Locarno Treaties (1925) in the Context of the Versailles System Transformation as seen from London

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 157-195
Author(s):  
E. V. Khakhalkina ◽  
V. S. Dzyuba
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
System Transformation ◽  
European Security ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
World War ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
Outcome Document

This paper is an attempt to reassess the role of the Locarno Treaties (1925) in terms of the Versailles-Washington system of international relations evolution. The authors argue that the Locarno Treaties represent one of the turning points in the development of the international order after World War I. The Treaties were not a mere add-on to the Versailles system, in fact, they had replaced it and became the main legal instrument for maintaining security in the region. In order to test this hypothesis and provide a better understanding of how the contemporaries themselves assessed these agreements, the authors examine them within a broader context of debates on the European security issues, which took place in the 1920s.The views of the British elites on this matter are of particular interest here, since it was the British diplomacy that was at the origin of the Locarno Conference in 1925. The paper draws on a wide range of recently declassified archival documents, as well as on the materials of the debates in the House of Commons and publications in the leading British newspapers. It allows the authors to trace the evolution of approaches by the main British political parties to security issues in Europe. A systematic comparison of views of the Conservative and the Labour party representatives on the Geneva Protocol and the Rhineland Pact shows that by mid-1920s the British political elites advocated for an in-depth transformation of the Versailles order, particularly, through the development of an effective mechanism for maintaining international security. On that basis a broad political consensus had arisen, which led to the formation of a new two-party structure (Tory-Labour) after World War I.The study begins with an overview of the political situation in Europe and in Great Britain in the early 1920s. Then, it examines the Labour Party’s draft of the Disarmament Protocol, as well as the principal causes of its failure. Finally, the paper covers the preparatory process for and the progress of the Locarno negotiations. Special attention is paid to the debates in the House of Commons on the conference, particularly, on its outcome document - the Rhineland Pact.

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.

scholarly journals Female images in the movies of the 2010s about the World War I

2021 ◽  
pp. 109-120
Author(s):  
Natal'ya Ivanovna Tribunskikh ◽  
Daria Chuprasova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
World War I ◽  
Western Society ◽  
World War ◽  
Female Images ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Tv Shows

The subject of this research is the yet poorly studied topic of representation of the female images in military media sources, namely movies and TV series of the 2010s. The choice of sources is substantiated by the new approaches towards delivery of information, new characters and patterns that correspond to the modern media trends; as well as by a wide range of projects timed to the centenary of the World War I. The key tasks of this article lie in determination of the role of women and characteristics of female images in a number of movies and TV shows of the 2010s about the World War I. The author carries out a comparative analysis of reflection of the Western and Russian cinematography associated with the representations on the gender hierarchy that is seen through interaction between men and women in the material under review. The article reveals the main patterns that are most commonly used for describing the role of women in war. The conclusion is made that a certain variety of female images that have recently appeared in cinematography indicates the interest of historians and researchers dealing with memory, gender, media and visual culture. The comparative analysis of sources demonstrated that the representation of female images in movies of the 2010s about the World War I reflects a certain difference in the officially broadcasted sociocultural and ideological perception of women and their role characteristic to modern Russian and Western society. The Russian movies are oriented towards expressing the official state concept of traditional values and women's affiliation to family and the country; while Western movies create the images typical for their cultural reality, which do not neglect the role of wives and mothers, however allow the heroines to transcend family interests.

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 Propaganda, Censorship, and Book Drives: The Newark Public Library in World War I

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 101
Author(s):  
George Robb
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Significant Role ◽  
Public Libraries ◽  
Public Library ◽  
World War ◽  
Reading Material ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Women Librarians

This article examines the activities of the Newark Public Library during World War I as a means of highlighting the significant role American libraries played in promoting the nation’s war effort. During the war public libraries were usually the most important information centers in their communities. They distributed books, pamphlets, and posters in support of a wide range of government initiatives, they organized war-related exhibits and classes, and they collected vast amounts of reading material for libraries at military camps. Newark’s chief librarians, John Cotton Dana and Beatrice Winser, oversaw many such patriotic initiatives, but they also became involved in more controversial campaigns to employ women librarians at military camps and to resist wartime calls for censorship of unpatriotic literature.

“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.

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