When Nazis Became the Key of Economic and Diplomatic Reconstruction: German Prisoners of War in the French Transition from Warfare to Peace Time (1944-1948)

For millions of Europeans, notably 40 million French people under occupation during the period 1940-1942, the 8th of May 1945 marked the end of the war. This turning-point of European history, a transition from war to peace could not be simply described as a diplomatic event. For about 12 million Germans, the Liberation of Europe meant the total defeat and the beginning of a captivity of nearly three years for one million of them in France.

This paper proposes to analyze the process of leaving the war behind as an indicator of gaps in a period of resurrection in French postwar history; one which has been shaped, simultaneously, on three analytical levels:

• On the macro, including states, their national and international public policy toward the management of massive labor input for projects of national reconstruction
• On the meso, including social, cultural and political actors and the tensions between the representations of the prisoners and their treatment on a daily basis, defining their strategies for reconstruction and reconciliation in terms of recognition and of cost
• On the micro or individual level which refers to the change of perception regarding the nature of the "enemy."

My aim will be to understand to what extent this captivity could have contributed to the rebuilding of national identities, in France and why this transitional period of "leaving the war behind" could be considered as a successful resurrection of a future in comparison with the postwar period of the First World War.