The Politics of War Trauma: The Aftermath of World War II in Eleven European Countries

The Politics of War Trauma compares the attitudes and policies towards the health consequences of World War II in eleven European countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, East Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and West Germany. It shows the remarkably asynchronous development of the medical approach to the survivors in these countries. In a truly interdisciplinary and innovative way, the book connects aspects of the aftermath of war that are not usually analyzed together. Changes in medical and psychological thinking about the consequences of the war and the prevalence of war-related health problems are analyzed in the context of the political and cultural histories of Cold War, welfare state, memory, and psychiatry.