This volume deals with the multiple impacts of the First World War on societies from South Europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa, usually largely overlooked by the historiography on the conflict. Due to the lesser intensity of their military involvement in the war (neutrals or latecomers), these countries or regions were considered "peripheral" as a topic of research. However, in the last two decades, the advances of global history recovered their importance as active wartime actors and that of their experiences. This book will reconstruct some experiences and representations of the war that these societies built during and after the conflict from the prism of mediators between the war fought in the battlefields and their homes, as well as the local appropriations and resignifications of their experiences and testimonies.

During the last two centuries, ethnolinguistic nationalism has been the norm of nation building and state building in Central Europe. The number of recognized Slavic languages (in line with the normative political formula of language = nation = state) gradually tallied with the number of the Slavic nation-states, especially after the breakups of Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. But in the current age of borderless cyberspace, regional and minority Slavic languages are freely standardized and used, even when state authorities disapprove. As a result, since the turn of the 19th century, the number of Slavic languages has varied widely, from a single Slavic language to as many as 40. Through the story of Slavic languages, this timely book illustrates that decisions on what counts as a language are neither permanent nor stable, arguing that the politics of language is the politics in Central Europe. The monograph will prove to be an essential resource for scholars of linguistics and politics in Central Europe.

First World War-based ex-servicemen's organisations found themselves facing an existential crisis with the onset of the Second World War. This book examines how two such groups, the British and American Legions, adapted cognitively to the emergence of yet another world war and its veterans in the years 1938 through 1946. With collective identities and socio-political programmes based in First World War memory, both Legions renegotiated existing narratives of that war and the lessons they derived from those narratives as they responded to the unfolding Second World War in real time. Using the previous war as a "learning experience" for the new one privileged certain understandings of that conflict over others, inflecting its meaning for each Legion moving forward. Breaking the Second World War down into its constituent events to trace the evolution of First World War memory through everyday invocations, this unprecedented comparison of the British and American Legions illuminates the ways in which differing international, national, and organisational contexts intersected to shape this process as well as the common factors affecting it in both groups. The book will appeal most to researchers of the ex-service movement, First World War memory, and the cultural history of the Second World War.

This is the first scientific biography of Milan Rastislav Stefanik (1880-1919) that is focused on analysing the process of how he became the Slovak national hero. Although he is relatively unknown internationally, his contemporaries compared him "to Choderlos de Laclos for the use of military tactics in love affairs, to Lawrence of Arabia for vision, to Bonaparte for ambition ... and to one of apostles for conviction". He played the key role in founding an independent Czechoslovakia in 1918 through his relentless worldwide travels during the First World War in order to create the Czechoslovak Army: he visited Serbia and Romania on the eve of invasion by the Central Powers, Russia before the February revolution, the United States after it declared war on Germany, Italy dealing with the consequences of defeat in the Caporetto battle, and again when Russia plunged into Civil War. Several historical methods are used to analyse the aforementioned central research question of this biography such as social capital to explain his rise in French society, the charismatic leader to understand how he convinced and won over a relatively large number of people; more traditional political, military, and diplomatic history to show his contribution to the founding of Czechoslovakia, and memory studies to analyse his extraordinary popularity in Slovakia. By mapping his intriguing life, the book will be of interest to scholars in a broad range of areas including history of Central Europe, especially Czechoslovakia, international relations, social history, French society at the beginning of the 20th century and biographical research.

This book project traces the thought of several Roman Catholic Modernists (and one especially virulent anti-Modernist) as they confronted the intellectual challenges posed by the Great war from war from 1895 to 1907.

This work is a comparative study of the three "great" American wars of the twentieth century: World War I, World War II and Vietnam. The book explores several aspects of American popular culture, like fashion, film and the societal mores of each era. While a number of books have covered fashion during individual wars, this is the first study to compare several major conflicts, drawing some conclusions regarding the lasting influences of wardrobe over an entire century. This book provides short background information for each war, briefly covering earlier conflicts that shaped the hostilities of the twentieth century. Although the emphasis is on women's clothing, participation and service, men are not ignored. Their fashions not only speak to the times, but the enormity of their sacrifices.

The story of Allied victory in the Holy Land, far from the carnage of the Western Front but a crucial, morale-boosting success under the aggressive and forward-thinking General Allenby. Three battles for the control of the key fortress-city of Gaza took place in 1917 between the `British' force [with units from across the Empire, most notably the ANZACs] and the Turks. The Allies were repulsed twice but on theirthird attempt, under the newly-appointed General Allenby, a veteran of the Western Front where he was a vocal critic of Haig's command, finally penetrated Turkish lines, captured southern Palestine and, as instructed by Lloyd George, took Jerusalem in time for Christmas, ending 400 years of Ottoman occupation. This third battle, similar in many ways to the contemporaneous fighting in France, is at the heart of this account, with consideration of intelligence, espionage, air-warfare, and diplomatic and political elements, not to mention the logistical and medical aspects of the campaign, particularly water. The generally overlooked Turkish defence, in the face of vastly superior numbers, is also assessed. Far from laying out and executing a pre-ordained plan, Allenby, who is probably still best remembered as T. E. Lawrence's commanding officer in Arabia, was flexible and adaptable, responding to developmentsas they occurred. JOHN D. GRAINGER is the author of numerous books on military history, ranging from the Roman period to the twentieth century.

Australia, Wilkommen (1990) documents the rich and varying contribution made by Germans in Australia. Originally welcomed as hardy pioneers, German settlers were responsible for discovering and opening up vast tracts of land. German scientists and entrepreneurs played a large role in the Australian economy. But as the German empire expanded into the Pacific, and Britain and Australia were drawn into two world wars, perceptions of Germany and its people changed and immigrants were caught in the crossfire between the old and new worlds. This book examines these issues surrounding German immigration into Australia, and the shifting perceptions of both the immigrants and the nation itself.

Ruthless Warfare (1998) demonstrates how close the First World War came to Australia. It has been argued that Australia was manipulated against its interests into action in WW1 by London - this unpublished collection of documents from the military division of the German Archives shows that this was not the case. The German Navy expected a major confrontation with the British Empire, both in the North Sea and further afield. German cruisers were expected to make a significant contribution in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, pinning down British naval forces and thus undermining the British fleet's supremacy in the Atlantic. The damage and disruption to imperial trade would have had serious consequences for Australia, and these German plans also meant that a significant military intelligence system was active in the Antipodes.

Essays examining the rift between British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and its effect on events. This volume of essays examines the perceived rift between the British and German intellectual and cultural traditions before 1914 and how the resultant war of words both reflects and helped determine historical, political, and, ultimately, military events. This vexed symbiosis is traced first through a survey of popular fiction, from alarmist British and German "invasion novels" to the visions of Erskine Childers and Saki and even P.G. Wodehouse; contrastingly, the "mixed-marriage novels" of von Arnim, Spottiswoode, and Wylie are considered. Further topics include D. H. Lawrence's ambivalent relationship with Germany, Carl Sternheim's coded anti-militarism, H. G. Wells's and Kurd Lasswitz's visions of their countries under Martian invasion, Nietzsche as the embodiment of Prussian warmongering, and the rise in Germany of anglophobic, anti-Spencerian evolutionism. Case histories of the positions of German andEnglish academics in regard to the conflict round out the volume. Contributors: Iain Boyd White, Helena Ragg-kirkby, Rhys Williams, Ingo Cornils, Nicholas Martin, Gregory Moore, Stefan Manz, Andreas Huther, Holger Klein Fred Bridgham is Senior Lecturer in the Department of German at the University of Leeds.

Historians have long argued that the Great War eradicated German culture from American soil. Degrees of Allegiance examines the experiences of German-Americans living in Missouri during the First World War, evaluating the personal relationships at the local level that shaped their lives and the way that they were affected by national war effort guidelines. Spared from widespread hate crimes, German-Americans in Missouri did not have the same bleak experiences as other German-Americans in the Midwest or across America. But they were still subject to regular charges of disloyalty, sometimes because of conflicts within the German-American community itself.
"Degrees of Allegiance" updates traditional thinking about the German-American experience during the Great War, taking into account not just the war years but also the history of German settlement and the war's impact on German-American culture.

From the moment the German army moved quietly into Luxemburg on 2 August 1914, to the Armistice on 11 November 1918, the fighting on the Western Front in France and Flanders never stopped. There were quiet periods, just as there were the most intense, savage, huge-scale battles. The war on the Western Front can be thought of as being in three phases: first, a war of movement as Germany attacked France and the Allies sought to halt it; second, the lengthy and terribly costly siege warfare as the entrenched lines proved impossible to crack (late 1914 to mid-1918); and finally a return to mobile warfare as the Allies applied lessons and technologies forged in the previous years. As with previous wars, British Commanders-in-Chief of a theatre of war or campaign were obliged to report their activities and achievements to the War Office in the form of a despatch and those written from the Western Front provide a fascinating, detailed and compelling overview of this part of the First World War. This volume concludes with Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig's fascinating despatch, originally published in 1919, on the execution of the fighting on the Western Front.

This book challenges current thinking about the outbreak of World War I and the course of German foreign policy since Bismarck's chancellorship. In 1914, Germany's opening offensives against France were to be accompanied by a simultaneous offensive by her ally, Austria-Hungary, against Russia. The Austrian offensive was intended to hold the Russians until Germany defeated the French-six weeks, no more. Then, the German army would turn east to support the Austrians. The Austrian offensive was a catastrophic failure. After only days of fighting Russia, Germany was obliged to send troops to support Austria lest she capitulate while most of the German army was still in France. The Austrian army's severe deficiencies were a constant drain on the German effort throughout the war. After the war, German memoirists and historians claimed that the German leadership had been unaware of these deficiencies before the war broke out. These claims have been accepted by historians down to today. The book presents recently re-discovered documentary evidence that the German general staff and Germany's political leadership had known of the Austrian army's weaknesses for decades before the war. The book also reveals a new perspective of Bismarck's diplomacy beginning shortly after he engineered the Dual Alliance between the two countries in 1879. It demonstrates that as early as 1882 Bismarck became aware that the Austrian army was far weaker than assumed when he concluded the alliance. It was primarily his concern about Austria's weakness that spurred Bismarck's energetic diplomacy, seeking alliances and understandings with other countries in the region, and which became the main consideration that guided his foreign policy from then on. For if Austria suffered a defeat, Germany would find itself alone between two dangerous powers: France and Russia. The consequences of his policies resulted in peace down to his departure in 1890. His successors, for a variety of reasons addressed in the book, were not as careful, ignored Austria's weaknesses despite the warnings of the military attaches, and permitted Austria to become involved in a war. The result was tragically foreseeable.

In this provocative study, Hazel Hutchison takes a fresh look at the roles of American writers in helping to shape national opinion and policy during the First World War. From the war's opening salvos in Europe, American writers recognized the impact the war would have on their society and sought out new strategies to express their horror, support, or resignation. By focusing on the writings of Henry James, Edith Wharton, Grace Fallow Norton, Mary Borden, Ellen La Motte, E. E. Cummings, and John Dos Passos, Hutchison examines what it means to be a writer in wartime, particularly in the midst of a conflict characterized by censorship and propaganda. Drawing on original letters and manuscripts, some never before seen by researchers, this book explores how the essays, poetry, and novels of these seven literary figures influenced America's public view of events, from August 1914 through the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, and ultimately set the literary agenda for later, more celebrated texts about the war.

In Jewish Integration in the German Army in the First World War David J. Fine offers a surprising portrayal of Jewish officers in the German army as integrated and comfortably identified as both Jews and Germans. Fine explores how both Judaism and Christianity were experienced by Jewish soldiers at the front, making an important contribution to the study of the experience of religion in war. Fine shows how the encounter of German Jewish soldiers with the old world of the shtetl on the eastern front tested both their German and Jewish identities. Finally, utilizing published and unpublished sources including letters, diaries, memoirs, military service records, press accounts, photographs, drawings and tomb stone inscriptions, the author argues that antisemitism was not a primary factor in the war experience of Jewish soldiers.

World War I was obviously one of the most important events of the 20th century. It was also a crucial period in Leon Trotsky's political biography. This work is an examination of Trotsky's writings of 1914-1917 and the context in which they were produced. Its findings challenge Trotsky's autobiography and the standard account by Isaac Deutscher. Trotsky's war time journalism is shown to be of continuing relevance to contemporary issues ranging from European unity to ethnic cleansing in the Balkans.

After the collapse of the Romanov dynasty in February 1917, Russia was subject to an eight month experiment in democracy. Sarah Badcock studies its failure through an exploration of the experiences and motivations of ordinary men and women, urban and rural, military and civilian. Using previously neglected documents from regional archives, this text offers a history of the revolution as experienced in the two Volga provinces of Nizhegorod and Kazan. Badcock exposes the confusions and contradictions between political elites and ordinary people and emphasises the role of the latter as political actors. By looking beyond Petersburg and Moscow, she shows how local concerns, conditions and interests were foremost in shaping how the revolution was received and understood. She also reveals the ways in which the small group of intellectuals who dominated the high political scene of 1917 had their political alternatives circumscribed by the desires and demands of ordinary people.

In October 1911, Winston S. Churchill was an accomplished young Liberal politician who, as the newly appointed First Lord of the Admiralty, still wore his ambition and emotion on his sleeve. Robert L. Borden was the new Canadian Prime Minister, less emotional and much older than Churchill. They became companions in an attempt to provide naval security for the British Empire as a naval crisis loomed with Germany. Their scheme for Canada to provide three Dreadnought battleships for the Royal Navy as part of an Imperial squadron was hotly debated by the Canadian Parliament and rejected by the Senate. It was one of the most divisive debates in Canadian parliamentary history. Churchill invested considerable time and effort in trying to deliver the scheme and even believed he might need to resign when it failed. The decision had great implications for the future, leading to the crises in shipbuilding foreshadowing the outbreak of WW1.

During World War I, American merchant ships were given oddly colored paint jobs to distort their profiles at sea. Dubbed "Razzle-Dazzle," these camouflage patterns were believed responsible for dramatic decreases in Allied shipping losses. This book examines the real (and more compelling) factors that made a difference in the survivability of merchant shipping: the various measures taken principally by the U.S. Navy, including the use of convoys and destroyer escorts, along with some innovative naval technologies. At the same time, advances in America's shipbuilding industry and the development of the nation's first major on-the-job training program enabled mass production of merchant ships at a record pace.

America's Arab Nationalists focuses in on the relationship between Arab nationalists and Americans in the struggle for independence in an era when idealistic Americans could see the Arab nationalist struggle as an expression of their own values. In the first three decades of the twentieth century (from the 1908 Ottoman revolution to the rise of Hitler), important and influential Americans, including members of the small Arab-American community, intellectually, politically and financially participated in the construction of Arab nationalism. This book tells the story of a diverse group of people whose contributions are largely unknown to the American public. The role Americans played in the development of Arab nationalism has been largely unexplored by historians, making this an important and original contribution to scholarship. This volume is of great interest to students and academics in the field, though the narrative style is accessible to anoyone interested in Arab nationalism, the conflict between Zionists and Palestinians, and the United States' relationship with the Arab world.

Food is critical to military performance, but it is also central to social interaction and fundamental to our sense of identity. The soldiers of the Great War did not shed their eating preferences with their civilian clothes, and the army rations, heavily reliant on bully beef and hardtack biscuit, were frequently found wanting. Nutritional science of the day had only a limited understanding of the role of vitamins and minerals, and the men were often presented with a diet that, shortages and logistics permitting, was high in calories but low in flavour and variety. Just as now, soldiers on active service were linked with home through the lovingly packed food parcels they received; a taste of home in the trenches. This book uses the personal accounts of the men themselves to explore a subject that was central not only to their physical health, but also to their emotional survival. -- .

This book is based on original research into intimidation and violence directed at civilians by combatants during the revolutionary period in Ireland, considering this from the perspectives of the British, the Free State and the IRA. The book combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, and focusses on County Kerry, which saw high levels of violence. It demonstrates that violence and intimidation against civilians was more common than clashes between combatants and that the upsurge in violence in 1920 was a result of the deployment of the Black and Tans and Auxiliaries, particularly in the autumn and winter of that year. Despite the limited threat posed by the IRA, the British forces engaged in unprecedented and unprovoked violence against civilians. This study stresses the increasing brutality of the subsequent violence by both sides. The book shows how the British had similar methods and views as contemporary counter-revolutionary groups in Europe. IRA violence, however, was, in part, an attempt to impose homogeneity as, beneath the Irish republican narrative of popular approval, there lay a recognition that universal backing was never in fact present. The book is important reading for students and scholars of the Irish revolution, the social history of Ireland and inter-war European violence.