scholarly journals Propaganda Music in Second World War Britain: John Ireland's Epic March

2014 ◽  
Vol 139 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Guthrie
Keyword(s):  
Art Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Musical Style ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Total War ◽  
Problematic Relationship ◽  
Music And Politics ◽  
Second World

ABSTRACTWhile biographical studies of British composers' experiences in the Second World War abound, little attention has been paid to how the demands of ‘total’ war impacted on music's ideological status. This article sheds new light on how composers and critics negotiated the problematic relationship between art music and politics in this period. John Ireland's Epic March – a BBC commission that caused the composer considerable anxiety – provides a case study. Drawing first on the correspondence charting the lengthy genesis of the work, and then on the work's critical reception, I consider how Ireland and his audiences sought to reconcile the conflicting political and aesthetic demands of this commission. With its conventional musical style, Epic March offers an example of a ‘middlebrow’ attempt to bridge the gap between art and politics.

scholarly journals Vera Lynn on Screen: Popular Music and the ‘People's War’

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATE GUTHRIE
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
A Site ◽  
Second World

AbstractBy the outbreak of the Second World War in Britain, critics had spent several decades negotiating the supposed distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow culture, as recent scholarship has shown. What has received comparatively little attention is how the demands of wartime living changed the stakes of the debate. This article addresses this lacuna, exploring how war invited a reassessment of the relative merits of art and popular music. Perhaps the most iconic British singer of the period, Vera Lynn provides a case study. Focusing on her first film vehicle,We'll Meet Again(1942), I explore how Lynn's character mediated the highbrow/lowbrow conflict – for example, by presenting popular music as a site of community, while disparaging art music for its minority appeal. In so doing, I argue, the film not only promoted Lynn's star persona, but also intervened in a broader debate about the value of entertainment for a nation at war.

Wartime Economies, 1939–1945

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Land ◽  
Jari Eloranta
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Great Powers ◽  
Small States ◽  
World War ◽  
Small State ◽  
Total War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
European Economies ◽  
Second World

This chapter provides an overview of European economies during the Second World War, showing that total war affected all economies, yet in different ways. Mobilization presented massive challenges, and often led to labour shortages in other sectors. Resources proved to be a decisive factor in determining the outcome of the war, since richer nations were able to get more out of their economies and populations for the war effort. This chapter first considers Great Britain and Germany as comparable great powers dealing with the exigencies of total war, and then puts the spotlight on Switzerland, as a case study of a neutral nation during wartime, and Finland, a small state that was forced into the war. The comparison of different states during this conflict highlights the connections between large and small states, a perspective that has not been emphasized in earlier literature.

Turning Aliens into Socialists

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Jessica Moberg
Keyword(s):  
Outer Space ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
History Of ◽  
Swedish History ◽  
Second World ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Highly Evolved

Immediately after the Second World War Sweden was struck by a wave of sightings of strange flying objects. In some cases these mass sightings resulted in panic, particularly after authorities failed to identify them. Decades later, these phenomena were interpreted by two members of the Swedish UFO movement, Erland Sandqvist and Gösta Rehn, as alien spaceships, or UFOs. Rehn argued that ‘[t]here is nothing so dramatic in the Swedish history of UFOs as this invasion of alien fly-things’ (Rehn 1969: 50). In this article the interpretation of such sightings proposed by these authors, namely that we are visited by extraterrestrials from outer space, is approached from the perspective of myth theory. According to this mythical theme, not only are we are not alone in the universe, but also the history of humankind has been shaped by encounters with more highly-evolved alien beings. In their modern day form, these kinds of ideas about aliens and UFOs originated in the United States. The reasoning of Sandqvist and Rehn exemplifies the localization process that took place as members of the Swedish UFO movement began to produce their own narratives about aliens and UFOs. The question I will address is: in what ways do these stories change in new contexts? Texts produced by the Swedish UFO movement are analyzed as a case study of this process.

The Etappe Kanaren: A case study of the secret supply of the German Navy in Spain during the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan J. Díaz Benítez
Keyword(s):  
Active Role ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
World War ◽  
The One ◽  
Intense Activity ◽  
German Navy ◽  
Second World

The secret supply of the German Navy during the Second World War has scarcely been studied until now. The goal of this article is to study one of the more active supply areas of the Etappendienst at the beginning of the war, the one known as Etappe Kanaren, as part of the Grossetappe Spanien-Portugal. In this research primary sources from German Naval War Command have been consulted. Among the main conclusions, it should be pointed out, on the one hand, the intense activity to support the Kriegsmarine during the first years of the war, despite the distance from mainland Spain and the British pressure, which finally stopped the supply operations. On the other hand, we have confirmed the active role of the Spanish government in relation to the Etappendienst: Spanish authorities allowed the supply operations, but pressure from the Allies forced the Spanish government to impede these activities.

The Revival of Cornish: An Dasserghyans Kernewek

PMLA ◽  
1946 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 258-268
Author(s):  
John J. Parry
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Total War ◽  
Living Tradition ◽  
Second World

Among the Celtic tongues Cornish occupies a unique place. It is not a wholly dead language like Gaulish and Galatian, and neither is it an actively living one like Welsh and Breton, Irish and Scots Gaelic. Even Manx, few as the speakers of it may be, has maintained a living tradition. But Cornish was practically dead when the revival began in 1904, and it was well on its way to becoming a living language again when the second world war broke out. Whether this revival can survive amid the dislocation of total war remains to be seen.

Military Service and Canadian Army Suicides of the Second World War, 1939–44

2021 ◽  
pp. e20200008
Author(s):  
William J. Pratt
Keyword(s):  
Military Service ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Canadian Army ◽  
Total War ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Difficult Time ◽  
Military Mobilization ◽  
The Many ◽  
Second World

Over 230 Canadian Army soldiers took their own lives during the Second World War. For many, soldiering seems to have exacerbated stresses and depressions. Their suicide notes and the testimony of family, officers, and bunkmates reveal that wartime disturbance was an important section of the complex array of reasons why. In attempts to explain the motivations for their tragic final actions, the instabilities brought by the Second World War and the stresses of military mobilization must be added to the many biological, social, psychological and circumstantial factors revealed by the proceedings of courts of inquiry. Major military risk factors include: access to firearms, suppression of individual agency, and disruption of the protective networks of friends and family. Some Canadians had a difficult time adjusting to military discipline and authority and were frustrated by their inability to succeed by the measures set by the army. Suicide motivations are complex and it may be too simplistic to say that the Second World War caused these deaths, however, it is not too far to say that the war was a factor in their final motivations. Some men, due to the social pressures and constructs of masculine duty, signed up for active service despite previously existing conditions which should have excused them. Revisiting these traumas can expose the difficulties that some Canadians experienced during mobilization for total war. Many brought deep personal pain with them as they entered military service and for some, the disruptions, frustrations, and anxieties of life in khaki were too great to bear. Like their better-known colleagues who died on the battlefield, they too are casualties of the Second World War.

Can Events Facilitate Intercultural Understanding?

2021 ◽  
pp. 218-237
Author(s):  
Karen Davies ◽  
Caroline Ritchie
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Ethnographic Case Study ◽  
Intercultural Understanding ◽  
World War ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Physical Spaces ◽  
Second World

The founding philosophy of many cultural events established after the Second World War was to enhance the dynamics of peace through supporting and developing multicultural understanding. Over 50 years after their establishment, this chapter investigates the potential of such iconic events to achieve this aim and contribute to the concept of peace through tourism, based on a longitudinal ethnographic case study of Llangollen International Musical Eisteddfod. The results show that this aim can be achieved by such events if they provide enough time and space for participants (performers and audiences) to interact. However, the study also identifies current cultural, political, and fiscal challenges in providing these temporal and physical spaces.

scholarly journals The Massigli Affair and its Context: Turkish Foreign Policy after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 271-296
Author(s):  
Onur Isci
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Turkish Foreign Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Second World ◽  
English I

This article examines Turkey's wartime diplomacy between the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and Hitler's unleashing of Operation Barbarossa. Rather than a survey of Turkish foreign policy as a whole, it takes a critical episode from July 1940 as a case study that – when put in context – reveals how fear of Nazi power and even greater fear of the Soviet Union created in Turkey a complex view of a desired outcome from the Second World War. Juxtaposing archival materials in Turkish, Russian, German, and English, I draw heavily on the hitherto untapped holdings of the Turkish Diplomatic Archives (TDA). Overall, this article demonstrates both the breadth and limits of Nazi Germany's sweeping efforts to orchestrate anti-Soviet propaganda in Turkey; efforts that helped end interwar Soviet-Turkish cooperation. Against previously established notions in historiography that depict Soviet-Turkish relations as naturally hostile and inherently destabilizing, this article documents how the Nazi–Soviet Pact played a key role in their worsening bilateral affairs between 1939 and 1941. The argument, then, is in keeping with newer literature on the Second World War that has begun to compensate for earlier accounts that overlooked neutral powers.

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