Tassy Payne, Staff Reporter

History professor Angelika Holeger moderated the “70 Years Later: Legacy of World War II” panel on September 2 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of WWII and to discuss what legacies this conflict left behind.

Hoelger said topics like World War II should be commemorated.

“We should address the global significance and the forgotten parts of the war,” she said.

IU Southeast German professor Michael Hutchins, French professor Charles Pooser, and political science professor Jean Abshire presented presentations on the legacies WWII left from three different angles. Hoelger said the three chosen for the panel were chosen based on their expertise and research of their topics.

Francaphone Africans in WWII: The Liberation of the “Motherland”

Pooser presented about Africans who fought and died to liberate their European colonizers and then received very little in return.  

“Around 20,000 Africans were sent south in France,” he said.

Pooser said that the Africans were not claimed by Motherland citizens and that the Africans weren’t paid the salaries and pensions that were due to them as French soldiers. They received much less compared to  European soldiers.
International Law After 1945

Abshire discussed the legacy of WWII on international law, specifically international human rights law.

International laws are rules and obligations recognized as binding on countries. Abshire stated that early international law focused on the conduct of war. She said that treaties were a major source of international law.

After the First World War, there wasn’t supposed to be a second one. Abshire said that there were needs for new efforts to try to regulate and mitigate conflicts between countries.

Responses to these conflicts in 1945 were

• creating a new international government organization
• creating new agreements/conventions
• to show efforts to punish violators of the law during war.

Abshire said the first legacy WWII left was how the International Governmental Organizations were formed. She said this took international law to a new level.

The second legacy WWII left was how New laws were formed. Abshire said there are new levels of collaboration to avoid conflict between countries, which has led to an increased generation of laws and agreements.

The last legacy WWII left was how the laws were to be enforced. She said there were various judicial bodies to enforce areas of law. One of the judicial bodies mentioned was the World Trade Organization.  She said that there were developments after WWII being fought. Abshire said that in some respects international law has come a long way but she said that it is an ongoing process.

Reframing the Nazi Legacy in Contemporary German Film

“For the German-speaking world, the legacy of WW2 has always been qualitatively different than for the rest of the world,” Hutchins said. “It’s because of the legacy of having lost the war and the legacy of having perpetrated unspeakable crimes.”

Hutchins talked about how Germans have never been able to “valorize” the war like the winner of the war did. There were two different interpretations of what it meant to be German.

The first interpretation is citizens of East Germany who were anti-fascism. They had a clean break with the Nazi legacy.

The second interpretation is West Germany. These citizens were mourning, coming to terms with guilt.

Hoelger said that this panel worked out well.

“I hope there will be more panels that will raise awareness left in mark,”she said.