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The Bloody Victory: Post-war Violence in Europe in Comparison, 1944-1946
October 25, 2018 @ 6:30 pm - 7:30 pm EDT
Immediately after the end of the WWII, a wave of violence emerged in most of the former occupied European countries. Germans, national traitors, collaborators, and women, accused of “horizontal collaboration”, were being humiliated, beaten and even killed. However, at the same time, an optimistic mood had spread throughout Europe. The end of the war meant the end of the starvation, occupation and national abasement. Recently liberated countries and nations have been looking forward to their positive national future. So, why did the victors kill the vanquished?
Dr. Ota Konrád is an associate professor of modern history at the Charles University in Prague. Since 2012 he is head of the department of German and Austrian studies at the university. He has worked on topics dealing with the history of the humanities, history of the foreign policy and history of the WWI in central Europe. Recently, he co-authored (together with Rudolf Kučera) a monograph Out of the Apocalypse. Physical Violence in the Fall and Reconstruction of Central Europe, 1914–1922 (2018) which deals with the cultural history of violence in the Czech lands, Austria and South Tyrol in the WWI and in the immediate postwar period. Currently, he is preparing a broad comparative project about collective violence as a tool for reshaping national identities at the end of the WWII in Europe.
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