ABSTRACT
Karl Mannheim’s idea of ‘political generation’ is applied to war and the memory booms of the mid-1920s to mid-1930s and beyond. These were contested both within and between generations who experienced the Great War, especially as combatants. The controversy over All Quiet on the Western Front is exemplary. The bifurcation of ways of remembering between for example at the extremes – Nazi and Pacifist versions of the War – reveal the intense political contestations over memory especially in Germany. The role of veterans is discussed, such as Hitler and E. M. Remarque, and references to Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will and German expressionism (especially Otto Dix) are some of the examples used. The transgenerational links of these to the 1950s/1960s, and to a third way boom of the 1980s, suggest both continuity and discontinuity, and the collapse of political pacifism in Europe and America between the 1930s and the 1950s is placed in the context of the nationalist and generational reaction to the Great War, the schism between fascist militarism and the anti-war internationalism which responded to it. The continuity of these memories, which resonate with the 1960 responses to war, supports further waves of generational identification with anti-militarism.
