Presented at Temple ICAS event " The 70th anniversary of 1945: Trouble ahead?" on February 27, 2015

1. The 70th Anniversary of 1945:
Trouble Ahead?
Temple ICAS – Sciences Po Alumni
Association Conference, 27 February
2015
Karoline Postel-Vinay

2. What this presentation is about/not
about
René Magritte, « La trahison des images », 1928

3. Main points
• Normative concern
• 1945 as global narrative
• « World events » and « global narratives »
• « WW2 », the label issue
• « WW2 », the timeline issue
• 1945 as legacy

4. 1945 as global narrative
Adoption of the United Nations Charter, 1945

5. World events, global narratives
• Was 1989 a world event?
Fall of Berlin as fall of all walls? DMZ?
End of history worldwide? Latin America?
Cold War as contested narrative (NAM)
• Was WW1 really global?
“Great war” and “grande guerre” rather than
“world” war

6. Label?
• China: “War of resistance against Japan”, (now “world anti-
fascist war”)
• Japan: “incidents”, then (1941) “Greater East Asian war”,
then (1945) “Pacific war”, “World war two”, “Fifteen Years
War” // “Sino-Japanese war”
• Germany: “Weltkrieg”
• Free France: “Guerre mondiale”
• Great-Britain: “Second great war”, then (post-1945),
“Second world war”
• Soviet Union: “Great patriotic war”
• US: (pre-1941 media “European war”) //“Second world
war”

7. Timeline?
• Chinese “century of national humiliation”: from 1839 Opium
War to est. of PRC, including two Sino-Japanese wars
• 1931: Japan invades Manchuria (Mukden Incident)
• 1937: Second Sino-Japanese War (Marco Polo Bridge Incident)
// Communist-Kuomintang unity //Fluidity of Western powers
positions
• 1939: “Second great war” in Europe
• 1941: “Second world war” (Germany invades USSR, Japan
invades US + official war declaration China against Japan)
• 1945: End of WWII // end of Sino-Japanese war // end of
colonization of Taiwan (1895-45) & Korea (1905-45)
(//Occupied SE Asian nations back to Europe, various
independence processes )

8. D
Double V Campaign, 1942, New York
The US “Good War” and the African-American “Double
Victory” narrative

9. Realistic utopia?
Paris, May 1968