scholarly journals Three Publications about Archaeology of a Segment of the First World War's Forgotten Eastern Front

2021 ◽  
Vol 59 ◽  
pp. 189-201
Author(s):  
Paul Barford
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
German Army ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Russian Army ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World

While the horrors of the trench warfare on the Western Front in Belgium and France are part of the European cultural memory, to some degree the much more extensive and mobile Eastern Front of the 1914–1918 conflict has become the forgotten front (Die vergessene Front). Although for just over eleven months in 1914/15, the central part of a major front, some 1000 km long on which three million people died ran through the middle of what is now Poland, for a number of reasons the memory of this has there been all but erased from memory and from the cultural landscape. The reviewed three volumes are the result of a project that has attempted to address the poor state of historical memory of the momentous events and human drama that took place a century earlier on the segment of the front, 55 km west of Warsaw. Here, from mid-December 1914, the Russian Imperial army tried to hold back the eastward advance of the German troops on defences built along the Bzura and Rawka rivers. For the next seven months, the fighting here took the form of the same type of prolonged static trench warfare more familiar on the Western Front (the only place in the eastern sphere of war that this happened). The German army made every effort (including mining and several major gas attacks), to advance on Warsaw but failed to break through. It was only after the Great Retreat of the Russian army in the summer of 1915 that these defences were overrun and Warsaw fell.

From Ober Ost to Ostland?

2018 ◽  
pp. 245-262
Author(s):  
Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Cultural Memory ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The World ◽  
First World ◽  
Vast Area

Igor Narskij examines the experience of Russian soldiers on the eastern front, an experience significantly different from that undergone by soldiers on the western front because of the vast area of the eastern theater of war and the fact that it was largely fought as a mobile war, not a static one. Maintaining that prevalent arguments put forward by historians to explain Russia’s failure in the war―including the alleged backwardness of the country’s peasant soldiers and the lack of adequate supplies―have been overstated, the chapter posits that the war actually had a significant civilizing and disciplining effect. The chapter also argues that because for Russia the First World War segued into internal dissension in the Revolution of 1917 and the Civil War of 1918–1920, Russians never completely integrated the experience of the world war into its cultural memory.

scholarly journals The forgotten Eastern Front: dealing with the social and archaeological legacies of the Battle of the Rawka and Bzura Rivers (1914–1915), central Poland

Antiquity ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Anna I. Zalewska ◽  
Grzegorz Kiarszys
Keyword(s):  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Central Poland ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The Social ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
Heritage Policy ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

While the Western Front of the Great (or First World) War is deeply engrained in the European historical consciousness, memories of the Eastern Front are less prominent. Here, events have been repressed, obscured by the subsequent experience of the Second World War and by heritage policy in the region. The authors present the results of archaeological investigations of a battlefield in central Poland, where static trench warfare was fought between December 1914 and July 1915. A unique landscape palimpsest was formed, the present neglected state of which is a material expression of contemporary attitudes to the legacy of the forgotten Eastern Front. The study illustrates the wider intersection of warfare, identity and memory.

The East Wind

2018 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Andrew Glazzard
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Memory ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
East Wind ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

Holmes’s words to Watson at the end of ‘His Last Bow’ (1917) express an idea of warfare that sits uneasily with our contemporary perception of the First World War. Today we are accustomed to associate that war with the horrors of the Western Front: the battles of the Somme (1916) and Passchendaele (1917) loom large in our cultural memory as paradigms of unnecessary bloodshed and strategic incompetence. But this was not how Conan Doyle saw it – and he saw the Western Front at first hand, while both his brother, Brigadier-General Innes ‘Duff’ Doyle, and his son Kingsley were in the thick of the action. At the invitation of the War Office, Doyle toured the British, Italian and French Fronts in 1916, and the Australian Front in 1918, using his authority as Deputy Lieutenant of Surrey to don an improvised khaki uniform ‘which was something between that of a Colonel and Brigadier, with silver roses instead of stars or crowns upon the shoulder-states’.1

Kultureller Raum und Bewegungskrieg. Raumerfahrungen und Raumdeutungen zu Osteuropa in Selbstzeugnissen deutschsprachiger Kriegsteilnehmer der k.u.k. Armee

2014 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 367-388
Author(s):  
Wolfram Dornik
Keyword(s):  
Local Population ◽  
Cultural Images ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
German Speaking ◽  
Kurt Lewin ◽  
Surrounding Space ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World

Abstract Due to the permanent shift between mobile and trench warfare as well as conquest and occupation, the soldiers of the First World War in Eastern Europe were brought into more intense relationship to the surrounding space and the local population than on other theatres of war. This article focuses on cultural interpretation of space on the Eastern Front by German-speaking Austro-Hungarian soldiers. Using eleven diaries and unpublished memoirs of subaltern officers, non-commissioned officers and ordinary soldiers, it seeks to analyse the perceptions of cultural space, Kriegslandschaften (Kurt Lewin) and the image of the »East«. It is shown to what extent the specific war experience shaped the cultural images of the soldiers during the war, and which interpretations they offered in their writings.

scholarly journals RUSSIAN ARMY IN 1917: FROM THE IMPERIAL WAR TO THE SOLDIER PEACE

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-27
Author(s):  
Sergey Nelipovich
Keyword(s):  
Decisive Role ◽  
October Revolution ◽  
Political Struggle ◽  
Small Communities ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
Russian Army ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Cost ◽  
First World

This paper analyzes the actions of the Russian army in the final year of the fightings on the Eastern Front of the First World War. This paper demonstrates that the Russian army in 1917 was undergoing violent internal processes, caused by the desire of various political forces to seize and retain power. The army involvement in the political struggle was steadily increasing and by autumn 1917 it had become an influential political force capable to play independently a decisive role in changing society (the Kornilov affair, the October Revolution in big cities and small communities). The paper concludes that the leadership of the Russian army was unable to achieve success at the front, even with a numerical superiority over the enemy's troops and at the cost of huge losses. At the same time, pacifist sentiments and the desire to end the war by any mean spreadamong the Russian soldiers. These moods were one of the most important factors contributing to the success of the October Revolution in November 1917 and the rapid conclusion of the Brest Peace in March 1918.

Russian Romances: Emotionalism and Spirituality in the Writings of “Eastern Front” Nurses, 1914–1918

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-128
Author(s):  
Christine Hallett
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Front Line ◽  
Field Hospital ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World ◽  
Moving Front ◽  
Russian Medical

The nursing work of the First World War is usually associated with the trench warfare of the Western Front. Nurses were based within fairly permanent casualty clearing stations and field hospitals, and patients were moved “down the line” to base hospitals, and then to convalescent hospitals “at home.” The nurses and volunteers who worked on the Eastern Front and offered their services to the letuchka or “flying columns” of the Russian medical services had a very different experience. They worked with highly mobile units, following a rapidly moving “front line.” The diaries of three British (one Anglo-Russian) nurses who worked alongside Russian nursing sisterhoods in three different flying columns—Violetta Thurstan (Field Hospital and Flying Column), Florence Farmborough (With the Armies of the Tsar) and Mary Britnieva (One Woman’s Story)—stand as an important corpus of nursing writing. Written in a highly romantic style, they take up similar themes around their work on the Eastern Front as a heroic journey through a dreamlike landscape. Each nurse offers a portrayal of the Russian character as fine and noble. The most important themes deal with the romance of nursing itself, in which nursing work is portrayed as both character-testing and a highly spiritual pursuit.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Historical Issues ◽  
First World

In the collective memory, the concept of the First World War is pervaded by the trauma of the modern technologized war on the western front, whereas the events and battles on the eastern front of 1914–1915, other than the battle of Tannenberg, have shifted into the background. Thus, the phrase “all quiet on the eastern front” offers a succinct description of the lack of scholarly research on the first two years of the war on the German eastern front. This volume aims to correct that deficiency, presenting essays by professional historians from eight countries discussing the eastern theater of war in terms of operations, mindset, and cultural-historical issues.

The Forgotten Front

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

This book presents research on the eastern front of World War I, a subject comparatively eclipsed by scholarly study of the western front. Focusing on the first two years of the war, the volume concentrates primarily on elements of the conflict between the Central Powers (specifically Germany and its ally Austria-Hungary) and pre-revolutionary Russia. The book approaches topics of interest through a tripartite structure, addressing the operational conduct of the war, the combatants’ cultural conceptions of themselves and the enemy, and how the conflict has been understood and commemorated in the years since the end of the war. The volume concludes with a chapter that brings together themes studied throughout the book in a discussion of the potential continuities between the German conduct and perception of war from the First World War to the Second.

scholarly journals Badly Equipped, Under-financed, Technologically Backward but Splendidly Uniformed: A Brief View into Austria- Hungary’s Efforts in the Eastern Front and the Battle of Galicia

Perceptions ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Jack Sweeney
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
First Year ◽  
World War ◽  
Is Research ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
Russian Army ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

The purpose of this study was to research the role that Austria-Hungary played in the Eastern Front of the First World War. Specifically, there is research into their clumsy actions in the tragic battle of Galicia. The research was conducted through the works of several historians that focus on Austria-Hungary and Russia in the First World War. Overall, the weak leadership, trans cultural makeup of the army, and the sheer numbers of the imperial Russian Army resulted in a complete rout in both the Battle of Galicia and the Brusilov Offensive. If it had not been for the sheer power and efficiency of Germany, the Austro-Hungary Empire would have capitulated to Russia in the first year of the war.

scholarly journals How to Tell the War? Trench Warfare and the Realist Paradigm in First World War Narratives

2018 ◽  
pp. 143-161
Author(s):  
Martin Löschnigg
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Disruptive Effect ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
War Narratives ◽  
In Stahlgewittern ◽  
War Experience ◽  
Modern Warfare ◽  
Trench Warfare ◽  
First World

This paper will analyze how memoirs and novels of the First World War reflect the challenges which modern warfare poses to realist narrative. Mechanized warfare resists the narrative encoding of experience. In particular, the nature of warfare on the Western Front 1914–1918, characterized by the fragmentation of vision in the trenches and the exposure of soldiers to a continuous sequence of acoustic shocks, had a disruptive effect on perceptions of time and space, and consequently on the rendering of the chronotope in narrative accounts of the fighting. Under the conditions of the Western Front, the order-creating and meaning-creating function of narrative seemed to have become suspended. As I want to show, these challenges account for a fundamental ambivalence in memoirs and novels which have largely been regarded as paradigmatically ‘realistic’ and ‘authentic’ anti-war narratives. Their documentary impetus, i.e. the claim to tell the ‘truth’ about the war, is often countered by textual fragmentation and a “cinematic telescoping of time” (Williams 29), i.e. by a structure which implies that such a ‘truth’ could not really be articulated. In consequence, these texts also explore the relationship between fact and fiction in the attempt at rendering an authentic account of the modern war experience. My examples are Edmund Blunden’s Undertones of War (1928), Robert Graves’s Goodbye to All That (1929) and the novel Generals Die in Bed (1930) by the Canadian Charles Yale Harrison, as well as German examples like Ernst Jünger’s In Stahlgewittern (1920; The Storm of Steel, 1929), Ludwig Renn’s Krieg (1928; War, 1929) and Edlef Köppen’s Heeresbericht (1930; Higher Command, 1931).

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