2026/01/02 by Petr Wohlmuth · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Eastern European Communism and Reforms #World Wars: History, Literature, and Impact #Central European national history
paper · doi:10.1080/13518046.2026.2618367
openalex publication_date 2026/01/02 · openalex created_date 2026/01/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/15
The symbolic production of historical meaning at the native level of actors, in relation to past wars and armed conflicts, is one of the areas where research in the fields of post-positivist oral history and reenactment studies overlap. A recent academicFootnote11. The research included human participants, who all provided an appropriate informed consent in written form. The research respects the Code of Ethics of Charles University. oral history projectFootnote22. The project in question was the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR) research project 22-07058S, “History and culture of contemporary Czech military re-enactment in an interdisciplinary perspective,” implemented (2022–2024) at Charles University, Faculty of Humanities. The author of the article was a principal investigator of the project. concentrated on analyzing the various strategies used by certain Czech military reenactors of WWII Axis-German forces to legitimize their reenactment brand within the reenactment community. This research note analyzes and interprets the specific and sustained efforts of many of these reenactors, whose reenactments aim to produce historical meaning and are designed to influence the interpretation of WWII history in Czech lands, primarily the war’s dramatic and extremely violent ending in May 1945, which still represents a contested past in Czech society. These reenactors have focused primarily on the elaborate semantic construction of their performances, targeted at gradually transforming the cultural content of the image of the WWII enemy by producing representations that portray Axis-German armed forces personnel and Third Reich citizens as victims of war – rather than perpetrators – primarily in the context of the large-scale revenge atrocities committed by the victors between May and August 1945. In parallel, these reenactors engaged in the construction of the increasingly negative image of WWII Soviet armed forces, the eastern Czechoslovak WWII army in exile, and Czechoslovak May 1945 revolutionary paramilitaries. This research note attempts to provide an interpretative understanding of the process of historical transformation of the cultural content involved, including the success of reenactors in establishing effective partnerships with various governmental and state bodies. It also points out the potential social consequences of this transformative process.