Memory Fragmentation from Below and Beyond the State: Uses of the Past in Conflict and Post-conflict Settings [1 ed.] 9780367706210, 9780367706227, 9781003147251

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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 postconflict 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 such efforts as well as backlash from actors below and beyond the state have 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 Fellow at the Marc Bloch Centre, Berlin, Germany. Valérie Rosoux is Research Director at the FNRS and Professor in Political Science at UCLouvain, Belgium, as well as Fellow at the Max Planck Institutes Luxembourg and Halle, Luxembourg and Germany. Anne Bazin is Assistant Professor in Political Science at Sciences Po Lille, University of Lille, France. Emmanuelle Hébert is External Scientific Fellow at the Institut de Sciences Politiques Louvain Europe (ISPOLE) at UCLouvain, 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 from Below and Beyond the State Uses of the Past in Conflict and Post-conflict Settings Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert

Memory Fragmentation from Below and Beyond the State Uses of the Past in Conflict and Post-conflict Settings

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 ISBN: 978-0-367-70621-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-70622-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-14725-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003147251 Typeset in Times New Roman by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents

List of illustrations Contributor biographies Acknowledgments

viii ix 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 ÉLISE 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 wars: The 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 political and military 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 VALÉRIE 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

17 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 constructions   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   7.2 The PSG Ultras’ commemoration in front of the Bataclan, on 13 November 2018   7.3 A poster announcing the lantern ceremony organized by the association 13onze15, in the 10th district of Paris, on 13 November 2016   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 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!”  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 13.3 Ehrenmal der Bundeswehr, Berlin 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 14.2 Colonial illustration of radio networks used in the French colonies 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

27 92 95 98 99 187 195 196 214 215 216

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, France. She is Assistant Professor at Sciences Po Lille, France, and research fellow at CERAPS (University of Lille). She is also associate research fellow at ISP (University of Paris-Ouest, France) 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, series "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), France. He is a CNRS research fellow at the research centre CESSP/ University Paris 1, France. He was a research fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, France, in 2021‒2022. His research topics include history and memory politics, sociology of political elites, sociology of intellectuals, and history of ideas. His work now focuses on the production and circulation of conservative (especially 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 fellow at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin, Germany. His main field of expertise is the social construction of the notions of friends and enemies in international

x Contributor biographies relations. 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 UCLouvain, 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 feminist 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 journal 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, France. She has obtained a PhD with support from the Fund for Scientific Research in Belgium, working under joint supervision of the UCLouvain, Belgium, and the Université Paris Nanterre. Written from a sociological and political science perspective, her PhD unpacks the international circulations of restorative justice, its structuring in France, its developmental 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-carrefour. Contribution à une sociologie des professions internationales,” Cultures & Conflits, n°119‒120, 2020. Emmanuelle Hébert is an alumna from the College of Europe, Natolin, Poland, and the Institute for European Studies of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. She holds a PhD in political sciences from the UCLouvain, Belgium, and Université Paris Nanterre, France (co-supervision). She has been a guest lecturer at the Université de Namur, Belgium, UCLouvain, Belgium, and Sciences Po Paris, France. Her publications include Passé(s) recompose(s). Les Commissions d’historiens dans les processus de rapprochement (PologneAllemagne, 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 AuschwitzBirkenau during World War II. Within the scope of her PhD thesis, Solveig Hennebert studies the memory of antisemitic events among Jewish communities in France. She focuses on understanding Jewish remembrance and memory practices in their diversity.

Contributor biographies  xi Élise Julien is Assistant Professor in Modern History at Sciences Po Lille, France, a member of the research center IRHiS, University of Lille, France, and currently a visiting 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 studies of everyday practices that are investigated using spatial analysis, narrative analysis, and discourse analysis. Her work has been widely published in journals 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 UCLouvain, Belgium. He graduated with master 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, Belgium, and a PhD in Theology from KU Leuven, Belgium. His research focuses on religion, conflicts, and collective memories. In 2019–2020, he worked as a Fulbright fellow at Columbia University, USA. 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, France. His work focuses on identities and cultural problems in the Middle East, particularly 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, narrations de guerre au Moyen-Orient. He has presented his research both in France and abroad, through conferences and articles about war memories, cultural 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 Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University College Roosevelt (Utrecht University). In 2018, Sandra obtained a grant by the

xii Contributor biographies Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) 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 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 Master’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, France, a full member of the research unit CERAPS (University of Lille), and a research fellow 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. Co-edited 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 research centre Recherche et Etudes en Politique Internationale (REPI) in Brussels, Belgium. 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 Critique internationale, Critical Military Studies,

Contributor biographies  xiii Cultures & Conflits, Etudes Internationales, International Political Sociology, Stratégique, and Security Dialogue. Antoine Younsi is PhD candidate in International Relations at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. 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 was initiated as a two-section panel at the 2019 Congress of the French Political Science Association (AFSP) in Bordeaux, during which we started discussing the analytical potential of the concept of memory fragmentation 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 discipline 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 “common 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 preparation 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 especially grateful for the financial support we have received from our home institutions 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 administration 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 mobilizing, 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 which social groups provide DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-1

2  Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert 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 subject 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 receptacles of memories passed down by social groups and their institutions; rather, we favour an understanding of collective memory as an “hourglass, with the collective 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 contents 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 practices of recognition, commemoration, reparation, or healing; (3) the communicative 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 material 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 postconflict 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 formation and/or transformation of collective memories. The underlying mechanism has been theorized by Frantz Fanon, who stressed that in the context of colonial domination, the collective practice of violence can facilitate the formation 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 (DalgaardNielsen, 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 alliance 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 difficult relationship between South Korea and Japan despite their perceived common need to resist 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 “conceive” (more or less) dominant 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 become part of national frames and which can not, they are most often considered the reference actors that can legitimize or marginalize memory discourses sustained by specific groups within society. Thus, governments are usually perceived as the central actors capable of defining “memory frameworks” (Halbwachs, 1994 (1925)) on the national level which – by way of commemoration 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

4  Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert 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 are not. In the contemporary context, however, as this book series observes, “public debates, buttressed by the fragmentation of nation states and their traditional narratives, have greatly accelerated. Societies are today pregnant with newly unmediated 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 many 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 elaborate 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 postconflict. More concretely, we argue that conditions of the articulation and definition 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, including the densification of transnational memory discourses, and the increasing facility 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 diverging 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 collective 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 publicly 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 recognition 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 counterinsurgency 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; CrivelloBocca 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 memory 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. Actors driving this type of fragmentation 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 governments. 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 established 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 intergovernmental 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 international 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 borders 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,

6  Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert Table 1.1 Conceptual characteristics of horizontal and vertical memory fragmentation Horizontal fragmentation Character

Increasing number of diverging, sometimes conflicting memory discourses are articulated from within individual public institutions; decreasing consensus on “national” myths and foundational stories Potential Bureaucratic rivalry; electoral rationales politics; diverging organizational objectives Potential actors

Military organizations and other government departments; political parties; professional historians working for specific political institutions or parties

Vertical fragmentation Increasing number of parallel, sometimes conflicting memory discourses that are no longer associated with the state but either with subnational or transnational communities, including “humanity” Conflicting norms and agendas on the international, national, and subnational level; politics of international recognition Civil society groups and memory entrepreneurs, international organizations; local and transnational NGOs; international media; diaspora

as a result both of contextual change that enabled increased transnational interconnectedness and of the material and ideational weakening of the central state because of the emergence of new modes of international governance and of new communication media. 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 discourses 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 making 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 communication 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 status 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

Introduction  7 of processes of collective decision-making (Merkel, 2014; Rosanvallon, 2006; Rosenthal, 1998). 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 essentially 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 the power of implementing or suggesting 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 promoting 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 their cooperation, an effective recognition and dissemination of discourses from substate 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 sometimes 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 changing 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 enables us to “see” new phenomena and implications that more established concepts would overlook. This is especially the case in contemporary civil-military relations, as governments are increasingly subject to pressure from their civil societies 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 contexts, subnational and transnational actors appear to become increasingly

8  Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert successful 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 specific (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 challenging 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’ capabilities to produce unified, “national” memory frameworks. Stipe Odak’s chapter thus shows how the victimhood discourse produces groups within civil societies 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 memory 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, Élise Féron argues that such activities, while contributing to the fragmentation and complexification of the established victim/perpetrator dichotomies, do not only challenge memory discourses produced by the state but also reflect tensions among civil society actors with sometimes diverging agendas. The remaining chapters in this section complexify the picture even further. Thus, Élise Julien’s analysis of the historical evolution of a German association 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

Introduction  9 the German governments evolved that was used to promote national frameworks of memory. Civil society actors can also promote alternative narratives 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 multiethnic 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 attempted 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 honouring the dead. Both sides were asking for national unity 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 historians 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 legitimizing rather than challenging political ideas about “national” history (Berger, 2007). To what extent should historians be considered independent agents of memory fragmentation in contemporary post-conflict contexts? Sandra Rios Oyola provides a first answer based on her analysis of a Colombian 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 initiative, its members used a combination of oral history and academic research to include civil society perspectives that challenged some of the government narratives. 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 participating historians can explain why Polish-German textbook reform could make progress despite recent governmental efforts to promote its own “national” narratives. 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

10  Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert their position in the academic 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 uses 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 ineffectiveness 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 elites to legitimate the US bombing campaigns 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, and challenging 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 military 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 2013 as 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 category of actors participating in memory fragmentation processes, namely transnational 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

Introduction  11 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 definition challenging memory frames promoted by governments? Once again, the contributions of this volume suggest 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 framework that highlights the unity of the Rwandan nation and de-emphasizes the differentiation between victims and perpetrators of the 1994 genocide. Looking at the very peculiar case of ANNA News, a transnational news agency closely affiliated with the Russian political agenda, Thomas Richard shows how such actors can be used by governments to promote memory fragmentation in other territories. 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 fragmentation” 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 discourses and strategies. In other words, as for other social phenomena, it is through interactions 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 strategic perspective would expect.

Note 1 https://www.routledge .com /Memory -Studies -Global -Constellations /book -series / ASHSER1411

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Introduction  13 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: Presses de Sciences Po. 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. Latouche, M. Mathien, & G. 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:10.1080/13698249.2014.904982 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

14  Eric Sangar, Valérie Rosoux, Anne Bazin, and Emmanuelle Hébert 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). Paris: La Découverte. 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). russels: Peter Lang. Rosoux, V., & Ypersele, L.. (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.),

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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 discursive (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 theoretical in nature, I utilize concrete examples, mostly from ex-Yugoslav countries, to illustrate the major arguments. My chapter is divided in six subsections, which espouse the following arguments: (1) Memories of suffering have a significant role in collective memories 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 minorities, 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 outline 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 deepened 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 collective 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 survival of the group and development of the sense of a continuity (Hirschberger, 2018); (b) fear being a much more basic and “contagious” emotion than hope (Bar-Tal, 2001); (c) the adaptational, organizational, and mobilizing value of traumatic 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 an event would have little impact on a sense of community. Only when a past suffering 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 suffering 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 the memory of their suffering into their national identity. Additionally, their suffering in the Communist Yugoslavia was only sporadically mentioned and almost entirely excluded from scientific research until the 1980s. Even now, Roma’s victims 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 sufficient 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 identity  21 victimisation is an act of harm perpetrated against a person or group, and victimhood is a form of collective identity based on that harm. The act and 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 without 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 recognized 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 coordinated 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 superiority (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 as the victim-group claims 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 possibility of social re-bonding through mutual reliance, shared trust, and post-traumatic 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 exemplified 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 the BosnianHerzegovinian 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 victim-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 centuries led to stronger political demands for national memories, which were forces of political legitimization, symbols of national unity, and tools of consensusbuilding. Operating with centralized political power, regulating education and cultural production, most of the nation-states strengthened the link between collective memory and national identity. Anderson (2006) finds the most compelling example for this in cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers. “The public ceremonial reverence accorded these monuments precisely because they are either

Construction of victimhood identity  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 victimhood, 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 victimhood 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 specificity 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. Those five factors explaining why nations have gradually lost their importance as master-frameworks of victimhood identity are discussed now more in detail: 1. Increased memorialization of non-national tragedies: the first, and arguably 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, therefore, 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 culture and ethics were deeply consequential for the self-understanding of states and their international presentation. Barkan (2000, p. xxiv) sees the restitution 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 nevertheless 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

Construction of victimhood identity  25 foundational quasi-mythical pasts, which previously served as generation transcending 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 apologies, judicial proceedings, truth commissions, historical commissions, or materials 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 relevant because it reduces the top-down pressure coming from political leaders to create idealized versions of national histories. It opens a discursive space to previously 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 suffering but as individual voices that deserve to be heard. Good examples are the Croatian Memories and Bosnian Memories online projects. Unlike previous 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 frameworks. 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 concrete 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’ (…) victimhood 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 important, 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 victimization, 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 victimhood 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 competing 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 outgroup 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 contrasted 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

Construction of victimhood identity  27 “master difference” to describe demarcation lines between Alevis and Sunnis, both Islamic denominations, but with little sense of commonality. From the outside perspective, it might seem that groups in question have much in common and that their attempts at differentiation are merely expressions of the “narcissism 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 victimhood. 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, Themgroups 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 victimhood 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 (sometimes 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 articulated 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 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 influence 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 MiddleEast 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 postMilošević 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 availability 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 suffering 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 permanent 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 “living 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

Construction of victimhood identity  29 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 constructions 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 ingroup 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 distance make their exchange difficult. Also, some other groups who were targeted based on their inborn characteristics might find numerous parallels with the suffering 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 sufferings 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 understand 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 overarching 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 exYugoslavia 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 fragmentation of memory here served the purposes of war (We-Them mechanism). Those two cases of fragmentations are radically different. The Jewish community 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 subgroup attempts to articulate specificities of their own trauma while remaining 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 competition 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 overall 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 “multidirectional memories.” Therein, memory is seen “as subject to ongoing negotiation,

Construction of victimhood identity  31 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 memory 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 contested. 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 assessment 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 idealization 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.”

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34  Stipe Odak Rothberg, M. (2011). From Gaza to Warsaw: Mapping Multidirectional Memory. Criticism, 53(4), 523–548. 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. 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 memory work in societies transitioning from war. The analytical lens of fragmentation 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 chapter 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 representation, 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 discuss 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 functions 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 regarding 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 discussing 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 a strong political desire to establish who was a victim and who was a perpetrator and thereby draw up a new stable identity in which peace can be grounded. As in all narrative work, this post-war story-telling strives to make meaning and create coherence in a temporal as well as in a moral sense (White, 1990). It means that commemoration is always political as stories are told that legitimate and de-legitimate certain actions and make some experiences more important than others. Memory work thus demands “the coordination of individual and group memories, whose results may appear consensual when they are in fact the product of intense contest” (Gillis, 1994, p. 5). “We” are constructed as the good victims and “they” as the bad perpetrators. A great many actors may be involved in this “contest” including national governments, minority groups, international 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 femininity are discursive drivers that produce easily recognized stories. Historically, the dominant figure in commemoration is male, often a soldier, central in patriotic 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 righteousness (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 discuss 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

38  Johanna Mannergren Selimovic depict rural women who are mourning, standing still, gazing into the distance; carriers 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 fascinating 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 patriotic 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 reason 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

Gender, memory, and peace  39 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 recognized 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 working 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 violence 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 the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless campaigning in support of Yazidi victims. 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

40  Johanna Mannergren Selimovic 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 disappearance 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 foundation or inclusive narrative in the post-conflict period. When commemoration in transitions from war to peace produces simplistic memory tropes in which individual experiences are ignored or reduced to narrow representations, it follows that political projects of homogenization and nation-building shut out memories 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 multiple 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 during World War II to successfully demand the release of their imprisoned (Jewish) husbands. Another example of this work concerns the global campaign for recognition of Comfort Women who were subject to systematic rape by the Japanese

Gender, memory, and peace  41 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 passive 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 preconceived 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 acknowledged, 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 public discourse. Nevertheless, women’s organizations organize manifestations and petitions that regularly disturb the memoryscape. Indeed, an interesting topic concerns 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 narrative 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

42  Johanna Mannergren Selimovic Buenos Aires, demanding to know what happened to their children and grandchildren 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 commemorative 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 capital 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 international 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 productive 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

Gender, memory, and peace  43 silencing and distortion of women’s experiences indicate that the idea of a foundational, collective memory is a phantasy, given that so much is left out (Jacobs, 2008, p. 221). However, a gendered reading that critically scrutinizes the discursive 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 asking 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 experiences. 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 fragmentation 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 counterdiscourses formed (Altinay and Petö, 2016, pp. 12–17). These questions address the core of any analysis of memory politics in postconflict 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 representation of women is a central ingredient in an affective memory politics, it is a highly circumscribed representation, leaving out any multidimensional and complex stories 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-individualized 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 marginalization 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 ending war and building peace are made invisible through commemoration practices (McDowell, 2008, see also Brown, 2014a). By analyzing how women’s experiences are memorialized as part of homogenizing national narratives, we can

44  Johanna Mannergren Selimovic understand more deeply what roles for women are deemed acceptable, encouraged, or discouraged in the post-war society. How and to what extent is it possible for women agents to move beyond narrowly constructed subject positions of being either sexualized bodies or grieving mothers? This chapter has begun to search for an answer to this question by analyzing 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 pluralistic 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 processes 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 transnationally (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 vertical fragmentation thus emerges as a process that holds promises of transformation.

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Gender, memory, and peace  45 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. (2012). ‘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 Postgenocide 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.

46  Johanna Mannergren Selimovic 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. (Ed.), 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. (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 various 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 memorialization 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 contradiction with official and/or international discourses that increasingly mention these types of violence, such as peace agreements which recognize sexual violence 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 perpetrated 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 “horizontal fragmentation” is characterized by the presence of conflicting discourses on memory within the same public sphere, whereas “vertical fragmentation” pertains 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 struggle 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 marginalized (Chakrabarty, 1998, p. 18). As we will see, multiple minority and subaltern histories appear through memorialization work relating to wartime SGBV. These histories sometimes directly contradict the hierarchies of victims and perpetrators appearing in official memorialization 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, butalso 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 different 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 initiatives, 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 people 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 perpetrated 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 alongside 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 memorialization 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 responsible for the violence, are daunting (see for instance Sharratt, 2013; Féron, 2015). Survivors often only use metaphors or innuendos to speak about their experience 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 narrate 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 survivors 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 criminal realm. Admittedly there are cases, like in Bosnia Herzegovina or in Rwanda, where national institutions foreground some SGBV experiences in their memorialization 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 experienced. 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 weapons, sometimes wounded, while women are portrayed in supporting roles, or crying). 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 fragmentation of memories is particularly obvious when it comes to SGBV. For instance, while SGBV figures prominently in international actors’ and researchers’ representations 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 commemorations 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

Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence  51 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 memorialization 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 fragmentation 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 international 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 specifically 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 “bottom-up” memorialization of SGBV. Women’s groups allow and facilitate the collection 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 standardize 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 central 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 fragmentation 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 memorialization 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, associations 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 prisoners. Things seem simpler when it comes to talking about sexual violence perpetrated 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 violence 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 victims 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.

Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence  53 These hierarchization processes lead to a 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 triumphant 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 a “subaltern” history (Chakrabarty, 1998). The specific question of the memories of female combatants, who sometimes 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 conflictrelated 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 combatants who are subjected to rape or forced marriage. These “omissions” do not only concern female combatants. In many cases, even the sexual violence suffered by civilian women is overlooked. For example, Susan Risal (2019) speaks of “denialism” on the part of the Nepalese government regarding cases of sexual 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 publicly 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 following 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, gender, 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 commemorations 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 violence that women have experienced at the hands of the “enemy,” because even if

Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence  55 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 minority 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 suffered 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 liberator. 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 consequences 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 victim 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 number of certain types of SGBV and especially of sexual violence as compared to other types of violence, such as bombings, riots, and assassinations, has contributed 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 processes 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 themselves 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 intimate 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 collective 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

Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence  57 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 contradictions 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 memorialization, 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 perpetrated. 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 memorialization 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, memorialization 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/perpetrator 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 commemorations 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 memorialization for survivors. As we have seen, many do not want to be associated to such

58  Élise Féron 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 memorialization 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 victims of other types of violence too. If we set up separate memorialization mechanisms 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 survivors 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.

References Altınay, A. G., & Petö, A. (Eds.). (2016). Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories: Feminist Conversations on War, Genocide and Political Violence. Routledge. Bassiouni, C. (1994). ‘Final Report of the United Nations Commission of Experts established pursuant to Security Council Resolution 780 (1992).’ S/1994/674/Add.2 (1 and 5) December 28. Bhabha, H. (1990). DissemiNation: Time, narrative, and the margins of the modern nation. In H. Bhabha (Ed.), Nation and Narration (pp. 291–322). Routledge. Brown, C. (2013). Women’s narratives of trauma: (Re) storying uncertainty, minimization and self-blame. Narrative Works, 3(1), 1–30. Burnet, J. E. (2012). Genocide Lives in Us. Women, Memory, and Silence in Rwanda. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press. 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.

Conflict memories and sexual and gender-based violence  59 Donahoe, A. E. (2017). Peacebuilding Through Women’s Community Development: Wee Women's Work in Northern Ireland. Palgrave Macmillan. Edström, J., Dolan, C., Shahrokh, T., & Onen, D. (2016). Therapeutic activism: Men of hope refugee association Uganda breaking the silence over male rape in conflict-related sexual violence. Institute of Development Studies, Evidence Report no. 182. 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). Springer. Féron, É. (2018). Wartime Sexual Violence against Men. Masculinities and Power in Conflict Zones. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Féron, É. (2019). When is it torture? When is it rape? Discourses on wartime sexual 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. Henry, N. (2011). War and Rape: Law, Memory and Justice. Routledge. Korac, M. (2006). Gender, conflict and peace-building: Lessons from the conflict in the former Yugoslavia. Women's Studies International Forum, 29(5), 510–520. Krause, U. (2015). A continuum of violence? Linking sexual and gender-based violence 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 postconflict 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 after Conflict (pp. 154–172). Routledge. McDowell, S. (2008). Commemorating dead ‘men’: Gendering the past and present in post-conflict Northern Ireland. Gender, Place and Culture, 15(4), 335–354. Močnik, N. (2018). Sexuality after War Rape. From Narrative to Embodied Research. Routledge. Risal, S. (2019). “Defining” Justice and Dignity Through Gendered Peace Building: A Case Analysis of Women Who Faced Sexual Violence in the Time of Conflict in Nepal. Tewa: Nagarik Aawaz. Sharratt, S. (2013). Gender, Shame and Sexual Violence: The Voices of Witnesses and Court Members at War Crimes Tribunals. Farnham: Ashgate Publishing. Simić, O. (2018). Silenced Victims of Wartime Sexual Violence. Routledge. True, J., & Riveros-Morales, Y. (2019). Towards inclusive peace: Analysing gendersensitive peace agreements 2000–2016. International Political Science Review, 40(1), 23–40. UN (2017). Report of the Secretary-General on Conflict-Related Sexual Violence. New York: Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict, S/2017/249, 15 April. Väyrynen, T. (2014). Muted national memory. When the Hitler’s brides speak the truth. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 16(2), 218–235.

60  Élise Féron 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 Élise 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 (notably, 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 difficult to consider that a growing fragmentation has progressively challenged a stateimposed 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  Élise 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 interactions 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 cemeteries. 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 million 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 nationalracist (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 established 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 president 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 public 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 establish 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 campaigns 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. The German

64  Élise Julien 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 cemeteries 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 cemeteries. 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 increasingly 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 partisan groups of German civil society. While the republican government failed to impose a dominant interpretive discourse that provided a consensual narrative 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 unchallenged, the VDK made strong progress between the early 1920s and the start of the 1930s.

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge  65

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 attention 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 promoted by Eulen under the Republic and now relayed by Mutschmann, finally gained the support of the regime (Kaiser, 2010, pp. 178–185). From this perspective, 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 accompanying 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 governing 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 perceived 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 majority 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 with the old

66  Élise Julien 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 himself 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 architect 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 international 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 remembrance policy, the VDK obtained the creation of the Heldengedenktag and a legitimacy 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 proscribed. With this new balance of power, the fragmentation of memories following 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

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge  67 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 reconciliation 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  Élise 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 commemorations, 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 membership 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 association 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 organisation charged with preserving war graves by the German Federal Government.5 The government had effectively abandoned the idea of recreating a public department 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 quasidelegation 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 entrepreneur 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 awareness of the problems and contradictions to which it was now exposed (Assmann & Frevert, 1999).

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge  69 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’ associations. 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 international 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, displaying 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 initiative placed

70  Élise Julien 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 emblematic 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

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge  71 unacceptable to the VDK, since its purpose was to honour all war dead, and especially 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 government 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 announcement 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 meditation 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 unreachable 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 nevertheless 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 tyranny” (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  Élise 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 reservist 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 association’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 converged 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 seeking 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 possible 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

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge  73 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 considered 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://kri​egsg​raeb​erst​aetten​.volksbund​.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 others. 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 established 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 controversy 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, culprits, victims” (Helden, Täter, Opfer).

74  Élise Julien

References Assmann, A., & Frevert, U. (1999). Geschichtsvergessenheit – Geschichtsversessenheit: Vom Umgang mit deutschen Vergangenheiten nach 1945. Stuttgart: DVA. Bauerkämper, A. (2017). Reisen in die Vergangenheit: Westdeutsche Soldaten, Kriegsgräberfürsorge und “Schlachtfeldtourismus”. Militärgeschichtliche Zeitschrift, 76/1, 104–131. Becker, A., & Tison, S. (Eds.). (2018). Un siècle de sites funéraires de la Grande Guerre. Nanterre: Presses de Paris Nanterre. Behrenbeck, S. (1996). Der Kult um die toten Helden: Nationalsozialistische Mythen, Riten und Symbole 1923–1945. Cologne: Böhlau. Böttcher, J. (2018). Zwischen staatlichem Auftrag und gesellschaftlicher Trägerschaft: Eine Geschichte der Kriegsgräberfürsorge in Deutschland im 20. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Brandt, S. (2000). Vom Kriegsschauplatz zum Gedächtnisraum: Die Westfront 1914‒1940. Baden-Baden: Nomos. Dienst am Menschen, Dienst am Frieden: 75 Jahre Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge. (1994). Volksbund Deutscher Kriegsgräberfürsorge. Reissues: - 2001, 2009, 2019. Gilles, B., & Offenstadt, N. (Eds.). (2014). Mémoires de la Grande Guerre.Matériaux pour l’histoire 113–114, 2-5. 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. Julien, E. (2014). Asymétrie des mémoires: Regard franco-allemand sur la Première Guerre mondiale. In Vision Franco-Allemande (Vol. 24). Paris: IFRI. Kaiser, A. (2010). Von Helden und Opfern: Eine Geschichte des Volkstrauertags. Frankfurt: Campus. 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 Kriegsgräberfürsorge 1950–2000. Zeithistorische Forschungen, 2017(1), 68–92. Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF. (1921–1982). VDK (ed.). Kriegsgräberfürsorge KF, volumes 1921–1982. Krumeich, G. (2001). Langemarck. In François, E., & Schulze, H. (Eds.), Deutsche Erinnerungsorte (Vol. 3, pp. 292–309). Munich: Beck. Manig, B.-O. (2004). Die Politik der Ehre: Die Rehabilitierung der Berufssoldaten in der frühen Bundesrepublik. Göttingen: Wallstein. Ulrich, B., Fuhrmeister, C., Hettling, M., & Kruse, W. (Eds.). (2019). Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge: Entwicklungslinien und Probleme. Berlin: be​.bra​. Wernstedt, R. (2016). Die Täter-Opfer-Problematik in der Gedenkkultur am Beispiel der Kriegsgräberstätte Costermano. Lernen aus der Geschichte, 10. http://learning​-from​ -history​.de​/Lernen​-und​-Lehren​/content​/13252. Wilke, K. (2011). Die Hilfsgemeinschaft auf Gegenseitigkeit (HIAG) 1950–1990: Veteranen der Waffen-SS in der Bundesrepublik. Paderborn: Schöningh. Ziemann, B. (1999). Die Erinnerung an den Ersten Weltkrieg in den Milieukulturen der Weimarer Republik. In Schneider, T. (Ed.), Kriegserlebnis und Legendenbildung (Vol. 1, pp. 249–270). Osnabrück: Universitätsverlag Rasch.

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 conflicts 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 collective 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 antiGerman 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 relationships 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, presented (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 such as Pomerania, Warmia and Mazuriai (the southern part of former DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-7

76  Thomas Serrier East Prussia / 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 exploring 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 chapter, should be used very cautiously as it has two distinct meanings. One meaning 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 outcome 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 communist 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 ultimately 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 Germans. 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 complex 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 migrations 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” ancestral 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 repeatedly 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 grievances 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 satisfied. 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 regaining 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 imagined “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 “verification 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 memory 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

Pluralism at stake  79 seminal essays outlining all the ideological barriers to the official reading of history (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 “depositaries” of a heritage they had been used to deliberately destroying, neglecting, marginalizing or simply overlooking since 1945 (Thum, 2003; Serrier, 2006). The following observation 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 German association of expelled Germans from the East (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 challenging the general condemnation of the German past. The letter of the Bishops of 1965 and Brandt’s Warsaw journey in 1970 mentioned earlier rapidly constituted 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 certainly 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 strangeness 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

80  Thomas Serrier one-sided display of history, and to cope with this truncated narration of the past. These questions weighed even heavier on the new generation than the original strangeness inherited from the German touches of their hometowns and landscapes. To quote Andrzej Zawada’s influential essay called “Bresław” ‒ a voluntary 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 disturbed 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 significant 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 historian 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 everyday 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 somehow 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].

Pluralism at stake  81 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 widespread 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 codirector of the German-Polish Textbook Commission (see Hébert in this volume). He and the Warmia-born poet Kazimierz Brakoniecki launched the most emblematic cultural association called Cultural Community Borussia as early as 1990 in Olsztyn. They repeatedly wrote about their search for the disappeared world of East 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 inhabitants “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 literature 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 territories, 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 generation 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. Historical 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 history 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 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-lasting 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

Pluralism at stake  83 Poland) whose region admittedly returned to Poland already after 1918. During the 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 considered 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 where “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 multicultural 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, but also Russian scholars and cultural actors from Kaliningrad 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. This was illustrated 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 the Jewish Cemetery in Olsztyn/Allenstein. To quote only one

84  Thomas Serrier other example, the “district of the four temples” in Wrocław ‒ with its catholic, lutheran, and orthodox churches as well as its recently restored synagogue – 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 politicized 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 allegedly “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 nationalconservative camp into old Germanophobic clichés (Weber, 2019). The complex, entangled, and multiple memory cultures in Gdańsk may provide 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, reshaping 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 complemented 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

Pluralism at stake  85 are completely 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 promoted 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 motivations 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 cofounder and chief ideologue of the right-wing National Democracy movement, he saw the German Empire as the major threat to Polish independence.

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Pluralism at stake  87 Kraft, C. (2006). Geschichte im langen Transformationsprozeß in Polen. In Altrichter, E. (Ed.), GegenErinnerung: Geschichte als politisches Argument (pp. 129–151). Munich: 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. Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag. Linek, B. (2000). Polityka antyniemiecka na Górnym Slasku w latach 1945–1950. Opole: 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. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Lipski, J. J. (1998). Powiedzieć sobie wyszystko...: eseje o sa̜siedztwie polsko-niemieckim. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Polsko-Niemieckie. Loew, P. O. (2003). Danzig und seine Vergangenheit 1793–1997: Die Geschichtskultur einer Stadt zwischen Deutschland und Polen. Osnabrück: Fibre Verlag. Loew, P. O., Pletzing, C., & Serrier, T. (Eds.). (2006). Wiedergewonnene Geschichte. Zur Aneignung von Vergangenheit in den Zwischenräumen Mitteleuropa. Wiesbaden: 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. Poznan: Instytut Zachodni. Michnik, A. (1990). Zwei Gesichter Polens, zwei Gesichter Europas. Transit, 1. 185–189. Ruchniewicz, R. (2005). Zögernde Annäherung: Studien zur Geschichte der deutschpolnischen Beziehungen im 20. Jahrhundert. Dresden: Thelem. Schlögel, K. (2015). In Space We Read Time: On the History of Civilization and Geopolitics. New York: 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). Munich: 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). Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek. Strauchold, G. (2003). Myśl Zachodnia i jej realizacja w Polsce Ludowej w latach 1945– 1957. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszałek. Ther, P. (2014). The Dark Side of Nation-States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe. New York: Berghahn. Thum, G. (2003). Die fremde Stadt: Breslau 1945. Munich: Siedler.

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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 traditionally 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 seek to manipulate or revise history (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 DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-8

90  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert posited by Maurice Halbwachs, collective memory is not a discourse imposed by an institution, but rather the result of the interaction between historical memory and individual memory (Halbwachs, 1994). The resulting “fragmentation” 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 interaction plays out between individual memories (recollections) and official or dominant 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 diversity of discourse is a usual situation arising from the diversity of social relationships existing within a society. To illustrate this, we analyze ceremonies and commemorations of the terrorist attacks that took place on 13 November 2015 based on personal ethnographic observations. To mark these events, 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 concept is empirically relevant in our specific field study, we will start by presenting the state ceremony and memorial norms conveyed around the commemoration of the attacks. This then serves as the context for our case study of an extremely dissonant commemoration, the PSG Ultras march, and an investigation 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.

The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  91 Conducting an ethnography can be a useful tool in memory studies (Antichan, 2017; Baussant et al., 2018; Chavanon, 2019). This seemed to be the most appropriate method for our objectives of discerning individual subjectivity and appropriations 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 subjective reality, so we considered that direct personal interviews were less useful 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 commemorative 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 30 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 elicited 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.

92  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert 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 symbols 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, travelling 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 contribute 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 referred

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’ commemorations  93 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 commemorations 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 memory. 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 reputation. 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 ethnographic 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 arrondissements on 13 November. As this is our third year, we are not surprised easily. 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 control 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

94  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert 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. Then 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 the Bataclan. While their intervention disturbs the calm in front of the grassroots

The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  95

Figure 7.2  The PSG Ultras’ commemoration in front of the Bataclan, on 13 November 2018. Source: Picture taken by chapter author Delphine Griveaud.

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 colleagues (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 surrounding 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

96  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert 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 confusion 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 influenced 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 demonstrations 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 general 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 narrative: “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 memory 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 commemoration, it is their interpretation of dominant memorial rites as being 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 term “terrorism.” The Ultras’ commemoration is physical and loud, consistent with the Ultra culture, while the state’s practice 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 commemorating the attack. Yet the observed dissonance between the official and the Ultras’

The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  97 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 passersby 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 referring 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 participants could go from the state ceremony directly to the Life for Paris commemoration, 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 commemoration 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

98  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert

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 securing 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 memory 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 commemoration 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”

The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  99

Figure 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. 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 …”

Participants

Public welcomed

Ritual practices

12 am Every year since 2016 Static (assembled gathering)

Square in front of the 11th arrondissement town hall

Life for Paris (victims’ organization)

• Moment of silence • Concert and speech by the president of Life for Paris, a victim of the attacks • Multicolour balloons released into the sky Yes, kept at a distance by security Yes, kept at a distance by security fences fences • Inside the security fence: officials, • Members of Life for Paris victims’ families and friends, first • Inside the security fence: responders invitees, officials, victims’ • 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

Successive stops from one memorial to another, from Saint Denis Stadium to the Bataclan Between 9 am and 11 am Every year since 2016 Hybrid (walking and assembled gatherings) • Moment of silence • Reading victims’ names out loud • Wreath laying in front of memorial

Location(s)

Time Year Type of action

State

Organization

Table 7.1 Commemorations of the 13 November 2015 attacks

Members of 13onze15; interested members of the public

5 pm 2016 only Static (assembled gathering) • Moment of silence • Everyone present could launch blue, white, and red lanterns inscribed with a personal message into the canal Yes, inclusive

Canal St Martin

13onze15 (victims’ organization)

PSG Ultras

• Moment of silence • March (military style) • Football club anthems • Smoke bombs No

From Place de la République to the Bataclan 10 pm Every year since 2016 March

PSG Ultras

100  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert

Participation of officials Media presence Estimation Security and organization of space Yes

+++ ++ 1,000 people 300 people • Security fences to separate areas: Security fences demarcating two invitees and police; the media; the areas: near the stage, with the public public at a further distance • Within the fences, areas designated for victims, for officials, and for first responders • At the edge of the fences, tents offering psychological support

Yes

No

+ − 150 people 50 people A fence on each end of the The street blocked launch site of the canal, from Place de la held by members of République to the 13onze15 Bataclan, with around 20 vans of riot police monitoring the march

No

The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  101

102  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert Commemorations are thought of as moments of coming together and are sometimes presented as apolitical. Yet the discourse surrounding them is charged with political meaning, particularly when uttered just a few metres away from memorials and plaques. Not always a simple expression of mourning, memorial ceremonies 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, individual 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, communion 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 restrictive, circumscribing the social interactions and framed by expected attitudes, consensual 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 commemorating. There are also individual appropriations by attendees of each commemorating 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 recognition. Instead, the ethnographic evidence supports the theory that every organization 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 fragmentation 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

The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  103 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 nonstate 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 commemorations participate in the public policy of memory in an “ongoing normative 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 areligious and as helping the direct victims and the families of the deceased, thus advocating 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 ongoing 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.

104  Delphine Griveaud and Solveig Hennebert 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.

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The PSG Ultras’ commemorations  105 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 (118-151). Paris:Lemieux éditeur. 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. 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 experienced 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 construction 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 established by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights in 2019. The conflict in Colombia has lasted over five decades and reached an important 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 mandate for the Colombian Memory Museum, created as part of the agreement. This mandate says that the National Centre for Historical Memory (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 cut by a third, and DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-10

110  Sandra Rios Oyola the president did not even attend the inauguration of the Truth Commission. 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 several 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-signature” period. This chapter is based on the analysis of the norms and mandates that regulate the Historical Memory Group (HMG) and its successor, the NCHM, their management reports, a thematic analysis of over thirty newspaper articles taken from the national newspaper El Espectador in the years 2019‒2021, other outlets such as the magazine Semana, the magazine 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 members 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 analysis 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 traumatic 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),

The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia  111 these narratives of social memory help us to define what is “grievable” in society. 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 disappearance 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 members 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 disappearance 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 resonate 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 in conflict with 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 tensions 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

112  Sandra Rios Oyola memory “as the process of a multiplication of expressions of memories calling into question a given social framework (here at the national level), and consequently 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 unspeakable events, traumatic memories, silences, and denunciations that are configured in diverse and often contradictory ways. The case of Colombia, featuring over six decades of violence, 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 forcefully displaced. Colombia is a democratic country, with free elections and a robust judicial and legislative system, nevertheless, it nested one of the longest conflicts 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 circumstances, 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, assassination, forced disappearance, and other emblematic cases in cooperation with scholars, 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 fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia  113 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 paramilitary. Its aims included providing some form of symbolic reparation through the memorialization of victims (Riaño & Uribe, 2016). The researchers working 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 populations, Peasants, Afro-Colombian and Indigenous populations, among others. The scholars’ knowledge and experience in the region gave legitimacy to the institution and to the process of writing these reports that are a mixture of historical memory based on victims’ testimonies and academic research. Additionally, the Group supported the creation and continuation of hundreds of memory initiatives 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 elements 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, former 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 participate in the implementation of satisfaction measures for victims through

114  Sandra Rios Oyola the reconstruction of the historical memory of the massacres (…). It also suggested as part of the symbolic reparation measures, to elaborate biographical profiles of the mortal victims of the two massacres as a form of recognition 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 communities, while the perpetrators were still in power. Nevertheless, there were cases in which this work [the NCHM’s work] was used to remove perpetrators from power, or for preventing that political candidates, who were perpetrators 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 development 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 construction started on 5 February 2020, was tested at the Bogotá International Book Fair (17 April to 2 May 2018) and a second version at the Book and Culture Festival in Medellín (7 to 16 September 2018). In 2019, two versions of Voces were presented 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 decisions, 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 conclusions 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.

The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia  115 In what follows, I present a succinct list of some of the issues that have been raised regarding the NCHM 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 statements 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, several 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 NCHM 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).

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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 changing. 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 themselves 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 perspective, 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 neutrality. 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 memory 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

The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia  117 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 demonstrates an interpretation of the mandate of the NCHM as a tool for the restriction (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 expressions 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

118  Sandra Rios Oyola international level, members of academia, memory organizations, and victims’ organizations. 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 different time periods, different geographical regions, victims from different perpetrators, 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 academia and among civil society (see Aranguren, 2017; Castillejo, 2017; Riaño & Uribe, 2016). At a national level, victims’ organizations have rejected the MUP perspective, 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 reconciliation 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 fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia  119 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 memories 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, rigour, and openness of narratives of historical memory. The role of victims’ organizations 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 memorialization. They are concerned with avoiding the politicization of memory and doing their work with neutrality and openness. The crucial difference is what they consider 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 fragmentation of memory occurs can provide insightful elements to start such dialogue.

Note 1 It was possible that the truth commission (Comisión para el Esclarecimiento de la Verdad - CEV) created in 2016 would make the historical memory centre redundant, and that instead the Centre would be in charge of the new Memory Museum.

120  Sandra Rios Oyola

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://cen​trod​emem​oria​historica​ .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​=0b6​f6f0​0cf6​355f​816b​f434​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/

The fragmentation of historical memory in Colombia  121 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​=IwA​R1NH​dHul​Y6Y9​LP48​nJkw​VRAr​l1q5​ 33qo​vsQP​zBcu​OzCC​8vNQ​mq4r​R8KtFM 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.

122  Sandra Rios Oyola Rothberg, M. (2009). Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of 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, 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. 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 experienced 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 humiliations, 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 diplomatic 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 history 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 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 reports, 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 especially 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 fragmentations 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 this 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 horizontal 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 deal with future generations: the participants aimed at criticizing national stereotypes in textbooks and putting their (national) viewpoints into perspective. Such a commission is one of the pieces of evidence of the existence, in parallel to horizontal fragmentation, of a vertical type of memory fragmentation which competes and contests the official memory discourse of the state 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 PolishGerman Commission – and of its objective of modifying school textbooks – has

Transforming the Polish-German past  125 made possible the progressive transformation of the historical dialogue into a common narrative. This evolution is due to three main factors, the first one being the context. 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 relations and while civil society was organizing various bilateral actions of reconciliation (Hébert, 2020). When political relations get more tense, the historical dialogue within bilateral commissions becomes more difficult. Their work is often frozen or stopped. However, the Polish-German Commission, with a mere 49 years of cooperation, has resisted political uncertainties, such as the introduction 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 government changes both in Poland and Germany since the 2000s, while parties from the left, centre-right, or ultra-conservative spectres 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 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 authorities 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 German regional entities, the Länder, which have the responsibility for education policy: are the recommendations mandatory? Or are they just consultative? Can they be partially implemented? Can we agree with the recommendations, especially about the expulsions? Do political authorities have to disseminate them in schools? The recommendations drafted by the commission would in particular lead to controversies in the Länder’s parliaments, as well as within the permanent 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 expellees’ organizations proposed “Alternative

126  Emmanuelle Hébert 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. Supported by the conservatives and published several times in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for example (Hébert, 2020: 345‒350) these historians were strongly attacking the commission for its “ideological” approach and its “controversial” 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 understandable and acceptable recommendations for textbooks, but they would sometimes face strong opposition from the authorities and social groups, which 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), which 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” (covering the long after-war period) in 1994, conferences were organized, focusing on the future of the 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 fragmentation process when each social group took action to support its own important memory issues. The expellees’ organizations in particular were getting quite successful in influencing the political agenda in Germany, while the Kaczyński twin brothers were ruling over Poland. In this context of exacerbated tensions and memory fragmentation, 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 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 obliviating perpetrators or controversial actors and events (Tartakowsky, 2020). Several reasons could explain the PiS’ financial support for the project. The most credible

Transforming the Polish-German past  127 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 commission’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’ involvement 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 former 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 – facilitates the search for compromise and sometimes even the creation of friendship beyond borders. They form a solid core for the commission, contributing altogether 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 fragmentation 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 fieldwork over the years in both countries. In the Polish-German Commission, three generations of actors – mainly historians, 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 concentration camps, victims of forced labour, victims of various types of expulsion – 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 commission, “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

128  Emmanuelle Hébert 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 generation 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 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 copresident in 2007. Some, such as Violetta Julkowska, integrate with the team in the 2010s thanks to their 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 references 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 discourses – 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 rapprochement 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.

Transforming the Polish-German past  129 These Polish-German mandates rely much less on formal rules than on customary norms that are carried on over all the years. The only written document 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 presidency sessions alternate, so do the scientific conferences organized by the commission. 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 delegation. 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 regarding 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 institutionalization, 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 several “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), commissions 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 recommendations 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

130  Emmanuelle Hébert 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 conferences on difficult issues, such as the Order of the Teutonic Knights, Silesia, Polish-German relations in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. In the following 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 at drafting a common historical narrative and presenting 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 copresident 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 pioneer role has probably not been sufficiently recognized, except among the commission’s members. In the last decades, transnational history has been deepened and comprises several trends, linked to approaches such as comparison, transfers or histoire croisée (Maurel, 2014: 79‒92). The drafting of common textbooks follows this perspective. It aims at highlighting interactions and reciprocal influences, possible various 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 mechanisms. 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 viewpoint. 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

Transforming the Polish-German past  131 population density in the territories set by Western Europeans in the twelfth century (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 domination in the first drafting of this chapter. The Polish viewpoint also dominates in some chapters, in particular regarding Polish national history or Central European history, which are often not deeply explained in German (or Western) textbooks in general. The 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 textbooks 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 interpretation 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 supplement 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 sensitive 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

132  Emmanuelle Hébert 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 development of Polish cities and villages. Other examples appear in the next volumes, such as the great difficulty of getting 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 compromise – which leads to a new memory fragmentation, from a transnational perspective, but also the avoidance of a specific topic. Avoidance Avoidance forms a third option to deal with the past: if a topic provokes a disturbance, 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 certainly 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 supplement (Europa I, supplement: 44‒52; 64‒80). The supplement also covers deeper descriptions of the architecture (Europa I, supplement: 247) or of Christian symbols (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 history. 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

Transforming the Polish-German past  133 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 translated 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 settlers welcomed? What privileges do they get? What place is left for local populations? These are 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 workshop” 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), strengthening the colourful and nuanced character of the narratives’ mosaic. The next volumes 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 disagreements 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 schoolbook, 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 multicultural exchanges by the city of Lviv (Lwów in Polish), nowadays in Ukraine,

134  Emmanuelle Hébert 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 entrepreneurs, taking action to compete with rival interpretations, including the official 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 dialogue 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 experts and commission’s members involved – and very flexible procedures throughout the commission’s existence and the project’s development. 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

Transforming the Polish-German past  135 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-)fragmentation, implied by the actions taken by a transnational body, proposing or sometimes almost imposing – when it comes to the commission’s recommendations 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, humiliation, 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 dialogue. 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 published 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 confrontational 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).

136  Emmanuelle Hébert 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 collection 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 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 honour 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.

Transforming the Polish-German past  137 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 conferences 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.

138  Emmanuelle Hébert 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, epitomized 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 observation, 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 countries (Mälksoo, 2009; Neumayer, 2019). The delicate issue of Polish participation 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 performed by civil society actors and historians. This is obvious in Poland, where, since the early 2000s, the historiography of the Holocaust has experienced decisive 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 publications 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) governments 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 the various forms of Polish participation in the Holocaust (Leszczyński, 2016). In DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-12

140  Valentin Behr 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, spreading 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 multiplication 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 specializing 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 “antiPolish” 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 interests, 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 controversies 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-àvis state authorities and of the political role of scholars. The problem, however, is far from limited to a schematic opposition between an authoritarian political 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. The fragmentation of Holocaust memory thus highlights both the divides in the historiographical field and the political cleavages within Polish society.

When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories  141 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 methodological 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 institution 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 antiJewish attitudes – denunciation, blackmail, participation in “hunts for Jews” alongside the German occupiers, killings – were far more frequent than the national historiography suggests. 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 historians 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 historians.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 councils, 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 mentioning 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 responsibilities 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 position 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

When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories  143 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 socalled 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 commemorations 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 implementation 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 history. 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 relations 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 orientations may vary according to changes within the political field. Indeed, the management 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, statements 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 interpretations. At the national pole, the IPN nowadays produces a historical narrative that is hardly original and has little scholarlylegitimacy, but which is widely disseminated thanks to the outstanding means at its disposal. Conversely, at the critical pole, PCHR produces scholarlyrecognized 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 volume Night without an End elicited very hostile reviews from IPN historians, who accused the authors of peddling “falsifications” or “lies.” The main review, written by the head of the research programme on the history of Polish-Jewish relations 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 instrumentalized 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 government, the media, and even the judiciary. The result is a hybridization of professional roles, between the academic world and the bureaucratic world, between the service of science and the service of the state. The division of the historiographical 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

When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories  145 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 communism – that speak for themselves. This leads to a somewhat naive belief in the possibility 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, paradoxically 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 combining 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 contexts, 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

146  Valentin Behr primarily faults the authors for carrying out incomplete archival research. His 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 reliability 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 occupation” 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 adopting 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 opposition 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 autonomy of these Polish police officers vis-à-vis occupying authorities. According to Grabowski, the degree of autonomy of the blue police was quite significant

When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories  147 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 multiple references to the work of PCHR researchers, without specifically criticizing 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 volume, 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 unproblematically 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 unambiguous 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 spontaneously 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 historical 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 scholars 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 journals, 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​.pre​ss) 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 conception 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 therefore 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 conflicting 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, judging 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.

When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories  149

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 society 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 historical policy and the involvement of Holocaust historians in public debates, combine 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 narrative, 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 proceedings against historians Jan Grabowski and Barbara Engelking. Parts of the Polish electorate and diaspora are particularly sensitive to government actions aimed at promoting the “Polish point of view” on history. 5 The book has been translated in English as Night Without End: The Fate of Jews in German-Occupied Poland (Indiania University Press, 2022). 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).

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When historians contribute to the fragmentation of memories  151 Grabowski, J. (2020). Na posterunku. Udział polskiej policji granatowej i kryminalnej w Zagładzie Żydów. Wołowiec: Wydawnictwo Czarne. Grądzka-Rejak, M., & Sitarek, A. (Eds.). (2018). The Holocaust and Polish-Jewish Relations. Selected Issues. Warsaw: IPN. Gross, J. T. (2001). Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hibou, B. (2017). The Political Anatomy of Domination. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Hilberg, R. (1961). The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: 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. Paris: CNRS Éditions. Koposov, N. (2018). Memory Laws, Memory Wars: The Politics of the Past in Europe and Russia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kula, M. (2004). Krótki raport o użytkowaniu historii. Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe. Leociak, J. (2019). Naissance d’une école historiographique. In A. Kichelewski, J. LyonCaen, J.-C. Szurek, & A. Wieviorka (Eds.), Les Polonais et la Shoah. Une nouvelle école historique (pp. 49–65). Paris: 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. Kraków: Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej. Machcewicz, P., & Persak, K. (Eds.). (2002). Wokół Jedwabnego. Warsaw: 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. London: 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​=IwA​R0Zl​sTFi​uX9e​ykNi​KaVX​ivCX​ dDx2​bkQe​3YSX​CIRi​ZIO4​Gb3D​ZntC​9xoB08. 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: Princeton University Press. 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. 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 accurate 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). The civilian social memories of the Allied airwars in Germany and Japan have varied in space and time. However, generally speaking, they have become critical, and thus both from a normative and military perspective. This was rapidly the case 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 minority 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 victory celebrations in July 1945 (Knapp, 2016). In the United Kingdom, the social criticism of strategic bombing only grew in the DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-14

156  Mathias Delori 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 civilian public debate on the Allied air war followed a different path in the United States. During the war, 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 strategic 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 suggesting, 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; Gentile, 2001), there is also an articulate discourse validating the thesis of the effectiveness of the Allied air war, including the controversial “area” bombings directed against civilians. The supporters of these bombings are sometimes called the “Douhetians” in reference to Giulio Douhet, the Italian officer who prophesied during the interwar period that “By bombing the most vital civilian centres it could spread terror through the nation and quickly break down B’s material and moral resistance” (Douhet, 1942 (1921) p. 37). It is difficult to measure

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  157 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 specific 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 empirical 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 strategic 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 little, if anything, about strategic bombing before they were appointed: diplomat George Ball, businessmen Franklin d’Olier and Henry Alexander, Paul Nitze

158  Mathias Delori (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. Among these men, one expressed a particular voice: 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 because they had contributed to remobilizing the bombed people against the aggressors.6 The conclusion of the synthesis reports on the “decisive” character of “strategic” bombings in general and of those directed against the “morale” of civilians in particular is due to the marginalization 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 of “strategic” studies and other research 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 decisionmakers and military commanders (Sherry, 2012), etc. Whatever the practical reasons, 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 “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 two hypotheses regarding the possible effects of “area” bombing on civilian “morale”: a strategically interesting 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 (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). They concluded that both effects cancel each other out. In their view, it could happen that a person who saw their child

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  159 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 government 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” bombing 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 the 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 interview 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 firsthand 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 “discovery.” The latter caused outrage among the partisans of strategic bombings. In his memoirs, Galbraith mentions the case of Orvil Anderson, the USSBS military advisor: On the evening when we first discussed these figures on the deck of the Patria, Orvil Anderson's voice broke, and he asked, 'Did I send those boys to do that?' However, he soon recovered his poise and gave his attention initially

160  Mathias Delori to faulting the German statistics and, when that proved impossible, to seeking to have them overlooked (Galbraith, 1981), p. 215) 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, 1981, p. 226). 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 scientists: 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 secretariat. In an undated document, probably produced in the spring of 1945, the person 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 heavily 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 specialized 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 remain vague concerning the effects on German war production.

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  161 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 propaganda 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 the paragraphs 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, which had 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 bureaucratic interest. Indeed, the US Navy was radically opposed to the project of creating an independent air force, arguing that 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 devastating 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 testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion 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)): 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

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  163 published until 1998. This left to the USSBS Morale Division a sort of monopoly on the assessment of the effect of “strategic” 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 statistical 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 disagree 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 production of these data and the time required for their analysis explain why the

164  Mathias Delori 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 police 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 interviewers 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 science 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 surrender 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 apathy. War weariness, willingness to surrender, loss of hope for German victory, 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 statistical artefacts. 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 targets 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 instituted in July 1947. Some of the flying fortresses that had

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  165 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 submitted 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 lessons to be learned from the strategic bombings of World War II for the preparation 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 interesting 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, particularly 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 conventional strategic bombing partially obsolete. The most illustrious representative 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 bombing (Brodie, 1959, p. 137). Another important legacy of the USSBS can be found in the writings of sociologist 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 proposing 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 warfare” 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 reproduced 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 tradition 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 narrative 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 mastering violence against nonrebel 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 conclusion that “strategic” bombing made a “decisive” contribution to the victory over Germany and Japan. This, she wrote, “has stood the test of time.”24 If that is true, 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 comments 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.

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  167 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 strategic 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.

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.

168  Mathias Delori Brodie, B. (1946). The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Brodie, B. (1959). Strategy in the Missile Age. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Copeland, J. C.(2017). 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 (1931).pour l’édition italienneCommand 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. (1981). A Life in Our Times: Memoirs. London: Deutsch. 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. New York: Dial Press / J. Wade. Hippler, T. (2014). Le gouvernement du ciel. Histoire globale des bombardements aériens. Paris: 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. London: 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 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

The memory of the Allied bombings of World War II  169 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. New York: Free Press 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. Berkeley: University of California Press. Zinn, H. (2010). The Bomb. San Francisco: City Lights Publishers.

12 Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars: The 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’ phenomenon? Nothing, on the contrary, is more socialized, more linked to the culture 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 peaceful 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 “pacification,” 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 revolutionary 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 legitimates a revisionist memory framework of the Algerian War that is out of step with the one promoted by recent French governments but also most contemporary 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 science 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 provide answers to our question either (Olsson, 2007; Wasinski, 2010; Daho, 2014). In particular, until now this research has sought to understand how the experience 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. I should add here that sociological and critical work has focused primarily on technical strategic discourse, 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 strategic 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, resulting 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 discourse of many French academic historians but also of recent French governments, 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 are the external military 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 that past. I should also underline the fact that the impact of recent military discourses 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 others 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 fragmentation 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 context 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” colonial 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.

Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  173

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. LieutenantColonel 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 rallying 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 members 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; VidalNaquet, 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 framework 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 limited 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 “policing” 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

174  Christophe Wasinski 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. I 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 “community” 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’ journals, 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, competing 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 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 frameworks by calling for the need to “pacify” memory of the Algerian affair (Rosoux, 2016: 211). On a legal and institutional level, this policy of concealment 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 amnesty to 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 “maintaining 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

Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  175 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 2000, the communist newspaper L’Humanité publishes the “Appeal of the Twelve,” signed among others by Henri Alleg, Noël Favrelière, Germaine Tillon and Pierre VidalNaquet. 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 resounding 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 publicly 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 opposing 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

176  Christophe Wasinski 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 doctrine 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 consequence, 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 rehabilitation 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 as they were following the US military debate on counterinsurgency expertise thus “rediscovered” the memory of the Algerian War. To paraphrase Eric Hobsbawm, the American relay enabled the French military to reinvent a colonial warrior tradition (Hobsbawm, 1972). 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 – 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 becoming 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

Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  177 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 published 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 counterinsurgency thinking in the US Army after the invasion of Iraq. In the same year, Roger Trinquier’s La guerre moderne is republished in the this 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 concepts, de doctrine et d’expérimentation – publishes the official manual ContreInsurrection (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” metaphor 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 general 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 torture by the army, and Sylvie Thénault on confinement practices as a mode of coercive 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 working 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

178  Christophe Wasinski likely to contain information on the “disappeared” Algerians. It is also working with organizations 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. I should also mention academic, journalistic and militant publications 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 memory 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 veterans 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 associations, 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, veteran 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 debates among French political decision-makers during the same period when they discuss military interventions (Branche, 2018: 165). One reason for this

Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  179 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). The question reappeared 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 mention in particular the theoretical construction and practical application exercise 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 warfare 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 enforcement 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 generated 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

180  Christophe Wasinski 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 fragmented. 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 decade 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 “pacification” in Algeria, we have moved from a situation of vertical memory fragmentation 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 criticize 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 mentioned 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 veterans. 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 Algerian 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 fragilizes 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.

Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  181

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. Piedsnoirs 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.

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Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  183 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). The Social Function of the Past: Some Questions. Past and Present, 55, 3–17. Hobsbawm, E. (1972). The Social Function of the Past: Some Questions. Past and Present, 55, 3–17. 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. 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.

184  Christophe Wasinski 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 pour la présidence de la République. 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.

Present wars as catalysts of fragmented memories of past wars  185 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, reproduced in Figure 13.1, referred to the airstrike of 4 September 2009 that was ordered by Col. Georg Klein, the German commander of the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) Kunduz, resulting in the killing of 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 counterinsurgency doctrine in Afghanistan after 2009 by the German Bundeswehr has uncovered an already ongoing process of fragmentation of civil-military memory discourses on World War II in Germany. As this fragmentation becomes visible and increasingly publicly expressed, this might challenge the status quo of civil-military relations 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 willingness to uphold the interpretation of the ISAF mission as a non-violent reconstruction 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 PRT 2 commander described Col. Klein’s order as a decision within a context of war that would not have been questioned in other countries without the burden of DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-16

“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  187

Figure 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 “Hurray, we can still do it!” Source: Reprint with friendly permission from the Titanic editors and the cartoon author Tim Wolff.

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 status of World War II experience were brought into light following the transnational dissemination of NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine as part of the ISAF mission. This might be considered a case of vertical memory fragmentation, (unintentionally) driven by decisions of an international organization that had complex implications for the delicate balance between a “hidden,” internal tradition of valorizing the Wehrmacht experience during World War II, and an official, governmental

188  Eric Sangar tradition of regulating and restricting any use of the Wehrmacht experience. The impact of NATO’s adoption of the counterinsurgency doctrine was to indirectly encourage some military leaders to reconnect current Bundeswehr operations with the Wehrmacht past but also to challenge 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 valuing 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 officers to share views that can be interpreted as critical of the civilian or military leadership, 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 intend to produce 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 institutional 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 summarize the characteristics of the German ISAF mission and its difficult adoption of NATO’s counterinsurgency doctrine in 2009. Second, the article will discuss the larger domestic impact of the emerging interpretation of counterinsurgency doctrine as a “combat mission” and the implications for German civil-military relations in three domains: 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.

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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 considerable 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 basically 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-holders, 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 legitimizing the US Army’s counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq (Kaplan, 2013; Ricks, 2009). The key to reconciling both objectives was the argument that examples

190  Eric Sangar of ‘successful’ counterinsurgency campaigns could be found in colonial history, 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 contemporary counterinsurgency campaigns when correctly applied (Sangar, 2012). Of course, both academics and military practitioners have criticized the underlying 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 operational guidelines that implemented FM 3-24 in Afghanistan by focusing on the “protection” of the Afghan population, and by limiting offensive military operations against insurgent groups to situations when their territory could subsequently be controlled and developed by the Afghan central government (Münch, 2011, p. 12; see also Wasinski in this volume). 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 “counterinsurgency” appeared as early as in 2007, it was systematically avoided both in official documents and in external statements even after General McChrystal’s arrival as ISAF commander in 2009 (Münch, 2010, p. 212). While the exact reasons for this hesitation are unclear, observers presume that the military leadership was fearful that the adoption of any such concept could be interpreted by the German public as legitimizing the offensive use of force in military operations abroad, and therefore contradict the Bundeswehr’s communication strategy portraying itself a peacekeeping 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 II 4 (Noetzel & Schreer, 2009, p. 17). Still in 2010, when the Bundeswehr realized the first operations designed according to the approach proscribed by ISAF HQ for counterinsurgency, the Minister of Defence argued that while the Bundeswehr did conduct “COIN operations”, these should not be understood as “Aufstandsbekämpfung” (Münch, 2010, p. 216). More generally, the military leadership repeatedly downplayed violent incidents involving Bundeswehr troops in Afghanistan and rejected the use of the term “Krieg” (“war”) in association 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’s difficulties in adopting counterinsurgency 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

“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  191 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, observers 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 counterinsurgency (Noetzel & Zapfe, 2009). This interpretation, however, contradicts the fact that in internal debates, Bundeswehr officers of different levels of responsibility 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 [destructive] 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 capabilities 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 counterinsurgency 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 traditions 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

192  Eric Sangar history of the Prussian reforms, the military resistance against Hitler, and the Bundeswehr’s own experiences, thus excluding references to the Wehrmacht 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 developing 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 traditions, according to a recent survey conducted by Kayss among cadets at British and German officer schools, more cadets affirmed having a “very good knowledge” 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 models (Kayss, 2019, p. 132), with many of them criticizing the Bundeswehr leadership 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 counterinsurgency 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 officers argued in public debates that the lesson of the Afghanistan mission should be the recognition of soldiers’ combat experiences and of “timeless” military virtues,

“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  193 framed as being neglected by the Bundeswehr’s official tradition. Especially midlevel 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 principles of the counterinsurgency approach formulated in FM 3-24 5 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 insightful 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 […] decorated 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 examples drawn from Wehrmacht battles, former Wehrmacht senior officers continued 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

194  Eric Sangar the Wehrmacht era for analogies with their combat experiences in Afghanistan (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 reintroduction 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 organizational 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 decorations from World War I.​ A second illustration of the increasingly public fragmentation of memory discourses 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 specifically 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, regularly 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 internal demand for the dedicated commemoration of combat deaths was the construction of a centralized military memorial, the “Ehrenmal der Bundeswehr” (“Bundeswehr Memorial of Honour”). To avoid public accusations of valorizing death in combat and therefore reviving the Wehrmacht’s cult of the warrior death, the memorial is dedicated to all members of the Bundeswehr (soldiers and civilians) 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 traditional battlefield symbols, except for the symbolic integration of broken identification tags in the memorial’s bronze shells (Münch, 2015, p. 295).​

“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  195

Figure 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. 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 “ignorance” 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  Ehrenmal der Bundeswehr, Berlin. Source: https://commons​.wikimedia​.org​/ wiki​/File​:Ehr​enma​lder​Bund​eswehr​-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 infantry 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 reality 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

“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  197 among officer candidates at the Bundeswehr University of Hamburg, sparked controversy 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 discourse 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 contributor, 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 sacrifice. […] 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 postheroic society [after 1945] has produced a change. (Birkhoff, 2014, pp. 108‒109) To avoid this dilemma, the author calls for a radical military professionalization 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 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)

198  Eric Sangar 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-soldier 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 majority of Bundeswehr officers. The few available surveys among Bundeswehr officers 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 respondents 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 ‘nationalconservative’, 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 tradition 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 noncombat skills) (Wiesendahl, 2016).

Conclusion: is this a case of 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

“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  199 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 perceived pacifism resulting from the memory discourses on the Nazi past in German society and demand the valorization of military virtues such as sacrifice and courage 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 institutions 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 articulation (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 operations 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 associated 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 fragmentation, 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 military 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 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

200  Eric Sangar 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 legitimized 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 exaggeration 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.

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“Hurra, wir können’s noch!”  203 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 Warnecke, D. (2008). Kommandeur in Afghanistan. if–Zeitschrift für Innere Führung, 52 (1), 5–13. 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 political and military 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 soldiers, 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 repeating 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 president 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 countries 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 governments 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 stabilize an official framework for colonial memory around its alleged “benefits” failed (Blanchard & Veyrat-Masson 2008). Since then, the public use of historical references 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 institutional 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 contrary, 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 relevant to ask about the potential impact of a process of “horizontal memory fragmentation,” 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 reasoning 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 enable social groups to think about the present” (Lavabre 1994: 51). Based on this approach, the chapter analyzes the ways in which political leaders 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 questions, 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 military “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 solidarity, 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 receptive 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 memory (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

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  207 caused by French colonialism, some right-wing political parties, colonial veteran groups, and also parts of the military elites were driven by a “colonial nostalgia,” 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 associated 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 successful 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 “victory.” This visit offered him an opportunity for the establishment of a FrancoMalian 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 following 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 mobilization 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 referencing the term “debt.” The first one was frequently used to refer to the letters 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 succeeded in expelling the German Wehrmacht from metropolitan France. This interdiscursivity 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 intervention in the view of both the Malian and the French societies, the following section will discuss how the political discourse marginalized parts of the history 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 naming that the French were the colonial power. Moreover, the colonial past is considered 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 “solidarity” 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 relationship, 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 administration” (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 silencing the French political responsibility for colonialism. This particular framing

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  209 valorized both Malian history – as a society capable of “solidarity” and “sacrifice” – and French history, as a society which dissociates itself from any responsibility for this sacrifice. Thus, the contemporary “repayment” of the debt (the French military intervention), is not perceived as a “recognition” or even “reparation” 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 during 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 centenary 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 historiographical erudition. At the level of operational decision-making, under the impetus 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 materialized 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.

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  211 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 trajectory 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 successors, was created in 1943 in Algeria. […] The General Staff carefully preserves and maintains this historic lineage […] Two of the five composing 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 culture without going over the top, aims to unite people around a shared embodiment, 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 transmitters. 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, military 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 memorial 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 discourses 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 rhetorical, 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: exploration, 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 presented themselves as his successors, claiming to be “following in his footsteps” (Gout 2015: 114). Using orientalist vocabulary to describe Timbuktu as “legendary,” “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 symbolic 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 century. 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

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  213 an “oeuvre” (colonial undertaking), carried out “by diplomatic means and without 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 (see Figure 14.1). 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 captain’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 administration. This framing focuses on the traces left by the French colonial administration, 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 administration 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 disappeared, 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 (see Figure 14.2), 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 understanding 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

214  Antoine Younsi

Figure 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 (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).

their forebears. They also claimed to be able to draw on them for a set of tactical practices, like General Barrera who recounted having chosen the “Joffre route” to 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,

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  215

Figure 14.2  Colonial 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).

the military command requested historical and cartographic information on the border areas between Mali, Niger, Chad, Libya, and Algeria. An SHD team exhumed 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 (see Figure 14.3). 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 geographies of power directly inherited from the colonial period.​

216  Antoine Younsi

Figure 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 (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).

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, 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 colonial skills amounts, above all, to the reinstatement of postcolonial governmental dynamics. The underlying idea that these doctrines are applicable across

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  217 divergent 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 effective strategic know-how, since its effectiveness is historically "proven" (Wasinski 2010) – despite bureaucratic competition with 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 taking 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 government, 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 “memorial 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

218  Antoine Younsi a bill on the “values of the republic” his government 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 extreme right offered a window of opportunity to the most revisionist members 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 officers 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 supporters 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, fondement 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 maintient 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 appellent 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/

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220  Antoine Younsi Sangar, E. (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, 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: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 SaintCyriens. 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

“Paying a blood debt” or “Liberating Africa”?  221 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 Valérie Rosoux Introduction The main hypothesis emphasized in the introduction to this book regards the phenomenon of memory fragmentation from below and beyond the state. It depicts the decline of the state as an influential memory agent and the increasing importance 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 fragmentation 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 memory 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 resolution, namely that a narrative of the past oriented towards forgiveness is inherently positive because it favours unity and reconciliation. The study highlights the tensions, contradictions, and dilemmas faced by third parties keen to “fix” post-war memories quickly and effectively. It shows that such efforts can paradoxically prevent closure and make the fragmentation irreversible. DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-19

226  Valérie 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 narratives and practices enable the parties to move on, or do they reinforce the deadlock? 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 selfevident. 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 considered as “sharable” with the passing of time. Such evolution is rarely observed on the ground. All case studies demonstrate that political representatives do not control memories. In this sense, they cannot simply reconfigure incompatible narratives (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 interrogation 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, resulting 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 periods are at the origin of memory layers that constitute a “tragic mille-feuille.” Representations of colonial violence, civil war, and genocidal violence are intertwined 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 ethnic 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 during 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 complex 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 intimately 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 artificially isolate this particular level, but to examine the ambiguities that might

228  Valérie 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 outside, 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 massive 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 prisoners 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 justice 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).

Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”?  229 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 responsibility 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 forgiveness” (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 fragmentation 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 memorial 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 subsequent 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 experiences 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”

230  Valérie Rosoux (Chrétien 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 director 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 practitioners’ 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 particular church or religion. Among the data gathered for this analysis, four documentaries 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 conducted 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 victim. 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 descendants, whether their parents are victims, criminals. or accomplices. From this perspective, the whole society needs healing. Therefore, a wide range of therapeutic responses to symptoms such as “post-traumatic stress syndrome” (PTSD) has been

Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”?  231 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 encouraging forgiveness, NGOs present themselves as indispensable to save the society as a whole. This approach 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 criminals, 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 prescription: “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 prisoners, 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’ murderer: “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  Valérie 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 forgiveness,healing,resilience, happy ending) not only characterizes calls for reconciliation 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 better 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 following 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

Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”?  233 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 different 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 intervene to try to limit the depth of fragmentation? Beside the traditional people-topeople 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, the 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 other’s narrative, but to move from radicalized narratives to “better-formed” stories (Cobb, 2013). This approach 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 ambitious 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 facilitators – 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  Valérie Rosoux (Rothberg, 2009), third parties can provoke an additional violence. The unification 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 proceed 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 dimension 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 incorporation of conflictual memories takes time. In the aftermath of mass atrocities, one does not count in years, but in generations. Any attempt to tame fragmentation implies a long-term involvement with issues which are painful and divisive. 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 expectations. 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 objectives related to everyday coexistence (which in itself is remarkable after mass atrocities) and, on the other hand, more ambitious goals related to the fragmentation 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 improbable 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 unified 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. Narrative shifts matter, but they do not constitute a magical solution to deal with genocidal violence.

Can NGOs do away with the “tyranny of the past”?  235 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 respect, 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 victims’ emotions. To most survivors, hatred and resentment are not only understandable 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 evaporate 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 (policymakers, 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​.peaceinsight​.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://the​forg​iven​essp​roject​.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  Valérie Rosoux

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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 at appearing as a power player in the Mediterranean and at countering Western influence in the Middle East. The Russian government frequently justifies such policies by referring to episodes in Russian collective memory, including the history of the Soviet Union. However, as stated by Mykola Makhortykh (2022), this aspect remains understudied when it comes to the Russian intervention in Syria. His own research focuses on these uses by Russian authorities, analysed through the prism of securitization. Speech acts by Russian officials frame specific issues as matters of collective 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, deepening, and to some extent going beyond official discourses. When Russia chose to get directly involved in the Syrian civil war in September 2015, this involvement not only meant sending troops and weapons to fight alongside government 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 DOI:  10.4324/9781003147251-20

240  Thomas Richard coverage of the fighting by placing cameras on army vehicles during battles and by keeping their editing of graphic images to a minimum. 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 geopolitical, humanitarian, and moral point of view. At the same time, this narrative aims at justifying the Syrian government’s stance and at fostering support for its policy. To achieve such an aim, a wide yet carefully chosen narrative of the past is called for that portrays the Syrian troops as relivingthe Soviet experienceof World War II, while distancing Russian involvement from the quagmires of Soviet and Russian interventions in the past. This undertaking is by no means ANNA News’ prerogative as other Russian media and news channels have also developed a narrative of Russia’s intervention in Syria. For instance, the Russian 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 development of a focused discourse than the one produced by ANNA News. Although RT has better access to official images shot by communication services, its development 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 uncontrolled 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 its 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 unrecognized 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 communication war with Western media, considered as biased when reporting about the Syrian situation.

ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?  241 All these considerations make it difficult to characterize ANNA News’ influence on memory fragmentation. Within the context of Russian society, ANNA News, due to its reliance on sources and contributors from civil society, could be seen as an actor that both supports the Russian government’s attempts to reestablish official narratives of the Russian past (in terms of disseminated frames of the past) and fragilizes these attempts, as it offers memory narratives to Russian citizens that are 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 at reaching proRussian 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 interventions, 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 analogies 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 primary 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 fulllength 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 editorial line did not receive any answer, I focused my analysis on the video contents, 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 references to the memory of the Soviet heroic sacrifice narrative during World War II.

242  Thomas Richard 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.

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 ‘moderate 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

ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?  243 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 generally 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 identity 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 citizens 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 the 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 monthslong, 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 represented 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 elements in the Russian mythical memory of the Battle of Stalingrad.

244  Thomas Richard 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 presented 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 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 hollow 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 intervention in Syria. By downplaying Russian involvement in the war, the agency legitimizes the Syrian government’s narrative of a patriotic fight against “jihadism” 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 powers. 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 a memory frame to suggest

ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?  245 interpretations 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 are portrayed 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 cannot 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 relatively scarce. But the current conflict in Syria is presented in a way that conceives the current conflict as a logical sequele of these earlier wars, incorporating the lessons from earlier mistakes and failures. In all three conflicts, Russia is presented as fighting 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 presence 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 supporting 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 compared 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-insurgency 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

246  Thomas Richard of the Russian military police in Aleppo is particularly telling (“Russian military police in Aleppo,” “Russian military keeps playgrounds safe for Aleppo children”). 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 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, including 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 interventions 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 representations 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 nationalities, 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 euphemizing 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

ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?  247 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 reporters 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 the Western involvement in Afghanistan during the 1980s and the one in today’s Syria. The refusal to apply the distinction made by Western media between “moderate” and “radical” 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 distinction 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 illustrates 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, discovering 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 similarly 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 terrorism 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

248  Thomas Richard 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 contemporary Syrian opposition fighters are compared to al Qaida militants operating in Afghanistan.6

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 situation. 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 types of 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 statements. 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 frontline 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 subtle 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 infrastructures. Actors like ANNA News that are neither fully controlled by, 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 stateowned media. Russian citizens may increasingly become aware of the various ways the past can be articulated to justify the present, and thus become increasingly aware that there is a plurality of discourses over the national past, even if

ANNA News as a transnational memory entrepreneur?  249 ANNA News stands out 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 interpretations 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, circulates across territorial and sometimes even linguistic borders, ANNA News contributes to a subtle challenge of 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 they 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.

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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​_Zlf​gpjR​t9yx​ G0CK​wX3BQDZp​&index​=6​&t​=0s « Palmyra in 306 scars left behind by ISIS » RT

252  Thomas Richard 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 « 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

17 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, including 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 leaders. Overall, these studies have enabled scholars researching on conflict and postconflict 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 mobilization supporting or challenging them. Political and institutional actors are perceived 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 fragmentation” 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

254  Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, and Eric Sangar 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 chapter individually, we will discuss this question according to three major 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 communication such as social networks, diminish governments’ capability of “governing” 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, Élise 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 memory, 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 that governments and non-state actors can actually share similar perspectives. Such dynamics are more frequent in the framework of 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 possible 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 the idea according to which concrete bureaucratic needs, such as the justification of additional funding and institutionalautonomy, 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 fragmentation: bodies created by the Colombian government precisely to prevent vertical fragmentation originating from civil societies actually develop a memory agenda on their own, fuelled by the scientific practices and epistemological standards of historians 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 contemporary 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 discourses are present. However, this does not mean that authoritarian systems can today easily maintain government control of national memory frames: the development 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 capability 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 official 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

16 / Thomas Richard

Military organizations: officers of the German army Military organizations: officers of the French army Transnational organizations: international peacebuilding NGOs Transnational organizations: international news agency

Yes

Historians: members of government commemoration group Historians: members of bilateral textbook commission Historians: Holocaust scholars Military organizations: leadership of the US Air Force Military organizations: officers of the French army

No

Yes Yes No

Yes No Yes Yes

No No Yes No

Civil society: victim associations, activists Civil society: commemoration association Civil society: intellectuals, political parties Civil society: football supporter groups

9 / Emmanuelle Hébert 10 / Valentin Behr 11 / Mathias Delori 12 / Christophe Wasinski 13 / Eric Sangar 14 / Antoine Younsi 15 / Valérie Rosoux

Yes No

Civil society: victim associations Civil society: victim associations, activists

2 / Stipe Odak 3 / Johanna Mannergren Selimovic 4 / Élise Féron 5 / Élise Julien 6 / Thomas Serrier 7 / Delphine Griveaud & Solveig Hennebert 8 / Sandra Rios Oyola

Yes

Yes No Yes

Uncertain Yes No Yes

Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes

No Yes

Uncertain

Yes Uncertain No

Yes Yes Uncertain Uncertain

Yes

Yes No Yes No

Uncertain Yes

Horizontal Vertical Memory role of fragmentation? fragmentation? government diminished?

Fragmentation actor(s)

Chapter number and author

Table 17.1 Comparative overview of the results of each chapter

256  Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, and Eric Sangar

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 problematic 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 situations 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, 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 production 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 irreversible. They may contribute to “open” national frames, accompanying a proper democratic deliberation, such as the increasing tendency to recognize crimes committed 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 victimperpetrator 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 stabilize memory frames produced by governments. Further comparative research would be needed in order to see if there are any generic factors that favour memory

258  Anne Bazin, Emmanuelle Hébert, Valérie Rosoux, and Eric Sangar 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 ongoing. Most memory scholars usually assert that specific events have only indirect effects on actual memory discourses. According to Schudson, the range of empirically 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 magnitude whose impact can suddenly modify the “balance of power” between coexisting 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, an apparent countrywide unity in discourse has developed about the value of the independence of Ukraine and its genuine difference from Russia. The previously so-called “proRussian” population, generally referring to Russian-speaking people living in Eastern Ukraine, woke up in February while being bombed by their neighbouring country. A consequence 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 process includes a growing recognition 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.

Conclusion  259 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 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.

Index

13 November 2015 90, 91 Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo 41 Afghan War/War in Afghanistan 166, 170, 172, 176, 179, 186, 189–191, 193, 241, 244–247 Aleppo 243–247 Alexander, Henry 157 Anderson, Orvil 157, 159–160 anger 51, 135, 231, 235 anti-German sentiment/Germanophobia 75, 78, 82, 84 apologies 25, 148, 230 Argentina 41 Association Audin 177–178 Auschwitz 23, 37, 143 Aussaresses, Paul 175, 180 avoidance 132, 134 Ban Ki-Moon 233 Belarus 76, 83 Bigeard, Marcel 175 Block of Women 40 Bosnia-Herzegovina 22, 24, 25, 27–29, 36–38, 41, 42, 47, 50–53, 56, 189 ‘Bosnian Girl’ 42 Branche, Raphaëlle 177, 178, 180 Budde, Hans-Otte 191 Burundi 50, 51 bystander 98, 102, 141, 142, 233 cemetery/cemeteries 62–64, 69, 70, 84 Chad 214 Charlie Hebdo 91, 92 Chechnya 241, 244–247 Chile 111 China 3, 52, 211, 240, 248 Cold War 5, 75, 158, 178, 193, 255 collective identity 3, 20, 21 colonial debt 208

colonial memory 205, 206, 209, 213, 217 Comfort Women 40, 41, 44, 51, 52 Comité Audin 173, 174 communism 20, 63, 69, 75–78, 80, 125, 126, 129, 139, 143–145, 173, 175 compromise 70, 126, 127, 131, 132, 134, 160, 194 concentration camps 20, 68, 69, 123, 127 Costermano 70, 71 counter-memories 36, 42, 44, 50, 75, 241 Crimea 1 Croatia 20, 25, 30, 51 Cross of Honour for Valour 194, 195 culprit 69–71 cultural appropriation 83 defeat 3, 62, 76, 131, 161, 176, 189, 244, 247 de-fragmentation/defragmentation 127, 134, 258 Deir-ez-Zor 243, 244, 246 despair 3, 231, 235 diaspora 5, 6, 233 dissonant commemoration 90, 96 d’Olier, Franklin 158, 161 Douhet, Giulio 156, 157, 161, 166 DRC/Congo, Democratic Republic of 50–52, 227, 228 Eckert, Georg 127, 128 Ehrenmal 72, 194–196 embedded journalism 239, 240 Engelking, Barbara 140–142, 146, 148 Eritrea 39 ethnographic fieldwork 90, 91, 93, 102, 103, 124 Eulen, Siegfried Emmo 64–67 fear 20, 75–78, 161, 164, 226, 231 forgiveness 28, 225, 226, 229–234

262 Index Gacaca 227–229 Galbraith, John K. 158–162 Galula, David 170, 177, 179, 180, 216 gender-just peace 35, 36, 44 gender roles 50, 54 generation 25, 29, 70, 79, 80, 82, 124, 127–128, 130, 178, 193, 211, 226, 227, 234, 235 Georg Eckert Institute 124, 125, 129 German-Polish relations 75 Global War on Terror 166, 175, 180 Grabowski, Jan 140–142, 145–149 grassroots movement/Grassroots organisation 109–112, 117, 230 Great Britain/United Kingdom (UK) 3, 7, 73, 155, 156, 162, 166 Great Lakes 47, 49, 50, 52, 233 grief 37, 85, 96, 226, 227 grievance 19, 77 Gross, Jan Tomasz 140–142, 147, 148 guilt 3, 23–26, 226, 228, 229 Hiroshima 159 historical commission 25, 124, 125, 135 Historical Memory Group in Colombia (HMG) 9, 110, 112, 113 Hitler, Adolf 65, 66, 77, 161, 192, 242 Hollande, François 92, 179, 204, 207–209, 212 Holocaust/Shoah 1, 5, 9, 23, 29, 37, 70, 139–143, 145, 147–149, 163, 256 Hutu 52, 227–229 information war 247 Institute of National Remembrance/IPN 142–148 international tribunals 50, 228 intersectionality 19, 23, 26, 43, 48, 57 Invasion of Iraq/War in Iraq 5, 157, 166, 170, 176, 177, 189, 241, 246 Iran 1, 240, 243, 248 ISAF/International Security Assistance Force 186–191, 195 Isa Khel 193 ISIS/Islamic State/Daesh 39, 89, 93, 94, 96, 247 Israel 4, 23, 24, 27, 37, 139, 140 Japan 3, 7, 40, 41, 51, 52, 155–159, 161–166 Jedwabne 141–143 Jihadism 212, 244–245, 247, 248

justice 22, 51, 77, 111, 113–116, 228, 229, 235 juxtaposition 26, 132–134 Kaczyński, Jarosław & Lech 84, 85, 123, 126 Kagame, Paul/President Kagame 1, 229 Kamerić, Šejla 42, 44 Karfreitagsgefecht 193, 194 Karsdorf, Bruno 197 Kigali 228–230 Klein, Georg 186, 187 Korea/South Korea 3, 41, 52, 111, 157, 165 Kosovo 22, 189 Kunduz 186, 187, 189, 196, 200 Langemarck 64, 73 Laos 157, 166 Libya 210, 214, 215, 218, 241 Likert, Rensis 158, 160, 161, 163 Lithuania 76, 83 loss 3, 37, 56, 244 Madres de Plaza de Mayo 41 Manstein Plan 197 Markiewicz, Władysław 123, 126–128 McChrystal, Stanley 189–191, 200 mediation 189, 231, 232 memory entrepreneur 3, 5, 6, 51, 61, 62, 68, 73, 111, 112, 128, 134, 170–172, 199, 239, 241, 249, 253 military tradition 69, 191, 192, 198, 200 minority history 52 morale 158, 160–165 moral superiority 21, 30 Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves 41 mourning 9, 38, 62–65, 94, 102, 254 multidirectional memory 20, 30, 31, 233, 257, 258 Murad, Nadia 39, 40 Mutschmann, Martin 63, 65 Nagasaki 159 National Centre for Historical Memory (NCHM) 109, 110, 112–119 Nazism 66–70, 72, 139, 196, 198 negationism 228 negotiation 30, 40, 109, 116, 119, 128, 132, 133, 135 Nepal 39, 51, 53 Netanyahu, Benjamin 1

Index  263 NGO/non-governmental organisation 5–7, 11, 28, 50, 51, 66, 140, 147, 149, 225, 227, 230–234, 255 Niger 214–216 Nitze, Paul 157, 161, 164, 165 Northern Ireland 24, 47, 51, 53, 55 Nowak, Andrzej 142 official memory 48, 50, 52–54, 56, 57, 90, 97, 109, 124, 174, 192, 243, 248 pacification 166, 170, 172–174, 176, 179, 180, 212, 216 pacifism 3, 155, 171, 195, 198, 199 Palestine/Palestinians 27, 28, 166, 243 Paris attacks 254 peace process 43, 44, 112, 114, 115 perpetrator 8, 9, 11, 21, 26, 36, 39, 42, 43, 48, 51, 52, 57, 92, 114, 118, 126, 127, 141, 228–231, 233, 234, 254, 257 Polish Centre for Holocaust Research (PCHR) 141–147, 149 Polish-German Textbook Commission 9, 123, 124 Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Matters 124 postcoloniality 205–207, 209, 213, 216, 217 post-traumatic stress syndrome/PTSD 230 Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) 186, 189 Putin, Vladimir 1, 240, 242, 248 RAND Project/RAND Corporation 156–159, 165 rape 38–40, 43, 47, 49–53, 55, 56 rapprochement (bilateral) 123, 127–129, 134 reconciliation 3, 5, 9, 28, 51, 62, 67–69, 84–86, 110, 113, 116, 118, 123, 125–128, 130, 135, 171, 172, 180, 225–228, 230–235, 253 redress 21 reframing 133, 135, 241, 244 remembrance policy 66, 72 resentment 66, 80, 97, 226, 233, 235, 255 resistance 3, 7, 9, 47, 48, 54–57, 157, 191, 208, 212, 213 responsibility 24, 61, 62, 66, 69, 81, 113, 115, 125, 129, 133, 139, 143, 148, 149, 189–191, 208, 209, 229, 231, 246, 257 righteousness 37

Roma/Sinti and Roma 20 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 157 Rwanda 1, 11, 36, 38, 41, 50, 52, 56, 225, 227–235 Sahel 179, 217 Search for Common Ground 233 Serbia 22, 28–30, 52, 200 sexual violence 38, 39, 41, 47, 49–55, 57 shame 24, 38, 41, 99, 192, 226, 230 silence/silencing 1, 9, 36, 38–41, 43, 47–50, 52, 54, 55, 58, 89, 92–94, 96, 98, 100, 111, 112, 135, 174, 208, 226, 246 South Africa 39, 51, 232 Soviet Union 76, 165, 245, 255 Special Jurisdiction for Peace/JEP 109, 110, 115, 119 Speer, Albert 159 Srebrenica 28, 37, 41, 42 Sri Lanka 24, 29 Statue for Peace 41 stigma/stigmatization 49, 57, 58, 94, 96, 97, 144, 226 subaltern history 53 subjectivity 3, 56, 91 taboo 57, 199 Theresienstadt 23 Timbuktu 207, 210, 212–214 Tischler, Robert 64, 66, 68 torture 39, 41, 47, 49, 55, 56, 111, 173–175, 177–180 transitional justice 51, 113, 115, 116 trauma 3, 20, 21, 25, 26, 30, 31, 35–38, 49, 54, 56, 58, 110, 112, 230, 231, 245, 248, 255 Treaty of Versailles 62, 63, 65 Trinquier, Roger 170, 173–175, 177, 180 Truman, Harry S. 165 Tutsi 52, 227–229 Ukraine 76, 133, 241, 258 Unity Is Strength Foundation 230 Universalism 5, 254 UNPROFOR 42 vengeance 231 veteran 69, 77, 170, 173, 174, 178, 180, 193, 206, 207, 231 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre 175, 177 Vietnam War 5, 10, 156, 157, 166, 176, 181 Volkstrauertag 63, 65, 67–70

264 Index Waffen-SS 69–71 Wagenführ, Rolf 159 Warnecke, Dieter 191 Wehrmacht 66–68, 70, 71, 73, 85, 127, 188, 191–194, 197–200, 208 Wehrmachtausstellung 70, 73 White Helmets 247 World War I/First World War 25, 26, 61, 62, 64, 194, 209 World War II/Second World War/Great Patriotic War 10, 20, 23, 25, 28–30,

40, 41, 51, 52, 66, 71–73, 75, 77, 82, 84, 85, 123, 126, 127, 129, 133, 139, 141–143, 146, 155–157, 163, 165, 166, 186–188, 190, 192–195, 198, 208, 210, 240–246, 258 Yazidis 39, 40 Yugoslavia 20, 27, 29, 30, 39 Zimmermann, Manfred 66, 67, 73