• Literature and Politics: John Banville and Fintan O’Toole in conversation with Lara Feigel

    Is literature always political? Does the writer have more political responsibility than other citizens, or less? What was the role… Read More >

  • ‘Comparing Occupations’ podcast

    Beyond Enemy Lines is a European Research Council project, set up to look at culture in the occupation of Germany…. Read More >

  • Conversations on ‘Melancholia’

    As part of a series of events organised in association with the Melancholia exhibition (Inigo Rooms, Somerset House – East Wing,… Read More >

  • Melancholia – a Sebald Variation

    The Beyond Enemy Lines team has organized a major international, multi-disciplinary and multi-media exhibition. Curated by John-Paul Stonard and Lara… Read More >

  • “No settlement will be permanent nor effective unless basic changes occur in the German culture”

  • “Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed”

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Britain’s Role in Creating the EU: Was Contemporary Germany created by Britain?

Beyond Enemy Lines

Beyond Enemy Lines is the first study to survey in detail the cultural landscape of the British and American zones of Germany, exploring in particular the British and American writers and filmmakers who worked in Germany during the Occupation. Artists, who included W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Billy Wilder and Humphrey Jennings, were sent as part of the occupying armies to convert Germans to democracy through instilling British and American culture.