Histories of the Aftermath: The Legacies of the Second World War in Europe

"This is an excellent collection. In its thematic breadth and its broad geographical coverage it is quite distinctive." · Mark Roseman, Indiana University, Bloomington


In 1945, Europeans confronted a legacy of mass destruction and death: millions of families had lost their homes and livelihoods; millions of men in uniform had lost their lives; and millions more had been displaced by the war's destruction, and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. From a range of methodological historical perspectives-military, cultural, and social, to film and gender and sexuality studies-this volume explores how Europeans came to terms with these multiple pasts. With a focus on distinctive national experiences in both Eastern and Western Europe, it illuminates how postwar stabilization coexisted with persistent insecurities, injuries, and trauma.


Frank Biess is Associate Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (Princeton UP, 2006), and he is currently working on a history of fear and anxiety in postwar Germany.


Robert G. Moeller is Professor of modern European and German history at the University of California, Irvine. He has published widely on the social, cultural, and political history of Germany in the twentieth century.