Rituals of outrage: Bomber Command, Dresden and the digital afterlife of Britain's wartime myth

Britain's memory of the Second World War continues to function as a powerful hegemonic narrative, or 'sacred story', that affirms moral clarity, heroic sacrifice, and an unpayable debt to the wartime generation. Yet in the digital age this narrative circulates within an environment shaped by algorithmic visibility, affective polarisation, and the commercial pressures of online news. This thesis examines how that sacred story is negotiated, challenged, and reshaped when authoritative figures put forward interpretations of the war that depart from the dominant script. It argues that digital platforms now serve not simply as repositories of public opinion but as performative spaces in which national memory is curated, policed, and weaponised.

Drawing on cultural memory theory, discourse analysis, and wider social sciences (including media studies, political sociology, and social psychology), and focusing on the period 2010-20, the research investigates three moments of contention regarding remembrance of the 1945 Dresden bombing, an episode long associated with moral ambiguity and contested memory. Each case investigates a distinctive form of authority: the experiential voice of a veteran, the moral voice of a religious leader, and the epistemic voice of a journalist turned popular historian. The thesis traces how their respective calls for repentance, reconciliation and reflection moved through a discursive chain from articulation (in speeches, interviews, and television appearances) to mediation (media circulation across print and online news outlets), to reception and contestation (within reader comment sections and social-media threads). Using a mixed-methods approach, it reveals how these interventions were reframed by the press and subjected to intense scrutiny in online communities structured by outrage and competitive displays of patriotic authenticity.

Overall, the thesis demonstrates that Britain's wartime sacred story is not a settled consensus, but a dynamic symbolic resource deployed across the political spectrum to regulate belonging, assign blame, and sustain affective engagement.