Measuring the War Experience: Ghanaian Soldiers in World War II

1987 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 159-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne M. Israel

During World War II, some 65,000 Ghanaians were under the command of British officers in the Royal West African Frontier Force, and since India was the transit and refuelling station for those en route to Burma, the 30,000 who served there briefly experienced life in both countries. There has been much conjecture about the impact of the war on participating African soldiers,1 and this article focuses on the nature and socio-economic implications of their experience as later revealed by the veterans themselves in two rather overlooked sources of information: oral interviews and locally published materials.

Author(s):  
Inger L. Stole

This concluding chapter discusses the impact of wartime events on advertising and consumer activism after World War II, and examines their reverse trajectories in the 1950s. With a few notable exceptions, it was not until the later 1960s that advertising came under new scrutiny by a nascent consumer movement. The key factor in the transformation of advertising’s image was the (War) Advertising Council’s tireless work on behalf of the advertising community. Displaying an excellent sense of timing and direction, the WAC coached and chastised individual advertisers, pleading for their compliance in what it believed to be a fantastic public relations opportunity. The war experience had shown that just as advertisers were capable of providing the keys to social success, they were equally adept at guiding the public through issues of political magnitude.


2021 ◽  

From the Trojan War to the sack of Rome, from the fall of Constantinople to the bombings of World War II and the recent devastation of Syrian towns, the destruction of cities and the slaughter of civilian populations are among the most dramatic events in world history. But how reliable are literary sources for these events? Did ancient authors exaggerate the scale of destruction to create sensational narratives? This volume reassesses the impact of physical destruction on ancient Greek cities and its demographic and economic implications. Addressing methodological issues of interpreting the archaeological evidence for destructions, the volume examines the evidence for the destruction, survival, and recovery of Greek cities. The studies, written by an international group of specialists in archaeology, ancient history, and numismatic, range from Sicily to Asia Minor and Aegean Thrace, and include Athens, Corinth, and Eretria. They highlight the resilience of ancient populations and the recovery of cities in the long term.


Author(s):  
C. Claire Thomson

This chapter traces the early history of state-sponsored informational filmmaking in Denmark, emphasising its organisation as a ‘cooperative’ of organisations and government agencies. After an account of the establishment and early development of the agency Dansk Kulturfilm in the 1930s, the chapter considers two of its earliest productions, both process films documenting the manufacture of bricks and meat products. The broader context of documentary in Denmark is fleshed out with an account of the production and reception of Poul Henningsen’s seminal film Danmark (1935), and the international context is accounted for with an overview of the development of state-supported filmmaking in the UK, Italy and Germany. Developments in the funding and output of Dansk Kulturfilm up to World War II are outlined, followed by an account of the impact of the German Occupation of Denmark on domestic informational film. The establishment of the Danish Government Film Committee or Ministeriernes Filmudvalg kick-started aprofessionalisation of state-sponsored filmmaking, and two wartime public information films are briefly analysed as examples of its early output. The chapter concludes with an account of the relations between the Danish Resistance and an emerging generation of documentarists.


2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard K. Fleischman ◽  
R. Penny Marquette

The impact of World War II on cost accountancy in the U.S. may be viewed as a double-edged sword. Its most positive effect was engendering greater cost awareness, particularly among companies that served as military contractors and, thus, had to make full representation to contracting agencies for reimbursement. On the negative side, the dislocations of war, especially shortages in the factors of production and capacity constraints, meant that such “scientific management” techniques as existed (standard costing, time-study, specific detailing of task routines) fell by the wayside. This paper utilizes the archive of the Sperry Corporation, a leading governmental contractor, to chart the firm's accounting during World War II. It is concluded that any techniques that had developed from Taylorite principles were suspended, while methods similar to contemporary performance management, such as subcontracting, emphasis on the design phase of products, and substantial expenditure on research and development, flourished.


Author(s):  
Joia S. Mukherjee

This chapter outlines the historical roots of health inequities. It focuses on the African continent, where life expectancy is the shortest and health systems are weakest. The chapter describes the impoverishment of countries by colonial powers, the development of the global human rights framework in the post-World War II era, the impact of the Cold War on African liberation struggles, and the challenges faced by newly liberated African governments to deliver health care through the public sector. The influence of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund’s neoliberal economic policies is also discussed. The chapter highlights the shift from the aspiration of “health for all” voiced at the Alma Ata Conference on Primary Health Care in 1978, to the more narrowly defined “selective primary health care.” Finally, the chapter explains the challenges inherent in financing health in impoverished countries and how user fees became standard practice.


2015 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 533-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Cottiero ◽  
Katherine Kucharski ◽  
Evgenia Olimpieva ◽  
Robert W. Orttung

How effective is Russian state television in framing the conflict in Ukraine that began with the Euromaidan protests and what is its impact on Russian Internet users? We carried out a content analysis of Dmitrii Kiselev's “News of the Week” show, which allowed us to identify the two key frames he used to explain the conflict – World War II-era fascism and anti-Americanism. Since Kiselev often reduces these frames to buzzwords, we were able to track the impact of these words on Internet users by examining search query histories on Yandex and Google and by developing quantitative data to complement our qualitative analysis. Our findings show that much of what state media produces is not effective, but that the “fascist” and anti-American frames have had lasting impacts on Russian Internet users. We argue that it does not make sense to speak of competition between a “television party” and an “Internet party” in Russia since state television has a strong impact in setting the agenda for the Internet and society as a whole. Ultimately, the relationship between television and the Internet in Russia is a continual loop, with each affecting the other.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110549
Author(s):  
Oliver Coates

The National Negro Publishers Association (NNPA) Commission to West Africa in 1944–1945 represents a major episode in the history of World War II Africa, as well as in American–West Africa relations. Three African American reporters toured the Gold Coast, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Liberia, and the Congo between November 1944 and February 1945, before returning to Washington, DC to report to President Roosevelt. They documented their tour in the pages of the Baltimore Afro-American, the Chicago Defender, and the Norfolk Journal and Guide. Their Americans’ visit had a significant impact in wartime West Africa and was widely documented in the African press. This article examines the NNPA tour geographically, before analyzing American reporters’ interactions with West Africans, and assessing African responses to the tour. Drawing on both African American and West African newspapers, it situates the NNPA tour within the history of World War II West Africa, and in terms of African print culture. It argues that the NNPA tour became the focus of West African hopes for future political, economic, and intellectual relations with African Americans, while revealing how the NNPA reporters engaged African audiences during their tour.


2008 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 517-521 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan L. Smith

During World War II, scientists funded by the United States government conducted mustard gas experiments on 60,000 American soldiers as part of military preparation for potential chemical warfare. One aspect of the chemical warfare research program on mustard gas involved race-based human experimentation. In at least nine research projects conducted during the 1940s, scientists investigated how so-called racial differences affected the impact of mustard gas exposure on the bodies of soldiers. Building on cultural beliefs about “race,” these studies occurred on military bases and universities, which became places for racialized human experimentation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 372-390 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susanne Karstedt

The reentry of sentenced perpetrators of atrocity crimes is part and parcel of the pursuit of international and transitional justice. As men and women sentenced for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the other tribunals return from prisons into society and communities questions arise as to the impact their reentry has on deeply divided postconflict societies, in particular on victim groups. Contemporary international tribunals and courts mostly do not have penal or correctional policies of their own, and the legacy of early release, commuting of sentences and amnesties that Nuremberg and other post-World War II tribunals have left, is a particularly problematic one. Germany’s historical experience provides an analytic blueprint for understanding in which ways contemporary perpetrators return into changed and still fragile societies. This comparative analysis between Nuremberg and the ICTY is based on two data sets including information on returning war criminals sentenced in both tribunals. The comparative analysis focuses on four themes: politics of reentry, admission of guilt and justification, memoirs, and political activism.


Author(s):  
Yolonda Youngs

This study traces the development and evolution of Snake River use and management through an in-depth exploration of historic commercial scenic river guiding and concessions on the upper Snake River in Grand Teton National Park (GRTE) from 1950 to the present day. The research is based on a combination of methods including archival research, oral history analysis, historical landscape analysis, and fieldwork. I suggest that a distinct cultural community of river runners and outdoor recreationalists developed in Grand Teton National Park after World War II. In GRTE, a combination of physical, cultural, and technical forces shaped this community’s evolution including the specific geomorphology and dynamic channel patterns of the upper Snake River, the individuals and groups that worked on this river, and changes in boat and gear technology over time. The following paper presents the early results from the first year of this project in 2016 including the work of a graduate student and myself. This study offers connections between the upper Snake River and Grand Teton National Park to broader national trends in the evolution of outdoor recreation and concessions in national parks, the impact of World War II on technological developments for boating, and the cultural history of adventure outdoor recreation and tourism in the United States.   Featured photo by Elton Menefee on Unsplash. https://unsplash.com/photos/AHgCFeg-gXg


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