Making Do with Less

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-168
Author(s):  
Anand Toprani
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Multinational Firms ◽  
Government Support ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Synthetic Fuel ◽  
Reliable Source ◽  
National Socialists ◽  
The Many

After analyzing the role of oil in Germany experience during World War I, this chapter reveals how German civilian and military leaders appreciated the many benefits of fuel synthesized from coal years before the National Socialists came to power. Military planners were especially interested, since they had learned the hard way between 1914 and 1918 just how vulnerable Germany was economically to a British blockade. Synthetic fuel was strategically irreplaceable because it was Germany’s only reliable source of petroleum in wartime if it lost access to overseas imports. Private firms such as IG Farben also used synthetic fuel to build fruitful partnerships with other multinational firms. While the National Socialists reaffirmed government support of synthetic fuel after 1933, they also went much further by championing domestic oil exploration and the stockpiling of imports.

John Cranko's Antigone (1959): A Ballet Lost and Found

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Jean Racine ◽  
World War ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Detailed Consideration ◽  
Lost And Found ◽  
The Many ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
The Relationship

John Cranko's dramatic and theatrically powerful Antigone (1959) disappeared from the ballet repertory in 1966 and this essay calls for a reappraisal and restaging of the work for 21st century audiences. Created in a post-World War II environment, and in the wake of appearances in London by the Martha Graham Company and Jerome Robbins’ Ballets USA, I point to American influences in Cranko's choreography. However, the discussion of the Greek-themed Antigone involves detailed consideration of the relationship between the ballet and the ancient dramas which inspired it, especially as the programme notes accompanying performances emphasised its Sophoclean source but failed to recognise that Cranko mainly based his ballet on an early play by Jean Racine. As Antigone derives from tragic drama, the essay investigates catharsis, one of the many principles that Aristotle delineated in the Poetics. This well-known effect is produced by Greek tragedies but the critics of the era complained about its lack in Cranko's ballet – views which I challenge. There is also an investigation of the role of Antigone, both in the play and in the ballet, and since Cranko created the role for Svetlana Beriosova, I reflect on memories of Beriosova's interpretation supported by more recent viewings of Edmée Wood's 1959 film.

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.

scholarly journals The role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system (based on the materials of new archival documents)

2020 ◽  
pp. 75-84
Author(s):  
Alexander Naumov
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
World War ◽  
Systemic Mechanism ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
Archival Documents

This article reviews the role of Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 in escalation of crisis trends of the Versailles system. Leaning on the British Russian archival documents, which recently became available for the researchers, the author analyzes the reasons and consequences of conclusion of this agreement between the key European democratic power and Nazi Reich. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the moods within the political elite of the United Kingdom. It is proven that the agreement became a significant milestone in escalation of crisis trends in the Versailles model of international relations. It played a substantial role in establishment of the British appeasement policy with regards to revanchist powers in the interbellum; policy that objectively led to disintegration of the created in 1919 systemic mechanism, and thus, the beginning of the World War II. The novelty of this work is substantiated by articulation of the problem. This article is first within the Russian and foreign historiography to analyze execution of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement based on the previously unavailable archival materials. The conclusion is made that this agreement played a crucial role in the process of disintegration of interbellum system of international relations. Having officially sanctioned the violation of the articles of the Versailles Treaty of 1919 by Germany, Great Britain psychologically reconciled to the potential revenge of Germany, which found reflection in the infamous appeasement policy. This launched the mechanism for disruption of status quo that was established after the World War I in Europe. This resulted in collapse of the architecture of international security in the key region of the world, rapid deterioration of relations between the countries, and a new world conflict.

“When Women Do the Work of Men”: Representations of Gendered Occupational Identities on British Railways in World War I Cartoons

2019 ◽  
Vol 117 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-78
Author(s):  
Emma Robertson ◽  
Lee-Ann Monk
Keyword(s):  
Women Workers ◽  
World War I ◽  
Occupational Culture ◽  
World War ◽  
National Union ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Traditional Work ◽  
Late Twentieth Century ◽  
Do So

During World War I in Britain, women workers took on previously men-only jobs on the railways. In response to this wartime development, the National Union of Railwaymen published a series of cartoons in their journal, Railway Review. These images depicted women employed as porters and guards, occupying the engine footplate, and acting in the role of station-mistress. Through a close reading of the cartoons, and related images in the journal, this article examines how the humorous portrayal of female railway workers reinforced masculine occupational identities at the same time as revealing ambiguities in (and negotiating anxieties over) the gendered nature of railway employment. Despite wartime labour shortages, certain occupations, notably the driving and firing of steam trains, remained stolidly men’s work and would do so until the late twentieth century. By scrutinising the construction of gendered occupational culture in union journals, we can better understand the tenacity of notions of “traditional” work for men and women on the railways.

Mountain Interval

2018 ◽  
pp. 45-66
Author(s):  
Virginia F. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Alternative Interpretation ◽  
Natural Setting ◽  
World War ◽  
The Road

In early 1915, the Frost family made a hurried departure from England as the war in Europe escalated. Although they successfully escaped the ravages of World War I, at the time the most mechanized conflict in history, the Frosts returned to a country undergoing its own rapid and irreversible changes at the hands of technology. In the collection Mountain Interval, published in 1916, Frost depicts the violence of technology toward humans in poems such as “Out, Out –“ and “The Vanishing Red,” but most of the violence is reserved for plants and animals, both domestic and wild. He also addresses the role of technology in society, especially the telephone, and starts to move from observational to theoretical descriptions of astronomical objects. This chapter begins with an alternative interpretation of the natural setting in one of Frost’s most popular poems, “The Road Not Taken.”

Antecedents

2020 ◽  
pp. 25-41
Author(s):  
Rebecca Ayako Bennette
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
German Society ◽  
World War ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Military ◽  
Broad Overview

This chapter gives a broad overview of developments within the main areas of psychiatry, the military, and pacifism and provides the necessary background to understand the conditions prevailing in Germany leading up to 1914. It highlights the rising fortunes and expanding purview of psychiatry in the decades before World War I and references the limits of describing the trends as medicalization. It also explores the general prestige of the military and the role of pacifism in imperial German society. The chapter looks at August Fauser and Erwin Ackerknecht's estimations of psychiatry around 1900, which inhabited opposite ends of the opinion spectrum. It analyses attitudes toward the insane that had been lumped with the larger category of the poor over the nineteenth century.

War and Vanity

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lars Öhrström
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Royal Navy ◽  
World War ◽  
Swedish West Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
Bearing Factory ◽  
North Eastern ◽  
Disastrous Effect ◽  
Nail Varnish

In my childhood, visits to Gothenburg would always include a long (it seemed at the time) tram ride with my mother, from the centre of town to the north-eastern districts, past the old, red brick, ball-bearing factory of SKF to the vast Kviberg Cemetery to put flowers on my grandmother’s grave. I never ventured on any longer excursions among the neat flower-decorated graves on these well-kept lawns, but had I done so I would perhaps have discovered a different, more uniform, part of the cemetery that relatives seldom visited: the war graves. War graves form a somewhat unexpected discovery in the suburbs of a country that was neutral in both world wars, but there it is. Among the mostly German, American, and British graves we find, in the Commonwealth section, that of Arthur Cownden who, at 17, was probably the youngest to be buried there. He was boy telegraphist on a Royal Navy destroyer, and on the morning of 1 June 1916 his body was washed ashore close to the small fishing village of Fiskebäckskil on the Swedish west coast. His ship, the HMS Shark , was one of many British losses during the preceding day’s Battle of Jutland—the only clash between the main forces of the Royal Navy and the German Hochseeflotte during World War I. By all accounts this was a terrible battle, with loss of lives in the thousands on both sides, and one of the largest naval battles ever fought. The Battle of Jutland remains somewhat controversial for two reasons: the enduring argument between the two British commanders, David Beatty and his superior John Jellicoe, and the purported role of the Royal Navy’s smokeless gunpowder cordite in the sinking of a number of its own ships. We have no business with naval tactics, but the cordite question is related to one of the lesser-known supply problems of World War I, that of acetone. You may be familiar with this molecule as nail varnish remover, but perhaps you also know the disastrous effect it has on the glossy surface of cars.

Racist Hysteria to Pragmatic Rapprochement? The German Debate about Rhenish ‘Occupation Children’, 1920–30

2013 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
JULIA ROOS
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
World War I ◽  
Mixed Race ◽  
World War ◽  
Weimar Germany ◽  
The Family ◽  
Illegitimate Children ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Policy Discourses

AbstractThis essay revisits 1920s German debates over the illegitimate children of the Rhineland occupation to examine hitherto neglected fluctuations in the relationship between nationalism and racism in Weimar Germany. During the early 1920s, nationalist anxieties focused on the alleged racial ‘threats’ emanating from the mixed-race children of colonial French soldiers. After 1927, plans for the forced sterilisation and deportation of the mixed-race children were dropped; simultaneously, officials began to support German mothers’ paternity suits against French soldiers. This hitherto neglected shift in German attitudes towards the ‘Rhineland bastards’ sheds new light on the role of debates over gender and the family in the process of Franco–German rapprochement. It also enhances our understanding of the contradictory political potentials of popularised foreign policy discourses about women's and children's victimisation emerging from World War I.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document