Competing national memories of World War II

Abstract

We assessed the knowledge of 1,338 people from 11 countries (8 former Allied and 3 former Axis) about World War II. When asked what percentage their country contributed to the war effort, across Allied countries, estimates totaled 309%, and Axis nations’ estimates came to 140%. People in 4 nations claimed more than 50% responsibility for their country (Germany, Russia, United Kingdom, and United States). The overclaiming of responsibility reflected in these percentages was moderated when subjects were asked to consider the contributions of other countries; however, Russians continued to claim great responsibility, the only country that remained well over 50% in its claim of responsibility for the Allied victory. If deaths in the war are considered a proxy of a nation’s contributions, the Soviet Union did carry much of the burden. This study points to sharp differences in national memory even across nations who fought on the same side in the war. Differing national perspectives shape diverse memories of the same complex event.

Collective Memories on the 2010 European Debt Crisis

“…Similar phenomena are reported in the context of major other international events for collective memories in different countries, the Second World War being an important example (Roediger et al (2019)).…”

“…Our paper is related to studies in neuroscience and psychology that deal with (collective) memories (Dezső and Loewenstein (2012), Roediger and Abel (2015), Roediger et al (2019)), studies that elaborate on views about elites and the general public regarding European integration and the effects of economic conditions on the latter (e.g., Gabel and Palmer (1995), Hooghe (2003), Steenbergen and de Vries (2007) Gabel and Whitten (1997)) and studies that investigate views of economic experts and non-experts (e.g. Sapienza and Zingales (2013), Andre et al (2019)).…”

Memória Ou Metamemória Das Origens?

“…Essa é uma questão difícil, pois envolve documentar o compartilhamento de estados mentais, freqüentemente considerados incomunicáveis (NAGEL, 1974). Trabalhos recentes (ABEL et al, 2019;CANDIA et al, 2019;CHEN et al, 2017;GAGNEPAIN et al, 2019;HIRST et al, 2018;O'CONNOR, 2019;ROEDIGER et al, 2019;SPIVAK et al, 2019) permitiram alguns progressos nesta área. A leitura muito útil desses trabalhos pode ser enriquecida, acredito, distinguindo três modalidades do trabalho da memória cujo compartilhamento não possui o mesmo grau de plausibilidade: a protomemória, a memória e a metamemória (CANDAU, 2011).…”

Overclaiming responsibility in fictitious countries: Unpacking the role of availability in support theory predictions of overclaiming

“…In Experiment 2 we forced subjects to explicitly consider all of the territories in Oloram. We adapted an approach used in examining collective memories for World War II (Roediger et al, 2019). Subjects rated either a single territory in Oloram or rated five territories at the same time.…”