The process of narration is structured, as Gerard Genette has shown, on the basis of the fundamental distinction between the `time of the story`, the physical succession of events, and the `time of the narrative`, which is perceived as `the sequence of linguistic signs representing these events`.

The key point for understanding narrative as a process is the deciphering of the concept of `discourse`. `Discourse` is not simply understood as the formulation of speech, but at the same time as a `body of knowledge` and additionally a `system of communication strategies`, with which the holders of this speech exercise power. On this basis, however, `discourse` loses its `objectivity`, losing the ability to describe reality unmediated, as it is articulated `subjectively` - a term that must be taken literally here - as the speech of the social subjects who express it.

Historiography as a scientific activity cannot be excluded from the process of narration. And this does not only concern writing as a representative process of the past; it primarily concerns the constitution of sources as `discourses`: Whether it is printed archival material from diplomatic or other governmental services, or material from other official social entities (e.g., political parties, newspapers, etc.), or even oral material, or finally, for the material constitution of the social space itself (e.g., monuments).

This material is constructed as narration through the `discourses` articulated by social subjects. Therefore, historiographical narration is bound by a series of mediations that arise on the one hand from the same `empirical material`, and on the other hand from the viewpoint of the historian. This problematic regarding the function of `discourse` at all levels of historiographical narration is what the essays in this volume seek to specialize and process, prompted by the `discourses` that were articulated - and continue to be articulated - concerning the crucial decade of the 1940s.