A Dance with Death: The Imperial War Graves Commission and Nazi Germany.

This article examines the Imperial War Graves Commission’s (IWGC) interactions with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, focusing on the management and commemoration of British and German First World War dead buried on each other’s soil. Contrary to interpretations framing these efforts solely as appeasement, the IWGC’s negotiations with the Nazi regime primarily aimed to protect British war cemeteries in Germany, which had been established instead of repatriating bodies, a decision that created stark disparities with the scattered and neglected German graves in Britain. The article highlights how these cemeteries became politicized sites reflecting competing British and German narratives of victory and defeat, with Nazi groups in Britain and Germany using German war graves for propaganda, while the IWGC struggled to maintain control amid shifting political contexts. Ultimately, the IWGC’s attempts at cooperation were limited by divergent memory cultures and political realities, and the outbreak of the Second World War ended these efforts without resolving the underlying tensions over war remembrance.