Remasculinizing the Shirker: The JewishFrontkämpferunder Hitler

2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 440-465
Author(s):  
Michael J. Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Gender Identity ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
High Status ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

AbstractThis article examines the impact of Nazi persecution on the gender identity of German-Jewish veterans of World War I. National Socialism threatened to erase everything these Jewish men had achieved and sacrificed. It sought to destroy the identity they had constructed as soldiers in the service of the Fatherland, as well as the high status they had earned asFrontkämpfer(front-line fighters) in the Great War, upon which their sense of masculinity identity rested. Although diminished and disempowered by Nazi terror, Jewish veterans were able to orient themselves toward hegemonic ideals of martial masculinity, which elevated military values as the highest expression of manhood, giving them a space to assert themselves and defy the Nazi classificationJew. For the Jewish men who fought in World War I, the Nazi years became a battle to reclaim their status and masculine honor. They believed that the manner in which they handled themselves under the Nazis was a reflection of their character: as men who had been tried and tested in the trenches, their responses to persecution communicated their identity as soldiers, as Jews, and as Germans.

The Great War of the Postcards

2021 ◽  
Vol 88 (3) ◽  
pp. 525-568
Author(s):  
Johann Strauss
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Book Illustrations ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

This article examines the functions and the significance of picture postcards during World War I, with particular reference to the war in the Ottoman Lands and the Balkans, or involving the Turkish Army in Galicia. After the principal types of Kriegspostkarten – sentimental, humorous, propaganda, and artistic postcards (Künstlerpostkarten) – have been presented, the different theatres of war (Balkans, Galicia, Middle East) and their characteristic features as they are reflected on postcards are dealt with. The piece also includes aspects such as the influence of Orientalism, the problem of fake views, and the significance and the impact of photographic postcards, portraits, and photo cards. The role of postcards in book illustrations is demonstrated using a typical example (F. C. Endres, Die Türkei (1916)). The specific features of a collection of postcards left by a German soldier who served in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq during World War I will be presented at the end of this article.

Comrades Betrayed

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Social Death ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Great War

At the end of 1941, six weeks after the mass deportations of Jews from Nazi Germany had begun, Gestapo offices across the Reich received an urgent telex from Adolf Eichmann, decreeing that all war-wounded and decorated Jewish veterans of World War I be exempted from upcoming “evacuations.” Why this was so, and how Jewish veterans at least initially were able to avoid the fate of ordinary Jews under the Nazis, is the subject of this book. The same values that compelled Jewish soldiers to demonstrate bravery in the front lines in World War I made it impossible for them to accept passively, persecution under Hitler. They upheld the ideal of the German fighting man, embraced the fatherland, and cherished the bonds that had developed in military service. Through their diaries and private letters, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving family members and records from the police, Gestapo, and military, this book challenges the prevailing view that Jewish veterans were left isolated, neighborless, and having suffered a social death by 1938. Tracing the path from the trenches of the Great War to the extermination camps of the Third Reich, the book exposes a painful dichotomy: while many Jewish former combatants believed that Germany would never betray them, the Holocaust was nonetheless a horrific reality. In chronicling Jewish veterans' appeal to older, traditional notions of comradeship and national belonging, the book forces reflection on how this group made use of scant opportunities to defy Nazi persecution and, for some, to evade becoming victims of the Final Solution.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 206-214
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
German Identity ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Great War

The book closes with a short glimpse into the history of Jewish veterans after 1945, as the survivors of the camps returned to Germany, outlining ruptures and continuities in comparison with the pre-Nazi period. Jewish veterans imposed different narratives on their experiences under National Socialism. As the past receded into the distance, it became a concern for the survivors to engage with the past, which they variously looked back on with nostalgia, disillusionment, or bitter anger. Although National Socialism threatened to erase everything that Jewish veterans of World War I had achieved and sacrificed, sought to destroy the identity they had constructed as soldiers in the service of the nation, as well as bonds with gentile Germans that had been forged under fire during the war, threatened to sever their connections to the status they had earned as soldiers of the Great War and defenders of the fatherland, their minds, their values and their character remained intact. Jewish veterans preserved their sense of German identity.

The Great War and Civil War Memory

2019 ◽  
pp. 232-282
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
World War ◽  
War Memory ◽  
Public Monuments ◽  
Civil War Memory ◽  
Lincoln Memorial ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War ◽  
War Commemoration

This chapter examines the influence of Civil War commemoration on World War I commemoration and the impact of World War I on Civil War commemoration. The war limited recognition that the Lincoln Memorial climaxed development of the National Mall with less militarism than recent Lincoln statues suggested. Some sponsors of World War I monuments rejected Civil War precedents, such as those who projected useful memorials, but an army of doughboy statues built on Civil War precedents. The proliferation of male nudes was one example. The crisis of World War I caused some memorial promoters to treat the Civil War as a foreshadowing and some memorial promoters to treat the Civil War as a refuge from modernity. The Confederate memorial at Stone Mountain illustrated both tendencies and the displacement of public monuments by cinema in the 1930s.

scholarly journals The Impact of World War I on Middle East “Arabs” in Awwad’s “Al-Raghif”: A Cultural Perspective

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-36
Author(s):  
Lateef Wisam Hamid
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
World War I ◽  
Great War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
World War ◽  
War Narrative ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

Abstract My paper will explore the genre of war narrative from a cultural perspective, namely the impact of the Great War on Arabs in the novel Al-Raghif (The Loaf’) in 1939 by the Lebanese novelist Tawfiq Yusuf Awwad, as it is the first Arabic novel which is totally concerned with WWI and its longlasting consequences: hunger, despair and the elusive promise of freedom to Arabs.

War, Revolution, and Nation-Making in Lithuania, 1914-1923

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Balkelis
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
Nation State ◽  
World War ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Modes Of Thought ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

This book explores how war made the Lithuanian state and shaped society from the onset of the Great War in 1914 to the last waves of violence in 1923. As the very notion of an independent Lithuania was constructed during the war, violence became an essential part of the formation of Lithuanian state, nation, and identity. War was much more than simply the historical context in which the tectonic change from empire to nation state took place. It transformed people, policies, institutions, and modes of thought in ways that would continue to shape the nation for decades after the conflict subsided. By telling the story of the post-World War I conflict in Lithuania, the book focuses on the juncture between soldiers and civilians rather than the strategies and acts of politicians, generals, or diplomats. Its two main themes are the impact of military, social, and cultural mobilizations on the local population, and different types of violence that were so characteristic of the region throughout the period. The actors in this story are people displaced by war and mobilized for war: refugees, veterans, volunteers, peasant conscripts, prisoners of war, paramilitary fighters, and others who took to guns, not diplomacy, to assert their power. The book tells the story of how their lives were changed by war and how they shaped the society that emerged after war.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tomas Balkelis
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
General Question ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Post War ◽  
Social Disaster ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Great War

The introduction sets a thematic and historiographical framework for the study of the continuous military violence in Lithuania from 1914 to 1923, its offshoots social disaster, state failure, revolution, mass mobilizations, paramilitarism, and their impact on nation-making and identity formation during the post-World War I period. It posits a general question: what is the relationship between nation-making and war violence? It provides a brief overview of key events and historical developments in the Lithuanian–Polish borderland from the Great War to the end of the Polish–Lithuanian War and explains the roots of the post-war conflict. It also discusses major historiographical debates on the impact of the Russian revolution and the Great War on the post-World War I order in Eastern Europe and different types of violence that were common to the region.

A New History for a New Channel: The Great War and the Launch of BBC2

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taylor Downing
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Television History ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World ◽  
Intense Debate ◽  
Do So

This article considers the making of the BBC2 series, The Great War, and examines issues around the treatment and presentation of the First World War on television, the reception of the series in 1964 and its impact on the making of television history over the last fifty years. The Great War combined archive film with interviews from front-line soldiers, nurses and war workers, giving a totally new feel to the depiction of history on television. Many aspects of The Great War were controversial and raised intense debate at the time and have continued to do so ever since.

From Multi-Industry Planning to Keynesian Planning: Gardiner Means, the American Keynesians, and National Economic Planning at the National Resources Committee

1990 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-212 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederic S. Lee
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Economic Planning ◽  
World War ◽  
National Planning ◽  
National Economic ◽  
Basic Characteristics ◽  
American Society ◽  
Industry Planning ◽  
The Impact ◽  
American Economy

In recent years we have witnessed a revival of interest in the National Resources Committee (NRC) and its work on national planning. The research shows that the roots of national planning at the NRC are found in the Progressive Era, when individuals sought, through city, regional, and economic planning, to bring order to American society, in the government's management of the economy during World War I, and in Hoover's attempt at macromanagement of the economy. The research also shows that national economic planning, as distinct from other forms of planning, was an important component of the committee's work. In regard to this, researchers have acknowledged that Gardiner Means, as director of the Industrial Section of the Industrial Committee and author of The Structure of the American Economy, Part I: Basic Characteristics, was an important and outspoken advocate of economic planning within the NRC, but they have been less clear as to his specific contributions to economic planning. Moreover, the researchers have not extensively investigated the NRC position toward national economic planning, the economic models from which national economic plans would be developed, and the impact of the Keynesian revolution on the NRC approach to national economic planning. These omissions are not surprising inasmuch as neither Warken's (1979) nor Clawson's (1981) general coverage of the NRC provided much more than a brief and superficial description of the Industrial Section and a listing of its most important publications. Kalish (1963), on the other hand, discussed Means and the Industrial Section in more depth but in such a disjointed manner that it is impossible to grasp the movement toward economic planning that took place in the NRC and the important role Means played in the process. Finally, neither Chapman's (1981 and 1983) nor Jeffries's (1987) discussions of the impact of the Keynesian revolution on the activities of the NRC dealt specifically with its impact on Means's work on economic planning.

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