ABSTRACT
Unlike memory studies that focus on trauma, this chapter addresses the happy recollections of German and Allied veterans who returned to settle in France after having first served there as soldiers during the Second World War. It explores the connections among memory, tourism, migration and war. German and later Allied military personnel brought with them images of France, whose tourism iconicity had been established by the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. While sightseeing in Paris and the French countryside, occupation soldiers frequently met women with whom they became romantically involved, creating another motivation for their postwar return to France, where some settled and had children, thereby creating ‘post’ or second-generation memory, with their stories now told by children and grandchildren. Occasionally, women settled in France as well, after having first seen it during the war. In contrast to less affluent veterans, those who returned to live in France were more educated in the arts and culture generally and more likely to know the French language, especially in the case of those who acquired ‘second homes’ there. This chapter integrates the study of the tourist imaginary with that of migration and cultural memory.
