Pernicious Objects: The Small Things that Haunted Europe after WWII

Pernicious Objects: The Things that Haunted France after World War II

What happened to all the busts of Philippe Pétain after 1944? What happened to the millions of Vichy collaborationist and Nazi-related posters, busts, insignia, hats, guns, arm bands, calendars, pamphlets, and children’s books that France was awash in by the mid-1940s? Scholarship on contemporary dilemmas posed by WWII-era material culture, including the thriving trade in small-object memorabilia, has recently spiked, while the history of these artifacts’ survival in the final days of WWII, liberation, and postwar rebuilding remains mostly unwritten. This talk introduced new research exploring pivotal moments in 1944-1950, as Allied occupiers, French leadership, and the population at large struggled to purge the country and continent of “pernicious objects.”

 

Dr. Sarah Griswold  is Assistant Professor of European History at Oklahoma State University, focusing on modern France