Occupation Regimes and Civil–Military Encounters at the Western Front

2020 ◽  
pp. 93-124
Author(s):  
Alex Dowdall

Chapter 3 uncovers the dynamics of the military occupation regimes put in place on both sides of the lines during the First World War, and demonstrates how they impacted civilian life in the front-line towns. It provides the first comparative analysis of military occupation on both sides of the Western Front, and argues that although some of the methods employed differed from one side of the lines to the other, the main objectives were fundamentally the same. In all cases civilian freedoms were curtailed on the basis of military necessity. It describes the German and Allied occupation regimes side by side, before moving on to a discussion of the face-to-face encounters and relationships that developed between individual civilians and soldiers. It demonstrates that three types of encounter between civilians and soldiers had particularly strong impacts on the social dynamics of urban communities on both sides of the Western Front. They arose from military indiscipline, platonic relationships, and sexual encounters. The chapter argues that although the German occupation regime was notably harsher than that on the Allied side, and forced civilians to navigate complex issues of resistance and collaboration, in both cases urban life near the front was profoundly shaped by the military presence.

1948 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 156-157

In the period under review the Far Eastern Commission approved policy decisions relating to: 1) interim import-export policies for Japan, together with the controls necessary for enforcement; 2) the reduction of Japanese industrial war potential; 3) the supply of food for civilian consumption in Japan. It also approved a proposal that fines collected by the military occupation courts should be set aside as a special fund to be used to defray the costs of Allied occupation.


Urban History ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
KRISTA COWMAN

ABSTRACT:This article explores the importance that accessing urban life assumed for British soldiers stationed in France during World War I. Many who fought on the Western Front had never visited a foreign country before sailing to France. Drawing on contemporary letters and diaries and later memoirs, it considers how men responded to the new experiences they found in French towns and cities behind the lines. Through exploring activities from shopping and dining to cinema and prostitution, it argues that urban outings became critical to sustaining morale by offering opportunities to engage with civilian life on a reasonably regular basis.


Author(s):  
Alex Dowdall

Communities under Fire rewrites the history of the Western Front from the perspective of its civilian inhabitants. Between 1914 and 1918, the fighting passed through some of Europe’s most populated and industrialised regions. Large French towns including Nancy, Reims, Arras, and Lens lay at the heart of the battlefield. Their civilian inhabitants endured artillery bombardment, military occupation, and considerable material hardships. Many fled for the safety of the French interior, but others lived under fire for much of the war, ensuring the Western Front remained a joint civil-military space. Communities under Fire explores the wartime experiences of civilians on both sides of the Western Front, and uncovers how urban communities responded to the dramatic impact of industrialized war. It discusses how war shaped civilians’ personal and collective identities, and explores how the experiences of military violence, occupation, and forced displacement structured the attitudes of civilians at the front towards the nation. It argues that that the direct experiences of war shaped both personal and collective identities, placing civilians at the Western Front at the forefront of a broader process of wartime militarization. This development had wide-ranging social impacts, as civilians in towns at the Western Front felt their experiences marked them out as members of ‘communities under fire’ inhabiting distinct positions within wartime French society, and entitled them to privileged treatment. This book explains the multiple ways by which urban residents responded to, were changed by, succumbed to, or survived the enormous pressures of life in a warzone.


Author(s):  
Ilan Zvi Baron

Questions arose about what it meant to support a country whose political future the author has no say in as a Diaspora Jew. The questions became all the more pronounced the more I learned about Israel’s history. Many Jews feel the same way, and often are uncomfortable with what such an obligation can mean, in no small part because of concerns over being identified with Israel because of one’s Jewish heritage or because of the overwhelming significance that Israel has come to have for Jewish identity. Israel’s significance is matched by how much is published about Israel. Increasingly, this literature is not only about trying to explain Israel’s wars, the military occupation or other parts of its history, but about the relationship between Diaspora1 Jewry and Israel.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian H. Huerta

Latino boys and young men often carry the debt of violence into different spaces. This invisible trauma manifests into disruptive behaviors in schools. It is well documented that violence in urban communities and schools has received significant attention from researchers, but little attention has been paid to Latino male youth as individuals and the various forms of violence they have experienced, and how that impacts educational persistence. This qualitative study focuses on 26 Latino male middle and high school students who are attending two continuation schools to understand the types of violence they have experienced and their educational aspirations after high school.


2002 ◽  
Vol 28 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 325-343
Author(s):  
Ruth K. Miller

In civilian life, an individual has the right to refuse medical treatment in almost any circumstance. While a patient who refuses treatment may face adverse consequences such as prolonged illness, our society recognizes the importance of individual choice in health matters. Members of the military, however, enjoy no such right. Service members are required to submit to certain medical treatments as a part of their employment contract. Refusing such treatments is disobeying an order, and the service member then faces the prospect of a dishonorable or “other than honorable” discharge, and even imprisonment. Disobeying an order to receive treatment can thus result in the equivalent of a felony conviction on the individual's employment history forever.


2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S360-S360
Author(s):  
E. Tartakovsky ◽  
N. Rofe

BackgroundThe military is a stressful environment, and many service persons experience army stress. Therefore, it is important to understand the factors affecting army stress and stress resiliency.ObjectiveThe present study examines the connections between personal value preferences and army stress, applying the value congruency paradigm.MethodMale soldiers serving in three combat units in the Israeli Defense Forces participated in the study (n = 257).ResultsThe results obtained demonstrated that personal value preferences explained a significant proportion of the variance in army stress beyond the socio-demographic variables. A lower stress level was associated with a higher preference for the values of societal security, conformity, achievement, and universalism, and with a lower preference for the face and personal security values.ConclusionsThe research promotes our understanding of the relationships between general motivational goals expressed in personal value preferences and stress in the military context. In addition, the results obtained indicate the possible relevance of using values for selecting and preparing recruits who will most likely adjust well to the army framework. Finally, some value-oriented interventions that may be used for promoting the soldiers’ psychological adjustment during their army service are suggested.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.


1999 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN McHUGH

This is a study of a successful parliamentary campaign led throughout the 1920s by a small group of backbench Labour MPs aimed at abolishing the military death penalty for the offences of cowardice and desertion. It was sustained in the face of opposition from the military establishment, the Conservatives, and finally the House of Lords. The campaigners used the opportunity afforded by the requirement on government to pass, annually, an Army Bill, to challenge the military establishment's insistence that a capital penalty was essential to the maintenance of army discipline. Despite the unwillingness of the 1924 Labour government to confront the military on this issue, the reformers persevered, securing some minor, incremental reform before the coming of the second Labour government in 1929. The new government was prevailed upon by backbench pressure to authorize a free vote in the Commons which approved the abolition of the capital penalty for cowardice and desertion in the Army Act of 1930.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luane Flores Chuquel

This current work studies the human rights violations suffered by indigenous peoples during the period of the Brazilian CivilMilitary Dictatorship. Likewise, it makes some notes about the beginning of the violations in a moment before this dark period. On this path, even before the Military Coup was launched in the year 1964 (one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four), the Indians were already experiencing constant usurpations of their rights at the expense of irresponsibilities commanded most of the time, by those who should watch over their rights lives. As will be seen, the violation and disrespect for Human Rights in the face of these peoples ended up becoming common and gaining strength mainly in the beginning of the implementation of the military regime. Negligent attempts at acculturation and "emancipation", in addition to inconsequential contacts with isolated peoples, culminated in the destruction and predatory logging of their lands. Missing processes of terribly violating demarcations of indigenous areas promoted the expulsion of countless peoples, causing the Indians to fall into a life totally surrounded by hunger, begging, alcoholism and prostitution. All in the name of the so-called “economic advance”, which aimed at building roads, in what was called “occupation of the Amazon”? As frequently stated by the authorities at the time, the Amazon rainforest was seen and understood as a “population void” by the Military Government. According to this thought idealized by the disgusting dictators and supporters, it will be observed that the cases of violations of Human Rights have been systematically “legalized”. The life, land and culture of indigenous peoples were left in the background. Depending on this brief narrative developed through documentary research, based on a hypothetical-deductive method, the intention is to rescue the martyrdoms of that time, demonstrating what actually happened to indigenous peoples during the Military Regime, in the simplest attempt to remember or even disclose to those who are unaware of this part of history. All that said, don't you forget. So that it never happens again.


10.34690/125 ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 6-36
Author(s):  
Роман Александрович Насонов

Статья представляет собой исследование религиозной символики и интерпретацию духовного смысла «Военного реквиема» Бриттена. Воспользовавшись Реквиемом Верди как моделью жанра, композитор отдал ключевую роль в драматургии сочинения эпизодам, созданным на основе военных стихов Оуэна; в результате произведение воспринимается подобно циклу песен в обрамлении частей заупокойной мессы. Военная реальность предстает у Бриттена амбивалентно. Совершая надругательство над древней верой и разбивая чаяния современных людей, война дает шанс возрождению религиозных чувств и символов. Опыт веры, порожденный войной, переживается остро, но при всей своей подлинности зыбок и эфемерен. Церковная традиция хранит веру прочно, однако эта вера в значительной мере утрачивает чистоту и непосредственность, которыми она обладает в момент своего возникновения. Бриттен целенаправленно выстраивает диалог между двумя пластами человеческого опыта (церковным и военным), находит те точки, в которых между ними можно установить контакт. Но это не отменяет их глубокого противоречия. Вера, рождаемая войной, представляет собой в произведении Бриттена «отредактированный» вариант традиционной христианской религии: в ее центре находится не триумфальная победа Христа над злом, а пассивная, добровольно отказавшаяся защищать себя перед лицом зла жертва - не Бог Сын, а «Исаак». Смысл этой жертвы - не в преображении мира, а в защите гуманности человека от присущего ему же стремления к агрессивному самоутверждению. The study of religious symbolism and the interpretation of the spiritual meaning of “War Requiem” by Britten have presentation in this article. Using Verdi's Requiem as a model of the genre, the composer gave a key role in the drama to the episodes based on the war poems by Wilfred Owen; as a result, the work is perceived as a song cycle framed by parts of the funeral mass. The military reality appears ambivalent. While committing a blasphemy against the ancient belief and shattering the aspirations of modern people, the war offers a chance to revive religious feelings and symbols. This experience of war-born faith is felt keenly, but for all its authenticity, it is shaky and ephemeral. The church tradition keeps faith firmly, but this faith largely loses the original purity and immediacy. Britten purposefully builds a dialogue between the two layers of human experience (church and military), finds those points where contact can be established between them. But this does not change their profound antagonism. In Britten's work, faith born of war is an “edited” version of the traditional Christian religion: in its center is not the triumphant victory of Christ over evil, but a passive sacrifice that voluntarily refused to defend itself in the face of evil-not God the Son, but “Isaac.” The meaning of this sacrifice is not in transforming the world, but in protecting the humanity of a person from his inherent desire for aggressive self-assertion.


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