On the Fence, Over the Fence

Author(s):  
John Schofield

Given the significance of military training in shaping early archaeological practice, and the enthusiasm with which archaeologists have explored the remains of early conflict (from the Roman and medieval periods especially), it is surprising how long it has taken archaeologists to develop interest in more recent conflict. It seems to have taken the fiftieth anniversaries of the Second World War to inspire interest amongst professional archaeologists and across the heritage sector, following a longer history of amateur endeavour. This chapter briefly reviews these earlier histories of the subject, before focusing on some recent examples that illustrate the breadth of research and the opportunities it provides for public engagement. The role of anniversaries appears particularly relevant at the time of writing, with the centenary of the First World War. Alongside archaeological activities along the former Western Front, and in Jordan, an archaeological survey of the UK Home Front is under way.

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-105

The article discusses a neglected aspect in the history of the Second World War and the role of Armenians and their motivation to fight against the Nazi Germany. The author suggests that the memory of the Genocide against the Armenians perpetratrated by Turkey in the First World War with connivence from Germany played an important role in the memory of Soviet Armenians enrolled in the Red Army. This is one of the explanations why the present day Republic of Armenia still maintains – from different reasons – the name The Great Patriotic War instead of Second World War, like Russia.


Author(s):  
Susan M. Papp

THIS CHAPTER seeks to present a comparative examination of the film industries in Hungary and Poland from the invention of the first motion picture cameras in the 1890s up to and including the Second World War, and the important role played in this industry by Jews from both countries. Throughout the period, Hungary had a vibrant film industry, yet, from the end of the First World War, each successive government tried to politicize and shape it. In Poland, government interference was less intrusive until the late 1930s, and Jews continued to play an important role in the film industry until the German invasion in September 1939. Nevertheless calls were made to limit the role of Jews. Even though the history of filmmaking in the two countries was very different, there still remain some interesting historical comparisons to be explored. In particular, this chapter will examine the Hungarian Theatre and Film Chamber (A SzínműVészeti és a Filmművészeti Kamara), established in 1938 by the regime of Miklós Horthy in order to limit the number of Jews working in the film business in Hungary....


Author(s):  
Rex Ferguson

From the beginning of the Second World War until 1952, the UK maintained a National Register and issued all citizens with identity cards (one of only two times in which this has occurred—the other being during the First World War). The National Registration Identity Card was an intrinsic part of the logic of classification which guided life on the home front and organized individuals into categories of usefulness, vulnerability, and risk. Mirroring the simplistic basis of these categories, the National Registration Identity Card was notable for the paucity of information it contained. Rather than working as an authentic token which served to validate identity in itself, when it came to security, the card only really worked when read alongside the more richly detailed register to which it referred. Cross-checking between card and register and, more importantly, opening conversations which rested upon the potential for cross-checking, thus animated attempts to identity individuals in wartime Britain. In retreating from the radical subjectivity of modernist prose, writers of the period, such as Graham Greene and Elizabeth Bowen, produced characterizations that were as similarly shorn of depth as the categories that the home front pushed individuals into and the cards that identified them. In playing upon the genre of the espionage thriller, The Ministry of Fear (1943) and The Heat of the Day (1948) thus narrate identities that are defined by social position and by plots which confirm individuals as often precisely what they initially appear to be.


Author(s):  
Mark Rawlinson

This chapter explores how Anglophone literature and culture envisioned and questioned an economy of sacrificial exchange, particularly its symbolic aspect, as driving the compulsions entangled in the Second World War. After considering how Elizabeth Bowen’s short stories cast light on the Home Front rhetorics of sacrifice and reconstruction, it looks at how poets Robert Graves, Keith Douglas, and Alun Lewis reflect on First World War poetry of sacrifice. With reference to René Girard’s and Carl von Clausewitz’s writings on war, I take up Elaine Cobley’s assertion about the differing valencies of the First and Second World Wars, arguing that the contrast is better seen in terms of sacrificial economy. I develop that argument with reference to examples from Second World War literature depicting sacrificial exchange (while often harking back to the First World War), including Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour Trilogy (1952–61), and William Wharton’s memoir Shrapnel (2012).


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-250
Author(s):  
Sjang L. ten Hagen

ArgumentThis article contributes to a global history of relativity, by exploring how Einstein’s theory was appropriated in Belgium. This may sound like a contradiction in terms, yet the early-twentieth-century Belgian context, because of its cultural diversity and reflectiveness of global conditions (the principal example being the First World War), proves well-suited to expose transnational flows and patterns in the global history of relativity. The attempts of Belgian physicist Théophile de Donder to contribute to relativity physics during the 1910s and 1920s illustrate the role of the war in shaping the transnational networks through which relativity circulated. The local attitudes of conservative Belgian Catholic scientists and philosophers, who denied that relativity was philosophically significant, exemplify a global pattern: while critics of relativity feared to become marginalized by the scientific, political, and cultural revolutions that Einstein and his theory were taken to represent, supporters sympathized with these revolutions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 133-149
Author(s):  
I. Vietrynskyi

The paper focuses on the initial stage of the formation of the Commonwealth of Australia, and the process of its establishing as an independent State. The international political context for the development of the country, from the period of creation of the Federation to the beginning of the Second World War, is primarily viewed. The Commonwealth’s international position, its place and role in the regional and global geopolitical processes of the early XX century, in particular in the context of its relations with Great Britain, are analyzed. The features of the transformation of British colonial policies on the eve of the First World War are examined. The specifics of the UK system of relations with Australia, as well as other dominions, are being examined. The features of status of the dominions in the British Empire system are shown. The role of the dominions and, in particular, the Commonwealth of Australia in the preparatory process for the First World War, as well as the peculiarities of its participation in hostilities, is analyzed. The significance of the actions of the First World War on the domestic political situation in Australia, as well as its impact on dominions relations with the British Empire, is revealed. The history of the foundation of the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and its participation in imperial forces on the frontline of the First World War is analyzed. The success and failure of its fighters, as well as the role of ANZAC, in the process of formation an Australian political nation are analyzed. The economic, humanitarian and international political consequences of the First World War for the Commonwealth of Australia are examined, as well as the influence of these consequences on the structure of relations between the dominions and the British Empire. The socio-economic situation of the Commonwealth of Australia on the eve of World War II, in particular the impact of the Great depression on the development of the country as a whole and its internal political situation in particular, is analyzed. The ideological, military-strategic and international political prerequisites for Australia’s entry into the Second World War are being considered.


Author(s):  
Robert Blobaum

This chapter examines the intersection of war and gender in Warsaw. The resurrection of an independent Polish state in the aftermath of the First World War was accompanied by the establishment of equal political rights and suffrage for women, a cause that had minimal support before the war but was accepted after the war with little public debate or dissent. However, that the war itself had something to do with this important development in Polish political culture is assumed rather than established in the historiography of modern Poland and the emerging scholarship about women and gender. Moreover, in the scant literature on the role of women in wartime Poland, the focus had been placed—or misplaced—on a small minority of women who served as volunteers in auxiliary military organizations, particularly those in support of the Polish legions.


2020 ◽  
pp. 249-266
Author(s):  
Brian Cantor

Most materials fracture suddenly because they contain small internal and surface cracks, which propagate under an applied stress. Griffith’s equation shows how fracture strength depends inversely on the square root of the size of the largest crack. It was developed by Alan Griffith, while he was working as an engineer at Royal Aircraft Establishment Farnborough just after the First World War. This chapter examines brittle and ductile fracture, the concepts of fracture toughness, stress intensity factor and stBiographical Memoirs of Fellows ofrain energy release rate, the different fracture modes, and the use of fractography to understand the causes of fracture in broken components. The importance of fracture mechanics was recognised after the Second World War, following the disastrous failures of the Liberty ships from weld cracks, and the Comet airplanes from sharp window corner cracks. Griffith’s father was a larger-than-life buccaneering explorer, poet, journalist and science fiction writer, and Griffith lived an unconventional, peripatetic and impoverished early life. He became a senior engineer working for the UK Ministry of Defence and then Rolls-Royce Aeroengines, famously turning down Whittle’s first proposed jet engine just before the Second World War as unworkable because the engine material would melt, then playing a major role in jet engine development after the war, including engines for the first vertical take-off planes.


2020 ◽  
pp. 39-70

The Ministry of Food was essentially created during the War, and survived until it was reabsorbed into the Ministry of Agriculture in 1958. It has been the subject of extensive popular and scholarly interest as part of research into the management of the Second World War on the Home Front. Lessons about food control had been learned from the experiences of the First World War, which were consciously applied to this war. This was in part because so many of the men had been involved in that conflict in some way, including Woolton himself. They had personal memories of what had worked well then, but were also very aware of the mistakes that had been made, which they did not wanted repeated. Woolton certainly was, as his ...


Author(s):  
Paul Knepper

Between the 1890s and the 1950s, drug smuggling became a global problem. The League of Nations played a pivotal role during the interwar period in promoting perceptions of “drug trafficking” and fashioning an international response. Drawing on archives in Geneva, London, and New York, as well as fiction, this essay examines the “dreamscape” of drug trafficking: the nightmare of the foreign trafficker and the dream of a worldwide scheme for drug control. It explores the fear of “reverse colonization” in relation to the drug trade and the British Empire before the First World War, explains the vision of police cooperation that shaped the League’s response to drug trafficking, and examines the concept of “organized crime” in relation to the League’s response. The discussion includes a look at the emergence of the role of the United States in the United Nations antidrug campaign after the Second World War.


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