Dreams and Nightmares: Imagining the Aftermath of War, 1815–1945

Abstract Thinking about and planning for the end of war generally begins as soon as fighting breaks out, if not long before. Yet few studies analyse how participants considered and prepared for war’s outcomes, and even fewer compare the dynamic of wartime projections in different times and places. Using a transnational longitudinal approach, this article focuses on a series of case-studies across Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia to examine how the end of war was imagined. It highlights interactions between war and its aftermaths and challenges the notion of ‘the post-war’ as an a priori category by stressing its historical contingency and fluidity. The ‘aftermaths of war’ are, we argue, constantly in the process of formation, contestation and evolution. Throughout our case-studies we observe hopes for post-war peace and prosperity alongside fears of post-war disorder—including revolution, racial war and even genocide. The tension between hope and fear about the aftermaths of war appears as a constant, although the ways in which hope and fear play themselves out are context-specific. Such sentiments are often expressed in a language of religion, which never entirely disappears but is supplemented and at times overcome by more secular doctrines of salvation—nationalism, socialism, imperialism or welfareism. The conclusion brings us to the present by exploring how and when the aftermaths of these distinct but interrelated wars end, or, by contrast, endure and overlap.