ISSN:
1537-5358
Content:
This article explores practices of humiliating Germans during their forced removal from Eastern Europe in 1945. Despite decades of historical studies of expulsion and violence in modern states and colonial settings, this area of inquiry has not received much attention. Drawing on ego-documents written by displaced persons and official documents from local contexts, I argue that practices of humiliation directed against Germans became an integral part of the rebirth of nation-states shortly before and just after the end of the war on the Eastern front. Accepting popular rites of violence, including acts of humiliation, enabled the authorities to manage the widespread desire for revenge. This toleration simultaneously allowed ordinary people not only to participate in violence during the liminal phase of the transition from war to peace but also to engage in state- and nation-building from below. The state monopoly on violence was thus consolidated by integrating rites of violence and elements of popular justice—vengeance—into the official jurisdiction and institutional procedures for dealing with Nazi crimes. For East European societies, practices of humiliation directed against a hated enemy were perceived as legitimate justice: they redefined the sacral boundaries of national communities by giving ordinary people the feeling that they were protecting their purity and restoring their damaged honor. To explain the longevity and polycentrism of the European culture of violence, I also address the capacity of “deep” emotional memory to reactivate practices of violence across time and space through internalized rituals.
Note:
Enthält Literaturangaben
In:
The journal of modern history, Chicago, Ill. : Univ. of Chicago Press, 1929, 96(2024), 2, Seite 362-401, 1537-5358
In:
volume:96
In:
year:2024
In:
number:2
In:
pages:362-401
Language:
English
URL:
Volltext
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Author information:
Tichomirov, Aleksej Aleksandrovič 1979-
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