Politics and technologies of authenticity: the Second World War at the close of living memory

Abstract

As the participant generation passes away, the current moment of Second World War cultural memory is suffused with a sense of an imminent ending and of our passing into a new phase of engagement beyond living memory, a phase which – so it is often held – will be the poorer for lacking the validating presence of first hand witnesses; it may even constitute a kind of closure. This essay takes this observation as a point of departure for a wider exploration of this contemporary landscape of remembrance which, it is argued, is peculiarly and multiply fraught with anxieties about authenticity. It begins by discussing how the steady disappearance of the participant generation serves as a foundation for this anxiety, looking at how it has helped to fuel particular sorts of mnemonic activity as part and parcel of a post-Cold War boom in Second World War remembrance. It then explores some wider aspects of that remembrance which are generating new concerns about authenticity and interrogating it in novel terms. Finally, it makes the case for what can be gained by viewing contemporary Second World War cultural memory through this particular lens and sets out a research agenda for the future.

Keywords:

• Second World War
• authenticity
• remembrance
• living memory
• post-Cold War
• norms
• technology
• reflexivity

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the journal’s two anonymous reviewers for their comments on this paper. An earlier version was presented at the European Social Science History Conference in Valencia in March 2016, in a panel on ‘Historical Authenticity: An Interdisciplinary Approach’. I would like to thank my fellow participants – Achim Saupe, Sara Jones, Andrea Rehling and Jukka Kortti – for their stimulating presentations and the audience for their comments.

Notes

1. ‘Samuel Willenberg – Holocaust Survivor. Obituary’, Daily Telegraph, 29 February 2016, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/12178158/Samuel-Willenberg-Holocaust-survivor-obituary.html

2. This global post-Cold War boom is the subject of my ongoing monograph project, How the Second World War Still Shapes Our Lives. Other relevant recent studies of the contemporary landscape of memory include Rosenfeld 2009; Stone 2014; Bragança and Tame 2016; Finney 2017.

3. On the auratic power of original objects, see Hicks 2017.

4. See the Center’s website at http://www.operationlastchance.org/; the poster campaign is discussed in ‘German poster campaign launched to find surviving Nazis’, BBC News Online, 23 July 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23428997.

5. The quote from Underwood is from a Congressional debate of 15 May 2001 and is available at http://www.c-span.org/congress/bills/billAction/?1295014.

6. This same sentiment has been expressed to me during interviews with curators at several notable memorial sites and museums, but always on an off the record basis.

7. Fake Holocaust memoirs are analysed in a broader context of literary fakery in Vice (2014).

8. ‘Veterans Vow to Find “Walter Mitty” Remembrance Day Marcher’, Daily Telegraph, 4 December 2009, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/defence/6726187/Veterans-vow-to-find-Walter-Mitty-Remembrance-Day-marcher.html.

9. ‘Schaef’, blogpost, Becoming Witnesses, 6 August 2008, http://becomingwitnesses.wordpress.com/category/uncategorized/page/3/

10. Mae’s Food Blog, 8 October 2013, http://maefood.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/jewish-style-polish-food-krakow.html.

11. For ‘Blitz parties’ specifically, see http://www.theblitzparty.com/.

12. The unveiling of this, Hitler’s electoral slogan for a campaign in contemporary Germany, closes the book.

13. It could be argued that making the message so obvious weakens the films, of course; it is also noteworthy that despite the stress on the power of authenticity, these films (and many others) minimise differences between past and present in a rather inauthentic way in the interests of making their larger political point.