Nations Apart

Focusing on the striking contradiction between destruction and care, violent repression, and the simultaneous development of the welfare state, Nations Apart brings a new revisionist interpretation of an occupied society.

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Nations Apart reconsiders the Nazi occupation of Bohemia and Moravia during World War II. The dismemberment of Czechoslovakia after the 1938 Munich Agreement is typically recalled in Czech historical memory as the beginning of a period of humiliation, occupation, and resistance. Against this narrative of victimhood, %Sustrová argues that the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia witnessed the unexpected expansion of the Czech welfare state, a process driven by local nationalisms and which, in turn, contributed, inadvertently to the stability of Nazi governance. Through extensive research in Czech, German, and Swiss archives, Nations Apart demonstrates that ethnically exclusive Czech national ideology dominated politics and everyday life during Nazi rule. Illustrating similarities between the wartime 'Protectorate' and the occupation regimes in Western Europe, %Sustrová sheds new light on occupied societies during WWII and on the ambiguous origins of welfare states in post-war Europe.