scholarly journals My Shirt Is in Mexico

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Voluntary Service ◽  
Sylvia Townsend Warner ◽  
Civil Defence ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Village ◽  
Second World

Sylvia Townsend Warner lived for nearly half her life in Maiden Newton. Surprisingly, since she was a Communist, and Maiden Newton was a working-class village, she showed little interest in its people. During the Second World War, however, she inevitably became more involved with them. ‘Miss Warner’ was a driving force in the Women’s Voluntary Service in Dorchester, and in Maiden Newton’s Civil Defence. Almost all of her short stories about the village date from this chaotic and unpredictable period. They provide a rich source of material about the village’s Home Front, and show Warner’s attitude to it all: a mix of amusement, pity and resignation which combine to make some very fine stories.

The Motif of Sacrifice in the Literature and Culture of the Second World War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Rawlinson
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
War Poetry ◽  
Anglophone Literature ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

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).

Celebrating England: ‘Heritage’ Writing and the Rural Novelist

2018 ◽  
pp. 207-222
Author(s):  
Dominic Head
Keyword(s):  
Careful Analysis ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
Rural Places ◽  
The Village ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World ◽  
English Heritage

In this chapter, Dominic Head focusses on the relationship between nonfiction English heritage writing by popular rural novelists and the same writers’ rural/regional visions explored through their novels of the 1930s and Second World War. Rather than discovering a uniform and distasteful indulgence in easy sentiment or idealizing fantasy, Head’s careful analysis of rural novelists’ nonfiction about rural places and people reveals a richness of approach, from the unexpectedly radical (Henry Williamson’s The Village Book (1930)) to predictably conservative (Francis Brett Young’s Portrait of a Village (1938)), to something in between (Doreen Wallace’s novels, ‘Face of Britain’ books, and ‘Batsford Home Front Handbook’, How to Grow Food (1940)). The chapter summarizes and periodizes the heritage writing of the 1930s-1940s, arguing that it is a genre that may generate a self-consciousness about nation and identity that is inseparable from a pervasive anxiety about modernity.

Improving Safety

2019 ◽  
pp. 80-116
Author(s):  
Jim Phillips
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Generational Differences ◽  
Moral Economy ◽  
Economic Security ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
World War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Village ◽  
Second World

The Scottish miners’ central goal was economic security. An important generational element was involved in its pursuit. The Village Pit generation saw nationalisation as deliverance from the evils of private ownership. The New Mine generation was simultaneously more critical of nationalisation and willing to engage with its joint consultative features. Nationalisation was dynamic and the New Mine generation shaped it to fit the security needs of miners and their communities. Generational differences were highlighted during the Second World War. The Scottish coalfield politics of the Home Front were complex, involving Communism and the strategic interests of the Soviet Union. Whereas the Village Pit generation opposed unofficial strikes, these involved and were led by the New Mine generation, who saw them as evidence of powerful workplace and community anger that could be mobilised in pursuit of collective security. In the 1950s New Mine generation miners were more assertive in their defence of the coalfield moral economy. Their actions at workplace level placed significant limits on the managerial sovereignty of NCB officials.

Zabiegi likwidujące skutki obrzezania wykonywane w Warszawie w czasie drugiej wojny światowej. Wstępna próba opisu zjawiska

2017 ◽  
pp. 437-446
Author(s):  
Maria Ciesielska
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Tissue Preparation ◽  
World War ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
Reconstruction Surgery ◽  
Repair Operation ◽  
Manual Treatment ◽  
Operating Technique ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Second World

Men’s circumcision is in many countries considered as a hygienic-cosmetic or aesthetic treatment. However, it still remains in close connection with religious rites (Judaism, Islam) and is still practiced all over the world. During the Second World War the visible effects of circumcision became an indisputable evidence of being a Jew and were often used especially by the so-called szmalcownicy (blackmailers). Fear of the possibility of discovering as non-Aryan prompted many Jews hiding on the so-called Aryan side of Warsaw to seek medical practitioners who would restore the condition as it was before the circumcision. The reconstruction surgery was called in surgical jargon “knife baptizing”. Almost all of the procedures were performed by Aryan doctors although four cases of hiding Jewish doctors participating in such procedures are known. Surgical technique consisted of the surgical formation of a new foreskin after tissue preparation and stretching it by manual treatment. The success of the repair operation depended on the patient’s cooperation with the doctor, the worst result was in children. The physicians described in the article and the operating technique are probably only a fragment of a broader activity, described meticulously by only one of the doctors – Dr. Janusz Skórski. This work is an attempt to describe the phenomenon based on the very scanty source material, but it seems to be the first such attempt for several decades.

Women’s Antifascist Resistance on German-Occupied Territory Through the Lens of Soviet Leaflets, 1941–1945

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200942098804
Author(s):  
Regina Kazyulina
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Violence ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
The Self ◽  
World War ◽  
Occupied Territory ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Second World ◽  
Unrealistic Expectations

During the Second World War, approximately 28,500 Soviet women fought in the ranks of the partisans on Soviet territory temporarily occupied by the Wehrmacht. Although Soviet propaganda destined for the home front often spoke about their contributions, they eschewed direct appeals for others to follow in their footsteps. In contrast, partisan leaflets distributed across occupied territory overtly called on local women to join the partisan movement and fight alongside men. This essay explores how Soviet propagandists attempted to engage with local women on occupied territory through partisan leaflets and the kinds of expectations they sought to convey. Partisan leaflets not only exploited the image of the self-sacrificing partizanka to encourage women to sacrifice themselves but also vividly and graphically detailed crimes committed against women and children in order to inspire hatred. Such depictions were meant to steal the resolve of local civilians, while simultaneously discouraging behavior that was thought to aid the enemy. The representations conveyed in partisan leaflets encouraged a duality that saw women portrayed either as Soviet-style amazons or victims of sexual violence and rape. While promoting partisan recruitment, such representations encouraged unrealistic expectations and foreshadowed the violence that awaited women who failed to live up to them.

Alien Internment in John Galsworthy’s ‘The Bright Side’ and ‘The Dog It was that Died’

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-61
Author(s):  
Jill Felicity Durey
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Short Stories ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Internment Camp ◽  
Bright Side ◽  
Second World ◽  
John Galsworthy

This article illuminates two short stories by John Galsworthy through examining them with the help of his diaries and letters, a handful of unpublished letters by his nephew from an internment camp and secondary historical sources. It argues that the stories, when read in conjunction with these sources, are highly revealing about human nature during Second World War and also about Galsworthy’s prescient fears concerning a second twentieth-century world war, which he did not live to see.

The Rise of the Middle Class in Iran before the Second World War

2019 ◽  
pp. 43-63
Author(s):  
H. E. Chehabi
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Consumption Patterns ◽  
World War ◽  
Village Level ◽  
New Middle Class ◽  
Modern Business ◽  
State Employment ◽  
The Village ◽  
Second World

This chapter traces the formation of a modern middle class that emerged as a result of Reza Shah's rigorous modernization policies in the 1920s and 1930s. The state expanded the educational system and bureaucracy, reaching down from the court to the village level. At the same time, it fostered lifestyles and consumption patterns modeled on those of Europe, which this new and increasingly secular middle class embraced, setting it apart from the rest of society. Given its reliance on state employment, this was not a bourgeoisie stricto sensu. This new middle class existed next to the traditional mercantile elite, which was centered on the bazaar and closely allied to the clergy. In the 1920s, however, many Iranian businessmen adopted a middle-class lifestyle, and, as a consequence, a modern business bourgeoisie gradually emerged that was to some extent a link between the traditional mercantile elite centered on the bazaar and the modern middle class.

The Neutral Zone at Pisarovina

2020 ◽  
pp. 196-306
Author(s):  
Gaj Trifković
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Neutral Zone ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Village ◽  
Second World

What transpired in Pisarovina, a small village located on the outskirts of Zagreb, is unique not only to Yugoslavia, but to the Second World War in general. Pisarovina was the location officially agreed by both the German occupation authorities and the Yugoslav Partisans to function as the center of the prisoner exchange cartel at the end of 1943. In order to facilitate this, the village and its immediate surroundings were declared a neutral zone, quite possibly the only such place in war-torn Europe. The system saved hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners who faced an uncertain fate. Frequent contacts between the envoys provided both the Germans and the Partisans with a "back-channel" for talks on political issues and trade, as well as the opportunity to spy on each other.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 154-168
Author(s):  
Jeff Eden
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Home Front ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Devotional Life ◽  
Second World

This concluding chapter reviews the two stories told in the book about Soviet Muslims in the Second World War: one about the devotional life of Muslim citizens, including soldiers, their families on the home front, and local religious leaders; the other about state dynamics. Regarding the effectiveness of Soviet religious propaganda during the Second World War, it offers summary thoughts connecting the resurgence of devotional life in wartime, the widespread perception that religiosity was now permitted by the state, and the state’s ambiguous, ineffectual approach to shaping religious policy. The chapter then places the book in the context of other studies of Islam in the Soviet Union.

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