Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and Preparedness

259 Pages·2021·4.328 MB·English

by  Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, Casper Sylvest

Cold War Civil Defence
in Western Europe
Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival
and Preparedness
Edited by Marie Cronqvist
Rosanna Farbøl · Casper Sylvest
Cold War Civil Defence in Western Europe
· ·
Marie Cronqvist Rosanna Farbøl
Casper Sylvest
Editors
Cold War Civil
Defence in Western
Europe
Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Survival and
Preparedness
Editors
Marie Cronqvist Rosanna Farbøl
Department of Communication Department of History
and Media University of Southern Denmark
Lund University Odense, Denmark
Lund, Sweden
Casper Sylvest
Department of History
University of Southern Denmark
Odense, Denmark
ISBN 978-3-030-84280-2 ISBN 978-3-030-84281-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84281-9
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Preface
The idea for this book emerged at a workshop in the Network for Civil
Defense History held at Lund University in the autumn of 2018. In
the delightful surroundings of the Old Bishop’s House, our conversa-
tions brimmed with observations about the similarities and differences in
national civil defence efforts during the Cold War and theoretical discus-
sions about how to approach and study such histories. Notwithstanding
the interdisciplinary composition of the group, there was agreement
that the field of civil defence history would benefit from a common
theoretical vocabulary and a sustained effort in the direction of transna-
tional and comparative history. It was against this background that we
decided to collectively explore the merits and potential of the concept of
sociotechnicalimaginariesinabranchofhistorysodeeplyaffectedbythe
development of science and technology. When we met again, this time in
wonderful Copenhagen at the height of summer in August 2019, most
of the chapters began to take shape. We thank Riksbankens Jubileums-
fond and the Danish Research Council (grant no. 8018-00047B, Danish
Civil Defence during the Cold War) for their support in making these
workshops possible.
Shortly after lockdowns were introduced in many countries during
the spring of 2020, we moved our collaboration online, submitting and
commenting on drafts through a web-based collaborative platform. The
pandemic and its waves have had deep effects on societies, communities,
families and individuals across the world. For teachers and scholars of
v
vi PREFACE
history, neat plans and schedules were disrupted due to irregular access
to archives and new forms of teaching that encroached on research time.
What stands out, however, from our perspective as editors, is just how
rewarding and gratifying scholarly collaboration has proved to be during
this time. We cannot thank the contributors to this volume enough for
thespiritandenergywithwhichtheyhavetakenonthistaskundernovel
circumstances.
It has been our priority from the outset to make this volume as
widely accessible as possible, and we are deeply grateful to the Book
Fund at the Lund University Library for covering the Open Access fee,
and thereby making the entire volume available to access and download
via the Palgrave Macmillan website. We would also like to thank Den
Hielmstierne-Rosencroneske Stiftelse for its financial support, which has
proved extremely valuable in preparing the manuscript for publication.
In that context, we would also like to express our gratitude to Catherine
Schwerin, who has improved the manuscript with great care and a sharp
eye for every detail. Finally, we thank Molly Beck, Lucy Kidwell and Joe
Johnson at Palgrave Macmillan for their interest in the project and their
support and professional assistance in all of its phases.
Lund, Sweden Marie Cronqvist
Aarhus, Denmark Rosanna Farbøl
Odense, Denmark Casper Sylvest
April 2021
Contents
1 Introduction: New Paths in Civil Defence History 1
Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest
2 Order on Their Home Fronts: Imagining War
and Social Control in 1950s NATO 25
Iben Bjørnsson
3 The Imagined Disastrous: West German Civil
Defence Between War Preparation and Emergency
Management 1950–1990 53
Jochen Molitor
4 Normalising Nuclear War: Narrative Scenarios,
Imaginative Geographies and Sites of Leisure
in 1950s Britain 77
Jonathan Hogg
5 Embedding Preparedness, Assigning Responsibility:
The Role of Film in Sociotechnical Imaginaries
of Civil Defence 103
Peter Bennesved and Casper Sylvest
6 ‘The World is Her Home’: The Role of Women
Volunteers in Dutch Civil Defence in the 1950s
and 1960s 129
Dick van Lente
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 Ruins of Resilience: Imaginaries and Materiality
Imagineered and Embedded in Civil Defence
Architecture 157
Rosanna Farbøl
8 Framing Civil Defence Critique: Swiss Physicians’
Resistance to the Coordinated Medical Services
in the 1980s 183
Sibylle Marti
9 Remembering Desirable Futures? Civil Defence
Memories and Everyday Life in Sweden and the UK 209
Marie Cronqvist and Matthew Grant
10 Conclusion: Civil Defence Futures (Re)imagined 233
Marie Cronqvist, Rosanna Farbøl, and Casper Sylvest
Index 247
Notes on Contributors
Peter Bennesved is a Historian of science and ideas at the University
of Umeå, Sweden. His research concerns Swedish civil defence during
the twentieth century, with a particular focus on its material aspects and
technologies.InNovember2020,BennesveddefendedhisthesisSheltered
societycivilianairraidsheltersinSweden—fromideatomateriality,1918–
1940andbeyond (2020).BennesvedhasalsoconductedresearchonCold
War civil defence media and propaganda. Currently, he is working on the
reception of internet, surveillance and cybersecurity technologies in co-
operation with the Humanities Laboratory (HUMLAB) and the iAccept
project at Umeå University.
Iben Bjørnsson is a Researcher and Curator at Stevnsfort Cold War
Museum in Denmark specialising in contemporary history. She earned
her Ph.D. in History from the University of Copenhagen and has done
extensive work on cultural, ideological, military and political aspects of
the Cold War, security and international relations, political parties and
organisations, the Arctic and the Nordic countries. She is the author of
a biography on Copenhagen’s former lord mayor Urban Hansen and a
book on the anti-communist activities of the Danish Social Democratic
party.
MarieCronqvist isAssociateProfessorinJournalismandMediaHistory
at the Department of Communication and Media at Lund University,
Sweden. Her research is focused on Cold War media, civil defence
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x NOTESONCONTRIBUTORS
culture and transnational broadcasting. Her most recent publications
include ‘Foreign correspondents in the Cold War: The politics and prac-
tices of East German television journalists in the West’ (co-author Sune
Bechmann Pedersen) in Media History (2020) and ‘From socialist hero
to capitalist icon: The cultural transfer of the East German children’s
programme Unser Sandmännchen to Sweden in the early 1970s’ in
Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television (2021).
Rosanna Farbøl is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of
Southern Denmark. Her research is focused on Cold War civil defence,
andshehasspecialisedintheconnectionbetweenmateriality,imaginaries
and culture, and comparative studies of urban civil defence strategies in
DenmarkandEurope.Herlatestpublicationsinclude‘Warfareorwelfare?
Civil Defence and emergency planning in Danish urban welfare archi-
tecture’ in Cold War cities: Politics, culture and atomic urbanism, eds.
JonathanHogg,MartinDodgeandRichardBrooks(London:Routledge,
2020) and ‘Urban civil defence: Imagining, constructing and performing
nuclear war in Aarhus’, Urban History (2020).
MatthewGrantisaReaderinHistoryattheUniversityofEssex,United
Kingdom. He has written extensively on British civil defence, including
After the bomb: Civil defence and nuclear war in Britain, 1945–68
(Palgrave, 2010) and several articles and essays. With Benjamin Zieman,
he co-edited Understanding the imaginary war: Culture, thought, and
nuclear conflict (Manchester University Press, 2016). He is currently
writing a history of Britain’s Cold War home front: Citizens and the state,
1945–53.
Jonathan Hogg is Senior Lecturer in Twentieth-Century History at
the University of Liverpool. He researches the cultural and social
history of British nuclear mobilisation. He is the Author of British
nuclear culture: Official and unofficial narratives in the long twentieth
century(Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) and the Editor or co-editor of
Using primary sources (LUP, 2017), Cold War cities (Routledge, 2020)
and British nuclear mobilisation since 1945 (Routledge, 2021). He is
currentlyworkingonhistoriesofUKuraniumminingandonanextended
project on the nuclear 1980s.
Sibylle Marti is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Bern,
Switzerland. Her research is located at the interface of cultural history,
history of knowledge and STS. She has published widely on the history