AHR Forum
World War II and National Cinemas

How have cinematic representations of World War II reflected and helped to shape national memories of that traumatic event, and how have filmic treatments of the battles of the late 1930s and early to mid-1940s changed over time? These are among the main questions taken up in a trio of essays that look in turn at the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. The first contributor, John Bodnar, a leading scholar of the history of immigration and commemoration in the United States, is particularly attentive to shifting ideas about democracy and individualism. The second, Geoff Eley, a prominent specialist in the study of Western Europe who has worked on the social and cultural history of both Germany and Britain, concentrates more directly on the ways representations of war register and help us trace changes in the political landscape. Denise J. Youngblood, the only contributor best known for her work on films per se, contributes an essay that complements the first two by looking at Russian movies of different decades that portray the war as an event that caused great suffering yet also provided opportunities for great heroism. Following their essays comes a commentary by Jay Winter, a well-known historian of World War I, that places these discussions into a broader temporal framework and takes issue with the ways that Bodnar, Eley, and Youngblood define or fail to define slippery concepts such as collective memory.	1
The questions addressed in this AHR Forum are obviously ones that might just as easily have been posed about other countries, especially perhaps Japan and Germany. There is, however, a value to comparing and contrasting the treatment of the war in the particular national cinemas that are the focus here. This is because the United States, Britain, and Russia share one important trait: many within each country look back proudly on the role their country played in defeating the Axis powers. In light of this common point of departure for cinematic treatments of the war as a source of pride as well as a traumatic event, the diverging ways that it has been represented on screen in each nation is particularly striking. Coming at a time when World War II films are once again making news—thanks to the appearance of new cinematic treatments of everything from Pearl Harbor to the Battle of Stalingrad—the discussions of Bodnar, Eley, Youngblood, and Winter have the potential to provide not just a new perspective on the past but also food for thought when thinking about how movies currently in theaters are shaping the images that a new generation has of this conflagration.	2

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