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The Impact of WWII on European Society and Culture

23 June 2016, 12:00 am

War & Europe

Event Information

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23-24 June 2016
The genocidal Second World War in Europe is notable for the distinction - made in radically varying ways by different people - between what was perceived as 'legitimate' violence, and what went 'beyond' the kinds of violence that might be expected during wartime. This international and interdisciplinary conference addresses questions of individual responsibility within collective violence, and how to think and write about past events and one's own role in it.

When:
23-24 June 2016

Where:
Common Ground, UCL Institute of Advanced Studies
South Wing, UCL Main Building
Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT

Please register below - tickets are free but do let us know you're coming.

Overstepping boundaries, whether through complicity, collaboration, 'excess' brutality, betrayals, wilful profiting from the distress of others, or in a myriad of other ways, was a widespread phenomenon, both among Germans and Soviets and among people living in the countries under Nazi and Soviet occupations. Without these various forms of collaboration and engagement with the Nazi or Soviet genocidal machines, the persecution and mass murder of civilians could not have been undertaken on this scale. Many who were involved on the side of the perpetrators sought ways of justifying acts that in other moral universes seem reprehensible, incomprehensible; others felt or claimed that they were mobilised or constrained to act in certain ways, and did not feel they had much choice in the context, raising key questions about structures of power and individual agency. Moreover, the ways in which this genocidal war affected societies across Europe had significant long-term consequences: these conflicts affected interpersonal relations, emotions, and attitudes, as well as material and political positions - legacies that underlie continuing tensions and unease about a past that still haunts us today.

Questions of individual responsibility within a wider system of collective violence pose challenges that are not easily resolved. Historians, journalists and literary scholars also face significant questions about ways of thinking and writing about these events, and their own roles in relation to past and present. This conference seeks to address these issues from a variety of perspectives.

Programme

Thursday 23 June  
1.30-2.15pm Registration
2.15-2.30pm  Welcome, opening remarks
2.30-4.00pm

I. Borders of complicity and collusion: German society at war

  • Nicholas Stargardt (University of Oxford) - National defence and genocide: what were Germans fighting for in WW2?
  • Christina Morina (Duitslandinstitut Amsterdam and Jena University - From social war to total war: interpersonal relations in wartime Germany
4.00-4.30pm Tea break
4.30-6.30pm

II. Boundaries of victimhood and collaboration: societies under occupation

  • Jan Grabowski (University of Ottawa) - The role of Polish 'blue' police in the extermination of Polish Jews, 1939-45
  • Tatjana Tönsmeyer (University of Wuppertal) - Occupied societies as societies under stress: examples from Eastern and Western Europe
  • Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers University)- Experiences of occupation in the Soviet Union (title TBC)
6.30-7.30pm Reception (Haldane Room)
7.30-9.00pm

Overcoming war among neighbours: current debates and history today

Journalist Anna Bikont, who won the European Book Prize for The Crime and the Silence on the 1941 massacre in Jedwabne (Poland), will be in conversation with Alexandra Senfft, whose books examine the transgenerational consequences of National Socialism, including within her own family. They will be joined by Prof Jan Grabowski, a historian of the Holocaust, in a conversation chaired by Prof Mary Fulbrook, Director of the UCL EI.

NOTE: If you registering for the first day of the conference, there is no need to sign up for this event separately. If you just wish to join us for this public roundtable, please let us know you are coming by signing up here!
Friday 24 June  
10.30-12.30pm

III. The cultural mediation of violence

  • Susanne Knittel (Utrecht) - Shallow graves: the politics of perpetrator representations
  • Stephanie Bird (UCL) - The figure of the Nazi disguised as a Jew: identity, self-representation and justice
  • Mischa Gabowitsch (Potsdam) - Soviet war memorials 1939-45: From Berlin to Pyongyang
12.30-1.30pm Lunch
1.30-3.30pm

IV. Boundary transgressions: Understanding perpetration

  • Stephen Reicher (St Andrews)- Only following orders'? Rethinking the psychology and the practice of toxic obedience
  • Felix Römer (German Historical Institute London) - How it feels to be an occupier: violence and paternalism on the eastern front, 1941-44
  • Mary Fulbrook (UCL) - Systemic violence and the division of guilt, or: The mystery of the disappearing perpetrator
3.30-4.00pm Tea break
4.00-5.00pm V. Writing the past: Roundtable discussion: How do we as scholars and as human beings address this past; and how is our own positionality implicated in the ways we explore and represent the violent past?
5.00-6.30pm Book launch: Reverberations of War in Germany and Europe since 1945; Stephanie Bird, Mary Fulbrook, Julia Wagner, Christiane Wienand

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