"The chapters in this volume originate in a conference held at Leeds University in summer 2008"--Page 11.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary material / Editors Narratives of Trauma -- Introduction / Helmut Schmitz and Annette Seidel-Arpacı -- ‘Killing Us in a Slow Way Instead of Doing it with Gas’: The German Catholic Discourse of ‘Suffering’, 1946-59 / Suzanne Brown-Fleming -- Imperialist Air War. East German academic Research and Memory Politics reflected in the Work of Olaf Groehler / Bas von Benda-Beckmann -- Hitler’s Legacy in Concrete and Steel: Memory and Civil Defence Bunkers in West Germany, 1950-65 / Nicholas J. Steneck -- Expressions of Memory in Pforzheim, a City hit by Air War / Christian Groh -- ‘Den Toten der ostdeutschen Heimat’: Local Expellee Monuments and the Construction of Post-war Narratives / Jeffrey Luppes -- Das Trauma der deutschen Kriegskinder zwischen nationaler und europäischer Erinnerung: Kritische Anmerkungen zum gegenwärtigen Wandel der Erinnerungskultur / Michael Heinlein -- Double Visions: Queer Femininity and Holocaust Film / Cathy S. Gelbin -- Foundational Traumas: On a Figure of Thought in Recent German Literature on Wartime Suffering / Helmut Schmitz -- German Victimhood Discourse in Comparative Perspective / Bill Niven -- Holland and the German Point of View: On the Dutch Reactions to German Victimhood / Krijn Thijs -- The Miracle Workers: ‘German Suffering’, Israeli Masculinity, and the Feminised/Queered Nation as Redemptive in Eytan Fox’s Walk On Water / Annette Seidel-Arpacı -- List of Contributors / Editors Narratives of Trauma -- Index / Editors Narratives of Trauma.

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Over the last decade German culture has been engaged in a re-examination of the traumatic events of the Second World War and their post-war legacy in the public and private sphere. This shift in German memory culture from a focus on responsibility for the Holocaust to a focus on wartime suffering has attracted a lot of critical attention over the past decade, in both Cultural and Literary Studies and History. This volume brings together British, German, Dutch and American scholars from the fields of Cultural Studies, History and Sociology to address the national and international significance of discourses of ‘German wartime suffering’ in post-war and contemporary Germany. The focus of this interdisciplinary volume is both on the historical roots of the ‘Germans as victims’ narratives and the forms of their continuing existence in contemporary public memory and culture. The first three sections of this volume explore the conditions of German victim discourses in a variety of media and public arenas from historiography, sociology, literature and film to monuments, civil defence bunkers and local public memory. The final section sets the contemporary re-articulation of German wartime suffering in an international context with respect to its reception and its reflection in both Western and Eastern Europe and Israel.

English, with one contribution in German.