Taking a multidisciplinary, transnational approach, this conference explores the role of informal communication under conditions of World War II occupation and Nazi rule. Bringing together specialists on diverse European societies, the conference examines informal communication’s relationship to official state communications on the one hand, and its embeddedness in specific social realities and wartime mentalities on the other.

Argumentary

Over the course of World War II, over 200 million Europeans became subjected to Nazi rule. From the Baltic States to the Balkans, from the coasts of Normandy to the banks of the Black Sea and beyond, Nazi Germany and its allies unleashed previously unfathomable projects of ethnic cleansing and genocide, transforming European societies in ways that reverberate to the current day. These transformations, however, were not merely the product of colossal ideological visions and policies of conquest implemented “from above.” Rather, they were the continuously negotiated and tenuous result of millions of acts of introspection, self-emplacement, and action vis-à-vis myriad new and terrifying realities. Crucial to these negotiations was communication, which occurred in a very particular environment. Across Europe, wartime conditions and Axis rule devastated established sources of information and public spheres, while censorship, propaganda, and dictatorship went to unprecedented lengths to constrict, mold, and (re-) direct public opinion. As a result, World War II became a breeding ground for alternate, informal information channels, in which rumors, gossip, and tall tales helped shape individuals’ actions and sense of reality.

Taking a multidisciplinary, transnational approach, this conference explores the role of informal communication under conditions of World War II occupation and Nazi rule. Bringing together specialists on diverse European societies, the conference examines informal communication’s relationship to official state communications on the one hand, and its embeddedness in specific social realities and wartime mentalities on the other. More broadly, it asks how individuals employed various communicative and interpretative strategies to make sense of and act upon ever-changing landscapes of destruction. As such, the conference welcomes contributions that examine the following (non-exhaustive) questions :

• What role did informal communication play in particular World War II contexts ? Among which populations, in which situations, and for what purposes did certain forms of informal communication become particularly salient ?
• What do the forms, contents, and modes of informal communication reveal about social relations, the creation of identificatory categories (delineated by gender, ethnicity, age, language, etc.), or the possibilities for agency in conditions of violence and upheaval ? How are these related to practices of accommodation or opposition to particular regimes, especially vis-à-vis Nazi Germany and its Axis allies ?
• How did soldiers and/or civilians try to explain a world turned upside-down by the global conflict ? What role did experiences of previous conflicts (e.g. World War I, colonial wars) play in these processes ? How did Europe’s ongoing colonial contexts shape communications and expectations about World War II ?
• How did informal communication enable new kinds of knowledge, especially in relation to ongoing Nazi atrocities ? What can an examination of rumors, jokes, or prophecies reveal about the emergence of knowledge on the Holocaust ?
• What was the role of neutral countries (e.g. Switzerland, Sweden) or transnational networks (e.g. the Catholic Church) in spreading informal knowledge of ongoing Nazi crimes ? How did state actors, including Nazi Germany or the Allies, draw on informal communication to help disseminate or obscure this nascent knowledge ?
• How did states react to informal spheres of communication ? What efforts did the Nazi and other dictatorial regimes mobilize to monitor their societies, counteract rumors, and demarcate informal communication as “deviant” behavior ? How does this compare to the surveillance practices of democratic states during World War II (e.g. Great Britain or the USA) ?
• What kinds of parallels can be drawn between the communicative ecosystems of different political regimes and the communicative practices that these fostered ? To what degree can we compare Nazi Germany, Vichy France, the Soviet Union, or Europe’s various aligned or occupied territories ? What can be said about the specificity of informal communication under dictatorial rule in comparison to democracies ?
• How do we reconstruct the informal communicative practices of the past ? What kinds of sources lie at our disposal ? How do we problematize and contextualize these ? How do our methodological challenges relate to larger questions of credibility and veracity, both in regard to our historical actors and our current position as social scientists ?
• To what extent did wartime informal communicative practices reverberate into the postwar period ? How did these shape more global efforts of postwar reconstruction and Europeans’ reckonings with the crimes of their immediate past ?
• What kinds of perspectives can a historical exploration of informal communication, “fake news,” and “postfactuality” contribute to current debates on these issues ?

To examine these questions, this conference welcomes perspectives from scholars of various disciplines (such as history, communication and literary studies, sociology, and anthropology) who work on World War II, its precursors and immediate aftermath, and its more long-term memorial and historiographic reverberations. It seeks studies on diverse geographic contexts, with a special emphasis on different European societies that experienced Nazi occupation and dictatorial rule. However, to encourage explicitly comparative insight, it also welcomes contributions on other societies, including Nazi Germany’s non-European collaborators (e.g. Japan) or the Allied states and their efforts surrounding informal communication. Ultimately, in exploring these subjects, the conference aims to establish a modern, transnational approach to communications in conditions of war and occupation, while historicizing ongoing debates on media, postfactuality, and truth.

Submission guidelines

Please submit a short biography (max. 150 words) as well as the title and an English-language abstract (max. 250 words) of your intended contribution. Send your application as a single PDF file to the project leader, Caroline Mezger (caroline.mezger@ehess.fr). The submission deadline is May 1, 2026. You will be notified about your participation by the end of June. In case of questions, please contact Caroline Mezger by e-mail.

Practical Information

This is the final conference of the Leibniz Junior Research Group Project “‘Man hört, man spricht’ : Informal Communication and Information ‘From Below’ in Nazi Europe” (INFOCOM), conducted at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich. For more information, please see : https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/en/news/topics/man-hoert-man-spricht.

The conference will take place at the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) in Munich, from October 7 to 9, 2026.

Conference participants will be asked to submit an extended abstract (ca. 500 words) for internal circulation prior to the workshop. Presentations will last 20 minutes to allow for ample discussion time. The working language is English.

A selection of original articles based on the conference contributions will be published in a collective, peer-reviewed volume. In your application to this conference, please specify whether you would be interested in contributing a (previously unpublished) article to the publication.

Invited speakers’ travel and accommodation costs will be paid for by the IfZ.

The conference’s public keynote lecture will be delivered by Jo Fox, Professor of Modern History and Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Newcastle University.

Scientific Committee 

• Caroline Mezger (main organizer, EHESS)
• Florent Brayard (EHESS/CNRS)
• Thomas Chopard (EHESS)
• Johannes Großmann (Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich) Isabel Heinemann (IfZ Munich)