Keywords

Introduction: The Constructed Nature of Identity

With the emergence of the “new military history,” the study of war has evolved significantly and is now integrating a broader research perspective that exceeds the restrictive battle-descriptive construct which played a prominent part in traditional writings about military history, by seeking the nexus between the armies and the societies. War is a complex phenomenon which cannot be understood only in terms of battles, strategies, and military maneuvers. The battlefield integrates two main theaters of war – the military-operational one and the civilian one – connected by human tragedy, suffering, and the collective trauma. The impact and consequences of war in relation to societies, human behavior, and state conduct help us comprehend multiple faces of war which go beyond the actual warfare. Therefore, the military history research should look at recent conceptual and theoretical trends that have emerged as part of the growing influence from cultural and social studies. The new research trends require new paradigmatic approaches and methodological tools of research that integrate a host of other disciplines, especially history, sociology, psychology, anthropology, and cultural studies.

Studying cultural aspects of war can tell us more about how and why people fight; how the parties at war face the trauma of violence; how emotions and feelings influence the fighting capacity, in which way the experience of war is being memorialized; and how memory frames the dynamics of identity formation and state conduct (Black, 2004). There are also important psychological factors which explain the war dynamics and give us valuable insights into the fabric of warfare. In the words of John Keegan, the outcome of a war – however strong the capabilities and however high the commanding skills or operational thinking – significantly rests on the fighting capacity of the soldiers, their motivation to fight, the combative spirit, and their willingness to face death (Keegan, 1983).

Questions of identity have been central to scholarly debates since the turn of the twentieth century. “Who we are” is the central question shaping the discussions on identity issues. While some scholars argue that identity is formed on the basis of the primordial ties of blood, kinship, language, and common history, others consider that the term should not be seen as a static concept, but as a comprehensive and dynamic process that is produced and reproduced under various circumstances, integrating human dispositions, practices, and emotions that people share collectively and which they have internalized through socialization (education, politics, the media, sports, or everyday practices) (Wodak et al., 2009).

Discussing the basic concepts of the creation of identity, the closest field is the research on nationalism in the 1980s and 1990s which speaks about the immense influence that nationalism has exerted on identity construction. There is a rich literature on nationalism that has produced a variety of findings and theories on how nationalism/national identity develops as closely interconnected concepts. For Charles Kupchan, nationalism is, at its core, about identity that is rooted in a shared ethnicity, lineage, language, culture, religion, or citizenship (Kupchan, 1995). As other scholars argue, national identity may be defined as “a body of people who feel that they are a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, symbols, and language” (Emerson, 1960; Guibernau, 2004). The exiting attributes that shape the concept of identity do not entirely explain the dynamics of the identity construct. Benedict Anderson (1983) defines a nation as imagined communities because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion” (Anderson, 2006). A nation in the form of “imagined communities” is a socially constructed community that gives its members a sense of identity and belonging, thus reflecting people’s need to define themselves and others and make people perceive themselves as part of that group. We might thus say that while maintaining its primary characteristics that make people feel as part of a distinct national group, identity is socially constructed and may evolve constantly over time under specific conditions and influences.

Building on the existing attributes, the concept of identity integrates a set of practices of memory and collective remembrance that speak about the centrality of war and of its experiences to the national consciousness. Certainly, war creates a powerful sense of shared identity that unites people, but it also produces mental gaps that separate or distinguish them from others. Defeats, suffering, humiliation, or great military victories leave deep traces in people’s memory and prepares the ground for forging a sense of identity. However, especially important – in the words of Black – “war, in the shape of images of violence, answers to something deep in the human psyche, at least insofar as framing identities are concerned. It helps define groups and provides them with an apparent coherence” (Black, 2004: 17).

The past traumatic events, which shape the way in which collectives and nations continue to look at themselves and relate to others, provide better grounds for people to construct their identity. As Carpentier argues, war draws an imagined frontier between “us” and “them,” between the Self and the Other, identified as the Enemy. Although the Self and the Enemy share antagonistic identities, they need each other in order to voice their own distinct identities (Carpentier, 2015: 4). Identity, however, is not a fixed process. The paradigmatic identification Self versus the Other helps a group achieve more cohesiveness and self-definition, but the way in which the war memory is processed as part of the identity building process is first and foremost determined by narratives. This thesis has been explored extensively as part of the identity building analysis. Wodak, De Cillia, Reisigl, and Liebhart (1999) have identified language and discourse as the essential instruments in the social construction of imagined communities. In their view, the discursive constructs of nations and national identities are key tools that emphasize national uniqueness and intra-national uniformity, and, in doing so, the members of a national community simultaneously construct the distinctions between themselves and other nations.

The way we see others speaks about complex identity dynamics that takes shape through the power of language. The way in which the experiences of war are put into a narrative is part of a particular set of beliefs, feelings, and perceptions that together create distinct stories, acts of remembrance, and memories that people identify with and that are absorbed over generations (Porter, 2007). The fundamental question is who is creating the narrative, as it determines the main actors involved and their interests in projecting specific patterns of identity formation. The elites have a considerable ability to shape the central symbols and images that constitute national identity (Kupchan, 1995) and, thus, to generate specific discursive typologies. They have the necessary mechanisms to produce national symbols in terms of monuments, museums, or other historical sites that shape a nation’s story. Here, the media also plays an increasingly significant role. As Anderson rightly observed, mass media is a key instrument in the social construction of imagined communities, changing the perceptions and emotions of the members of the group/community/nation and producing patterns of homogenous identification that strengthen the sense of who we are (Anderson, 2006).

While people form their own beliefs and convictions that help forge a sense of collective identification, they can be easily taught or influenced through the power of discourse how to look at their history and how to relate to others. Different typologies of discourse can create different historical narratives that can change people’s perceptions of what constitutes their national identity.

The German case is especially worth discussing since its collective identity construction in the twentieth century was the result of dramatic changes that forced the entire nation to rethink who they were and how to identify themselves with their past. The major shift that shaped the German identity was the result of two catastrophic wars. In the aftermath of the First World War, the defeat was used to create a national consciousness that at its core had the need to legitimize the war and therefore saw the emergence of a cult of war dead and praise of the military who remained – according to the general perception – undefeated on the battlefield. It also led to the search for ways to overcome the feeling of humiliation that was inflicted upon the country at the end of the war. The main narrative claimed that Germany was defeated, humiliated, and treated unjustly through complicit political games despite being militarily undefeated. The defeat discourse prepared the ground for powerful nationalistic feelings and strengthened nationalism and enforced what G. Mosse called the Myth of the War Experience (Mosse, 1990). The Second World War generated a paradigmatic change through a new and innovative discursive agenda. As R. Wittlinger has pointed out, the single most important factor that determined the character as well as the nature of the postwar German identity was the legacy of the National Socialist past and the Second World War that led to the moral and military defeat of Germany. The collective memory of the Nazi past provided the basic narrative for the creation of a new identity, one which had to find a place for the Holocaust and the Second World War in the national consciousness (Wittlinger, 2010). The identity discourse generated a radical shift from nationalism to patriotism based on the concept of nation. The result was a new German collective identity, based on a commitment to democratic principles, values, and institutions – in other words, a post-national identity shaped through the lens of a normative collective identity that was to provide a way out of the German dilemma of how to deal with the horrors of the past while finding a new place and role in the international arena. Considering Germany’s central geopolitical role in Europe, the transformative process of identity would have far-reaching consequences.

This is why it is important how the history of wars is put into a narrative, how people speak about their past, and what are the intentions of the main actors involved in creating narratives. As Wang argues, it is nearly impossible to divorce our own perceptions from the semi-orchestrated construction of our national or political narrative (2012: 3). The state’s capacity to shape patterns of memories and collective identity remains a central feature in the analysis of the dynamics of identity formation.

Building on this paradigmatic approach, we treat the concept of identity as socially constructed – imagined communities – and thus subject to change through shifting narratives and discourses. The memory of war – created by collectives or politically driven – remains a major vehicle in this change due to the importance of historical narratives in preparing the ground for national and other senses of identity.

Military History and “Memory Turn”

Starting in the mid-twentieth century, the craft of history is particularly entangled with the contemporary “memory boom” or “memory turn” that weighs heavily on the growing interest in cultural and memory studies (Winter, 2006; Finney, 2014). With the Great War and the Second World War, the cult of memory spreads widely as a global phenomenon, but the recent decades have further accelerated this trend. The Centennial of the Great War and various anniversary events dedicated to the Second World War further fueled the “memory boom” phenomenon that owes much to the constant and growing public interest in the accumulated trauma and catastrophic experiences of war (Finney, 2014). Building on the new scholarly investigations, the connection between war, memory, and identity was increasingly being researched systematically, adding new dimensions to the military history study.

While it is widely assumed that memory has nowadays become a major focus of scholarly and public interest, there is no clear consensus as how to define and understand memory. The modern collective memory of war builds on traditions and rituals which go back to the American Civil War and stretched through the First World War and the Second World War. However, scholars searching for the concept of memory acknowledge its complexity and the difficulty to address it. The works of Neff (2005), Desjardins (2003), Kansteiner (2002), and Kramer (2007), to mention just a few, bring valuable contributions to the scholarly investigation and understanding of the collective memory construct, but questions still remain. Building on the subject of memory, Maurice Halbwachs who pioneered the research in memory studies, maintains that memory is framed within a social setting, and when collectives come together to recall significant events of the past, they create collective memory (Halbwachs, 1992). The same argument is used by Meghan Tinsley who considers collective memory to be a joint understanding of the past, developed and shared by members of nations, religions, or ethnic groups (Tinsley, 2015). For Jay Winter, the collective memory is constructed through the action of groups or individuals who come together to remember (Winter & Sivan, 1999). Here, the distinction is between individual or passive memory and collective memory which implies a social setting. In other words, the collective memory of war is not what everybody thinks or remembers about a war. Building on the issue of memory, Winter assumes that collective memory first and foremost constitutes acts of remembrance (Winter, 2006). It is about how wars, soldiers, and victims of war are remembered through collective actions (ceremonies, monuments, films, culture, etc.). The patterns of remembrance are an important indicator of how people and collectives relate to past war experiences and how they translate their perceptions and feelings into narratives as part of the collective memory building. According to John R. Gillis, “The core meaning of any individual or group identity, namely, a sense of sameness over time and space, is sustained by remembering; and what is remembered is defined by the assumed identity” (Gillis, 1994: 3). In other words, how a war is remembered – with defeats and victories, collective trauma, and suffering – reveals and shapes a sense of Self. Traumatic memories of war persist, but the way they are remembered can change the substance of the memory narrative in multiple ways. Collective memory consists of multi-layered connections between often contradictory modes of understanding and competing narratives of the past (Wodak et al., 2009). The key question is: how war and war experiences need to be remembered and in which way the war memories can help form patterns of collective identities?

There is a multitude of ways in which collective memory is standardized and reproduced (Roudometof, 2002: 7). The relationship between memory and identity is largely produced by various forms of cultural or religious practices that incorporate commemoration, remembrance, and public military ceremonies. People are encouraged to remember their past and create collective imagery that is absorbed as part of their national consciousness. Military history books, archives, museums, war monuments, memories, or images that remind us about the past all contribute to the process of constructing and preserving memory because they create the national heritage foundation and speak about the unique national character. The memory sites become the expression of remembering and mourning, connecting people through collective grief, gratitude, or national pride, thus providing a powerful sense of group allegiance. Here, the role of the state remains an important driver in the process. National holidays, ceremonies, and military parades are all organized by the state with the specific aim to encourage people to remember and teach them what/how to remember and what to forget (Wang, 2012: 3). As some scholars have acknowledged, what to remember and what parts of history should be forgotten is a decision made primarily by the political elites (Wang, 2012: 3). Regardless of ideological character, political regimes have a natural tendency to adopt a selective memory of war, one which focuses on specific events and that may produce a powerful collective impact by placing certain events into the national consciousness while silencing or forgetting others. The collective memory of the First World War in Romania provides such an example. Romania entered the war in August 1916 but was soon defeated by the forces of the Central Powers (in December, the capital of the country was occupied by the enemy forces). The memory of the defeat was to be silenced by means of the important military success reached by the Romanian military in the summer of 1917 during the battles of Marasti, Marasesti, and Oituz. The events of July–August 1917 were to remain and be celebrated as trademarks of national glory and the spirit of sacrifice in the service of the country, thus shaping the entire memory of war and leaving deep traces in the national consciousness. The Mausoleum of Marasesti, which was erected on the place where the battle of Marasesti took place, is now a symbol of commemoration and national gratitude and a central site where military ceremonies are held, honoring the memory of all those who gave their lives saving the country.

In Russia, the collective memory of the Second World War is a major state enterprise aiming at increasing the national spirit of solidarity, patriotism, and national attachment toward a glorious past (Merridale, 2009; Putin, 2020). The memory of the Bolshevik atrocities, Stalinist crimes, or the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact are all silenced, while the great military victories during the Second World War and the immense national collective sacrifice were to become the dominant features of the national identity construct, closely watched by the state authorities.

The “turn to memory” also reveals the growing interest of the public in the story of war. War remains a highly popular subject, enjoying a great deal of appeal across generations. The last decades have seen a surge of this trend. While its popularity continues to expand apace, the public contribution to the history of war opened new and innovative ways of looking at and understanding warfare-related matters. War seen through the people’s eyes becomes a social and cultural experience that can both challenge and enrich the old research paradigms of studying military history. There is a strong link between the process in which the commemoration and memorialization of individual wars shape collective memories and that in which the use of the vocabulary and imagery of conflict helps make war a key social experience, even for those who have not seen fighting (Black, 2004).

The study of the memorialization of war allows the integration of multiple voices, in written or oral form, from memoires to contemporary letters and interviews as well as abstract recollections based on pictures, photographs, and images. All these create a large body of non-archival sources that can open unknown windows to the study of military history and provide significant sources of knowledge to military historians. However, not only historians tap in to these sources, but also poets, filmmakers, televisions producers, illustrators, artists, popular culture, and the streets (as public spaces) provide a contribution of their own by creating and promoting memory trends (Carpentier, 2015). There is a large technological and media infrastructure which includes the print trade, the art market, the mass circulation press, the film industry, and the developments in photography that together create powerful channels for the dissemination of texts, images, and narratives about the past. As the war continues to draw widespread attention, the popular culture has adjusted to this trend by integrating a large body of war-related subjects. The war is the subject of songs, movies, documentaries, novels, and artwork – every conceivable form of entertainment and culture.

The memory of war integrates also the voices of those who experienced the war. Any traces of memory coming from the direct participants – in terms of letters, diaries, and memoires – help recreate a multitude of war images. To use John Keegan’s words, “allowing the combatants to speak for themselves, when and where possible, is an essential ingredient of battle narrative and battle analysis” (Keegan, 1983: 46). Listening to the voices of participants at war and giving them the space to talk about their fears, suffering, emotions, and trauma of death provide new sources of conducting military history research. The impact of imagery reflected in photographs or pictures can add genuine insights into the experience of war. The variety of films, television programs, documentaries, or book publications that address the issue of war is the result of but also the engine driving the public fascination about war-related issues. These days, Internet and social media are important tools of transmitting across the society the historical experience of others and allowing the public to share their own views and get engaged in vivid debates regarding the experience of war. This is another way of constructing narratives and fosters a kind of memory that is not scholarly grounded, but rather based on feelings, convictions, and beliefs that people build and adopt collectively.

The Great War Centennial events emphasized this trend even further as they triggered a significant interest in the war among diverse groups who contributed through collection of documents, memoires, photographs, family objects, pictures, and other images of the past, all of them adding new pieces to the archival repositories of the national collective memory. All these items constitute new war evidence that give valuable insights into the human experiences and the cultural impact of war trauma on people and societies (Langenbacher and Shain, 2010).

The shift in public interest regarding the memory of war by incorporation of the societal and cultural dimension is well noticed when we look at the changing patterns of remembrance. The great military events remain part of large public commemoration activities (e.g., Battle of Somme, Battle of Verdun, Battle of Normandy), but the message and the subject of remembrance have been significantly reframed in line with the changing memory narratives. What and how people should remember are important questions that help understand the deep connection between memory and mental representation of war. To use Eyerman’s words: “how an event is remembered is intimately entwined with how it is represented” (Eyerman, 2001).

The practice of remembrance of the two great wars of the twentieth century highlights a significant change of paradigm that says a lot about how people memorialize war and how remembrance practice may construct/reconstruct identities. While in the years following the end of the Great War, the soldier stood at the center of remembrance activities – built on the symbol of the Grave of the Unknown Soldier – the last decades have witnessed a gradual change of paradigm. The collective memory of the First World War is now increasingly shaped by the images of human tragedy and the horrors of trench warfare, while the suffering of the people on and behind the battlefield also plays a more prominent role in the collective and public memory. Such representation of war had a significant impact on how we see today the Second World War which adds new meanings to the construction of historical memory. The wounds inflicted by war on civilians and the human tragedies provoked by the war erased the borderline between the military and civilians, as both paid their own price as victims of the same conflict. The amplitude of human suffering covering a much broader field of casualties – including pogroms, genocide, the Holocaust, mass killing, or dislocation of the population – challenged the old assumptions that war is only about the history of fighting. The growing public interest in the non-military aspects of war speaks about new mental constructions of war which focus on individual and collective experiences. In other words, it is not solely the war, but the human suffering caused by the war that significantly frames the collective memory building, adding new dimensions to the patterns of remembrance.

The two great wars of the twentieth century changed the paradigm of remembrance, integrating more cultural and societal elements with special focus on human suffering, trauma, and the horrors of war experienced by the society at large. In a general perspective, the memory of trauma, tragedy, or suffering brings people closer together and help forge a sense of belonging that is absorbed in the collective mindset. But the same traumatic feelings may also keep people apart. As we shall see below, this behavioral dynamic is getting more evident when we look at the subjects that presently dominate the public interest in the history of war, creating new typologies of memory narratives and identity formation.

The Use of War Memory in Constructing Identity Typologies

Divided historical memories or a gap in identities can draw deep fault lines among people and nations. Such dynamics creates antagonistic views and hostile perceptions that significantly frame the way people see or interpret the actions of others, leading to mutual adversity that is reproduced and transmitted over generations. The memory of war is a major source of hate, hostility, resentment, and antagonism that can become central to a population’s sense of its shared identity. Both the academic and public domains, either through schools or through arts, popular culture, and mass media, may contribute to the dissemination of past grievances that encourage mutual adversity and turn history into a battlefield of narratives of the imagined historical truth. Tensions over history still remain a powerful obstacle that hinder efforts at reconciliation and can turn into a major geopolitical challenge, even among allies. The geopolitical situation in Northeast Asia or the South China Sea weighs heavily on the controversial historical dossiers that still haunt the present political views and actions of the regional countries, as the relations between Japan and South Korea or China and Japan provide good examples.

The relations between Russia and its neighbors are, to a large extent, shaped by their complicated history that has resulted in growing feelings of fear, mistrust, and suspicion regarding the Russian actions in the region (Cioculescu, 2013). Many countries develop a mythology of victimhood that is used to create a positive self-image built on the victim-perpetrator dichotomy. The traumatic emotions of suffering, losses, and betrayal are deeply embodied in the collective memory and produce a powerful sense of shared identity. The Munich Agreement of September 1938, the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact of August 1939, or the post-war agreement of 1945–1946 heavily marked the collective memory of most of the countries in Central/Eastern Europe. These events inflicted fears of being betrayed or left isolated as victims of Great Power politics. The Polish example is a good case in point. Here, the ample national remembrance manifestations organized annually and dedicated to the Second World War are especially centered on Poland’s role as a victim in both the war and in the peace that followed (Ochman, 2013). Feelings of victimization and hopelessness came to symbolize the deepest fears and threats, fueling their collective memory representation and identity construction. A different image of victimhood is also promoted by Hungary – the image of being a victim of injustice and humiliation. From this perspective, the Trianon Treaty is remembered as a tragedy of historical proportions, while many Hungarians relate to it as almost a personal trauma. The feeling of victimization is also a dominant feature in the war memory of the Arab countries whose collective memory regarding the Great War is filled with feelings of resentments, frustration, and betrayal toward the Western European Empires.

The memorialization process centered on war, and war experience is an important indicator of states’ political conduct in both domestic politics and international affairs. It speaks about states’ critical security concerns but also about the psychological grievances that might affect their behavior and influence the way they look at others as potential allies or foes. Memory of war can be changed through narratives, and, here, the political discourse has an important role to play. The way an event is remembered is a product and a consequence of how that specific event is translated into language and, especially important, how it is instrumentalized though political narrative.

In a broader perspective, the memory of wars is at the forefront of an ongoing battle over collective memory, a dynamic process which reflects not only the people’s convictions but a host of political interests and state agendas. War is a primary topic to be exploited politically by certain groups that have an interest in manipulating the historical truth or presenting it in a selective form to serve political purpose. This creates specific historical narratives that are implemented in an organized manner, through school curricula and academia to state agencies, state-controlled media, and propaganda instruments promoted by network of social or political organization. This approach is especially obvious in case of the history of the Second World War.

Certainly, for most of the Western countries, the Second World War plays a central part in the national identity construction although this happened in radically different manners. In the case of Germany, the memory is shaped in terms of reconciliation and forgiveness while assuming the responsibility for past mistakes. For Britain and the USA, it is about the ultimate sacrifice required to save humankind from the evil shadow of Nazism and Fascism and help the countries regain their freedom. For many countries from Central/Eastern Europe, the Second World War is regarded as the primordial historical phenomenon that profoundly changed their history. It remains deeply embodied in the collective memory as the symbol of national trauma, injustice, and suffering, leaving deep traces in the national psyche and creating a sense of martyrdom. In Russia, the Great Patriotic War became the very foundation of the Soviet/Russian identity built on the memory of bravery, spirit of sacrifice, human tragedy, and military greatness of the Russian/Soviet nation that made the final victory over Nazism possible. For many countries in Asia, the trauma of the Japanese occupation is a defining feature of their national collective memories which still profoundly shapes their national psyche.

However, identity is not a static phenomenon. It evolves over time through various formal or informal tools of learning, and/or this is especially important, as a result of politically driving agendas. Emotions expressed in terms of hostility, hate, or reconciliation are not a given thing, but rather a product of external factors. Therefore, identity formation is a learning process, teaching people how to use the memory of war or how to remember their own past in order to create patterns of identification. Here, we may currently find two forms of political discursive approaches. On the one hand, we find the political discourse that uses the war memory in order to forge an identity based on the ideology of nationalism and patriotism as in the case of Russia and other countries that follow a nationalistic path. The goal is not only to encourage the development of a specific collective memory but to use it as a way of creating powerful bridges between the state and the population. In other words, the capacity to mobilize the people through memory and practices of remembrance plays a significant role in creating a specific pattern of identity that can be instrumentalized for the benefit of the political power either to increase its legitimacy or consolidate public support for its policies.

On the other hand, the political discourse elsewhere is moving toward a more societal narrative: a trend that has gained special prominence in Western Europe. It emphasizes the need to use memory of war as a platform to create cross-national identities with a special focus on reconciliation, tolerance, and lessons to be learned from the war experience. This is a new paradigmatic approach that seeks to replace the hostility discourse with a more formative narrative that can create bridges among people based on unifying messages. Germany is an important voice, in driving a new approach in terms of memorializing and remembrance practices. In his speech delivered at the Franco-German conference “Winning Peace” in Berlin on October 11, 2018, the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, noted that: “The future needs remembrance. The past is an indelible part of our identity. It serves as a reminder and teaches us, for today, but also for tomorrow” (Maas, 2018). According to Maas, the reason “why peace could not take hold after the Great War was because it was simply not possible to create peace in the hearts and minds of the people.”

The new European narrative is intended to introduce a new pattern of collective memory that is now part of remembering the victims and the human tragedy. However, at the same time, it is about lessons that may be transmitted to the next generations. The key concepts are reconciliation and forgiveness as a way of building a new memory of war and a new identity. Apology diplomacy has been a major tactical means in the reconciliation process. The German leaders have issued a number of direct apologies for the Nazi past crimes. Regrets have been also expressed by Japanese heads of government to both China and Korea on different occasions. Most recently, attending the ceremonies organized in Poland for the 75th commemoration of the outbreak of the Second World War, the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier apologized for Germany’s actions in war: “My country unleashed a horrific war that would cost more than 50 million people – among them millions of Polish citizens – their lives… This was a German crime” (Steinmeier, 2019). In line with the German narrative, the European message calls for a new kind of collective remembrance aiming at teaching people how to look at their past, not to forget the past horrors, to pay tribute to all those who suffered and made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country, and to respect their memory. From this perspective, the study of war is seen as playing an important role as part of a formative process that builds upon the shared experiences of war to prepare the grounds for a peaceful and more secure future. The memory of war and the remembrance activities may unite individuals, collectives, and nations and provide the foundation for a new identity construction characterized by tolerance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. Such a pan-European identity forged on the ashes of war can replace the old-fashioned identity defined along strict ethno-national lines, used to produce homogenous national identities, that was a major cause of hostilities and conflicts throughout the twentieth century.

Identity, Collective Memory, and Strategic Culture

The analysis of wars and conflicts tell us that culture plays an important role in explaining how and why people fight and how states act in times of military crises and geopolitical turbulences. As part of this conceptual understanding, the study of the link between cultural factors of war, historical memory, identity formation, and states’ security behavior opens new perspectives of research in the field of military history and helps us examine the nature and the dynamics of states’ strategic thinking and specific attitudes to war.

Long-neglected in the international relations (IR) academic theories, assuming that it had a minimal influence in explaining war-related matters or the dynamics of international politics, the issue of identity has been reconsidered. The advancement of IR constructivist theory gave new impulses when studying the identity-related matters and their impact on shaping states’ conduct. An important focus of the constructivist IR scholars was to investigate how collective identities are formed and what role they play in shaping national interests, the development of foreign policy directions, and the evolution of international rules, norms, and institutions (Neumann, 1998). Extending the framework of analysis, the IR constructivist theory assumes that it is not only the structure that shapes the power and interests within the international system, but that ideas and perceptions play an equally important role (Wendt, 1995).

Building on the new theoretical advancements, war memory serves as an important factor that can influence the decision-making process and the way in which different actors understand and interpret the nature of conflict. War and trauma associated with it create a historical baggage of accumulated experiences, beliefs, practices, and ideas that leave enduring legacies in a state’s strategic thinking and allow us to understand the deep historical roots that shape states’ actions and motivate their decisions. Against this background, each country develops its own strategic narrative and security culture that reflect specific identities and emphasize national attributes as deriving from historical experiences. It is a fairly common argument that the term strategic culture integrates a set of beliefs, attitudes, and preferences held by strategic decision-makers regarding the use of force, the object of war, and the most effective means of achieving it (Snyder, 1977; Porter, 2007; Longhurst, 2004). In other words, strategic culture is essentially an attempt to integrate cultural considerations, cumulative historical memory, and their influences in the analysis of state security policies and international relations (Al-Rodhan, 2015).

The way in which states process and memorialize their past and traumatic war experiences often plays a key role in explaining their attitudes toward war and how they behave in the context of war. It provides valuable insights and help decipher how states build their agenda of security priorities, how they consider their strategic options, and how they adjust their strategies of actions and strategic narratives. National pride, prestige, and esteem are important variables that motivate states’ conduct as well as their aspirations and constraints in the international system. The strategic mindset remains deeply rooted in past grievances, anxieties, frustrations, fears, or ambitions and aspirations that unveil states’ sources of self-perception and the perception of “the others.” Relations between states are in many ways a product of their history and historical interactions, and here the wars and conflicts have an important role to play.

The memory of war and how memories are translated into military practice say much about states’ military and strategic cultures. This is especially important nowadays when we see that history continues to haunt states’ collective mindset, at the same time as the consequences of the recent traumatic past are still fresh on their mind, exerting considerable influence over their behavior. The foreign and security policy of China or Russia is simply impossible to decipher without taking into consideration the deep historical and cultural roots that shaped it.

The feelings of insecurity, victimization, and humiliation or betrayal leave enduring legacies and, in many cases, strongly influence the national strategic thinking. For China, the “century of humiliation” inflicted by the West and Japan in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is the formative historical process that defines its current international posture and security objectives. The entire political and state apparatus, academic curriculum, and state propaganda are mobilized to underline the endurance of the Chinese people vis-à-vis foreign invaders and its peaceful and inoffensive intentions toward the others. The main argument is that China, throughout her history, did not act as an aggressive actor, but it was a victim of others’ hostile actions. Past defeats are now a historical motivator for forging a new pattern of international behavior rooted in a growing nationalist feeling and the great power ambitions seen as a defensive shield against any foreign attempt to humiliate China again. In the words of Stephen R. Platt, “There is a lingering memory of that history from the 18th century that goes a long way to explain the desire in China for a global trading order that works more on China terms” (Platt, 2018).

Russia is a similar case as her historical memory is the product of the way in which past war traumas are processed as part of the national identity and strategic narrative. The fear of foreign aggression – deeply embodied in the Russian collective psyche – coupled with its geographical vulnerability and the memory of victimization remain the core of Russian strategic culture and identity formation. From this perspective, the Great Patriotic War came to symbolize the Messianic struggle to defend the country against foreign enemies and serve as a model of all wars – which inevitably have a defensive character – that Russia has to fight against real or invented threats. Russia developed an obsession with a culture of insecurity that turned into a quest for territory as the only buffer against potential invaders. In the words of former Soviet diplomat, M.M. Litvinov, “The more territory you have the safer you are” (Constantiniu, 2010).

The culture of insecurity is an important motivator that can explain states’ reactions and choices in connection with present-day events as can be seen in the reaction by Poland and the Baltic States in connection with Russia’s actions against Ukraine in 2014 (Lucas, 2015). These countries harbor a sense of victimization in the collective memory of their relationship with Russia. The historical memory of their past military experiences and the centuries-long trauma of Russian occupation remain the main factor driving their feelings of insecurity and vulnerability and, as a result, shaping their strategic reactions and political decisions. The lessons they learned from their recent war experiences are a powerful engine which make their present security agenda focus on searching for credible defense commitments and strong military alliances, as the only strategy to provide for their defense against a potential Russian threat (Kulesa, 2016; Dueck, 2017; Hunt, 2018; Hodges et al., 2020).

In other cases, the impact of collective memory of war on the strategic culture takes place through a different logic that is not necessarily connected to the feeling of insecurity and past grievances, but is the result of a transformative process often stemming from a strategic shock. Germany provides an example worth noting. The feelings of guilt and shame coupled with the psychological burden of the Nazi past came to weigh heavily on Germany’s historical narratives, leading to a profound change in the German strategic culture and its strategic identity. The militarist spirit that inspired the Prussian military traditions during the last two centuries has been replaced by a new strategic culture that is pacifist, passive, and restrained. Germany assumed the status of civilian power that defined a new role for Germany within the Great Power configuration. The new non-militarist spirit cannot be understood without a close examination of those features that marked Germany’s war experience, especially in the twentieth century and created particular patterns of collective memory. Due to its past war experiences, Germany has developed a culture of war avoidance combined with a diplomacy characterized by moral and normative principles of international law that translate into an assumed reluctance regarding the potential deployments of German military force abroad.

The preeminence of normative strategic culture is evident in the case of the USA as well but with significant differences. The Civil War, the Second World War, and the Vietnam War impacted the way the USA looked at war and utility of force. It is not only the competitive nature of international politics that frames state conduct, as claimed by the neo-realistic school of international relations, rather there are various domestic and ideological factors with important roots in the collective memory and identity formation. The commitment to democratic values, human rights, and liberties overwhelmingly shapes the US’s strategic culture and military intervention rhetoric and has forged a sense of exceptionalism that implies that the country is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage (Al-Rodhan, 2015). As part of this conceptual thinking, the use of force is seen as a tool to protect peace in the name of liberal democratic principles and individual freedom. The use of military force is justified on moral grounds that legitimize the military interventions and justify the war rhetoric, defined as a struggle of good versus evil.

The way in which states look at their past and memorialize their war experiences provides valuable insights into the fabric of their current strategic thinking. Certainly, the emerging strategic realities and military technological advancements under the impact of globalization create new challenges, forcing states to readjust their military strategies and ways of war. In that sense, past wars may be of little or no relevance to future wars. However, the study of war history remains today as relevant as before. Moreover, the way in which past conflicts are translated into collective memory helps us decipher new perspectives, national and collective, regarding the issue of war and to explain various typologies of states’ military behavior and strategic options in times of crisis.

Conclusion

The growing influence of cultural and social studies provides new methodological and analytical lens which allows a better view and understanding the history of warfare and its impact on contemporary society. War as an extremely traumatic event strongly contributes to uniting people and creating strong bridges across generations, but at the same time, it may be a cause of deep fault lines among people and countries that continue to keep them apart. The way in which people and collectives remember and memorialize wars creates patterns of identity that profoundly shape how people think about themselves, how they perceive others, and how states frame their agendas of actions and interests in the international system.

However, the integration of identity and memory studies as part of military history writing is not fully accepted, and it even raises powerful criticism among scholars. Their main concern regards the danger of allowing memory turning into a freewheeling historical agent in its own right, thus weakening the role of critical thinking or historical analysis which stays at the foundation of military history study (Klein, 2000). The argument is that the collective memory is a subjective-formative process that tells us a lot about war experiences, based on people’s emotions, perceptions, and feelings, but they do not provide a credible research method to replace the long-standing tradition of scientific objectivity. As claimed by some scholars, military history has the unique mission of writing about war, using credible empirical information and avoiding subjective interpretations which do not comply with the historical truth. To Michael Howard, at the center of the history of war, there must lie the study of military history, “that is, the study of the central activity of the armed forces, that is, fighting” (Howard, 2006).

Certainly, the archives and documentary evidence remain the main depository of historical information, and they play a critical role when conducting war history research. My argument is that the archives are not the only reservoir of information that we need to understand or study war. The scholarly developments over the last decades have shown us that the study of military history needs to integrate multiple voices and extend its area of research by considering new fields and tools of analysis. It is not about the lack of historical objectivity but the changing purpose of writing about the past, and here the collective memory plays an increasingly significant role, allowing us to discover new faces of war and to bring new voices into the story of war.

Military history has an important formative function that is built around the significance of war in creating/recreating patterns of collective behavior, cultural values, national identities, or strategic mindsets. Warfare is also about the individuals and their direct experience of combat, and, thus, what the direct participants say and how they confront the experience of battle can substantially enrich war studies and bring new perspectives to the understanding of the issue of war and conflicts. Military history plays an important role in studying and explaining the way in which people and countries look at war and the utility of force and how war experiences frame their patterns of behavior and strategic conduct. The past is a valuable reservoir of knowledge and information to help us understand how identities and historical memories shape states’ typologies of strategic and military actions.

The way in which people and nations memorialize their war experiences and how war memory is used to form collective identity remains an important source of hostility and mistrust that influences regional and international relations. However, at the same time, as dynamic processes, both memory and identity can be changed through historical narratives. The role of military history is not only to inform but also to teach and help people learn from past experiences. The terms of reconciliation and tolerance are nowadays playing a more prominent role in the discursive approaches to memory and identity. We speak more about the war as a collective trauma that has provoked overwhelming human suffering, affecting all people, societies, and countries.

The dynamics and scale of human suffering of the two world wars forged new frames for the memorialization process with a lasting impact on both political and public cultures. This can be noticed in the systematic attempt to produce a new European political discourse, one which speaks about war as a traumatic event, the tragedy and human suffering of which need to unite people as the only way to prevent such horrors from happening again. Using this logic, the memory of war needs to be focused on lessons to be learned and on creating patterns of behavior and practices that drive people toward reconciliation and understanding. War should be seen as a bridge connecting people through past tragedy, suffering, and death as a way of creating a motivator for building a future together, free of all the past grievances and tragic experiences.

This is a new paradigm that calls for a new military history construct, one which pays increased attention to the shifting discourses about memory and identity that have already opened new windows to the understanding of war and to new ways of conducting military history research.

Summary

Chapter I: Military History and “Memory Turn”

The chapter discusses the concept of collective memory seeking to understand how memory of the past is constructed, shaped, preserved, and transmitted over generations. The central question is how war is remembered and how the war memories form patterns of collective identity. Various forms of remembrance are an important indicator of how people and collectives relate to past war experiences, and how they translate their perceptions and feelings into narratives as part of the collective memory building. Within this framework, we may understand the complex relationship between war memory, identity formation, and the societal dynamics of remembering and forgetting.

Chapter II: The Use of War Memory in Constructing Identity Typologies

The chapter discusses the significance of war memories in constructing identity typologies and how they can create divisions and hostility among people and nations. Victimhood and traumatic emotions are deeply ingrained in collective memory, influencing identity construction. At the same time, memory of war is a learning process that shapes patterns of identification, with political discourse either fostering nationalism and patriotism or advocating for cross-national identities through reconciliation and tolerance. Against this background, the memorialization of war memories reflects states’ political and sociocultural behavior, which might influence their behavior toward one another. Within this paradigm, the new European narrative that emphasizes reconciliation, forgiveness, and collective remembrance acts as a means to foster cross-national identities and replace old-fashioned ethno-national identities.

Chapter III: Identity, Collective Memory and Strategic Culture

The chapter discusses how culture, identity, and collective memory influence states’ strategic behavior. Previously neglected in international relations theories, the issue of identity has gained importance through constructivist theories, which emphasize the role of ideas and perceptions in shaping state behavior. The study of identity formation and historical memory helps us understand how nations perceive war and make strategic decisions. Past conflicts leave lasting legacies that shape a state’s strategic thinking, and understanding how war memories are processed is crucial in deciphering states’ attitudes and choices. In other words, the way states memorialize their war experiences provides insights into their current strategic thinking and can explain their military behavior and options in times of crisis.

Cross-References