Special lecture

Lucy Noakes and Frank Trentmann

Winners and Losers?

Britain and Germany after the Second World War

21 March 2025

(1:03 h)

Special lecture

Lucy Noakes and Frank Trentmann

Winners and Losers?
Britain and Germany after the Second World War

This event is part of the Max Weber Foundation's series on the The Ends of War - International perspectives on the Second World War.

How do historical narratives and memories shape our understanding of national identity and collective memory?

Lucy Noakes (University of Essex) and Frank Trentmann (Birkbeck) reflect on how the Second World War has shaped Germany and Britain after 1945. The conversation offers insights into the ways in which the two nations navigated the aftermath of the war and redefined their identities and roles in the contemporary world.

About the speakers:

Lucy Noakes, President of the Royal Historical Society and Professor of History at the University of Essex, specialises in the social and cultural history of early to mid-twentieth-century Britain, with a particular focus on people's experiences and memories of the world wars. Mining the Mass Observation archive, her forthcoming book The People's Victory. VE Day Through the Eyes of Those Who Were There (Atlantic Books, May 2025) presents a comprehensive and groundbreaking history of how Britons at home experienced the end of the Second World War.

Frank Trentmann, Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London, is a historian of modern Britain, Germany and the world. His research explores the interplay between material, political and moral change. His latest book, Out of the Darkness: The Germans 1942–2022, follows the German people's journey from the horrors of the Nazi era to their moral and social reinvention, and its limits. Trentmann's work captures the dramatic changes during and after the Cold War, the division and reunification of Germany, and the nation's evolving and ambivalent role on the world stage.