The Demands of Total War

2021 ◽  
pp. 335-357
Author(s):  
Helen Roche
Keyword(s):  
Extended Family ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
School Life ◽  
Great Expectations ◽  
Total War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Forced Labour ◽  
Education And Society

The quality of school life at the NPEA gradually deteriorated during wartime—chronic shortages of everything from steel to salt, from teaching staff to stable-hands, increasingly impinged on the schools’ day-to-day functioning. This chapter begins by considering the great expectations placed on the Napolas by the Inspectorate and the armed forces, in their capacity as de facto officer training schools. Secondly, it describes daily life at the NPEA, including the ‘war missions’ (Kriegseinsätze) which pupils were expected to undertake as leaders on the children’s evacuation programme (KLV) or as anti-aircraft auxiliaries (Flakhelfer). It also explores the all-important connections between the Napola home-front and former pupils at the battle front, as exemplified by the school newsletters or Altkameradenbriefe, which were expressly designed to foster a transgenerational sense of comradeship among all who belonged to the Napolas’ ‘extended family’. Finally, the chapter briefly examines the ways in which the NPEA system profited from or abetted the wartime crimes of the Nazi regime, including the expropriation of asylums and Jewish property, and the use of forced labour (not least that of concentration-camp inmates). The conclusion then situates the experience of the Napolas within the context of existing scholarship on the state of German education and society during this turbulent period of total war. Ultimately, the NPEA were better able to withstand the privations of war than most ‘civilian’ schools during this period, due not least to their centralized administration, and their supposedly vital contribution to the war effort.

Transportation and Rearmament in the Third Reich

1973 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 389-409 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Overy
Keyword(s):  
Service Industry ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Total War ◽  
Economic Framework ◽  
Direct Preparation ◽  
The Will ◽  
The Third Reich

The role of rearmament within the economic framework has become a theme of recurring interest in twentieth century history. During the century, however, the scope of the problem has broadened considerably, so that historians no longer talk of rearmament as merely the direct preparation of a nation's armed forces with the means of waging war. Instead the idea of‘ total war’ introduces a new dimension, indirect or economic rearmament. This second dimension involves a much broader interpretation of the political disposition of individual countries at different times and under rapidly changing circumstances, as well as an understanding of the quality of service, industry or institution that would materially contribute to the effective waging of war on the home front as well. The danger of this sort of interpretation lies in the fact that it only appears to be necessary to locate the will to war in order to understand economic or social processes of a much more sophisticated and diverse nature.

The Teacher's Job in Total War

1942 ◽  
Vol 35 (7) ◽  
pp. 327-330
Keyword(s):  
Armed Forces ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Total War

We are engaged in total war. That is why we are meeting here today. For total war reaches into every phase of a nation's life. Total war is waged not only on the battlefront, in the factory and in the homes. It is waged in every classroom t hroughout the nation. Every classroom is a citadel. Every teacher has his part to play. The job of the armed forces is to win this total war on the battlefront. The job of industry is to furnish the weapons and supplies needed by the armed forces to carry on total war. The job of the schools in this total war is to educate the nation's manpower for war and for the peace that follows. We can lose this total war on the battlefront as a direct result of losing it on the industrial front, on the home front or on the educational front. Education is the backbone of an army. This was never more true than it is today-now.

Wives for the Wounded: Marriage Mediation for Japanese Disabled Veterans during World War II

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (3) ◽  
pp. 667-697
Author(s):  
Lee K Pennington
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
War Injuries ◽  
Total War ◽  
Disabled Veterans ◽  
War Effort ◽  
And Gender ◽  
War Mobilization

Abstract Japan’s armed invasion of China in July 1937 catalyzed the creation of new welfare services for the rapidly escalating number of Japanese disabled veterans. Among those reforms was the emergence of public and private marriage mediation services that aimed to introduce potential brides to disabled veterans and create independent households for men with severe war injuries. Acting through the Greater Japan Disabled Veterans Association and Patriotic Women’s Association, the Japanese state established formal procedures for arranging such marriages. Concurrently, private matchmakers created marriage mediation services expressly for disabled veterans. Public and private marriage mediation efforts sought the multifaceted rehabilitation of disabled veterans and contributed to total war mobilization on the Japanese home front. In the process, wartime marriage mediation for disabled veterans reinforced contemporary social customs and gender norms by positioning women within married households to support their husbands. However, women possessed an extraordinary degree of personal agency because their consent was needed to produce marriages intended to benefit wounded servicemen and the war effort. This essay examines the origins of marriage mediation services for Japanese disabled veterans as well as popular wartime depictions of such endeavors and their female participants.

IV. Economic Mobilization

1949 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 555-563 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph J. Watkins
Keyword(s):  
Machine Tools ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Industrial Equipment ◽  
Effective Utilization ◽  
Transportation Services ◽  
Total War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Democratic Nation ◽  
War Production

Provision for national security requires planning in many fields—military, technological, political, and economic. Planning in the economic field is of special importance. The sustained striking power of our armed forces would depend to a large extent on our economic preparedness and on the speed and effectiveness with which the economy could be converted to war production.Economic mobilization involves the marshaling and coördination of the nation's resources as an integral part of a total war effort. It means the conversion of thousands of factories from the production of civilian goods to the production of essential war items. Machine tools and other industrial equipment must be reconditioned and new machinery made and installed for the production of airplanes, ships, tanks, and guns. Facilities for the production of essential war-supporting products and services must be expanded, and the output of non-essential products must be curtailed. Allocations, priorities, rationing, and conservation measures must be imposed to assure the effective utilization of manpower, materials, production facilities, fuels, power, and communication and transportation services. These and other wartime measures must be accomplished with a minimum disruption of the civilian economy, lest they destroy the sources upon which the effectiveness of economic mobilization in a democratic nation depends.

A Great Sacrifice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Mendez
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
African American Women ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Black Soldiers ◽  
The North ◽  
War Effort ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Government

This study analyzes the effects of the Civil War on northern black families as they sacrificed for a Union victory, and asks the question, how were black Union soldiers from the North and their families affected by their involvement in the Civil War? When northern black men joined the armed forces of the Union and went off to fight in the Civil War, they were the vanguard of a black community that faithfully supported the Union effort in large numbers and steadfastly sent their men to fight. Since they made a significant sacrifice, these families deserve to have their story told about their contribution to the Union war effort and how their lives were directly affected by the Civil War. Letters from family members to the government are the most valuable source used in this study. Collectively, the letters are significant because they represent the few written primary sources and records left behind by African-American women. These are their words and they are saying what was on their minds and what were their needs, concerns, and desires. Some of the letters give great insight into the minds and thoughts of these family members. The most valuable of correspondences discuss why northern blacks supported the war and what they expected in return. They talk about loyalty, citizenship, and the pride of a people. Using these letters, the Civil War history of black soldiers is examined; however, woven into this history is the story of the families on the home front.

scholarly journals Women in the Margins: Media Representations of Women's Labour in the Canadian Press, 1935-1945

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracy Moniz
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Labour Force Participation ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
War Effort

During the Second World War, women’s participation in Canada’s ‘total war’ effort meant increased domestic responsibilities, volunteering, enlisting in the armed forces, and joining the civilian workforce. Women’s labour force participation more than doubled throughout the war, with more women working alongside and in place of men than ever before. This created a situation that could challenge the traditional sexual division of labour, and so women’s labour became a subject for discussion in the public sphere. Through a comparative content analysis of the commercial and alternative (labour) press, this study examines representations of women’s labour in wartime in the context of women’s mobilization into the war effort through to subsequent demobilization near war’s end. It first considers the theoretical and methodological issues involved in the historical study of news media and women and then offers original empirical research to demonstrate that when women’s labour did emerge as a subject in the Canadian press, gender, not labour, was prioritized in the news. This was symbolically and systematically leveraged both within and across the commercial and alternative press, which reinforces stereotypical values about women and their labour and upheld the patriarchal status quo. In the end, while there were surface-level changes to the nature of women’s paid labour during the war, the structures of female subordination and exploitation remained unchallenged despite women’s massive mobilization into the workforce. By setting media representations against the wartime realities of women’s labour told through archival records and secondary literature, this dissertation argues that news media generally presented a ‘history’ of women’s labour that did not reflect the lived reality or the political economic and social significance of women’s labouring lives. This not only coloured how women’s labour was represented in the news, but it can also shape the history that scholars construct from the newspaper. In contributing to feminist media and media history scholarship, this dissertation offers empirical evidence that challenges dominant ways of thinking about women’s history in terms of the domestic sphere and furthers an understanding of women’s wage labour as a provocation to such historical public-private divisions. This may, in turn, inspire histories that more fully and equitably capture women’s experiences.

The Adaptation of Centralized European Controls of Raw Materials, Industry, And transport (October 30,1903)

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franz Neumann ◽  
Paul Sweezy
Keyword(s):  
Labor Supply ◽  
Machine Tools ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Control Patterns ◽  
Post War

This chapter focuses on Germany's adaptation of centralized controls of European raw materials, industry, and transport. German economic controls aim to utilize all resources of occupied Europe, manpower, raw materials, machines and machine tools, railroads and other vehicles, industrial capacities, etc., for the German war effort. To achieve this, the report explains that the Germans have applied two methods: centralized machinery operating from Berlin and indigenous economic institutions that have been transformed so as to correspond to the German control patterns. Some of the major agencies regularly operating in German-occupied Europe are the Ministry of Armaments and Armament Production, German Purchasing Commissions for the Armed Forces under the Supreme Command of the Armed Forces, the organization of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, and the Commissioner General for Labor Supply. The chapter considers the technical and administrative problems involved in Germany's immediate post-war control over the European economy.

The politics of neighbourliness: social democracy on the home front in Britain during the Second World War

2018 ◽  
pp. 177-194
Author(s):  
Clare Griffiths
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Town Planning ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
Important Relationship ◽  
The Social ◽  
War Effort ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

Clare Griffiths probes the historical and political implications of the social and psychological concept of ‘neighbourliness’, especially as it played out in that pivotal moment of apparent social democratic ascendancy, the 1940s, and the ‘People’s War’. In line with the revisionist historiography on this period, Griffiths warns us against romanticising the decade, and exaggerating the degree of good will and community spirit that really existed. ‘Neighbourliness’ was often constructed, whether to boost the case for the war effort or, later, for socialism or town planning. It could also at times be invasive and snooping. Yet, she insists, we should not ignore the importance of the aspiration to neighbourliness, albeit imperfect and half-formed, as it was a persistent theme at government and intellectual levels, but also in ordinary, everyday conversations. Above all, it shows the important relationship between values and emotions on the one hand and political objectives on the other, as well as subjects like housing policy and community life somewhere in between.

War work on the home front: the Central Sphagnum Depot for Ireland at the Royal College of Science for Ireland, 1915–19

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clara Cullen
Keyword(s):  
Royal College ◽  
First Aid ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
World War ◽  
Easter Rising ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Hospital Ships ◽  
First World

Immediately after war was declared with Germany, emergency classes in first aid and ambulance work were organised in the Royal College of Science for Ireland (RCScI) in Dublin. By 1915 the College had two Voluntary Aid Detachments Red Cross groups who met hospital ships from the Western Front bringing casualties to Dublin hospitals. They were also provided aid to casualties of the Easter Rising. The women’s VAD also organised and managed the Central Sphagnum Depot for Ireland. Sphagnum moss had been found to have medicinal and absorbent properties and was known as a safe, reliable surgical dressing, making it a perfect replacement for increasingly scarce cotton wool in hospitals and dressing-stations during the First World War. As war casualties mounted, demands for this moss as a field-dressing increased. Between 1915 and 1919, over 900,000 dressings were dispatched to various theatres of war. This chapter assesses the work of the women who voluntarily involved themselves with the central depot by organising moss collection, sterilisation, packaging and dispatching. It also pits this Irish contribution to the war effort against Ireland’s increasingly turbulent political backdrop.

Epilogue

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin F. Baxter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Total War ◽  
War Effort

The extraordinary story of RDX during World War II is composed of many striking chapters, one of which is the unprecedented collaboration between Britain, Canada, and the United States. At each stage, however, the proponents of RDX had to surmount formidable technical and human obstacles before the super-explosive and its offspring, Composition B and Torpex, could make an impact on the Allies’ war effort. Although researchers at the Woolwich Arsenal had desensitized the dangerous explosive by mixing it with TNT and some beeswax, the Ministry of Supply was unable to supply the vast quantities that were needed for total war....

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