2019. frühen Bundesrepublik. Wallstein. AU: Please
provide
Ulrich, B., Fuhrmeister, C., Hettling, M., & Kruse, W. (Eds.). (2019). Volksbund Deutsche publisher
Kriegsgräberfürsorge: Entwicklungslinien und Probleme. be.bra. city name
Wernstedt, R. (2016). Die Täter-Opfer-Problematik in der Gedenkkultur am Beispiel der for reference
AU: Please
provide publisher Kriegsgräberstätte Costermano. Lernen aus der Geschichte, 10. http://learning-from Manig, 2004.
city name for -history.de/Lernen-und-Lehren/content/13252.
reference Wilke, Wilke, K. (2011). Die Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit (HIAG) 1950–1990:
2019. Veteranen der Waffen-SS in der Bundesrepublik. Schöningh.
AU: Please Ziemann, B. (1999). Die Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg in den Milieukulturen der
provide publisher Weimarer Republik. In Schneider, T. (Ed.), Kriegserlebnis und Legendenbildung (Vol.
city name for ref- 1, pp. 249–270). Universitätsverlag Rasch.
erence Ziemann,
1999.
6 Pluralism at stake
Rebelling provinces and the national master
narrative in German-Polish collective
memories after the Cold War
Thomas Serrier
Introduction
Historical memory and cultural heritage in Central Europe are characterized by
their multifaceted nature. They can play a crucial role in transforming societies by
renewing transnational dialogues that may be bogged down in burdensome con-
flicts and ossified national narratives. This is especially the case when it comes to
transnational dialogues with neighbouring countries, where historical narratives
are particularly entangled. The end of the Cold War showed the close connection
between democratic pluralism as a political matter and the recognition of different
national pasts as a cultural issue.
This chapter examines four different phases in the evolution of the collec-
tive narratives around German-Polish history between the end of the Cold War
and the present day. It highlights the important role of anti-German sentiment as
part of cultural heritage in Poland during the Cold War era and the role of anti-
German fear as a key issue in the 1990s. This chapter argues that regional Polish
counter-memories have played a key role in renewing the national narrative
around German-Polish relations since the end of the Cold War and it interprets
the national-conservative backlash in today’s Poland as a reactive response to
the spectre of fragmentation. Although German-Polish relations remain in many
ways nuanced and distanced, it is fair to say that they improved spectacularly
since the 1990s (Wolff-Powęska & Bingen, 2005; Ruchniewicz, 2005) after a
period of complicated and partially frozen relationships during the Cold War.
This chapter focuses in particular on the regional territories of Western and
Northern Poland which have played a key role in reshaping German-Polish rela-
tionships since the end of the Cold War. The rediscovery of the cultural history
of these previously multicultural and multi-ethnic regions, which were home
to German, Jewish-German, Kashubian, and Upper Silesian communities, pre-
sented (and continues to present) a key challenge to the national master narrative,
which was characteristic of the Polish communist regime after World War II.
Post-multicultural issues were permanently debated in these regions from the late
1980s into the present day, marked by an unprecedented campaign against liberal
ideas in Poland. This study will be conducted by comparing case study regions
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-7
76 Thomas Serrier
such as Pomerania, Warmia i Mazury (southern Ostpreußen), Silesia, and cities
like Gdańsk (former Danzig) and Wrocław (Breslau).
The text outlines the multicultural legacy of these regions and explores the
renewal of regional historiography around 1989. Indeed, the early 1990s saw the
proliferation of extraordinarily vibrant cultural associations committed to explor-
ing the diverse history of their regions, perhaps in response to the increasing
fragmentation of their memories. This eventually led to a counteroffensive by
conservative and right-wing forces that reshaped the national master narrative
which emerged or was pushed top down during the 2000s in Poland.
The term “post-multicultural,” which constitutes a key concept in this chap-
ter, should be used very cautiously as it has two distinct meanings. One mean-
ing focuses on contemporary post-migratory societies and is used to express
the polemical and negative position that was popular in public discourse in the
2000s and 2010s around the alleged “failure” of the multicultural paradigm of the
1980s and 1990s. In this chapter, we use the term “post-multicultural” to mean
the reverse, in line with Juri Andruchowytsch’s understanding of the term when
he writes about the destruction of multiculturality in Central Europe as an out-
come of the twentieth century: “The multiculturality is de facto being projected
into the past. There certainly used to be a multiculturality before, but what we
have nowadays is a post-multiculturality. We can only find traces and prints”
(Andruchowytsch, 2003, p. 68).
“Recovered territories”: the joint communist

and national post-war narrative
To properly understand the paradigm shift in the Polish regional narratives of
the late 1980s, it is necessary to go back as far as the immediate afterwar period.
These years were characterized by major upheavals on many fronts, including the
transformation of the political system from the pre-war status quo into a commu-
nist regime, as well as massive territorial and demographic changes. The Curzon
line became Poland’s new eastern border, while the western border of Poland
was reset at the so-called Oder–Neisse line (Eberhardt, 2012, 2015; Hinrichsen,
2015; Gousseff, 2015). These far-reaching geopolitical decisions were ulti-
mately approved at the Potsdam Conference by the victorious Three Powers.
The redrawn borders resulted in the annexation of large territories of the Polish
Second Republic by the Soviet Union which are now parts of today’s Lithuania,
Belarus, and Ukraine in the East as well as the concession of the Free State of
Danzig and the German territories east of the rivers Oder and Neisse to Poland in
the West. Overall, Poland lost around 20 per cent of its interwar territory (Esch,
1998) and both territorial changes were accompanied by the forced migration of
several million Polish and German people.
The annexations took place within a complicated context. On one hand,
Germany’s military defeat was welcomed with relief by the Poles after the Nazi
Occupation. On the other hand, the expansion of the Soviet Union following
the advance of the Red Army was regarded with reasonable suspicion and fear
Pluralism at stake 77
after the experience of the Hitler-Stalin pact (or Molotov-Ribbentrop pact) and
the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland in 1939‒1941 (Weber, 2019). This com-
plex backdrop meant that both the annexations and forced migrations of the years
1944‒1948 faced significant challenges in terms of political legitimacy and public
support.
In the aftermath of the Soviet victory, the new Polish government was quick to
use the national ideology to try and legitimize the narrative of the forced migra-
tions and the western annexations (Zaremba, 2019). Indeed, the first leader of the
Polish People’s Republic Władysław Gomułka, who was directly in charge of
the annexed territories, did not hesitate to adapt the legacy of Roman Dmowski’s
National Democratic party to modernizing purposes, well before the Polish
October of 1956.1 However, it is not surprising that Poles refused to forget that
their liberation from Nazi rule had come with Soviet expansion, costing them their
national sovereignty and their historical territories in the East, the so-called Kresy.
Early expansionist thoughts of a Poland reaching as far as the Baltic Sea and
the Oder river (Mazur, 2002: Krzoska, 2003; Strauchold, 2003) go back to the
interwar period. Especially Zygmunt Wojciechowski, a companion of Dmowski,
who founded and headed the strategically seminal Institute of Western Affairs in
Poznań after 1945, designed a historical narrative that emphasized the historic
inclusion of the new territories in the ancient Polish kingdom. Despite a lack of
historical evidence, all annexed territories were claimed to be “recovered” ances-
tral territories, which had been violently and repeatedly snatched by the Germans,
from the Teutonic Knights to the Third Reich. Nonetheless, under complicated
auspices, the regime’s goal of political and territorial legitimization was repeat-
edly achieved with the help of what the former fighter of the Polish Home Army
and anti-communist thinker of the 1980s Jan Józef Lipski has called the “trump
card of Germanophobia” in a classic essay of 1985 (Lipski, 1998). Above all, the
deep-rooted reflexes of fear against Germans were a valuable asset to fuse the
discourse of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) elites and officialdom, common
feelings of the Polish people and even large segments within the Catholic Church,
despite the symbolic role of the famous “pastoral letter of the Polish bishops to
their German brothers” of 1965 (Żurek, 2005; Kosicki, 2009).
The last leader of the Polish People’s Republic, General Jaruzelski, tried to
mobilize his audience with the help of these traditional Germanophobic griev-
ances as late as May 1985 at the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the end
of World War II. He recalled the “Drang nach Osten” or German “drive to the
East” as well as the Teutonic Knights, and listed very systematically the territories
annexed or “recovered” by Poland from the German Reich in 1945.
Dear comrades and citizens, veterans and pioneers, citizens of Wrocław, the
storm of Teutonic Knights was reduced to dust and ashes. Forty years ago,
the criminal Third Reich ceased to exist. Historical justice has been satis-
fied. Our robbed territories, Warmia, the Vistula region, the Lebus region,
returned to the homeland. Mazury and Silesia returned to the homeland after
being torn away from Poland during the manipulated plebiscites [of 1920 and
78 Thomas Serrier
1921, T.S.] Gdańsk, our city, returned to the homeland. […] The “Drang nach
Osten” was banned beyond the Elbe.
(Becher et al., 2001, pp. 221‒222)
This rhetoric was undoubtedly nothing but routine, all in the hope of regain-
ing support for the regime in the tense years of Solidarność. Just as a reminder,
Jaruzelski’s speech with its well-rehearsed combination of state legitimization,
unmistakable anti-German undertones, and the ritual celebration of victory
was held just one day before the President of the Federal Republic of Germany
Richard von Weizsäcker gave his much acclaimed and ground-breaking speech
at the Bundestag in Bonn on the 8th of May that he defined as a “Liberation day”
even for Germany.
The rebellion of the province: beyond German fear

In their attempt to build the nation around fantasies of national unity against imag-
ined “Others” such as Germans (not to mention the Jews), Polish communist party
leaders were always tempted to freeze relations with (mainly West) Germany as
late as in the 1980s. In line with this approach, the Polish communist party was
also known to encourage anti-German sloganeering against the background of
their own fading control over Polish society. From the early 1950s onwards, PRL
political elites and the official Polish press were known to pick out and highlight
unmistakable anti-Polish voices from the vast social and historical discourse of
the German Expellees in the Federal Republic. By focusing almost solely on the
most exposed and radical representatives of the German expellee community,
the PRL political elites and official Polish press could easily present them as a
stubborn, aggressive pack of nostalgic Prussians and old Nazis who were totally
unteachable and unwilling to learn from history (Ahonen, 2003; Hahn & Hahn,
2010). Meanwhile in Poland, the Upper Silesian “autochtones” especially in the
Opole District were subject to their first ethnic screening process known as “veri-
fication action” (akcja weryfikacyjna), and which led to long-lasting suspicion
between the communities for decades (Linek, 2000; Service, 2010).
When reflecting on the long-term evolutions of fragmented collective mem-
ory in this area, the first turning point was certainly seen in the growing vertical
opposition between “us” and “them,” the society on one side, and the communist
regime on the other. This symbolic and mostly subjective divide undoubtedly
had a deeper history in Polish political culture, dating back at a minimum to the
period of the Partitions of Poland and the tensions between the population and the
three imperial administrations during the “long” nineteenth century (Kraft, 2006).
Although this binary thinking was clearly a by-product of the anti-communist
struggle of the previous years, this “us” and “them”; opposition continued to be a
characteristic hallmark of the so-called “transformation” period.
In the 1970s and 1980s, the Polish civil society and anti-communist opposition
developed a more subtle counter narrative to confront the xenophobic stereotypes
propagated by the PRL elites. During the 1980s, Lipski put forward a range of
seminal essays outlining all the ideological barriers to the official reading of his-
tory (Behrend, 2007). His fundamental essay sketched out two distinctive types
of patriotism in a critical reflection provocatively subtitled “on Polish national
megalomania and xenophobia.” Lispki’s essay, which was first published in the
underground press and in the Parisian review Kultura in 1981, dealt with the need
to change the hostile perception of the German cultural heritage and to regard it as
a shared European heritage. This narrative saw the Poles as honourable “deposi-
taries” of a heritage they had been used to deliberately destroying, neglecting,
marginalizing or simply overlooking since 1945 (Thum, 2003; Serrier, 2006).
This may seem minor, but Lipski’s invitation to Günter Grass to give a speech
in front of the oppositional student group Hybrydy in Warsaw in 1985 shows
his forward-looking search for a new, positive, or at least more nuanced image
of the German culture (even if the regime sabotaged the event by denying the
German-Kashubian novelist the entry into Poland). The Danzig-born author of
The Tin Drum was known for his violent criticism of the reactionary discourse
of the Federation of Expellees and stood therefore for “another” polonophile
Germany. Grass had publicly embraced the role as a political symbol of a new era
of German-Polish understanding, most notably when the Chancellor Willy Brandt
took him on his famous trip to Poland in 1970 (Serrier, 2015).
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the Polish political opposition combated
the regime’s highly traditional and yet crudely instrumental stereotypes by chal-
lenging the general condemnation of the German past. The letter of the Bishops
of 1965 and Brandt’s Warsaw journey in 1970 mentioned earlier rapidly consti-
tuted what Pierre Nora has notoriously called “lieux de mémoire,” but the key
issue of cultural heritage, in the way that it was addressed by Lipski, revealed the
gradually changing perceptions of German heritage. No one expressed the initial
feeling of discomfort better than Joanna Konopińska, a settler freshly arrived in
Wrocław, in her diary on 12 June 1945:
I am sitting at my desk writing down these impressions although it would cer-

tainly make more sense to clear the flat. Instead of writing I certainly should
be rushing through the apartment to sweep out and cleanse all this strange-
ness and germanhood that weep from all corners. At this very moment, with
almost every step, I run into things that have once belonged to someone else,
that attest that people whom I do not know at all and who may even be dead
now, lived an unknown life just in here. How can you possibly begin a new
life here?
(Konopińska, 1987, p.42)
This feeling of discomfort and unease obviously lasted a long time, even though
the reasons changed drastically as the new generation grew up. For the first-born
generation in the Western and Northern territories after the war, the only thing
that really mattered now was understanding why their families and officials had
presented them with a distorted vision of their birthplaces and homeland in a
one-sided display of history, and to cope with this truncated narration of the past.
80 Thomas Serrier
These questions weighed even heavier on the new generation than the original
strangeness inherited from the German touches of their hometowns and land-
scapes. To quote Andrzej Zawada’s influential essay called “Bresław” ‒ a volun-
tary and highly symbolic hybridization of German Breslau and Polish Wrocław
– that was first published in 1996:
Wrocław is a town that has suffered a complete memory amputation. I got used
to this town only with great difficulty because of this disabling infirmity. It dis-
turbed and tormented me almost every step I would take. Indeed one can hardly
walk in the streets of Wrocław without being permanently reminded of it.
(Zawada, 1996)
Dealing with the past, undertaking its archaeology, trying to unveil the hidden
chapters of a bound and gagged narration must certainly have been of signifi-
cant political importance. It therefore comes as little surprise that some important
political personalities emerged from the circles of regional cultural activists. To
cite but one, Donald Tusk, the former Polish Prime minister (2007‒2014) who
subsequently served as President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019, was
actively involved in the cultural endeavours in his homeland during the 1990s. As
is well-known, Tusk, born in 1957, began his political career in the vivid liberal,
anti-communist opposition of his hometown Gdańsk, the other, not to say the
“true capital of Poland” during the Solidarność movement. What is less known,
however – but potentially as important for us – is Tusk’s active commitment to
renewing the multicultural image of his region’s past. Together with the histo-
rian Grzegorz Fortuna and Wojciech Duda, the editor-in-chief of the Gdańsk-
based magazine Przegląd Polityka, Tusk edited a popular fine book entitled Once
Upon a Time in Danzig, based on old photographs of the town and the every-
day life during the German period and the period of the Free City (Duda et al.,
1996). Driven by the success of this beautifully illustrated photo album, Tusk
and his co-authors continued to publish similar books, e.g., on the year 1945 in
Danzig, on Oliwa and Wrzeszcz, and on the old district of Langfuhr, known to
be Günter Grass’ birthplace. The interesting thing is that Tusk himself some-
how provided the ideological background for these publishing activities. In more
political terms, one should mention the slightly provocative article he co-signed
under the title “The rebellion of the province” in the Gdańsk daily newspaper
Dziennik Bałtycki on 21 November 1995 ‒ just a few days after post-communist
Aleksander Kwaśniewski’s election as president of Poland. Together with the
renowned writer Paweł Huelle, Tusk obviously felt an urgent need to address the
converging issues of Polish political culture, regionalism, post-multiculturalism,
and multiple heritage. At the very least, one can say that Fortuna, Duda, and Tusk
met the challenge head-on by arguing that:
Today we see ourselves without any complex or resentment with regards to

the heritage of Danzig. We are fully aware that each of its ethnic communities
has contributed to its development in line with its specific ability [genius].
Between the lines, one can read the subtle criticism of the homogenizing narrative
that the PRL regime had strongly supported until 1989 and that was still wide-
spread at this time. Against this challenging background the “ownership” dispute
would be increasingly debated in the 1990s. “Where is Prussia?” and “Whom
does Prussia belong to?” were frequently asked questions (and heavily quoted
articles by the historian Robert Traba and the publicist Adam Krzemiński) at the
turn of 2000 (Traba, 2001; Krzemiński, 2003). It therefore comes as little surprise
that Robert Traba, one of the most widely cited Polish historians, intensely dealt
with those questions as a vocal proponent of regional research and long-time co-
director of the German-Polish Textbook Commission (see Hébert in this volume).
He and the Warmia-born poet Kazimierz Brakoniecki launched the most emblem-
atic cultural association called Cultural Community Borussia as early as 1990 in
Olsztyn. They repeatedly wrote about their search for the disappeared world of
Eastern Prussia, which they compared to a “Northern Atlantis” (Brakoniecki,
1997). As Brakoniecki and Traba wrote:
This country is ours. Aware of its multicultural and plurinational past, we are
willing to take responsibility for its future. We want to create a Polish identity
for it, an active, creative and constructive way of thinking while bringing to
light all the layers of past buried under our feet, the Prussian, the German, the
most local heritage.
(Brakoniecki & Traba, 1990)
In subsequent essays, Traba, born in 1958 in Mazurian Węgorzewo, the old

Angerburg, would go even further than Lipksi’s idea of a German “cultural
deposit” by describing the post-war Polish inhabitants as curators, in charge of
preserving its cultural heritage. He even went as far as calling the present inhabit-
ants “spiritual coheirs” of this truly European heritage.
A natural closeness developed between political, cultural, and literary circles.
“Open regionalism” (R. Traba) constituted an important matter for both political
and cultural actors in the 1980s and 1990s (Knyżewski, 2012). The search for a
lost multicultural landscape was a powerful trend in Polish contemporary litera-
ture since the 1980s, a trend illustrated with Artur Daniel Liskowacki’s Szczecin
novels, Paweł Huelle’s and Stefan Chwin’s Gdańsk novels, Olga Tokarczuk’s
fictionalization of Upper Silesia and the Kłodzko county, Adam Zagajewski’s
poems on post-war Polish Wrocław, and Marek Krajewski’s crime novels set in
pre-war German Breslau. Most of these authors became internationally acclaimed.
In 2018 Olga Tokarczuk was even honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature
for “a narrative imagination that represents the crossing of boundaries as a form
of life, with encyclopaedic passion.”
Everyday items often served as the basis material for fictional projects, from
the mysterious German inscription on a fire hydrant in a remote Mazurian town
to the unknown initials on white blankets left in an abandoned wardrobe in a
deserted house in Upper Silesia (Brakoniecki, 2007, p.137; Tokarczuk, 1998). But
these pure literary objects turned out to be only a few steps away from politics.
82 Thomas Serrier
A good example of this was Paweł Huelle’s literary breakthrough with his first
novel Weiser Dawidek [“Who was David Weiser?”] (1987), which was far more
than a simple cultural event. Huelle claimed to have written the Polish sequel of
Günter Grass’ legendary “Danzig Trilogy” ‒ one of the first contemporary writers
to deal with the hidden German past of his hometown and the dark secret of the
ethnic cleansing.
It is important to highlight that all the people mentioned above share the same
generational experience. They were all born in the Western and Northern ter-
ritories, i.e., the former German territories around 1955‒1958, so ten years after
the end of World War II, the populations exchange, and the take-over of the land.
Their view stood in sharp contrast to the feelings of their parents and the genera-
tion of first settlers represented by Joanna Konopińska as they consciously refused
to play the traditional “germanophobia card” that Lispki had sharply denounced in
his struggle with the PRL ideology.
Rebellion of the province: towards fragmentation?

The significance of Poland’s historical rediscovery only became clear with time.
Against this background, positioning oneself in relation to the multicultural past
of the region would become a key issue. The simple assertion that a German
or a pluricultural heritage did effectively exist was already a political statement
(Mazur, 1997). Yet, despite this deeply and commonly shared view, the critical
questioning of the official master narrative of the PRL regime, i.e., the post-war
narrative of the “recovered territories,” took slightly different shapes according
to each regional context and political sensitivity. Historic narratives around the
German issue varied slightly from region to region as context and motives were
slightly different. In some parts of the new Western and Northern territories, Poles
who had fled or were expelled from the lost Eastern “Kresy” in 1945 were now
confronted with an absolute “otherness.” In some others, the key issue was to
reinterpret a centuries-long history of neighbourhood and coexistence. In the his-
tory of Gdańsk for example there were conflicts, but far more mutual exchanges
in a dominantly German environment.
It is important to note that there are key differences in the transformations
of cities as the borders shifted. For example, the transformation of Danzig to
Gdańsk was quite different from the transformation of Stettin and Breslau to
Szczecin and Wrocław. In the former case, the Hanseatic harbour of Gdansk had
flourished had flourished especially while it was part of the Polish kingdom from
the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. The starting points for local narratives
were therefore completely different. To take another example, misunderstandings
between the Katowice region and the Opole region in Upper Silesia go back to
the interwar period when Upper Silesia was divided into a German and a Polish
part, and the populations experienced two different state contexts; the long-last-
ing mutual suspicions can be explained by the on-going presence of a German
minority around Opole that managed to avoid expulsion after 1945 (Linek, 2001).
One should also take into account the historical vision of the Poles from Poznań
and Wielkopolska (Greater Poland) whose region admittedly returned to Poland
already after 1918. During the th century, they had simultaneously experienced
the mark of Prussian administration and the tensions of the political and cultural
struggle between the national communities. To cite a last specific case, cultural
appropriation was undoubtedly most difficult in the Polish “Wild West,” the
immediate vicinity of the Oder–Neisse border, where there was a strong feeling
of insecurity (Halicka, 2020).
The wide spectrum of historical experiences eventually led to a regional
fragmentation of discourses. After 1989, there was some rivalry between big
or medium-sized Polish towns like Gdańsk, Szczecin, Katowice and Wrocław
or Olsztyn, Zielona Góra, and Gorzów Wielkopolski. It became clear that cities
were seeking to forge new local identities and with that a modern, open European
narrative of a positive multicultural past. This more horizontal fragmentation of
memories, narratives, and (on a practical level) regional initiatives must be con-
sidered a natural consequence of the sheer variety of distinct regional contexts
that characterize the overlapping spaces of German-Polish shared history (Loew
et al., 2006; Serrier, 2008). Besides sharing a German-Polish background, there
were few similarities between regions where a majority ethnic group struggled
for its self-determination (like the Kashubians in Pomerelia) or “double cultures”
and other forms of hybridity had emerged over time (like in Upper Silesia).
Other places were de facto monoethnic before 1945 (like Danzig or the county
of Glatz) but had always been claimed by the Poles following historical lines of
argument. Whereas Szczecin faced the challenge of a heavy Prussian heritage
“en bloc,” the civil society and town authorities in Wrocław obviously embraced
the rich palimpsests characteristic of its past (Thum, 2010). The rise of a multi-
cultural narrative was actively supported at that time by the town’s liberal mayor
Rafał Dutkiewicz, long before the city was elected European Cultural Capital in
2016 (Davies & Moorhouse, 2002). That is why Norman Davies’ emblematic
book Microcosm on Breslau’s and Wrocław’s multi-layered pasts was so timely
and vital.
Although much of the discussion around cultural heritage focused on its
German component, the politics of memory managed – or at least tried to look
beyond German-Polish circles. Many initiatives programmatically underline the
presence of other cultures in Poland’s multicultural heritage: Jews, Kashubians,
Ukrainians, Lithuanians, etc. Indeed, “open regionalism” truly meant that the
cultural interest was manifold from the beginning of the movement despite the
focus on German-Polish dialogue. In order to fully renew traditional perceptions,
the cultural and scientific activities of Borussia for instance immediately tried
to be all-encompassing by developing partnerships with Lithuanian, Belarussian,
Ukrainian, and Kaliningrad Russian scholars and cultural actors who shared
a common interest for the former “Ostpreußen.” In big cities like Wrocław or
Gdańsk but also in smaller towns, Jewish heritage played a central role from the
very beginning as was shown by the early commitment of Borussia to save the
Bet Tahara, the first building of the Allenstein-born architect Erich Mendelsohn,
the well-known pioneer of the Art Deco and Streamline Moderne architecture, on
84 Thomas Serrier
the Jewish Cemetery in Olsztyn/Allenstein. To quote only one other example, the
“district of the four temples” in Wrocław ‒ with its catholic, lutheran, and ortho-
dox churches as well as its recently restored synagogue (2006) – has also played
a powerful symbolic role.
Today’s challenges: rebellion against the province, return

to nationalism?
In the 1990s, the rediscovery of Poland’s multicultural heritage was highly politi-
cized and went on to be widely promoted on the local and regional levels. One
may have dreamt of a linear and continuous development into the end of twentieth
century, with local history blossoming into an ever-increasing phenomenon.
However, a change in the atmosphere has been noted in various sectors around
the middle of the 2000s. This new atmosphere was emblematized by the first
election of the Kaczyński twin brothers at the highest level of the state in 2005.
This was certainly nothing totally new since the leaders of the highly emblematic
Cultural Community in Borussia had regularly been targeted for they were alleg-
edly “Poles who cultivate German traditions,” as Ignacy Rutkiewicz wrote in his
essay “A selective history” in Rzeczpospolita (26 August 2004) The charge of
treason is not far away and demonstrates the increasing relapse of the national-
conservative camp into old Germanophobic clichés (Weber, 2019).
The complex, entangled, and multiple memory cultures in Gdańsk may pro-
vide a last example to expand on, considering the resurgence of old quarrels and
ideological rivalries that has often been debated in the last decade. Perhaps due to
its location “between Germany and Poland,” the city of Gdańsk looks back over
a long history that offers an infinite array of conflicts, exchanges and emblematic
personalities (Loew, 2003). As is not surprising, the city was one of the first and
most emblematic Polish towns that opened up to its own past in the 1990s, reshap-
ing its identity by building mainly on the beauty of the reconstructed old town of
Danzig, the iconic world of memories in Günter Grass’ world-famous literary
work, and the vivid Polish literary scene which has emerged around Stefan Chwin
and Paweł Huelle since the 1980s.
However, the politics of memory in Gdańsk offers a picture full of paradoxes
for the time being, as Basil Kerski, the current director of the European Solidarity
Center in Gdańsk and editor-in-chief of DIALOG, a German-Polish magazine,
has judiciously noticed (Kerski, 2019. During the 2000s, an impressive series of
construction projects was launched to complete the museum landscape. This com-
plemented an already rich collection of cultural sites and institutions, especially
in its completely reconstructed old town. The European Solidarity Center (2007)
and the Museum of World War II (2017) both became organizations of national
importance. Especially the latter made several headlines in the last years after the
early dismissal of the first director, the renowned historian Paweł Machcewicz,
for obvious political reasons. Was the planned permanent exhibition based a bit
too heavily around the European and global dimensions of World War II and not
enough around Poland’s traditional narrative of victimhood, in the eyes of the
national conservatives? Other internationally distinguished museums are com-
pletely dedicated to Poland’s multi-ethnic past, like the Museum of the History
of Polish Jews (Polin) in Warsaw or the Silesian Museum in Katowice, and they
seem to work quite normally. One should maybe add a potential for fragmented
hysteria to the fragmentation of memories. This potential hysteria apparently
comes from different levels of national and international media coverage (see
Behr’s contribution in this volume).
Another aspect deals with the multicultural and multi-ethnic background
in post-war Gdańsk and the hidden stories behind it. During all the years of
the political rivalry between the Kaczyński party Law and Justice (PiS) and
Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), personal attacks were made on Tusk’s
Kashubian family background and his grandfather who served (under duress) in
the Wehrmacht during the war. In the same vein, when Günter Grass belatedly
revealed in 2006 that he fought under the uniform of the Waffen SS in the last
months of World War II, he certainly left his Polish readers and admirers deeply
saddened, but a large majority of 72 per cent inhabitants eventually supported
their popular mayor Paweł Adamowicz to write a letter of reconciliation to the
author of The Tin Drum in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung on August 2006. A statue
was also erected for the author in 2002 in his native town: “Gdańsk understands
his son” (Serrier, 2007, 2015).
The killing of Paweł Adamowicz on 14 January 2019 stirred up overwhelming
emotions since the valued politician of Tusk’s Civic Platform had keenly pro-
moted policies of cultural openness since 1998, in his years as mayor of Gdańsk.
Even if national hysteria may have played a confused role in the mixed moti-
vations of the murderer, the scale of the national grief demonstrated the large
support for a liberal policy, characterized by its open approach towards its post-
multicultural heritage. The commemoration of the victory of Solidarność in the
first semi-free elections on 4 June 1989 took place 30 years later in 2019 in this
tense context. Indeed, to the fragmentation of memories one should certainly add
the great political divide that has undoubtedly become deeper and wider over the
last two decades. This surely encouraged the reassertion of regional identities
against the restoration of central control. In that respect, these mixed impressions
may not permit a proper conclusion, but they underline again the importance of the
entangled history and help to acknowledge the struggle around shared memories.
Note
1 Roman Dmowski (1864‒1939) was a leading Polish politician of his time. The co-
founder and chief ideologue of the right-wing National Democracy movement, he saw
the German Empire as the major threat to Polish independence.
References
Ahonen, P. (2003). After the Expulsion: West Germany and Eastern Europe 1945–1990.
Oxford University Press.
86 Thomas Serrier
Andruchowytsch, J. (2003). Das letzte Territorium: Essays. Suhrkamp.
Becher, U. A. J., Borodziej, W., & Maier. R. (Eds.) (2001). Deutschland und Polen im
zwanzigsten Jahrhundert. Analysen – Quellen – didaktische Hinweise. Verlag Hahnsche
Buchhandlung.
Behrends, J. C. (2007). Jan Józef Lipskis Europäischer Traum. Zur Geschichtskultur in
Polen, Russland und Deutschland nach 1989. Themenportal Europäische Geschichte.
www.europa.clio-online.de/essay/id/fdae-1426.
Brakoniecki, K. (2007). Warmiński Budda. Borussia.
Brakoniecki, K., & Traba, R. (1990). Vorwort. Borussia, 1.
Brandes, D., Sundhaussen, H., Troebst. S. (Eds.). (2010). Lexikon der Vertreibungen:
Deportation, Zwangsaussiedlung und ethnische Säuberung in Europa des 20.
Jahrhunderts. Böhlau Verlag.
Davies, N., & Moorhouse, R. (2002). Microcosmos: Portrait of Central European city.
Jonathan Cape.
Duda, W., Fortuna, G., & Tusk, D. (Eds.). (1996). Był sobie Gdańsk. Fundacja Dar
Gdańska.
Eberhardt, P. (2012). The Curzon line as the eastern boundary of Poland: The origins and
the political background. Geographia Polonica, 85/1, 5–12.
Eberhardt, P. (2015). The Oder-Neisse Line as Poland’s western border: As postulated and
made a reality. Geographia Polonica, 88/1, 77–105.
Esch, M. G. (1998). „Gesunde Verhältnisse“: Deutsche und polnische Bevölkerungspolitik
1939–1950. Verlag Herder Institut.
Gousseff, C. (2015). Echanger les peuples: Le déplacement des minorités aux confins
polono-soviétiques (1944–1947). Fayard.
Hahn, E., & H.H. (2010). Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern: Legenden, Mythos,
Geschichte. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh.
Hahn, H. H., & Traba, R. (2011–15). Deutsch-Polnische Erinnerungsorte. Verlag
Ferdinand Schöningh.
Halicka, B. (2020). The Polish Wild West: Forced Migration and Cultural Appropriation
in the Polish-German Borderlands, 1945–1948. Routledge.
Hinrichsen, H. (2015). Oder-Neisse-Grenze. Bis auf Widerruf? In Hahn, H H., & Traba,
R. (Eds.), Deutsch-Polnische Erinnerungsorte (Vol. 1., p. 497–521). Verlag Ferdinand
Schöningh.
Kerski, K. (2019). Contradictions polonaises au miroir européen. Allemagne d’Aujourd’hui,
288, 14–24.
Kleßmann, C., & Traba, R. (2011). Kresy und Deutscher Osten. Vom Glauben an die
historische Mission – oder Wo liegt Arkadien? In Hahn, H. H., & Traba, R. (Eds.),
Deutsch-Polnische Erinnerungsorte. (Vol. 3, p. 37–70). Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh.
Knyżewski, J. (2001). Zwischen Olsztyn und Allenstein. Die Konstruktionen von
Regionalgeschichte in der Zeitschrift Borussia. „Regionalkontexte“. Historie.
Jahrbuch des Zentrums für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der
Wissenschaften, 5, 129–140.
Kończal, K., & Wawrzyniak, J. (2018). Provincializing memory studies: Polish approaches
in the past and present. Memory Studies, 11/4, 381–404.
Konopińska, J. (1987). Tamtem wrocławski rok. Dziennik 1945-1946. Wydawnictwo
Dolnośląski.
Kosicki, P. H. (2009). Caritas across the iron curtain ? Polish-German reconciliation and
the Bishop’s letter of 1965. East European Politics & Societies 23, 2. 213–243.
Kraft, C. (2006). Geschichte im langen Transformationsprozeß in Polen. In Altrichter,
E. (Ed.), GegenErinnerung: Geschichte als politisches Argument (pp. 129–151).
Oldenbourg Verlag.
Krzemiński, A. (2003). Prusy – to my. Polityka, 14.03.
Krzoska, M. (2003). Für ein Polen an Oder und Ostsee. Zygmunt Wojciechowski (1900–
1955) als Historiker und Publizist. Fibre Verlag.
Linek, B. (2000). Polityka antyniemiecka na Górnym Slasku w latach 1945–1950. Instytut
Śląski w Opolu.
Linek, B. (2001). “De-Germanization” and “Re-Polonization” in Upper Silesia 1945–1950.
In Ther, P. & Siljak A. (Eds.), Redrawing Nations. Ethnic Cleansing in East-Central
Europe, 1944-194. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Lipski, J. J. (1998). Powiedzieć sobie wyszystko...: eseje o sa̜siedztwie polsko-niemieckim.
Wydawnictwo Polsko-Niemieckie.
Loew, P. O. (2003). Danzig und seine Vergangenheit 1793–1997: Die Geschichtskultur
einer Stadt zwischen Deutschland und Polen. Fibre Verlag.
Loew, P. O., Pletzing, C., & Serrier, T. (Eds.). (2006). Wiedergewonnene Geschichte. Zur
Aneignung von Vergangenheit in den Zwischenräumen Mitteleuropa. Harrassowitz
Verlag.
Mazur, Z. (2002). Antenaci: O politycznym rodowodzie Instytutu Zachodniego. Biblioteka
Przeglądu Zachodniego, 2002.
Mazur, Z. (Ed.). (1997). Wokół niemieckiego dziedzictwa kulturowego na Ziemiach
Zachodnich i Północnych. Instytut Zachodni.
Michnik, A. (1990). Zwei Gesichter Polens, zwei Gesichter Europas. Transit, 1. 185–189.
Ruchniewicz, R. (2005). Zögernde Annäherung: Studien zur Geschichte der deutsch-
polnischen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Thelem.
Schlögel, K. (2015). In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics.
Bard Graduate Center.
Serrier T. (Ed.). (2006). Die Aneignung fremder Vergangenheiten in Nordosteuropa am
Beispiel plurikultureller Städte (20. Jahrhundert (Vol. XV). Nordost-Archiv.
Serrier, T. (2007). Günter Grass et la Waffen-SS: la mémoire maudite d’un Prix Nobel
allemand. Vingtième Siècle. Revue d’Histoire, 94, 87–101.
Serrier, T. (Ed.). (2008). Die Aneignung fremder Vergangenheiten in Nordosteuropa
am Beispiel plurikultureller Städte (20. Jahrhundert). Nordost-Archiv. Zeitschrift für
Regionalgeschichte (Vol. XV). 9-324.
Serrier, T., & Weber P.-F. (Eds.). (2019). Allemagne-Pologne au XXIe siècle: une
normalisation inachevée ?Allemagne d’Aujourd’hui (Vol. 288), 9–140.
Serrier, T. (2015). Günter Grass. Mit Blechtrommel und Nobelpreis im Krebsgang. In
Hahn, H. H., & Traba, R. (Eds.), Deutsch-Polnische Erinnerungsorte (Vol. 1, pp. 700–
716). Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh.
Service, H. (2010). Sifting Poles from Germans? Ethnic Cleansing and Ethnic Screening
in Upper Silesia, 1945–1949. The Slavonic and East European Review, 88/4, 652–680.
Strauchold, G. (2001). Autochtoni polscy, Niemieccy, czy.: Od Nacjonalizm do Komunizm
(1945–1949). Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek.
Strauchold, G. (2003). Myśl Zachodnia i jej realizacja w Polsce Ludowej w latach 1945–
1957. Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek.
Ther, P. (2014). The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe.
Berghahn.
Thum, G. (2003). Die fremde Stadt: Breslau 1945. Siedler.
88 Thomas Serrier
Thum,G. (2010). Uprooted. How Breslau became Wroclaw during the Century of
Expulsions. Princeton University Press.
Tokarczuk, O. (1998). Szafa. Ruta.
Traba, R. (2001) Gdzie są Prusy? Dialog. Magazyn Polsko-Niemiecki, 55–56.
Traba, R. (2002). Przestrzeń i pamięć kulturowa. Dwa przykłady dydaktyzacji historii
poprzez wykorzystanie elementów krajobrazu kulturowego. Tylko Dialog ? Polsko-
niemieckie rozmowy o wspólnej historii. Borussia, 27, 56–61.
Weber, C. (2019). Der Hitler-Stalin-Pakt - ein Tabou. In François, E. & Serrier, T. (Eds.)
Europa. Die Gegenwart unserer Geschichte (vol.1, p.81–86). WBG.
Weber, P.-F. (2015). Timor Teutonorum. Angst vor Deutschland seit 1945: eine europäische
Emotion im Wandel. Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh.
Weber, P.-F. (2019). La peur de l’Allemagne comme volonté et représentation ? De la
politique des émotions en Pologne. Allemagne d’Aujourd’hui, 288, 46–58.
Wolff-Powęska, A., & Bingen, D. (Eds.) (2005). Nachbarn auf Distanz: Polen und
Deutsche 1998–2004. Harrassowitz.
Zaremba, M. (2019). Communism – Legitimacy – Nationalism: Nationalist Legitimization
of the Communist Regime in Poland. Peter Lang.
Zawada, A. (1996). Bresław. Eseje o miejscach. Wydawnictwo „Okis“.
Żurek, R. (2005). Zwischen Nationalismus und Versöhnung: Die Kirchen und die deutsch-
polnischen Beziehungen 1945–1956. Böhlau Verlag.
7 The PSG Ultras’ annual
commemoration of the 13
November 2015 terrorist attacks:
a window on collective memory
Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert
Introduction
On 13 November 2018, around 60 PSG Ultras1 – a group of supporters of the
football club Paris Saint-Germain – walked from Place de la République to the
Bataclan club to commemorate the victims of the 2015 terrorist attacks. They
chanted and sang along the way, then stopped in front of the club to observe a
minute of silence. Before dispersing they shouted “DAESH, DAESH, fuck you!”2
in unison. While this gathering was the occasion to pay tribute to those killed,
it was a far cry from the conventional representations of the solemn, emotional
official ceremonies that appeared in the media the following day. In this chapter,
we explore remembrance practices that lie outside the state framework, focusing
on the PSG Ultras’ march as an explicitly dissenting illustration of these. The PSG
Ultras involved in this specific march were Virage Auteuil3 Ultras: over the years
dozens of Ultra groups have been created and dissolved, partly due to violence
at or outside of the games, and these groups have various political orientations
ranging from white nationalism to antifascism. The Auteuil PSG Ultras are tradi-
tionally on the left of the political spectrum – some members recently joined an
antifascist group (Palheta & Roueff, 2020).
This book questions memory fragmentation and the state’s ability to impose
a hegemonic framework for national memory discourses. Both horizontal and
vertical fragmentation are defined as processes in which diverse and sometimes
conflicting memory discourses are becoming more prominent in the public
sphere. In that sense, it aligns with research developing the idea that memory
frameworks are the result of competition between groups who manipulate his-
tory (Chaumont, 2010).
In this chapter, we challenge this theoretical framework through a specific
case study. While we do not deny that there are conflicts in the memory field,
we argue that researchers need to go beyond the competing memory paradigm
to understand them and consider the social relationships involved (Gensburger,
2002). In the study of specific cases, memory appears to be a complex social
phenomenon that cannot be understood simply by considering the intentions
of the actors or the commemorative events organized (Gensburger, 2002). As
posited by Maurice Halbwachs, collective memory is not a discourse imposed
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-8
90 Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert
by an institution, but rather the result of the interaction between historical
memory and individual memory (Halbwachs, 1994). The resulting “fragmenta-
tion” or multiple appropriations of memory frameworks is not new and can be
observed in historical examples. For instance, in nineteenth-century France, the
July Monarchy (1830–1848) tried to impose a single discourse on the nation
and its history in order to unify the nation and legitimize the King by creating a
museum of Versailles. Yet despite the will of the crown, each individual visiting
the museum interpreted and appropriated the narrative according to the other
groups they belonged to (nobility, bourgeoisie, etc.) (Antichan, 2018). Thus, the
disagreements that may appear in remembrance and commemorations are not
necessarily due to conflicts and “memory fragmentation” but are more likely the
result of the plurality of memory frameworks that coexist in the social world both
in the past and nowadays.
The case study of the PSG Ultras gives a sense of the diversity in which groups
produce a commemoration discourse of their own and thus introduce a particular
interpretation of the collective memory of a violent event with societal impact.
Here, collective memory is understood neither as an essence nor as a region of the
brain highlighted on an MRI scan, but as the product of an interaction. This inter-
action plays out between individual memories (recollections) and official or domi-
nant discourses and representations. It is constantly updated in dynamic temporal
and social frameworks. Moreover, the individual appropriation of official memory
is not linear, since each actor appropriates a discourse based on the groups they
belong to (Halbwachs, 1994). So, is the “national” memory under pressure from
competing frameworks? We argue that rather than a conflict of memories, a diver-
sity of discourse is a usual situation arising from the diversity of social relation-
ships existing within a society.
To illustrate this, we analyze ceremonies and commemorations of the ter-
rorist attacks that took place on 13 November 2015 based on personal ethno-
graphic observations. To mark these attacks, each year on the anniversary of
the attacks, the city government organizes a ceremony in front of each of the
locations where they occurred, while a non-profit association, Life for Paris,4
organizes a concert and balloon release in front of the town hall of the 11th
arrondissement. In 2016, the 13onze15 non-profit organization5 also held an
event, inviting participants to launch blue, white, and red lanterns down the
Canal Saint-Martin. Also, since 2016, the PSG Ultras have marched every
year from the Place de la République to one of the locations of the attacks in
memory of the victims. Is this plurality in commemorative initiatives a mark
of “memory fragmentation” and competing memories? To investigate whether
this theory is empirically relevant in our specific field study, we will start by
presenting the state ceremony and memorial norms conveyed around the com-
memoration of the attacks. This then serves as the context for our case study of
an extremely dissonant commemoration, the PSG Ultras march, and an inves-
tigation of the (non-)existence of competing memories. This is then extended
to all the commemorative events coexisting on this date, as a window to an
empirical understanding of collective memory.
AU: Please
The PSG Ultras’ annual commemoration 91 confirm the
shorten text made
Conducting an ethnography can be a useful tool in memory studies (Antichan, in the running
2017; Baussant et al., 2018; Chavanon, 2019). This seemed to be the most appro- head?
priate method for our objectives of discerning individual subjectivity and appro-
priations in a context in which there is a moral weight of consensual discourse.
In other words, what respondents say during commemorations may be closer
to what they think they should say than what they actually think. During our
fieldwork, our objective was to get as close as possible to the perceived sub-
jective reality, so we considered that direct personal interviews were less use-
ful than starting with casual conversations, listening without interrupting and
contextualizing interactions (Antichan, 2017) before integrating a subject’s own
experience into the analysis. This requires a rigorous adherence to empiricism
that is sensitive to the lived experience of individuals, while taking into account
the ways in which collective representations are shaped by these experiences
(Lemieux, 2012). A team conducted the ethnographic fieldwork (in particular,
the two authors of this chapter and Sylvain Antichan). Over a period of three
years (2016–2018), we were spending long days making observations on the
street at the Place de la République as well as at the places where the commemo-
rative events took place on the three-day period before and after each anniversary
of the attacks.6
The state commemorations of 13 November 2015

In France, 2015 was marked by various events publicly identified as terrorist
attacks.7 These included the killings at the office of the publication Charlie Hebdo
and the killing of police officer Ahmed Merabet on 7 January; the killing of police
officer Clarissa Jean-Philippe on 8 January; and the antisemitic attack at the Hyper
Cacher, a kosher supermarket, on 9 January, during which four people were killed
and 16 were held hostage. Then, on 13 November, several coordinated attacks
were perpetrated at the Stade de France, the Bataclan music club, and in bars in
the 10th and 11th arrondissements of Paris. In these attacks, a total of 130 people
were killed, 90 of whom were at the Bataclan. Taken together, these events elic-
ited much political and media commentary, with the government (and sometimes
the media) shaping a discourse of “national unity” (Truc, 2016, p. 325) centred
around so-called “French values” (liberty, equality, fraternity, secularism, etc.)
and the “defence of freedom” (Boussaguet & Faucher, 2017).
Modes of commemoration vary widely. This is because the uses of memory
are linked to the definition of identity, or more specifically to “social images”
(Avanza & Laferté, 2005), as a specific discourse constructed in space and time
and put forward by a social group to represent itself. The representations of and
discourses surrounding the 2015 attacks are no exception to this plurality, yet
the state and the mass media have chosen to convey only those that conform
to a rather restrictive social framework. This social framework revolves around
national unity and so-called “French” values understood as freedom of speech,
universality, liberty, equality, solidarity as well as demonizing the “enemies” of
these values.
The victims of the 2015 attacks were mostly French citizens, but so were the
perpetrators, complicating the issue of how to define an “external enemy” or what
constitutes an “acceptable” enemy (Garcin-Marrou, 2001, p. 84). The “social
images” produced that year thus aimed to defend a form of “national unity”
against a common enemy: terrorism. François Hollande, the French President
at the time, explicitly stated in several speeches following the attacks that the
fight against terrorism would be made possible through the “unity” and “coming
together” (Boussaguet & Faucher, 2018) of the French people. Images and sym-
bols of national unity – from the French flag to the expression “Je suis Charlie”8
– were co-opted and any form of opposition to the discourse of national unity was
widely criticized (Badouard, 2016; Gombin et al., 2016).
Since 2016, the first anniversary of the attacks, commemorations have been
held each year. During these events, the locations of the attacks are cordoned off
by the police, and the victims’ families are separated off in a seated area. Other
participants who arrive by choice or by chance must stand and await the arrival of
officials and the start of the ceremony. The procession of officials9 arrives, travel-
ling from plaque to plaque all morning. The protocol is the same at each location:
a laying of a wreath, a minute of silence, a reading of the victims’ names, and
greeting the survivors and the families of victims.
The commemorations thus reproduce particular memorial tropes that contrib-
ute to the construction of an all-encompassing narrative. The status of the victims
and the reasons why they were targeted are not mentioned: the police, Jewish
people, members of the editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, concertgoers … all are
Figure 7.1 “ Fluctuat nec mergitur,” the slogan of the city of Paris, here on a billboard
on the sidewalk in front of the Bataclan concert hall, on 13 November 2016.
This message was posted on numerous billboards during the week before the
anniversary of the attacks. Source: Picture taken by chapter author Delphine
Griveaud.
The PSG Ultras’ annual commemoration 93
referred to simply as “victims of terrorism and barbarism,” with the state paying
them all equal tribute. This homogenization encourages citizens to subscribe to
a binary discourse of national unity against an external impersonal threat (“the
French people vs. terrorism”). Through this mechanism, by imbuing the com-
memorations with political meaning, the state marginalizes other practices, as we
will discuss.
Yet even a highly ritualized and organized memory framework cannot
completely standardize memory, thus leaving space for other uses of mem-
ory. We explore this based on our field observations of other 13 November
commemorations.
Outsider commemorations: the PSG Ultras march

to the Bataclan
Since 2016, the PSG Ultras have organized their own commemoration of the 13
November victims, particularly in memory of one of their friends who died during
the attacks. This football supporters’ association tends to have a negative social
representation. They are often seen as violent and are viewed warily by the state
and other actors, including other football fans (Ginhoux, 2014). Reflecting this
negative social status, their public commemoration was perceived as dissonant by
passers-by and other mourners. We investigated this dissonance and whether it
potentially conflicts with the state commemorative norms.
To set the scene, here is our report from our ethnographic observation of the
Ultras’ march in 2018.
Paris 11th arrondissement, 13 November 2018.

It’s 10 pm and we’re leaving a bar very close to the Bataclan after a day of eth-
nographic work on the commemorations of the Paris and Saint Denis attacks.
This is the third year (since 13 November 2016) that we have observed in the
field both official and unofficial commemorations in the 10th and 11th arron-
dissements on 13 November. As this is our third year, we do not surprise eas-
ily. However, about 60 PSG Ultras are advancing on us – or rather towards
the Bataclan – with military discipline, singing, and followed by at least a
dozen riot vans. Suddenly, the leader of the group shouts, “We will remind
them of the context!” and all launch into chanting, “DAESH, DAESH, fuck
you!” as if they were at a match against Olympique de Marseille.10 They stop
in front of us, a few metres in front of the doors of the Bataclan. The leader
then announces calmly, “Eh guys, we’re coming, let’s go slowly … in silence
guys …”. In front of the club, they kneel, then set off red smoke bombs. Still
in silence. They then sing a supporters’ song that they all know by heart, “Oh
City of Lights,” in homage to Paris, which was targeted during the attacks:
Oh, City of Lights

Feel the heat
From our heart
Do you see our fervour
When we walk near you
On this quest, chase the enemy
Finally so that our colours
Still shine
The lyrics and the melody are catchy, almost making you want to join in.
Finally, they repeat one last time “DAESH, DAESH, fuck you!” in front of
the Bataclan to stunned onlookers.
Throughout their commemorative performance, many follow them to take
photos, trying to understand who they are. Shock is evident on some faces.
The two of us decide to go and talk to one of the men in the march and tell
him that it is impressive. He thanks us and tells us that it is “normal” to pay
tribute. They have been doing this every year since 2016, and each time they
file an official demonstration request with the Paris prefecture, which grants
them authorization for 30 minutes. In response to our surprise at having
missed them the previous year, he explains that although they always leave
from Place de la République, their destination varies: in 2017, they went to
La Bonne Equipe, one of the bars that was attacked.
He explains that they are there because they are from Paris: “We won’t forget,
we will always be there.” And that “anyone can come” to join their parade.
He points out that they are not just men, that women and children are also
welcome, as if to dispel the violent and virile image of the Ultras. Probably
aware of the stigma of hooliganism attached to groups of football supporters,
he wants to underline that this is a march that everyone can participate in.
There followed a discussion about the six years during which Ultras had been
banned from going to the stadium until all the groups united.
They are then joined by those who had stayed behind, and all together they
leave in the direction of Place de la République. We continue together until
parting to take the metro.
This moment is disconcerting for us, for a colleague who lives on the boulevard
and calls us immediately to find out what is happening, and for the few people
mourning in silence in front of the Bataclan. We did not know that the Ultras had
been performing this “duty of memory”11 every year, making themselves visible
in a powerful, virile, and noisy ritual as if they were defending their football team
against a rival from outside – but in this context the rival is Daesh (ISIS).
The way the PSG Ultras express themselves – marching to honour their friend
who died during the attacks – is far from the expected solemnity during a tribute
or expression of mourning. The smoke, the supporters’ chants, the gestures – it
all reflects the culture of football stadiums. They are “spectacle professionals”
(Yonnet, 1998), and this shocks some residents and others who came to mourn at
Figure 7.2 T
he PSG Ultras’ commemoration in front of the Bataclan, on 13 November
2018. Source: Picture taken by chapter author Delphine Griveaud.
the Bataclan. While their intervention disturbs the calm in front of the grassroots
memorial, this sense of order is nevertheless relative given that throughout the
day, once access is reopened to passers-by, bikes and cars go about their business
without respecting any form of solemnity.
Based on our field observations, the Ultras’ commemoration appeared to cause
a range of reactions, from a lack of understanding to strong disapproval.
“What’s the connection?”

Alarmed by the cries and smoke, a neighbour asked one of our col-
leagues (Sarah Gensburger) who lives on the street what was going on.
Sarah explained that they were PSG Ultras and not to worry. The neighbour
responded “What’s the connection?”, summing up the incomprehension sur-
rounding the memorial practices of the supporters.
This demonstration by the Ultras is of interest in the sense that it shows two
worlds meeting that do not understand each other, as evidenced by the exchange
above or the following tweet:
At Place de la République, a group of Parisian Ultras sing war songs with
their arms raised in front of them. They go in noisy procession to light smoke
bombs in front of the Bataclan. An hour later, the Ultras had been dispersed
with tear gas as passers-by mourn.
(non-public Facebook post, 13 November 2018)
In reality, the Ultras did not march “with their arms raised in front of them” (a
thinly veiled allusion to the Nazi salute), and they were not dispersed by tear gas
– the author of the tweet may have confused this with smoke bombs. The confu-
sion of such details is revealing in terms of the nature of people’s reactions to the
scene. The way the Ultras choose to pay homage is met with judgement influ-
enced by the stigma they carry. Supervised closely by the police, they are also
aware of how they are perceived, as evidenced by our interlocutor emphasizing
that women and children are part of the group.
The Ultras’ transposition of the practices of football supporters to the Bataclan
commemoration was viewed by some witnesses as inappropriate. While they
adopted some common commemorative rites such as a minute of silence, they
translated this according to their own codes: staying silent but lighting smoke
bombs. It should be noted that the PSG Ultras have organized other demonstra-
tions of public grief on previous occasions in different contexts: for example,
they marched in 2006 after the killing of an Ultra. Aside from paying homage,
these occasions also seek to show that the supporters are honourable despite gen-
eral disdain for them (Latté, 2015). Moreover, at this occasion, their performance
was already an encounter between traditional grief practices and stadium culture.
Their chants and songs also show deep involvement in the local memory narra-
tive: “Oh City of Lights” celebrates the city of Paris facing the enemy and recalls
the hashtag #LifeForParis.12 This appears to be related to both the national mem-
ory framework of the attacks – the celebration of the city of Paris against terrorism
– and the Ultras’ value of defending their local territory (Ginhoux, 2014, p. 104).
While the PSG Ultras stage an alternative commemoration, they do not try to
challenge the official ceremony. In brief conversations afterwards, they described
it as “normal” and a civic “duty”. Their goal is to contribute to honouring the dead
and commemorating the attacks. While others view it as a dissonant commemo-
ration, it is their interpretation of dominant memorial rites true to the culture of
football stadiums. This “heterodox appropriation” (Thin, 2010) suggests that the
PSG Ultras may not even realize that their interpretation seems out of step with
the dominant norm, as they translate the dominant practices through their own
codes. The resulting dissonance in fact bears witness to an encounter between
two social worlds. Certain rites are shared: both the Ultras and the state respect
a moment of silence as well as a narrative: the city of Paris is facing an enemy,
the Ultras identify the enemy specifically as Daesh, the state chooses the more
abstract “terrorism.” The Ultras’ commemoration is physical and loud, consistent
with the Ultra culture, while the state’s is more solemn.
One could suggest that these differences could correspond to the concept
of “horizontal fragmentation” through which social groups are challenging the
state’s authority of producing a hegemonic national framework of commemorat-
ing the attack. Yet the observed dissonance between the official and the Ultras’
commemorative practices seems more a result of social stigma against the Ultras.
In other words, our case does not necessarily confirm a state-society divergence
in terms of the normative interpretation of the attacks. Instead, what we can see
is that members of a rather marginal social group “translate” the official memory
discourse into their own commemoration codes, without however challenging its
underlying meaning. The surprise or even resentment voiced by some passers-
by can thus be understood as a result of the fragmentation of the social body (in
terms of socialization and communication practices) rather than as conflict over
the meaning of the recent past.
Beyond the state and the Ultras’ commemorations:

13 November as a window on collective memory
Our previous comparison of the state ceremony and the Ultras’ commemoration
begins to illustrate a non-competitive framework between memory uses of the
attacks. In what follows, we deepen our understanding of this framework by refer-
ring to other memory discourses on the events, particularly those produced on the
first anniversary of the attacks in 2016. As mentioned, two victims’ organizations,
Life for Paris and 13onze15, also held their own commemorations. Based on our
field observations, we examine their memory practices in order to question the
book’s hypothesis of horizontal memory fragmentation and competition.
First, most of these commemorations occurred in relative proximity (the 10th
and 11th arrondissements)13 on the same day, yet a comparison (Table 7.1) shows
that they nonetheless managed to share the time–space framework. People could
very well attend all of these events if they wanted, and we encountered several
who did. This is the first argument supporting a non-competing interpretation of
the memory of these events.
There is no single framework for all the commemorations because the four
events had very distinctive features. Compared to the other commemorations, the
PSG Ultras’ was quite marginal. This is in part because it is essentially a private
event organized by Virage Auteuil, and while mentioned on their social networks,
it is neither largely publicized nor included in the unofficial programme shared by
the media. This made it exclusive rather than inclusive. It is also held later in the
day (as was the commemoration organized by 13onze15 in 2016). While partici-
pants could go from the state ceremony directly to the Life for Paris commemora-
tion, the other two took place several hours later. In terms of police presence, for
the state ceremonies and 13onze15, the police intervened just to cordon off the
event and search participants. By contrast, there was a high police presence during
the Ultras’ march, which was surrounded by the police, a response likely due to
the Ultras’ violent image.
Despite these differences, all the commemorations conveyed a similar and quite
consensual message. While the Ultras’ rite was dissonant, the memory narrative
was indeed similar to that produced by the state. The Life for Paris commemora-
tion equally conveyed a message similar to the one produced by the state, relying
on a balloon release ritual that aimed at representing unity between all individuals
Figure 7.3 A
poster announcing the lantern ceremony organized by the association
13onze15, in the 10th district of Paris, on 13 November 2016. Source: Picture
taken by chapter author Delphine Griveaud.
remembering the attacks. Furthermore, the blue, white, and red lanterns launched
by 13onze15 can be interpreted as a comparable message, the three colours of the
French flag symbolizing the unity of French people.
Many of the modalities were sometimes similar: locations, timing, relationship
to the public – everyone observed a moment of silence, and the purpose of each
commemoration was to honour the dead at the site of the attack. Some aspects
were different: the rituals, the participants, the bystanders’ reactions, the secur-
ing and segmentation of the space, and the relationship to the media. The Ultras
march was the only one that was in a way exclusive in terms of who participated.
Another observation that challenges the hypothesis of competing mem-
ory frameworks is that participation in a ceremony is not always a decisive,
intentional act: of the people “attending,” many had just been passing by and
stopped (deduced from the many attendees standing or sitting with bags of
groceries at the Life for Paris commemoration). Presence at a commemora-
tion does not necessarily presuppose full support either for the mechanism
or the institutional narrative – not all participants come together in the name
of the same values, beliefs, emotions, and so on. Those who are present “are
diversely and unequally motivated, with heterogeneous political convictions
and connections to the attacks” (Antichan, 2019). Participants may not have
made the trip specifically for the event, or they may not agree with all its
norms, though this is the impression given by the media (Sécail, 2016). The
media or institutional observers tend to project their beliefs onto the official
rite; to assume emotions and opinions from behaviour and “emotional fervour”
Figure 7.4 E
ach year on the anniversary of the attacks, Life for Paris sets up a balloon
release ceremony in front of the city hall of the 11th district of Paris. Here,
on 13 November 2018. Source: Picture taken by chapter author Delphine
Griveaud.
(Mariot, 2006, p. 11). On the other hand, we argue that an apparent diversity
of frameworks or interpretations may rather be a translation perpetrated by
groups or individuals, each convinced that they are in agreement with the state
discourse. Rather than the state being more limited in producing a hegemonic
framework of national unity we argue that it is the result of an ordinary social
process that is not new (Antichan, 2018).
While the commemorations organized by non-governmental groups might
appear to be in conflict in some ways with the national narrative, a different, or
even dissonant, event can in fact convey the same narrative. At the same time,
those attending the state ceremony may completely disagree with the narrative
as observed in our field study with one woman during the commemoration in
front of the Bataclan on 13 November 2018. First, she criticized the absence of
the French President: “The president is not coming? Serious mistake …” A few
minutes later, she expressed her strong disapproval of the ceremony as it did not
fit the message she thought should be conveyed: “It’s shameful not to say that
Islam is the source of all this. No, they did not die by chance! This country is
dying from everything …”
100
Table 7.1 Commemorations of the 13 November 2015 attacks
Organization State Life for Paris 13onze15 PSG Ultras

(victims’ organization) (victims’ organization)
Location(s) Successive stops from one memorial Square in front of the 11th Canal St Martin From Place de la
to another, from Saint Denis arrondissement town hall République to the
Stadium to the Bataclan Bataclan
Time Between 9 am and 11 am 12 am 5 pm 10 pm
Year Every year since 2016 Every year since 2016 2016 only Every year since 2016
Type of action Hybrid (walking and assembled Static (assembled gathering) Static (assembled March
gatherings) gathering)
Ritual practices • Moment of silence • Moment of silence • Moment of silence • Moment of silence
• Reading victims’ names out loud • Concert and speech by the • Everyone present could • March (military
• Wreath laying in front of president of Life for Paris, a launch blue, white, and style)
memorial victim of the attacks red lanterns inscribed • Football club
• Multicolour balloons released with a personal message anthems
into the sky into the canal • Smoke bombs
Public welcomed Yes, kept at a distance by security Yes, kept at a distance by security Yes, inclusive No
Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert
fences fences
Participants • Inside the security fence: officials, • Members of Life for Paris Members of 13onze15; PSG Ultras
victims’ families and friends, first • Inside the security fence: interested members of
responders invitees, officials, victims’ the public
• The media gathered in a dedicated families and friends, some
area guarded by another fence media
• Outside the fence: attendees or • Outside the fence: attendees or
passers-by passers-by
Participation of Yes Yes No No
officials
Media presence +++ ++ + −
Estimation 1,000 people 300 people 150 people 50 people
Security and • Security fences to separate areas: Security fences demarcating two A fence on each end of the The street blocked
organization of invitees and police; the media; the areas: near the stage, with the launch site of the canal, from Place de la
space public public at a further distance held by members of République to the
• Within the fences, areas 13onze15 Bataclan, with
designated for victims, for around 20 vans
officials, and for first responders of riot police
• At the edge of the fences, tents monitoring the
offering psychological support march
Commemorations are thought of as moments of coming together and are some-
times presented as apolitical. Yet the discourse surrounding them is charged with
political meaning, particularly when uttered just a few metres away from memori-
als and plaques. Not always a simple expression of mourning, memorial ceremo-
nies can be used as a tool to present demands and make them resonate (Latté,
2015). But as shown in a study on French presidential trips to regional areas, indi-
vidual participation in such events does not necessarily signal agreement with the
official discourse disseminated, or even agreement with the underlying memory
frameworks (Mariot, 2006).
Although the televised imagery of a commemoration transmits unity, commun-
ion and emotion, in fact there is a space of tension between the various attendees.
Rather than being fully consensual, a ceremony is not accepted by everyone in all
its aspects. The normative framework for commemorations is relatively restric-
tive, circumscribing the social interactions and framed by expected attitudes, con-
sensual speech, and the standard narratives conveyed by the media and officials.
Yet public reactions are often more heterogeneous than expected, and a plurality
of commemoration practices appears.
At an organizational level, there are distinctive groups and ways of commemo-
rating. There are also individual appropriations by attendees of each commemo-
rating framework. Yet while it is undeniable that conflictuality and organizational
and individual diversity exist, there is no evidence that this arises from competing
memory frameworks held by groups or individuals struggling for public recogni-
tion. Instead, the ethnographic evidence supports the theory that every organiza-
tion and individual commemorates and remembers depending on who they are
and where they come from. That is, our social (dis)positions operate necessarily
as a filter in remembering – the way we remember and commemorate reflects
social structures and interactions. Thus, this is necessarily diverse, as the possible
combinations of social dispositions and social interactions are infinite. But this
plurality does not mean the memory framework is either competitive or exclusive.
Conclusion
This analysis of commemorations of the 13 November attacks demonstrates a
diversity of memory practices, with the case of the PSG Ultras being the most
explicit example of this. Different commemorations occur at different times,
places, and according to diverse modus operandi during the same day in a two
districts radius. Their social treatments too are distinctive. Nevertheless, this
plurality does not appear to indicate a competitive framework. While there may
be conflict in the relationships between the state, victims, and organizations or
between attendees at the events, the discourse itself is not competing. The frag-
mentation results from different social, political, and cultural dispositions and
how participants and bystanders interact and experience the commemoration –
that is to say, the “framework” described by Halbwachs. In this sense, “horizontal
fragmentation” is not a historical process linked to the decline of the state, but a
reflection of social fragmentation. As such, its fracture lines move through time
and space, but they do not necessarily multiply in an inverse relationship to the
decline of the state. The “decline of the state,” or more accurately the increasing
redeployment of social activities to the private sector (Hibou, 1999), does affect
the governance of the public policy of memory, but it is not yet clear how this will
influence the plural nature of collective memory.
Going further, the “vertical fragmentation” – here interpreted as mere diversity
– of the memory frameworks can be understood as the result of the actions of the
state rather than the consequence of pressure by certain groups (Gensburger, 2014.
While the state remains powerful, it shares the governing of memory with non-
state organizations, to which it delegates the managing and remembrance of the
past. As noted in other studies, the relationship between the centralized state and
state-aligned actors around memory is more dialectical than vertical (Delpeuch,
Dumoulin, & de Galembert, 2014). All the attendees of the 13 November com-
memorations participate in the public policy of memory in an “ongoing norma-
tive creation process” (Lascoumes, 1990, p. 45). In this way, memory can be
understood as part of a shared governance between public and private, official and
unofficial, individual, and collective actors. While this governance is not exempt
from hierarchy, rank, and power imbalances, we consider that these relationships
are more dialectical than vertical.
Notes
1 “Ultras” are hardcore football fans that share some similarities with “hooligans” in the
British sense, however, there are historical differences between the French Ultras and
hooligans.
2 The literal translation would be “DAESH, DAESH, we fuck you in the ass,” but we
have translated this with the most likely English equivalent.
3 The name “Virage Auteuil” refers to the curve of the stadium and the area near Paris
where the group originates. The Ultras who march every 13 November gather together
several former Ultra groups that united after the French government took measures to
contain violence during football games.
4 Life for Paris is a non-profit organization created in December 2015 to offer a safe
space for the victims, victims’ families and first responders of the 13 November attacks.
With more than 650 members, the organization describes itself as apolitical and areli-
gious and as helping the direct victims and the families of the deceased, thus advocat-
ing for improving how the aftermath of terrorist attacks is handled.
5 13onze15 Fraternité et Verité is another non-profit organization, created in January
2016 for the victims of the 13 November attacks. It presents itself as independent from
any religious or political movement and states its objectives as helping victims defend
their rights, supporting them in the legal process and advocating for full transparency
regarding the events.
6 Some of the conclusions drawn in this chapter were produced collectively during ongo-
ing discussions. We took an ethnographic and pragmatic approach, with the objective
of trying to make room for the experiences of ordinary people in a particular time and
place.
7 On the ideological aspect of defining an event as a terrorist attack, see Garcin-Marrou
(2001: 7).
8 “I am Charlie.” The originator of this declaration was Joachim Roncin (art director of
the magazine Stylist), one hour after the terrorist attack on the Charlie Hebdo office.
This expression, and the image associated with it, became emblematic of the social
reaction following the January 2015 attacks (Bazin, 2016).
9 The officials are mostly representatives of the national and local government; members
of various organizations are also involved.
10 The football club Olympique de Marseille is a historic rival of PSG.
11 In 2019, one year after the event described, they marched with a banner declaring “duty
of memory.”
12 This hashtag was very popular after the 13 November attacks in Paris and St Denis.
13 One commemoration is in St-Denis.
References
Antichan, S. (2017). Comment étudier les pratiques mémorielles liées aux attentats ? :
Plaidoyer pour des sciences sociales ordinaires. Genèses, 109(4), 139–156. https://doi
.org/10.3917/gen.109.0139
Antichan, S. (2018). Comment l’histoire légitime-t-elle l’État-nation ? Revue Francaise de
Science Politique, 68(4), 629–650.
Antichan, S. (2019). Pourquoi s’arrête-t-on devant les mémoriaux des attentats ? : Politique
et civilité autour des mémoriaux du 13 novembre. Politix, 125(1), 59. https://doi.org/10
.3917/pox.125.0059
Avanza, M., & Laferté, G. (2005). Dépasser la « construction des identités » ? Identification,
image sociale, appartenance. Genèses, 61(4), 134–152.
Badouard, R. (2016). « Je ne suis pas Charlie. Pluralité des prises de parole sur le web et
les réseaux sociaux ». In P. Lefébure & C. Sécail (Eds.), Le défi Charlie. Les médias à
l’épreuve des attentats187–219. Paris: Lemieux éditeur.
Baussant, M., Chauliac, M., Gensburger, S., & Venel, N. (2018). Les terrains de la
mémoire: Approches croisées à l’échelle locale. Paris: Presses universitaires de Paris
Nanterre.
Bazin, M. (2016). L’énonciation du deuil national. Usages de « Je Suis Charlie » dans les
écritures urbaines. In P. Lefébure & C. Sécail (Eds.), Le défi Charlie. Les médias à
l’épreuve des attentats153–186. Paris: Lemieux éditeur.
Boussaguet, L., & Faucher, F. (2017). Quand l’État convoque la rue : La marche
républicaine du 11 janvier 2015. Gouvernement et Action Publique, 6(2), 37–61. https://
doi.org/10.3917/gap.172.0037
Boussaguet, L., & Faucher, F. (2018). La construction des discours présidentiels post-
attentats à l’épreuve du temps. Mots, 118, 95–115. https://doi.org/10.4000/mots
.23867
Chaumont, J.-M. (2010). La concurrence des victimes : Génocide, identité, reconnaissance.
Chavanon, M. (2019). La guerre des mémoires n’aura pas lieu ! Construction d’une
demande sociale de mémoire rapportée à l’immigration et nouvelles luttes symboliques.
Une comparaison des villes de Saint-Etienne et Villeurbanne. PhD Thesis, Université
Lumière Lyon 2.
Delpeuch, T., Dumoulin, L., & de Galembert, C. (2014). Sociologie du droit et de la justice.
Paris: Armand Colin. https://doi.org/10.3917/arco.delpe.2014.01
Garcin-Marrou, I. (2001). Isabelle Garcin-Marrou : Terrorisme, Médias et Démocratie:
Presses Universitaires de Lyon coll. « Passerelles », 2001. (Presses Universitaires de
Lyon). Paris. Consulté à l’adresse. http://journals.openedition.org/edc/977
Gensburger, S. (2002). Les figures du juste et du résistant et l’évolution de la mémoire
historique française de l’occupation ». Revue Française de Science Politique, 52,
291–322.
Gensburger, Sarah. (2014). Chapitre 11. Comprendre la multiplication des journées
de commémoration nationale. In C. Halpern, P. Lascoumes, & P. Le Galès, (Eds.),
L’instrumentation de l’action publique (pp. 345–366). Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
Ginhoux, B. (2014). Est-ce la fin du mouvement Ultra en France ? Mouvements, 2(78),
103–109.
Gombin, J., Mariau, B., & Villeneuve, G. (2016). Le web politique au lendemain des
attentats de Charlie. In P. Lefébure & C. Sécail (Eds.), Le défi Charlie. Les médias à
l’épreuve des attentats 221–256. Paris: Lemieux éditeur.
Halbwachs, M. (1994). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel.
Hibou, B. (1999). La privatisation des États. Paris: Karthala.
Lascoumes, P. (1990). Normes juridiques et mise en oeuvre des politiques publiques.
L’Année Sociologique, 40, 43–71.
Latté, S. (2015). Le choix des larmes. La commémoration comme mode de protestation.
Politix, 110(2), 7–34.
Lemieux, C. (2012). Peut-on ne pas être constructiviste ? Politix, 100(4), 169–187. https://
doi.org/10.3917/pox.100.0169
Mariot, N. (2006). Bains de foule : Les voyages présidentiels en province, 1888–2002.
Paris: Belin.
Palheta, U., & Roueff, O. (2020). Pratiques de l’antifascisme, France 2020. Table ronde
ADA-PB, la Horde, Jeunes Garde Lyon. Mouvements, 4(104), 147–166.
Sécail, C. (2016). L’histoire en marche (républicaine). L’information continue et « l’esprit
du 11 janvier ». In P. Lefébure & C. Sécail, Le défi Charlie. Les médias à l’épreuve des
attentats (Lemieux éditeur, p. 118151). Paris.
Thin, D. (2010). Milieux populaires et logiques socialisatrices dominantes : Une analyse
de la confrontation (HDR). Université Lumière Lyon 2.
Truc, G. (2016). Sidérations: Une sociologie des attentats (1re édition). Paris: Presses
universitaires de France.
Yonnet, P. (1998). Systèmes des sports. Paris: Gallimard.
Part 2
Historians

8 The fragmentation of historical
memory in Colombia
Sandra Rios Oyola
Introduction
The memorialization of the violent past in Colombia has been a rich process led
by government institutions, different sectors of civil society (scholars, the Church,
activists, among others), and grassroots victims’ organizations who have experi-
enced the harms of the conflict in the flesh. Consequently, the current hegemonic
voices about the historical memory of the conflict in Colombia are the result of
multiple negotiations between those different actors. Additionally, the social con-
struction of narratives of historical memory faces pressure from domestic and
international actors, which present norms about “the proper way” of facing past
human rights abuses (David, 2017); an example of those norms is those estab-
lished by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights in 2019.
The conflict in Colombia has lasted over five decades and reached an impor-
tant moment of transition in 2016 with the signature of the Peace Agreement
between the Colombian government and the FARC (Armed Revolutionary Forces
of Colombia) guerrillas. In this chapter, I will mainly focus on the aftermath of
the signature of the Peace Agreement, or the “post-Peace-Agreement-signature”
period, and the tensions that have been raised in the public discourse, regarding
the content and the forms of official memorialization. The tensions have risen
because of the Memory Museum’s mandate. This mandate says that the NCHM
should design and create the museum, and the results of the Truth Commission
(The Commission for the Clarification of Truth and Non-Repetition 2016‒2021)
should be present in the museum. According to the Decree 588/2018, the Truth
Commission should have a permanent exhibition in the museum that is accessible
to the public.
During the “post-Peace-Agreement-signature” period, President Ivan Duque’s
administration (2018‒2022) has sought to deter many of the steps taken for the
implementation of the agreement; his administration follows a mandate of “peace
with legality,” implying that there is a dubious legal character to the agreement
reached in 2016 (Crisis Group, 2018). As part of the direction taken by Duque’s
administration, the legality of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace was attacked
in the Congress, the budget of the Truth Commission was shortened by a third,
and the president did not even attend the inauguration of the Truth Commission.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-10
110 Sandra Rios Oyola
Furthermore, the autonomy of the NCHM was compromised when the president
positioned Dario Acevedo as its new director, as is explained below. Additionally,
the new organization of the NCHM included several bureaucrats coming from
many ministries including the Ministry of Defence, to its directive board of the
NCHM (Decree 502, 27 March 2017).
There is a clear process of vertical and horizontal fragmentation of memory
taking place in Colombia. At the moment of writing this chapter, there were sev-
eral clashes between the JEP and the NCHM, and between the NCHM and several
grassroots organizations that have removed their files from the NCHM’s archive.
The concepts of memory fragmentation can help to explain these frictions beyond
the personal positions of some actors or their ideologies. This chapter discusses,
from a perspective of memory fragmentation, how the institutional narratives of
the conflict in Colombia have changed during the “post-Peace-Agreement-sig-
nature” period. This chapter is based on the analysis of the norms and mandates
that regulate the HMG/NCHM, their management reports, a thematic analysis of
over thirty newspaper articles taken from the national newspaper El Espectador in
the years 2019‒2021, and other outlets such as the magazine Semana, the maga-
zine Arcadia, the national newspaper El Tiempo, and other virtual media such as
blogs and webinars produced by the Centro de Memoria, Paz y Reconciliación,
(Memory, Peace and Reconciliation Center), a local public institution in Bogotá.
Additionally, ten semi-structured interviews with ex-members and current mem-
bers of the NCHM and other memory institutions in Colombia were conducted
in 2019 and 2020. The information was codified following a thematic analysis
methodology. Thematic analysis is a qualitative research method for “identifying,
analyzing, organizing, describing, and reporting themes found within a data set”
(Nowell et al., 2017, p. 2).
The chapter starts with (1) a discussion about the theoretical perspectives used
in the analysis, including a reflection on the concepts of horizontal and vertical
fragmentation. This is followed by (2) a description of the work of the NCHM
before and after the signature of the Peace Agreement. Then, I present (3) an anal-
ysis based on the themes found in the examination of the information presented
above. And finally, (4) I present some concluding statements.
Vertical and horizontal memory fragmentation

Collective memories are the result of what social groups do in order to bring
from the past that which is important for their present. Halbwachs (1992[1925])
uses the concept of social frameworks of memory to explain how membership
of a group defines what we remember and how those memories help us to get a
stronger liaison with the group and those who came before us. In the case of trau-
matic memories or memories of violent pasts, Jeffrey Alexander (2004) explains
that not every event that is traumatic or violent becomes a collective traumatic
memory, mainly because social traumas are a social construction intended to make
some violent events more visible than others. In Judith Butler’s words (2004),
these narratives of social memory help us to define what is “grievable” in society.
The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia 111
When we remember and commemorate in a collective manner, we emphasize the
true nature of what happened, how it affects us, and how we move on or not.
The concern for developing social and historical memorialization of violent
pasts is linked to both the efforts of researchers and scholars as well as social
movements and activists. In Latin America, human rights activists became
memory entrepreneurs preoccupied with strengthening democracy and resisting
authoritarian repression through the memorialization of massive human rights
violations (Jelin, 2017). The importance of this practice comes from the type of
human rights violations that were committed during the 1970s and 1980s in the
Southern Cone. Different types of human rights violations such as forced dis-
appearance of civilians were repeated throughout the geographical region under
transnational operations such as the Operation Condor. This operation involved
the participation and complicity of state actors, armed forces, and different mem-
bers of civil society (Lazzara, 2018; Preda, 2020).
In the absence of truth commissions or other forms of accountability, memory
became a tool to fight impunity and silence. Initiatives such as the one carried by
the Vicaría de la Solidaridad in Chile were replicated across different scenarios
in Latin America, keeping a record of human rights abuses, such as forced disap-
pearance and torture, under the hope that at some point these reports could be used
to bring justice (Ruderer & Straßner, 2015). The hope was quickly transformed
into a strong work of historical and social memorialization that continues to reso-
nate across the continent.
However, the social memorialization of violent pasts is not a prerogative of
civil society, and it is also part of the repertoire of mechanisms developed by the
government in order to deal with the legacy of violence and to regain legitimacy
after transition. Elsewhere, I have explained how victims’ memories are often
used as a way to enhance the legitimacy of the post-transitional government, and
to achieve that goal, the way that victims are remembered is by highlighting their
role as “freedom fighters” or “democracy fighters” as occurred in Chile and South
Korea, and stripping them from their political identity (Rios Oyola, 2017).
In Colombia, in addition to the institutional commissions of inquiry, many
grassroots memorialization efforts were born during the highest peaks of the
conflict, in the early 2000s, and they responded to particular circumstances
and silences. There are multiple narratives of memory of violent pasts, some of
them conflict against each other, others overlap, or they are negotiated or denied
(Rothberg, 2009). They also have their own temporality, for example, they create
a collective effort to memorialize a massacre not long after it happened, as a way
to demand the termination of ongoing violence (Rios, 2018).
The concept of memory fragmentation helps us to understand some of the ten-
sions in the collective and social construction of narratives of social memory of
atrocious pasts. As I mentioned before, social frameworks help social groups to
decide what to bring from the past to the present. As a result, different carrier
groups create multiple narratives that are often competing among each other;
they overlap or they are negotiated. Sangar (2019: 39) defines fragmentation of
memory “as the process of a multiplication of expressions of memories calling
into question a given social framework (here at the national level), and conse-
quently weakening the consensus on ‘the needs of the present.’” The multiple
expressions of memory can come from above, from below, or from outside, and
in that case, we are talking about “vertical fragmentation”: conflicting memories
that not only come from above but from international, or transnational actors.
Memories can also come from civil society organizations, memory entrepreneurs,
and others, with conflicting positions that are inscribed in national audiences and
public institutions, in which case we are talking about “horizontal fragmentation”
(see introduction to this volume). These dynamics of social memorialization can
help to explain the conflicts and transformation in the memoryscape of Colombia,
instead of simply assigning the fate of a particular institution to the political or
personal will of specific actors.
The NCHM before the signature of the peace process

The social memorialization of violent political processes is constituted by unspeak-
able events, traumatic memories, silences, and denunciations that are configured
in diverse and often contradictory ways. The case of Colombia with over six dec-
ades of violence and presents a complex scenario of memorialization. According
to the Single Registry of Victims (Registro Único de Víctimas – RUV, 2020)
there were 8,944,137 victims in Colombia, including those who have been force-
fully displaced. Colombia is a democratic country, with free elections and a robust
judicial and legislative system, nevertheless, it nested one of the longest con-
flicts in the hemisphere. This contradiction explains why there have been at least
12 institutional commissions of inquiry about the conflict: on the one hand there is
trust in the institutions and on the other hand there is an ongoing violent crisis that
makes the demand for truth about the violence still pressing (Jaramillo, 2015).
Each one of these commissions responded to particular socio-political circum-
stances, definitions of violence and peace, and constituted institutional devices
for the construction of a historical memory of the conflict (Jaramillo, 2015: 25).
This chapter focuses on the Historical Memory Group (HMG) (2007‒2011),
which later became the National Centre for Historical Memory (NCHM)
(2011‒2021).1 When the HMG was created, the hegemonic narrative explained
the violence in the country as the result of legitimate attacks of the armed forces
against illegal armed groups funded by drug traffic. It was not until 2011 that
victims finally got a place in the official political discourse of Colombia, thanks
to Law 1448 (2011), better known as the Victims’ Law. This law was in part the
result of the mobilization of civil society, the will of the Court, and the pressure
of transnational human rights movements (Weber, 2020). Parallel to its role in the
legislative arena, the HMG developed a series of reports on massacres, assassina-
tion, forced disappearance, and other emblematic cases in cooperation with schol-
ars, researchers, and grassroots victims’ organizations. These reports and their
dissemination contributed to fracturing the narrative that described the violence
as a form of struggle against narco-terrorist guerrillas, and instead demonstrated
the existence of an armed conflict with social and political components, with a
widespread and systematic attack against certain sectors of society. This narrative
helped to strengthen the moral ground that supported the Victims’ Law (Riaño &
Uribe, 2016).
The Historical Memory Group was part of the National Commission for
Reparation and Reconciliation, which was created in 2005 in the framework of the
Law 975 Justice and Peace Law that legislated over the reintegration of the para-
military. Its aims included providing some form of symbolic reparation through
the memorialization of victims (Riaño & Uribe, 2016). The researchers work-
ing at the HMG triangulated the testimonies presented by the victims in order to
contrast them with judicial cases that had already been resolved; the purpose of
this triangulation was to avoid exposure to possible demands or interference in
ongoing cases. The methodology of the group followed a historical pathway and
a legal pathway, based upon the collection of testimonies, archives, and evidence.
For that reason, the cases that were selected in their methodology of emblematic
cases were restricted to those that were well documented and that had official
documents that supported the collected data (Lugo Vera, 2015). It was important
that “[t]hose accusations of responsibilities were then screened by other sources
such as files from social and state organizations such as the Prosecutor’s Office,
the Presidency’s Human Rights Observatory when it existed, the Ombudsman's
Office and its early warning system” (Delgado Baron, 2020).
The reports have been carefully written by research teams led by scholars who
are specialists on the different social problems tackled there, such as LGBT popu-
lation, Peasants, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous population, among others. The
scholars’ knowledge and experience in the region gave legitimacy to the institu-
tion and to the process of writing these reports that are a mixture between histori-
cal memory based on victims’ testimonies and academic research. Additionally,
the Group supported the creation and continuation of hundreds of memory initia-
tives that are informal and led by civil society. Again, they have gained the trust
of the communities who deposited their archives at the Group.
In 2010, an Interinstitutional Table was created in order to articulate the ele-
ments disposed of by the law 1424, which created a series of mechanisms of
transitional justice focused on the reintegration of the paramilitary army named
United Self-Defense of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia – AUC).
In this Table, the NCHM sought to guarantee citizens’ right to truth and victims’
right to reparations. In 2011, the Law 1448, also known as the Law of Victims
and Land Restitution, created the component of truth and reparation of Law 1424.
The NCHM had an important role in this area. For example, the Justice and Peace
wing of the Superior Court of Bogotá determined the responsibility of José Rubén
Peña Tobón, Wilmer Morelo Castro, and José Manuel Hernández Calderas, for-
mer members of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia of the massacres in
the villages of Corocito (Tame), and Matal de Flor Amarillo (Arauca).
In the operative part of the sentence, the court exhorted the NCHM to par-
ticipate in the implementation of satisfaction measures for victims through
the reconstruction of the historical memory of the massacres (…). It also
suggested as part of the symbolic reparation measures, to elaborate biograph-
ical profiles of the mortal victims of the two massacres as a form of recogni-
tion of the dignity of the people who were murdered and their families.
(NCHM, 2014, p. 14)
The Centre produced 102 book-length investigations documenting human rights

abuses, which are being used as a point of departure by the Special Jurisdiction of
Peace and by the Truth Commission. The NCHM’s role amid conflict was crucial
for creating a space that welcome victims’ voices because it was
dangerous to talk about the truth and to search for justice in polarized com-
munities, while the perpetrators were still in power. Nevertheless, there were
cases in which this work [the NCHM’s work] was used to remove perpetra-
tors from power, or for preventing that political candidates, who were perpe-
trators themselves, could win elections.
(GMH-CNRR, 2011)
The NCHM after the signature of the Peace Agreement

In the aftermath of the signature of the peace agreement, the most significant devel-
opment of the NCHM included taking more concrete steps toward the creation of
the Museum of Memory. The script for the permanent collection of the museum,
Voces para transformar a Colombia (Voices to transform Colombia), whose con-
struction started on 5 February 2020, was tested at the Bogotá International Book
Fair (17 April to 2 May 2018) and the second at the Book and Culture Festival
in Medellín (7 to 16 September 2018). In 2019, two versions of Voces were pre-
sented in the country. The script was based around the methodology “River, Body
and Land” in which each section presented an aspect of the conflict, showing its
systematic and complex character. Additionally, the NCHM continued with its
work supporting the implementation of orders and warrants issued by court deci-
sions, publishing texts and books regarding memorialization of the conflict in the
country, and supporting 18 local initiatives of memorialization (NCHM 2020).
According to the Peace Agreement, the Museum is supposed to consider the con-
clusions reached by the Truth Commission.
However, after the resignation of Gonzalo Sanchez as director of the NCHM
in 2018, a series of controversies were ignited around the new direction of the
Centre. As was mentioned before, during the “post-Peace-Agreement-signature”
period, President Ivan Duque’s administration (2018‒2022) has sought to deter
some aspects of the implementation of the agreement. His party, the Centro
Democrático, was part of the coalition against the peace plebiscite in 2016.
In what follows, I present a succinct list of some of the issues that have been
raised regarding the NMHC during this period:
1. The candidates proposed for the direction of the Centre were perceived as
partisan and biased against the peace process. (Delgado Baron, 2020).
2. The new director Dario Acevedo was perceived as biased due to his state-
ments against the peace process, his denial of the socio-political dimensions
of the conflict, among other controversial statements (Acevedo, 2018). His
resignation was demanded by several senators in 2019; additionally, Acevedo
was requested at the senate chamber for a “political control debate” in 2020
(El Espectador, 2020a).
3. The NCHM was expelled from the International Network of Sites of Conscience
and the National Network of Memory Sites in 2020 (Sitios de Memoria, 2020).
The expulsion was due to its “exclusionary and biased” statements and its
denial of the Colombian armed conflict (Revista Arcadia, 2020). The Network
claimed in a letter that Acevedo’s “contempt for the victims and for places of
memory in the Colombian territories is evident” (Revista Arcadia, 2020).
4. Several victims’ organizations removed their files from the NCHM’s files and
protested against the construction of the museum (EL Espectador, 2020b).
They claimed that they did not feel that their rights were being protected nor
did they feel safe with their information archived at the Centre.
5. The NCHM issued a call for academic applications, in order to fund research
for “A better understanding of the armed conflict.” Nevertheless, over 55
institutes and faculties from several universities rejected the call and claimed
that it was biased (El Espectador, 2020c). Additionally, different groups of
scholars have publicly manifested their discontent with Acevedo’s role at the
NCHM.
6. The NCHM changed the exhibition of indigenous memories of the conflict
(an exhibition named SaNaciones): the timeline that recognized the origin of
the violence suffered by the indigenous people at the Conquest was altered,
and the land as a central characteristic of the conflict removed (Forero, 2021).
7. Finally, the most pressing element against the NCHM has come from the
Special Jurisdiction for Peace (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz ‒ JEP),
which is the domestic tribunal of transitional justice in Colombia. The JEP
issued a caution against the NCHM to not alter the script Voces. According
to the JEP, “[t]he work will have a six-month protection measure, while the
question of whether it has undergone changes without having previously
consulted the victims of the armed conflict is resolved” (El Espectador,
2021). According to the Section for the Absence of Acknowledgment of
Truth and Responsibility for Facts and Conducts (La Sección de Ausencia de
Reconocimiento de Verdad y de Responsabilidad de los Hechos y Conductas
‒ SARV), “the CNMH must harmonize, coordinate, guide, and adjust its
actions, taking as a reference the Constitution, Legislative Act 01 of 2017
and the Peace Agreement” (JEP, 2020).
Thematic analysis about the uses of memory in Colombia

In this section, I use a thematic analysis approach in order to identify the main
positions in the debate about the role of the NCHM in the post-peace accord
period.
The conflict is not only about different interpretations of the past but about
different interpretations of what historical memory is about. The thematic
approach helps me to identify the main elements in those interpretations. As a
result, I found that on the one hand, there is a perspective that sees memory as
the understanding(s) of the past, and on the other, a perspective that sees memory
as a citizens’ right, mainly of victims, and as a pathway to their reparation and
dignification.
There are different actors that locate themselves on different positions in this
spectrum. Each position corresponds to particular notions of a political project of
nation and of reconciliation. For the sake of this analysis, I have elaborated two
ideal types of the perspectives used in this debate: Memory as the understanding(s)
of the past (MUP) and Memory as a right. Since these are ideal types, it is logical
that in practice there are borrowings, overlappings, and negotiations between both
perspectives.
Memory as the understanding(s) of the past (MUP)

According to this perspective, historical memory or memories are plural, there
cannot be an official narrative about the past, because memories are always chang-
ing. In order to guarantee or to support a democratic discourse, it is necessary to
have open and flexible notions of memory, where different actors see themselves
represented. Regarding its position on reconciliation, this perspective presents
memory as a vehicle for consensus not for conflict, where every actor sees them-
selves represented, and they are satisfied with that representation.
There have been rich and diverse debates in the field of memory studies and
transitional justice around the notion of “the duty to remember” or “the facing
the past principle” (David, 2020, p. 59). However, according to the MUP per-
spective, this is not the context in which the debate about the NCHM should be
located. Instead, the debate is done around issues of rigour, openness, and neu-
trality. Those were the themes identified in the analysis of over 30 news articles,
webinars, and other commentaries on this topic issued by analysts, members, and
ex-members of the NCHM.
The MUP perspective is built around the idea that the methods from the social
sciences and history would help to interpret the goals for the NCHM established
by the law (Arts 145‒148, Law 1448 2011). José Obdulio Espejo (2020), also
a supporter of the MUP perspective, explains the essence of this justification:
“History seeks to be objective and is subject to criticism and changes, while mem-
ory is subjective and reconstructs the events of the past from the testimonies of the
victims or survivors, which may or may not be real.” This rhetorical use of science
and history helps the MUP perspective to create distance from the criticisms about
a biased work and to establish its authority as based on scientific principles. This
is why Acevedo justified the call for historical research funded by the NCHM, as
an “effort to democratized the construction of memory” (El Espectador, 2020c).
The MUP is sustained on a paradox; it denies the validity of memory as
an authorized pathway to examine the past, and bases the work of the NCHM
on scientific and historiographic research. At the same time, it recognizes that
memories are multiple and flexible, therefore there cannot be a single version
of the past. Following this argumentation, any type of censorship or edition of
the memorialization of the conflict can be justified on a “scientific” basis, it can
be dismissed as political, or it can be justified due to the flexible character or
memory.
According to Acevedo, “[t]he truth in this sense is therefore not something
definitive, but rather it is understood as an accumulated knowledge from the
efforts of professional researchers” (Acevedo, 2019). He presents the work of the
NCHM as the pursuit of truth about the past, which is not definitive, and carried
by expert gatekeepers not by civil society or grassroots organizations. Further,
Acevedo claims that the works carried out by the previous administration of the
NCHM are not representative of the majority of scholars in the country; they
“were carried out by a small group of intellectuals who do not represent the broad
spectrum of national researchers” (Acevedo, 2019).
In terms of temporality, the alteration of the SANACIONES intervention dem-
onstrates an interpretation of the mandate of the NCHM as a tool for the restric-
tion (and possible censorship) of the victims’ voices. With the alteration of the
exposition, they intended to challenge the “ideology” presented there (Forero
Rueda, 2021). According to Fabio Bernal, director of the Memory Museum, the
exhibition's timeline was changed due to the NCHM's mandate:
That is why we must work with the memory and the victims and the expres-
sions that are of the victims, we guarantee that they are not modified or
altered. But we must also respect that regulatory framework of not promoting
and encouraging an official truth. This is not about imposing a point of view
because we must guarantee the reflection on the facts of the conflict from a
different way of the voices of the victims.
(Fabio Bernal, quoted by Forero Rueda, 2021)
Finally, the MUP’s emphasis on the harms caused by the FARC guerrillas is used
as an alleged correction of previous biases, which allegedly focused on the role
of the state and the paramilitary armies in the conflict. What is missing from this
perspective is the political dimension of memory that is considered to be a right
and a form of reparation and dignification for victims.
Memory as a right (MAR)

At the other end of the spectrum, we find the perspective of memory as a right, a
right for the society in general and the victims in particular. The actors that best
support this notion are members of the civil society at local, national, and interna-
tional level, members of academia, memory organizations, and victims’ organiza-
tions. To this perspective also belong the voices from public officers working at
diverse historical memory institutions, some of whom also worked or continue to
work for the NCHM.
Their view on openness and diversity means something different than what
is found in the MUP perspective. They consider that there are diverse views and
narratives about the past, which is a challenge in itself, because of the plurality of
voices of victims that need to be considered. There are victims belonging to differ-
ent time periods, different geographical regions, victims from different perpetra-
tors, and with different identities such as LGBTI, women, children, indigenous,
afro-Colombian, exiled victims, etc. These are also victims who have experienced
different types of harms (interview with Memory worker, May 2020). The idea of
diversity and openness is centred around the demand to include a wide array of
victim experiences, but it is centred around victims nonetheless.
The centrality of victims’ testimonies can also be problematic in itself because
it can lead to a hierarchy of victimhood or to the instrumentalization of victims’
voices as a way to legitimize a low-impact transition in the country. Nevertheless,
these problems have been recognized among the different actors and they are
part of the larger debate about memory and conflict in Colombia, both in aca-
demia and among civil society (see Aranguren, 2017; Castillejo, 2017; Riaño &
Uribe, 2016).
At a national level, victims’ organizations have rejected the MUP perspec-
tive, because they do not see themselves represented in it, and they see their own
interests and achievements betrayed. For example, the Association of Mothers of
those who have been killed in extrajudicial manner (MAFAPO), wrote a letter in
which they affirm that “he [Acevedo] does not guarantee the right to the truth of
the victims in general and of our organization in particular, so we decide not to
continue with the process indicated above” (El Espectador, 2020b). According to
the MAR perspective, reconciliation is based on the dignification of victims; once
victims have received integral reparation, their rights restored, and their humanity
recognized on equal terms as the rest of citizens, then we can say that reconcilia-
tion has been achieved.
The Future Museum is supposed to reflect the conclusions reached by the Truth
Commission. One of the main concerns for many MAR activists and victims is
that the MUP perspective promoted by the NCHM is a form of preparation for
delegitimizing the findings that the CEV or Truth Commission might encounter
(interview, NCHM officer, May 2020).
Conclusion
The concept of fragmentation of memory can be useful for analyzing the situation
of the institutional historical memorialization of the conflict in Colombia. In turn,
the Colombian case helps to expand the concept of memory fragmentation, since
it does not only focus on “the multiplication of expressions of memories” but on
the multiplication of perspectives that question the role of memory in itself. The
multiplicity of narratives not only exists at the level of the content of those memo-
ries but at the level of the uses of memory.
From the horizontal fragmentation perspective, there are several contentions at
different levels and arenas, at a national, regional, local, and international level.
For example, the role of scholars and the language of history vs. memory has a
strong influence on the MUP perspective, namely, the notions of neutrality, rig-
our, and openness of narratives of historical memory. The role of victims’ organi-
zations differs in the two perspectives studied in this chapter. On the one hand,
the MUP sees victims as an important component of the memorialization of the
conflict in their quality of “objects of memory,” while the MAR perspective sees
victims as “subjects of memory,” where not only the academic experts but lay
people can be experts of memory. Both perspectives can lead to a utilization of
victims’ voices as a form of legitimizing particular political projects.
From the vertical fragmentation perspective, there are contentions in terms of
the uses of memory that come from above, from below, and from outside. The
clearest case is the actions led by the JEP and the senate in order to establish some
standards for the regulation of memorialization practices at an official level. In a
similar vein, the role of the International Network of Sites of Conscience, as well
as the national network, in removing the NCHM’s membership, serves as a form
of challenging their authority and weakening the consensus about the past that the
current administration of the NCHM intends to create.
Is there a possibility of negotiation between these two perspectives? I argue that
there are commonalities between the two perspectives. Both of them are interested
in doing a memorialization work that shows the diversity of narratives of social
memory of the conflict. They both consider victims’ voices to be central to their
work, although one as an object and the other as a subject or agent of memoriali-
zation. They are concerned with avoiding the politicization of memory and doing
their work with neutrality and openness. The crucial difference is what they con-
sider what memory is for. The MUP seems to be more concerned with the issue of
clarification of the past, moving forward and passing the page of the conflict. While
the MAR sees memory as a tool for the symbolic reparation and dignification of
victims, with a broader temporal framework, that includes not only the period of the
modern conflict in Colombia but the understanding of multiple forms of past and
current violence. In sum, it is difficult but not impossible to start a dialogue between
these two perspectives, taking into consideration the process in which fragmenta-
tion of memory occurs can provide insightful elements to start such dialogue.
Note
1 The idea was that the truth commission (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la
Verdad -CEV) created in 2016 would make the historical memory centre redundant,
and instead the Centre would be in charge of the new Memory Museum.
References
Acevedo, D. (2018). ¿Dónde está la verdad? (I) El Espectador. Retrieved March 20,
2021 From: https://www.elespectador.com/opinion/donde-esta-la-verdad-i-columna
-826989/? utm_ source= ee. com& utm_ medium= widget_ lateral_ articulos& utm_
campaign=ultimas_noticias&cx_testId=6&cx_testVariant=cx_1#cxrecs_s
Acevedo, D. (2019). El “Basta Ya” no representa el amplio espectro de investigadores.
In D. Acevedo (Ed.), El Espectador. https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/el
-basta-ya-no-representa-el-amplio-espectro-de-investigadores-dario-acevedo/
Alexander, J. C. (2004). Toward a theory of cultural trauma. In J. C. Alexander (Ed.),
Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (pp. 1–31). Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press.
Aranguren, J. P. (2017). Managing Testimony and Administrating Victims: Colombia’s
Transitional Scenario under the Justice and Peace Act. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Butler, J. (2004). Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso.
Castillejo Cuéllar, A. (2017). La ilusión de la justicia transicional: Perspectivas críticas
desde el Sur global. Bogotá, DC, Colombia: Ediciones Uniandes.
Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. (2014). Recordar Para Reparar, Las masacres de
Matal de Flor Amarillo y Corocito en Arauca. Bogotá: CNMH.
Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica. (2020). Anexo a comunicación a la señora
Elizabeth Silkes, Directora Ejecutiva, Coalición Internacional de Sitios de Consciencia.
New York: USA.. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from http://centrodememoriahistorica
.gov.co/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Anexo_1_Oficio_-202002031000544-1.pdf
Crisis Group. (2018). Risky Business: The Duque Government’s Approach to Peace in
Colombia. 67. Retrieved March 20, 2021, from https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin
-america-caribbean/andes/colombia/67-risky-business-duque-governments-approach
-peace-colombia
David, L. (2017). Against standardization of memory. Human Rights Quarterly, 39(2),
296–318.
David, L. (2020). The Past Can’t Heal Us. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Delgado Baron, M. (2020). La Memoria Es Un Lugar de Enunciación. Pulso.
Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from http://iepri.unal
.edu.co/pulso/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=459&cHash=0b6f6f00cf6355f816bf434
a24040bb5
El Espectador. (2020a). Director del Centro de Memoria enfrentará otro debate de
control político. https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/politica/director-del-centro-de
-memoria-enfrentara-otro-debate-de-control-politico-articulo-903101/
El Espectador (2020b). Madres de Soacha renuncian a participar con el Centro Nacional
de Memoria Histórica. https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/justicia/verdad
/madres- de- soacha- renuncian- a- participar- con- el- centro- nacional- de- memoria
-historica/
El Espectador (2020c). Centros de investigación rechazan convocatoria del Centro de
Memoria Histórica. https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/justicia/verdad/
centros-de-investigacion-rechazan-convocatoria-del-centro-de-memoria-historica
-articulo-910117/
Espejo, J. O. (2020). ¿Culto a la memoria histórica? El Espectador. https://www
.elespectador.com/colombia2020/opinion/culto-a-la-memoria-historica/
Forero Rueda, S. (2021) No se trata de imponer una posición personal en una exposición.
Director del Museo de Memoria. https://www.elespectador.com/colombia2020/justicia
/verdad/no-se-trata-de-imponer-una-posicion-personal-en-una-exposicion-director-del
-museo-de-memoria/
GMH-CNRR. (2011). La Caja de Herramientas. Recordar y Narrar El Conflicto:
Herramientas Para Reconstruir Memoria Histórica. Bogotá: Centro Nacional de
Memoria Histórica.
Halbwachs, M.. (1992[1925]). On Collective Memory. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press.
Jaramillo, J. (2015). Las Comisiones de estudio sobre la violencia en Colombia. Un examen
a los dispositivos y narrativas oficiales sobre el pasado y el presente de la violencia. In
E. Montaño & E. Crenzel (Eds.), Las luchas por la memoria en América Latina (pp.
247–271). UNAM. https://doi.org/10.31819/9783964564177-010
Jelin, E.. (2017). La lucha por el pasado: Cómo construimos la memoria social. Ciudad
autónoma de Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.
JEP. (2020). Comunicado 059. La JEP adopta medida cautelar provisional sobre el CNMH
para proteger la colección “Voces para transformar a Colombia.” https://www.jep
.gov.co/Sala-de-Prensa/Paginas/JEP-adopta-medida-cautelar-provisional-sobre-el
-CNMH-para-proteger-la-colecci%C3%B3n-%E2%80%9CVoces-para-transformar
-a-Colombia%E2%80%9D-.aspx?fbclid=IwAR1NHdHulY6Y9LP48nJkwVRArl1q5
33qovsQPzBcuOzCC8vNQmq4rR8KtFM
Lazzara, M. (2018). Civil Obedience: Complicity and Complacency in Chile Since
Pinochet. University of Wisconsin Press.
Lugo Vera, J. P. (2015). Transitional justice, memory, and the emergence of legal
subjectivities in Colombia In Brunnegger, S. & Faulk, K. A. (Eds.) 2016, A Sense
of Justice: Legal Knowledge and Lived Experience in Latin America. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press.
Nowell, L. S., Norris, J. M., White, D. E., & Moules, N. J. (2017). Thematic analysis:
Striving to meet the trustworthiness criteria. International Journal of Qualitative
Methods, 16(1), 160940691773384. doi: 10.1177/1609406917733847.
Preda, C. (2020). The transnational artistic memorialisation of operation Condor:
Documenting a ‘Distribution of the Possible.’ Journal of Latin American Cultural
Studies, 29(2), 251–269.
Registro Unico de Víctimas, RUV. (2020). Reportes - RNI. Unidad Víctimas. https://cifras
.unidadvictimas.gov.co/
Revista Arcadia. (2020). Un director cercano a los militares y un acto de protesta preceden
la instalación de la “primera piedra” del Museo de Memoria. Retrieved from: https://
www.semana.com/agenda/articulo/un-director-cercano-a-los-militares-y-un-acto
-de-protesta-preceden-la-instalacion-de-la-primera-piedra-del-museo-de-memoria
/80371/
Riaño Alcalá, P., & Uribe, M. V. (2016). Constructing memory amidst war: The historical
memory group of Colombia. International Journal of Transitional Justice 10(1):6–24.
doi: 10.1093/ijtj/ijv036.
Rios Oyola, S. (2017). La memoria social: una herramienta de la justicia transicional en
Chile y Corea del Sur. Revista Colombiana de Sociología, 40(1Supl):129–147.
Rios Oyola, S. (2018). Peace processes and social acceleration: The case of Colombia. In
Mueller-Hirth, N. & Rios Oyola, S. M. (Eds.), Time and Temporality in Transitional
and Post-Conflict Societies. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.
Decolonization. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ruderer, S. & Straßner, V. (2015). Recordando tiempos difíciles: La Vicaría de la
Solidaridad como lugar de memoria de la Iglesia y de la sociedad chilena. Archives de
Sciences Sociales des Religions, 170, 37–60.
Sangar, É. (2019). L’impact de la fragmentation des mémoires collectives nationales sur la
politique étrangère: le cas de la France. Études Internationales, 50(1), 39.
Sitios de Memoria. (2020). Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica de Colombia Suspendido
de RESLAC. Retrieved March 22, 2021 https://sitiosdememoria.org/en/centro-nacional
-de-memoria-historica-de-colombia-suspendido-de-reslac_en/).
Weber, S. (2020). Trapped between Promise and Reality in Colombia’s Victims’ Law:
Reflections on Reparations, Development and Social Justice. Bulletin of Latin American
Research, 39(1), 5–21. https://doi.org/10.1111/blar.12887.
9 Transforming the Polish-German past
Towards a common narrative?
Emmanuelle Hébert
Introduction
“We're only demanding what was taken from us […]. If Poland had not expe-
rienced the years between 1939 and 1945, it would today be a country of
66 million if you look at the demographic data.” So did the Polish President Lech
Kaczyński (2007) defend his state’s position to get more votes in the Council of
the European Union (EU) before the Lisbon Treaty in 2007. On a very different
note, W. Markiewicz, the first Polish co-president of the Polish-(West-)German
Textbook Commission,1 a former prisoner of the Mauthausen concentration
camp, explains that “[he] dreams about the concentration camp […]. For [him],
the twelve years spent within the Polish-German Textbook Commission were the
compensation, it was [his] revenge against those who wanted to destroy [him] in
the concentration camp” (Markiewicz, 1995); “it is directly against Mauthausen
that [he] got engaged [in the commission]” (Schmidt, 1972). While Kaczyński
uses World War II as a basis for his rather aggressive demands against Germany
especially, Markiewicz evokes the same events to justify his full engagement
toward a Polish-German rapprochement.
Polish-German history has been marked by heavy tensions – including humili-
ations, annexations, occupations, massacres. Some of them go back to the Middle
Ages. Their uses, both domestically and in international relations, range from
“oblivion” to “accentuation” (Rosoux, 2001). With the re-establishment of dip-
lomatic relations in 1970 between Poland and the then West Germany, a bilateral
textbook commission is established in 1972, in order to create a dialogue on his-
tory and then, reconciliation. Indeed, as opposed to national or official discourses,
a dialogue emerges over history, aiming at listening to the other’s perspective,
in a “common effort for plural readings” (Ricoeur, 1992: 111). This results in
the potential development of transnational, bilateral narratives on Polish-German
history. Notably, in 2008, the commission changes its objective: it is not aimed
at “only” discussing two narratives in parallel, but at creating a common one,
through the project of a common history textbook.2 But how has this historical
dialogue been transformed into a common narrative on history?
The major source of this contribution is the Polish-German history textbook,
especially its first volume, published in May 2016, and various sources explaining
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-11
124 Emmanuelle Hébert
the whole process leading to the final printed document. This work is based on
research conducted during my PhD dealing with the Polish-German Textbook
Commission and the Polish-Russian “Group for Difficult Matters.” In particular, I
will refer to some of the 54 interviews I led mainly in Polish, in Poland, Germany,
and Russia, as well as archives from the Georg Eckert Institute in Brunswick, the
Western Institute in Poznań, the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Archiwum
Akt Nowych, Archives of the Lower-Saxony Land but also additional sources, such
as official discourses, media, participant observations during the Polish-German
Commission’s (closed) sessions, or opinion polls. The common textbook project
officially started in 2008, but I will also refer to the earlier period, from the 1970s
onward, in order to better understand the bilateral process in the long run and espe-
cially the interconnections with the Polish-German Textbook Commission, which
played a fundamental role in the project. My perspective is rather sociological,
almost ethnographic, based on one single case study. I will look at memory frag-
mentations linked to the construction of a transnational history narrative within the
framework of the Polish-German common history textbook project.
A fragmentation of memory means a division, an opposition, or even a conflict
on memory and history and their role in society. Such divergence is not enough
in itself to explain the phenomena: to designate a situation as fragmented, the
division must be dynamic, launched by a social group. In my case study, the
Polish-German Commission and most of the institutions surrounding the bilateral
textbook project – the Experts’ Committee, the Administrative Board, the authors,
the participants – push for a bilateral, transnational narrative – even presented in
English – that differs from the national ones. I therefore propose to analyze the
Polish-German common history textbook project as a case of vertical and hori-
zontal memory fragmentation. The contribution will follow this thread, looking
at the factors fostering a bilateral narrative transformation and then analyzing the
strategies used for the project.
A narrative transformation toward a memory

(de-)fragmentation
The Polish-(West-)German Textbook Commission has been working since
1972 up until now, almost without any interruption. From the very start, it was
decided that the commission would take care of school textbooks, in order to
directly deal with future generations: the participants aimed at criticizing national
stereotypes in the textbooks and putting their (national) viewpoints into perspec-
tive. Such a commission is one of the evidences of the existence, in parallel to
horizontal fragmentation, of a vertical type of memory fragmentation: it competes
and contests the official memory discourse, from a transnational perspective.
Many historical commissions such as the “Polish-Russian Group for Difficult
Matters” do not address school textbooks at all. The continuity of the Polish-German
Commission – and of its objective of modifying school textbooks – has made pos-
sible the progressive transformation of the historical dialogue into a common narra-
tive. This success is due to three main factors, the first one being the context.
Transforming the Polish-German past 125
The context as a catalyst for narrative transformation
The context is essential. Historical commissions are often created in a moment of
détente between two countries. This is true for the Polish-German Commission,
established in 1972, when Poland and West Germany relaunched diplomatic rela-
tions and while civil society was organizing various bilateral actions of recon-
ciliation (Hébert, 2020). When political relations get more tense, the historical
dialogue within bilateral commissions becomes more difficult. Their works are
often frozen or stopped. However, the Polish-German Commission, with a mere
49 years of cooperation, has resisted political uncertainties, such as the introduc-
tion of martial law in Poland in 1981, which resulted in a short suspension of the
cooperation, until Spring 1982, or the collapse of communism in 1989 and the
reunification of Germany the following year. It continues to work despite govern-
ment changes both in Poland and Germany since the 2000s, while parties from the
left, centre-right, or ultra-conservative alternate in power.
The commission, in which the role of historians is fundamental, has been
supported by the states, especially before 1989 and since the beginning of the
textbook project. Indeed, before 1989, Polish authorities were clearly close to
the commission, despite its autonomy. They would fund some of the meetings,
add observers from the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Foreign Affairs,
meet regularly with members of the commission, but also directly involve secret
services during bilateral conferences, as in Łańcut in 1976, where no less than
six agents were present (Strobel, 2015: 204‒216). On the German side, the links
with the social-democratic party (SPD) have been strong as well before 1989,
through the Georg Eckert Institute for international school textbook research in
Brunswick, but this was further proven in various discourses and gestures: during
each conference taking place in Germany, the local or regional political authori-
ties would, for example, invite the commission’s members3 for a special dinner.
This political support has not been free from a horizontal form of memory
fragmentation. Indeed, while the SPD supported the commission’s work, strong
debates would take place within the Länder, which have the responsibility for edu-
cation issues: are the recommendations mandatory? Or are they just consultative?
Can they be partially implemented? Can we agree with the recommendations,
especially around the expulsions? Do political authorities have to disseminate
them in schools? The recommendations drafted by the commission would in par-
ticular lead to controversies in the Länder’s parliaments, as well as within the per-
manent conference of the ministers of education, in the 1970s and 1980s – the SPD
Länder, ministers, and MPs, as opposed to the conservative ones, being mainly
in favour of implementing (totally) the recommendations and disseminating them
in schools – (Hébert, 2020: 337‒342). Moreover, three historians close to expel-
lees’ organizations, proposed some “Alternative Recommendations” (Menzel
et al., 1978) and openly criticized the commission. They especially proposed
a stark interpretation of the so-called “expulsions” from the end of World War
II. They were supported by the conservatives and published several times in the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for example (Hébert, 2020: 345‒350) – always
strongly attacking the commission for its “ideological” approach and its “con-
troversial” position as a form of cooperation with a communist, non-democratic
country. Such political support has also led to vertical memory fragmentation:
historians were looking for bilateral compromises, some commonly understand-
able and acceptable recommendations for textbooks, but they would sometimes
face strong opposition from the authorities and other social groups, who would
push for alternative memories and forms of memorialization. This was true for the
German Christian-Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) before Helmut Kohl became
Chancellor in 1982, but also for Polish authorities and the Polish United Workers’
Party (PUWP), who began a strong campaign against W. Markiewicz in the media
and with secret services in 1981‒1984 in particular, when the commission’s co-
president had to resign from his position (Hébert, 2020: 351‒353).
After 1989, there has been much less debate around the historical dialogue –
which almost completely disappeared from the media – while the commission
continued to work. After closing the “difficult issues chapter,” that is about the
long after-war period in 1994, conferences were organized, focusing on the future
of relations, such as euroregions or communicative spaces. The commission also
published pedagogical collections of sources. The last volume, dealing with the
twentieth century (Becher et al., 2001), consisted of a large collection of various
sources, all in Polish or German and translated, constituted the most disseminated
volume of the series. The early 2000s were marked by a new memory fragmen-
tation process when each social group took action to support its own important
memory issues. The expellees’ organizations in particular were getting quite suc-
cessful in influencing the political agenda in Germany, and the Kaczyński twin
brothers were ruling over Poland.
It is in this context of exacerbated tensions and memory fragmentation that
the German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, proposed to
his Polish colleague to launch a common history textbook project, following the
first successful German-French experimentation of a bilateral textbook. He did
not receive any reply before Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform (PO), a pro-European
party, favourable to reconciliation with its neighbours, formed a new government
in 2007 (Lässig & Strobel, 2013). The project was officially launched in 2008 and
has received strong political support for its development. Even after the Law and
Justice party (PiS) came back to power in 2015 and imposed an even starker
historical policy (Traba, 2006; Behr, 2020), leading to a deeper fragmentation in
Polish memory and history, the government has strengthened its financial support
for the project, while at the same time re-nationalizing Polish history textbooks
and promoting one single interpretation, focusing on national heroes and obliviat-
ing perpetrators or controversial actors and events (Tartakowsky, 2020). Several
reasons could explain the PiS’ financial support for the project. The most credible
one is the possibility offered by the project to present Poland’s history to Western
Europeans, in particular to the youngest generations.
Besides the context, a second factor is fundamental to explain the commis-
sion’s continuity and the creation of a shared narrative through a common history
textbook project: the nature of the actors involved.
The historians involved as actors of reconciliation
The active participation of historians, experts on the neighbouring country or
bilateral relations, legitimizes the commission’s action. For example, several
researchers cooperating with the commission focus on what Serrier designates
in this volume as regions with “plural pasts”: border regions, regions which were
once attached to Poland, once to Germany. The degree of the actors’ involve-
ment within the commission is often correlated to their personal trajectory. W.
Markiewicz, a former prisoner of the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp,
becomes the first Polish co-President in 1972. Georg Eckert, a social-democrat
activist, briefly member of the NSDAP before joining the Greek partisans, funded
the eponym institute for international textbook research. Gotthold Rhode, a for-
mer member of the NSDAP, a German expelled from Poland at the end of the
war and close to conservative milieux promoting a revision of the 1945 borders
between Poland and Germany, was nonetheless one of the most engaged actors
in the Polish-German rapprochement in the 1970s and 1980s, at that time the
only German member (fluently) speaking Polish. The presence of such engaged
actors – even if some members adopt a more confrontational approach4 – facili-
tates the search for compromise and sometimes even the creation of friendship
beyond borders. They form a solid core for the commission, contributing alto-
gether to a common work. In a sense, they participate in a process of memory
de-fragmentation, departing from their own peculiar experience to work toward a
shared narrative, at least inside the commission. Combining and confronting their
positions, they could on the contrary push for a strengthened memory fragmenta-
tion with the outside world, when depicting a common narrative that the public
was not ready to hear yet or that was strongly contested in the public sphere.
These researchers deeply inspire the next generations of actors, who still admire
their successes: references to these eminent actors appeared during all my field-
work over the years in both countries.
In the Polish-German Commission, three generations of actors – mainly his-
torians, but also geographers and sociologists, like W. Markiewicz – can be
distinguished. The first, born before the war, lived through World War II, and
sometimes even the first one. They were either victims – prisoners of concentra-
tion camps, victims of forced labour, victims of various types of expulsions – or/
and perpetrators – members of the NSDAP, mobilized soldiers in the Wehrmacht.
It is based on such experiences that they decided to get involved in the com-
mission, “so that never again someone would have to suffer from what [Maria
Wawrykowa] had [her]self survived” (Strobel, 2015: 196). The first generation
of actors was appointed by the Polish authorities. However, each of them could
decide to what extent they would be active. Maria Wawrykowa, Władysław
Markiewicz, Gotthold Rhode, Georg Eckert all decided to be very much involved
in the cooperation and, in fine, the de-fragmentation process. This is the gen-
eration that believed the most in reconciliation: for W. Markiewicz, the aim of
the commission was “of course, of course!” reconciliation. The later members
have been co-opted, depending on their specific qualifications. Following Klaus
Zernack (1977), most were already critics of the Ostkunde in the 1970s.5 The
second generation of actors was born after the war and joined the commission as
early as in the late 1970s. Most of the Polish side was close to the official party
(PUWP), without necessarily being a member of it. Some were dissidents and
could only take part in the commission after the 1989 turn. The third generation
was born as from the 1960s and started to collaborate with the commission in the
2000s. R. Traba, replacing W. Borodziej, became co-president in 2007. Some,
such as Violetta Julkowska, integrate with the team in the 2010s thanks to their
specific competencies in didactics, responding to the textbook project’s needs.
The link with the other country was sometimes more distant, but Marcin Wiatr
is, for example, a German from Silesia, while Igor Kąkolewski is a Pole from
the very same multicultural region. These younger generations make more refer-
ences to the concept of “kitsch of reconciliation” created by the analyst Klaus
Bachmann (1994) – although Hans Henning-Hahn co-edited a book on the topic
(Hahn et al., 2008). According to this concept, the term “reconciliation” would
have been totally banalized in the 1990s, until it lost all of its meaning. Some
members even explain that they “do not believe in reconciliation” (Borodziej,
2015) or “do not know what is reconciliation” (Kriegseisen, 2015). Depending on
the generation and on the identity of the actor, the memory discourse can differ.
As members of a national delegation involved in a bilateral negotiation, they can
be considered as memory entrepreneurs (Jelin, 2002), taking action to put their
memory discourse upfront. The variation among generations shows a certain form
of diachronic horizontal fragmentation of memory discourses: two different dis-
courses – at least – exist and compete over time within Polish society for example.
This horizontal fragmentation is also synchronic: such variety in the discourses
and actions can still be observed nowadays.
After the context and the actors involved, a third factor appears to explain
both the continuity of the commission’s work, including within the framework of
the textbook project and, therefore, the (de-)fragmentation processes between and
among Polish and German societies: the procedures.
The procedures: a facilitator for dialogue and understanding

The procedures and mandate define the degree of autonomy toward politics, which
is visible during crises or changes in governments, but also in everyday debates.
First and foremost, they define the objectives to reach, the main one being rap-
prochement or even reconciliation, or at least, a dialogue among historians from
both countries, supposed to lead to an appeasement in bilateral relations. The
mandates also precise some more concrete goals, namely the drafting of school
textbook recommendations.
These Polish-German mandates rely much less on formal rules than on cus-
tomary norms that are carried on over all the years. The only written docu-
ment is the agreement establishing the commission signed on 17 October
1972 by W. Markiewicz and G. Eckert in the name of the national committees
for UNESCO (Polish MFA Archives). The document is very short – three
pages – and does not elaborate much on the procedures the commission should
follow, except notably for the regularity and alternation of the meetings and
the drafting of regular reports. The commission meets regularly. The presi-
dency sessions alternate, so do the scientific conferences organized by the com-
mission. Only very rare exceptions have occurred to these norms. The use of
language constitutes another custom: from the very beginning, all meetings
were held in German, but the use changed over time and all meetings are now
simultaneously translated. The appointment of members is quite informal as
well, except for the co-presidents, who have been officially nominated by the
national committees for UNESCO. Each side is responsible for its composition
and co-optation guides the appointment of new members. Everyone can make
a proposal, but in practice, it is often the co-president who suggests a name –
especially after a conference – that is then approved by the national delega-
tion. Traditions encompass rather long breaks during meetings as well as visits
organized alongside conferences, in order for actors to socialize and discover
each other’s heritage and culture. Funding is secured on the German side at
the Georg Eckert Institute, but is quite diverse on the Polish side and regard-
ing conferences: various grants come from the Foundation for Polish-German
Cooperation, the ministries, the university hosting the meeting as well as the
co-president’s institution: the Polish Academy of Sciences and/or the Western
Institute in Poznań for years, then the University of Warsaw, the Centre for
Historical Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Berlin and, since
2020, the University of Poznań.
In 2008 the common textbook project was entrusted to the commission, which
continues to work under such informal rules. The project has a stronger institu-
tionalization, especially at its beginning, when the Administrative Board and the
Experts’ Board were created. The number of actors involved in the drafting stage
of the recommendations has very much increased – from a few researchers to sev-
eral “quartets,” then each composed of more than four people (Julkowska, 2016).
The continuity of the commission and the elaboration of a common narrative
can be explained by the discussions that took place on the most difficult issues
between the two countries. In comparison, according to Stefan Guth (2015), com-
missions that were established within the communist bloc, such as between Poland
and East Germany, did not contribute to the rapprochement; as the countries were
officially friends, there was (almost) no possible debate on sensitive issues like
the responsibility for World War II. The – even relative – inclusion of the public
during debates on important controversies has strengthened the Polish-German
Commission’s position, and therefore its legitimacy. Indeed, the recommenda-
tions were omnipresent in public debates in West Germany in the 1970s‒1980s,
taking place in every regional parliament and in the media. Forty years later, the
launch of the common schoolbook project in 2008 was seen as a “moment of
glory” for the commission (Traba, 2016, 2017).
After almost five decades, the commission has adapted to new contexts. Its
composition has been renewed with new profiles, while some members have
contested some of its fundamental objectives – especially reconciliation. Until
the 1980s, the commission worked on recommendations for history textbooks
in West Germany and Poland, as well as on the organization of scientific confer-
ences on the most difficult issues, such as the Order of the Teutonic Knights,
Silesia, Polish-German relations in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. In the
next decade, it published collections of historical sources, while a new stage was
launched between 2000 and 2010: the preparation and publication of a common
textbook, aiming this time at drafting a common historical narrative and present-
ing together a variety of viewpoints to the next generations.
Five strategies to present a common narrative

Transnational history allows us to go beyond national frames and analyze more
broadly various types of exchanges (Droit, 2007). Klaus Zernack, a former co-
president of the Polish-German Commission, had already developed in the 1970s
an analysis that would be nowadays described as transnational: specialized in
Central and Eastern Europe history, he notably studied Polish-German relations,
insisting on reciprocal, positive or negative, influences (Zernack, 1977). His pio-
neer role has probably not been sufficiently recognized, except among the com-
mission’s members.
In the last decades, transnational history has been deepened and comprises sev-
eral trends, linked to approaches such as comparison, transfers or histoire croisée
(Maurel, 2014: 79‒92). The drafting of common textbooks follows this perspec-
tive. It aims at highlighting interactions and reciprocal influences, possible vari-
ous scales of analysis, precise definitions of the words, and historicization of their
object.
In a bilateral textbook, the presentation of history can rely on various mecha-
nisms. Five of them have been identified in the Polish-German history textbook.
The first one reflects the domination of one viewpoint.
Domination of one viewpoint

The history presented is sometimes the product of the domination of one view-
point. The German perspective gets clear priority on competency issues: German
pupils are used to evaluating their competences and to tests at the end of each
chapter, which is much less the case of Polish youth. The dominating German
viewpoint has been underlined throughout the whole process – and even since the
beginning of the existence of the commission. The German picture of the poor
Polish peasant facing German civilization and technique is still visible nowadays.
The critiques concern both the general vision and precise formulations: the experts
debate over the relevance of the stereotyped image of a Polish peasant or of the
population density in the territories set by Western Europeans in the twelfth cen-
tury (Europa I, 2016, 228‒229).6 The very short presentation of the Partitions of
Poland in the first version of volume 3 (7.1) has been strongly discussed. Indeed,
the understanding of the Partitions and of the everyday life of Poles under foreign
dominations is essential to understand the liberal and nationalist movements that
emerged in Poland. The neglect of these elements shows a strong German domi-
nation in the first drafting of this chapter.
The Polish viewpoint also dominates in some chapters, in particular regard-
ing Polish national history or Central European history, which are often not
deeply explained in German (or Western) textbooks in general. The precise
comments on the Piast dynasty (154‒159), on the Jagellon one (208‒213), are
among the longest sub-chapters of the book – over three double-pages – and
show the Polish place in the presentation of history. The Polish side dominates
again in the debates around the ancient Thermopylae Battle that took place
between Greece and Persia in 480 BC: the event is absent from German text-
books and was at first not even quoted by the initial German author. This lack
is not understandable for Poles: it is a heroic defeat – the first one known? – to
which Poles refer at each epoch (Kąkolewski, 2017) – a special “viewpoint”
frame is added on the battle (83).
Sometimes, the history that is presented seems to reflect the domination of one
perspective, consistent with national divides of memory. The process is rather
implicit, depending on the nationality of the initial author for each sub-chapter,
but also on the state of historical knowledge at the time of drafting the manuscript.
More often, it is the second solution that is visible: a compromise between the two
countries.
Compromise
The history presented in the textbook is also the result of a compromise. The
editors have two possibilities. First, the authors can decide to reduce the inter-
pretation of historical facts to the smallest common denominator. For example,
the Thermopylae Battle mentioned above appears in the book, but only within
a pictured “viewpoint” frame with a short legend (83). Similarly, the Grunwald
Battle of 1410 appears only in a “memory frame,” about its re-enactments (71).
The Polish editor’s position is more favourable: they can add in the national sup-
plement what does not appear in the common textbook – both battles are indeed
more developed in this special volume.
Second, the compromise can, on the contrary, mean many pages on a sensi-
tive topic. The parts on religion, notably Christian, are generally long, as well
as the ones dealing with the alleged civilizational role of the Germans. A good
illustration is the sub-chapter “Pray! Defend! Work! – Everyone has their place
in society” (164‒169), which ends with two whole pages of various sources. The
sub-chapter on “Conquests in the name of the Cross” (184‒190) is even longer.
It develops the role of the Crusaders and of the German knights, who settle near
to the Baltic Sea. The Teutonic Knights appear here only as one example among
others. The “development of rural and urban settlements in Central and Eastern
Europe” (228‒235) is the longest one in the book. It focuses among other things
on the role of the Germans in the economical, technical, and jurisdictional devel-
opment of Polish cities and villages.
Other examples appear in the next volumes, such as the great difficulty of get-
ting to an agreement about Napoleon. Hero for the Poles, enemy for the Germans,
the perspectives on the French emperor obviously diverge. In the end, six full
pages are dedicated to him (Europa II: 224‒229), complemented with seven
pages on “Napoleonic Europe” (Europa II, 230‒236).
The strategies to present history can imply a dominant viewpoint, a compro-
mise – which leads to a new memory fragmentation, from a transnational perspec-
tive, but also the avoidance of a specific topic.
Avoidance
Avoidance forms a third option to deal with the past: if a topic provokes a dis-
turbance, the authors do not mention it. It is obviously not the preferred strategy
of this project. However, the presence of a Polish national supplement for the
two first volumes is noticeable. The most conflictual periods or bilateral events
are more deeply developed there. The very limited mention of such events in
the textbook, complemented with a longer explanation in the supplement, is cer-
tainly a form of compromise, but it definitely marks a form of avoidance, as the
major part of the explanation appears in the supplement. Several pages focus
for example on the Teutonic Knights – who organized a quasi-state within the
Polish State in the Middle Ages (Europa I, supplement: 61; 70‒73). Similarly,
one should underline the effort to include as many Polish national historical
facts in the textbook as possible despite their absence in the German curricula.
However, many other Polish national elements, in particular the details on the
various kings and dynasties, on the political regimes, are explained in the supple-
ment (Europa I, supplement: 44‒52; 64‒80). The supplement also covers deeper
descriptions of the architecture (Europa I, supplement: 247) or of Christian sym-
bols (Europa I, supplement: 127), which constitute mandatory parts of the Polish
curriculum. It adds examples of churches and paintings from Poland (Europa I,
supplement: 82‒85).
Avoidance as a third strategy to present history is more limited in the textbook.
It underlines to a certain extent the existing national dividing lines of memory
between the two countries. A fourth way to deal with the past is to juxtapose the
different viewpoints.
Juxtaposition
Juxtaposition composes the fourth possible scenario for the negotiation on his-
tory. History is presented as a mosaic of small narratives, each describing various
interpretations of the (common) past. This phenomenon can be the consequence
of two processes. First, the authors could not agree and the two viewpoints are
explained. The role of the Gniezno Act in 1000 is for example discussed by the
Poles and the Germans: is it the sign of a coronation of the Polish King Boleslaw
the Brave? (159). Similarly, the settlement-colonization of the Germans and the
settlement of German jurisdictions in Polish cities and villages is debated among
historians: the German word “Landesausbau” is rather neutral and could be trans-
lated by “settlement of the countryside,” while the Polish word “osadnictwo” is
more ambiguous: it can describe the settlement of German law on Polish cities
and villages (“osadnictwo na prawie niemieckim”) in the Middle Ages, but also
contains a more negative connotation (“osadnik”: the colonist). How are the set-
tlers welcomed? What privileges do they get? What place is left for local popula-
tions? These are the questions the historians are asking (235).
Second, the relevance of the two viewpoints seems interesting for the authors,
who decide to present both sides. This is why for example a “Historian’s work-
shop” focuses on learning the comparison approach of written sources in order to
show the Crusades from the Crusaders’ perspective but also from the perspective
of the local Arab populations on site (191). The divergences concern notably the
responsibility for the massacres. Other third sources appear, from France (205),
Egypt (47, 59), Greece and Rome (44, 56, 69, 71, 79, 83, 85, 97, 99), strengthen-
ing the colourful and nuanced character of the narratives’ mosaic. The next vol-
umes also encompass such mechanisms. For example, two texts, from a Pole and
from a German, are put into perspective concerning the beginning of World War
II (Europa 8: 59). Juxtaposition appears useful in order to address the disagree-
ments between authors or to show the importance of the perceptions in history
and memory: the very same fact can be interpreted in a complete different way
according to the viewpoint one adopts – it highlights, in sum, various memory
fragmentations. A last method of negotiation consists in adding a new element in
the balance.
Reframing the negotiation

When viewpoints diverge, a fifth solution is possible: adding a new element,
that was not planned at the beginning. This reframing enables leaving the duel
between histories and going beyond initial tensions on history. It is a classical
strategy of negotiation (Rosoux, 2013; Zartman, 2002). In the common school-
book, the creative negotiation manifests itself through long developments on
the – debated – inputs of German civilization. These are though compensated
by reciprocal influences, notably the linguistic ones, presented in a paragraph,
completed by a “memory frame” (323): Poland has also influenced German
culture. The paragraph on Silesia, as one of the “regions that divide and unite”
(234) seems to fall under a similar strategy. Instead of adding to the disparity of
the viewpoints, the authors chose to draft a unique text, that particularly insists
on the union that this region – alongside Pomerania – would push for. Cultural
contacts between Polish and German communities are numerous in the Middle
Ages, while the territories are sometimes ruled by the Polish prince, sometimes
governed by the Germans. The experts had recommended illustrating the multi-
cultural exchanges by the city of Lviv (Lwów in Polish), nowadays in Ukraine,
but the authors emancipated themselves from this proposition in order to unlock a
point of tension between the two countries: Silesia. In the following volumes, the
editors planned again to add some new elements, for example around the historian
and politician Joachim Lelewel. Dissident under the Russian Empire after the
three Partitions of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, the man is very well
known in Poland and appears in the curriculum. However, no mention is made
of his Prussian origins. The team of the common schoolbook project decided to
illustrate entangled contacts and the issue of nationality and identity through this
figure. He felt deeply Polish, but had a Prussian grandfather: Heinrich Lölhöffel
von Löwensprung, adviser to the Polish King (Wiatr, 2017).
History can therefore be presented in different manners: the schoolbook can
reflect the dominant position of one side, result from a compromise, mirror the
differences in perceptions. It can also underline the strategies of avoidance or
bypassing through the addition of a new element. The cases presented above
show, if it was necessary, that conflicts and historical misunderstandings leading
to memory fragmentation can, indeed, concern the twentieth century, but also
much more ancient times, such as the Middle Ages or even Antiquity. Depending
on the scenario in place, various memory fragmentations appear; first, on the
national level, when the historians find an agreement and act as memory entre-
preneurs, taking action to compete with rival interpretations, including the offi-
cial ones. Second, the mechanisms can also imply a bilateral and transnational
memory fragmentation, leading to national de-fragmentation, when the debate
results in a clear national demarcation line: the national position is confirmed and
strengthened by eminent historians.
Conclusion
To conclude, the Polish-German rapprochement started with a dialogue over
history, that resulted in the creation of a shared narrative, through a common
history textbook project launched in 2008. But how has this historical dia-
logue been transformed into a shared narrative on history? The Polish-German
Commission could continue to work and succeeded in managing the textbook
project, thanks to a favourable context – despite some political tensions and
changes in government in Poland especially – actors that were very much
engaged in the rapprochement process – ranging from politicians supporting the
project to the experts and commission’s members involved – and very flexible
procedures throughout the commission’s existence and the project’s develop-
ment. The long experience of the commission and its opening to public debate,
although quite limited, have strengthened the commission’s legitimacy to take
care of textbook project.
The processes showed a diachronic and synchronic form of horizontal (de-)
fragmentation of memory discourses in each country, with various, sometimes
conflictual narratives emerging within each society or on the contrary getting
more unified. With the dialogue, the recommendations drafted in the 1970s and
even more the common textbook project, the processes also revealed a strong
form of vertical memory fragmentation, when actors involved were looking for
transnational ways of telling history. The five strategies used in the textbook –
domination of a viewpoint, avoidance, but mostly compromise, juxtaposition,
and reframing of the negotiation – constitute further forms of vertical (de-)frag-
mentation, implied by the actions taken by a transnational body, proposing or
sometimes almost imposing – when it comes to the commission’s recommenda-
tions of the 1970s and 1980s – a new memory discourse. Historical commissions
participate in the slow, and never-ending adjustment process of memories. What
is at stake is not an integration or even homogenization of these memories, but
rather the development of a gradually common narrative. The dynamic appears
nowadays reversed in Poland. Rather than a dilatation or extension of the memory
landscape, a narrowing process seems particularly strong regarding the past in
Poland. This is especially true in a context when Poland’s ruling party PiS insists
every day on its historical policy, highlighting Poland’s victimhood or glorious
moments, while silencing more controversial historical events (see Behr in this
volume). The emotions raised are of course very high, potentially causing joy,
friendship, trust, and reconciliation, but also, for some, more frustration, humili-
ation, or anger. The reconciliation process needs indeed some constant work and
cooperation. As one of my interviewees said,
There is no eternal reconciliation. […] There is no friendship or love that lasts

forever. For it to be forever, there needs to be always dealt with […] this dia-
logue. It is not […] that we […], French and Germans, Poles and Germans,
will be forever reconciled. No, it is not a question of a certain good stage of
dialogue, which ends with a common narrative about history.
(Kąkolewski, 2017)
Does it mean that the progressive elaboration of a common narrative is only

temporary?
Notes
1 To facilitate writing, I will then simply refer to the “Polish-German (Textbook)
Commission.”
2 It follows the French-German common history textbook, whose first volume was pub-
lished in 2006, the same year when the German Minister of Foreign Affairs proposed
to launch a similar Polish-German textbook project.
3 There is no member as such of the commission. However, the commission’s presidency
is composed of several members, nowadays around 14 from each side. To facilitate
reading, I will simply write “members” to designate members of the presidency of the
commission.
4 Although this is not excluding one another, some eminent actors adopted a confron-
tational approach on history, but still contributed to the common work; they enabled
the presentation of various viewpoints that the commissions had to be aware of and to
consider.
5 The word Ostkunde does not have any equivalent in English. It designates the (non-)
scientific study of Eastern Europe, in particular of the former German territories. It is
often suffused with nostalgy. See in particular Zernack (1977: 12‒19).
6 The common schoolbook Europa, Nasza historia… is abbreviated as Europa… I, II,
7.1, 7.2 or 8 depending on its volume. If no detail is provided, it means that the first
volume is concerned. The supplement is abbreviated as Europa, I, supplement.
7 I only quote here the sources directly referred to in the contribution. For a full col-
lection of the sources (notably the 54 interviews) used for the whole research, see
HÉBERT, E. (2020), Passé(s) recomposé(s). Les Commissions d’historiens dans les
processus de rapprochement (Pologne-Allemagne, Pologne-Russie), Brussels, Peter
Lang.
Primary sources7
Archives
Archives of the Lower-Saxony Land in Wolfenbüttel. Niedersachsen Staatsarchiv
Wolfenbüttel. NLA – Staatsarchiv Wolfenbüttel, 143N Zg. 2009/069 (50/1, 50/2,
161/2, 226, 237/1, 237/2, 254, 267, 445, 438, 377, 235, 236/1, 266, 332/2, 333).
Archives of the Western Institute (Instytut Zachodni) in Poznań. 60.1 to 60.8;
Documents from Zbigniew Kulak (1, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19,
20, 29, 32, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49, 52, 53, 78, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84).
Archives of the Georg Eckert Institute in Brunswick. Documents from
Georg Stöber, Siegfried Bachmann, Wolfgang Jacobmeyer, Elfriede Hillers.
Correspondances. Many cartons that were not specifically identified. Cf.
Communiqué from 6 October 1975 about the 8th conference
Archives of New Acts in Warsaw (T2514: T.1, T.2, T.3).
Archives of the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Warsaw. Department
PKWiN (18/84, 21‒25); Department IV Europe (46/84, 45/86, 39/87, 12/88,
44/84, 32/82, 20/79, 45/77).
Protocols of the session of the presidency of the Polish-German Textbook
Commission, 1972‒2018.
Participant observations
Participant observation during the 36th conference of the Polish-German
Commission in Halle, 19‒21 May 2016.
Participant observation during the presidency session of the Polish-German
Commission in Słubice, 8 June 2017 and to the Viadrina Prize Ceremony in hon-
our of the Polish-German Commission in Frankfurt (Oder), 9 June 2017.
Participant observation during the 37th conference of the Polish-German
Commission and presidency session in Zamość, 23‒26 May 2018.
Participant observation during the presidency session and workshop of the
Polish-German Commission in Brussels, 13‒15 June 2019.
Interviews
Borodziej, W., 21.07.2015, Warsaw.
Julkowska, V., 3.03.2016, Poznań.
Kąkolewski, I., 8.06.2017, Frankfurt (Oder).
Kriegseisen, W., 2.10.2015, Warsaw.
Müller, M. G., 12.01.2017, Halle.
Traba, R., 4.06.2016, Berlin and 11.01.2017, Berlin.
Wiatr, M., 10.03.2017, Brunswick.
Websites
Polish-German Commission (2017), website, page with the list of successive con-
ferences organized: http://deutsch-polnische.schulbuchkommission.de/aufgaben/
themenkonferenzen.html (consulted on 1 November 2017).
Others
Common Schoolbook: Europa, nasza historia. Tom I. Od prahistorii do
średniowiecza, Warsaw/Wiesbaden, Wydawnictwa szkolne i pedagogiczne/
Eduversum, 2016 – Tom 2, 2017, 7.1, 2019, 7.2 and 8, 2020.
Working documents from the Polish-German textbook project.
Secondary sources
Bachmann, K. (1994, 5 August). Die Versöhnung muβ von Polen ausgehen. Die
Tageszeitung.
Becher, U. A. J., Borodziej, W., Ruchniewicz,K. (Eds.) (2001), Polska i Niemcy w XX
wieku. Wskazówki i materiały do nauczania historii. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.
Behr, V. (2020). La politique publique de l’Histoire et le “bon changement” en Pologne.
Revue d’Études Comparatives Est-Ouest, 1(1), 73–103.
Droit, E. (2007). Entre histoire croisée et histoire dénationalisée. Le manuel franco-allemand
d’histoire. Histoire de l’Éducation [online- DOI: 10.4000/Histoire-Education.1251],
114, 151–162 (consulted 16.08.2017).
Guth, S. (2015). Geschichte als Politik. Der deutsch-polnische Historikerdialog im
20 Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg.
Hahn, H.-H., Hein-Kircher, H., & Kochanowska-Nieborak, A. (Eds.) (2008).
Erinnerungskultur und Versöhnungskitsch. Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut.
Hébert, E. (2020). Passé(s) recomposé(s). Les Commissions d’historiens dans les processus
de rapprochement (Pologne-Allemagne, Pologne-Russie). Brussels: Peter Lang.
Jelin, E. (2002). Los trabajos de la memoria. Madrid: Siglo XXI de España Editores S.A.
Kaczyński, L. (2007). Interview during the negotiations of the EU treaty, cf. Deutsche
Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/polish-prime-minister-brings-world-war-two-into-eu
-vote-debate/a-2618555 (consulted 29.09.2020).
Lässig, S., & Strobel, T. (2013). Towards a joint German-Polish history textbook:
Historical roots, structures and challenges. In Korostelina, K. V. & Lässig, S. (Eds.),
History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation. Reconsidering Joint Textbook
Projects (pp. 90–119). Abingdon: Routledge.
Markiewicz, W. (1995, 2 December). Exposé at the conference “Das Konzentrationslager
Mauthausen”, Vienna, first quoted in: GEI Informationen, 30 (1995).
Maurel, C. (2014). Manuel d’histoire globale. Paris: Armand Colin, Coll. U.
Menzel, J., Stribrny, W., & Völker, E. (1978). Alternativempfehlungen zur Behandlung
der deutsch-polnischen Geschichte in den Schulbüchern. Bonn: Kulturstiftung der
deutschen Vertriebenen.
Ricoeur, P. (1992). Quel éthos nouveau pour l’Europe? In Koslowski, P. (Ed.), Imaginer
l’Europe. Le marché intérieur européen, tâche culturelle et économique. Paris: Cerf.
Rosoux, V. (2001). Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales. Brussels:
Bruylant.
Rosoux, V. (2013). La négociation internationale. In Balzacq, T., & Ramel, F. (Eds.),
Traité des relations internationales (pp. 795–822). Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.
Schmidt, J. (1972, 15/16 April). Auf Giftsuche in Büchern. Deutsche und polnische
Historiker sichten den Lehrstoff gemeinsam. Kölner Stadtzeiger, first quoted in: GEI
Informationen, 30, 1995.
Strobel, T. (2015). Transnationale Wissenschafts- und Verhandlungskultur. Die
Gemeinsame Deutsch-Polnische Schulbuchkommission 19721990. Göttingen: V&R
unipress.
Tartakowsky, E. (2020). L’enseignement de l’histoire en Pologne depuis 2017: De la
“décommunisation” à la centralité d’un nationalisme catholique. Revue d’Études
Comparatives Est-Ouest, 1(1), 105–134.
Traba, R. (2006). Walka o kulturę. Przegląd Polityczny, 75, 45–53.
Zartman, I. W. (2002). La politique étrangère et le règlement des conflits. In Charillon,
F. (Ed.), Politique étrangère. Nouveaux regards (pp. 275–299) Paris: Presses de
Sciences Po.
Zernack, K. (1977). Osteuropa. Eine Einführung in seine Geschichte. Munich: Beck.
10 When historians contribute to
the fragmentation of memories
The case of “Polish-Jewish relations”
during World War II
Valentin Behr
Introduction1
The Polish government’s recent efforts in the field of Holocaust history, epito-
mized by the so-called Holocaust law,2 provide an almost ideal-typical case study
of memory fragmentation. At first glance, it may appear to confirm the observa-
tion, already made at the time of the European Union’s eastward enlargement in
2004, of a rejection of the established canon of European memory politics – of
which the Holocaust is the cornerstone – in Central and Eastern European coun-
tries (Mälksoo, 2009; Neumayer, 2019). The delicate issue of Polish co-responsi-
bility in the extermination of the Jews is far from being a solely Polish problem,
since it involves the intervention of other states, not least the United States,
Russia, and Israel.
The fragmentation of Holocaust memory is not just a question of competition
between Jewish victims (mainly of Nazism) and Polish victims (of Nazism and
Soviet-style Communism). Surely, “post-communist states embarked on a new
kind of Holocaust remembrance, where the memory, symbols and imagery of
the Holocaust became appropriated to represent other historical crimes” (Subotić,
2020). But state narratives are increasingly challenged by the memory work per-
formed by civil society actors and historians. This is obvious in Poland, where,
since the early 2000s, the historiography of the Holocaust has experienced deci-
sive breakthroughs that give us a more precise vision of “Polish-Jewish relations”3
during World War II and challenge the myth of Polish innocence (Kichelewski
et al., 2019).
The aim of this chapter is to show how various rationales are connected to
contribute to the fragmentation of Holocaust memory. It is based on an analysis of
the debates on Polish-Jewish relations in Poland since 2015, using scholarly pub-
lications and media discussions dedicated to the Holocaust, while paying attention
to the biographies of the actors participating in these debates. Hence, the stances
taken by the actors are analyzed in relation to their positions in social space
(Bourdieu, 1996; Sapiro, 2009). Since 2015, the PiS (Law and Justice) govern-
ments have attempted to achieve an authoritarian monopolization of discourses on
the past, promoting an unambiguous narrative of Polish history in the twentieth
century that leaves little room for the less noble aspects of that history, particularly
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-12
140 Valentin Behr
the various forms of Polish participation in the Holocaust (Leszczyński, 2016). In
this way, for electoral purposes, it has contributed to memory fragmentation and
to the polarization of Polish society on memory issues, which are closely linked
to current political issues.4
I am primarily interested here in the actions of the Polish public authorities
and the divides in the historiographical field that result from them while taking
into account the insertion of these actions in a broader international context.
Hence, I focus on historians and their relations with the political field, i.e., to state
historical policy but also to the public debate, in which they intervene, spread-
ing their views in the media, taking sides with political parties and NGOs (or
opposing them). The “vertical” fragmentation of memories in the international
arena is combined with a “horizontal” fragmentation, characterized by a multi-
plication of discourses and a decrease of consensus within the Polish political
community. These two types of fragmentation are complementary. It can even be
hypothesized that in the Polish case, horizontal fragmentation is heightened by
vertical fragmentation. The consecration outside of Poland of historians special-
izing in the extermination of Polish Jews and critical of the “roman national,”
such as Jan Tomasz Gross (Princeton University), Jan Grabowski (University
of Ottawa), and Barbara Engelking (Polish Academy of Sciences), contributes
to diminishing the Polish state’s capacity to promote its national point of view
on the past. In return, this international consecration earned the aforementioned
historians severe criticism in Poland, so much so that the Holocaust law could be
dubbed “lex Gross,” since it was presented by some of its supporters as a means
of counteracting “anti-Polish” statements abroad, which Gross is supposed to
embody.
According to its promoters, historical policy would be a means for the Polish
state to make its point, especially in the international arena, based on the premise
that Poland is a peripheral country, discussed from the outside by foreign inter-
ests, especially American, European, and Israeli, who are ignorant of the specific
features of Polish history (Łuczewski, 2017). The work of historians who criticize
the national narrative is targeted by the Polish authorities precisely on the grounds
that it serves foreign interests. The conservative Polish government’s historical
policy thus illustrates a case where a government takes sides in memory con-
troversies that exist within society, rather than simply ensuring a “governance”
of memories that would bring divergent memory discourses within society into
dialogue with the aim of easing them (Sangar, 2019).
I propose to analyse this specific case of memory fragmentation by relating
it to broader research questions, those of the autonomy of the social sciences
vis-à-vis state authorities and of the political role of scholars. The problem, how-
ever, is far from limited to a schematic opposition between an authoritarian politi-
cal power, on the one hand, and historians suffering from restrictions in their
research autonomy, on the other. Indeed, I argue that the role of historians is more
ambivalent than it might seem. First, historical policy is legitimized and to a large
extent conducted by academic historians whose opinions are close to the PiS.
Second, the work of critical historians is not exempt from moral considerations.
When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories 141
The fragmentation of Holocaust memory thus highlights both the divides in the
historiographical field and the political cleavages within Polish society.
In this chapter, I shall show how the fragmentation of Holocaust memory in
Poland has been deepened by the attempt of the state authorities to reassert control
over the discourses on the past. Historical policy thus fosters theoretical and meth-
odological divides within the field of history, which translate into political cleavages
regarding the lessons to be learned from the past for contemporary Polish citizens.
Memory fragmentation and historical research

The Holocaust as a challenge to the Polish “roman national”
Since the publication of Jan Gross’s Neighbors, a best-selling book on the
1941 massacre of the Jewish population of Jedwabne by Polish civilians (Gross,
2001), research on Polish-Jewish relations has developed considerably in Poland.
The work of Gross, a Polish Jew who emigrated to the West after the anti-Semitic
campaign of 1968 and is now a professor at Princeton University, was followed by
the creation of the Polish Centre for Holocaust Research (PCHR) in 2003. Part of
the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFiS
PAN), this interdisciplinary research centre is the only Polish scientific institution
entirely dedicated to the Holocaust. However, it is far from being the sole institu-
tion to deal with the history of the Holocaust in Poland. It is worth mentioning
the Jewish Historical Institute (Żydowski Institytut Historyczny), which started to
collect testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust immediately after World War
II, as well as the Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which presents their
history from the Middle Ages onwards. Yet, the PCHR’s activities are the most
illustrative of memory fragmentation in the recent years.
In 2018, the publication of the collective volume Dalej jest noc (Night without
an End), the result of several years of work by the centre’s researchers, sparked
critical reactions and found an echo that scholarly books usually rarely elicit
(Engelking & Grabowski, 2018).5 The volume presents a collection of regional
case studies on the fate of Polish Jews during World War II. Seeking to assess
Polish attitudes towards the Holocaust, it shows that anti-Jewish attitudes –
denunciation, blackmail, participation in “hunts for Jews” alongside the German
occupiers, killings – were far more frequent than the national historiography sug-
gests – indeed, since at least the 1960s, the latter has focused on assistance to Jews
(Bartoszewski & Lewinówna, 1966; Gensburger & Niewiedzial, 2007).
PCHR scholars share a common approach, defined by director Jacek Leociak
as “a critical (not apologetic) approach to their country’s history and a pessimistic
reading of it” (Leociak, 2019, p. 49). This approach has inspired criticisms of an
enthusiastic reading of national history and the appropriation – or polonization,
as Leociak calls it – of the Holocaust: “Contrary to what some people believe,
research on the Holocaust does not simply consist in describing how Poles helped
Jews” (Leociak, 2019, p. 50). From the historiographical perspective, PCHR his-
torians revisit Hilberg’s famous triad – perpetrators, victims, bystanders (Hilberg,
142 Valentin Behr
1961) – to refine the latter category, pointing out that Poles were not only helpless
bystanders to the extermination of Jews.
According to the categories derived from Bourdieu’s field sociology (Bourdieu,
1984), PCHR researchers can be considered to belong to the “critical pole” of the
historiographical field. By this I mean that these historians intend to contribute to
the reassessment of a mythical national history. At the “national” pole, i.e., among
the defenders of a national narrative regarded above all as a bedrock of values
shared by the members of the political community, we find other academic histori-
ans.6 During the discussion on the Jedwabne massacre prompted by the publication
of Jan Gross’s book, Andrzej Nowak – a historian whose views are close to those
of the PiS – had already called for a “monumental” rather than a “critical” narrative
(Nowak, 2001). Nowak, one of the main advocates of the “roman national,” today
plays an important role in historical policy as a member of several scientific coun-
cils, including those of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) and the World
War II Museum in Gdansk. He was picked in 2015 to chair the “Culture, national
identity, historical policy” section of the National Development Council, a body of
advisors to the President of the Republic of Poland. Besides Nowak, other Polish
historians embraced careers of bureaucrats at the service of state historical policy.
Among the regular participants in the debates about the Holocaust, it is worth men-
tioning Mateusz Szpytma and Jan Żaryn. Szpytma, currently the vice-director of
the IPN, spent almost all of his professional career at the IPN, which he left only
to set up a museum dedicated to the memory of Poles who rescued Jews during
World War II. Żaryn, a professor at the University of Warsaw, also held responsi-
bilities within the IPN and served as a senator for PiS between 2015 and 2019. An
admirer of the interwar nationalist leader Roman Dmowski, he now holds the posi-
tion of director of a newly established institute dedicated to the political heritage
of the conservative-nationalist camp, with the support of the Ministry of Culture.
Thus, intellectual life appears highly polarized when it comes to evoking
Polish-Jewish relations during World War II. In an early 2019 article, Nowak
recalled the “historical lies” about Poland formulated abroad, citing among other
examples a faux pas by Barack Obama – who had evoked “Polish death camps”
in a speech – before launching an appeal to intellectuals critical of the Polish
national narrative, with PCHR researchers at the forefront:
“I would therefore like to appeal to those who refer to the idea of critical
history, to professors Barbara Engelking, Jan Grabowski, Dariusz Libionka,
Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, Jan Tomasz Gross […] I would like to encourage
them to speak out together against this wave of lies that insults the memory
of the victims of the Holocaust. It must be stopped. If not now, then when?
If not you, then who?”
(Nowak, 2019)
Such rhetoric is far from innocuous, in a context where PCHR researchers are
regularly berated by government members and journalists. For instance, Barbara
Engelking was not reappointed as President of the International Council of the
Auschwitz Museum after the publication of Night without an End. The Prime
Minister and the Minister of Science’s response was to blame the scholar, who
aspires to write a history of the Holocaust from the point of view of the Jewish
victims, for her lack of “Polish sensitivity” (Pacewicz, 2018).
Historical policy as an attempt at monopolizing the historical discourse

Under these conditions, it is the possibility of including insights other than the so-
called national point of view into the national narrative that is challenged by the
proponents of historical policy. This was already apparent in 2005, when the first
PiS-led government began working on its historical policy (Behr, 2015). Since
2015 there has been a form of authoritarian turn in historical policy, as illustrated
by the 2018 Holocaust law and the almost exclusive focus in official commemora-
tions on the Poles who rescued Jews.
Indeed, the work of PCHR researchers collides with the national narrative,
particularly as promoted by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN). The
IPN was originally created in the late 1990s to host the records of the security
services of Communist Poland. Its activities also include research and education
for the period 1918‒1989, as well as the prosecution of “crimes against the Polish
nation,” with an initial focus on the communist period, rather than World War II
and the Holocaust. It occupies a key position in the formulation and implementa-
tion of historical policy, as it is a de facto official pole of production of historical
knowledge. Given its significant resources – a yearly budget of around 100 million
euros and hundreds of historians on the payroll, including some 180 researchers –
it has a significant impact on the shape of research on Polish contemporary his-
tory. Nonetheless, the production of the IPN on the Holocaust over the past two
decades is far from unequivocal. In the early 2000s, it carried out considerable
efforts that led to a confirmation of Polish responsibility for the crime of Jedwabne
(Machcewicz & Persak, 2002). A few scholars, such as Marcin Urynowicz and
Adam Puławski, were also able to carry out important work on Polish-Jewish rela-
tions at the IPN. At the same time, the IPN was one of the main promoters of the
trope of the Jew-saving Pole during World War II.
As the IPN’s management is designated by the Parliament, its main orienta-
tions may vary according to changes within the political field. Indeed, the man-
agement appointed in 2016, following the electoral victory of the PiS, is mainly
composed of historians who claim to present an unequivocal narrative on certain
aspects of history, starting with Polish-Jewish relations under German occupation
(Behr, 2020). They openly aim to counter historians who, like those of the PCHR,
give what they consider to be an excessively negative image of the attitude of
Poles. To put it bluntly, this is about “changing the existing historical narrative”
(Tygodnik Powszechny, 2018). Under the pretence of contextualization, state-
ments by IPN officials suggest that its actual agenda consists in disproving the
thesis that anti-Semitism was rooted in Polish society before and during the war,
to underline the lack of loyalty of the Jewish minority towards Poland and to
reject the idea of a collective responsibility of Poles in the Holocaust.
144 Valentin Behr
While under the previous IPN management, two conferences were organized in
partnership with the PCHR in 2013 and 2014, such a collaboration between two
research centres located at two opposite poles of the historiographical field seems
unlikely today. Some scholars researching Polish-Jewish relations at the IPN, such
as Krzysztof Persak and Adam Puławski, have been fired or forced to resign by the
management appointed in 2016. Because of the direct and recurrent intervention of
the state in the historiographical debate, the dispute is not a simple quarrel between
historians that would reflect the dynamism of research and the pluralism of interpre-
tations. At the national pole, the IPN nowadays produces a historical narrative that is
hardly original and has little scientific legitimacy, but which is widely disseminated
thanks to the outstanding means at its disposal. Conversely, at the critical pole, PCHR
produces scientifically recognized research, which enables it to access national and
international research funding. On the other hand, its researchers are berated by the
IPN management, the government, and part of the media. As a result, the dominant
historical narrative in Poland, the one that is most prevalent in the media, in public
discourse, and in schools, is much closer to that of the IPN than to that of the PCHR.
The polarization of the historiographical field appeared clearly when the vol-
ume Night without an End elicited very hostile reviews from IPN historians, who
accused the authors of peddling “falsifications” or “lies.” The main review, writ-
ten by the head of the research programme on the history of Polish-Jewish rela-
tions at the IPN, Tomasz Domański, is 70 pages long and has been distributed for
free on the Institute’s website (Domański, 2019). The work of historians is instru-
mentalized in the political competition, since criticism of the volume has been
reported upon in the media – including on public television – with the assistance
of the IPN, most notably on the occasion of a conference devoted to the work of
the PCHR, held in Paris in February 2019. The aim was to discredit the book and
its authors among a wide audience, while at the same time supporting the thesis
according to which anti-Polish statements originate abroad.
Historical policy thus exacerbates divides within the historiographical field,
with conflicts now being likely to be handled by forces outside the field: the gov-
ernment, the media, and even the judiciary. The result is a hybridization of profes-
sional roles, between the academic world and the bureaucratic world, between the
service of science and the service of the state. The division of the historiographi-
cal field between a critical and a national pole is therefore based on divergent
conceptions of the profession of historian. But it is also based on oppositions in
terms of research approaches, which refer to the more or less explicit ethical and
moral foundations on which the historian’s work is based.
Practices of history, reflexivity, and moral principles

“True history” vs social sciences
In the case of contemporary history in Poland, it is worth recalling that the break
with the communist period was also a break with Marxism, bearing the stigma
of a partisan approach to knowledge, even though in Polish universities, scholars
who had belonged to the communist party were not fired, as was the case in the
former GDR. Most contemporary historians today defend a factual, positivist
approach, based on the analysis of vast collections of archival documents, most
often without much in the way of problematization or conceptualization (Kula,
2004). The profession of historian has thus been redefined around the notion of
truth (Stobiecki, 2002). “True” history, it is claimed, is based on sources – of
which historians of the contemporary period were long deprived under commu-
nism – that speak for themselves. This leads to a somewhat naive belief in the pos-
sibility of a factual and axiologically neutral historical scholarship. The positivist
conception of history, which tends to put concepts and models of analysis at a
distance, as they are suspected of conveying ideological presuppositions, para-
doxically leaves ample room for values – moral, political, or religious – which are
supposed to guide historians in their quest for truth (Stobiecki, 2002).
In this context, there are few advocates of multidisciplinary approaches com-
bining history and other social sciences, with an emphasis on the elaboration of
research questions and hypotheses to be tested on a case study. This is precisely
what the PCHR’s researchers do: theirs is an interdisciplinary approach combining
social history, microhistory, sociology, psychology, psychoanalysis, ethnology,
cultural and historical anthropology, and discourse analysis, devised to access
“different aspects, dimensions and consequences of this event [the Holocaust]
and its experience” (Leociak, 2019, pp. 60–61). On the other hand, proponents of
a positivist approach consider that social sciences have little to contribute to the
knowledge of history. One should limit oneself to factual questions: who, what,
how? Such an approach hardly allows us to broaden the analysis to more general
questions, such as domination, consent, or autonomy of actors in totalitarian con-
texts, questions that are at the heart of the reflections of PCHR researchers, and of
many other specialists of mass violence or authoritarian regimes (Bartov, 2018;
Hibou, 2017).
Significantly, PCHR researchers, who are historians but also, in some cases,
sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of literature, are regularly criticized
for not being “genuine” historians, which casts doubt on the credibility of their
work. Researchers affiliated with the PCHR indeed present interdisciplinary and
internationalized profiles, more often than their counterparts from the IPN, who
seldom publish in English or attend international conferences. Besides, all of them
are affiliated with universities or academic research institutes, be it in Poland or
abroad, while most IPN historians dealing with the Holocaust are not employed
in academia. Hence, the differences between the two groups in terms of practices
of history reflect different professional trajectories. For instance, Jan Grabowski
often mocks his critics from the IPN for being unknown outside Poland.
Narrow market vs broad market

Domański’s review of Night without an End exemplifies criticisms classically
formulated in the name of a positivist conception of historical research, since it
primarily faults the authors for carrying out incomplete archival research. His
146 Valentin Behr
arguments are sometimes lost in quibbling, as he claims that the authors do not
know or do not cite all the available sources, suggesting that the authors searched
the archives in a dilettante manner, without however providing elements that
would change the meaning of their interpretations: “Since the authors refer to
microhistory, they should not ex cathedra suggest an in-depth search when they
have not done one” (Domański, 2019, p. 27). The form and tone of the review are
emblematic of a genre prized by some Polish historians.7 His criticisms concern
points of detail, isolated from the book as a whole, whose arguments are neither
presented nor discussed. For example, Domański dedicates two pages to a critique
of the use of the word “powiat” (district, or county) to describe the territorial units
researched by the authors of Night without and End, as there is no homogeneity
between the book chapters in that respect: they alternately deal with the districts
as they were defined before, after, or during World War II. Domański points at a
“terminological confusion” that “should not happen in a scholarly study,” again
suggesting a lack of intellectual rigour, without explaining how this could alter the
authors’ findings (Domański, 2019, p. 7).
Such factual errors, he argues, are major issues and cast doubt on the reliabil-
ity of the whole volume. Domański’s review thus offers numerous occurrences
of the words “manipulation” (12), “error” (12), “false” (6), “lie” (2) or “myth”
(2). In addition, there are a dozen allusions to the “realities of the German occu-
pation” and about 20 mentions of the historical “context,” meant to qualify the
authors’ theses on the significant participation of Poles in the extermination of
Jews.8 For Domański, taking this context into account should lead the authors to
further emphasise that if Poles killed Jews, others helped, and some were killed
for it. In his view, it should also be recalled more often that Poles greatly suffered
from the German occupation. Domański accuses Barbara Engelking of seeking
to show the “Jewish side of the coin,” as if working on a specific topic or adopt-
ing a point of view were not legitimate, because it amounts to working based on
a predetermined thesis. However, it could be argued that the fate of the Jews has
been largely ignored by Polish mainstream historiography for several decades
(Polonsky & Michlic, 2003). Hence, Domański’s review illustrates the opposi-
tion between the seemingly incompatible “Polish” and “Jewish point of view,” in
which the historian is expected to pick a side.
A recurring criticism levelled at PCHR researchers concerns the role of the
“blue police” (policja granatowa) – commonly referred to as “Polish police” –
in the extermination of Jews. This police force composed of Polish policemen,
most of whom were already on duty before the war, was created on the initiative
of the German occupation authorities as an auxiliary force in the service of the
occupier. For Domański, as for other IPN researchers, the German occupation and
the collapse of the Polish State should be reasons not to consider this police force
as Polish. He thus suggests using the German term: “Polnische Polizei.” Beyond
legal formalism, what is at stake in the discussion is the question of the auton-
omy of these Polish police officers vis-à-vis occupying authorities. According
to Grabowski, the degree of autonomy of the blue police was quite significant
in the case of the “hunts for Jews” carried out in the Polish countryside from
1942 onwards (Grabowski, 2020). In other words, it is not simply a question of
who runs the institutions or lays down the law, but of how individuals actually act
(Grabowski & Engelking, 2019).
However, the gap between IPN and PCHR researchers appears to be smaller
when one considers IPN publications intended for what Bourdieu calls the narrow
(academic) market, as opposed to the broad (general public) market (Bourdieu,
1996). For example, the English-language edition of a collection of essays on the
Holocaust and Polish-Jewish relations written by IPN historians contains mul-
tiple references to the work of PCHR researchers, without specifically criticiz-
ing them (Grądzka-Rejak & Sitarek, 2018). The bulk of the contributions also
offer cautious conclusions that do not differ significantly from those expressed
by PCHR researchers on the difficulty of producing quantitative estimates or the
need for further in-depth studies. The chapter written by Domański in that vol-
ume, whose tone and content are much milder than his review of Night without
an End, is devoted to the policja granatowa, here simply and seemingly unprob-
lematically called “Polish police.” Among other things, the author mentions cases
in which police officers killed Jews “on their own initiative” (Domański, 2018, p.
79). This highlights the fact that writing patterns and even the type of narrative
being shared may differ depending on the audience a researcher is addressing. As
Bourdieu writes regarding the scientific field, researchers’ main clients are their
peers, which implies respect for certain rules and forms of expression if they
want to produce effects in this field (Bourdieu, 1976). State historical policy and
the hybridization of roles at the IPN, which was established to promote an unam-
biguous national memory, thus leads to offering a fictitious and overly polemical
narrative to the general audience – in the hope of garnering electoral support
from nationalist voters and NGOs, whereas on the academic market, the IPN’s
productions are in fact much closer to those of the PCHR than one might spon-
taneously believe. Hence, memory fragmentation is also nurtured by the specific
role attributed to history, which is supposed to shape the political community.
Consequently, historians enjoy a certain prestige, especially in Poland where his-
torical scholarship and intellectuals’ political engagement have accompanied the
struggles for independence since the nineteenth century (Beauvois, 1991; Zarycki
et al., 2017).
The meaning of the Holocaust for contemporary Polish society

Differences in approaches to historical research do not explain everything, however.
They overlap with differences in terms of axiological and moral preferences, which
also contribute to the polarization of the field of history and to the fragmentation of
memories. The agonistic approach to history, reinforced by historical policy, is not
specific to the historians situated at the “national” pole. It is also found, in different
forms, on the side of the proponents of critical history. Jan Gross, who has chosen
to toughen the tone of the Polish translation of one of his books (Kichelewski,
2009, p. 1098), and Jan Grabowski, who denies the status of historian to IPN schol-
ars and calls for the dismantling of the Institute, easily adopt a polemical tone in
148 Valentin Behr
their public stances (Grabowski, 2019). Far from being confined to academic jour-
nals, the historians’ quarrels about the Holocaust are aired out in a heavily divided
public space, as critics of the national narrative regularly publish or are interviewed
in the liberal-left (Gazeta Wyborcza, Oko.press) and foreign (Haaretz, Die Welt)
press, while their counterparts often appear in nationalist and conservative media
outlets, such as Wprost, Do Rzeczy, Gość Niedzielny, and even the public television
channel TVP, which has become a mouthpiece for the government.
Above all, the debates on Polish co-responsibility in the Holocaust resonate
with those on the definition of the Polish nation, in which an ethnocultural con-
ception is at odds with a civic conception that includes other populations in
the national community, starting with the Jews. This long-standing question is
now being asked with renewed urgency because of Poland’s accession to the
European Union and the changes brought about by globalization, including
immigration. It is no coincidence that Gross mentions the fact that Poles killed
“more Jews than Germans” in a text criticizing the refusal of refugee quotas by
Central European countries, linking this refusal to the memory of the Holocaust
in that region (Gross, 2015). For the historians of the critical pole, this is there-
fore also a question of combating anti-Semitism in contemporary Polish society
by keeping the memory of the genocide alive. Jacek Leociak considers that as a
Holocaust scholar he has an “ethical obligation to speak about the extermination
on behalf of those who cannot speak,” i.e., the victims (Leociak, 2019, p. 61).
Debates on Polish-Jewish relations are not just about the past: they refer to con-
flicting views on Poland and what it should be. The former director of the Polin
Museum, Dariusz Stola, notes that debates about the Holocaust are often less
about discussing the fate of Polish Jews than about the lessons to be drawn from
it for today’s Polish society (IPN, 2018). Scholars sometimes lend themselves to
such a reading of their work. Kichelewski notes that “Gross goes beyond mere
description or analysis to adopt a normative stance in interpreting the facts, judg-
ing the behaviour of Polish society on the basis of the acts rather than trying to
explain them at length” (Kichelewski, 2009, p. 1099). Barbara Engelking, in an
interview with the left-wing magazine Krytyka Polityczna, called for a national
realization:
“We have to face the fact that we haven’t always been good. I don’t see
what’s so terrible about that: to think that we Poles have also done a lot of
bad, horrible things. This is something that we have not been able to face
calmly. We should say “I apologise”, start to care about those Jews who were
killed, and to really change something in ourselves.”
(Krytyka Polityczna, 2019)
Holocaust historians easily adopt a moral register and memory is fragmented

above all because what is at stake is not only about the past, but about the present
and which lessons shall be drawn from the past. Historians are thus far from just
being scholars: they are intellectuals involved in the public debate and, as such,
they contribute to memory fragmentation.
Conclusion
Debates on the Holocaust in Poland thus reveal a series of salient oppositions in the
historiographical field, which themselves reflect the fragmentation of Polish soci-
ety when it comes to the memory of the Holocaust. The history of the Holocaust,
which is particularly sensitive because of its international dimension, is thus part of
“memory wars” that encourage an agonistic practice of history (Koposov, 2018).
Vertical and horizontal fragmentation, fostered by an unambiguous state histori-
cal policy and the involvement of Holocaust historians in public debates, com-
bine to produce a fragmentation of memories that appears more acute than ever.
However, it could be argued that this fragmentation, while reflecting deep divides
in Polish society, also attests to the existence of a thriving historiography, which
is receiving a significant echo in the Polish media and society. In this respect,
the authoritarian turn of Polish historical policy can be paradoxically interpreted
as a symptom of the loss of influence of the state in promoting its national nar-
rative, especially in the international arena where the Holocaust still constitutes
a benchmark for assessing the relationship of societies to their difficult national
past. However, what makes the national narrative strong is that it is still dominant,
as it finds many channels of diffusion such as parts of the media, of the Catholic
Church and NGOs like the aforementioned Polish League Against Defamation.
Notes
1 This chapter is a revamped and expanded version of a text that appeared previously in
French. See Behr (2019). I wish to thank Jean-Yves Bart for proofreading this chapter
with support from the Maison Interuniversitaire des Sciences de l’Homme d’Alsace
(MISHA) and the Excellence Initiative of the University of Strasbourg.
2 In January 2018, the Polish Parliament adopted a law criminalizing the imputation of
responsibility or co-responsibility for Nazi crimes to the Polish nation or state. This
law has sparked numerous protests in Poland and abroad, including from historians
who denounced a potential threat to freedom of research and freedom of speech. See
Bucholc and Komornik (2019).
3 I place that expression – common in Polish literature – in quotation marks at its first
occurrence because it is in itself problematic: before 1939, Jews in Poland were
considered Polish citizens, even though their nationality, like that of other national
minorities (German, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Belarusian), was distinguished from
Polish nationality.
4 The “Polish League Against Defamation,” a state-sponsored NGO, keeps monitoring
“anti-Polish” historical discourses in Poland and abroad. It has initiated legal proceed-
ings against historians Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking. Parts of the Polish elec-
torate and diaspora are particularly sensitive to government actions aimed at promoting
the “Polish point of view” on history.
5 The book is currently available in Polish. An English version is forthcoming, and
parts of the book have also been published in French (Kichelewski et al., 2019).
Previous works from PCHR researchers are also available in English (Engelking,
2016; Grabowski, 2013).
6 This does not mean, however, that the divide in the historiographical field should be
reduced to these two poles (national and critical), which also happen to be far from
homogeneous. These categories are constructed for the purpose of the analysis, and
150 Valentin Behr
if they are not sufficient to summarize the diversity of conceptions of the historian’s
vocation, which may vary from one individual to another, they are adequate to account
for the polarization of the debate.
7 Similarly, one can refer to previous reviews of Jan Grabowski’s work by Bogdan
Musiał (Musial, 2011).
8 There too, the Polish debate has met with a certain international echo, since Domański’s
review was been reported upon in Israel by Daniel Blatman (2019).
References
Bartoszewski, W., & Lewinówna, Z. (1966). Ten jest z ojczyzny mojej: Polacy z pomocą
Żydom, 1939–1945. Znak.
Bartov, O. (2018). Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz.
Simon & Schuster.
Beauvois, D. (1991). Être historien en Pologne: Les mythes, l’amnésie et la ‘vérité’. Revue
d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine, 38(3), 353–386.
Behr, V. (2015). Genèse et usages d’une politique publique de l’histoire. La ‘politique
historique’ en Pologne. Revue d’Études Comparatives Est-Ouest, 46(3), 21–48.
Behr, V. (2019). Les discussions sur la Shoah en Pologne, miroir grossissant des
polarisations du champ historien. In A. Kichelewski, J. Lyon-Caen, J.-C. Szurek, & A.
Wieviorka (Eds.), Les Polonais et la Shoah. Une nouvelle école historique (pp. 275–
290). CNRS Éditions.
Behr, V. (2020). La politique publique de l’histoire et le ‘bon changement’ en Pologne.
Revue d’Études Comparatives Est-Ouest, 51(1), 73–103.
Bourdieu, P. (1976). Le champ scientifique. Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales,
2(2), 88–104.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Homo Academicus. Les éditions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field. Stanford
University Press.
Bucholc, M., & Komornik, M. (2019). The Polish ‘Holocaust Law’ Revisited: The
Devastating Effects of Prejudice-Mongering. Cultures of History Forum.
Domański, T. (2018). Polish ‘Navy Blue’ Police in the Kielce County in 1939–1945. In
M. Grądzka-Rejak & A. Sitarek (Eds.), The Holocaust and Polish-Jewish Relations.
Selected issues. IPN.
Domański, T. (2019). “Korekta obrazu?”, Polish-Jewish Studies : 2020, Issue 1, p.
209-314.
Engelking, B. (2016). Such a Beautiful Sunny Day ...: Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish
Countryside, 1942–1945. Yad Vashem.
Engelking, B., & Grabowski, J. (Eds.). (2018). Dalej jest noc: Losy Żydów w wybranych
powiatach okupowanej Polski. Stowarzyszenie Centrum Badań nad Zagładą Żydów.
Gensburger, S., & Niewiedzial, A. (2007). Figure du Juste et politique publique de la
mémoire en Pologne (1945–2005). Critique Internationale, 1(34), 127–148.
Grabowski, J. (2013). Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and murder in German-occupied
Poland. Indiana University Press.
Grabowski, J. (2019). Imperium Pamięci Nacjonalistycznej. Co zrobić z IPN po odsunięciu
PiS od władzy? Gazeta Wyborcza, 19 January 2019.
Grabowski, J., & Engelking, B. (2019). Nieudana ‘Korekta obrazu’. Centrum Badań nad
Zagładą Żydów: https://www.holocaustresearch.pl/index.php?mod=news&show=377.
Grabowski, J. (2020). Na posterunku. Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w
Zagładzie Żydów. Wydawnictwo Czarne.
Grądzka-Rejak, M., & Sitarek, A. (Eds.). (2018). The Holocaust and Polish-Jewish
Relations. Selected Issues. IPN.
Gross, J. T. (2001). Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne.
Hibou, B. (2017). The Political Anatomy of Domination. Palgrave Macmillan.
Hilberg, R. (1961). The Destruction of the European Jews. Quadrangle Books.
Kichelewski, A. (2009). La peur des Juifs ou des Juifs qui ont peur ? Annales. Histoire,
Sciences Sociales, 64e année(5), 1091–1104.
Kichelewski, A., Lyon-Caen, J., Szurek, J.-C., & Wieviorka, A. (Eds.). (2019). Les
Polonais et la Shoah. Une nouvelle école historique. CNRS Éditions.
Koposov, N. (2018). Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and
Russia. Cambridge University Press.
Kula, M. (2004). Krótki raport o użytkowaniu historii. Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Leociak, J. (2019). Naissance d’une école historiographique. In A. Kichelewski, J. Lyon-
Caen, J.-C. Szurek, & A. Wieviorka (Eds.), Les Polonais et la Shoah. Une nouvelle
école historique (pp. 49–65). CNRS Editions.
Leszczyński, A. (2016). The Past as a Source of Evil: The Controversy over History and
Historical Policy in Poland. Cultures of History Forum.
Łuczewski, M. (2017). Kapitał moralny Polityki historyczne w późnej nowoczesności.
Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej.
Machcewicz, P., & Persak, K. (Eds.). (2002). Wokół Jedwabnego. IPN.
Mälksoo, M. (2009). The memory politics of becoming European: The East European
subalterns and the collective memory of Europe. European Journal of International
Relations, 15(4), 653–680.
Musial, B. (2011). Judenjagd. ‘umiejętne działanie’ czy zbrodnicza perfidia? Dzieje
Najnowsze, 432, 159–170.
Neumayer, L. (2019). The Criminalisation of Communism in the European Political Space
after the Cold War. Routledge.
Nowak, A. (2001). Westerplatte czy Jedwabne. Rzeczpospolita.
Nowak, A. (2019).Nieprzyjaciółka prawda? Gosc.pl, 21 February 2019: https://www.gosc
.pl/doc/5352175.Nieprzyjaciolka-prawda?fbclid=IwAR0ZlsTFiuX9eykNiKaVXivCX
dDx2bkQe3YSXCIRiZIO4Gb3DZntC9xoB08.
Okoński, M. (2018). Żydzi jako nowy priorytet IPN. Tygodnik Powszechny, 1 October
2018: https://www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl/zydzi-jako-nowy-priorytet-ipn-155516.
Pacewicz, P. (2018). 'Patriotyczna głupota' Morawieckiego i Gowina. Oko.press.
URL: https://oko.press/patriotyczna-glupota-morawieckiego-i-gowina-wyrzucaja-prof
-engelking-z-rady-oswiecimskiej-bo-nie-ma-polskiej-wrazliwosci
Polonsky, A., & Michlic, J. B. (Eds.). (2003). The Neighbors Respond: The controversy
over the Jedwabne Massacre in Poland. Princeton University Press.
Sangar, É. (2019). L’impact de la fragmentation des mémoires collectives nationales sur la
politique étrangère: Le cas de la France. Études Internationales, 50(1), 39–68.
Sapiro, G. (2009). Modèles d’intervention politique des intellectuels. Actes de la Recherche
en Sciences Sociales, 1(176–177), 8–31.
Stobiecki, R. (2002). Reaktualizacja mitu historii ‘prawdziwej’ w historiografii polskiej
po 1989 r. In Pamiętnik XVI Powszechnego Zjazdu Historyków we Wrocławiu, Adam
Marszałek, Toruń. (pp. 11–23).
152 Valentin Behr
Subotić, J. (2020). The appropriation of Holocaust memory in post-communist Eastern
Europe. Modern Languages Open, 1(22), 1–8.
Zarycki, T., Smoczyński, R., & Warczok, T. (2017). The roots of Polish culture-centered
politics: Toward a non-purely cultural model of cultural domination in Central and
Eastern Europe. East European Politics and Societies, 31(2), 360–381.
Part 3
Soldiers and military

organizations

11 Understanding the fragmentation
of the memory of the Allied
bombings of World War II
The role of the United States Strategic
Bombing Survey
Mathias Delori
Introduction
During1 the last week of July 1943, hundreds of British and American bombers
dropped tons of explosive and fire bombs on Hamburg, Germany. According to
an investigation conducted by the US government in 1945, “about one third of the
houses of the city were destroyed and German estimates show 60,000 to 100,000
people killed.”2 This quantitative depiction of the bombing does not give an accu-
rate picture of how the population of Hamburg experienced the event. The blow
caused by the firestorm caused the asphyxiation of thousands of people who had
taken refuge in air raid shelters whilst others died in the Elbe river after having
thought that it would save them from the fires. The bombing of Hamburg is only
one segment of the air war that the Allies conducted against Germany and Japan.
This air war caused about ten times more civilian deaths than the German and
Japanese “strategic”3 bombings. Nowadays, most historians think that it had no
significant effect on the course of the war (Kershaw, 2011; Overy, 2013).
This Allied air war has been the subject of a multitude of scholarly, artistic, lit-
erary, and cinematographic representations. These representations have varied in
space and time, but generally speaking, the viewpoint of these civilian vectors of
memory has become critical. This is evident in Germany (Friedrich, 2003; Sebald,
2004 (2001)) and Japan (Yoneyama, 1999), but it is also true for the countries
that conducted this policy of massive bombing of civilian targets and people. In
the United Kingdom, a moral and strategic critique of these bombings emerged
as early as 1941 thanks to the Committee for the Abolition of Night Bombing,
which became the Restriction Bombing Committee a year later. The activities of
this organization, as well as the stances taken by pacifist intellectuals such as
Vera Brittain, were strengthened after the terrible bombings of Hamburg (July
1943) and Dresden (February 1945) (Overy, 2016). This was obviously a minor-
ity voice, but the small controversy over the meaning of this air war, particularly
the so-called “area” raids on city centres and civilians, was significant enough to
prompt the British authorities not to highlight this aspect of the war during the vic-
tory celebrations in July 1945 (Knapp, 2016). In the United Kingdom, the social
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-14
156 Mathias Delori
criticism of strategic bombing only grew in the following decades. This trend is
perceivable in the rhetoric of the history of the air war published by the official
historians of the Royal Air Force in the early 1960s (Frankland & Webster, 1961).
It sharpened following the publication of the first scientific (and critical) book on
the issue (Hastings, 1979).
The public debate on the Allied air war followed a different path in the United
States. The collusion between the arm industries, the military, the propaganda
services, and the cinematographic industry generated a “Military-Industrial
Media-Entertainment Network” (MIMEN) which spread out the idea that stra-
tegic bombings could help to win the war at a lower economic and human cost
(for Americans). For instance, “Walt Disney imagined an orgiastic destruction of
Japan by the air in his 1943 animated feature Victory Through Air Power (based
on Alexander P. de Seversky’s 1942 book), well before the United States could
carry it out” (Sherry, 2008, pp. 177‒292). The MIMEN kept working after World
War II. Besides, the supporters of strategic bombing implemented an article- and
interview-based communication campaign which “persuaded the American public
that creating air supremacy would be the least costly and most effective strategy in
the face of a Soviet threat that the air itself helped to overstate” (Lazarowitz, 2005,
pp. 477‒478). However, this view evolved during the mid-1960s. Michael Sherry
sees Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop
Worrying and Love the Bomb, as a turning point (Sherry, 2008, pp. 181‒192). Of
course, the critical gaze on strategic bombing only strengthened with the rise of
a (sub)culture of anti-militarism after the Vietnam War. The debate on strategic
bombings, then, moved from “prophecy to memory” (Sherry, 2008), that is to say
from belief in the virtues of the air weapon to sympathy for the victims. Since
then, comments have ranged from characterizing the “strategic” bombings as a
crime against humanity or a war crime (Bloxham, 2006) to formulations suggest-
ing, in a more euphemistic way, that this piece of the Allied war effort was not
the most glorious. The development of this moral condemnation of the Allied
air wars has gone along, like in Britain, with a critical assessment of their very
military effects.
This set of critical civil views on the Allied air war contrasts with that found in
the field of Anglophone “strategic”4 expertise, and more precisely in the United
States. In this field, dominated by think tanks such as the Rand Corporation, the
question of the effects of the Allied air war is approached in a more nuanced
manner. A distinction is made between bombings directed against civilians and
those targeting factories or transport systems, and questions are asked about their
respective effects. While there is no shortage of criticism, particularly among
defence intellectuals close to the Navy and the Army (Andrews, 1950; Copeland,
2017 (1er octobre); Gentile, 2001), there is also an articulate discourse validating
the thesis of the effectiveness of the Allied air war, including with regard to the
most controversial aspect of this war: the “area” bombings directed against civil-
ians. The supporters of these bombings are sometimes called the “Douhettians”
in reference to Giulio Douhet, the Italian officer who prophesied during the inter-
war period that “By bombing the most vital civilian centres it could spread terror
Understanding the fragmentation of the memory 157 AU: Please con-
firm the shorten
through the nation and quickly break down B’s material and moral resistance” text made in the
(Douhet, 1942 (1932, 1921 pour l’édition italienne, p. 37). It is difficult to meas- running head?
ure precisely the weight of Douhetian thought in the American military field after
World War II. We do know, however, that it was sufficiently important until the
1990s to give meaning, internally, to the carpet-bombing of Korea, Vietnam, and
Laos (Dafinger, 2020a; Gibson, 1986) and, to a lesser extent, to the bombing of
Iraqi cities during the first Gulf War (Gentile, 2001).
A vector of memory (Rousso, 1990) played an important role in the social
construction of this spectacular case of horizontal fragmentation of memories: the
United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS). The USSBS is an expertise
launched at the end of World War II by President Roosevelt to understand the
effects of the Allied air war. For several months, some 300 civilians, 350 military
officers, and 500 soldiers stayed in Germany and Japan in order to gather empiri-
cal material concerning the effects of strategic bombings. The USSBS produced
about 200 reports on Germany and almost as many on Japan.
Although the USSBS was officially an “independent and scientific” study, it is
important to highlight that a particular interest weighed on the decision to launch
the study and the production of the reports. At that time, the United States did
not have an air force. The majority of US “strategic” bombing had been carried
out by Army air forces grouped in what was called the “Air Corps.” Senior Air
Corps officers were eager to become autonomous from their parent organization,
the Army. They hoped for the creation, after the war, of an independent air force
similar to the British Royal Air Force. They were supported in this endeavour by
the industries who produced the flying fortresses, notably Boeing and the Douglas
Aircraft Company. For these companies, the creation of an air force with strate-
gic forces appeared to be the condition for the perpetuation of contracts with the
War Ministry after the end of hostilities. These airmen and industrialists formed
an alliance in 1944 to convince the War Department and President Roosevelt to
launch an evaluation of strategic bombing, the results of which they hoped to
control in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of such bombing. Hence, “Senior
air officers had spent the preceding seven months establishing the survey’s scope,
framing its questions, and building an organizational framework that reflected the
AAF’s conceptual approach to strategic bombing” (Gentile, 2001, p. 50). These
airmen and industrialists formalized their lobbying activities in 1946 in a network
hosted by the Douglas Aircraft Company: the “Rand Project,” the ancestor of the
Rand Corporation created in the wake of the USSBS in 1948 (Dafinger, 2018).
As a matter of fact, the USSBS synthesis reports ‒ the only reports that had an
impact on the public debate ‒ all concluded that the Allied strategic bombing was
“decisive,” including those that were intended to “demoralize” the population.5
This chapter revisits this key moment in the constitution of the belief of a part of
the strategic studies field in the effectiveness of strategic bombing: the production
of the main USSBS reports. I show that the conclusions of the synthesis reports
are indeed very favourable to strategic bombing but that they mask a dissension
within the USSBS board. The latter was composed of a military advisor ‒ Air
Corps general Orvil Anderson ‒ and civilians of different backgrounds who knew
158 Mathias Delori
little, if anything, about strategic bombing before they were appointed: diplo-
mat George Ball, businessmen Franklin d’Olier and Henry Alexander, Paul Nitze
(who hesitated, then, between a career in the bank sector, the aircraft industry or
in the government), and two academics: the psycho-sociologist Rensis Likert and
the economist John K. Galbraith. Most of these men had links to the “airmen”
lobby or the Rand Project. There is one major exception though: Galbraith, the
head of the Overall Economic Effects Division. He came to the conclusion that
“strategic” bombing in general had been ineffective and that those directed against
civilian morale had even been counterproductive: they had contributed to remobi-
lizing the bombed people against the aggressors.6 The conclusion of the synthesis
reports on the “decisive” character of “strategic” bombing in general and of those
directed against the “morale” of civilians in particular is due to the marginaliza-
tion of Galbraith’s minority report.
The argument follows a chronological plan. Most of the discussion focuses
on the production of the reports between 1945 and 1947 and the knowledge/
power operations that were associated with it. I conclude, however, with a section
presenting the legacy of the USSBS in US “strategic” thinking during the Cold
War, a legacy that contributed to the fragmentation of memories between the field
“strategic” studies and other fields.
The initial debate on “strategic” bombings

Historians have shown that a multitude of motives helped produce the Allied
air war against Germany and Japan: the belief in the effectiveness of “strategic”
bombing, the bureaucratic interests of the RAF and the USSAF Air Corps (Eden,
2004), a logic of mimetic rivalry leading to blindness about the military meaning
of one’s actions (Zinn, 2010), the “technological fanaticism” of some decision-
makers and military commanders (Sherry, 2012), etc. Whatever the practical rea-
sons, two strategic rationales contributed to giving meaning to this public action.
The first was that the destruction of civilian infrastructure such as railway stations,
ports, airports, and factories would lead to a collapse of war production and, in
turn, to surrender. The second stated that the disorganization and terror caused
by the bombing of residential areas would “demoralize” the population, leading
them to revolt against their government or at least to participate less in the war
effort. The former was called “precision” bombing and the latter was called “area”
bombing.
At the time, the debate on these two types of bombing was posed in different
terms. In the case of “precision” bombing, the question initially raised was that
of the degree of effectiveness of the bombing and the cost/benefit ratio. Indeed,
it is hard to imagine that the destruction of infrastructure useful to the war effort
could, in itself, have no positive effect at all. However, there were three hypoth-
eses regarding the possible effects of “area” bombing on civilian “morale”: a stra-
tegically interesting effect, a weak or null effect, and a counterproductive effect.
In 1943, the US Air Force Command had asked historians to produce an expertise
on the effects of Allied “strategic” bombing. The group included Carl L. Becker
Understanding the fragmentation of the memory 159
(Cornell University), Henry S. Commager (Columbia University), Edward
Mead Earle (Princeton University), Louis Gottschalk and Bernadotte Schmitt
(University of Chicago), and Dumas Malone (Harvard University). Their conclu-
sion was intended to be cautious, but it was also relatively critical. In their view, it
could happen that a person who saw their child die before their eyes might feel so
“demoralized” that they would no longer participate in war effort. However, the
opposite effect ‒ that of radicalization against the “air terrorists”‒- also existed.
Therefore, these historians wrote that “there is no evidence that the British and
American bombing of German cities actually weakened the hold of the Nazi gov-
ernment on the German population” (Gentile, 2001, p. 30).
In 1945, the general data on the outcome of the war against Germany and
Japan made it impossible to determine whether each sort of “strategic” bomb-
ing had been effective, ineffective, or counterproductive. In the case of Germany,
the destruction of numerous civilian infrastructures (factories, train stations and
entire cities) suggested that the extraordinary Allied firepower had contributed to
the victory. However, Germany’s capitulation came after the capture of Berlin by
Soviet ground forces. More generally, the German people did not revolt against
the Nazi regime, and the workers seemed to have gone to the factory with the
same fervour until the very end. The Japanese case was different in that the war
had been fought primarily from the air. However, capitulation did not come after
the conventional bombings of Tokyo in February 1945 but on September 2, i.e.,
after the USSR entered the war against Japan (9 August 1945) and the two atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August 1945).
The discovery of the increase in German war production

Since the US air forces engaged in Europe had mainly carried out “precision”
bombing against civilian infrastructure, the “airmen” and the Rand Project had
high expectations for the report of Overall Economic Effects Division headed by
John K. Galbraith. In the absence of convincing documents, the work of Galbraith
and his team stalled until May 1945 when Galbraith had the opportunity to inter-
view a key witness: Albert Speer. Speer’s testimony is obviously situated, but as
Minister of Armaments (February 1942–May 1945), he was able to observe first-
hand the effects of the bombings on workers and the economy. Besides, he gave
Galbraith a document that summarized the evolution of German war production
during the war: the “Wagenführ” report, named after its author, Rolf Wagenführ.7
This report showed that “in two and a half years, Germany’s military production
of aircraft, armaments and munitions more than tripled, and even increased six
times as far as tanks were concerned,” and that it only collapsed in the autumn of
1944, at the time of the conquest of the Reich’s vassal territories by Allied ground
forces.8
Galbraith told the other members of the management team about this “discov-
ery.” The latter generated an outcry from the “strategic” bombing: clan. In his
memoirs, Galbraith mentions the case of Orvil Anderson, the USSBS military
advisor:
160 Mathias Delori
The night we first discussed the [figures showing the increase of German war
production] Orvil Anderson’s voice suddenly rose: “And I would have sent
our boys over there to do that?” But he soon regained his composure and
set about first to challenge the German statistics and then, when that proved
impossible, to treat them with contempt.
(Galbraith, 2006 (1981), p. 208)
Charles Cabot and Colonel Perera ‒two members of the USSBS secretariat who
were committed to the air force project ‒ reacted in the same way. In the first draft
of the summary report that they wrote, they ignored Galbraith’s “discovery” and
presented the Allied air war as a success story.
All USSBS directors were expected to sign the summary report on Germany
prepared by Cabot and Perera. Galbraith refused to do so, arguing that it was
a matter of “intellectual honesty” (Galbraith, 2006 (1981), p. 219). Diplomat
George Ball proposed a compromise solution. The USSBS would produce not
one but two synthesis reports: a relatively short “summary” report and a longer
“overall” report. Both would be signed by all members of the executive team,
but Galbraith would have leadership on one and the secretariat on the other. Ball
added that both sides could draw on the work of the other group of USSBS scien-
tists: the Morale Division headed by psycho-sociologist Rensis Likert.
The Morale Division takes position against Galbraith

The USSBS Morale Division conducted an exploratory survey in February‒March
1945 among the population of the cities of Krefeld and Darmstadt, which had
been bombed in June 1943 and September 1944, respectively. The investigators
interviewed 200 survivors as well as various local notables. These interviews did
not support the thesis of a “demoralizing” effect of the bombings on civilians.
For example, a police officer named Puetz explained to investigators that “the
people were dazed and depressed for about two weeks following the attack, but
soon recovered and were of course very mad at the attackers. Their belief in the
ultimate German victory was not affected.”9
The Morale Division did not communicate the above data to the USSBS secre-
tariat. In an undated document, probably produced in the spring of 1945, the per-
son in charge of the survey in Krefeld and Darmstadt explained, on the contrary,
that the bombings had had an interesting strategic effect: “the desire to stop the
war as a result of the bombings was reported by 58% of the inhabitants of Krefeld
and 55% of the population of Darmstadt. As Darmstadt was “bombed more heav-
ily than Krefeld, and the damage […] much greater,” it appeared, according to
him, that “the most heavily bombed city suffered a greater loss of morale.”10
Perera and Cabot relied on the pre-reports of Morale Division to marginalize
Galbraith’s critical theses. In practice, they let the economist produce his special-
ized report11 but they took control of the key sections of both the “summary”
and the “overall” report: the abstract, the introduction, and the conclusion. These
sections contain the idea that has marked the post-war field of “strategic” studies,
i.e., that “strategic” bombings played a “decisive” role in defeating Germany.
Both synthesis reports are more ambiguous concerning the effects on German
war production. However, they validate the Douhetian view that the bombing of
civilians broke their morale:
The night raids were feared far more than daylight raids. The people lost faith
in the prospect of victory, in their leaders, and in the promises and propa-
ganda to which they were subjected. Most of all, they wanted the war to end.
They resorted increasingly to “black radio” listening, to circulation of rumor
and fact in opposition to the Regime; and there was some increase in active
political dissidence ‒ in 1944 one German in every thousand was arrested for
a political offense. If they had been at liberty to vote themselves out of the
war, they would have done so well before the final surrender.12
The synthesis reports were presented to the press on 30 September 1945, six weeks
after the surrender of Japan. In the euphoria of victory, the mainstream press only
retained these passages validating without nuance the thesis of the effectiveness of
“strategic” bombing: “air power defeated Reich, d’Olier concludes” (Philadelphia
Enquirer); “Civilian study concludes bombers defeated Germany” (Washington
Times-Herald); “Strategic bombing of Germany is touted as decisive to victory”
(New York Tribune); “they missed the barrel but crushed Hitler” (Philadelphia
record editorial) (MacIsaac, 1976, p. 144).
The bombed Japanese are unable to continue the war

The American public hardly heard about the disagreements between Galbraith and
the other members of the board concerning the effects of “strategic” bombings on
Germany. However, the debate concerning Japan turned into an open controversy.
The US Navy having played a major role in the war in the Pacific was given the
direction of a new division within the USSBS: the Naval Analysis Division. Its
head, Vice Admiral Ralph A. Ofstie, requested that the summary report emphasize
the contribution of naval forces but also of the two atomic bombs. While this last
request may have reflected his sincere conviction of the decisive role played by
these bombs, one cannot exclude that it was underpinned, once again, by a bureau-
cratic interest. Indeed, the US Navy was radically opposed to the project of creating
an independent air force, and one does not need such a force ‒ and its thousands of
flying fortresses ‒ to wage war with atomic bombs. A few planes launched from an
aircraft carrier can suffice. Vice Admiral Ofstie expressed this opinion internally
while other sailors spoke publicly to criticize “strategic” bombing (Dickens, 1947).
In this context, the “air force supporters” relied, once again, on the analyses
of the Morale Division. In his pre-reports of early 1946, Likert hammered home
the idea that the bombing of Tokyo in February‒March 1945 had had a devastat-
ing effect on Japanese morale, rendering them “incapable of continuing the war.”
Paul Nitze, the main author of the summary report on Japan, recycled this idea to
establish the central thesis of the report:
162 Mathias Delori
Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the tes-
timony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opin-
ion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to
1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs
had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no
invasion had been planned or contemplated.13
Moreover, the summary report explicitly called for the creation of an independent
air force.14
This text outraged the senior officers of the Navy. During his hearing in the
House of Representatives during the debate over the creation of the air force,
Vice Admiral Ofstie used a technique documented by sociologists of controversy
(Latour, 2005 (1989) #3738): he opened the “black box” of the study he intended
to disqualify. Without mentioning Galbraith by name, he explained that certain
“civilian” members of the board did not, at first, consider validating the thesis of
the effectiveness of “strategic” bombing or recommending the creation of an air
force. These ideas were absent, he added, from the interim reports produced on
5 March 1946, 10 March 1946, and 1 May 1946. According to him, the USSBS
secretariat had modified the text under “pressure” from supporters of the creation
of an air force.15 According to David MacIsaac, this grand unpacking of a kind
of inter-army war surprised some members of Congress who “complained about
the damned militarists who seemed unwilling to give up their private armies”
(MacIsaac, 1976, p. 123).
At the time, the Morale Division had not produced any official and public study
of its own (only internal pre-reports), not even on the German case. This came in
May 1947 with the publication of the report on “The Effects of Strategic Bombing
on German Morale.” The timing was particularly opportune. The US Congress
was debating the bill that would lead, two months later, to the creation of the Air
Force.
The Morale Division officially concludes that “strategic”

bombings demoralized civilians
The United Kingdom had also undertaken, in 1945, to assess the effects of
“strategic” bombing. The summary report of this British Bombing Survey Unit
(BBSU) that began circulating in military circles in June 1946 stated that the
bombing of transportation systems had had an interesting military effect, that
the bombing of factories had had no measurable impact on productivity, and
that the bombing of civilian morale had been a complete failure: “Insofar as
the offensive against German cities was intended to break the morale of the
German population, it clearly failed.”16 One does not know whether the report
was shelved by the British government because of the rise of public opinion
critical of the area bombings, particularly the one against the city of Dresden,
or because of a specific request from the US Air Force lobby. Andrew Knapp
favours the first thesis without excluding the second (Knapp, 2013, 2016).
One thing is sure though: it was not published until 1998. This left to the USSBS
Morale Division a sort of monopoly on the assessment of the effect of “strate-
gic” bombing on civilian morale.
At the end of 1945, the Morale Division came across some documents that
were, at first sight, interesting for the evaluation of the psychological effects of
“strategic” bombing: the “Stimmungsberichte” (literally “mood reports”) of the
German intelligence services. These confidential reports were intended to inform
the Nazi authorities about the attitude of the population towards the war and the
regime. They thus directly crossed the problematic of the Morale Division of the
USSBS. These documents also went against the theory of a demoralizing effect
of the bombings. In essence, they explained that the population was tired of being
bombed, but that allegiance to the regime remained strong and even increased
when the regime managed to show that the bombs were not aimed at factories but
at women and children.
The USSBS records show that the Morale Division did consult these reports
but chose to ignore them for two reasons. First, Likert felt that documents of
this type produced in a totalitarian context could not be taken at face value. By
so doing, he anticipated a debate that took place in academia when historians of
the Holocaust and World War II discovered these reports in the 2000s (Kulka &
Jäckel, 2004). Second, one of his collaborators (or himself) felt that
the reports are limited in that the Germans did not avail themselves of modern
scientific techniques for the study of popular thought and feeling. Quantitative
controls, sampling methods, and research design were completely lacking in
the collection and interpretation of the material for those reports.17
Rensis Likert became known in the 1930s for having proposed a method of sta-
tistical analysis that consists of measuring attitudes on a numbered scale. This
method, commonly referred to as the Likert scale (Likert, 1932), is still used today.
The questions used as indicators can be closed or open-ended. In the first case, the
interviewees are asked to specify their degree of agreement with a statement by
choosing among the formulas “completely agree,” “rather agree,” “neither disa-
gree nor agree,” “rather disagree,” and “completely disagree.” In the second case,
the interviewees answer as they see fit. The analyst then assigns a code to each
respondent’s answers to classify them on the scale.
Likert convinced the USSBS secretariat to give him the means to carry out a
large-scale survey with open-ended questions and coded answers among 3,700
German bombing survivors (and almost as many Japanese). The interviewees were
asked about 50 questions on various subjects, including their reactions during and
after the air raids. The interviewers were then asked to look for any sequences in
the answers where the interviewees mentioned their “morale.” These indicators
were then subsumed into a “morale index” which was set up as a “dependent”
variable, i.e., to be explained. The statistical method was then used to test various
explanatory hypotheses, including that of a “strategic” effect of bombings. The
164 Mathias Delori
production of these data and the time required for their analysis explain why the
Morale Division’s reports were published almost a year and a half after the others:
in May and June 1947.
The context of the interviews was not conducive to the expression of free
speech. The interviewers were soldiers of an occupying army. They conducted the
interviews in uniform, which could give them an air of interrogation. Moreover,
the “denazification” process had started and rumours had begun to circulate about
the administration of a questionnaire that was supposed to determine the degree
of complicity of each individual with the Nazi regime (the future “Fragebogen
zur Entnazifizierung,” questionnaire for denazification). Although the interview-
ers explained the USSBS did not aim at assessing their proximity to the Nazi
regime, this was far from an ideal interview situation as described in social sci-
ence textbooks. The following excerpt from a “control interview” published as
an appendix to the main report of the Morale Division gives an idea of the biases
induced by this method of investigation:
Q: “In your opinion, what was the Allies’ objective through these raids?” (A21)
A: “The Allies wanted to exhaust the population, incite them to rebel, and thus
end the war. If they had not bombed the cities, the war would have lasted
much longer and more men would have died at the front”
Q: “Did you blame the Allies for the air raids” (A20)
A: “Really not. I was listening to the English radio and I knew that we had bombed
cities.”18
These questions and the interview context combined to generate responses in

which 68 per cent of those bombed explained that they “did not blame the Allies
for the bombing” and 59 per cent had “wished” that their government would sur-
render after a raid.19 The Morale Division concluded, then, that
bombing severely depressed the morale of German civilians. (…) Its main
psychological effects were defeatism, fear, hopelessness, fatalism, and apa-
thy. War weariness, willingness to surrender, loss of hope for German vic-
tory, distrust of leaders, feelings of disunity and demoralizing fear were all
more common among bombed than unbombed people.20
The report on the Japanese case appeared a month later, in June 1947. It told the
same story, using the same procedures. However, it included an original argument:
the idea of an indirect demoralizing effect. According to this theory, the drop in
morale would not only be observed in the bombed areas. When the chosen tar-
gets were symbolic, as in the bombing of the Japanese capital in February‒March
1945, the psychological effect was perceptible throughout the country. Paul Nitze
took up this idea in his summary report on the war in the Pacific. Major-General
Lauris Norstad also stressed this point during his hearing before Congress during
the debate over the creation of the US Air Force.21 The latter was officially insti-
tuted in July 1947. Some of the flying fortresses that had bombed Germany and
Japan were transferred to this new organization. The latter also fashioned some
plans for the rapid modernization of this fleet of “strategic bombers.”22
The role of USSBS in horizontal memory fragmentation

The conclusions of the USSBS in favour of “strategic” bombing did not only
contribute to convince the American congressmen to create the air force. They
immediately infused a multitude of key texts in American strategic thinking. The
first and most influential is the infamous NSC-68, written by Paul Nitze and sub-
mitted to President Truman two months before the outbreak of the Korean War.
This document called for a drastic increase in US military capabilities in all areas,
starting with strategic air forces. One year later, while US flying fortresses were
bombing Korean cities and villages, another report produced by the Air Force
used the conclusions of the USSBS summary reports to justify its demands for the
consolidation of its strategic forces (Irving, 1951). In 1953, the Stanford Research
Institute submitted another voluminous report to the US government on the les-
sons to be learned from the strategic bombings of World War II for the prepara-
tion of the US defence system. The text was mainly based on the “canonical”
texts of the USSBS, i.e., the three synthesis reports. The Stanford researchers
concluded, on this basis, that both precision and area bombing produced interest-
ing militarily effects.23
This tradition seemed to run out of steam in the mid-1950s when the Soviet
Union began to produce its arsenal of thermonuclear bombs and proved, par-
ticularly following the successful launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, that
it could strike directly at the territory of the United States. A second tradition
then took off. Its leitmotiv was that the entry into the “nuclear age” made con-
ventional strategic bombing partially obsolete. The most illustrious representa-
tive of this epistemic community is Bernard Brodie (Brodie, 1946). However,
these proponents of a “revolution in strategic thinking” did not totally reject the
USSBS’s conclusions on the usefulness of conventional “strategic” bombing,
especially those directed against the morale of populations. Brodie, for example,
relied on USSBS findings to argue that the July 1943 Hamburg bombing had an
impact on civilian morale throughout the country and that a repeat of this type
of area bombing would have forced the Reich to surrender earlier. This idea did
not completely contradict that of revolution in military affairs: for Brodie, the
USSBS demonstration of the “demoralizing” effect of area bombing was also an
argument in favour of his thesis of a demoralizing effect of thermonuclear bomb-
ing (Brodie, 1959, p. 137).
Another important legacy of the USSBS can be found in the writings of soci-
ologist Hans Speier, the first director of the Rand Corporation’s social science
department. In the 1950s, Speier argued that it was immoral to target German and
Japanese civilians without dismissing the idea that it could have some interesting
military effects. Speier overcame this potential cognitive dissonance by propos-
ing a new approach to the “demoralization of civilians.” According to him, it
should be possible to demoralize enemy civilian populations by employing less
166 Mathias Delori
violent instruments – such as propaganda ‒ or by intensifying bombing over a
short period of time (Dafinger, 2018, 2020b). The notion of “psychological war-
fare” comes directly from this translation work.
The main legacy of the USSBS, however, lies elsewhere: in the thinking (and
practice) of warfare against groups or states of the Global South. In 1948, the US
Air Force set up a research group on the European (mainly British) expertise on
aerial “pacification” of the colonies during the interwar period. For five years, ten
officers and six civilians paid by the fledgling air force sought to understand how
the Royal Air Force had “pacified” Iraq, the Gulf of Aden, Palestine, Transjordan,
East Africa, or the Indian subcontinent before World War II. These men repro-
duced what others have called the “myth of air control” (Gray, 2001), i.e., the
(disputed (Omissi, 1990)) idea that punitive bombing of rebellious villages and
tribes had helped Britain, France, and to a lesser extent Italy to preserve their
colonial empires.
This belief met the USSBS-produced belief in the “demoralizing” effects of
“strategic” bombing. The synthesis between the USSBS and air control myths
contributed to giving meaning, internally, to the bombing of civilians in Vietnam.
Thomas Hippler notes in this regard that the war in Vietnam combined “the worst
of two traditions: that of the total war between nation-states and that of the ‘small
war’ of the insurrectionary or colonial type” (Hippler, 2014, p. 179). This tra-
dition was also present in the US war in Laos and, to a lesser extent, in the
Gulf War in 1991 (Gentile, 2001), in Afghanistan in 2001, and in Iraq in 2003
(Grosscup, 2006).
The publication in 1998 (50 years after its production) of the critical report of
the British Bombing Survey Unit contributed to weakening the Douhetian narra-
tive within the field of “strategic” studies. Moreover, the “counter-insurgency”
turn of the “war on terror” in the 2000s mechanically prompted many proponents
of air power to cast some doubt on “classical,” “strategic” bombing. Indeed, the
precepts of counterinsurgency warfare emphasize the importance of controlling
violence against non-rebel populations in order to prevent them from becoming
rebellious ‒ an idea that is the exact opposite of “strategic” bombing. However, it
would be wrong to think that US “strategic” studies have definitively buried the
USSBS. In 2008, a Rand Corporation expert wrote, for example, that some of the
USSBS’s theses may be debatable, but that no expert questions its major conclu-
sion that “strategic” bombing made a “decisive” contribution to the victory over
Germany and Japan. This, she wrote, “has stood the test of time.”24 In this sense,
the horizontal fragmentation of civilian and “strategic” memories of the Allied air
war may not be quite over.
Notes
1 I thank Anne Bazin, Eric Sangar, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful com-
ments on a previous version of this chapter. This research is mainly based on some
archival work at the (US) National Archive Research Administration (hereafter NARA)
at College Park, nearby Washington DC.
2 USSBS. (1945a). United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report
(European War).
3 I use inverted commas when talking about “strategic” bombings in order to denote that
the (genuine) strategic dimension of these war actions is disputed.
4 I use inverted commas, again, in order to highlight that I am referring to the social
field that his proponent call “strategic studies.” Whether or not this field does produce
genuine strategic thought remains an open question.
5 USSBS. (1945a). United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report (European
War), USSBS. (1946). United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report
(Pacific War). 1 July 1946, USSBS. (1945b). United States Strategic Bombing Survey.
Overall Report (European war). 30 September 1945.
6 USSBS. (1945e). United States Strategic Bombing Survey.The effects of stra-
tegic bombing on the German war economy. Overall economic effect division.
31 October 1945.
7 USSBS. (1944‒1945). Rise and fall of German war economy 1939-1945, by Rolf
Wagenfuehr. Box 243-6-890. NARA, College Park.
8 USSBS. (1945e). United States Strategic Bombing Survey.The effects of strategic
bombing on the German war economy. Overall economic effect division. 31 October
1945.
9 USSBS. (1945c). Interview 3, Oberleutenant der Polizei Puetz, 13 March 1945.
Box 243-6-190. NARA, College Park.
10 USSBS. (1945d). Civilian reactions to bombing in Krefeld and Darmstadt. A pilot
study based on interviews with representative samples of the population (non daté).
Box 243-6-192. NARA, College Park.
11 USSBS. (1945e). United States Strategic Bombing Survey.The effects of strategic
bombing on the German war economy. Overall economic effect division. 31 October
1945.
12 USSBS. (1945a). United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report (European
War).
13 USSBS. (1946). United States Strategic Bombing Survey. Summary Report (Pacific
War). 1 July 1946.
14 Ibid.
15 Congress, US. (1947). National Security Act of 1947. Hearings before the Committee
on Expenditures in the Executive Departments House of Representatives, Eightieth
congress, first session on H. R. 2319. US Government Printing Office. Washington
DC.
16 BBSU. (1946 (not published until 1998)). The strategic air war against Germany:
British Bombing Survey Unit.
17 USSBS (undated). Chapter I. The course of decline in morale. Official intelligence
reports, supporting document, undated. RG 243 box 483. NARA, College Park, p. 83.
18 USSBS. (1947). United States Strategic Bombing Survey. The effects of Strategic
Bombing on German morale, May 1947, vol 1.
19 Ibid.
20 Ibid.
21 Congress, U. (1947). National Security Act of 1947. Hearings before the Committee
on Expenditures in the Executive Departments House of Representatives, Eightieth
congress, first session on H. R. 2319. US Government Printing Office. Washington
DC.
22 Commission, U. S. P. s. A. P. (1948). Survival in the air age. U.S. Government Printing
Office.
23 Stanford Research Institute / Institute of Research, L. U. (1953). Impact of Air Attack
in World War II: Selected data for civil defense planning.
24 Grant, R. (2008 (1er février)). The Long Arm of the US Strategic Bombing Survey. Air
Force Magazine.
168 Mathias Delori
References
Andrews, M. (1950). Disastrer Through Air Power. New York: Rinehart and Company.
Bloxham, D. (2006). Dresden as a war crime. In P. Addison & J. A. Crang (Eds.), Firestorm:
The Bombing of Dresden, 1945. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee.
Brodie, B. (1946). The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order. Princeton:
Brodie, B. (1959). Strategy in the Missile Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Copeland, J. C. 2017 (1er octobre). Formulaic Leadership: Ahistorical, Anachronistic, and
Wrong for the Air Force. Air & Space Power Journal, 31–3, 74–84.
Dafinger, S. (2018). Experten für den Luftkrieg. In F. Reichherzer, E. Droit, & J. Hansen
(Eds.), Den Kalten Krieg vermessen. Über Reichweite und Alternativen einer binären
Ordnungsvorstellung (pp. 93–105). Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenburg.
Dafinger, S. (2020a). Die Lehren des Luftkriegs. Sozialwissenschaftliche Expertise in den
USA vom Zweiten Weltkrieg bis Vietnam. Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag.
Dafinger, S. (2020b). Keine Stunde Null. Sozialwissenschaftliche Expertise und die
amerikanischen Lehren des Luftkrieges. Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in
Contemporary History, Online-Ausgabe, 17 2020, H. 1, URL: https://zeithistorische
-forschungen.de/1-2020/5809.
Dickens, A. S. G. (1947). Bombing and Strategy: The Fallacy of Total War. London:
Sampson Low, Marston & Co. Ltd.
Douhet, G. (1942 (1932, 1921 pour l’édition italienne)). Command of the Air. New York:
Coward-McCann.
Eden, L. (2004). Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons
Devastation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Frankland, N., & Webster, C. (1961). The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939–
1945 (4 vols). London: HMSO.
Friedrich, J. (2003). Brandstätten. Der Anblick des Bombenkriegs. Munich: Propyläen
Verlag.
Galbraith, J. K. (2006 (1981)). Une vie dans son siècle. Mémoires. Paris: La table ronde.
Gentile, G. P. (2001). How Effective Is Strategic Bombing? Lessons Learned from World
War II to Kosovo. New York: New York University Press.
Gibson, J. W. (1986). The Perfect War. Boston, New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press.
Gray, P. W. (2001). The Myths of Air Control and the Realities of Imperial Policing.
Aerospace Power Journal, 15–3, 21–31.
Grosscup, B. (2006). Strategic Terror. The Politics and Ethics of Aerial Bombardment.
New York and London: Zed Books.
Hastings, M. (1979). Bomber Command. Dial Press / J. Wade.
Hippler, T. (2014). Le gouvernement du ciel. Histoire globale des bombardements aériens.
Les Prairies ordinaires.
Irving, L. J. (1951). Air War and Emotional Stress: Psychological Studies of Bombing and
Civil Defense. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Kershaw, I. (2011). The End. Penguin Books.
Knapp, A. (2013). The Allied Bombing Offensive in the British Media, 1942–45. In A.
Knapp & H. Footitt (Eds.), Liberal Democracies at War: Conflict and Representation
(pp. 39–65). London: Bloomsbury.
Knapp, A. (2016). The horror and the glory: Bomber Command in British memories since
1945. https://www.sciencespo.fr/mass-violence-war-massacre-resistance/en/document
/horror-and-glory-bomber-command-british-memories-1945#footnoteref112_qoie6ds
(consulté le 7 décembre 2018).
Kulka, O. D., & Jäckel, E. (2004). Die Juden in den geheimen NS-Stimmungsberichten
1933‒1945: Inhalte der CD-Rom zu "Schriften des Bundesarchivs 62". Bundesarchiv.
https://www.bundesarchiv.de/DE/Content/Publikationen/Editionen/kulka-jaeckel_ns
-stimmungsberichte-gesamt.html (31 January 2023).
Latour, B. (2005 (1989)). La Science En Action. Paris: La Decouverte.
Lazarowitz, A. (2005). Promoting Air Power: The Influence of the U.S. Air Force on the
Creation of the National Security State. The Independent Review9–4, 477–499.
Likert, R. (1932). A Technique for the Measurement of Attitudes. Archives of Psychology,
140, 1–55.
MacIsaac, D. (1976). Strategic Bombing in World War Two: The Story of the United States
Strategic Bombing Survey. New York: Garland Publishing Company.
Omissi, D. (1990). Air Power and Colonial Control: The Royal Air Force 1919–1939.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Overy, R. (2013). The Bombing War: Europe, 1939–1945. London: Penguin.
Overy, R. (2016). Constructing Space for Dissent in War: The Bombing Restriction
Committee, 1941–1945. The English Historical Review, 131–550, 596–622.
Rousso, H. (1990). Le syndrome de Vichy de 1944 à nos jours. Paris: Seuil.
Sebald, W. G. (2004 (2001)). De la destruction comme élément de l'histoire naturelle.
Paris: Actes Sud.
Sherry, M. (2008). The United States and Strategic Bombing: From Prophecy to Memory.
In M. Young & Y. Tanaka (Eds.), Bombing Civilians: A Twentieth-Century History.
Free Press (kindle edition).
Sherry, M. (2012). Le Fanatisme Technologique et La Guerre Moderne. In D. Barjot (Ed.),
Deux Guerres Totales 1914–1918, 1939–1945. La Mobilisation de la Nation. Paris:
Economica.
Yoneyama, L. (1999). Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory.
University of California Press.
Zinn, H. (2010). The Bomb. City Lights Publishers.
12 Present wars as catalysts of
fragmented memories of past
warsThe use of the Algerian
War in the context of the French
deployment in Afghanistan
Christophe Wasinski
Introduction
“But do we believe that memory goes without saying, that it is a “natural” phe-
nomenon? Nothing, on the contrary, is more socialized, more linked to the cul-
ture of an era or a society” (Vidal-Naquet, 1975: 5). How can it be explained
that in France today, the collective memory of the Algerian War (1954‒1962)
still remains fragmented?1 How can we account for the fact that, despite the
time that has passed since the Evian Agreements (1962) were signed, a peace-
ful and unified vision of the conflict has still not emerged? What processes
explain the fact that radically different representations or frameworks of the
conflict still coexist? This chapter constructs a case analysis focusing on the
memory of the military operations carried out in Algeria in the name of “paci-
fication,” in order to show that, over the long term, the fragmentation of the
memory of the Algerian War essentially results from the combination of three
dynamics: the state’s inability to establish dominant memory frameworks; the
actions and positions taken by memory entrepreneurs – veterans, historians,
activists ‒ from civil society; and the rehabilitation of the doctrine of revolu-
tionary war by the French military from 2008 onwards, as theorized by authors
such as David Galula (1919‒1967) and Roger Trinquier (1908‒1986) among
others. On this last point, it seems that the French military felt this undertaking
was legitimized following the rediscovery of counter-insurgency thinking in
the United States in the context of American engagement in Afghanistan and
Iraq in the 2000s. Consequently, within the French military, a revalorization
of the military action during the Algerian War has occurred. It evolves on
the margins of major political speeches and official commemorations efforts
promoting a reconciliatory discourse. Thus, it contributes to constructing a
“niche” of technical, tactical and operational expertise that indirectly legiti-
mates a revisionist memory framework of the Algerian War that is out of step
with the one promoted by recent French governments but also most contem-
porary French historians.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-15
Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars 171
Collective memory and the production of military-strategic
knowledge
Research on the collective memory of wars and violent conflicts in political sci-
ence and the history of international relations does not generally concentrate on
the question of its fragmentation. This literature focuses more on the construction
of these memories and the political uses made of them (Lavabre, 1994; Winter
and Sivan, 2009). Some of this literature, based in particular on the writings of
the philosopher Paul Ricœur, has sought to grasp how collective memory and its
transformations can become a vector of reconciliation between communities or
states (Ricœur, 2000; Rosoux, 2001). Other studies have shown that elements
of the memory of past conflicts can influence decision-makers to adopt “tough”
security postures and, if need be, also serve to legitimize these postures among
populations (Khong, 1992; Buffet and Heuser, 1998; Dower, 2010). It should be
added that these works essentially deal with the question of memory in order to
understand how the past and such interpretations of the past, whether correct or
incorrect, influence foreign and security policy decisions. On the other hand, this
last body of work does not generally address the question of how contemporary
crises and conflicts can activate or reactivate more or less fragmented discourses of
memory of past conflicts within societies. Nor does it seek to understand whether
a state’s contemporary external military engagements have the effect of nourishing
“militaristic cultures” through these memory reactivations, or, on the contrary, of
fostering the blossoming of “pacifistic cultures” within the society of these states
(Barkawi and Stanski, 2012).
The sociological and critical research on strategic discourses does not pro-
vide answers to our question either (Olsson, 2007; Wasinski, 2010; Daho, 2014).
In particular, until now this research has sought to understand how the experi-
ence of past wars was mobilized by institutions and experts in order to legitimize,
justify ex post, or even promote, the use of armed force or the use of specific
military techniques such as counterinsurgency. Let us insist that the institutions
and experts studied by these analyses should not, strictly speaking, be considered
“memory entrepreneurs.” These experts are, first and foremost, “consumers” of
history, who use the past to develop operational expertise, among other things
in the form of “lessons learned.” To put it differently, their objective is less to
propose a specific interpretation of the history of the Algerian War than to fit the
past into the “boxes” of theoretical military thought. We should add here that
sociological and critical work has focused primarily on technical strategic dis-
course, but its field of analysis also includes political discourse or popular culture
which can influence the production of expertise. It should also be noted that these
works have taken seriously transnational mechanisms for the circulation of stra-
tegic knowledge. However, they have tended to leave unanswered the question
of the relationship between military thought and the issue of collective memory.2
Therefore, these studies have not sought to assess whether and to what extent such
expertise can contribute to memory fragmentation.
172 Christophe Wasinski
In this contribution, I attempt to fill some of these gaps based on a case study
on the memory discourses on the Algerian War in France. More specifically, this
study focuses on the development of memory frameworks in which collective
representations of the actions carried out in the name of “maintaining order”
or “pacification” in French Algeria by the French military are constructed and
narrated (Stora, 1999: 28). This case study shows that until the 2000s, there
was essentially a vertical fragmentation of these memory frameworks, result-
ing from divergent positions taken within civil society on this issue. During
the 2000s, this vertical fragmentation has been complemented by a process of
horizontal fragmentation. This horizontal fragmentation stems from the French
armed forces’ rediscovery of the Algerian War as a useful model for developing
expertise for contemporary military operations abroad. Indeed, in the context of
their deployments in Afghanistan and, subsequently, in Mali, French soldiers
have rehabilitated part of the so-called revolutionary war doctrine that initially
emerged in the 1950s and 1960s. In the underlying discourses of members of
the armed forces, the Algerian War does not appear as a “dirty war” but as
a useful case study of military adaptation and learning. However, while this
vision of French military practices in Algeria may be compatible with the one
defended by parts of French civil society, it is out of step both with the dis-
course of many French academic historians but also of recent French govern-
ments, attempting to recognize French wrongdoings in the Algerian War as a
way to facilitate reconciliation with Algeria. In short, the cause of shift in the
fragmentation of collective memory related to the “pacification” practices from
a vertical configuration to a horizontal situation is the external operations of the
2000s. Ultimately, therefore, it can be said that these operations do indeed have
at least some effects on how French society looks at its past, and even invite
reinterpretations of the past.
We should also underline the fact that the impact of recent military dis-
courses on collective memory is partly “accidental.” The primary objective of
the military has been to study and update the counterinsurgency approach, an
operational (and very problematic) conception of warfare developed among oth-
ers in Algeria. However, this case study shows that for this work on military
expertise to be “successful,” it willy-nilly involved a modification of French
society’s perception of the Algerian War. Once again, these experts cannot be
considered, strictly speaking, memory entrepreneurs. More simply, I found that
the soldiers’ organizational debate did in fact have an effect on the fragmenta-
tion of memory, even if this effect was not intended. Moreover, I notice that the
process of rehabilitation of the Algerian War operates within the wider con-
text of nostalgia for colonial operations among the French soldiers (Hauser,
2008). In this context, the French military did not only reinterpret the actual
events of the Algerian War of the 1950s and 1960s. In the wake of the wars in
Afghanistan and Mali, they also rediscovered the writings of the “great” colo-
nial soldiers Joseph Gallieni (1846‒1916) and Hubert Lyautey (1854‒1934),
who produced a great deal of theoretical military knowledge applied in French
colonial operations elsewhere.
The origins of the fragmented memory of the Algerian War
On 11 June 1957, Maurice Audin, a 25-year-old mathematician from the Faculty
of Algiers, was arrested at his home by French soldiers (Vidal-Naquet, 1989).
Maurice Audin was a member of the Algerian Communist Party and was in favour
of Algerian independence. Following his arrest, Audin disappeared. Lieutenant-
Colonel Trinquier explains to Audin’s wife Josette that her husband escaped in
the context of a prisoner transfer. She does not believe him and decides to ask
the French newspaper Le Monde for the addresses of readers who have opposed
the use of torture in Algeria. In particular, she contacts Jacques-Fernand Cahen,
an English teacher working at the military high school Prytanée militaire de la
Flèche (Boëldieu, 2008), who subsequently founds the Comité Maurice Audin
which meets for the first time in November 1957. This small committee, with
some 15 effective members and independent of political parties, was to be a rally-
ing point for those who criticized the operations carried out by the French Army
in Algeria in the name of “maintaining order” (Juillard, 2019). Among its mem-
bers was the historian of antiquity Pierre-Vidal Naquet, author of several essential
works on torture and abuses committed by the French Army in Algeria, some of
which were published after the end of the conflict (Vidal-Naquet, 1962; Vidal-
Naquet, 1975; Vidal-Naquet, 1979; Vidal-Naquet, 1989). The publishers Minuit
and François Maspero, who were close to the Comité Maurice Audin, edited works
denouncing military and police abuses (some of these works were even censored
by the French authorities during the war) (Alleg, 2008; Minuit, 2012; Monclaud,
2014; Stora, 199: 52‒53; Dosse, 2020: 77‒139).3 In the end, the Comité Audin
played an important role in stimulating a public debate on the disappearance of
the mathematician but also, more broadly, in the constitution of a memory frame-
work of the Algerian War that was critical of the effectiveness and legitimacy of
the French military action. The group contributed to the emergence of the image
of a morally dubious war, shared by parts of French society. During the 1970s
and 1980s, new accounts by veterans also highlighted the brutality of the war
(de Bollardière, 1972; Stora, 1999: 266). Although these stories had more lim-
ited resonance, they also participated in the same memory process. Finally, to be
thorough, it should be noted that during the years 1975‒1980, a critical academic
historiography of the war emerged, notably through the work of Charles-Robert
Ageron, although his writings do not focus specifically on the practices of “polic-
ing” and military “pacification” (Stora, 1999: 246; Branche, 2005: 274‒295).
Yet the memory of the conflict is not only constructed through publications
that are critical of French “pacification” practices. According to the historian
Benjamin Stora, “[a]bout 70% of the works published in France from 1962 to
1982 are favourable to the theses of maintaining the French presence in Algeria.
The officers, soldiers, harkis, pieds-noirs4 and politicians who were partisans of
French Algeria in fact occupy a preponderant place in the book of testimony”
(Stora, 1999: 239). In this category of narratives, one also finds books written by
former officers deployed to Algeria who were the “inventors” of the doctrine of
revolutionary war. In their testimonies, they detail the course of the operations
in which they took part, try to justify their actions, minimize the seriousness of
the use of torture or boast of their “dirty tricks” (Challe, 1968; Godard, 1972;
Massu, 1972; Salan, 1972; Bigeard, 1975; Trinquier, 1978; Léger, 1983). Their
testimonies can also be critical of political decision-makers but they are generally
much less critical of the military institution and its members. The political goal of
the war may have been morally dubious but still, according to these writings, the
military conduct of the war was legitimate and effective, and therefore the honour
of French combatants is (overall) intact. We should add to this list of testimonies
also a few books which promoted an idealized intellectual synthesis of French
military practices in Algeria, called the “theory of revolutionary war” (Trinquier,
1961; Trinquier, 1968; Beaufre, 1972). In one of these texts, Trinquier, who had
participated in the “Battle of Algiers,” evokes and justifies the use of torture
(Trinquier, 1961). It would probably be an exaggeration to speak of “commu-
nity” to designate all the authors of these books. Rather, it is the remnants of the
counter-revolutionary community of thought that was backed up by the military
institution during the war and which expressed itself in the armed forces’ jour-
nals, circulars and manuals (Déon, 1959; Villatoux and Villatoux, 2005). After
the conflict, these remnants of the community expressed themselves in a dispersed
manner. That said, through the positions they took, these veterans contributed to
the construction of a collective memory framework that was totally different from
the one elaborated by the community that emerged from the Comité Audin.
For many years after the war, as a result of this opposition between critical civil
society groups and some war veterans, French collective memory of the Algerian
War was fragmented along a vertical axis: on the one hand, two distinct, compet-
ing memory frameworks circulating within civil society, and on the other hand,
an official memory framework emphasizing silence and “forgetting.” Indeed,
the government and the military institution initially sought to make downplay
and marginalize the commemoration of the Algerian War as much as possible.
As Valérie Rosoux points out, President Charles de Gaulle believed that France
needed cohesion much more than truth. Concerning Algeria, he pursued a policy
of concealment that would be continued by his successor, Georges Pompidou
(Rosoux, 2016: 210‒211). This would also be the policy of François Mitterrand,
although he later indirectly recognized the presence of conflicting civil society
framework by calling for the need to “pacify” memory in the Algerian affair
(Rosoux, 2016: 211). On a legal and institutional level, this policy of conceal-
ment was implemented through amnesties, pardons and censorship (Rosoux,
2016: 212). Although they were also conceived as tools of memory pacification,
these measures sometimes generated political controversy, as in the case in 1982,
when François Mitterrand granted the amnesty of putschist generals who had
tried to overthrow the government in 1961 in reaction to de Gaulle’s decision to
accept the independence of Algeria (Guisnel, 1990: 66‒73). As early as in March
1962, the military institution also played its part in silencing its actions during the
Algerian War by adopting an amnesty that covered acts committed during “main-
taining of order” operations. At this time, the military were eager to “turn the
page” (Branche, 2005: 27) and political decision-makers helped them by orienting
the armed forces towards missions of territorial defence, nuclear deterrence,
conventional warfare and external operations in Africa (Hernu, 1975; Schmitt,
1992: 87‒104). In theory, the Army no longer had a reason to be interested in the
practice of “counter-revolutionary warfare” (although in practice, some of this
thinking on revolutionary warfare was discreetly recycled in the context of the
so-called doctrine of Operational Territorial Defence, DOT) (Rigouste, 2011).
Despite this, it seems that many active-duty officers had difficulties accepting the
outcome of the Algerian War until the early 1990s, without however making their
opposition public (Guisnel, 1990: 35).
The Algerian War in the light of the “war on terrorism”

In the early 2000s, the vertical memory divide still persists. In October 2012, the
communist newspaper L’Humanité publishes the “Appeal of the Twelve,” signed
among others by Henri Alleg, Noël Favrelière, Germaine Tillon and Pierre Vidal-
Naquet. The manifesto asks the President of the Republic, Jacques Chirac, and the
Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, to make a public declaration condemning torture
(Rosoux, 2016: 221; Stora, 2021: 42‒43). In 2001, General Paul Aussaresses, one
of the writers promoting the “theory of revolutionary war,” published the book
Services spéciaux – Algérie 1955‒1957 and expressed his opinions in a resound-
ing interview he gave to the daily newspaper Le Monde (Aussaresses, 2001a;
Aussaresses, 2001b; Beaugé, 2001). In the interview, Aussaresses recounts his
actions in Algeria, admits to having tortured people there, and seeks to justify
himself. He was prosecuted and convicted for “complicity in the glorification of
war crimes” in 2001 and sentenced in 2002 (Dosse, 2020: 107). In reaction to this
affair, 300 former generals took a public stance in defence of the Army’s actions
during the war (De Jaeghere et al., 2001). The Ministry of Defence did not pub-
licly support the generals, but nor did it take an official position rejecting their
claims (Branche, 2005: 50‒51 and 62‒63). In the wake of this affair, President
Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Jospin acknowledged that torture had been
used but minimized the extent of its use (Branche, 2005: 101, 103).
It was also at this time that former Chief of Staff Maurice Schmitt, who had
served as an NCO under Bigeard and Trinquier in Algeria, was accused of having
used torture. Between 2002 and 2007, Schmitt was implicated in trials oppos-
ing Louisette Ighilahriz, who claimed to have been tortured by him, and Henri
Pouillot, a conscript turned human rights activist. Schmitt also published two
books in which he sought to rehabilitate the action in which he participated during
the “Battle of Algiers,” justified the use of torture, and related the trials (Schmitt,
2001; Branche, 2005: 120; Schmitt, 2008). Paul Aussaresses and Maurice Schmitt
both draw connections between the 2001 terrorist attacks and the situation in
Algeria in order to justify their actions, although this discourse does not seem to
have been echoed more widely among active members of the armed forces.
A few years later, this situation changed significantly. From 2008 onwards,
there was a rediscovery of the doctrine of revolutionary warfare within the French
armed forces. This took place via a changing discourse on counterinsurgency
warfare within the US armed forces,5 at the time mired in Afghanistan and Iraq.
A group of officers, led by General Petraeus, proposed a technical diagnosis of
the insurgencies in those countries of what turned out to be a political problem
(Kaplan 2013). These soldiers asserted that the mission had become “bogged
down’” as the result of the application of an erroneous doctrine, which allowed
the debate to be shifted from the political sphere to the military technical sphere.
Political decision-makers were quick to validate this diagnosis, which had the
advantage of not further questioning their prior decisions. It is in this context
that counterinsurgency doctrine made a comeback in the United States. The
most obvious way to prove its validity would have been to illustrate the doc-
trine with examples taken from the history of US engagements; however, the
most prominent case of the deployment of US counterinsurgency is the one that
took place in Vietnam and resulted in defeat preceded by a long and costly war.
One might argue that proponents of counterinsurgency doctrine must, in con-
sequence, have thought it prudent to use more varied references and examples.
Thus, the discourse of the followers of US counterinsurgency thinking refers
sometimes to Vietnam, sometimes to British action in Malaysia, and sometimes
to “pacification” in Algeria. By making the Algerian War a source of operational
inspiration, General Petraeus and his team have contributed greatly to the reha-
bilitation of the experience of this conflict in the field of strategic expertise in
the United States and among its allies. The French military deployed alongside
their American peers in Afghanistan and following US military debate on coun-
terinsurgency expertise, thus “rediscovered” the memory of the Algerian War.
To paraphrase Eric Hobsbawm, the American relay thus enabled the French
military to reinvent a colonial warrior tradition (Hobsbawm, 2012).
The importation of this American rediscovery in France does not, however,
happen in a vacuum.6 It takes place within a milieu already interested in doctrinal
reflection within the French armed forces – and one also endorsed by the highest
military leadership (see statements by Chief of Staff Jean-Louis Georgelin to the
National Assembly, 2008; Georgelin, 2008). General Vincent Desportes is one
figure who has contributed most to the development of this milieu.7 Trained at
the US Army War College, amongst other places, Desportes directed the CDEF
(Centre de Doctrine et d’Emploi de Force) between 2005 and 2008 before becom-
ing head of the Collège Interarmées de Défense from 2008 to 2010). The CDEF
is the French equivalent of the US Army’s Training and Doctrine Command
(TRADOC), which plays a leading role in the elaboration of US conventional
warfare doctrine. Indeed, the CDEF was created to become a centre for doctrinal
reflection emulating the TRADOC (CDEF, 2010: 11). Under General Desportes’
command, during the 2000s, the CDEF promoted the revival of counterinsurgency
thinking in France by almost systematically referring to its rediscovery in the
United States. It is in this context that the institution published several “Cahiers de
la recherche doctrinale” on the subject (Valeyre and Guerin, 2009; Valeyre, 2010;
Raffray, 2013). In 2010, the CDEF also publishes an English version of a manual
entitled Doctrine for Counterinsurgency at the Tactical Level (CDEF, 2010), a
translation of the manual Doctrine de contre rébellion (Valeyre, 2010: 112). The
document contains many references to the doctrine of “revolutionary war.” Roger
Trinquier is cited twice (CDEF, 2010: 12, 33) and David Galula, another former
officer with Algerian experience, once (CDEF, 2010: 25).
General Desportes is also the co-director of the book series “Stratégies
& Doctrine” at the renowned French publishing house Economica, which has
released a total of six book series on defence issues. In 2008, this collection pub-
lished the book Contre-Insurrection: Théorie et Pratique (originally published in
English in the 1960s by David Galula) (2008; see also Galula, 2016). The book
includes a preface translated from English, written by General David H. Petraeus
and Lieutenant-Colonel John A. Nagl who oversaw the “rediscovery” of coun-
terinsurgency thinking in the US Army after the invasion of Iraq. In the same
year, Roger Trinquier’s La guerre moderne is republished in the same collection
(Trinquier, 2008). Between 2010 and 2014, Economica publishes five other books
on colonial warfare and counterinsurgency (Courrèges, Germain and Le Nen,
2010; Gillet, 2010; Franc, 2012; Mathias, 2012; Raffray, 2014). In 2013, a new
institution responsible for doctrinal reflection – the Centre interarmées de con-
cepts, de doctrine et d’expérimentation – publishes the official manual Contre-
Insurrection (CICDE, 2013), referring mainly to the experiences in Afghanistan
and Mali. However, considerations of how to “win” civilian populations clearly
recall the tenets of revolutionary warfare doctrine (CICDE, 2013: 45, 52), and
David Galula is cited on one occasion (alongside Gallieni and the “ink spot” met-
aphor for the operational design of counterinsurgency campaigns) (CICDE, 2013:
17, 31, 36, 57). None of the cited texts justifies or glorifies the harshest measures
used by the French military during the Algerian War (such as torture). However,
through their implicit suggestion that the Algerian War should be considered a
legitimate source of military lessons for contemporary operations, they participate
in a rehabilitation of French military action during the conflict and, more broadly,
of the principles of the colonial warfare. Furthermore, these texts ignore the gen-
eral political instability of this very doctrine (Rigouste, 2020). Finally, it should
be noted that this celebration of the doctrine of “revolutionary war” also pervades
the media in France, particularly thinkers on the right of the political spectrum,
and the world of think tanks (Lasserre, 2008; d’Alançon, 2011; de Durand, 2011;
Jaccard, 2011; Lasserre, 2011; Lasserre, 2012).
Contemporary works published by French historians since the late 1990s have
brought to light a completely different vision of what the colonial war and the
application of the doctrine of revolutionary war in Algeria were like. Examples
include the academic work of Claire Mauss-Copeaux on the violence committed
by conscripts during the conflict, or that of Raphaëlle Branche on the use of tor-
ture by the army, and Sylvie Thénault on confinement practices as a mode of coer-
cive management in Algeria (Mauss-Copeaux, 1998; Branche, 2001; Thénault,
2012). Such works confirm and deepen the analyses previously carried out by
Pierre Vidal-Naquet (Dosse, 2020: 130). Several academic historians work-
ing on colonialism and the Algerian War also support the militant work of the
Association Audin (2019), which succeeded the Comité. The Association militates
for the opening of the still-secret archives of the Algerian War, which are likely to
contain information on the Algerian “disappeared.” It is also working with organi-
zations such as Amnesty International or the Association of Christians for the
Abolition of Torture (ACAT) on legal problems resulting from amnesties decreed
in the past. We should also mention academic, journalistic and militant publica-
tions focused on the doctrine of revolutionary war and its diffusion throughout the
world (not least in the Latin American and African dictatorships) and its recycling
by the French police forces (Périès, 1999; Graner, 2014; Olsson, 2007; Robin,
2008; Rigouste, 2011; Anderson, 2018; Rigouste, 2020). This literature does not
always deal directly with the Algerian War but, at least, it places this conflict
in an important matrix of militarized repression in the Cold War and post-Cold
War period, and very explicitly warns against the rehabilitation and circulation of
this doctrine. It also warns against colonial nostalgia that attempts to “purify” the
past (Hauser, 2008). These publications also participate, in their own way, in the
memorial process of the Algerian War.
At the same time, some Algerian War veterans continue to defend their mem-
ory framework of military action in Algeria. Some question the recent critical
academic work regarding the doctrine of “revolutionary war” (Müller, 2001:
174‒181; Faivre, 2009; Lafourcade, 2010: 185; Faivre, 2012). The same vet-
erans reacted negatively to Emmanuel Macron’s statement on 13 September
2018 during a visit to Josette Audin, in which he acknowledged that the death
of Maurice Audin had been made possible by a system that allowed the use of
torture and extrajudicial executions.8 This reaction can be found in the report La
bataille d’Alger (1957) et l’affaire Maurice Audin, published by the Association
de soutien à l’armée française (2018). This report combines a critique of the
presidential speech, a corporatist defence of the actions of the armed forces in
Algeria and an attempt to rehabilitate the doctrine of “revolutionary war” (see
also: Le Borgne, 2012; Messana, 2017). This dossier also contains a copy of the
protest letter sent to President Macron by the retired General Bruno Dary. In this
letter, co-signed by some 30 veterans, veterans’ relatives, and veteran associa-
tions, the author claims that the “Battle of Algiers” had “eradicated terrorism”
from the city and ironically questions plans for a “future Memorial-Museum
of Terrorism.” It is a message written in the name of the veterans’ community.
As some activists close to the Association Audin write, every time a president
shows understanding towards victims of torture, veterans’ associations react by
defending the actions of the armed forces (Gèze et al., 2019). It should be noted
that the retired general Dary did not participate in the Algerian War. In other
words, this veteran community expresses a form of intergenerational military
solidarity through such messages.
As historian Raphaëlle Branche wrote, in the past, the state generally only took
a position on the Algerian War when it was forced to do so (Branche, 2005: 101).
This situation allowed the military to rediscover their colonial “traditions,” as
mentioned above. That said, while there are numerous references to the Algerian
War within the armed forces during the 2000s, these are hardly to be found in
among French political decision-makers during the same period when they discuss
military interventions (Branche, 2018: 165). One reason for this is probably the
fact that the strict application of counterinsurgency principles would have resulted
in numerically higher French troop commitments, particularly in Afghanistan, an
option that was excluded on the political level (National Assembly, 2008). Today,
the question seems to be reappearing in the context of French engagement in the
Sahel. Thus, in a National Assembly report on the “security and development
continuum,” we can read that
the “pacification” missions carried out in their time by Generals Gallieni and
Lyautey partly herald the paradigm of the global approach: military action
is placed in a broader framework integrating political, social, economic and
cultural factors. Civil-military action can even be seen as a specialty – or at
least a traditional area of excellence – of the French armies. One should men-
tion in particular the theoretical construction and practical application exer-
cise carried out in Algeria by Lieutenant-Colonel David Galula, which US
Army General David Petraeus is said to have presented as “the Clausewitz of
counterinsurgency.”
(Commission de la Défense nationale et des
Armées, 2020: 40)
Once again, due to the war in Afghanistan, the doctrine of revolutionary war-
fare and colonial military thought can be openly mentioned within the political
arena. Besides, and this proves to be a bit paradoxical, in recent years there has
been a progressive evolution in the political discourse concerning the Algerian
War. In December 2012, for example, President François Hollande acknowledged
before the Algerian parliament that the colonial system had been “unjust” and
“brutal.” During his speech, he also mentioned torture (C.V., 2012). During the
2017 election campaign, before the recognition of the assassination of Audin,
Emmanuel Macron had described colonization as “crimes against humanity”
and denounced the use of torture in Algeria. His speech had nonetheless caused
an outcry from the right (Le Monde, 2017; Rosoux, 2019: 236). In July 2020,
President Macron also commissioned a report on the Algerian memorial question
from historian Benjamin Stora. This report mentions, among other things, the
question of the reoccurrence of torture (Stora, 2021:42‒43).
Finally, it is interesting to note that in April 2021, 20 retired generals published
a public letter that appeared on the website of the extreme right-wing magazine
Valeurs actuelles (Fabre-Bernadac, 2021). More than 20,000 people then signed
this text. Among them, there is a majority of former military officers. The text
denounces among others Islamism and anti-racism which would risk provoking
a civil war in France. It also accuses the government of laxity in law enforce-
ment and threatens possible action by the active armed forces to restore order. It
is not possible to study here in detail the political and media controversy gener-
ated by this statement. It should be remarked, however, that the history of coup
attempts by the French military during the Algerian War is evoked by the press in
this affair. Moreover, three of the officers who signed the letter (Bernard Pillaud,
Frédéric Pince and François Torrès) are co-authors of a “global strategy against
Islamism and the break-up of France” (Allard, 2021). This politically reactionary
document reads like a plea for psychological warfare actions on French territory.
The authors also refer to a military document that advocated the rediscovery of
counter-revolutionary thought (Valeyre, 2010).
Conclusion
From the outset, the collective memory of “pacification” in Algeria has been frag-
mented. This situation stemmed from the antagonistic positions taken by veterans,
activists and critical historians within French civil society, while the state and the
military institution remained in retreat until the 2000s. Although the civil society
cleavage has persisted, fragmentation has become less binary for more than a dec-
ade now and concerns also divergent memory discourses within the state – here,
between the French military and the French government. This evolution is partly
the result of the military’s rediscovery of the doctrine of revolutionary warfare. As
has been shown, the French military now openly but selectively claims the legacy
of “pacification” in Algeria.
As a result of this “rediscovery” of the perceived effectiveness of French “paci-
fication” in Algeria, we have moved from a situation of vertical memory fragmen-
tation to one of both vertical and horizontal fragmentation. This fragmentation
has not, however, led to the emergence of two clearly delineated camps facing
each other. Some critical historians (such as Raphaëlle Branche, Sylvie Thénault,
Claire Mauss-Copeaux) respond more to the writings by veterans than to soldiers
rediscovering the doctrine of revolutionary war. On the other hand, activists and
researchers specialized in the diffusion of the counter-revolutionary doctrine criti-
cize the writings of the military and take into consideration the dramatic effects
of its application in Algeria but are less interested in responding to veterans. The
veterans sometimes salute the rediscovery of the doctrine of revolutionary war
and seek to legitimize past action through a comparison between “pacification”
and the “war on terror.” The military readily cite Lyautey, Galula and Trinquier
but refrain from referring to Generals Aussaresses and Schmitt – and, in terms
of any official reactions, the Army did not react when President Macron men-
tioned the Audin affair. It is not certain that one can speak of an alliance, in the
strict sense of the term, between those who rediscover Galula today and the vet-
erans. The absence of an alliance between these two groups certainly allows the
military to avoid taking position on the use of torture and executions during the
war – although these instruments arguably had an important empirical influence
on the conduct and outcome of the war. Their constant references to US doctrinal
reflection also contribute to a form of vertical fragmentation “from above”: the
military introduces a transnational dimension to the issue under study that fra-
gilizes memorial initiatives promoted by French governments of the 2000s and
the 2010s, seeking to acknowledge French wrongdoings in Algeria as a way to
facilitate reconciliation with contemporary Algeria. All of these elements show
in any case that memory fragmentation remains topical almost 60 years after the
end of the war.
Notes
1 I would like to thank Grey Anderson and Gabriel Périès for their valuable comments
and suggestions.
2 The article by Farrell (2002) is an interesting exception.
3 They were nevertheless fairly easy to find for those who bothered to seek them out
(Vidal-Naquet, 1975: 5).
4 The harkis were Algerian auxiliaries enrolled in the ranks of the French army. Pieds-
noirs referred to French people born in Algeria as well as their descendants.
5 Actually, the US military had already been exposed to the French doctrine at the time
of the Vietnam War (Tenenbaum, 2018: 252‒257, 268‒280).
6 Traces of the doctrine of revolutionary warfare can also be found during the 1990s (de
Saint-Quentin, 1997; Graner, 2014: 155‒158; Hogard, 2016).
7 See also: https://www.sciencespo.fr/psia/content/vincent-desportes.html
8 The mathematician and deputy Cédric Villani and several historians of the Algerian
War, including Sylvie Thénault, had drawn President Macron’s attention to this issue.
References
Allard, J.-C. (2021). Pour une stratégie globale contre l’islamisme et l’éclatement de la
France. Cercle de Réflexion Interarmées. April. https://lavoixdugendarme.fr/wp-content
/uploads/2021/04/Pour-une-strategie-globale-contre-lisl-amisme-et-leclatement-de
-la- France- 1. pdf? fbclid= IwAR 3T9I cFlk E8Vi s4LyZ_ dZqU Xxuj 7ufh ysYvN5E7
-OJNFZc4V0KxW7_WO0Q
Alleg, H. (2008). La Question. Paris: Minuit.
Anderson, G. (2018). La guerre civile en France, 1958–1962. Du coup d’Etat gaulliste à
la fin de l’OAS. Paris: La Fabrique.
Assemblée nationale (2008). Commission de la défense nationale et des forces armées,
Compte rendu n°37 Paris: Assemblée nationale.
Assemblée nationale (2020). Commission de la Défense nationale et des Armées, Rapport
d’information en conclusion des travaux d’une mission d’information sur le continuum
sécurité et développement, n°2696 Paris: Assemblée nationale.
Association de soutien à l’armée française (ASAF) (2018). « La bataille d’Alger » (1957)
et l’affaire Maurice Audin Paris: ASAF.
Association Maurice Audin (2019). Les disparus de la guerre d’Algérie du fait des forces
de l’ordre françaises. Vérité et justice?. Acte de la Journée d’étude du, 20 septembre
2019. https://journals.openedition.org/revdh/8447?file=1.
Aussaresses, P. (2001a). Pour la France. Services Spéciaux 1942–1954. Monaco: Rocher.
Aussaresses, P. (2001b). Services Spéciaux en Algérie 1955‒1957. Paris: Perrin.
Barkawi, T., & Stanski, K. (Eds.) (2012). Orientalism and War. London: Hurst.
Beaufre, A. (1972). La guerre révolutionnaire. Paris: Fayard.
Beaugé, F. (2001). L'accablante confession du général Aussaresses sur la torture en
Algérie. Le Monde, May 2.
Bigeard, M. (1975). Pour une parcelle de Gloire. Paris: Plon.
Boëldieu, G. (2008). A l’origine du Comité Audin: Jacques-Fernand Cahen. In R. Branche
et al. (Eds.), La France en guerre 1954–1962 (pp. 265–269). Paris: Autrement.
Branche, R. (2001). La torture et l’armée pendant la guerre d’Algérie, 1954–1962. Paris:
Gallimard.
Branche, R. (2005). La guerre d’Algérie: une histoire apaisée? L’histoire en débats. Paris:
Seuil.
Branche, R. (2018). L’embuscade de Palestro. Algérie 1956. Paris. La Découverte.
Buffet, C., & Heuser, B. (Eds.) (1998) Haunted by History. Myths in International
Relations. Providence/Oxford: Berghahn.
CDEF (2010). Doctrine for Counterinsurgency at the Tactical Level. Paris: CDEF.
CICDE (2013). Contre-Insurrection, Doctrine interarmées, DIA-3.4.4.(A)_COIN(2013),
n°064/DEF/CICDE/NP.
Challe, M. (1968). Notre révolte. Paris: Presses de la Cité.
C.V. (2012). Guerre d’Algérie : Hollande reconnaît ‘la torture’. Le Journal du Dimanche,
20 décembre https://www.lejdd.fr/International/Maghreb/Algerie-Hollande-reconnait
-les-souffrances-de-la-colonisation-581989-3206828
D’Alançon, F. (2011). Paroles d’officiers français sur la guerre d'Algérie. La guerre
d’Algérie, un cas d’école pour Washington. La Croix, 16 mai.
Daho, G. (2014). L'érosion des tabous algériens: Une autre explication de la transformation
des organisations militaires en France. Revue Française de Science Politique, 64(1),
57–78.
De Bollardière, J. (1972). Bataille d’Alger. Bataille de l’homme. Paris: Desclée De
Brouwer.
De Courrèges, H. et al. (2010). Principes de contre-insurrection. Paris: Economica.
de Durand, E. (2011). Francs-tireurs et centurions: Les ambiguïtés de l'héritage contre-
insurrectionnel français. Focus stratégique n° 29. Paris: IFRI.
De Jaeghere, M. et al. (2001). Le Livre Blanc de l’armée française en Algérie. Paris:
Contretremps.
De Saint-Quentin, G. (1997). Retour à la guerre révolutionnaire? Défense Nationale, 591,
105–111.
Déon, M. (1959). L’armée d’Algérie et la pacification. Paris: Plon.
Dosse, F. & Vidal-Naquet, P. (2020). Une vie. Paris: La Découverte.
Dower, J. (2010). Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima/9–11/Iraq. New York: The
New Press.
Fabre-Bernadac, J.-P. (2021). Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants: 20 généraux
appellent Macron à défendre le patriotism. Valeurs actuelles, April 21 https://www
.valeursactuelles.com/politique/pour-un-retour-de-lhonneur-de-nos-gouvernants-20
-generaux-appellent-macron-a-defendre-le-patriotisme/
Faivre, M. (2009). Les 1000 villages de Delouvrier. Protection des populations musulmanes
contre le FLN, Sceaux: L’esprit du livre.
Faivre, M. (2012). De la colonisation à la pacification de l’Algérie. La Casoar, 206, 20–23.
Farrell, T. (2002). Memory, imagination and war. History, 87(285), 61–73.
Franc, C. (2012). Galliéni et Lyautey. Penseurs pour le XXIe siècle. Paris: Economica.
Galula, D. (2008). Contre-Insurrection. Théorie et pratique. Paris: Economica.
Galula, D. (2016). Pacification en Algérie, 1956–1958. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Georgelin, J.-L. (interview by E. de Montety) (2008). "Des hommes seront toujours
nécessaires pour défendre notre pays ". Figaro Vox, 12 juillet. https://www.lefigaro
.fr/debats/2008/07/12/01005-20080712ARTFIG00036-des-hommes-seront-toujours
-necessaires-pour-defendre-notre-pays-.php
Gèze, F. et al. (2019). Macron, le passé colonial et des réactions inquiétantes dans l’armée
française. Médiapart, March 4 https://blogs.mediapart.fr/1000autres/blog/040319/
macron-le-passe-colonial-et-des-reactions-inquietantes-dans-l-armee-francaise-0.
Gillet, M. (2010). Principes de pacification du Maréchal Lyautey. Paris: Economica.
Godard, Y. (1972). Les trois batailles d’Alger. Les paras dans la ville. Paris: Fayard.
Graner, F. (2014). Le sabre et la machette. Officiers français et génocide tutsi. Mons:
Tribord.
Guisnel, J. (1990). Les généraux. Enquêtes sur le pouvoir militaire en France. Paris: La
Découverte.
Hauser, P. (2008). Le mensonge comme opérateur politique. In C. Coquio (Ed.). Retour du
colonial ? Disculpation et réhabilitation de l’histoire coloniale française (pp. 65–78).
Nantes: L’Atalante.
Hernu, C. (1975). Soldat-Citoyen : Essai sur la défense et la sécurité de la France. Paris:
Flammarion.
Hobsbawm, E. (2012). La fonction sociale du passé: quelques questions. In E.
Hobsbawm & T. Ranger (Eds). L’invention de la tradition (pp. 11–26). Paris:
Editions Amsterdam.
Hogard, J. (2016). Les larmes de l’honneur :60 jours dans la tourmente du Rwanda. Paris:
Hugo Doc.
Jaccard, R. (2011). Portrait d’un héros français. Causeurs.fr, October 23. www.causeur.fr/
portrait-dun-heros-francais-12565.
Juillard, F.-R. (2019). Le Comité Maurice Audin: s’organiser contre la torture. Le
Mouvement Social, 2(267), 63–79.
Kaplan, F. (2013). The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American
Way of War. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Khong, Y. F. (1992). Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam
Decision of 1965. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Lafourcade, J.-C. (with G. Riffaud) (2010). Opération Turquoise. Rwanda, 1994. Paris:
Perrin.
Lasserre, I. (2008). Afghanistan: le retour de la contre-insurrection. Le Figaro, October 29.
Lasserre, I. (2011). Afghanistan: les limites de la contre-insurrection. Le Figaro, September 6.
Lasserre, I. (2012). La contre-insurrection, l’autre victime de l’Afghanistan. Le Figaro,
March 26.
Lavabre, M.-C. (1994). Usages du passé, usages de la mémoire. Revue Française de
Science Politique, 44(3), 480–493.
Le Borgne, C. (2012). Le Sabre et la plume. Le Casoar, 205, 6–9.
Léger, P.-A. (1983). Aux carrefours de la guerre. Paris: Albin Michel.
Le Monde and AFP (2017). Algérie, Macron qualifie la colonisation de « crime contre
l’humanité », tollé à droite. February 15. https://www.lemonde.fr/election-presidentielle
-2017/article/2017/02/15/macron-qualifie-la-colonisation-de-crime-contre-l-humanite
-tolle-a-droite-et-au-front-national_5080331_4854003.html. En
Massu, J. (1972). Le torrent et la digue: Alger du 13 mai aux barricades. Paris: Plon.
Mathias, G. (2012). David Galula. Combattant, espion, maître à penser de la guerre
contre-révolutionnaire. Paris: Economica.
Mauss-Copeaux, C. (1998). Appelés en Algérie. La parole confisquée. Paris: Hachette.
Messana, B. (2017). Le jour du dépassement. In Association de Soutien à l’Armée
française, August 19. www.asafrance.fr/archives/resultats-de-recherche-archives/item
/libre-opinion-d-bernard-messana.html.
Minuit (Les Editeurs) (2012). La Gangrène. Paris: Minuit.
Monclaud, D. (2014). Les Editions de Minuit et la guerre d’Algérie: publications et
rééditions. Cahiers d’Histoire. Revue d’Histoire Critique, 124, 225–231.
Müller, L. (2001). Une thèse à la question. In M. De Jaeghere et al. Le Livre Blanc de
l’armée française en Algérie (pp. 174–181). Paris: Contretremps.
Olsson, C. (2007). Guerre totale et/ou force minimale? Histoire et paradoxes des « cœurs
et des esprits ». Cultures & Conflits, 67, 35–62.
Périès, G. G. (1999). De l'action militaire à l'action politique. Impulsion, codification et
application de la doctrine de la « guerre révolutionnaire » au sein de l'armée française
(1944–1960). University of Paris I, PhD Thesis.
Raffray, M. (2013). Contre-insurrection: la doctrine Hogard. Paris: Cahier du RETEX,
CDEF-DREX.
Raffray, M. (2014). Général Jacques Hogard. Stratège de la contre-insurrection. Paris:
Economica.
Ricœur, P. L. (2000). La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli. Paris: Seuil.
Rigouste, M.. (2011). L’ennemi intérieur. La généalogie coloniale et militaire de l’ordre
sécuritaire dans la France contemporainre. Paris: La Découverte.
Rigouste, M. (2020). Un seul héros le peuple. La contre-insurrection mise en échec par les
soulèvements algériens de décembre 1960. Paris: Premiers matins de novembre.
Robin, M.-M (2008). Escadrons de la mort, l’école française. Paris: La Découverte.
Rosoux, V. (2001). Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales. Le
recours au passé dans la politique étrangère de la France à l'égard de l'Allemagne et
de l'Algérie de 1962 à nos jours. Bruxelles: Bruylant.
Rosoux, V. (2016). Le travail de mémoire dans les relations franco-algériennes: limites
des retrouvailles. In O. Ostriitchouk (Ed.), Mémoires de conflits, mémoires en conflits:
Affrontements identitaires, tensions politiques et luttes symboliques autour du passé
(pp. 209–226). Bruxelles: Peter Lang.
Rosoux, V. (2019). The Administration of Post-War Memory in the Franco-German and
Franco-Algerian Negotiations. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society,
32(2), 227–244.
Salan, R. (1972). Mémoires. Fin d’un empire. « Algérie française » 1er novembre 1954 –6
juin 1958 (tome 3). Paris: Presses de la Cité.
Schmitt, M. (1992). De Diên Biên Phu à Koweit City. Paris: Grasset.
Schmitt, M. (2001). Alger – été 1957. Une victoire sur le terrorisme. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Schmitt, M. (2008). Deuxième bataille d'Alger (2002–2007): la bataille judiciaire. Paris:
L’Harmattan.
Stora, B. (1999). La gangrène et l’oubli. La mémoire de la guerre d’Algérie. Paris: La
Découverte.
Stora, B. (2021). Les questions mémorielles portant sur la colonisation et la guerre
d’Algérie. Rapport. January.
Tenenbaum, E. (2018). Partisans et centurions. Une histoire de la guerre irrégulière au
XXe siècle. Paris: Perrin.
Thénault, S. (2012). Violence ordinaire dans l’Algérie coloniale. Camps, internements,
assignations à résidence. Paris: Odile Jacob.
Trinquier, R. (1961). La guerre moderne. Paris: Les éditions de la Table Ronde.
Trinquier, R. (1968). Guerre, révolution, subversion. Paris: Robert Laffont.
Trinquier, R. (1978). Le Temps perdu. Paris: Albin Michel.
Trinquier, R. (2008). La guerre moderne. Paris: Economica.
Valeyre, B. (2010). « Gagner les cœurs et les esprits ». Origine historique du concept.
Application actuelle en Afghanistan. Paris: CDEF-DREX.
Valeyre, B., & Guérin, A. (2009). De Galula à Petraeus. L’héritage de la pensée américaine
de la contre-insurrection. Paris: CDEF-DREX.
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1962). La raison d’Etat. Paris: Minuit.
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1975). Les crimes de l’armée française. Paris: François Maspero.
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1979). La torture dans la République. Paris: Minuit.
Vidal-Naquet, P. (1989). L’affaire Audin (1957–1978). Paris: Minuit.
Villatoux, M.-C., & Villatoux, P. (2005). La République et son armée face au « péril
subversif ». Guerre et action psychologique en France (1945–1960). Paris: Indes
Savantes.
Wasinski, C. (2010). Rendre la guerre possible. La construction du sens commun
stratégique. Bruxelles: Peter Lang.
Winter, J., & Sivan, E. (Eds.) (2009). War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13 “Hurra, wir können’s noch!”
How NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine
uncovered German civil-military memory
fragmentation
Eric Sangar
Introduction
On 7 September 2009, the German satirical magazine Titanic published a
cartoon on its website featuring a picture of a destroyed fuel tanker under the
headline “Nach all den Jahren: Hurra, wir können’s noch!” (“After all these
years: Hurray, we can still do it!”). The publication referred to the airstrike
of 4 September 2009 that was ordered by Col. Georg Klein, the German com-
mander of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Kunduz, and killed about
70 civilians alongside a dozen supposed armed insurgents. Indeed, due to the
high number of civilian casualties, including in comparison with other Western
military operations in Afghanistan at the time, the attack was termed in German
media as “the bloodiest German military operation since the Second World
War” (Demmer et al., 2010).1
While the so-called Kunduz affair has been discussed at length with regards
to its legal, military, ethical, and political implications, it can also be used to
illustrate how memory fragmentation occurs in civil-military relations in German
society. This chapter is interested in how the implementation of NATO counter-
insurgency doctrine in Afghanistan after 2009 by the German Bundeswehr has
uncovered an already ongoing fragmentation of civil-military memory discourses
on World War II in Germany. As this fragmentation becomes visible and increas-
ingly publicly expressed, this might challenge the status quo of civil-military rela-
tions that had been established in (West) Germany after 1945.
Indeed, both in the parliament and in the German media, debates on the
Kunduz attack focused on the issue of civilian casualties as well as the attempts
of senior members of the Ministry of Defence to cover up the attack (Kornelius,
2009). These attempts appeared to be motivated by the government’s willing-
ness to uphold the interpretation of the ISAF mission as a non-violent recon-
struction mission that should not in any way be compared to World War II
(von Krause, 2011, pp. 225‒245). However, among many Bundeswehr officers,
the attack was interpreted very differently. In a personal interview, a former
German PRT2 commander described Col. Klein’s order as a decision within a
context of war that would not have been questioned in other countries without
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-16
“Hurra, wir können’s noch!” 187
Figure 13.1 C
artoon published on the website of the magazine Titanic, 7 September 2009,
showing the destruction of the Kunduz air strike under the headline “Hurrah,
we can still do it!” Source: Reprint with friendly permission from the Titanic
editors and the cartoon author Tim Wolff.
the burden of the history of World War II.3 More generally, among at the time
active German soldiers,
based on the available individual statements one can affirm quite clearly that
the mass of Bundeswehr members judged Klein’s decision positively. […]
Furthermore, many [soldiers] apparently perceived the airstrike as a just
retaliation against the insurgents who had already killed or wounded several
members of the Bundeswehr.
(Münch, 2015, p. 306)
This chapter will argue that the divergences in the interpretation of the Kunduz
attack illustrate a larger process of memory fragmentation in German society.
As part of this process, latent civil-military divergences on the normative sta-
tus of World War II experience were brought into light following the trans-
national dissemination of NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine as part of the
ISAF mission. This might be considered a case of vertical memory fragmenta-
tion, (unintentionally) driven by decisions of an international organization that
had complex implications for the delicate balance between a “hidden,” internal
188 Eric Sangar
tradition of valorizing the Wehrmacht experience during World War II, and
an official, governmental tradition of regulating and restricting any use of the
Wehrmacht experience. The impact of NATO’s adoption of the counterinsur-
gency doctrine was to indirectly encourage some military leaders to reconnect
current Bundeswehr operations with the Wehrmacht past but also to chal-
lenge the supposed lack of recognition of military values within contemporary
German society.
Two things must be emphasized: First, it is known that since the creation
of the Bundeswehr, an official tradition banning any positive reference to the
Wehrmacht has co-existed with a hidden, informally transmitted tradition val-
uing the Wehrmacht’s perceived combat quality. Second, the chapter does not
argue that there are more Bundeswehr officers who are “nostalgic” towards the
Wehrmacht than in the past, but that the Afghanistan experience has enabled those
officers who are opposed to the official tradition of memory discourses on World
War II, enforced by the German government, to publicly express their dissent and
in some instances even to modify existing commemoration practices.
Analyzing military discourses in Germany has traditionally been difficult due
to the lack of publicly available primary sources, the reluctance of German offic-
ers to share views that can be interpreted as critical of the civilian or military lead-
ership, and a relative lack of substantial academic debate on the sociological and
even institutional evolution of the Bundeswehr. This chapter has partly benefitted
from an increasing readiness of some younger officers to criticize their institution
and German society in general, including in military memoirs, edited volumes,
and specialized journals. The analysis of those sources has been triangulated with
existing scholarly analyses of contemporary German military discourses as well as
other primary sources, such as media coverage in the German press. Nevertheless,
it has to be emphasized that this chapter does not aim at producing an objective
picture of memory discourses within the German military. Rather, this text aims at
analyzing the question of why some of the hitherto “hidden” memory discourses
have increasingly been able to be voiced in public and without immediate insti-
tutional censorship, and why these discourses seem to have successfully altered
institutional commemoration routines, including the awarding of medals and the
honouring of combat deaths.
The argumentation will proceed as follows: first, the text will briefly sum-
marize the characteristics of the German ISAF mission and its difficult adop-
tion of NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine in 2009. Second, the article will
discuss the larger domestic impact of the emerging interpretation of counter-
insurgency doctrine as a “combat mission” and the implications for German
civil-military relations in three domains: These implications are particularly
emblematic zin three domains, i.e., the valorization of combat experience, the
commemoration of military deaths, and the perceived lack of societal support
for the Bundeswehr due to the public memory discourses on World War II. The
conclusion ends with a brief discussion of the limits of qualifying the analyzed
public civil-military fragmentation of military discourses on World War II as a
case of “vertical” fragmentation.
NATO counterinsurgency doctrine and German
military leadership
From 2001 on, the Bundeswehr participated both in the US-led Operation
Enduring Freedom (OEF), aiming at defeating the terrorist networks responsible
for the attacks of 11 September 2001, and the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF), mandated by the United Nations after the defeat of the Taliban
regime to support economic reconstruction and the authority of the new Afghan
central government. In 2003, the effort of German armed forces’ activities was
concentrated in Northern Afghanistan as they assumed command of PRT in the
northern province of Kunduz as well as of ISAF Regional Command (RC) North,
located in Mazar-i-Sharif.
Although NATO assumed overall command of ISAF in October 2004, the
ISAF regional commands, led by individual NATO armies, enjoyed a large
degree of autonomy in their operational planning. Until 2009, this resulted in a
“gap between NATO’s strategic directives and how these are then carried out on
the ground” (Giegerich & von Hlatky, 2020, p. 496), and consequently consider-
able variation in the operational approaches adopted by each regional command.
In charge of Regional Command North, the Bundeswehr focused on the extensive
conduct of light-weight patrols to establish a presence among the population, and
efforts to build trust and collect intelligence through regular meetings with local
power-holders. This strategy, the so-called “key-leader engagement,” was basi-
cally a direct transfer of the Bundeswehr’s peacekeeping approach in Bosnia and
Kosovo (Sangar, 2013, pp. 206‒209). The local population perceived the German
forces in the first years of the deployment as a mediator that could in some cases
contribute effectively to prevent violence between competing local power-hold-
ers, and reduce fears of a return to purely arbitrary forms of warlord rule (Koehler,
2008; Larsdotter, 2008).
However, the Bundeswehr’s operational autonomy was progressively reduced
due to the increasing presence and implication of US military planners within
ISAF command structures. This culminated in August 2009, when General
Stanley McChrystal assumed command over both ISAF and OEF following
US President Obama’s announcement of a “surge” in Afghanistan. As a result,
the strategic and operational planning process of ISAF headquarters (HQ) was
assuming more and more direct control in terms of objectives and operational
designs to be adopted by the regional commands in their areas of responsibility
(Münch, 2011, pp. 11‒12). General McChrystal’s centralized and binding ISAF
strategy was based on US counterinsurgency doctrine developed originally after
2004 and published in the manual FM 3-24.
Shaped by a small number of, as they were called by parts of the US media
“warrior intellectuals” such as General David Petraeus and Colonel John Nagl,
this doctrine originally had the double purpose of both improving and legitimiz-
ing the US Army’s counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq (Kaplan, 2013; Ricks,
2009). The key to reconciling both objectives was the argument that examples
of ‘successful’ counterinsurgency campaigns could be found in colonial history,
190 Eric Sangar
and that the careful study of those historical campaigns could be used to obtain
a number of universally valid principles that would enable success in contem-
porary counterinsurgency campaigns when correctly applied (Sangar, 2012). Of
course, both academics and military practitioners have criticized the underly-
ing use of the colonial past for being selective, mythicized, and anachronistic
(Gentile, 2009; Gumz, 2009; Jones & Smith, 2013; Mumford, 2012; Olsson,
2007; Porch, 2011). Despite such criticism, General McChrystal adopted opera-
tional guidelines that implemented FM 3-24 in Afghanistan by focusing on the
“protection” of the Afghan population, and by limiting offensive military oper-
ations against insurgent groups to situations when their territory could subse-
quently be controlled and developed by the Afghan central government (Münch,
2011, p. 12).
Prior to the formal adoption of US counterinsurgency doctrine by General
McChrystal, the German military leadership was confronted with an escalation of
insurgent violence in its area of responsibility in Northern Afghanistan. However,
while in internal reports from the German ISAF mission, the term “counterinsur-
gency” appeared as early as in 2007, it was systematically avoided both in official
AU: ‘after Gen
McChrystal’s documents and in external statements even after General McChrystal’s arrival as
as ISAF com- ISAF commander (Münch, 2010, p. 212). While the exact reasons for this hesita-
mander – ‘Gen tion are unclear, observers presume that the military leadership was fearful that
McChrystal’s
what as ISAF the adoption of any such concept could be interpreted by the German public as
commander? legitimizing the offensive use of force in military operations abroad, and therefore
contradict the Bundeswehr’s communication strategy portraying itself a peace-
keeping force since the 1990s (Münch, 2010, p. 213).
In June 2010, the German Army Office eventually published a preliminary
doctrine manual with the English (!) title “Preliminary Basics for the Role of
Land Forces in Counterinsurgency.” In its foreword, the manual states that the
“term ‘counterinsurgency’ (COIN) is an emotive subject in Germany” (German
Army Office, 2010, p. iii). Furthermore, the military leadership refrained from
using the German translation of counterinsurgency, “Aufstandsbekämpfung,”
fearing it could be associated by the public with German anti-Partisan operations
during World War II4 (Noetzel & Schreer, 2009, p. 17). Still in 2010, when the
Bundeswehr realized the first operations designed according to the approach pro-
scribed by ISAF HQ for counterinsurgency, the Minister of Defence argued that
while the Bundeswehr did conduct “COIN operations”, these should not be under-
stood as “Aufstandsbekämpfung” (Münch, 2010, p. 216). More generally, the mil-
itary leadership repeatedly downplayed violent incidents involving Bundeswehr
troops in Afghanistan and rejected the use of the term “Krieg” (“war”) in associa-
tion with the Afghanistan deployment (Münch, 2010, p. 213) – at a time when
their British, Danish or Canadian allies had acknowledged for a long term that the
mission was to win a war against an organized insurgency.
A possible explanation of the German military difficulties in adopting coun-
terinsurgency doctrine and more generally reacting to the challenges of the ISAF
mission could be that Germany as a whole, including its armed forces, are still
socialized into a consensual memory discourse on the lessons of the Second World
that has produced a strategic culture of a “civilian power” (Buras & Longhurst,
2004; Crawford & Olsen, 2017; Katzenstein, 1997; Maull, 1990). Indeed, observ-
ers have drawn on this general argument, suggesting that “the reason for the
German reluctance concerning COIN [counterinsurgency], not surprisingly, lies in
its history” (Hilpert, 2014, p. 142). According to this line of argument, the presence
of the past prevented both the military and the political leadership from engaging
with lessons from colonial history as easily as British and American strategists did
at the time, and from developing a meaningful German conception for counterin-
surgency (Noetzel & Zapfe, 2009). This interpretation, however, contradicts the
fact that in internal debates, Bundeswehr officers of different levels of responsibil-
ity agreed in their fundamental characterization of the Afghanistan deployment as
an opportunity to “rediscover” and apply the “proven” skills of combat.
For example, already in 2008, that is before the arrival of General McChrystal
as ISAF commander, General Warnecke, previously commanding Regional
Command North, was portrayed in an article for a defence journal arguing for
counterinsurgency as [the] new deployment reality. […] The first thing we

can and must do is adapt our own military capabilities and kinetic [destruc-
tive] means. Admittedly taken to extremes, this means: perhaps we need less
pocket maps [detailing the rules of engagement] and more effective means of
engagement!
(Warnecke, 2008, p. 9)
In 2010, Lt.-Gen. Budde, Chief of Staff, Army, saw the improvement of capabili-
ties for combat consequently as the key factor for success in Afghanistan:
I think the insight that the ability to fight must be the decisive feature of all
Army soldiers – including those deployed in stabilisation operations – has
now been generally accepted. […] And when you analyse how the company
commander of the QRF [ISAF Quick Reaction Force] […] coordinates fire
and movement of his units and support forces – then this is exactly what the
Panzer forces have been practising for decades, previously under the term
“battle of combined arms” and now under the term “operation of joint forces”.
(Budde, 2010, pp. 5‒6)
Military challenges to societal memory discourses

Why does the observation of a civil-military dissent on the framing of coun-
terinsurgency doctrine illustrate a phenomenon of memory fragmentation? As
detailed elsewhere (Bald, 2009; Kutz, 2006; Wette, 2002), the Bundeswehr has
been shaped since its creation by two parallel, sometimes contradicting tradi-
tions of using the past: according to an official Decree of Tradition, adopted by
the Ministry of Defence, the Bundeswehr refers in its military tradition to the
history of the Prussian reforms, the military resistance against Hitler, and the
Bundeswehr’s own experiences, thus excluding references to the Wehrmacht
192 Eric Sangar
during World War II and more generally any purely instrumental relationship to
military history. According to this official tradition, the past should not be used as
a source of directly applicable lessons for the present, including for the design and
conduct of military operations. Rather, the study of history is valued only for the
objective of improving a Bundeswehr officer’s sense of independent judgment,
necessarily informed by the values and moral standards of a democratic society
(Sangar, 2015). By contrast, an informal tradition, transmitted largely informally
in exercises, training manuals, and internal rituals, has continued to uphold the
value of the Wehrmacht experience as a source of useful lessons for develop-
ing combat capabilities, tactical skills, and virtues such as courage and discipline
(Sangar, 2013, pp. 181‒187).
It is therefore less astonishing that despite the official guidelines for military tra-
ditions, according to a recent survey conducted by Kayss among cadets at British
and German officer schools, more cadets affirmed having a “very good knowl-
edge” of World War II than compared to any other historical period, including
contemporary history since the 9/11 attacks (Kayss, 2019, p. 100). Furthermore,
most surveyed German cadets identify with Wehrmacht officers as their role mod-
els (Kayss, 2019, p. 132), with many of them criticizing the Bundeswehr leader-
ship for “‘artificially creating traditions’ from scratch rather than from history”
(Kayss, 2019, p. 135).
More importantly, the survey shows that German officer candidates tend to
reject public memory narratives taught at school as “German cadets felt ‘that it
[i.e., the history of World War II] was taught emotionally to encourage national
shame to avoid a repetition” (Kayss, 2019, p. 101). They also believed that their
rejection of the taught memory narratives of World War II was in conflict with
their continuous acceptance of those narratives within German society. Indeed,
Kayss observes that
the vast majority of the German cadets […] reported that they felt detached
and somehow distanced from German history. […] Many of the interviewed
German cadets […] spoke of “banned or suppressed narratives [about the
Nazi past] in Germany” […] [and] reported that their view of German history
was more balanced and positive than that of the German society at large.
(Kayss, 2019, pp. 106‒107)
Once again, it can be assumed that such critical tendencies among members of
the Bundeswehr towards post-1945 official memory frameworks already existed
earlier. What is new, however, is that after the introduction of the counterinsur-
gency approach, the hidden tradition of valuing “classical” military skills (which
were typically associated with the Wehrmacht) challenged more and more openly
the official tradition of a rupture with the Wehrmacht past. Hitherto, some offic-
ers argued in public debates that the lesson of the Afghanistan mission should be
the recognition of soldiers’ combat experiences and “timeless” military virtues,
framed as being neglected by the Bundeswehr’s official tradition. Especially mid-
level officers, who had been deployed to Afghanistan after 2008, claimed from
2010 on that they represented a “new” generation of officers that was shaped by
their experience in Afghanistan rather than by the Cold War. For example, in
a book dedicated to the “New German Combat Veterans”, two officers argued
that “shared hardships and extreme experiences have seen [sic] the emergence
of a self-assured and empowered ‘generation of mission veterans’” (Bohnert &
Neumann, 2017, pp. 64‒65).
Many of these voices associated the specificity of the Afghanistan mission
less with the specific principles of the counterinsurgency approach formulated
in FM 3-245 but rather with the perceived necessity to perform in “classical”
combat. Although US counterinsurgency draws on (idealized) lessons from
colonial warfare, most historical references mobilized by Bundeswehr officers
to frame the Afghanistan experience were consequently taken from World War
II. In an article presenting the so-called Karfreitagsgefecht 2010 (“Combat of
Good Friday 2010”), during which four Bundeswehr soldiers were killed, one
author states that “the engagement near [the village of] Isa Khel is a break in the
Bundeswehr’s deployment history. For the first time since the Second World War
German soldiers participated in lasting combat operations” (Helmecke, 2018, p.
4; own emphasis). Another soldier, who participated in a combat in the same area
six months later, even drew a direct parallel between his experience and the two
world wars: “I can imagine that the battle engagements of World Wars I and II
did not look very differently” (quoted in: Seliger, 2011, p. 185). Furthermore,
in his ground-breaking sociological analysis of the Bundeswehr deployment in
Afghanistan, Philipp Münch observes that
numerous examples show that the soldiers associated their experiences in

Afghanistan time and again with the [informally] transmitted pool of Second
World War experience, although they had to anticipate being reprimanded
for such uses. […] Soldiers of the [special forces command] KSK […] deco-
rated their vehicles with a symbol in the style of General Field Marshal Erwin
Rommel’s German Africa Corps. Referring to Afghanistan’s geographic
location, many soldiers referred to the Wehrmacht’s Eastern Front campaign
by commenting that never before a German soldier had made it that far to
the east.
(Münch, 2015, pp. 208‒209)
Once again, it has to be emphasized that an informal tradition of valorizing

the Wehrmacht experience as a model of military virtues and skills has existed
since the creation of the Bundeswehr: training manuals contained tactical exam-
ples drawn from Wehrmacht battles, former Wehrmacht senior officers contin-
ued to serve in the Bundeswehr or were sometimes commemorated in internal
ceremonies, and some barracks were even named after (in)famous Wehrmacht
generals (Bald, 1999, 2005; Bald et al.,2001). What has changed, however,
is the fact that since NATO’s adoption of the counterinsurgency approach in
Afghanistan, Bundeswehr soldiers and officers publicly use references from
the Wehrmacht era for analogies with their combat experiences in Afghanistan
194 Eric Sangar
(without, of course, explicitly asking for a revalorization of the Wehrmacht as
a tool of conquest). The fact that such statements do not seem to have resulted
in serious disciplinary or career consequences for their authors shows that the
official tradition, which had been imposed by the civilian leadership, loses
more and more its hegemonic status. This observation can be detailed for at
least three issues.
The first one concerns the question of combat courage as a source of
symbolic organizational recognition. As early as in 2007, a petition to the
Bundestag, signed by more than 5,000 individuals, called for the reintroduc-
tion of the Iron Cross as a medal rewarding extraordinary courage in foreign
military deployments. The leadership of the Ministry of Defence rejected this
reinstitution at first. However, “eventually the ministry officials felt obliged to
accommodate the [requests of the] soldiers by creating the Bundeswehr Cross
of Honour for Valour as the first military decoration that was immediately
related to [merits within the context of] combat actions” (Münch, 2015, p.
294). The new decoration is now officially recognized as the highest class
of the already existing Bundeswehr Cross of Honour and has become the
Bundeswehr’s highest decoration. In other words, courage in combat has been
recognized not only informally but even officially as a source of highest organ-
izational recognition. And despite the refusal to reuse the title of Iron Cross,
the traditional name of the highest decoration of the Prussian army, the visual
design of the new decoration bears close resemblance to the Wehrmacht’s War
Merit Cross during World War II, itself modelled on German military decora-
tions from World War I.
A second illustration of the increasingly public fragmentation of memory dis-
courses concerning the status of World War II are the controversies about the
need for specific commemoration rituals for Bundeswehr soldiers killed as part of
combat operations. Already “from 2007 on, voices from inside the Bundeswehr
demanded the recognition of German soldiers’ actions but also their death as spe-
cifically soldierly sacrifice” (Nieke, 2016, p. 93, emphasis in the original). Nieke
notes that since 2008, public commemoration ceremonies for soldiers who were
killed in combat action (and not as a result of accidents) are held in churches, reg-
ularly attended by local and national political representatives. Chancellor Merkel
even participated in a commemoration ceremony for the three soldiers killed in
the Karfreitagsgefecht of 2010 (Nieke, 2016, p. 87).
An institutional compromise attempting to accommodate the increasing inter-
nal demand for the dedicated commemoration of combat deaths was the con-
struction of a centralized military memorial, the “Ehrenmal der Bundeswehr”
(“Memorial of the Bundeswehr”). To avoid public accusations of valorizing death
in combat and therefore reviving a cult the Wehrmacht’s cult of the warrior death,
the memorial is dedicated to all members of the Bundeswehr (soldiers and civil-
ians) killed during their service, including in accidents. As visible in Figure 13.3,
the design of the memorial is extremely abstract and does not include any tradi-
tional symbols of battlefield, except for the symbolic integration of broken identi-
fication tags in the memorial’s bronze shells (Münch, 2015, p. 295).
Figure 13.2 O
n the left: War Merit Cross (Second Class) awarded by the Wehrmacht; on
the right: Cross of Honour for Valour awarded by the Bundeswehr. Sources:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Reichsgesetzblazz_KK_ohne_Schwerter.jpg
on Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public Domain (War Merit Cross) / https://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ehrenkreuz_Bundeswehr_Tapferkeit_1.jpg
on Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 by
Wikipedia author Flophila88 (Cross of Honour for Valour).
Given the anticipated tensions between commemoration norms in civil society

and within the military, the monument has probably been designed to remain
deliberately open about
which lines of tradition with regards to the history of the Bundeswehr since
1955 […]. The “Ehrenmal” […] represents therefore a renunciation of a
proposition of political sense-making that goes beyond the general slogan “to
the dead of our Bundeswehr for peace, justice and freedom” that is displayed
on the wall at the exit of the monument.
(Biehl & Leonhard, 2012, p. 333)
The third and most fundamental issue concerns the way in which some German
officers evaluate the influence of World War II memory on German civil society:
in some discourses, the enduring pacifist lessons of the Nazi past result in “igno-
rance” or even “rejection” of the actions, successes, and sacrifices of the military
in Afghanistan. Once again, while these views may have existed already before
the ISAF deployment, active service officers can now publish them without being
subject to disciplinary measures or diminishing career perspectives. For instance,
196 Eric Sangar
Figure 13.3 E
hrenmal der Bundeswehr, Berlin. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/File:EhrenmalderBundeswehr-3.jpg on Wikimedia Commons. Creative
Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license by Wikipedia author Fridolin
freudenfett.
Marcel Bohnert, an officer who had commanded a company of mechanized infan-

try in Kunduz and in 2020 was promoted to lead the Bundeswehr’s social media
team, published an article in 2019 stating:
The German society does not really want to accept the at times brutal real-
ity of Bundeswehr deployments and their consequences and perceives them
even less as a shared destiny. […] An attitude that is sceptical towards the
military may seem comprehensible given the experiences of two world wars
and of Nazism, however it could contribute to a deep alienation [between the
military and civil society] when the Bundeswehr, in accordance with political
mandates, participates in warlike conflicts worldwide.
(Bohnert, 2019, p. 296)
Bohnert’s views were echoed by others, mostly younger officers, who interestingly
did not necessarily possess a previous deployment experience in Afghanistan.
Some of these can be found in a collective volume co-edited by Bohnert under
the title “Army on the move – on the orientations of young officers in the
Bundeswehr’s combat troops.” The volume, resulting from a volunteer project
among officer candidates at the Bundeswehr University of Hamburg, sparked con-
troversy due to its underlying criticism of German society for its perceived lack of
support for the military. On the back cover, Lt-Gen. Bruno Karsdorf, Inspector of
the Army, praised the authors for their “courageous contributions” to the public
debate on security policy. By contrast, the journalist Gerald Wagner, writing in
the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, judged the book more harshly:
“Stubborn pride towards the organisational inside is coupled with harsh polemic
towards the outside. […] But the essence is: ‘we’ represent the other Germany
that the German society does not deserve” (Wagner, 2015). Even a US-based
reviewer commented that “comparing these articles to the kind of chapters that
would have appeared in a similar book [written by Bundeswehr officers] 40 or 50
years ago is quite a shock” (Herspring, 2017, p. 184).
Indeed, while it would be misleading to assume a homogenous memory dis-
course even among the limited number of officers contributing to this edited
volume, all the chapters that include references to the Nazi past share a critical
assessment of its perceived effects on contemporary German society. One con-
tributor, stating that “I perceive myself rather as someone who writes down what
he hears and reads than as an original thinker” (Birkhoff, 2014, p. 128), is very
explicit in his criticism:
As a result of two world wars, German society has adopted a long mental
distance towards the ideological valorization of patriotism and sprit of sacri-
fice. […] While in the autocratic and totalitarian predecessors of the Federal
Republic a military victory as a central objective of societal perception could
be achieved at perhaps not any but at high cost, the establishment of a post-
heroic society [after 1945] has produced a change.
(Birkhoff, 2014, pp. 108‒109)
To avoid this dilemma, the author calls for a radical military professionaliza-
tion that would create an esprit de corps enabling a re-focalization on military
combat and victory, following the model of Wehrmacht generals:
[E]specially great military victories were enabled by unconventional and

rejected ideas. Among the most impressive [of these victories] are the
Manstein Plan [of invading France in 1940] or Rommel’s plan for the Battle
of Gazala [during the Wehrmacht’s North African campaign].
(Birkhoff, 2014, p. 118)
The perceived lack of positive historical role models within the Bundeswehr is
criticized by another officer because such
models create guidelines, which soldiers can use for orientation more easily
than theoretical concepts. […] And, last but not least, [historical role models
198 Eric Sangar
create] pride. Pride of […] being part of military tradition that goes back over
centuries. Pride of defending values and principles that provide a permanent
counterweight to our society.
(Rotter, 2014, p. 59, own emphasis)
As early as in 2013, a navy officer writing in yet another collective volume edited
by active members of the Bundeswehr even went as far as claiming that due to the
memory of the world wars in German society, the Bundeswehr had become a de
facto interior enemy [“inneres Feindbild”]. The officer argues that within German
society after 1945, “the slogan ‘war’ became the multifaceted symbol of nazism,
judged as the morally most condemnable period of world history, and it became
a synonym of everything that the Federal Republic did not want to be” (Kempf,
2013, p. 187). Because of this discursive heritage, the author claims, Bundeswehr
soldiers are not only unable to construct an effective identity of a warrior-sol-
dier but more importantly “the described supremacy of the peace paradigm has
led to an opposition between Bundeswehr and society, between the military and
pacifism. It […] is the basis of an effective political construction of a [domestic]
enemy” (Kempf, 2013, p. 189).
This is not to say that the stated positions are representative of the major-
ity of Bundeswehr officers. The few available surveys among Bundeswehr offic-
ers emphasize that their attitudes reflect larger ideological cleavages of German
society, albeit with a tendency towards a higher (but by no means majoritarian)
proportion of conservative orientations. In a 2007 study commissioned by the
Bundeswehr Institute of Social Science among officer candidates studying at the
two Bundeswehr universities, the authors found that 38 per cent of the respond-
ents were in favour of political leadership by a strong elite and that “roughly half
of the students […] had serious doubts about the design of our parliamentary
system” (Bulmahn et al., 2010, p. 137) – emphasizing however that such attitudes
were found in similar proportions among the same age cohorts in German society.
And while another study found that officer candidates studying at Bundeswehr
societies identified themselves proportionally more as conservatives than fellow
citizens studying at public universities, “only 13.1% were classified as ‘national-
conservative’, linking partial rejection of democratic values to the primacy of
combat in the military profession” (Bonnemann & Posner, 2002, p. 49).
But the proliferation of the analyzed “revisionist” discourses, and the fact that
they do not seem to result in career sanctions, may be a sign that the hidden tra-
dition of valorizing the Wehrmacht and its values is gradually becoming a more
and more legitimate internal discourse and may already have hollowed out the
official tradition rejecting the use of experiences from World War II. The former
director of the Bundeswehr’s staff academy has observed the emergence of an
organizational culture that is shaped by a division between “Spartans“ (pressing
for a re-orientation towards the “eternal values” of a pure warrior culture) and
“Athenians” (defending a role model that emphasizes the need for an officer’s
integration in civil society and for mastering a combination of combat and non-
combat skills) (Wiesendahl, 2016).
Conclusion: is this a case vertical fragmentation only?
This chapter has analyzed a specific case of memory fragmentation within the
context of ongoing armed conflict: NATO’s adoption of the counterinsurgency
doctrine forced the German military and political leadership to recognize the
Bundeswehr’s implication in offensive combat action. However, while they
attempted to avoid any substantial public debate on this doctrine, officers have
tried to challenge the official taboo on the use of the Wehrmacht experience and
to rehabilitate “classical” military values. Active officers have criticized the per-
ceived pacifism resulting from the memory discourses on the Nazi past in German
society and demand the valorization of military virtues such as sacrifice and cour-
age in combat, values whose demise was often associated with the dominating
memory discourse on the Nazi past within German civil society. The military
leadership then struggled to contain the challenges from these internal memory
entrepreneurs, for example by negotiating official ways of commemorating war
deaths without favouring the exclusive valorization of death in combat.
These difficulties may indicate that Johann Michel’s argument of state insti-
tutions becoming rather “coordinators” than “governors” of memory discourses
(Michel, 2010) can apply to German civil-military relations. Certainly, it is a case
that illustrates the increasing complexity of contemporary memory dynamics that
transcend the established hierarchies between “official” and “lived” memories, as
shown for the case of Franco-Algerian relations by Valérie Rosoux who argues
that “the analysis of uses of the past in the Franco-Algerian context highlights
a set of tensions that probably cannot be reduced any more to a binary articula-
tion (of the type political actors – civil society)” (Rosoux, 2016, pp. 217‒218).
Now, is this really a case of “vertical” fragmentation, unintentionally unleashed
by NATO’s centralized adoption of counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan?
Of course, without active participation in NATO’s counterinsurgency opera-
tions since 2009, there would have been little leeway for individual officers to
make more or less openly the case for the revalorization of military values associ-
ated with the Wehrmacht past. But this coincided with a wider trend in German
politics through which once marginalized memory discourses on the pre-1945
past are in the process of becoming increasingly accepted as part of an increasing
strength of right-wing movements (Frei, 2005; Lewandowsky, 2016). This could
point to an interaction of “vertical” and “horizontal” factors of memory fragmen-
tation, whose culminated effect was to weaken the Bundeswehr’s official tradition
of banning the use of the Wehrmacht experience.
Indeed, despite numerous surveys showing that the Bundeswehr is among the
public institutions enjoying the highest level of trust among the population, the
idea that civil society somehow fails to “support” German soldiers is becoming a
more and more accepted general wisdom defended by many journalists, but even
by historians. This is illustrated by the fact that a recent bestseller on German mili-
tary history, printed by the very renowned Propyläen publishing house and as of
January 2021 topping the amazon.de charts on German military history, can make
the following claim without provoking a major public controversy: resuming his
200 Eric Sangar
analysis of German civil-military relations in the aftermath of the Afghanistan
deployment, the author states that “before 1945, soldiers were heroes, they enjoyed
a high degree of social acceptance. Terms like duty, sacrifice and fatherland were
strongly rooted in societal values. In the society of the Federal Republic, those
terms have little significance” (Neitzel, 2020, p. 551). And even in an interview
with the Spiegel magazine published in November 2020, the same author legiti-
mized demands by Bundeswehr members for a revalorization of the Wehrmacht
experience without being challenged by the journalists conducting the interview:
[T]he combat troops need role models that can provide orientation in the
exercise of their craft. This leads automatically to the Wehrmacht […]. The
soldiers know of course that the Wehrmacht has conducted a criminal war
of annihilation, but naturally there is a military tradition that they seek to
mobilise.
( Der Spiegel, 2020, p. 40)
In the light of that statement, the Titanic cartoon presented at the beginning of this
chapter appears more like an accurate description rather than a satirical exaggera-
tion of the reception of the Kunduz attack in 2009.
Notes
1 As a matter of fact, ten years earlier the German participation in NATO’s bombing
campaign against Serbia marked the country’s first offensive use of military force
abroad since 1945. In 1999, German Tornado jets fired 236 air-ground missiles as part
of their mission to destroy Serbian air defences. It remains unknown, however, if and
how many civilian victims resulted from these attacks. See: https://augengeradeaus.net
/2019/03/vor-20-jahren-der-erste-kriegseinsatz-der-luftwaffe-in-der-nato/
2 PRT = Provincial Reconstruction Team, joint civil-military units deployed by the US
and NATO in Afghanistan after 2002 to stabilize remote territories outside the direct
control of the Afghan government.
3 Personal interview with Col Rainer Buske, 16 January 2011.
4 The Wehrmacht had actually used the term “Bandenbekämpfung” (“counter-banditry”).
5 Gen. McChrystal famously invented the term “courageous restraint” for the application
of this approach in Afghanistan.
AU: Should
be renamed Bibliography
‘References’,
right? Bald, D. (1999). Alte Kameraden - Offizierskader der Bundeswehr. In U. Breymayer, B.
Ulrich, & K. Wieland (Eds.), Willensmenschen: Über deutsche Offiziere (pp. 50–64).
Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag.
Bald, D. (2005). Die Bundeswehr: eine kritische Geschichte, 1955–2005. Munich: C.H.
Beck.
Bald, D. (2009). Bedingt einsatzbereit ‒ "realistische Ausbildung" oder mit der Wehrmacht
in den Hindukusch. In D. Bald, H.-G. Fröhling, & J. Groß (Eds.), Bundeswehr im
Krieg ‒ Wie kann die Innere Führung überleben? (pp. 7–16). Hamburg: Institut für
Friedensforschung und Sicherheitspolitik an der Universität Hamburg.
Bald, D., Klotz, J., & Wette, W. (Eds.) (2001). Mythos Wehrmacht: Nachkriegsdebatten
und Traditionspflege. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag.
Biehl, H., & Leonhard, N. (2012). Militär und Tradition. In N. Leonhard & I.-J. Weikner
(Eds.), Militärsoziologie – Eine Einführung (2nd ed., pp. 314–341). Wiesbaden:
Springer.
Birkhoff, J.-P. (2014). Führen trotz Auftrag: Zur Rolle des militärischen Führers in der
postheroischen Gesellschaft. In M. Bohnert & L. J. Reitstetter (Eds.), Armee im
Aufbruch: Zur Gedankenwelt junger Offiziere in den Kampftruppen der Bundeswehr
(pp. 105–128). Berlin: Miles-Verlag.
Bohnert, M. (2019). Die deutsche Bundeswehr und der Krieg in Afghanistan: Ein Blick
auf die Bewährung der Inneren Führung. Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, 2019
(3), 291–299.
Bohnert, M., & Neumann, A. (2017). German Mechanized Infantry on Combat Operations
in Afghanistan. Berlin: Miles-Verlag.
Bonnemann, A., & Posner, C. (2002). Die politischen Orientierungen der Studenten an
den Universitäten der Bundeswehr im Vergleich zu den Studenten an öffentlichen
Hochschulen. Sicherheit und Frieden (S+F) / Security and Peace, 20 (1), 42–52.
Budde, H.-O., Lt-Gen. (2010). Die Herausforderungen des deutschen Heeres. Das
schwarze Barett 42, 4–8.
Bulmahn, T., Fiebig, R., Wieninger, V., Greif, S., Flach, M. H., & Priewisch, M. A. (2010).
Ergebnisse der Studentenbefragung an den Universitäten der Bundeswehr Hamburg
und München 2007. Potsdam: Sozialwissenschaftliches Institut der Bundeswehr.
Buras, P., & Longhurst, K. (2004). The Berlin Republic, Iraq, and the use of force.
European Security, 13 (3), 215–245. doi:10.1080/09662830490499957
Crawford, B., & Olsen, K. B. (2017). The puzzle of persistence and power: Explaining
Germany’s normative foreign policy. German Politics, 26 (4), 591–608. doi:10.1080/0
9644008.2017.1364365
Demmer, U., Feldenkirchen, M., Fichtner, U., Gebauer, M., Goetz, J., Goos, H., … &
Stark, H. (2010). Ein deutsches Verbrechen: Rekonstruktion vom Kunduz-Anschlag.
Der Spiegel.
Der Spiegel. (2020, 24 October). “Kultur der Angst”: SPIEGEL-Gespräch mit Sönke
Neitzel. Der Spiegel, pp. 38–40.
Frei, N. (2005). 1945 und wir: das Dritte Reich im Bewusstsein der Deutschen. Munich:
C.H. Beck.
Gentile, G. P. (2009). The selective use of history in the development of American
counterinsurgency doctrine. Army History, 72, 21–35.
German Army Office. (2010). Preliminary Basics for the Role of Land Forces in
Counterinsurgency. Cologne: Heeresamt.
Giegerich, B., & von Hlatky, S. (2020). Experiences may vary: NATO and cultural
interoperability in Afghanistan. Armed Forces & Society, 46 (3), 495–516.
doi:10.1177/0095327x19875490
Gumz, J. E. (2009). Reframing the historical problematic of insurgency: How the
professional military literature created a new history and missed the past. Journal of
Strategic Studies, 32 (4), 553–588. doi:10.1080/01402390902986972
Helmecke, C. (2018). Gefallen und verwundet im Kampf: Deutsche Soldaten im
Karfreitagsgefecht 2010. Zeitschrift für Historische Bildung, 2018 (2), 4–9.
Herspring, D. (2017). Book review: Armee im Aufbruch. Zur Gedankenwelt junger
Offiziere in the Kamptruppen der Bundeswehr, ein Erlebnisbericht über einen
militärischen Einsatz der Bundeswehr in Afghanistan im Jahre 2008, Unternehmen
202 Eric Sangar
Bundeswehr? Theorie und Praxis (militärischer) Führung. Armed Forces & Society, 43
(1), 183–185. doi:10.1177/0095327x15617461
Hilpert, C. (2014). Strategic Cultural Change and the Challenge for Security Policy:
Germany and the Bundeswehr's Deployment to Afghanistan. Houndmills: Palgrave
Macmillan.
Jones, D. M., & Smith, M. L. R. (2013). Myth and the small war tradition: Reassessing the
discourse of British counter-insurgency. Small Wars & Insurgencies, 24 (3), 436–464.
doi:10.1080/09592318.2013.802604
Kaplan, F. M. (2013). The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American
Way of War. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Katzenstein, P. J. (Ed.) (1997). Tamed Power: Germany in Europe. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Kayss, S. K. (2019). Identity, Motivation and Memory: The Role of History in the British
and German Forces. London/New York: Routledge.
Kempf, L. (2013). Der Soldat als Feindbild im Inneren? In M. Böcker, L. Kempf,
& F. Springer (Eds.), Soldatentum: auf der Suche nach Identität und Berufung der
Bundeswehr heute (pp. 185–200). München: Olzog.
Koehler, J. (2008). Auf der Suche nach Sicherheit. Die internationale Intervention in
Nordost-Afghanistan, SFB-Governance Working Paper Series, Nr. 17. Berlin: Freie
Universität Berlin.
Kornelius, S. (2009, December 12). Er hat die Menschen als Ziel, nicht die Fahrzeuge.
Süddeutsche Zeitung.
Kutz, M. (2006). Deutsche Soldaten: eine Kultur- und Mentalitätsgeschichte. Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.
Larsdotter, K. (2008). Exploring the utility of armed force in peace operations: German
and British approaches in northern Afghanistan. Small Wars & Insurgencies, 19 (3),
352–373.
Lewandowsky, M. (2016). Die Verteidigung der Nation: Außen- und europapolitische
Positionen der AfD im Spiegel des Rechtspopulismus. In A. Häusler (Ed.), Die
Alternative für Deutschland: Programmatik, Entwicklung und politische Verortung
(pp. 39–51). Wiesbaden: Springer VS.
Maull, H. W. (1990). Germany and Japan: The new civilian powers. Foreign Affairs, 69
(5), 91–106.
Mumford, A. (2012). The Counter-insurgency Myth: The British Experience of Irregular
Warfare. London: Routledge.
Münch, P. (2010). 'Counterinsurgency' in der Bundeswehr: Konzeption, Interpretation und
Praxis. Sicherheit und Frieden (S+F), 28 (4), 211–216.
Münch, P. (2011). Strategielos in Afghanistan ‒ Die Operationsführung der Bundeswehr
im Rahmen der ISAF. Berlin: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik.
Münch, P. (2015). Die Bundeswehr in Afghanistan: Militärische Handlungslogik in
internationalen Interventionen. Freiburg: Rombach.
Neitzel, S. (2020). Deutsche Krieger: Vom Kaiserreich zur Berliner Republic – eine
Militärgeschichte. Berlin: Propyläen.
Nieke, S. (2016). Gefallene Helfer: Das Soldatengedenken der Bundesrepublik
zwischen militärischer Zurückhaltung und professionsethischer Würdigung der
Bundeswehr. Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik, 9 (1), 79–100. doi:10.1007/
s12399-015-0545-x
Noetzel, T., & Schreer, B. (2009). Missing links: The evolution of German counter-
insurgency thinking. The RUSI Journal, 154 (1), 16–22.
Noetzel, T., & Zapfe, M. (2009). NATO and counterinsurgency: The case of Germany.
In C. M. Schnaubelt (Ed.), Counterinsurgency: The Challenge for NATO Strategy and
Operations (pp. 129–151). Rome: NATO Defense College.
Olsson, C. (2007). Guerre totale et/ou force minimale ? Histoire et paradoxes des « cœurs
et des esprits ». Cultures & Conflits, 67 (3), 35–62.
Porch, D. (2011). The dangerous myths and dubious promise of COIN. Small Wars &
Insurgencies, 22 (2), 239–257. doi:10.1080/09592318.2011.574490
Ricks, T. E. (2009). The Gamble: General Petraeus and the Untold Story of the American
Surge in Iraq, 2006–2008. New York: Penguin Press.
Rosoux, V. (2016). Le travail de mémoire dans les relations franco-algériennes: limites
des retrouvailles. In O. Olha (Ed.), Mémoires de conflits, mémoires en conflits (pp.
209–226). Bern: Peter Lang.
Rotter, F. (2014). Wie dienen? Preußische Tugenden im 21. Jahrhundert. In M. Bohnert &
L. J. Reitstetter (Eds.), Armee im Aufbruch: Zur Gedankenwelt junger Offiziere in den
Kampftruppen der Bundeswehr (pp. 53–62). Berlin: Miles-Verlag.
Sangar, E. (2012). The past stimulating the change? The use of historical experience
by the British and American Armies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In B. Chiari (Ed.),
Auftrag Auslandseinsatz: neueste Militärgeschichte an der Schnittstelle von
Geschichtswissenschaft, Politik, Öffentlichkeit und Streitkräften (pp. 355–365).
Freiburg: Rombach.
Sangar, E. (2013). Historical Experience: Burden or Bonus in Today’s Wars? The British
Army and the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan. Freiburg: Rombach.
Sangar, E. (2015). The weight of the past(s): The impact of the Bundeswehr's use of
historical experience on strategy-making in Afghanistan. Journal of Strategic Studies,
38 (4), 411–444. doi:10.1080/01402390.2013.798584
Seliger, M. (2011). Sterben für Kabul: Aufzeichnungen über einen verdrängten Krieg.
Hamburg/Berlin/Bonn: Mittler.
von Krause, U. (2011). Die Afghanistaneinsätze der Bundeswehr: Politischer
Entscheidungsprozess mit Eskalationsdynamik. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag.
Wagner, G. (2015, 26 February). Keiner weiß, wie der Landser tickt. Frankfurter
allgemeine Zeitung. Retrieved from https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/forschung
-und-lehre/bundeswehrstudenten-rechnen-mit-der-oeffentlichkeit-ab-13445907.html
AU: Is if-
Warnecke, D. (2008). Kommandeur in Afghanistan. if–Zeitschrift für Innere Führung, 52 Zeitschrift
(1), 5–13. correct?
Wette, W. (2002). Die Wehrmacht: Feindbilder, Vernichtungskrieg, Legenden. Frankfurt
a.M.: S. Fischer.
Wiesendahl, E. (2016). Bundeswehr without cohesion: Negative developments in Innere
Führung. Ethics and Armed Forces, 2016 (1), 41–45.
14 “Paying a blood debt” or
“Liberating Africa”?The
postcolonial fragmentation of
French military and political
memory frames during
the Operation Serval in
Mali (2013–2014)
Antoine Younsi
Introduction
France also came to honour a debt dating back to the world conflicts of the
twentieth century because it hadn’t forgotten the sacrifice that Malian sol-
diers, that African soldiers had paid for with the price of their blood so that
France could be free!
(Hollande 2013a)
There was a sweeping wind of change, a liberating momentum in a land that

has close ties with the French. 70 years on, it seemed that history was repeat-
ing itself in reverse: the troops from the metropole on their way to liberate
Africa.
(General Bernard Barrera, commanding officer of
the French intervention force in Mali, quoted in
Chapleau (2015))
These quotations are taken from speeches given at the time by the French presi-
dent Hollande and Major General Bernard Barrera, commander of French ground
forces during the French intervention in Mali, code-named Operation Serval. The
statements reflect that in the minds of both French political decision-makers and
French military commanders, references to French colonial history played an
important role. IR scholars have argued that in France but also in other coun-
tries such uses reflect and mobilize national collective memories (Rosoux 2001),
including when political decision-makers use historical lessons and analogies to
justify the use of force in armed conflicts (Sangar 2015). But what happens when
there is a “fragmentation” of national collective memories? This chapter will
examine the process of memory fragmentation related to the political and military
discourse during French intervention in Mali, launched in 2013.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-17
“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”? 205
Indeed, in political contexts that are marked by a declining capacity of gov-
ernments to impose, legitimize and stabilize an official framework of memory
(Michel 2010), it is relevant to examine the consequences of diverging memory
frameworks on societal discourses with regards to the decisions of how, and if, a
war should be waged. France is a crucial case since it “is distinguished by strong
traditions of strategic narratives drawing on national history” (Sangar 2019: 51),
including the colonial period. In recent decades, images of colonialism in France
have been at the heart of often conflicting demands and discourses of memory.
During the Sarkozy presidency, the last attempt by a French government to stabi-
lize an official framework for colonial memory around its alleged “benefits” failed
(Blanchard & Veyrat-Masson 2008). Since then, the public use of historical refer-
ences related to colonial history constitutes a risk of creating controversy, which
policymakers should anticipate (Sangar 2019).
However, few researchers have studied the influence of these changes on the
military institution and its interactions with political leadership. While military
sociologists observe that the French army maintains traditions and an institu-
tional memory permeated by its colonial past (Benoît, Champeau, and Deroo
2006) it is difficult to argue that the institution can shield itself completely from
the debates over colonial memory that run through French society. On the con-
trary, due to its active use in French foreign policy, but also its presence in
national commemoration ceremonies, the army occupies a significant place in
French society (Serfati 2017). For the past few decades, a “renaissance” of the
army’s presence in both the public sphere and in French foreign policy can be
observed (Daho 2016).
With the French military’s growing presence in society and politics, it is rel-
evant to ask about the potential impact of a process of “horizontal memory frag-
mentation,” that is, a process in which a shared national framework of memories
(of a colonial past) becomes gradually more divided as a result of diverging use
by state institutions, such as the government and the military. The context of
Operation Serval deserves special attention because it is described by observers
and the military alike as the most important military operation led and conducted
by France since the Algerian War. Moreover, it united two countries formerly
linked by a colonial relationship, adding complexity through their diverging
postcolonial heritage (Hall 2007) both in Mali and in France (Bergamaschi &
Diawara 2014).
To conceptualize my analysis, I use Erwing Goffman’s notion of “framework”
by applying it to the field of warfare (Macé 2016). According to Goffman, framing
operations organize the configuration and meaning of activities (Goffman 1974:
242). In other words, through their interactions, the actors produce frameworks
which then influence the way in which they perceive reality, express themselves
about it, and subsequently act. In the Goffmanian tradition, frameworks are of a
relational and circular nature. While they can be adopted, they can also be adapted
or challenged by other frameworks. Maurice Halbwachs introduced a similar rea-
soning to the field of memory, using the term “social framework of collective
memory” (1994). The social frameworks of memory order “the meaning of the
206 Antoine Younsi
past, according to the representations, world views, symbols or ‘notions’ that ena-
ble social groups to think about the present” (Lavabre 1994: 51).
Based on this approach, the chapter analyzes the ways in which political lead-
ers and the military have selectively used the colonial memory to provide meaning
to and to implement Operation Serval. The text will also address the conditions
that define and articulate the underlying frameworks as well their intersubjective
dimension. How do these memory frameworks act on warlike perceptions and
interactions? What links exist between political and military frameworks? Where
do their perceptions and understandings of action collide? To answer these ques-
tions, I have examined numerous official statements by French political leaders
involved in Operation Serval. For military discourses, I have mainly analyzed a
dozen war memoirs – mostly written by officers – as well as interviews, articles
from military journals, and doctrinal documents.
The postcolonial memory framework used by French

civilian leaders
The memory framework mobilized by French political and diplomatic figures to
give meaning to Operation Serval refers to the colonial troops deployed during
the two world wars. References to the colonial past and more precisely to the role
played by the Tirailleurs sénégalais1 in these wars have been used by French
political leaders to frame the intervention as the payment of a postcolonial mili-
tary “blood debt” to the Malian state and society. This reading of the colonial past
was linked to the warlike postcolonial present, considered as an opportunity to
relieve oneself of the burden of history, by honouring a moral military debt. Thus,
the French intervention would be just another episode in a continuous history of
Franco-Malian interstate relations, presented as fraternal and as an act of solidar-
ity, especially on the military level.
The legitimate effectiveness relating to narratives of memories depends
upon the existing historical representations within the target audiences (Gow &
Wilkinson 2017). Given that in the case of Operation Serval, French political
leaders had to find a narrative that could appeal both to the French and the Malian
public, the frame of the colonial “blood debt” seems to have been used because
of its ability to be used as a “working misunderstanding” (Shalins 1981), in other
words, because of its ability to generate a positive resonance in Franco-Malian
audiences. The French authorities could expect the Malian audience to be recep-
tive to this framing since it was structured around the figure of the Tirailleur, who
died for the French empire, a much-valued character in the Malian national mem-
ory (Bakari 2001). Within Malian society, the “blood debt” reference has also
been mobilized over the past 50 years by veterans who fought as Tirailleurs and
subsequently demanded recognition and payment of their military pensions from
the French government (Mann 2006). By contrast, within French society, French
leaders had to consider the fact that for several decades, the national memory of
French colonialism had been fragmented. While some civil society initiatives as
well as leftist political parties called for a recognition of the suffering and crimes
caused by French colonialism, some right-wing political parties, colonial veteran
groups, and also parts of the military elites were driven by a “colonial nostal-
gia,” categorically rejecting any recognition of systematic colonial wrongdoings
designated as a form of “repentance” (Bancel et al. 2015). As we will see in
the following analysis, the “blood debt” narrative framing helped to legitimize
the intervention in Mali for both camps in the French memory controversy on
colonialism.
Several days after the launch of Operation Serval, on 16 and 21 January 2013,
President Hollande, anxious to “symbolically mark victory” (Hollande 2018: 34),
announced to the military leadership his desire to occupy Timbuktu, a city associ-
ated with positive colonial imaginaries since the nineteenth century (Benjaminsen
& Berge 2004). Whilst this involved a rewriting of the military operational plan,
this objective was chosen to strengthen the political legitimacy of the operation,
as one adviser to the President points out: “It was a conquest with a high media
profile that was needed […] But [the Malian city of] Gao didn’t say anything to
anyone. Contrary to the mythical Timbuktu” (Notin 2014: 275). After the suc-
cessful occupation of the city by French ground forces, on 2 February, Hollande
visited the city, posing as a liberator in order to personify, mark and signify “vic-
tory.” This visit offered him an opportunity for the establishment of a Franco-
Malian postcolonial narrative emphasizing the idea of the repayment of a blood
debt dating back to the world wars. A few hours later, during a statement in Mali’s
capital Bamako, he framed for the first time his military intervention with this
postcolonial narrative (Hollande 2013b), repeating it many times during the fol-
lowing months of Operation Serval:
Victory began when Konna was liberated, when Diabaly was liberated, when
Gao was liberated, when Timbuktu was liberated, when Kidal was finally
liberated, when Tessalit, Aguelhok were liberated! Today, the whole of Mali
has been liberated […] Friends of Bamako, France, in responding to Mali’s
appeal, has come to the rescue of a friendly country, yours, and I know the
strong relations that unite us. […] France has also come to honour a debt that
was contracted during the two world conflicts of the 20th century. Because
France had not forgotten that Malian soldiers, that African soldiers had paid
the price of their blood to liberate France!
(Hollande 2013a)
The postcolonial dimension of the “blood debt” argument is quite explicit.

However, this argument is frequently accompanied and strengthened by the mobi-
lization of other references to memories that contain more implicit links between
the colonial period and the contemporary intervention. This is particularly the
case for the two terms “appeal” and “liberation,” which often appear when ref-
erencing the term “debt.” The first one was frequently used to refer to the let-
ters requesting military assistance issued by interim Malian President D. Traoré,
received by the French government in early January 2013. In the French historical
consciousness, this term echoes the appeal of 18 June 1940, emitted by Charles de
208 Antoine Younsi
Gaulle from London to mobilize resistance forces against the Nazi occupation of
France, notably within the French colonies in Africa. The term “liberation” was
frequently used to describe the immediate consequences of French military action
in Mali. But this term also reminded a French audience of the so-called period of
Libération during the last months of World War II, when the Allied armies suc-
ceeded in expelling the German Wehrmacht from metropolitan France. This inter-
discursivity helped to sustain the narrative of the “blood debt” as it framed the
insurgency situation of 2013 as being at least morally comparable to the Second
World War, resulting in a “duty” to, in the words of President Hollande, “respond
to Mali’s appeal” and to “honour its debt.”
While the discourse on the blood debt clearly aimed at justifying French inter-
vention in the view of both the Malian and the French societies, the following
section will discuss how the political discourse marginalized parts of the his-
tory of the Tirailleurs’ engagement that could have had a damaging effect on the
desired legitimation of Operation Serval. First, the role attributed to the Malian
Tirailleurs was presented in an ahistorical way, since the context of the colonial
system and its inherent power relations were mostly silenced. The only allusion
to the colonial system was made by Hollande during his first speech in Bamako:
I am speaking here in front of the independence monument, to pay tribute

to your history but also to tell you that your country will experience a new
independence that will no longer be, this time, a victory over the colonial
system but a victory over terrorism, intolerance and fanaticism. This is your
independence.
(Hollande 2013b)
Even here, the “colonial system” is presented in an abstract manner, without nam-
ing that the French were the colonial power. Moreover, the colonial past is con-
sidered a purely Malian history, as Hollande speaks of “your history” only. This
framing enables him to remain silent about the genuinely hierarchical and violent
aspects of Franco-Malian history, which would contradict the framing of “soli-
darity” and “brotherhood.” Consequently, in presidential speeches the Malian
Tirailleurs are overwhelmingly presented as having deliberately chosen to help
France during the world wars. This is what emerges from the vocabulary used to
describe their historical role. These “soldiers” (Hollande never used the world
Tirailleurs) “came,” “took part,” “participated,” “have sacrificed themselves,”
and “paid the price of their blood.” The use of this vocabulary emphasizes the
autonomous agency of the Tirailleurs and disguises the colonial power relation-
ship, silencing the fact that during this period Tirailleur enlistment reflected “less
to the loyalty of the populations than to the reality of their control by the admin-
istration” (Joly 1986: 296).
To sum up, the narrative of the “blood debt” enabled French political leaders
to appeal to both Malian and French collective memories by narrowing down the
blood of the colonial debt to the military domain whilst at the same time silenc-
ing the French political responsibility for colonialism. This particular framing
valorized both Malian history – as a society capable of “solidarity” and “sacri-
fice” – and French history, as a society which dissociates itself from any respon-
sibility for this sacrifice. Thus, the contemporary “repayment” of the debt (the
French military intervention), is not perceived as a “recognition” or even “repara-
tion” for suffering caused by the French colonial system. Given that, as explained
above, the moral assessment of colonialism continued to be controversial within
French society, this framing enabled Hollande to avoid any positioning on the
rightfulness of French colonialism itself. The effectiveness of this narrative can
be derived from the fact that it was used by leaders other than President Hollande
and that its use consolidated over time. Hollande moreover noted, a few months
before the end of his term, the fact:
I have also recalled it whenever it has been possible to do so in all African

countries [...] France owes its solidarity to the sacrifice of the Tirailleurs dur-
ing the last two world conflicts. By coming to the rescue of Mali […] France
is paying a debt to the soldiers from all over Africa who died for our freedom.
(Hollande 2017)
Traces of this discourse can also be found in statements by other French political
and diplomatic personalities. This is the case, for example, for the remarks made
by Christian Rouyer, French ambassador to Mali, who used the term “discharge of
a debt” to present the French military intervention in 2013 (Gary-Tounkara 2013:
52). François Hollande’s successor, Emmanuel Macron, used it during the cen-
tenary of the Armistice of the First World War (Arseneault 2018). Interestingly,
Malian political leaders have also participated in the consolidation of the “blood
debt” narrative, especially President Keïta who has often mentioned it, since his
presidential campaign in 2013:
It is thanks to [France] that there is still a Mali. And the evocation by President
Hollande of the “blood pact” between our two countries went straight to my
heart. I thought of my great-grandfather, Nankoman Keita, who was killed in
Douaumont during the First World War, and of my father, Boubacar Keita,
who fought against colonial troops during the Second World War.
(Prier 2013)
In the following section, we will see, however, that this arguably superficial but
apparently consensual narrative was challenged horizontally, from within the
French military institution.
The postcolonial memory framework used by French

military officers
As with French political leaders, references to the Second World War are also
very present among the military leaders of Operation Serval. The officers who
took up the pen did not hesitate to present themselves as the heirs of the liberators
210 Antoine Younsi
of 1944: “it is the liberation of Paris in Timbuktu” (Barrera 2015: 103). These
are not just individual anecdotes from officers anxious to display their historio-
graphical erudition. At the level of operational decision-making, under the impe-
tus of military leaders and command structures, World War II was also mobilized
to give meaning to war actions. The same General Barrera was referring to the
period during a speech to his troops at the end of his mandate:
The opportunity exists to remember the sacrifice of the liberators, to better

understand the African soldiers (name of the 3rd Algerian Infantry Division
under the command of the French General Alphonse Juin) of 1945 and those
soldiers of today, liberators in their own right.
(Barrera 2015: 411)
The names given to certain missions of Operation Serval, such as “Gustave”

or “Garigliano,”2 as well as to unit groupings such as “Monsabert,” “Leclerc,”
“Koufra,”3 also served to claim this heritage, as a lieutenant-colonel explained:
I decided to give it a name because it will be necessary […] to epitomize

this unity, this cohesion, a spirit allowing it to fulfil its destiny. I’ve chosen
“Koufra” in homage to the Leclerc columnist who more or less followed our
journey, similarly using Zouar as an outpost for the raids conducted against
the Italians in southern Libya [during World War II].
(Jordan 2015: 33–34)
These forms of intersubjective historicization of the warlike action could be mate-

rialized even in the symbols of certain insignia specially made for the deployment.
This is notably the case of the Victory symbol, chosen for the units of the Serval
brigade:
The Little Victory of Constantine was the symbol chosen by General

Monsabert seventy years earlier on the eve of the fighting in Italy and the
liberation of Provence. It remained that of the 3rd Brigade and, by extension,
that of the entire Serval Brigade […] It is the unifying link with the past.
(Barrera 2015: 12, 43)
The presence of the memory of World War II, used to give cohesion to the units
deployed in Mali and meaning to their actions, does not mean that the memorial
discourse of the “blood debt” was adopted by the French military. First, the notion
of “debt” never appears in the military discourses analyzed. When they refer to
the world wars, the feats of arms, like the armies, are mostly “whitewashed.”
Second, the majority of colonial references mobilized by these professionals go
far beyond the period of the two world wars. Finally, both the testimonies and
the specialized literature indicate that the transmission of memories is carried out
within the institution, without regard for the societal debates that have contributed
to the fragmentation of memories linked to colonialism within French society.
Indeed, within the French army, the social frameworks of memory are largely
the result of socialization in terms of army “corps” and professional traditions
specific to the institution (Thiéblemont 1999) ‒ itself rooted in a historical tra-
jectory marked by colonization. The army cultivates its traditions in order to
develop sense of belonging. The esprit de corps encourages members of the same
regiment or military branch to share social representations of the past (Roynette
2017). This is the idea that General Barrera makes explicit when he describes the
colonial affiliation of the brigade he commanded in Mali:
The Algerian Third Infantry Division, with the 3rd Brigade being their suc-
cessors, was created in 1943 in Algeria. […] The General Staff carefully
preserves and maintains this historic lineage […] Two of the five compos-
ing regiments belonged to the African Army. All [the regiments] have their
traditions, their own history, but they belong to the 3rd [...] The military are
attached to the history of their units, following the example of their elders.
They draw their pride and their uniqueness from these references. This cul-
ture without going over the top, aims to unite people around a shared embodi-
ment, an invisible glue.
(Barrera 2015: 19)
For its part, the hierarchical “corps” of officers had a special relationship with
these memory frameworks, since its members were their main bearers and trans-
mitters. The officers ‒ from whom most of the testimonies studied come ‒ make
up a corps of their own marked by a certain social reproduction (Weber 2012).
The generational proximity to the colonial wars makes it possible to objectify the
persistence of memorial references, including colonial ones, directly transmitted
through family ties among certain officers deployed in Mali:
Reading Niafounké on the map, I see my grandfather, an old colonial officer,

telling me on summer evenings in his large Marseille villa about faraway
expeditions between African spears, Chinese guns, and Moroccan sabers
and moukhalas […] I was brought up with close memories of the battles in
Indochina and Algeria, the bloody battles of our ancestors.
(Barrera 2015: 83‒84, 150)
This family memory heritage is often combined with a professional heritage

that is passed on during training at the French officer training school, the Ecole
Spéciale Militaire de Saint-Cyr. In this place strongly marked by traditions, mili-
tary memory is commemorated and mythologized. Some speak of the existence of
a “cult of memory,” insisting on the idea that this socialization through memory
is structuring this command corps (Alber 2007). The more military leaders that
occupy commanding positions, the more they are expected to master this memory
and keep it alive. The institution expects them not only to use it to federate their
units and give meaning to their actions4 but also to refer to it when planning
operations.5
212 Antoine Younsi
Thus, the French army produces internally and autonomously a set of memo-
rial frameworks, which, in the daily reality of the job, take on more importance
than the memorial framework used by the civilian authorities, including that of the
legitimacy of military operations. In the context of Operation Serval, the memory
narrative used by President Hollande was never discussed in the military dis-
courses analyzed. This lack of interest suggests that it was neither considered
problematic nor binding by these soldiers. This autonomy in the mobilization of
memorial frameworks is even more perceptible if we consider, as will be the case
in the following section, the specific military uses of French colonial history. It
can be argued that this history was mobilized in two ways, one rather rhetori-
cal, the other rather cognitive (Brändström et al. 2004). The first was more of a
memory reading of the present as a register of justification for the intervention.
The second was to mobilize this memory as a practical resource for organizing
the war.
At the rhetorical level, three distinct colonial periods were mobilized: explora-
tion, conquest, and administration. The period of French exploration of what is
now Mali is based on references to René Caillié, the first French explorer to return
from Timbuktu in 1828. The officers who mobilized this rhetoric willingly pre-
sented themselves as his successors, claiming to be “following in his footsteps”
(Gout 2015: 114). Using orientalist vocabulary to describe Timbuktu as “legend-
ary,” “mythical,” “pearl and gateway to the desert” (Verborg 2015: 175), they
describe the city in a timeless way: “nothing has changed for centuries” (Gout:
114).The relationship of enmity also seems to be frozen in time, as the soldiers
say to face the same form of threat: “The GTIA has received a new mission to raid
Timbuktu, the holy city of the Muslims, the forbidden city, the city of the French
explorer René Caillié, but also the new capital of Malian jihadism” (Gèze 2014:
142). This reading gave meaning to the action on the ground, as was revealed in
the speech that General Barrera, commander of the forces, gave to his men the day
after the occupation of the town:
Symbol of distant Africa, Timbuktu represents for the world a city sym-
bolic in its barbarianism […]. This first mission is fulfilled. We did it […]
in the footsteps of René Caillié, Lieutenant-Colonel Joffre and the “Bonnier
Colonists”, our predecessors who reached the city of the “333 saints” one
hundred and nineteen years ago.
(Scarpa & Barrera 2015: 57)
This last speech introduces the second period mobilized in the testimonies, that
of the military “pacification” of Mali by the French army in the nineteenth cen-
tury. This memorial narrative is structured around two elements: the genesis of
the French colonial enterprise in Mali by Generals Louis Faidherbe and Joseph
Gallieni and the military conquest of Timbuktu in 1894 by Lieutenant-Colonel
Eugène Bonnier and Joseph Joffre. The nature of the framing of this period was to
totally sanitize colonial violence by glorifying French feats of arms and denying
or depoliticizing the resistance of the time. The colonial conquest is presented as
an “oeuvre” (colonial undertaking), carried out “by diplomatic means and with-
out violence” (Scarpa & Barrera: 15), and therefore without resistance ‒ implicit
proof that it would have been unproblematic and even necessary. Thus, here too
it is suggested that, like the colonial officers, the contemporary French military
would face a territory troubled by an adversary without political ambition. This is
the idea suggested by General Barrera when he compares a report from a colonial
mission to Timbuktu with one produced by his subordinate: “Reading the cap-
tain’s report, I have the impression of rereading that of Lieutenant-Colonel Joffre,
written in 1894, denouncing the same fears of the sedentary population in the face
of the brigands and the peoples of the North” (Barrera 2015: 389).
Finally, the last period mobilized in the narratives is that of the colonial admin-
istration. This framing focuses on the traces left by the French colonial adminis-
tration, described in a nostalgic way:
We are next to the remains of the French fort in Araouane. This post is over
a century old […]. The state’s action was long-lasting. Teachers, engineers,
technicians, administrators followed the settlers and brought a certain idea of
European civilization. The architecture of this country, the existing adminis-
tration still bears the mark of this legacy, this imprint. […] History is never
far away in Africa. Even if people have legitimately gained freedom, they
never forget the landmarks and memories of an authority that has all but dis-
appeared, synonymous with security.
(Barrera 2015: 349)
The violent nature of colonial domination is once again denied. However, this
framing places more emphasis on the breaks between the colonial period, which
is described as prosperous, and Malian independence, which is synonymous with
a lack of “reference points” or “authority” or even “neglect” (Tencheni 2017: 30).
Thus, this interpretation suggests that there is a postcolonial continuity in terms of
the dependence of Mali on France. And it is this form of historicization that unites
the mobilization of the three colonial periods mentioned above.
At the cognitive level, it can now be said that, schematically, colonial military
memory was used in two ways to formulate the Serval operation. It was used to
understand the specificity of the environment ‒ geographical, social, and political
‒ of the theatre of operation. It was also mobilized as a repertoire of actions within
which operational know-how from the colonial era was identified as a legitimate
source of learning.
The use of colonial memory to understand the local environment is the result
of individual, collective, and institutional efforts. First, in order to plan operations,
some officers drew on the accounts of colonial officers for “keys to understand-
ing the military context” (Jordan 2015: 18). Wishing to study the geography of
the field, the axes of mobility, or the specific characteristics of the population,
they considered it relevant to refer to these period documents written by their
forebears. They also claimed to be able to draw on them for a set of tactical prac-
tices, like General Barrera who recounted having chosen the “Joffre route” to
214 Antoine Younsi
Figure 14.1 E
ngraving illustrating the Imouchar Tuaregs at Taqinbawt on 15 January
1894, before the attack by Lieutenant-Colonel Bonnier’s troops, who had
taken possession of Timbuktu a few days earlier (Scarpa & Barrera 2015:
15). Le Petit Parisien – Supplément Littéraire Illustré, n°263, 18 février 1894,
downloaded from gallica.bnf.fr. Reprint permission for academic purposes
granted by Bibliothèque de France (BnF).
Timbuktu, following his readings (Barrera 2015: 81‒84). The Service Historique
de la Défense (SHD) has also been called upon several times to update local
knowledge and know-how specific to the colonial period in Mali. In 2014, the
military command requested historical and cartographic information on the bor-
der areas between Mali, Niger, Chad, Libya, and Algeria. An SHD team exhumed
Figure 14.2 C
olonial illustration of radio networks used in the French colonies (Jordan
2015: 140). Le Petit Journal Illustré, n°172, 9 décembre 1923. Downloaded
from gallica.bnf.fr. Reprint permission for academic purposes granted by
Bibliothèque de France (BnF).
from its colonial archives the main checkpoints that constituted the “surveillance
device” of the Kidal (Mali), Iférouane (Niger), Toummo (Libya) axis from 1890
to 1930 (Rocher 2018). The study was thus used to restructure the military posture
in the region. The bases of Madama and Dirkou (Niger), initially identified by the
SHD for their central place in this colonial device, were respectively reinvested
by the French and American armies. In doing so, the army transposed the geogra-
phies of power directly inherited from the colonial period.
Other, more doctrinal forms of colonial know-how were updated during this
military intervention. This is strongly visible when the French military refers to
the use of “populo-centric” counter-insurgency doctrines or where they claim to
be inspired by the precepts of Hubert Lyautey, Joseph Gallieni, or David Galula,
216 Antoine Younsi
Figure 14.3 Z
oom view of a military map of the Niger colony, showing the axes of mobility
linking the strategic points that were linking Madama, Chirfa, Dirkou (Jordan
2015: 137). Colonel Abadie, M. (1927). Croquis de la Colonie du Niger
Abadie, Paris: Gaillac-Monrocq. Downloaded from gallica.bnf.fr. Reprint
permission for academic purposes granted by Bibliothèque de France (BnF).
the main theorists of the French “pacification” doctrines: “Any intervention in a

foreign country must be done with the population and not without and even less
against. This precept of David Galula has been confirmed today” (Tencheni 2017:
42). The rediscovery of this French operational tradition has taken place in the
army over the last 15 years (Daho 2016). The colonial origin of these doctrines
has already been noted (Olsson 2007). However, the transposition of these colo-
nial skills amounts, above all, to the reinstatement of postcolonial governmental
dynamics. The underlying idea that these doctrines are applicable across diver-
gent temporal contexts has several consequences. First, it allows us to question
the continuous nature of colonial and postcolonial power relations being ignored.
It also allows the military to present itself as the holder of a legitimate and effec-
tive strategic know-how, since it is historically proven (Wasinski 2010) – even
within bureaucratic competition between other ministries and agencies involved
in the intervention.
Conclusion
This chapter has highlighted a fragmentation of colonial memory that can be
identified as vertical and horizontal: the French government mobilized the “blood
debt” narrative in order to legitimize the intervention in Mali in 2013, while tak-
ing care to avoid pronouncing on the morality of French colonial rule, a source of
tension within the memory of French society. At the same time, we have seen that
the French army mobilized memorial references in an autonomous way that was
not very much linked to the framing chosen by the French civilian leadership. If
military leaders neither adopted nor discussed the framework used by the govern-
ment, it is partly because the military institution maintains its own professional
memorial frameworks. Trained and accustomed to referring to them, the French
military preferred to mobilize a set of specific colonial references to signify and
organize the war. Of course, these framings did not undermine the government’s
memorial framework. More directly expressed within or towards the military
institution, their discourses had much less impact than political discourses; but
they are still assumed, considered legitimate, and produce concrete effects on the
ground, such as the geographical repositioning of military bases.
However, some recent dynamics indicate that these civil-military divisions
about the framing of the French intervention in the Sahel did not totally persist.
In a context marked by growing criticism of the French military presence in the
Sahel, judged to be ineffective by many international observers and described as
an “occupying force” in some popular demonstrations,6 the Chief of the Defence
Staff is the first military officer to have publicly used the reference to the “blood
debt” to justify the need for Operation Barkhane:
I want to tell all listeners from African countries who are listening to us that
the real reasons for our actions are there. They are also, perhaps, a debt that
we took on the day these Africans came by their thousands to defend our soil
in 1914-1918 and in 1939-1945. That is where my debt lies and that is my
concern remains.
General Lecointre in Boisbouvier (2019)
By contrast, political leaders have expressed interpretations of the colonial

past that come closer to the ones present within the French military. President
Macron, wishing to bring the Franco-Algerian relationship out of its “memo-
rial paralysis,” recently claimed that it was important to refuse “repentance”
about French colonial violence in Algeria (El Azzouzi & Salvi 2021). At the
same time, in the context of a bill on the “values of the republic” his govern-
ment described postcolonial and decolonial criticism as “militant visions” that
contribute to “separatism” within French society (Macron 2020). This political
dissemination of arguments until then defended by the opposition parties of the
218 Antoine Younsi
extreme right offered a window of opportunity to the most revisionist mem-
bers of the military, who hastened to publish two op-eds in the French right-
wing magazine Valeurs Actuelles. Exactly 60 years after the generals’ putsch
in Algiers, more than a hundred former as well as a few currently active offic-
ers vigorously demanded the political class to show firmness and patriotism
towards the
unravelling of our homeland […] which, through a certain anti-racism, has

only one aim: to create unease, even hatred between communities on our
soil. Today, some speak of racialism, nativism and decolonial theories, but
through these terms it is the racial war that these hateful and fanatical sup-
porters want. They despise our country, its traditions, its culture, and want to
see it dissolved by tearing away its past and its history. 7
Notes
1 The term was given in the French army to infantry soldiers from the French colonies
in sub-Saharan Africa (well beyond Senegal) during the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries.
2 The Battle of Garigliano was fought during the Italian Campaign between the Allied
forces and the German army in May 1944. The aim was to break through the Gustave
fortifications line in order to regain control of Rome.
3 Generals Joseph de Monsabert and Philippe Leclerc both took part in the Italian
Campaign; starting from colonial territories, they were at the head of divisions mainly
composed of colonial troops. “Koufra” refers to the battle in the town of the same name
between Philippe Leclerc’s Free French Forces and the Italian army in Libya in 1941.
4 This is what was recommended in the first document that aimed to formalise the basis
of the tasks of an army officer after the professionalisation of the armed forces, see
Etat-major de l'armée, “L’Exercice du métier des armes dans l’armée de terre, fonde-
ment et principes”, 1999, p. 4. Retrieved from https://defense.ac-versailles.fr/IMG/pdf
/pistes_ethique_fondements.pdf
5 It is mainly during Senior Officer training at the Ecole de Guerre (Army War College)
that these professional skills are required.
6 For example, see « Malgré le coup d’Etat et la défiance des Maliens, la France main-
tient l’opération Barkhane », Le Monde, 27 August 2020. Retrieved from https://
www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2020/08/27/malgre-le-coup-d-etat-et-la-defiance-des
-maliens-la-france-maintient-l-operation-barkhane_6050075_3212.html
7 Retrieved from « Pour un retour de l’honneur de nos gouvernants »: 20 généraux appel-
lent Macron à défendre le patriotisme », Valeurs actuelles, 21 April 2021. https://www
.valeursactuelles.com/politique/pour-un-retour-de-lhonneur-de-nos-gouvernants-20
-generaux-appellent-macron-a-defendre-le-patriotisme/
References
Alber, A. (2007). Une socialisation professionnelle par l’histoire: la formation morale
des Saint-Cyriens et le martyrologe patriotique. Temporalités, 6/7(1). doi:10.4000/
temporalites.188
Bakari, K. (2001). Des tranchées de Verdun à l’église Saint-Bernard. 80.000 combattants
maliens au secours de la France (1914-18 et 1939-45), Paris: Karthala.
Bancel, N., Blanchard, P., & Boubeker, A. (2015). L'impossible mémoire coloniale ou la
nostalgie de la grandeur impériale. In: N. Bancel, P. Blanchard, & A. Boubeker (Eds.),
Le grand repli (pp. 153–164). Paris: La Découverte.
Benjaminsen, T., & Berge, G. (2004). Une histoire de Tombouctou. Paris: Actes Sud.
Benoît, C., Champeaux, A., & Deroo, É. (2006). La culture post-coloniale au sein de
l'armée et la mémoire des combattants d'outre-mer. In P. Blanchard and N. Bancel
(Eds.), Culture post-coloniale 1961‒2006 (pp. 125–133). Paris: Autrement.
Bergamaschi, I., & Diawara M. (2014). The French military intervention in Mali: Not
exactly Francafrique but definitely postcolonial. In B. Charbonneau & T. Chafer
(Eds.), Peace Operations in the Francophone World: Global Governance Meets Post-
colonialism (pp.137–152). London: Routledge.
Blanchard, P., & Veyrat-Masson, I. (2008). Les guerres de mémoires. Paris: La
Découverte.
Brändström, A., Bynander, F., & Hart, P. (2004). Governing by looking back:
Historical analogies and crisis management. Public Administration, 82(1), 191–210.
doi:10.1111/j.0033-3298.2004.00390.x
Daho, G. (2016). La transformation des armées. Enquête sur les relations civilo-militaires
en France. Paris: Maison des Sciences de l'Homme.
El Azzouzi, R., & Salvi, E. (2021). Chasser l'Islamo-gauchisme et honorer Ali boumendjel,
le "en même temps" précaire du président français. Mediapart, 3 March 2021. https://
www. mediapart. fr/ journal/ international/ 040321/ chasser- l- islamo- gauchisme- et
-honorer- ali- boumendjel- le- en- meme- temps- precaire- du- president- francai? page
_article=1
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gow, J., & Wilkinson B. (2017). The Art of Creating Power: Freedman on Strategy.
London: Oxford University Press.
Halbwachs, M. (1994). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel.
Hall, S. (2007). Identités et cultures. Politiques des Cultural Studies. Paris: Editions
Amsterdam.
Joly, V. (1986). La mobilisation au Soudan en 1939‒1940. Revue Française d'Histoire
d'Outre-Mer, 73(272), 281–302.
Lavabre, M-C. (1994). Le fil rouge. Sociologie de la mémoire communiste. Paris: Presses
de Sciences Po.
Macé, É. (2016). Des cadres de guerre vulnérables: La série Homeland, une heuristique
critique de la « guerre au terrorisme ». Réseaux, 5(5), 71–97. doi:10.3917/res.199.0071
Mann, G. (2006). Native Sons, West African Veterans and France In The Twentieth
Century. London: Duke University Press.
Notin, J-C. (2014). La guerre française au Mali. Paris: Tallandier.
Olsson, C. (2007). Guerre totale et/ou force minimale? Histoire et paradoxes des « cœurs et
des esprits ». Cultures & Conflits, 3(3), 35–62. doi:org/10.4000/conflits.3102
Rosoux, V., (2001). Les usages de la mémoire dans les relations internationales. Le
recours au passé dans la politique étrangère de la France à l’égard de l’Allemagne et
de l’Algérie, de 1962 à nos jours. Bruxelles: Bruylant.
Ruscio, A. (2006). Autour d’un anniversaire: Dien-Bien-Phu, en 2004, Cahiers d’Histoire.
Revue d’Histoire Critique, 99, 9–29. doi:10.4000/chrhc.756
Roynette, O. (2017). Bons pour le service. La caserne à la fin du XIXe siècle. Paris: Belin.
220 Antoine Younsi
Sangar, É. (2015). Défendre Duffer’s Drift: l’influence de la mémoire collective et du
régime d’historicité sur le choix des enseignements historiques en temps de crise,
Temporalités, 21. doi:10.4000/temporalites.3085
Sangar, É. (2019). L’impact de la fragmentation des mémoires collectives nationales
sur la politique étrangère: le cas de la France. Études Internationales, 50(1), 39–68.
doi:10.7202/1062816ar
Serfati, C. (2017). Le militaire, Une histoire française. Paris: Editions Amsterdam.
Shalins, M. (1981). Historical Metaphors and Mythical Realities: Structure in the Early
History of the Sandwich Island Kingdom. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Thiéblemont, A. (1999). Cultures et logiques militaires. Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France.
Wasinski, C. (2010). Valider la guerre: la construction du régime d'expertise stratégique.
Cultures & Conflits, 1(1), 39–58. doi:10.4000/conflits.18078
Weber, C. (2012). A genou les hommes. Debout les officiers. La socialisation des Saint-
Cyriens. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes.
Primary sources
Discourses by political leaders
Arseneault, M. (2018, November 7). A Reims, Macron et Keïta célèbrent « les aïeux
de ceux qu’on est allé défendre», RFI. Retrieved from https://www.rfi.fr/fr/france
/20181107-reims-macron-keita-celebrent-aieux-ceux-on-est-alle-defendre.
Gary-Tounkara, D. (2013). La gestion des migrations de retour, un paramètre négligé de la
grille d'analyse de la crise malienne. Politique Africaine, 130(2), 47–68. doi: 10.3917/
polaf.130.0047
Hollande, F. (2013a, September 19). Cérémonie d’investiture du président de la République
du Mali. IBK, Bamako. https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/189048-declaration-de
-m-francois-hollande-president-de-la-republique-sur-li
Hollande, F. (2013b, February 2). Discours sur les relations franco-maliennes et
l'intervention militaire française au Mali. Bamako. https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours
/187023-declarations-de-mm-francois-hollande-president-de-la-republique-et-di
Hollande, F. (2017, January 2). Discours du président à l’occasion de l’ouverture du
Sommet Afrique-France. Bamako. https://www.vie-publique.fr/discours/201813
-declaration-de-m-francois-hollande-president-de-la-republique-sur-les
Hollande, F. (2018). Leçons du pouvoir. Paris: Stock.
Macron, E. (2020, October 2). Discours du Président de la République sur le thème de la lutte
contre les séparatismes. https://www.elysee.fr/front/pdf/elysee-module-16114-fr.pdf
Prier, P. (2013, February 10). Les Touaregs ne sont pas les Indiens du Mali. Le
Figaro. Retrieved from https://www.lefigaro.fr/mon-figaro/2013/02/10/10001
-20130210ARTFIG00190-les-touaregs-ne-sont-pas-les-indiens-du-mali.php
Discourses by military leaders:

Barrera, B. (2015). Opération Serval. Note de guerre. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
Boisbouvier, C. (2019, November 11). Mort de 13 soldats français au Mali: le général
François Lecointre invité de RFI, RFI. Retrieved from https://www.rfi.fr/fr/emission
/20191129-general-francois-lecointre-chef-etat-major-armees
Chapleau, P. (2015, March 5). Le général Barrera vient de publier ses carnets de guerre
maliens, Lignes de Défense. Retrieved from http://lignesdedefense.blogs.ouest-france
.fr/archive/2015/04/30/barrera-14000.html
Gèze, P. (2014). L’épopée du 21e RIMA au Mali. In Hanne, O. (Eds.), Mali une paix à
gagner. Panazol: Lavauzelles.
Gout, F. (2015). Libérez Tombouctou ! Journal de guerre au Mali. Paris: Tallandier.
Jordan, F. (2015). L’armée française au Tchad et au Niger. A Madama, sur les traces de
Leclerc. Paris: Nuvis.
Rocher, Y-M. (2018). Le rôle de soutien du SHD envers le CPCO durant l’opération
Serval. In Les opérations extérieures, Du terrain à l’Histoire. Paris: Hexagone Balard.
Scarpa, R., & Barrera, B. (Eds.) (2015). Offensive éclair au Mali. Paris: Editions Pierre
de Taillac.
Souchier, E. (2015, June 6). Mon prénom c'est Bernard, c'est pas Bonaparte, France
Culture. Retrieved from https://www.franceculture.fr/emissions/une-fois-pour-toutes/
general-bernard-barrera-mon-prenom-c-est-bernard-c-est-pas-bonaparte
Tencheni, S. (2017). Entre mes hommes et mes chefs. Journal d’un lieutenant au Mali.
Panazol: Lavauzelle.
Verborg, P. (2015). Envoyez les Hélicos ! Carnets de guerre – Côte d’Ivoire, Libye, Mali.
Monaco: Editions du Rocher.
Part 4
Transnational organizations

15 Can NGOs do away with the
“tyranny of the past”?
Strategies against memory fragmentation in
Rwanda
Valerie Rosoux
Introduction
The main hypothesis emphasized in the introduction to this book regards the phe-
nomenon of memory fragmentation from below and beyond the state. It depicts
the decline of the state as an influential memory agent and the increasing impor-
tance of civil society actors. This chapter explores this assumption by focusing on
transnational actors’ roles in post-conflict contexts. It concentrates on the posture
adopted by Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Rwanda after 1994. This
case study is particularly emblematic if we consider one of the main challenges in
the aftermath of mass atrocities: dealing with the past.
At first glance, we could think that transnational NGOs, in close connection
with local civil society actors, actively participate in the vertical fragmenta-
tion that characterizes most current contexts (see the Introduction to the book).
However, the analysis of the Rwandan case forces us to nuance this hypothesis.
The analysis shows that most NGOs calling for forgiveness favour the production
and dissemination of memory discourses that do not contest the state’s narratives
but confirm them.
The aim of the chapter is to question the scope and practical limits of the
NGOs’ power regarding parties’ representations of the past. It is divided into three
parts. The first describes the politics of memory chosen by Rwandan authorities in
the aftermath of the genocide that devastated the country. The second shows that
numerous NGOs adopted the same strategy as the government to deal with the
past. To both policymakers and practitioners, the priority was to stop the mem-
ory fragmentation in Rwanda. The third part explores individual reactions to this
approach. The study focuses on the interaction between memories emphasized
and concealed at the macro level (government), meso (NGOs), and micro level
(individuals). It questions a widely accepted premise in the field of conflict resolu-
tion, namely that a narrative of the past oriented towards forgiveness is inherently
positive because it favours unity and reconciliation. The study highlights the ten-
sions, contradictions, and dilemmas faced by third parties keen to “fix” post-war
memories quickly and effectively. It shows that such efforts can paradoxically
prevents closure and make the fragmentation irreversible.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-19
226 Valerie Rosoux
The intention of the chapter is to be neither cynical nor euphoric about calls for
reconciliation and forgiveness coming from third parties. It explores the notion of
fragmentation in observing the impact of reconciliatory narratives and practices
whose explicit objective is precisely to counter fragmentation. Do these narra-
tives and practices enable the parties to move on, or do they reinforce the dead-
lock? How do they affect the most marginalized communities among the parties
(survivors and families of victims)? Addressing these questions means that we
consider fragmentation as an ambivalent phenomenon which is – as such ‒ neither
positive, nor negative, but which depends directly on the objective pursued by
the parties. In this respect, it is critical to wonder whether calls for reconciliation
coming from outside might paradoxically contribute to new patterns of exclusion.
Do they lead to the accusation or even stigmatization of the voices that question
the master narrative? At first glance, the situation could be depicted in binary
terms (official representation of the past – sometimes qualified as the victor’s
perspective ‒ versus resisting vivid memories). However, the dynamics is much
more complex than a political struggle for power. Beyond a theoretical interest,
this question has a direct impact for practitioners and local people.1
Forgiveness as an official mantra

“We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of
it, and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human” (Arendt, 1968: 25).
These often-quoted words of Hannah Arendt remind us of the decisive importance
of the narratives we shape from our memories, whether they have been lived or
transmitted. Putting our experiences into words seems even more crucial when
they are marked by violence. However, this process of narration is far from self-
evident. On the collective level, the search for a master narrative which resonates
with all the groups and communities spread over a national territory is often an
impossible mission. The memories that are selected by political representatives
are rarely shared by all citizens. The bet is that they could, however, be consid-
ered as “sharable” with the passing of time. Such evolution is rarely observed on
the ground. All case studies demonstrate that political representatives do not con-
trol memories. In this sense, they cannot simply reconfigure incompatible narra-
tives (Rosoux, 2019). On the individual level, the narration of violent episodes (be
they directly lived by the citizens or transmitted to them) is also a very complex
operation. The existence of unspeakable experiences (Hayner, 2000), the absence
of attentive and effective interlocutors able to listen to painful memories, and the
intensity of emotions such as guilt, fear, shame, grief, and resentment explain
why silence characterizes most post-conflict settings (see the chapter by Johanna
Mannergren Selimovic).
In these circumstances, the question is: how can we transform hurtful and even
abject events into narratives? Unlike certain other practical questions, it remains
paramount for years, decades, and even generations (Rosoux, 2021). This interro-
gation concerns all the segments of the population and implies other issues, often
delicate ones. How can we move forward without betraying the dead? How can
Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”? 227
we take both the past and living generations seriously ‒ those who, whatever their
role, witnessed the violence and those who came afterwards, whether they were
born later or returned from exile?
In Rwanda, these questions lead to dizzying challenges. Between April and
July 2004, more than 800,000 people were massacred by the army, militias,
neighbours, and “friends and acquaintances.” In the space of a few weeks, waves
of atrocious violence swept through the country. Some Rwandans were forced
to kill their own partners and children. Inconceivable crimes took place, result-
ing in inconsolable grief. The death toll of the genocide remains a subject for
debate in academic circles (Verpoorten, 2020). Yet, this debate cannot reduce
the extent of the genocide that targeted Tutsis, from babies to old people. Hutus
classed as political opponents and traitors were also systematically slaughtered
with machetes (Mamdani, 2001). The genocide was only halted with the military
victory of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) on 18 July 1994, which then itself
was later accused of crimes against Hutu civilians in the neighbouring Democratic
Republic of Congo.
The Rwandan case does not only illustrate the effects of genocide but also the
impact of civil war and the legacy of colonialism. These three historical peri-
ods are at the origin of memory layers that constitute a “tragic mille-feuille.”
Representations of colonial violence, civil war, and genocidal violence are inter-
twined and persistent (Silverman, 2013). Far from being reduced to a “collective
murderous madness,” the genocide directly resulted from the instrumentalization
of the Hutu/Tutsi distinction during the colonial period. The radicalization of eth-
nic cleavages from the 1950s onwards led to a succession of massacres (1959,
1963, 1965, 1966, 1973) that fed the imagination on all sides. According to José
Kagabo, the themes of injustice and history distortion are underlined in Tutsi
circles while a kind of “Hutuization” of memory can hardly be denied (quoted by
Vulpian 2004: 73‒74). All these representations correspond to various forms of
otherness that have succeeded one another and sometimes overlapped. In Rwanda,
the “other” was in turn the child to be educated (from the Belgian perspective dur-
ing the colonial administration), the traitor to be punished (during the civil war),
the enemy to be fought (during the international war that devastated Congo), the
animal to be exterminated (during the genocide against the Tutsi). In such a com-
plex context, how can Rwandans transform this “other” into a compatriot? To
answer this question, most voices call for reconciliation.
In the field, three main approaches can be distinguished. The first is initiated
at the local level, within civil society (Schildt, 2016). Other approaches come
“from above” (from official commemorations to the Gacaca courts or the Ingando
solidarity camps set up by the National Unity and Reconciliation Commission).
Still other initiatives are taken “from outside.” All these approaches are inti-
mately linked. Local projects are often co-led and co-financed by transnational
NGOs. Some of them get support from official authorities. Similarly, official
programs depend to some extent on bilateral and multilateral international aid.
In focusing on initiatives taken from outside, this chapter does not seek to arti-
ficially isolate this particular level, but to examine the ambiguities that might
228 Valerie Rosoux
characterize this specific level. As we will see, these initiatives have a direct
impact on the memory narratives that are emphasized, tolerated, or rejected at
all these levels. But before concentrating on precise initiatives coming from out-
side, it is useful to stress the official posture adopted by the Rwandan authorities
in this matter.
In the aftermath of the genocide, the main objective of the new government
in Kigali was the fight against negationism (denial of the genocide against the
Tutsi) and the eradication of the culture of impunity. The gravity of the crimes
committed between April and July 1994 and the number of massacres that have
gone unpunished since independence explain this priority. The aim of the mas-
sive annual commemorations was to avoid categorically the inversion of the roles
based on the “victimization” of the killers (Ternon 2001: 71‒74) and the “double
genocide” thesis (according to which, two genocides (one against the Tutsi and
one against the Hutu) were committed in Rwanda). As mentioned, the human
rights violations perpetrated in Rwanda and Congo by the military forces of the
new government were immediately denounced as the instrument of a policy of
terror. They cannot, however, be compared to the genocide, either in their scope
or in their purpose. According to the “double genocide” thesis, everyone is guilty
and in the end no one is.
Therefore, the Rwandan authorities progressively stopped honouring all the
victims of the genocidaires, whether Tutsi or Hutu. In 1996, the commemorations
no longer explicitly mentioned the Hutu victims of the genocide. Moreover, they
never evoked the status of victims with regard to the Hutu who, without having
been perpetrators, were massacred by the RPF (Vidal 2001: 1‒46). In the same
line, the Rwandan authorities reinforced their official representation of the past on
the exhumation of thousands of bodies in “extermination sites.” Their goal was to
prove the past tragedy and to call for justice. This choice was directly supported
by external donors. The arguments developed in favour of the establishment of
the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda confirm that the aim was initially
justice, not reconciliation. In a few years, however, the dynamic was reversed.
Reconciliation became the consensual goal (Oomen, 2005). In terms of memory,
this political shift meant that memory fragmentation was perceived as a major
threat to limit at all costs.
This evolution was not only political. It was also pragmatic: justice, as vital as
it was, would turn out to be almost impossible to achieve. Prior to the genocide,
the country’s judiciary counted, in total, 800 lawyers and judges. After 1994,
this number was drastically reduced since only 40 lawyers were still alive in the
country, others were killed or in exile. The institutions whose task was to ensure
respect for the law and to enforce judicial decisions (law courts, police, prisons,
etc.) no longer functioned properly. In 2001, there were still around 120,000 pris-
oners in insalubrious prisons, awaiting trial. After some early trials (that led to
some hangings) as it became clear that it was physically impossible to enforce jus-
tice efficiently and rapidly, the government renounced to put the emphasis on the
fight against impunity and called for national reconciliation. They then decided to
re-establish a traditional procedure known as “gacaca” (Ingelaere, 2008).
The new Gacaca courts, created in response to exceptional circumstances,
were based on an ancestral custom whereby local wise men would be brought
in to settle a dispute (Reyntjens, 1990). The law of 26 January 2001 created new
court-type structures, based on this customary system. In June 2002, around
11,000 courts were inaugurated. The system was based on participatory justice:
the people were at the same time witness, judge, and party to the case. The general
principle was to bring together, in the very place where the crimes occurred, their
various actors: survivors, witnesses, and suspects. The aim was to establish the
truth and identify the victims and their killers. The discussions were directed by
non-professional “judges” elected from the well-respected men and women of the
community and authorized to hand down sentences for those found guilty (within
limits and excluding capital sentences). The vast majority of genocide cases were
tried by this system, which came to an end in June 2012.
The whole process was based on confession and forgiveness. On 18 June 2002,
when the first Gacaca courts were being put in place, President Paul Kagame
explained that: “The crimes which were committed must be curbed and punished,
but also forgiven. I call upon the perpetrators to be brave and to confess, to repent
and ask for forgiveness.” Two years later, he repeated the same message: “The
guilty must confess their crimes and ask the victims for forgiveness. Confession
will ease their conscience, but above all, these confessions will give some comfort
to the survivors who will then know, even if it is painful, how their loved ones
died and where their bodies were left” (quoted by Braeckman, 2004: 417). When
the Gacaca process came to an end, similar statements were repeated. In 2019, for
instance, President Kagame still explained:
“Someone once asked me why we keep burdening survivors with the respon-
sibility for our healing. It was a painful question, but I realized the answer was
obvious. Survivors are the only ones with something left to give: their forgive-
ness” (Kigali, 7 April 2019). Throughout the years, the argument remained the
same: forgiveness is a key condition for “the restoration of social harmony”.
(Kigali, 18 June 2012)
In this respect, forgiveness became a necessary step to stop memory fragmenta-

tion and promote national unity. Hence, official speeches no longer evoked Hutu
or Tutsi, but only Rwandans. This maximalist position is understandable if we
consider the horrific violence associated with ethnicity. As the genocide memo-
rial in Kigali indicates, the ethnic divisions that resulted in the civil war and the
genocide were distorted and politically used by the colonial power. The subse-
quent argument is that they are not only toxic but also “artificial”, as opposed to
the precolonial era where such categories were much more fluid and not linked
to political discrimination. However, it is worth questioning the reception of this
official narrative. Does it resonate within the population, whose plurality of expe-
riences was erased?
The reaction to the official slogan “We are all Rwandans” is often summarized
in a few words: “There are no longer Rwandans ‒ only Hutu and Tutsi” (Chrétien
230 Valerie Rosoux
1995: 186). This sentence shows the limits of a narrative that tries to impose
a single version of history. Nonetheless, this reconciliatory narrative was also
underlined by third parties, including transnational NGOs. Thus, the Dutch direc-
tor of the Unity Is Strength Foundation explained that the “incredible” process of
reconciliation in Rwanda is based largely on forgiveness, something that “even us
Europeans have failed” to achieve. “It is difficult,” he insisted, “to tell someone
who killed your father and mother that you forgive him, but this has happened
here” (Kigali, 1 April 2011). This moral lesson was addressed to foreigners, who
often appear to be too critical vis-à-vis the regime in Kigali. Beyond this example,
this eagerness to promote forgiveness often corresponded to foreign practition-
ers’ hope.
Practitioners’ hope to limit fragmentation

In the field, several NGOs led by US, European and Australian directors base their
activities on seminars designed to promote forgiveness. The majority of them have
a religious background but their NGOs are not systematically linked to a particu-
lar church or religion. Among the data gathered for this analysis, four documenta-
ries are particularly emblematic: Icyizere Hope, As We Forgive, Ingando ‒ When
Enemies Return, and Raindrop over Rwanda.2 Each of these stories has its own
specificities. However, they all concern the transformation of relations between
survivors and liberated prisoners. And they strikingly confirm the interviews con-
ducted in Washington and Brussels. Rather than detailing each collected story,
this section points out the main features intended to slow down the fragmentation
of national memory. Four of them are worth mentioning.
(1) The documentary filmmakers and interlocutors we met in Europe, Rwanda,
and the US confirm the discourse emphasized in Kigali. Several of them consider
that “there are no limits to forgiveness.” In this respect, the same scenario appears
as the ultimate goal: a repentant perpetrator asks forgiveness from a forgiving vic-
tim. The seminars organized by the NGO World Vision, which mainly works with
Rwandan religious leaders, are symptomatic in this regard (Steward, 2009). Their
approach is based on a collective request for forgiveness, which means that every
participant apologizes for past misdeeds, including external participants. In the
case where no personal wrongdoing has been committed by the participants, they
are invited to apologize for the crimes of their ancestors. Forgiveness is thus the
cornerstone, the prelude to redemption. As the US members of the As We Forgive
team explain, their aim is to transform communities by initiating “a grassroots
movement of repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation in Rwanda.”3
(2) The whole process is based on a therapeutic approach to reconciliation.
The notion of trauma plays an essential role since all protagonists are frequently
described as traumatized: survivors, of course, who are often marked in their
flesh, perpetrators, portrayed as frightened and ashamed, and finally the descend-
ants, whether their parents are victims, criminals. or accomplices. From this per-
spective, the whole society needs healing. Therefore, a wide range of therapeutic
responses to symptoms such as “post-traumatic stress syndrome” (PTSD) has been
developed, to alleviate the psychological and social damage inflicted by the past
violence. These initiatives include for instance Trauma-Informed Peacebuilding
approaches, delivered by multidisciplinary teams including mediators, trauma
specialists, development specialists. and clinicians.
From this perspective, the role played by third parties is crucial: in encour-
aging forgiveness, NGOs present themselves as indispensable to save the soci-
ety as a whole. This dynamic is particularly palpable in the documentary As We
Forgive: “More and more Rwandans are discovering hope through reconciliation
as perpetrators repent of their crimes and survivors find the strength to forgive.”
One of the consequences of this approach is the levelling of victims and crimi-
nals, brought together by the same label of trauma. This phenomenon is described
by the documentary Icyizere Hope: “They are all more similar than different.
They are all, victim and aggressor, suffering from trauma. The most effective
way to overcome their trauma is by making an effort to forgive each other.” In
the documentary Ingando, a veteran unsurprisingly underlines the same prescrip-
tion: “We have to forgive each other, to forget the bad story and be focused on
the future.” As this reaction shows, the main objective is to move forward. It is
not to establish and assume a responsibility, but to ultimately adopt a common
narrative.
(3) All seminars and documentaries attempt to help Rwandans and Westerners
to move forward. It is with this objective in mind that the screenings of the film
As We Forgive were organized in Rwanda and in the United States. In Rwanda,
hundreds of young people, most of them children of survivors and released pris-
oners, were targeted. One example is the conversion of Zainabo (18 years old),
an orphan of the genocide who thought she could never forgive her parents’ mur-
derer: “In the film, Chantale [a survivor who eventually managed to forgive her
father’s killer, despite her loneliness and pain] touched my heart and taught me
forgiveness. I decided that I too would forgive the person who killed my father.”4
The transformation is identical for Berthe Kayitesi who struggled as a child head
of family in the aftermath of the genocide. While she describes the fate of the
“forgotten of the forgotten,” this orphan refuses to be depicted as a “victim.” To
overcome the weight of a past “more present than the present itself,” she wants to
build her future on education (Kayitesi, 2009, p. 62). The journey of Immaculée
Ilibagiza, a Rwandan refugee in the United States and author of a best-seller
recounting her desire to forgive, follows the same pattern (Ilibagiza, 2007).
(4) The last element concerns the outcome of the narratives promoted by
NGOs engaged in forgiveness and reconciliation: they all have a happy ending.
The stories are told as initiatory journeys during which an individual who was
thought to be destroyed manages to get back on his feet and look to the future
in a constructive manner. On a collective level, the itinerary is identical: from
a devastated society to a society that is moving on, “from despair to optimism”
(Steward, 2009, p. 187), “from genocide to generosity” (Steward, 2015). Almost
like in a fairy tale, forgiveness allows all parties to go “beyond violence, beyond
fear, beyond anger, beyond vengeance,”5 “from haters to healers, from bringers of
violence to makers of peace” (Steward, 2015). This perspective is completely in
232 Valerie Rosoux
line with the national history promoted by the Rwandan authorities and their call
to go beyond a “dark history” in order to shape “a bright future.”6
In the documentary Ingando, young Rwandans explain that they are fortunate
to witness a decisive stage in the Rwandan national history (described as a “new
national momentum”). The tone is the same in the documentary As We Forgive,
which gives the floor to a genocide orphan: “We are brothers and sisters, there
is no ethnic division here. I want to rebuild my country.” Her testimony focuses
on forgiveness, which is presented both as a turning point (“Before I forgave, I
felt angry and alone”) and an inspiring lesson (“People in other countries also
need reconciliation. Rwandans forgive each other”). For the film’s director, who
became the head of an NGO called As We Forgive, the happy ending sketched in
the documentary was confirmed in the field, as she reported that more than 90 per
cent of the participants in their seminars described the impact of the programme
as “positive and tangible” in their lives.7
As we see, this particular approach to conflict transformation (based on forgive-
ness – healing – resilience happy ending) not only characterizes calls for reconcil-
iation coming from above (government) and from outside (transnational NGOs in
Rwanda). It also corresponds to a transnational wave that strongly resonates with
current post-conflict settings all over the world (Lefranc, 2009; Grosescu et al.,
2019). In this regard, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC) became an iconic model – despite all its limits. To Archbishop Desmond
Tutu, forgiveness is like “opening a window to let the fresh air rush into a dark
closed room.” “To forgive,” he continues, “is not being altruistic; it is the best
form of self-interest” (Tutu, 2000, 2003). This “confessional narrative” (Moon,
2008, p. 92) was presented as a key condition for building “a different and bet-
ter society for all” (seventh volume of the TRC report), a new South Africa, a
“rainbow nation at peace with itself ” (Mandela, Pretoria, `10 May 1994). The fol-
lowing example of South Sudan is also a good illustration. According to Bishop
Isaiah Dau, described as an “insider mediator” by the Network for Religious and
Traditional Peacemakers, search for reconciliation is essentially driven by the
imperative to transform darkness into light:
Hope is what we would need every day. Most of the thoughts I have on South
Sudan are very dark. (…) We are being told there is light in the end of the
tunnel, but for us there is only darkness in the tunnel, and only faith for the
light. But what we need to realize is that there is light all around us, we need
to see it and through it transform darkness around us bit by bit.
(Keyes, 2019, p. 3)
As already suggested, the shift from darkness to light is almost systematically

evoked in the aftermath of mass atrocities.
With regard to the topic of this volume, this eagerness to be liberated from
the “tyranny of the past” (Jervis, 1976: 218) implies putting an end to memory
fragmentation. It is assumed that reconciliation and ultimately peace can only
occur when all stakeholders, including individual victims, adhere to the same
narrative. This perspective was particularly promoted in the 1990s but it remains
currently advocated in the Great Lakes, and far beyond. The “Search for Common
Ground” (to refer to the title of an international NGO particularly active in the
African Great Lakes) is perceived as a necessary condition for closure. The aim
is identical at the level of international organizations. As former United Nations
Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon explained, reconciliation is a way to “bring a
sense of closure” to harrowing chapters in history (27 October 2010). From this
perspective, the most fundamental goal in terms of national memory is to favour
a united narrative that overcomes the fragmented memories shared by the differ-
ent actors (victims, perpetrators, bystanders, returnees, members of the diaspora
spread all over the world).
Don’t ask me more

Beyond NGOs explicitly devoted to forgiveness, how do other third parties inter-
vene to try to limit the depth of fragmentation? Beside the traditional people-to-
people initiatives that focus on trust building and work on the “cognitive biases
that jeopardize the reconciliation work” (Pearson d’Estrée, 2009), some specific
initiatives are based on the uses of history. They refer to storytelling and search
for a “better, more truthful version” of the past (Karn, 2006). Their action is often
presented as a way to offer “a negotiated view of the past” which is both rigorous
enough from an empirical standpoint and psychologically acceptable to all sides.
In this regard, their goal is not to impose a partial narrative that would be dictated
by official authorities. Yet, it is still to gradually develop a shared vision (Bracka,
2017) to enable the passage “from a divided past to a shared future” (Bloomfield,
2003). There is no doubt that the practitioners involved in these projects are well
intentioned. The idea is not only to favour mutual acknowledgement of the oth-
er’s narrative, but to move from radicalized narratives to “better-formed” stories
(Cobb, 2013). This dynamic is based on the following sequence: a new narrative
allows a new definition of the problem and, therefore, new potential solutions.
Such evolutions should in principle reduce differences and produce shared
historiographical reconstructions. However, this narrative incorporation cannot
provide the miraculous “stickiness” to act as “political glue” able to keep former
adversaries together. A narrative shift may be a necessary condition to move on
but it is not a sufficient one. In the absence of decent reparation measures, for
instance, it might be indecent to put the pressure on the victims who rarely feel
ready to take up the challenge, at least in the short term. This gap is highlighted
by a Rwandan survivor left alone in her village, who slowly replied to some ambi-
tious outsiders: “I can live with them [the killers]. Don’t ask me more. Don’t ask
me too much.”8
These few words invite third parties to be reflective. NGO workers and facilita-
tors – however well intentioned ‒ may actually reinforce resentment among the
most vulnerable ones (Bloomfield and Scott, 2017, Terris and Tykocinski, 2021).
If they put pressure on victims’ shoulders to ask them to adopt an empathetic
view towards their perpetrators and/or to develop a multidirectional memory
234 Valerie Rosoux
(Rothberg, 2009), third parties can provoke an additional violence. The unifi-
cation of memories related to past violence can hardly be conceived in a hasty
manner. As the sociologist and psychotherapist Esther Mujawayo explained after
losing her mother, father and husband during the genocide:
I don’t want to understand them [the killers], at least, not yet. I want to pro-
ceed step by step: within ten years maybe. I say to myself that some people
are paid for that, for understanding the killers—politicians, humanitarian
staff, right-thinking people. […] I don’t want to understand them and I don’t
want to excuse them. They did it.
(Mujawayo and Belhaddad, 2004, p. 87)
In the field of interpersonal memory of past violence, the willingness to “get it

done” is counterproductive (Joshi and Wallensteen, 2018). This temporal dimen-
sion is crucial. All case studies remind that the individual work of memory is
a process which advances in step with its own inner timing (Ricoeur, 2004).
The unification of narratives cannot be programmed or pushed. In this regard,
the rush to stop memory fragmentation risks being not only useless but also
counterproductive.
Conclusion: taming fragmentation

These survivors’ voices call for a “modest” picture: the narrative incorpora-
tion of conflictual memories takes time. In the aftermath of mass atrocities, one
does not count in years, but in generations. Any attempt to tame fragmenta-
tion implies a long-term involvement with issues which are painful and divi-
sive. Hubris is one of the most toxic temptations in devastated areas. Political
authorities and NGO workers are neither magicians nor a deus ex machina. It is
crucial to preserve them ‒ and the local populations ‒ from unreachable expec-
tations. Rather than rushing to reconciliation on autopilot, it is crucial to clarify
the aims which are pursued. In this regard, it could be useful to differentiate
between short-term and long-term intentions: on the one hand, reachable objec-
tives related to everyday coexistence (which in itself is remarkable after mass
atrocities) and, on the other hand, more ambitious goals related to the fragmen-
tation of the social fabric.
The eagerness to move from a “narrative of contamination” to a “narrative
of redemption” is not surprising in the field of conflict resolution (Hampson and
Narlikar, 2022). However, from a psychological perspective, it is highly improb-
able that a survivor will react overly forgivingly toward perpetrators – at least
in the short term. In Rwanda, the focus on forgiveness offers an uncomplicated
storyline that corresponds to the need of the official authorities (creation of a uni-
fied and forward-looking narrative) and third parties’ expectations (willingness to
turn the page and need to believe in human goodness). Nevertheless, it denies the
existence of deeply fragmented memories. Narratives shift matter, but they do not
constitute a magical solution to deal with genocidal violence.
At the end of this analysis, two main lessons merit to be underlined. First, if
reconciliatory narratives differ too much from the experience lived by particular
groups, they rapidly exclude them. This is not only a moral issue but also a political
and very pragmatic one. Without the support of the population, modifications made
to master narratives are sterile and in vain. In this regard, the attitude adopted by
official authorities and third parties toward hatred is symptomatic. The eagerness to
erase hate-based narratives is not surprising from a conflict resolution perspective.
Nevertheless, this objective should not systematically lead to the negation of vic-
tims’ emotions. To most survivors, hatred and resentment are not only understand-
able but also necessary for self-respect and justice (Murphy, 2003, p. 19). If the
experience narrated by these victims is simply and purely ignored, their anger – and
in some cases, despair – will likely increase. Research carried out to date shows that
the memories based on these strong emotions are transmitted from one generation
to the next (Rosoux, 2020). This means that memory fragmentation does not evapo-
rate with the mere passage of time. Knowing that, taming differences seems to be a
much more appropriate aim than eliminating them (Gardner Feldman, 2002, 337).
Notes
1 This chapter was written as part of a larger research project devoted to the dynamics
between former enemies, and between various groups of actors on each side (policy-
makers, survivors, bystanders, perpetrators, and third parties). The project is based on
a case-oriented and inductive research design. The most important methods of data
collection are qualitative interviewing and participant observation, working with four
NGOs particularly active in the African Great Lakes. I would like to thank the FNRS
and the Max Planck Foundation for supporting this project.
2 The documentary Icyizere Hope was directed in 2009 by Kenyan Patrick Mureithi.
It focuses on an interindividual reconciliation workshop with ten survivors and ten
genocidaires (Josiah Film). The film As We Forgive was directed the same year by the
American Laura Waters Hison (produced by Stephen Maceevety). The documentary
describes the evolution of two survivors towards the individuals who massacred their
families during the genocide. Ingando - When Enemies Return is a 2007 documentary
directed by Danes Martin Bush Larsen, and Jesper Houborg. It focuses on the journey
of former Rwandan soldiers, demobilized and “educated” within the ingando (Mutobo)
framework, to reintegrate their civilian life within their respective communities.
Finally, Raindrop over Rwanda was directed by the American philanthropist Charles
Annenberg Weingarten in 2010 (Annenberg Foundation). The documentary depicts
the encounter between Charles Annenberg Weingarten himself and a survivor, Honoré
Gatera, during a trip to Rwanda.
3 See the presentation of the initiative on the following website: https://www.peacein-
sight.org/en/organisations/awf-ri/?location=rwanda&theme
4 Her sentences were emphasized during the presentation of As We Forgive in Washington
on 25 May 2011.
5 See the documentary Beyond Right and Wrong: Stories of Justice and Forgiveness,
http://theforgivenessproject.com/
6 This formula was explicitly emphasized by the ambitious national program Ndi
Umunyarwanda – I am Rwandan (2013).
7 Laura Waters, Washington, 25 May 2011. Little is said about the type of surveys that
led to this figure.
8 Kigali, 7 April 2010.
236 Valerie Rosoux
References
Aggestam, K., Cristiano, F., & Strombom, L. (2015). Towards agonistic peacebuilding?
Exploring the antagonism–agonism Nexus in the Middle East peace process. Third
World Quarterly, 36(9), 1736–1753.
Ahmed, S., & Brahimi, L. (2008). In Pursuit of Sustainable Peace. The Seven Deadly Sins
of Mediation. New York: Center on International Cooperation.
Arendt, H. (1968). Men in Dark Times. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Company.
Bercovitch, J. (2009). Mediation and conflict resolution. In J. Bercovitch, V. Kremenyuk,
& I. W. Zartman (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Conflict Resolution (pp. 340–357).
London: Sage.
Bloomfield, D., & Scott, S. V. (Eds.) (2017). Norm Antipreneurs and the Politics of
Resistance to Global Normative Change. New York: Routledge.
Bloomfield, D., Barnes, T., & Huyse L. (Eds.) (2003). Reconciliation After Violent Conflict:
A Handbook. Stockholm: IDEA.
Bracka, J. (2017). From banning Nakba to bridging narratives: The collective memory
of 1948 and transitional justice for Israelis and Palestinians. In U. Belavusau & A.
Gliszczynska-Grabias (Eds.), Law and Memory: Towards Legal Governance of History
(pp. 348–373). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Braeckman, C. (2004). Rwanda, dix ans après. Politique Internationale, 103, 417.
Burton, J. W. (1987). Resolving Deep-rooted Conflict: A Handbook. Lanham: University
Press of America.
Chrétien, J.-P. (Ed.) (1995). Rwanda. Les médias du génocide. Paris: Karthala.
Ciliers, J., Dube, O., & Siddiqi, B. (2016). Reconciling after civil conflict increases social
capital but decreases individual well-being. Science, 352(6287), 787–794.
Cobb, S. (2013). Speaking of Violence. The Politics and Poetics of Narrative in Conflict
Resolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
de Waardt, M., & Weber, S. (2019). Beyond victims’ mere presence: An empirical analysis
of victims’ participation in transitional justice in Colombia. Journal of Human Rights
Practice, 11, 209–228.
Gardner Feldman, L. (2002). The principle and practice of ‘reconciliation’ in German
foreign policy: Relations with France, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic.
International Affairs, 75(2), 333–356.
Grosescu, R., Baby, S., & Neumayer, L. (2019). Justice, memory and transnational networks.
European and South American entanglements. Global Society, 33(3), 307–315.
Hampson, F., & Narlikar, A. (2022). International Negotiation and Political Narratives. A
Comparative Study. New York: Routledge.
Hayner, P. (2000). Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity. London:
Routledge.
Tutu, D. (2003). Speech: No Future without forgiveness (version 2). Archbishop Desmond
Tutu Collection Textual, 15 (https://digitalcommons.unf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi
?article=1014&context=archbishoptutupapers)
Ilibagiza, I. (2007). Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust. New
York: Hay House.
Ingelaere, B. (2008). The Gacaca courts in Rwanda. In L. Huyse & M. Salter (Eds.),
Traditional Justice and Reconciliation after Violent Conflict. Learning from African
Experience (pp. 25–59). Stockholm: IDEA.
Jervis, R. (1976). Perceptions and Misperceptions in International Politics. Princeton:
Joshi, M., & Wallensteen, P. (2018). Understanding Quality Peace. Peacebuilding after
Civil War. New York: Routledge.
Karn, A. (2006). Depolarizing the past: The role of historical commissions in conflict
mediation and reconciliation. Journal of International Affairs, 60(1), 31–50.
Kayitesi, B. (2009). Demain ma vie. Enfants chefs de famille dans le Rwanda d’après.
Paris: Editions Laurence Teper.
Keyes, S. (2019). Mapping on Approaches to Reconciliation (The Network for Religious
and Traditional Peacemakers) https://www.peacemakersnetwork.org/wp-content/
uploads/2019/08/Mapping-on-Approaches-to-Reconciliation.pdf.
Lefranc, S. (2009). La production de nouvelles techniques de pacification: la normalisation
internationale des causes locales. In Y. Schemeil & W.-D. Eberwein (Eds.), Normer le
monde (pp. 65–86). Paris: L’Harmattan.
Levy, D., & Natan, S. (2010). Human Rights and Memory. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania
University Press.
MacGinty, R. (Ed.) (2013). Routledge Handbook of Peacebuilding. New York:
Routledge.
Mamdani, M. (2001). When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism and the
Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Moon, C. (2008). Narrating Political Reconciliation: South Africa’s Truth and
Reconciliation Commission. Lanham: Lexington Books.
Mujawayo, E., & Belhaddad, S. (2004). Sur-Vivantes: Rwanda, Histoire d’un génocide.
Tour-d’Aigues: Editions de l’Aube.
Murphy, J. C. (2003). Getting Even: Forgiveness and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Oomen, B. (2005). Donor driven justice and its discontents: The case of Rwanda.
Development and Change, 36(5), 887–910.
Pearson d’Estrée, T. (2009). Problem-solving approaches. In J. Bercovitch, V. Kremenyuk,
& I. W. Zartman (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Conflict Resolution (pp. 143–171).
London: Sage.
Reyntjens, F. (1990). Le gacaca ou la justice du gazon au Rwanda. Politique Africaine,
40, 31–41.
Ricoeur, P. (2004). Memory, History, Forgetting. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press.
Rosoux, V. (2019). Israeli and Palestinian stories. Can mediators reconfigure incompatible
narratives? Global Policy, 10(2), 61–67.
Rosoux, V. (2020). Negotiating on behalf of previous generations: Justice in post- conflict
contexts. International Negotiation, 25, 93–108.
Rosoux, V. (2021). Memory and narratives of hate and forgiveness in post-conflict
societies. In A. Narlikar & F. Hampson (Eds.), International Negotiation and Political
Narratives. A Comparative Study (pp. 484–515). New York: Routledge.
Decolonisation. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Rurangwa, R. (2009). Génocidé. Paris: J’ai lu.
Schildt, J. (2016). C’est d’abord la réconciliation avec soi. Pour une sociologie des
pratiques locales de réconciliation au Rwanda. Déviance et Société, 3(40), 327–345.
Shaw, R. (2007). Memory frictions: Localizing the truth and reconciliation commission in
Sierra Leone. International Journal of Transitional Justice, 1(2), 183–207.
Silverman, M. (2013). Palimpsestic Memory. The Holocaust and Colonialism in French
and Francophone Fiction and Film. New York: Berghahn Books.
238 Valerie Rosoux
Sontag, S. (2003). Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Steward, J. (2009). Only healing heals: Concepts and methods of psycho-social healing in
post-genocide Rwanda. In P. Clark & Z. Kaufman (Eds.), After Genocide. Transitional
Justice, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Reconciliation in Rwanda and Beyond
(pp. 171–189). New York: Columbia University Press.
Steward, J. (2015). From Genocide to Generosity. Carlisle: Langham Global Library.
Ternon, Y. (2001). L’innocence des victimes. Au siècle des génocides. Paris: Desclée de
Brouwer.
Terris, L. G., & Tykocinski, O. E. (2021). Agents of peace or enablers of violence? The
proximal effects of mediators in international disputes. International Interactions,
48(1), 1–22.
Tutu, D. (2000). No Future Without Forgiveness. London: New Ed.
Tutu, D. (2003). Speech: No Future without forgiveness (version 2). Archbishop Desmond
Tutu Collection Textual, 15.
Verpoorten, M. (2020). How many died in Rwanda?. Journal of Genocide Research, 22(1),
94–103.
Vidal, C. (2001). Les commémorations du génocide au Rwanda. Les Temps Modernes,
613, 1–46.
Vulpian, L. (2004). Rwanda. Un génocide oublié ? Un procès pour mémoire. Brussels:
Complexe.
Weinrich, H. (2005). Lethe: Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens. Munchen: C.H. Beck.
Weinstein, H. M. (2011). The myth of closure, the illusion of reconciliation. The
International Journal of Transitional Justice, 5(1), 1–10.
Zartman, I. W. (2000). Ripeness: The hurting stalemate and beyond. In P. Stern & D.
Druckman (Eds.), International Conflict Resolution after the Cold War (pp. 225–250).
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
16 ANNA News as a transnational
memory entrepreneur? Uses
of the past in the coverage
of the Syrian civil war by
Russian-language media
Thomas Richard
Introduction
Russia’s involvement in the Syrian civil war has most often been analyzed in
terms of geopolitical influence, with the country aiming to appear as a power
player in the Mediterranean and at countering Western influence in the Middle
East. But, as stated by Mykola Makhortykh (2022), despite widespread uses of the
past by Russian authorities to frame their international policy, this aspect remains
understudied when it comes to the Russian intervention in Syria. His own study
focuses on these uses by Russian authorities, studied through the prism of secu-
ritization. Speech acts by Russian officials frame specific issues as matters of col-
lective security, in which uses of memory are particularly prominent. This chapter
aims at understanding the use of memory by another Russian actor, the media,
through the study of ANNA News, a news agency that has been particularly active
in Syria. Despite the fact that the agency adopts a staunch pro-Kremlin stance,
its memory uses are independent from that of the Russian authorities. Carefully
crafted and coherent, its narrative appears to develop a vision of the Syrian civil
war that is rooted within the Russian war experience, that deepens, and to some
extent goes beyond official discourses. When Russia chose to get directly involved
in the Syrian civil war in September 2015, this involvement not only meant send-
ing troops and weapons to fight with governmental soldiers, it also signified that
the Syrian war became a key topic for Russian media, who sent reporter teams on
the field, some of them for long-term missions to cover the war.
This was particularly the case for ANNA News (Abkhazian Network News
Agency), a privately owned, Russian-speaking Abkhaz news network, founded in
2011 by Marat Musin, a specialist in financial intelligence, and former lecturer at
Moscow University. Throughout the years, ANNA News has specialized in the
covering of military and security topics, with a particular interest in areas where
Russia’s interests are at stake, taking a strongly pro-Kremlin editorial line. Its
reporters have been embedded with Syrian troops and sent impressive news cov-
erage of the fighting by placing cameras on army vehicles during battles and by
keeping their editing of graphic images to a minimum.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-20
240 Thomas Richard
These images and the discourse that accompany them not only illustrate the
war, but also aim to put it into perspective, primarily to a Russian audience, but
also to a global one, through their use on the internet and by other pro-government
media in Russia, China, Iran, and the Arab world. This perspective seeks first to
justify Russia’s intervention in Syria in the eyes of these various audiences, and
to develop a narrative that asserts its rightfulness and obligation from a geopoliti-
cal, humanitarian, and moral point of view. At the same time, this narrative aims
at justifying the Syrian government’s stance and fostering support for its policy.
To achieve such an aim, a wide yet carefully chosen use of the past is called for,
that portrays the Syrian troops as reiterating the Soviet narrative of World War II,
while distancing Russian involvement from the quagmires of Soviet and Russian
interventions in the past.
This undertaking is by no means an ANNA News’ prerogative as other Russian
media and news channels have also developed a narrative of Russia’s intervention
in Syria. For instance, the Russians’ state news channel, Russia Today (RT), and
its image agency, Ruptly, have been closely reporting events in Syria since 2015.
Nevertheless, RT’s coverage is less organized in its narrative and in the develop-
ment of a focused discourse than the one produced by ANNA News. Although
RT has better access to official images shot by communication services, its devel-
opment of a war narrative is also firmly in the hands of the Russian political and
military sphere, and merely reflects the securitization process studied by Mykola
Makhortykh. By contrast, ANNA News has relied on embedded reporters, some
of them volunteers coming from civil society, who can develop a narrative on
their own. If the agency adopts a strongly pro-Kremlin stance, it remains uncon-
trolled by the state, and its apprehension of the past, as patriotic as it may seem, is
not supervised by the Russian government. As it pays little attention to the idea of
Russian interests to favour a more emotional approach to the conflict, it may even
appear to compete with the securitized approach of Russian authorities. That is,
while ANNA News, being a private agency, remains below the Russian state, its
discourse may also go beyond that of the state, and it has a more realist approach
of international relations when it comes to Syria. From a legal point of view, albeit
registered as a news agency in Russia, ANNA News is based in a foreign unrec-
ognized state (Abkhazia) under Russian protection.1
If one may argue that Putin’s Russia tries to regain control of its collective
memory (Wood 2011, Malinova 2017), a move in which RT plays a part, ANNA
News, despite sharing much of the Kremlin’s conception of the national past,
developed its own editorial line, which, given the scope of its audience, manages
to address both the domestic Russian public and a transnational audience that may
feel empathy for a Russian perspective on the Syrian civil war (Doucet 2018).
Another aim, clearly stated by the agency, is to consider itself in a communica-
tion war with Western media, considered as biased when reporting the Syrian
situation.
All these considerations make it difficult to characterize ANNA News’ influ-
ence on memory fragmentation. Within the context of Russian society, ANNA
News, due to its reliance on sources and contributors from civil society, could
ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur? 241
be seen as an actor that both supports the Russian government’s attempts to re-
establish official narratives of the Russian past (in terms of disseminated frames
of the past) and fragilizes these attempts, as it offers Russian citizens memory
narratives produced outside the realm of the media directly controlled by the state
or by oligarchs close to the state.
Simultaneously, to the extent that ANNA News also aims to reach pro-Russian
audiences outside Russia, the agency’s uses of the past might also qualify it as a
memory entrepreneur in territories outside Russia. In particular, the agency tries
to challenge the narratives of Western mainstream media on the wars in Syria
or in Ukraine (Khaldarova and Pantti 2016), less by spreading “fake news” but
by reframing their interpretation of the facts (Macgilchrist 2007). Concretely,
while many Western media develop a narrative of the Russian intervention in
Syria using references to (Western) collective memories of the wars Russia lost
in Afghanistan and Chechnya during the second half of the twentieth century,
ANNA News insists on the idea that these experiences have actually helped
Russia to learn from its past mistakes and to change its intervention strategy. The
channel thus develops a counter-memory discourse, based on the claim that it is
not Russia but the Western powers that are repeating the blunders of past inter-
ventions, including those in Iraq and Libya, based on enduring misperceptions
of the situation, something which, according to the agency, dates back to their
involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
In the following, I will analyze in detail ANNA’s memory framing of Russia’s
involvement in Syria. The term “memory framing” refers here to the ways in
which journalists develop their narratives by establishing comparisons and analo-
gies between the events of the Syrian civil war and key historical episodes of
conflict with strong resonance in Russian collective memory. To do so, my pri-
mary sources have been ANNA News reports, supplemented by some reports
from other news channels, including RT. These reports, originally aired on the
channel either as documentaries or as newsfeed, were available on YouTube, and
organized as a playlist in chronological order since 2015, using the title “Syrian
Chronicles.” At its apogee,2 before its last suspension in May 2020, the playlist
contained about 300 videos, ranging from a few minutes of uncut footage to full-
length documentaries (up to 1h15), with most of the videos being 7 to 15 minutes
long, often focusing on a specific military operation, or presenting reports from
the field. Given that my attempts to contact the agency to discuss its work and edi-
torial line did not receive any answer, I focused my analysis on the videos’ con-
tents, and on the written articles that accompanied them on the agency’s website.3
To understand how past conflicts are used by the channel to frame the Syrian
civil war, the chapter is structured in two parts, one for each major frame. The first
part will focus on ANNA News’ portrayal of the war from the perspective of the
people siding with the Syrian and Russian governments, which is linked to refer-
ences to the memory of the Soviet heroic sacrifice narrative during World War II.
The second part, which will focus on the reports covering the rebels’ actions, will
analyze the channel’s complex use of the memory frames from the past Russian
interventions in Afghanistan and Chechnya.
242 Thomas Richard
Destructions and popular defence: the Great Patriotic
War as a frame of representation
The most obvious memory frame used by ANNA News reporters in Syria is that
of World War II, more precisely in its interpretation disseminated by the current
Russian government. Dubbed in the former Soviet space the “Great Patriotic War,”
the struggle from 1941 to 1945 has gained the status of a civil religion in today’s
Russia. Under Vladimir Putin’s rule, the Russian state has heavily promoted this
memory as a symbol of national unity and sacrifice using numerous celebrations
and cultural products. It is portrayed as a shared heroic endeavour of the Russian
people4 against a despicable enemy, entailing countless sacrifices even compared to
the other members of the anti-Hitler coalition (Kucherenko 2021). Mobilizing this
memory frame as a positive reference for the fight of the Syrian army and its Russian
allies can be considered a source of legitimation, at least to a Russian audience.
Direct references to World War II are at first glance relatively rare in ANNA
News’ narratives. Once in a while, a reporter may mention the war, for instance
when discovering that a Soviet-made Syrian cannon was engineered in 1941, but
direct references do not go much beyond this. Rather, one has to take into account
how symbolic and lexical elements of the Great Patriotic War’s narrative are used
indirectly (Tumakin 2003, Markwick 2012) to frame images and facts reported
from the Syrian civil war and thus allow the two conflicts to be assimilated in the
eye of the audience.
One key aspect in this regard is that the Civil War is indeed presented as a
patriotic war, in which the whole Syrian people, in its various social components,
takes part. This can be seen through the portrayal of Syrian fighters, ranging from
well-equipped militias raised by businessmen (“Syria: great Russian war report on
Syrian special brigade the Desert Eagles,” “Palmyra: Syrian army Desert Falcons
hours before storming Palmyra”) to fighters in rags, some of them very young
(16‒17 years old), some of them in their fifties (“Tiger forces … road to Aleppo
February 2020”). All kinds of people are depicted as formerly peaceful civilians
that appear to have taken up arms voluntarily (rather than “being mobilized” by
the government) against what is presented as a threat to the very existence of the
Syrian state. This is particularly relevant when it comes to the coverage of female
fighters (“Syrian Christian girls defend their town against Western-backed ‘mod-
erate rebels’”).
In these reports, the interviewed pro-government fighters insist on the patriotic
dimension of their struggle, presenting it as war of national defence that requires
everyone to do his/her duty in the face of a merciless enemy supported by external
powers. The screen presence of female fighters can be seen as an answer to the
Western coverage of female Kurdish guerrillas (Toivanen and Baser 2016), as
well as a reference to the war mobilization of women in the USSR, a topic all the
more familiar to audiences in Russia as it has been widely covered in books and
films (Markwick 2018).
This understanding of the war as a patriotic ordeal is also apparent in the fact
that, except for a very few reports focused on Syrian Christians (“Syria: Christians
pack Damascus church to join Pope’s plea for peace”), the coverage does gener-
ally not evoke the religious identities of their witnesses, apart from emphasizing
the idea of having them underlying a pre-war Muslim-Christian brotherhood. This
absence of confessional identities is noticeable, even when the religious iden-
tity of the interviewees is notorious, as in the case of the Druze general Issam
Zahreddin (“ANNA News presents: Deir-ez-Zor under siege”). The only identity
that is prominently featured is the Syrian national one, resisting against an enemy
considered as representing a perversion of Islam but also strongly influenced by
foreign forces.
Moreover, Syrians are generally represented as fighting this enemy on their
own. Apart from very rare examples (“Russian ANNA News reporter tasting mate
with Syrian Hezbollah soldiers”) no explicit mention is made of Iranian soldiers
or of the Hezbollah. Apart from the Russian troops, the only foreigners on the
government side that appear on screen are Palestinians from the Liwa al Quds
militia, who are embedded into the Syrian army, and who are presented as fighting
for Syria as if it was their homeland (“Battles for Aleppo: October 2016, on the
front lines with Liwa al Quds”). By contrast, these reports completely ignore the
rifts created within the Palestinian community in Syria (Napolitano 2012). Syrian
rebels are generally presented as individual traitors (rather than as an organized
collective insurgency) and can thus be compared to the portrayal of Soviet citi-
zens who had joined the German Army. In sum, the characterization of the Syrian
war as a lone, national struggle against an evil, externally sponsored enemy is
reminiscent of official memory discourse on World War II in Russia, enabling
audiences to assimilate the two situations and to consider Syrian rebels as traitors.
The World War II memory frame also appears in the way individual battles
are presented, with a focus on the fights for Aleppo and Deir-ez-Zor. Among
the numerous battles fought in Syria, the particular attention given to these two
battles can be explained because they can be used to construct implicit analogies
with the Battle of Stalingrad and the Siege of Leningrad. Indeed, the months-
long, entrenched fighting in Aleppo has been intensely covered by ANNA News
reporters (“Aleppo earthquake”), and reported in a way that suggests associations
with the Russian “mythical chronotopes” (configuration of space and time as rep-
resented in discourse) to the Syrian situation (Kotstetskaya 2016): the Citadel
of Aleppo, attacked time and again by Syrian rebels, becomes an equivalent of
the Mamaev Kurgan, and the desperate fight of Syrian government soldiers in
the al-Kindi Hospital evokes the Pavlov House (“Aleppo Battlefield: Russian
report heroes of al Kindi Hospital”), the sacrifice of Soviet soldiers on the hill of
Mamaev Kurgan and in the Pavlov House being two of the most celebrated ele-
ments in the Russian mythical memory of the Battle of Stalingrad.
These parallels between the two decisive Russian battles of World War II and
the war in Syria are also suggested by the fact that the Battle for Aleppo is pre-
sented as the turning point of the war, during which the offensive launched by
the regime opposition was definitely defeated. Because Deir-ez-Zor, on the other
hand, was besieged for months by jihadi fighters and could only be supplied by
helicopter, this battle can easily evoke the Siege of Leningrad (Kirschenbaum
244 Thomas Richard
2006, p. 114) (“Deir-ez-Zor under siege,” “Captain Ghaleb”). Indeed, witnesses
featured on ANNA News emphasized the lack of food and ammunition as well as
their dire living conditions that improved only once the siege was broken and the
city was “liberated” by regime forces (“The outcome of the ‘caliphate’ October
7th 2017 ANNA News Deir-ez-Zor documentary”). And just like Leningrad, the
city was subsequently hailed as “unsubdued” despite the long duration of the
siege (“Deir-ez-Zor, an unsubdued city”).
With regard to these two cities, but also to the fighting in Palmyra, the subtle
use of the World War II memory frame can also be illustrated by the attention
given to destructions, particularly when it comes to cultural heritage (Harmansah
2015).
The idea of urban destruction and the loss of cultural heritage is deeply rooted
in the collective memory of World War II in Russia. The war put a heavy burden
on Russian cultural goods, many of which were either looted or destroyed by
Nazi Germany, and left deep marks in the urban landscape of the USSR. Images
of destruction in Syria are shot to resemble these ruined cities, with their hol-
low buildings, and empty streets covered in rubble. As in documentaries on the
destruction of Soviet cities until 1945, ANNA News uses long, wide-angled,
aerial shots, with little commentary other than presenting the ruined cities and
putting the blame on the adversary. Such images have become a visual trope,
used to make a link between past and present destructions, and between ancient
and modern newsreels in the eye of the public. For example, the composition and
angles of the images used to characterize Aleppo in the documentary “Aleppo
earthquake” are surprisingly similar to the aerial images of Stalingrad after the
battle of 1943, featured the same year in the documentary “Heroic Stalingrad” by
Leonid Varlamov.
To conclude, references to World War II as it is remembered in Russia are key
to understanding the way ANNA News portrays and legitimizes the Russian inter-
vention in Syria. By downplaying Russian involvement in the war, the agency
legitimizes the Syrian government’s narrative of a patriotic fight against “jihad-
ism” while at the same time making Russian’s involvement in the war appear as
morally necessary in order to counter an evil enemy supported by foreign pow-
ers. Beyond this frame, ANNA News’ coverage of the war is also shaped by
references to the channel’s interpretation of Soviet and Russian interventions in
Afghanistan and Chechnya, which will be discussed in the next section.
Counterinformation and reframing: building a sequel

narrative to Russia’s wars against Muslim insurgents
References to collective memories of the Soviet and Russian wars in Afghanistan
and Chechnya are used by ANNA News as memory frame to suggest interpreta-
tions of the Syrian opposition forces. More conflictual than the memory of World
War II, these conflicts are characterized in Russia at the same time by some degree
of forgetfulness, and at the same time are a matter of heated debates in the political
and intellectual spheres. From a patriotic point of view, such as the one developed
by ANNA News, which shares a number of traits with the official and popular
memories of these wars, they are considered traumatic events and particularly
ill-managed conflicts. Nevertheless, they do not appear as illegitimate, as Soviet
and Russian soldiers as victims and heroes (Danilova 2014), fighting, to a large
extent, for a just cause, only to be blamed by the West (Russell 2002, Kadykalo
and Behrends 2015). On the one hand, these references are used to demonstrate
that Russia has learnt from past mistakes and that its involvement in Syria can-
not be compared to the past failures experienced by the Soviet Union and Russia,
and, as a result, to reject analogies between the Russian intervention in Syria and
those in Afghanistan and Chechnya. On the other hand, comparisons are indeed
made when it comes to the Western involvement in Afghanistan, enabling the
denunciation of what reporters present as the repetition of an irresponsible foreign
interference that fosters rather than combats terrorism.
As with World War II, direct references to Afghanistan and Chechnya are rela-
tively scarce. But the current conflict in Syria is presented in a way that it suggests
as a logical sequence of these earlier wars, incorporating the lessons from earlier
mistakes and failures. In all three conflicts, Russia is by now presented as fight-
ing against radical jihadist insurrections (Notte 2016), a memory reinterpretation
of the war in Afghanistan and of the First War in Chechnya in the light of the
Second War in Chechnya and of the Syrian conflict. Indeed, the Syrian rebels are
qualified as what can be translated as “militants” or “insurgents” in English, in
Russian “boiviki,” a word that was mainly used during the wars in Chechnya in
the 1990s (Goninaz 2003). The use of these terms thus suggests a similar nature
of the enemy – an interpretation that is reinforced by the highlighting of the pres-
ence of jihadi fighters from the Caucasus among the Syrian opposition forces
(Souleimanov 2014).
Russian troops appear rarely on screen, and when they do, it is mainly in sup-
porting roles, while the reporting emphasizes the agency of Syrian troops and
officers, and in particular the commanding Syrian generals, Suhail al Hassan and
Issam Zahreddin. This relative lack of Russian presence can be interpreted as a
means to say that this is not a new war of Afghanistan (which was characterized
by a heavy Russian military footprint, including scores of Soviet conscripts), in
which the Red Army dominated the military action against the Mujahideen com-
pared to the role played by Afghan government forces. This way of narrating the
conflict insists on the lessons Russia has learnt when it comes to counter-insur-
gency warfare, particularly with regard to communication strategy aspects (Hahn
2008, Blank 2013). These lessons include the necessity to embed Russian troops
more deeply with local forces, to restrain the public visibility of Russian forces
in Syria, and to carefully develop a justificatory narrative for the war, aimed both
at Russian and foreign audiences. In this regard, the attention devoted to the role
of the Russian military police in Aleppo is particularly telling (“Russian military
police in Aleppo,” “Russian military keeps playgrounds safe for Aleppo chil-
dren”). The soldiers, well-equipped and disciplined, do not appear as threatening
warriors, but are rather presented as a sort of peacekeeping force, supervising
ceasefires and protecting local civilians. This goes as far as mentioning Russian
246 Thomas Richard
soldiers using popular Western culture to bond with the local population, for
instance when a Russian soldier is shown entertaining Syrian children by singing
a popular French song (“ZAZ Je veux, Russian soldier in Syria cover”).
Furthermore, the Russian military deployment is presented as being part of
a multi-faceted, civil-military engagement in Syria that balances instruments of
hard and soft power and includes humanitarian, medical, and cultural actions
(Van Herpen p. 47, 67; “Aleppo female medics presented with flowers and cake
on Women’s Day,” “Russian center opens in Damascus state university”). Rather
than insisting on the geopolitical motives for the Russian intervention in Syria,
reporters use legal terms commonly used to justify Western interventions, includ-
ing notions such as “responsibility to protect” or “duty to intervene.” These are
reinterpreted to fit the Russian policy in the Middle East (Charap 2013), but above
all to develop a moral narrative that lacked in the Afghan and Chechen inter-
ventions of the 1980s and 1990s. As a result, this helps avoid the impression of
Russian soldiers acting as occupying forces – in contrast to Western media rep-
resentations of the past wars in Afghanistan and Chechnya, especially during the
First War in Chechnya where Russian soldiers were shown in Western media as
undisciplined and brutal looters (Lieven 2000).
Furthermore, as are portrayed Syrian soldiers and as were the Soviets during
World War II, these soldiers are presented as coming from all the nationalities and
religious backgrounds present in Russia, with a majority being Muslims recruited
in Chechnya. When interviewed, their officers underline the fact that their faith
enables them to better understand local customs and habits, and that they consider
it their duty to be there, given their experience with the wars in the Caucasus. This
presentation contrasts with the perceived military failure in Afghanistan during
the 1980s, when the USSR was not able to take advantage of its various nationali-
ties, and is presented as being in sharp contrast with the more brutal and distant
behaviour of Western troops in Iraq during the 2000s.
Another lesson that can be perceived as being gleaned from earlier Russian
interventions is the coverage of casualties. While Soviet media were known for
silencing the number of civilian and military casualties in Afghanistan, Russian
reporters, and particularly those working for ANNA News, seem to avoid euphe-
mizing the Syrian civil war. Indeed, in the ANNA coverage, the Syrian civil war
appears as a succession of particularly impressive and gruesome images (Brown
2015). Be it in Deir-ez-Zor, the Ghouta, Aleppo, or in the North, viewers can
watch the scores of wounded and the dead, including sometimes their body parts,
and can listen to interviews of amputees (“Storming of Deir-ez-Zor,” “Doctors
examine girl who lost her legs in shelling”).
These editorial choices thus can be seen as a reaction to the censored way state
media reported the war in Afghanistan and which led to increasing distrust among
the Soviet population (Downing 1988), but also to the lack of a proactive Russian
coverage of the war in Chechnya that enabled the hegemonic influence of Western
media in the framing of this war. The crudeness of these shown images provides
testimonial legitimacy, thus asserting, within the context of post-Soviet Russia,
that they are not censored (Tejkalova et al. 2017) and thus can be trusted.
Besides the conveying of implicit lessons gleaned from the interventions
in Afghanistan and Chechnya, these memory frames are also used to develop
a counter-narrative with regard to the framing of the Russian intervention by
Western mainstream media. Indeed, the ANNA News coverage mobilizes the
memory of the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan to highlight the fact that like in
the 1980s in Afghanistan, Western powers are once again sponsoring insurgent
forces trying to bring down the legitimate local government (“White Helmets,
the mask of terror” “Attack on a Russian patrol in Syria”).5 Here the report-
ers refer to the financial, medical, and military support Western powers gave to
the Afghan Mujahideen, a support that paved the way for the subsequent rise of
jihadi networks around the world, including the one led by Osama Bin Laden.
These claims enabled the implicit construction of a historical analogy between
Western involvement in Afghanistan during the 1980s and in today’s Syria. The
refusal to apply the distinction made by Western media between “moderates”
and “radicals” opposition forces can be seen as contributing to this objective.
Despite obviously detailed knowledge of the various factions fighting in Syria,
and as already observed above, the coverage by ANNA News tends to put them
all together under the jihadi category. Western attempts to uphold this distinc-
tion are sarcastically dismissed by using the term “so-called moderate rebels” on
every occasion, at times replaced by the slightly more cynical term “moderate
head-choppers.”
ANNA News’ framing of military equipment used by opposition forces illus-
trates this last point further as reporters focus on Western equipment that was
taken from militant groups in Syria and inspected by Syrian and Russian officials
at the end of major battles (“Russian sappers sweep Aleppo for mines, discov-
ering shells made in US, Germany,” “US weapons found in liberated town of
Homs”). These exposures allow reporters to make analogies with the US-made
Stinger missiles that were given to the Afghan Mujahideen, which, after being
used against the Soviets, became an issue for the security of the US (Kuperman
1999). The coverage of Western training provided to opposition fighters is simi-
larly used to bolster the analogy with the Western involvement in Afghanistan,
because it enables reporters to denounce the fact that these trained rebels are in
fact jihadis who will turn on their former allies, as they did in Afghanistan (“The
ISIS triangle and what is really going on in US-controlled Rukban camp”). In
other words, like in Afghanistan, the West stands accused of creating the terror-
ism it pretends to fight. Humanitarian workers are not spared in this information
war, as the White Helmets of Aleppo became the subject of a violent documentary
by ANNA News (“White Helmets, the mask of terror”) accusing them of being
a faux-nez for jihadi groups, the reference behind this accusation being Western
humanitarian mobilization in Afghanistan and Chechnya. Despite being rejected
by Western media, these accusations were serious enough to prompt a reappraisal
of the White Helmets’ part in the Syrian civil war (Pacheco et al. 2020). This
analogy is underlined in a few videos by using archival footage, in which contem-
porary Syrian opposition fighters are compared to al Qaeda militants operating in
Afghanistan.6
248 Thomas Richard
Conclusion
ANNA News’ coverage of the Syrian war appears as a complex phenomenon,
deeply rooted in past conflicts that drive the reporters’ understanding of the situa-
tion, Rather than sheer propaganda, it develops a narrative of the war that justifies
the Kremlin’s position and its intervention in the country, but goes far beyond the
geopolitical elements usually evoked (Bagdonas 2012). If power play, prestige,
and military issues are central in Putin’s Russia stand on Syria, it also appears
that, beyond the strategic alliance between the two countries, the Syrian conflict
has been an opportunity for non-state actors such as ANNA News to develop new
and creative memory framing, subtly legitimizing the Russian narrative of the war
while at the same time countering narratives developed by many Western media.
While Russian officials may use the past in order to justify the Russian choice
to intervene, ANNA News reporters adopt a much more empathic stance towards
the Syrian government forces that complements and goes beyond official state-
ments. To them, these forces are considered as some kind of equivalent to the
heroic narrative of Soviet troops who faced the Nazis, as they stand on the front-
line against jihadi aggression. At the same time, the references to the Afghan
and Chechen wars, whose failures are well-rooted in both Russian and Western
memories, are reinterpreted. Syria is framed as a conflict in which Russia, unlike
its Western counterparts, has learnt from its past mistakes and that therefore some
of the traumas rooted in its past interventions have been overcome.
By developing these complex, multi-dimensional memory frames, ANNA
News can be considered an unusual agent of memory fragmentation. To be sure,
the channel does not challenge the contents of the official memory discourses
produced by the contemporary Russian state under Vladimir Putin. But the fact
that a news channel operating from outside the Russian territory can provide sub-
tle memory narratives to transnational audiences, both within Russia and (to an
arguably more limited extent) beyond, particularly in areas such as China and
Iran, which are rather ignored in this regard by Western media, highlights the fact
that new and differentiated memory discourses are more and more disseminated
“from above” the state – here via satellite TV, YouTube, and other transnational
media infrastructure. Actors like ANNA News that are neither fully controlled nor
openly opposed to the Russian government can potentially reconfigure, perhaps
even restrain, the Russian state’s ability to provide authoritative discourses on the
national memory through ceremonies, discourses, and via its network of state-
owned media. Russian citizens may increasingly become aware of the various
ways the past can be articulated to justify the present, and thus become increas-
ingly aware that there is a plurality of discourses over the national past, even
if ANNA News stands as a particularly patriotic player in this field. Thus, the
Russian involvement in Syria may be considered as a mirror through which the
coverage of the present helps Russia to reflect on its past. The war is presented
along lines of understanding that allow viewers to “inhabit” (de Certeau 1990 p.
239) the conflict, according to their own memories of past wars, which may or
may not conform to the memory discourses produced by the state.
Beyond this domestic dimension, ANNA News’ use of memory frames also
has a transnational dimension, especially when it comes to reacting to interpreta-
tions produced by Western media. Strongly opposing the Western narrative of
the Syrian civil war, ANNA News aims at providing an alternative historical and
memorial framing of the war that valorizes the Russian ability to “learn” from
past failures, compared to the Western obsession with repeating the mistakes of
the past. In this regard, despite limited means, ANNA News acts as a memory
entrepreneur on the global media scene. As such coverage, combined of course
with discourses produced by more influential non-Western media outlets, circu-
lates across territorial and sometimes even linguistic borders, ANNA News con-
tributes to subtly challenge hegemonic memory frames in other societies. It is
of course impossible to measure the impact of these challenges – but given the
increasingly polarized debates on military interventions in Western societies, one
can assume that these challenges were not completely ineffective.
Notes
1 In 2017, however, the agency’s headquarters was moved to Moscow, and the first “A”
in its name was changed as standing for “Analytical.”»
2 ANNA News’ main YouTube channel was discontinued several times (RT 2020).
Nevertheless, despite the loss, some of the most impressive videos are still visible, as
they have been uploaded on other channels. Since ANNA News’ main channel is still
discontinued at the time of writing, despite originally coming from ANNA News, my
references will come from these other YouTube channels.
3 https://anna-news.info/
4 Depending on the situation, the Soviet identity might be put forward, namely when
other former Soviet nations are involved in the celebration. But as a whole, Russia
tends to interpret its Soviet heritage as Russian.
5 The video for this last report has been deleted, but the article that sums it up is still
available here: https://anna-news.info/attack-on-a-russian-patrol-in-syria/ last viewed
05/07/2021
6 Unfortunately, these videos were among the ones deleted by YouTube which could not
be retrieved.
References
Bagdonas, A. (2012). Russia’s interests in the Syrian conflict: Power, prestige, and profit.
European Journal of Economic and Political Studies, 5(2), 55–77.
Blank, S. (2013). Russian information warfare as domestic counterinsurgency. American
Foreign Policy Interests, 35(1), 31–44.
Brown, J. D. (2015). “A Nightmare Painted by Goya”: Russian media coverage of the
Syrian chemical weapons attacks in comparative perspective. Problems of Post-
Communism, 62(4), 236–246.
Certeau, M. D. (1990). L'invention du quotidien. Paris: Gallimard.
Charap, S. (2013). Russia, Syria and the doctrine of intervention. Survival, 55(1), 35–41.
Danilova, N. (2014). Victims and heroes: commemorating the Russian military casualties
in the Chechen conflicts (pp. 58–75). London: Routledge.
Doucet, L. (2018). Syria & the CNN effect: What role does the media play in policy-
making?. Daedalus, 147(1), 141–157.
250 Thomas Richard
Downing, J. D. (1988). Trouble in the backyard: Soviet media reporting on the Afghanistan
conflict. Journal of Communication, 38(2), 5–32.
Goninaz, M. D. (2003). De quelques emplois de la notion de «terrorisme» dans la presse
russe. Topique, 2, 129–134.
Hahn, G. M. (2008). The Jihadi insurgency and the Russian counterinsurgency in the North
Caucasus. Post-Soviet Affairs, 24(1), 1–39.
Halbwachs, M. (1997). La mémoire collective. Paris: Albin Michel.
Harmanşah, Ö. (2015). ISIS, heritage, and the spectacles of destruction in the global media.
Near Eastern Archaeology, 78(3), 170–177.
Kadykało, A., & Behrends, J. C. (2015). The Afghan war (1979–1989) in the cultural
memory of the Russians. Cultural Analysis, 14, 48–85.
Khaldarova, I., & Pantti, M. (2016). Fake news: The narrative battle over the Ukrainian
conflict. Journalism Practice, 10(7), 891–901.
Kirschenbaum, L. A. (2006). The legacy of the siege of Leningrad, 1941–1995: Myth,
memories, and monuments. Cambridge University Press.
Kostetskaya, A. (2016). Stalingrad re-imagined as mythical chronotope: Fedor Bondarchuk’s
Stalingrad in IMAX 3D. Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 10(1), 47–61.
Kucherenko, O. (2021). 7 Lend-lease in war and Russian memory. In The memory of the
second world war in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia. Routledge.
Kuperman, A. J. (1999). The Stinger missile and US intervention in Afghanistan. Political
Science Quarterly, 114(2), 219–263.
Lieven, A. (2000). Through a distorted lens: Chechnya and the Western media. Current
History, 99(639), 321.
Macgilchrist, F. (2007). Positive discourse analysis: Contesting dominant discourses by
reframing the issues. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines,
1(1), 74–94.
Makhortykh, M. (2022). Historical Memory and Securitisation of the Russian Intervention
in Syria. In: Klymenko, L., Siddi, M. (eds) Historical Memory and Foreign Policy.
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15194-1_8.
Malinova, O. (2017). Political uses of the great patriotic war in post-Soviet Russia from
Yeltsin to Putin. In War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (pp. 43–70).
Palgrave Macmillan.
Markwick, R. D. (2012). The great patriotic war in Soviet and post-Soviet collective
memory. In The Oxford handbook of postwar European history. Oxford Academic.
https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199560981.013.0035.
Markwick, R. D. (2018). ‘The Motherland Calls’: Soviet women in the great patriotic
war, 1941–1945. In The Palgrave handbook of women and gender in twentieth-century
Russia and the Soviet Union (pp. 217–232). Palgrave Macmillan.
Napolitano, V. (2012). La mobilisation des réfugiés palestiniens dans le sillage de la
«révolution» syrienne: s’engager sous contrainte. Cultures & Conflits, 87, 119–137.
Notte, H. (2016). Russia in Chechnya and Syria: Pursuit of strategic goals. Middle East
Policy, 23(1), 59–74.
Pacheco, D., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2020, April). Unveiling coordinated groups
behind white helmets disinformation. In Companion Proceedings of the Web
Conference 2020 (pp. 611–616).
Revel, J. (2000). Pratiques du contemporain et régimes d’historicité. Actualités du
Contemporain (Le genre humain), 35, 13–20.
RT (2020). We got a complaint: YouTube deletes channels focusing on Crimea & eastern
Ukraine, cites ‘terms of use’ violation. https://www.rt.com/news/489243-youtube
-delete-channels-crimea/
Russell, J. (2002). Mujahedeen, mafia, madmen: Russian perceptions of Chechens during
the wars in Chechnya, 1994–96 and 1999–2001. The Journal of Communist Studies and
Transition Politics, 18(1), 73–96.
Souleimanov, E. A. (2014). Globalizing Jihad? North Caucasians in the Syrian civil war.
Middle East Policy, 21(3), 154–162.
Tejkalova, A. N., de Beer, A. S., Berganza, R., Kalyango Jr, Y., Amado, A., Ozolina,
L., & Moreira, S. V. (2017). In media we trust: Journalists and institutional trust
perceptions in post-authoritarian and post-totalitarian countries. Journalism Studies,
18(5), 629–644.
Toivanen, M., & Baser, B. (2016). Gender in the representations of an armed conflict:
Female Kurdish combatants in French and British media. Middle East Journal of
Culture and Communication, 9(3), 294–314.
Tumarkin, N. (2003). The Great Patriotic War as myth and memory. European Review,
11(4), 595–611.
Van Herpen, M. H. (2015). Putin’s propaganda machine: Soft power and Russian foreign
policy. Rowman & Littlefield.
Wood, E. A. (2011). Performing memory: Vladimir Putin and the celebration of World
War II in Russia. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 38(2), 172–200.
Quoted video material (all videos have been last

accessed between 20 May and 9 July 2020):
« Aleppo Battlefield: Russian report heroes of al Kindi Hospital » Daniel Fry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Q88UnyMZQ&bpctr=1594011061
« Aleppo earthquake » R&U Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFYmrMCbwBw
« Aleppo female medics presented with flowers and cake on Women's Day » Ruptly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22nU3Me-C1I
« Anna News presents Deir-ez-Zor under siege » R&U Videos https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=KewY8HETxhY&t=188s
« ANNA News reporter tasting mate with Hezbollah Syrian soldiers » Ivan Sidorenko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFjjFo5NK7E
« Battles for Aleppo: October 2016, on the front lines with Liwa al Quds » John Smith III
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWkON4BUTdE
« Deir-ez-Zor an unsubdued city » Erzu Aytkhaloy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtBQJevGniA
« Doctors examine girl who lost her legs in shelling » RT https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=l2LZZKDWoQ0&t=7s
« Palmyra: Syrian army Desert Falcons hours before storming Palmyra » Ivan Sidorenko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBDW7emIpWg&list=PLbBv32uqs_ZlfgpjRt9yx
G0CKwX3BQDZp&index=6&t=0s
« Palmyra in 306 scars left behind by ISIS » RT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyrTIVjkxfI
« Pray for Palmyra concert conducted by Gergiev goes ahead in Palmyra » Ruptly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVTQkYjv1h4
« Russian centre opens in Damascus state university » RT https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=Or9-267TMbs
« Russian military keeps playgrounds safe for Aleppo children » Vesti News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izHzREvf9a8
252 Thomas Richard
« Russian military police in Aleppo » Heavy War clashes https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=Nxwlv0sa7Wk
« Russian sappers sweep Aleppo for mines, discovering shells made in US, Germany » RT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WvNlM1xaFaQ
« Storming of Deir-ez-Zor » R&U Videos
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Bm-fLqY_ig
« Syria: Christians pack Damascus church to join Pope’s plea for peace » Ruptly
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=m4wNHxyBm08&list=UU5aeU5hk31cLzq_sAExLVWg&index=58078
« Syria: great Russian war report on Syrian special brigade the Desert Eagles » Frontinfo
Syria HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKWsMvpxaRA
« Syria Captain Ghaleb » War and peace in Syria
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HJ5Sh-L8qo
« Syrian girls defend their town against Western-backed « moderate rebels » »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTKIqc6vQXI
« Ten tons of humanitarian aid arrive in Hmeymin » Ruptly https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=u6GthRjh4Pc
« The ISIS triangle and what is really going on in US-controlled Rukban camp » Vanessa
Beeley
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXSZxOyxL8k
« The outcome of the ‘caliphate’ October 7th 2017 ANNA News Deir-ez-Zor documentary
» R&U
Videos https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anna+news+deir+ez+zor
« Tiger Force … Road to Aleppo February 2020 » R&U videos https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=-w-fEN4iiY8
« US weapons found in liberated town of Homs » Ruptly https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=EdP0Gk_x1SE
« White Helmets, the mask of terror » Hands off Syria https://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=TSgKdo9NKCU&bpctr=1594174958
« ZAZ Je veux Russian soldier in Syria cover » Николай Должанский
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-6hfrL32Do
Conclusion
Overall findings and implications for the heuristic
and normative value of “memory fragmentation”
Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, and
Eric Sangar
Since the 1990s, the so-called “boom” of memory studies (Olick et al., 2011,
p. 3; Winter, 2001) has produced a considerable body of theoretical and empirical
knowledge on the social and political dynamics of intersubjective representations
of the past. Building on the foundational work by Maurice Halbwachs’ sociology
of memory (Halbwachs, 1994 (1925)), scholars from different disciplines have
argued that political actors can “use” the past to create and maintain an identity
for their political communities and thus legitimize present political action, includ-
ing decisions to go to war, but also to promote processes of reconciliation. Others
have emphasized processes of memory “reframing” or “contestation” driven by
subaltern social groups, memory entrepreneurs, intellectuals, or religious lead-
ers. Overall, these studies have enabled scholars researching on conflict and post-
conflict to understand why the past is mobilized in the present, and how collective
representations of the past may facilitate or constrain an escalation but also the
overcoming of political violence.
At least implicitly, many of the accounts assume an essentially hierarchical
relationship between collective representations of the past and political mobili-
zation supporting or challenging them. Political and institutional actors are per-
ceived to “impose” or “construct” (more or less) dominating narratives of the past,
which are “contested” or “challenged” by subaltern social groups and memory
entrepreneurs. Against this, the guiding hypothesis of this volume has been that as
the conditions of the articulation and definition of social frameworks of memory
in contexts of conflict and post-conflict have changed, processes of what we call
“fragmentation of collective memory” have increased. Reflecting larger trends,
including tendencies towards political polarization within political communities,
the densification of transnational memory discourses, and the increasing facility
of disseminating hitherto “dominated” memory frames through media like social
networks and historical research, we have positioned an analytical model that
differentiates between two conceptual logics of memory fragmentation: “vertical
fragmentation” and “horizontal fragmentation.” The category of “horizontal frag-
mentation” refers to phenomena of memory fragmentation characterized by the
occurrence of several, sometimes conflicting memory discourses occurring within
the public sphere and/or the political institutions of a given political community.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251-21
The category of “vertical fragmentation” designates those memory discourses that
are produced “beyond” or “below” the central state, often transcending national
boundaries and sometimes in conflict with discourses promoted by the state. Both
categories include a variety of political actors and motivations.
What do the 15 case studies, covering four types of actors, tell us about the
relevance of this framework? Rather than summarizing the results of each chap-
ter individually, we will discuss this question according to the main cross-case
observations.
First, does the increased presence of memory discourses produced by actors
from below and beyond the state, facilitated by more horizontal means of com-
munication such as social networks, diminish governments’ capability of “gov-
erning” frames of national memory in conflict and post-conflict societies? The
analytical results presented in different chapters paint a certainly more complex,
partially inconclusive picture. Arguably, some contributors have well illustrated
processes of “vertical fragmentation” in which hitherto marginal actors (such as
women’s activists, professional historians, or victim associations) have slowly
become more successful in injecting their memory claims into public discourse
and in some cases even in modifying the discourses produced by governments (see
the chapters by Stipe Odak, Johanna Mannergren Selimovic, Valentin Behr, Elise
Féron, and Sandra Rios Oyola). But most of these actors also formulate demands
towards governments, asking for increased “official” recognition and integration
in commemoration activities sponsored by governments. This may suggest that
governments still occupy the position of gatekeepers to national frames of mem-
ory, probably resulting from their exclusive access to instruments, symbols, and
resources of the state. Furthermore, we have also seen evidence of governments’
skilful adaptation to the changing conditions of production and dissemination of
memory discourses. Valérie Rosoux’s and Thomas Richard’s chapters show how
governments integrate non-state actors into their dissemination efforts. Such tac-
tics are obviously easier for authoritarian regimes. However, Elise Julien presents
an example of a rather symbiotic, albeit at times less hierarchical relationship
between a non-state memory actor, and successive German regimes since the
1920s. Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert contribute yet another possi-
ble adaptation of national governments when analyzing the commemoration of
the Paris attacks of November 2015: rather than developing a clear-cut narrative
identifying perpetrators, official discourses emphasized a “universalist” mourning
of human suffering, thereby leaving space for other memory discourses, including
those expressed by the Paris Saint German football fans.
Second, does fragmentation actually happen “horizontally,” that is, across
political institutions? The chapters by Mathias Delori, Christophe Wasinski, Eric
Sangar and Antoine Younsi uncover the surprising autonomy and “creativity”
of military organizations, usually perceived to be subject to the control of their
civilian governments, to produce and disseminate memory discourses that differ
from the ones upheld by their governments. These discourses may even imply a
thorough challenge for civil-military relations, as in the case of Germany. Such
attempts often reflect hitherto hidden memory transmissions within military
Conclusion 255
organizations, as in the case of military memories of the colonial wars which have
been transmitted internally as part of the military doctrine of the French army.
Mathias Delori’s chapter adds that concrete bureaucratic needs, such as the justifi-
cation of additional funding and bureaucratic autonomy, can also motivate efforts
to produce and disseminate competing representations of the past. Outside the
realm of military actors, Sandra Rios Oyola offers a particularly original insight
into what one could call a hybridization of horizontal and vertical memory frag-
mentation: bodies created by the government precisely to prevent vertical frag-
mentation originating from civil societies actually develop a memory agenda on
their own, fuelled by the scientific practices and epistemological standards of his-
torians employed in these bodies. A last perspective is given by Thomas Serrier’s
chapter, focusing on the role played by political cleavages among the holders
of power within national political systems. In Poland, the decentralization and
pluralization following the end of the Cold War have enabled political parties to
engage in competing memory discourses in order to promote their contemporary
political agendas. Despite a return of some authoritarian tendencies in Poland,
such politically motivated horizontal fragmentation is still ongoing in contempo-
rary Poland.
This last point underlines the necessity to consider the political context. As a
matter of fact, memory fragmentation is more likely to happen in contexts where
pluralist media, free elections, open civil societies and independent scientific dis-
courses are present. However, this does not mean that authoritarian systems can
today easily maintain government control of national memory frames: the devel-
opment of social networks but also of transnationally organized civil society actors
as well as international organizations has made it easier for marginalized memory
narratives to be voiced in national publics and institutions, even if authoritarian
governments retain overwhelming resources to disseminate hegemonic narratives
through education, commemorations, repressive policies, and state propaganda.
The example of the Russian NGO Memorial International illustrates this point
well. Despite the Russian government’s efforts to limit the organization’s capa-
bility to resist the construction of a national memory framework re-valorizing
the Soviet Union, including its outright ban of the NGO in 2021, Memorial has
managed to continue to operate outside Russia and to disseminate its memory
discourses via transnational activist networks and social networks (Rouet, 2022).
In Table 17.1, we summarize each chapter’s finding with regards to the book’s
overall analytical framework.
A question we have shied away from answering so far is the following: should
memory fragmentation be considered good or bad? The term fragmentation is
certainly associated with contestation, disagreement, polarization. However, our
conceptualization does not pretend that the absence of fragmentation means the
existence of a harmonious, consensual imagination of the past, quite the contrary.
A lack of means or even a repression of collective memories that violate the offi-
cial frames defined by government may be linked to structural violence, trauma,
and resentment experienced by marginalized groups and individuals (Fanon,
2002 (1961); Petersen, 2002). As Valérie Rosoux’s chapter shows, these dangers
Table 17.1 Comparative overview of the results of each chapter
Chapter number and Fragmentation actor(s) Horizontal Vertical Memory role of

author fragmentation? fragmentation? government diminished?
2 / Stipe Odak Civil society: victim associations Yes No Uncertain
3 / Johanna Mannergren Civil society: victim associations, activists No Yes Yes
Selimovic
4 / Elise Féron Civil society: victim associations, activists No Yes Yes
5 / Elise Julien Civil society: commemoration association No Yes No
6 / Thomas Serrier Civil society: intellectuals, political parties Yes Yes Yes
7 / Delphine Griveaud Civil society: football supporter groups No Yes No
& Solveig Hennebert
8 / Sandra Rios Oyola Historians: members of government commemoration group Yes Yes Yes
9 / Emmanuelle Hébert Historians: members of bilateral textbook commission Yes Uncertain Yes
10 / Valentin Behr Historians: Holocaust scholars No Yes Yes
11 / Mathias Delori Military organizations: leadership of the US Air Force Yes No Uncertain
12 / Christophe Military organizations: officers of the French army Yes Yes Uncertain
Wasinski
13 / Eric Sangar Military organizations: officers of the German army Yes Yes Yes
14 / Antoine Younsi Military organizations: officers of the French army Yes No Uncertain
15 / Valérie Rosoux Transnational organizations: international peacebuilding No Yes No
NGOs
16 / Thomas Richard Transnational organizations: international news agency No Yes Uncertain
Conclusion 257
are even to be seen in contexts where the goal is to “reconcile” and to “heal” a
society after a genocide committed even amongst members of the same family.
Furthermore, national frames, if uncontested, may lock societies and their leaders
into romanticized narratives of their national past, possibly resulting in problem-
atic misperceptions of and subsequently conflicts over recognition, as the outside
world may not share the carefully crafted memory frame a national government
has successfully imposed (Lindemann, 2010; Wolf, 2011).
On the other hand, unchecked fragmentation can, in our view, have negative
effects on societies, including on the actors themselves who have successfully
challenged the hegemonic frame of national memories. Stipe Odak discusses
the potential implications of such situation in his chapter: societies may become
divided as a result of a competition for recognition among groups which define
themselves according to an exclusionary victim identity (Lefranc, 2002; Lefranc
et al., 2008). Furthermore, we could question to what extent any society actually
does need a form of shared vision of its past in order to find some basic consensus
on its present normative, beyond a simple coordination of the rational interests
of its members. This supposition is certainly at the core of Maurice Halbwachs’
reflections, although he rarely considers national communities. A country like
post-war West Germany that built its national memory frame on the – certainly
incomplete – recognition of a German responsibility for the crimes committed
during the Nazi period, illustrates that such unifying narratives do not necessarily
have to produce enmity and a desire for revenge.
We therefore think that the concept of memory fragmentation should be used,
above all, as an analytical concept to capture changes in the dynamic of produc-
tion and dissemination of memory discourses within a society, thereby modifying
government’s capability to influence the frames of what are considered “national”
memories. This being said, we do believe that fragmentation processes are not irre-
versible. They may contribute to “open” national frames, accompanying a proper
democratic deliberation, such as the increasing tendency to recognize crimes com-
mitted by European colonial powers as a result of social movements such as Black
Lives Matter (Steinberg, 2022; Verbeeck, 2021). This might correspond to Michael
Rothberg’s proposition of “multidirectional memories” in contemporary societies
(Rothberg, 2009). There are no objective reasons to prevent frames of national
memory from acknowledging wrongdoings of formerly dominant actors or from
differentiating narratives that go beyond a binary victim-perpetrator dichotomy. The
empirical likelihood of such “inclusive” frames to emerge depends, of course, on
the political institutions and context as well as on the incentives for political actors
to engage in cross-societal dialogue rather than in identity politics.
The case studies of this book have produced ample evidence of the complexity
of memory fragmentation processes, including the fact that civil society actors
and transnational organizations do not always challenge but sometimes also sta-
bilize memory frames produced by governments. Further comparative research
would be needed in order to see if there are any generic factors that favour mem-
ory fragmentation, such as the structure of the political system, the international
environment, or the quality of democracy.
As this conclusion is being written, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is ongo-
ing. Most memory scholars usually assert that specific events have only indirect
effects on actual memory discourses. According to Schudson, the range of empiri-
cally observable discourses on the past is limited by “the structure of available
pasts [in terms of the configuration of historical events], the structure of individual
choices, and the conflicts about the past among a multitude of mutually aware
individuals or groups” (Schudson, 1989, p. 107). But wars are events of a magni-
tude whose impact can suddenly modify the “balance of power” between coexist-
ing memory discourses beyond the control of the social actors promoting them,
including authoritarian governments. The rapidly evolving memory frameworks
in Ukraine as a result of the Russian invasion can illustrate this.
Ukraine was long perceived to be a society shaped by memory conflicts
(Narvselius, 2012; Ostriitchouk, 2013; Zhurzhenko, 2014): the Ukrainian society
has been characterized – in a slightly caricatural way – as deeply divided along
the Dnieper line: the West of the country being considered as nationalistic, turned
towards Western Europe and valorizing controversial nationalist heroes such as
Stepan Bandera, while the East would be exclusively Russian-speaking, identify
as Russian and seeking closer ties with Russia at any cost. Since the Russian
attack of 2022 however, and at the time of writing at least, a country-wide unity
in discourse has developed about the value of the independence of Ukraine and its
genuine difference from Russia. The previously so-called “pro-Russian” popula-
tion, generally referring to Russian-speaking people living in Eastern Ukraine,
woke up in February while being bombed by their neighbouring country. A conse-
quence of this contemporary violence might be a “defragmentation” of Ukrainian
memories, creating a wider consensus for a national memory frame based on the
idea of an autonomous Ukrainian national identity which has been repeatedly
threatened by external actors. But if this defragmentation includes a growing rec-
ognition of Ukraine as a “European” and democratic community, could this also
create the conditions for a public recognition of hitherto marginalized memory
discourses, including the ones about war crimes committed by Ukrainians against
Jews and other minorities during World War II? In other words, could the war
indirectly create the conditions for a “multidirectional memory” in which multiple
narratives on historical wrongdoings can coexist?
References
Fanon, F. (2002 (1961)). Les damnés de la terre. Paris: la Découverte.
Halbwachs, M. (1994 (1925)). Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire. Paris: Albin Michel.
Lefranc, S. (2002). Politiques du pardon. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.
Lefranc, S., Mathieu, L., & Siméant, J. (2008). Les victimes écrivent leur Histoire.
Introduction. Raisons Politiques, 30(2), 5–19. doi:10.3917/rai.030.0005
Lindemann, T. (2010). Causes of war: The struggle for recognition. Colchester: ECPR
Press.
Narvselius, E. (2012). The “Bandera Debate”: The contentious legacy of World War II and
liberalization of collective memory in Western Ukraine. Canadian Slavonic Papers,
54(3–4), 469–490. doi:10.1080/00085006.2012.11092718
Conclusion 259
Olick, J. K., Vinitzky-Seroussi, V., & Levy, D. (2011). Introduction. In J. K. Olick, V.
Vinitzky-Seroussi, & D. Levy (Eds.), The collective memory reader (pp. 3–62). New
York / Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ostriitchouk, O. (2013). Les Ukrainiens face à leur passé: vers une meilleure compréhension
du clivage Est/Ouest. Bruxelles: P.I.E. Peter Lang.
Petersen, R. D. (2002). Understanding ethnic violence: Fear, hatred, and resentment in
twentieth-century Eastern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional memory: Remembering the holocaust in the age of
decolonization. Redwood City: Stanford University Press.
Rouet, G. (2022). Memorial: une ONG qui dérange…. Hermès, la Revue, 89(1), 124–128.
Schudson, M. (1989). The present in the past versus the past in the present. Communication,
11(2), 105–113.
Steinberg, P. (2022). Blue Planet, Black lives: Matter, memory, and the temporalities of
political geography. Political Geography, 96, 1–12. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102524
Verbeeck, G. (2021). The haunting past of colonialism in Belgium: The death of Patrice
Lumumba in public memory. International Public History, 4(2), 89–98. doi:10.1515/
iph-2021-2029
Winter, J. (2001). The generation of memory: Reflections on the “memory boom” in
contemporary historical studies. Canadian Military History, 10(3), 5.
Wolf, R. (2011). Respect and disrespect in international politics: The significance of status
recognition. International Theory, 3(1), 105–142.
Zhurzhenko, T. (2014). A divided nation? Reconsidering the role of identity politics in the
Ukraine crisis. Die Friedens-Warte, 89(1/2), 249–267.

Memory Fragmentation From Below and Beyond The State

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Memory Fragmentation From Below and Beyond The State

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Memory Fragmentation From Below and Beyond The State

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Memory Fragmentation from Below and

Beyond the State

This volume suggests a model of collective memory that distinguishes between

Eric Sangar is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po Lille,

Valérie Rosoux is Research Director at the FNRS and Professor in Political

Anne Bazin is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po Lille,

Emmanuelle Hébert is Guest Lecturer in Political Science at the Université

Titles in this series

22. Memory and Identity

Edited by Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux,

List of illustrations viii

1 Introduction: “Memory fragmentation” as a new heuristic tool

2 Construction of victimhood and its fragmentation within

3 Gender, memory, and peace: struggles between

4 Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence:

5 The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge: A century of

7 The PSG Ultras’ annual commemoration of the 13 November

8 The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia 109

9 Transforming the Polish-German past: Towards a common

10 When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories:

11 Understanding the fragmentation of the memory of the Allied

12 Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past

13 “Hurra, wir können’s noch!”: How NATO’s counterinsurgency

15 Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”?:

16 ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?

Conclusion: Overall findings and implications for the heuristic

For example, as governments’ capability of defining hegemonic frames of

Table 1.1 Conceptual characteristics of horizontal and vertical memory fragmentation

Horizontal fragmentation Vertical fragmentation

interconnectedness and of the material and ideational weakening of the central

Civil society actors

1 Memories of suffering have an important role in

In other words, a group can experience numerous episodes of victimization with-

2 Development of a victimhood identity assumes past suffering

3 Nations used to be dominant frameworks for the

4 Importance of nations in the construction of victimhood

1. Increased memorialization of non-national tragedies: the first, and argu-

4. Increasing “individualization” of wars: The twentieth century brought

5. Intersectional analyses of victimhood: The very understanding of victimi-

5 Modelling victimhood identity: We, They, Them

Figure 2.1 Victimhood identity and we constructions. Source: Author.

6 Inclusive and exclusive forms of victimhood fragmentation

Fragmented memories: an island and an archipelago

Gender in homogenizing memory work

Mothers and de/sexualized bodies

Marginalizations and erasures

Challenges to homogenizing narratives

Art as a site for contestations

Concluding discussion: gendered memory production

Patterns of silencing and vertical fragmentation of

The standardization and horizontal fragmentation of

the Bosnian Serb women survivors of conflict-related sexual violence were

“when remembering becomes a collective process, the structuring effect of

As a consequence, and especially as far as traumatic and unspeakable memories

Tensions and resistances around SGBV memorialization

“many Rwandan women refused to participate in genocide commemoration

AU: Should pub-

After World War I: an increasingly polarized political arena

Since 1945: a strong continuum and gradual transformations

List of illustrations viii

Table 1.1 Conceptual characteristics of horizontal and vertical memory fragmentation

1 Memories of suffering have an important role in

2 Development of a victimhood identity assumes past suffering

3 Nations used to be dominant frameworks for the

4 Importance of nations in the construction of victimhood

Figure 2.1 Victimhood identity and we constructions. Source: Author.

6 Inclusive and exclusive forms of victimhood fragmentation

Table 7.1 Commemorations of the 13 November 2015 attacks