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1 - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and World War II

Can a Psychiatric Concept Help Us Understand Postwar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2013

Richard Bessel
Affiliation:
University of York
Dirk Schumann
Affiliation:
German Historical Institute, Washington DC
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Summary

How far can the pervasive violence of World War II, which affected not only combatants but also civilians, help explain the nature of European societies in the 1950s? The research presented in this book spans several countries and approaches this question from a variety of disciplines. The specific point that this chapter proposes to address is whether the understanding of the individual's reaction to life-threatening violence can contribute usefully to the body of research on the German society of the 1950s. This chapter raises questions and generates new hypotheses or tools for future empirical research. The crucial question remains whether it is at all admissible to use medical concepts to generate hypotheses for historical research.

World War II exposed many individuals to extreme and prolonged violence, and works of fiction as well as historical essays and books attempt to describe the way in which ordinary Germans experienced the war. Wolfgang Borchert's play Draussen vor der Tür captured the atmosphere of the early postwar years. When it was first broadcast on the radio on February 13, 1947, it elicited a tremendous response from listeners. The play describes the guilt, pain, nightmares, and finally suicide of a returned soldier confronted by various people, such as a former officer and the director of a cabaret, trying to forget the war and return to normality. Returning to “normality” was particularly important in the 1950s. Here, the most important question is what lies beneath the surface of this normality and necessitates maintaining it at all costs.

Type
Chapter
Information
Life after Death
Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe During the 1940s and 1950s
, pp. 15 - 36
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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