This expression is often used for post-war rewriting of history in a more coherent way according to local stereotypes and moral values,[1] which may include denying war atrocities.
On the winning side, it is closely related to the concept of fair quest and just war, which claim to kill only warriors in fights.
Research done by Norman Brown, Peter Lee, and others, tested the hypothesis that memory is organized based on life-changing events by having participants recall memories with historically defined autobiographical periods (H-DAPs; i.e. "during the war", "after the earthquake").
The results found that participants that lived in war zones or places where a natural disaster such as a tsunami had occurred typically would refer to their H-DAPs to date personal events, while New Yorkers almost never mentioned the attacks of 9/11.
The researchers believed this was happening because even though they remembered the attacks of 9/11, they had very little direct effect on their everyday lives.