Comparative Memories: War Defeat and Historical Memory Formation in the Post-Civil War American South and Post-World War II Germany
Journal: NC Digital Online Collection of Knowledge and Scholarship (The University of North Carolina at Greensboro)
Year: 2014

Defeat in war, and the humiliation that sometimes follows, creates memories of war and the defeated society that are often more myth than reality. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the American South following the American Civil War and Germany following World War II. In both cases, romanticization, memorialization, and omission were common responses to dealing with defeat while occupied by outside forces. This thesis follows those memories, their change over time, and critically analyze