It is a basic assumption of this article that the history, symbolism and mentality of war - e.g. in the form of heroism - constitute central elements in the make-up of national identities, also in the European Community, despite the fact that the EC is more commonly thought of as a peace movement. The contribution and significance of `war mentality' may differ from one country to the next, however. The article examines the link between national identity and the mentality of war in Great Britain, (West) Germany and Denmark, as three EC countries representing different national histories, structures and ambitions. The approach is comparative and intercultural. The author argues (1) that the mentality of war is radically different in the three countries: one of proud and unifying civic heroism in Britain, of traumatic negative presence in Germany and of symbolic moral strength based on historical defeats in Denmark; (2) that these differences are mainly rooted in (the outcome of) World War II and conform with general patterns of political culture in the three countries concerning the link between nationalism and internationalism; and (3) that this makes for very different attitudes to closer political cooperation in a `European Union', particularly as regards integration in the areas of common security and defence policies. Attitudes to the Gulf War are used as a concrete case to demonstrate some of the salient points. The article concludes by pointing out the difficulties in unifying European nationalisms so dissimilar in this decisive area of national identity, and in permanently keeping the military option out of intra-European national competition.

Th e aim of this chapter is to examine certain religious dimensions of nationalism in historical perspective, giving special attention to what I have elsewhere termed the "profane sacrality" of national identity (Hedetoft 1990a, 1995). According to this analysis, national identity functions as both a formal and substantive replacement of public-collective religiosity, following the modern privatisation of religious belief. "Die Nation fordert wie Gott liebende Hingabe" ("the nation requires, like God, loving, unselfi sh devotion"), as the German political philosopher Erhard Stölting approvingly suggested in the mid-1980s (Stölting 1988). George Mosse refers to nationalism as a "cult of death" (Mosse 1990). And Anthony Smith, following both Carlton Hayes and Emile Durkheim, in more pacifi c, less dramatic terms, conceptualises the nation as a "sacred communion of citizens, a willed and felt communion of those who assert a moral faith and feel an ancestral affi nity" (Smith 2000). Th is is a formulation obliquely echoing Ernest Renan's well-known defi nition of the nation as a daily plebiscite in which citizens continuously reaffi rm and commemorate their sense of belonging to the national community based on its "past glories" and "heroic deeds" (Renan 1882/1990). Or in Michael Herzfeld's potent formulation, "the secular equivalent of salvation is the idea of a patriotic and democratic community, one that tolerates neither graft nor oppression" (Herzfeld 1992, 6). Th e key question addressed in this chapter pertains to the specifi cs of this national belief system. First, how is "loving, unselfi sh devotion" expected (even in a sense required) to be practically and symbolically manifested by and maintained in the minds of citizens-through various kinds of ritual acts of belonging-as a seemingly essential and transcendent bond between its members and between nation and state? Moreover, how is nationalism as a civil, political religion currently aff ected by transnationality and globalisation?

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