Stamps reflect contemporary ideas and events, and none more so than those at the end of the Second World War. They were seen by all governments as an invaluable means of publicity, promotion and persuasion. Skilfully designed and eye-catching, they reveal how the years 1944 to 1949 were decisive in reshaping Europe after Germany's defeat. Not only did countries have to reconstruct shattered economies, rebuild devastated cities, and relieve widespread distress, but many underwent radical political realignments. Successive sets of stamps clearly depicted these events and, very significantly, the ideologies underpinning them.

The Second World War transformed the world not just America and the opposing belligerent nations. Eighty years later the postal authorities of the world continue to commemorate the conflict – because the effects are still being felt. This book looks at how the conflict is remembered and its aftermath. It is essentially an annotated picture book - the challenge to the reader is to determine the message the stamp is telling.

Today, European nations still use stamps to commemorate aspects of a nation's culture, history and achievements. During the Second World War, however, stamps were considered far more important in conveying political and ideological messages about their country's change in fortunes – whether it was as triumphant occupier, willing or unwilling ally, or oppressed victim. Some issues and overprints contained obvious messages, but many others were skillfully designed and subtle in their intentions. Stamps and their accompanying postmarks offer an absorbing and surprisingly detailed insight into the hopes and fears of nations at this tumultuous time. This remarkable collection examines and interprets the stamps of twenty-two countries across western and eastern Europe. The glorification of the Führer and Germany on the stamps of countries he most oppressed was inevitable, but many issues are ambiguous and indicative of the rival ethnic and political forces striving to attain influence and power. Desperate to unite the people, Soviet Russia resorted to images of the nation's heroic achievements under the Tsars; the mutually hostile puppet states Hitler and Mussolini allowed to emerge out of conquered Yugoslavia lost no time in issuing stamps proclaiming their cultural diversity; and Vichy France sought to justify its existence with issues linking past glories under Louis XIV and Napoleon with an equally glorious future alongside Hitler. These and many more stories reveal the aspirations, assumptions and anxieties of so many nations as their destinies hung in the balance.

In 1945, Europeans confronted a legacy of mass destruction and death: millions of families had lost their homes and livelihoods; millions of men in uniform had lost their lives; and millions more had been displaced by the war's destruction, and the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime. From a range of methodological historical perspectives--military, cultural, and social, to film and gender and sexuality studies--this volume explores how Europeans came to terms with these multiple pasts. With a focus on distinctive national experiences in both Eastern and Western Europe, it illuminates how postwar stabilization coexisted with persistent insecurities, injuries, and trauma.

The Second World War transformed the world not just America and the opposing belligerent nations. Eighty years later the postal authorities of the world continue to commemorate the conflict - because the effects are still being felt. This book looks at how the conflict is remembered and its aftermath. It is essentially an annotated picture book - the challenge to the reader is to determine the message the stamp is telling.

In most European countries, the horrific legacy of 1939–45 has made it quite difficult to remember the war with much glory. Despite the Anglo-American memory narrative of saving democracy from totalitarianism and the Soviet epic of the Great Patriotic War, the fundamental experience of war for so many Europeans was that of immense personal losses and often meaningless hardships. The anthology at hand focuses on these histories between the victors: on the cases of Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Austria, Finland, and Germany and on the respective, often gendered experiences of defeat. The book’s chapters underline the asynchronous transition to peace in individual experiences, when compared to the smooth timelines of national and international historiographies. Furthermore, it is important to note that instead of a linear chronology, both personal and collective histories tend to return back to the moments of violence and loss, thus forming continuous cycles of remembrance and forgetting. Several of the authors also pay specific attention to the constructed and contested nature of national histories in these cycles. The role of these ‘in-between’ countries – and even more their peoples’ multifaceted experiences – will add to the widening European history of the aftermath, thereby challenging the conventional dichotomies and periodisations. In the aftermath of the seventieth anniversary of 1945, it is still too early to regard the post-war period as mere history; the memory politics and rhetoric of the Second World War and its aftermath are again being used and abused to serve contemporary power politics in Europe

The presentation of Europe's historical past has changed - it was possible to conceal the fact that the majority of people actively co-operated or accommodated Nazi rule. This collection unravells the moral and political choices facing European governments in the aftermath of World War II.