Twenty-first-century views of historical violence have been immeasurably influenced by cultural representations of the Second World War. Within Europe, one of the key sites for such representation has been the vast array of museums and memorials that reflect contemporary ideas of war, the roles of soldiers and civilians, and the self-perception of those who remember. This volume takes a historical perspective on museums covering the Second World War and explores how these institutions came to define political contexts and cultures of public memory in Germany, across Europe, and throughout the world.

Stephan Jaeger is a Professor of German Studies and the Head of the Department of German and Slavic Studies at the University of Manitoba. His research covers narratives, representations and memory of war in German and European museums, literature, film, and historiography. He is co-editor of the book seriesMuseums and Narrative (with De Gruyter). His books includePerformative Geschichtsschreibung (2011) andThe Second World War in the Twenty-First-Century Museum: From Memory, Narrative, and Experience to Experientiality (2020).

List of Illustrations
Preface
List of Abbreviations

Introduction: Representing the Second World War in German and European Museums and Memorials
Jörg Echternkamp and Stephan Jaeger

PART I: MUSEUMS

Chapter 1. Multi-Voiced and Personal: Second World War Remembrance in German Museums
Thomas Thiemeyer

Chapter 2. The Experientiality of the Second World War in Twenty-First-Century European Museums (Normandy, Ardennes, Germany)
Stephan Jaeger

Chapter 3. Exhibiting Images of War: The Use of Historic Media in the Bundeswehr Military Museum (Dresden) and the Imperial War Museum North (Manchester)
Jana Hawig

Chapter 4. In the Eye of the Beholder: Gaze and Distance through Photographic Collage in the Topography of Terror and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights
Erin Johnston-Weiss

Chapter 5. The Challenging Representation of National-Socialist Perpetrators in Exhibitions: Two Examples from Austria and Germany
Sarah Kleinmann

Chapter 6. Warschau erhebt sich: The 1944 Warsaw Uprising and the Nationalization of European Identity in the Berlin Republic
Winson Chu

PART II: MEMORIALS AND MEMORIAL LANDSCAPES

Chapter 7. A Culture of Remembrance, Memorials and Museum in the Hürtgenwald Region
Karola Fings

Chapter 8. Contested Heroes, Contested Places: Conflicting Visions of War at Heldenplatz/Ballhausplatz in Vienna
Peter Pirker, Magnus Koch, and Johannes Kramer

Chapter 9. Commemorating Flight and Expulsionvor Ort: Local Expellee Monuments in Central and Eastern Europe
Jeffrey Luppes

Chapter 10. Local Battlefields as Cultural Landscape of Global Value? Views of War in Normandy and the Classification as World Heritage
Jörg Echternkamp

Afterword: The Memory Boom and the Commemoration of the Second World War
Jay Winter

Index