This book is a marvellous read, emotional and yet educative, clearly the result of extensive research, and you have a particular interest in British and German history. But one wonders, what sparked the idea for such work?

Thank you, that’s very kind of you to say! I’ve actually been thinking about questions of war and remembrance for a while. My earlier research was about the German-Jewish soldiers of the First World War and how these men were remembered (or not). Yet, I’d never really given much thought to the fact that German history could also be found much closer to home. It was only when I stumbled across the deaths of German prisoners of war in wartime Cheshire that my interest really piqued. I immediately wanted to know much more about these individuals: how had they ended up dying so far from home? Where were they buried and where were their graves today? And then of course, there was the opposite side of the story: what happened to the British dead in wartime Germany? And with all this a project was born!

There’s an extensive list of sources, but did the research process also involved travelling to some of these burial sites?

Oh yes, I’ve spent many a day wandering around cemeteries. As there were once enemy graves in most regions of Britain and Germany, the opportunity for site visits has been endless. In Brandenburg and Bavaria, some local archivists even ended up driving me out to some of the more isolated cemeteries, other times I ended up on long rambles after the public transport ran out. The journey has always been worth it though. As a historian, I think it’s important to connect what I read in the archive to the landscape; it helps so much to visualise people’s earlier emotions and even to see how disputes over the location of graves might have come about.

Could you talk us through the research and writing process, and how long did it take?

With any project, you have to go through the key stages of reading, researching and writing. However, the main thing needed is time. It’s not just finding a moment to get to libraries and archives, but also the space to think, plan and write. I first started to give some thought to the enemy war dead about a decade ago, but only in very vague terms. What I did, though, was to slowly collect material, so if I was visiting an archive for another project, I’d make sure to read their files on the war dead at the same time. Things only really took off in a big way when the Leverhulme Trust awarded me a 12 month fellowship in 2022, which the University of Chester also generously supported. This gave me the time I needed to drill down into the archival material and to get writing.

Is there something you wish you could expand more? Maybe in future projects?

When I first started the research, I never imagined just how big a history this actually was. But the archival material was voluminous and that’s just dealing with the British and German dead on the two home fronts. There were many other places – most obviously the battlefields – where the British and Germans ended up burying the enemy. All of this could be written about in much greater depth, but the one area that particularly fascinates me is the fate of the enemy dead in colonial spaces, North Africa for example.

Do you think that today War Cemeteries receive the right attention, as it was the intention behind their creation, or are they slowly being forgotten?

This is a good question. With generational shifts, I think it’s inevitable that the way people engage with war cemeteries will have changed. After all, our understanding of the world wars and our relationship to the dead has always been in constant flux. There is still a big interest in the history of twentieth century conflict, and people want to remember those men and women who sacrificed their lives, but this does not necessarily equate to visiting graves of the fallen. Indeed, I was more often than not the only visitor at many of the very well-kept cemeteries. Instead, people seem to be drawn to newer sites, such as the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire.

After the First World War there was a lot of confusion regarding on what was the best course of action, but after the second world conflict, the governments took more swift and firm positions on how to deal with the dead. Could we say that they learned their lesson from the past, in this instance?

I would say that it depends on which direction we look. There was certainly a great effort to control memorialisation after the Second World War. Thus, 1939-1945 is normally a line added to existing Great War memorials, rather than a conflict remembered separately. However, when it came to the graves of those killed, there was a bit more continuity. The principle of non-repatriation remained central to the Imperial War Graves Commission’s work, which meant that they again left the British and empire dead on German soil, sometimes to the chagrin of bereaved families.

This book focuses primarily on Britain and Germany but, to your knowledge, were other nations’ governments involved in negotiations and discussions in a similar manner?

Absolutely! When the fighting stopped in 1918 and 1945, we more often than not think about histories of peace treaties, returning soldiers and the reconstruction of damaged lives and cities. However, dealing with the dead was also a massive part of the transition from war to peace. All the belligerents had to put in place plans for either the repatriation or permanent burial of their dead, and this process had to involve some form of negotiation between the different powers. In Britain alone, it was not just the Germans who wanted to move their bodies; the French, Belgians, Dutch, Americans and others also had their own exhumation plans.

There is an abundance of movies, TV Shows and novels set during the two world wars, are there any, that you know of, that cover – even partially – the topic of caring for the enemy dead? And if yes, anything you would recommend?

This is another great question and I’m sure your readers will have some brilliant examples to offer here. If I may, though, I’d like to just share one example. I find the Danish film ‘Land of Mine’ – a nominee for Best Foreign Film at the 2017 Oscars – fascinating for a whole host of reasons. It doesn’t deal with enemy war graves per se, but what it does do is to turn our gaze onto the fate of enemy servicemen. The film shows a group of very young German prisoners of war, most of them just teenagers, who the Danes deployed after VE-Day to clear land mines from Jutland’s beaches. The results are sadly inevitable. As one young German after the next dies, our sympathies are gradually turned towards the dying enemy and ultimately the horrors of war.

And finally, what will you be working on next?

One of the consequences of finishing a big project is that people always ask, so what’s next! But it’s a very fair question. I’ve a few shorter articles, essays and book reviews that I’m going to get to first. After that, there are some very different aspects of Britain and Germany’s entangled history concerning landscapes and memory that I’d love to delve into. Watch this space as they say!

Tim Grady is a historian and the author of Burying the Enemy: The Story of Those who Cared for the Dead in Two World Wars, published by Yale University Press.

Letizia Turini is an Editorial Intern at Aspects of History.