Доц. д-р Георги Бърдаров
Sofia University
https://doi.org/10.53656/his2025-5-2-con
Abstract. War is the natural state of humankind, and its traumas mark entire generations, being transmitted through collective memory to the next. One of the key questions we address in this article is whether revisiting the history of military conflicts can help protect us from future ones. Through literary sources and field research, a comparison is made between post-war Germany and its attempt to deal with the most painful and shameful part of its history, that of Nazism, and the nations of the former Yugoslavia, which failed to cope with the traumas of their history and inherited antagonism and ended up in the bloody Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. The specific factors and reasons why in one place they succeeded and in the other not to rework their history and, consequently, what are the consequences of this are highlighted.
Keywords: reworking history, collective memory, war, Nazism, prevention of conflicts
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