scholarly journals Difrences in the national (historical) memories of Germany and Russia on the example of a railway disaster in Zielonka Pasłęcka in January 1945

2018 ◽  
Vol 300 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-275
Author(s):  
Tomasz Gliniecki
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
German Researcher ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Historical Memories ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

This article presents divergent views of the national memories of the Germans and Russians, accumulated since the Second World War in two leading narratives, presenting the mnemonic syndromes of winners and losers. The railway disaster at Zielonka Pasłęcka in January 1945 and its consequences was used as a point of comparison. The author presents, amongst others, the impact of the work of the German researcher Heinz Timmreck, in the form of numerous reports from this incident, mainly highlighting the suffering of the German civilian population fleeing the region endangered by fighting. On the other side, the author presents memoirs of Soviet officers marked with personal ambitions and traces of vengeful attacks preserved in the military documentation. The juxtaposi�tion of the narratives and their comparison provides a new perspective, prompting changes in the mythologised memory of both nations.

14. War and world politics

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tarak Barkawi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines how war fits into the study of international relations and the ways it affects world politics. It begins with an analysis of the work of the leading philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, to highlight the essential nature of war, the main types of war, and the idea of strategy. It then considers some important developments in the history of warfare, both in the West and elsewhere, with particular emphasis on interrelationships between the modern state, armed force, and war in the West and in the global South. Two case studies are presented, one focusing on war and Eurocentrism during the Second World War, and the other on the impact of war on society by looking at France, Vietnam, and the United States. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether democracy creates peace among states.

14. War and world politics

2019 ◽  
pp. 225-239
Author(s):  
Tarak Barkawi
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern State ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

This chapter examines how war fits into the study of international relations and the ways it affects world politics. It begins with an analysis of the work of the leading philosopher of war, Carl von Clausewitz, to highlight the essential nature of war, the main types of war, and the idea of strategy. It then considers some important developments in the history of warfare, both in the West and elsewhere, with particular emphasis on interrelationships between the modern state, armed force, and war in the West and in the global South. Two case studies are presented, one focusing on war and Eurocentrism during the Second World War, and the other on the impact of war on society by looking at France, Vietnam, and the United States. There is also an Opposing Opinions box that asks whether democracy creates peace among states.

Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Politisierung, Vernichtung, Überleben. Edited by Jörg Echternkamp. Band 9, Halbband 1, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Edited by Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. 2004. Pp. xi+993. €49.80. ISBN 3-421-06236-6. Die Deutsche Kriegsgesellschaft 1939 bis 1945. Ausbeutung, Deutungen, Ausgrenzung. Edited by Jörg Echternkamp. Band 9, Halbband 2, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg. Edited by Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt. Munich: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt. 2005. Pp. xiii+1112. €49.80. ISBN 3-421-06528-4.

2006 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 333-338
Author(s):  
Robert G. Moeller
Keyword(s):  
German Society ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Original Research ◽  
World War ◽  
War Economy ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World ◽  
At Home

During the Second World War, Germans fought a “two-front war.” A “community of fate” bound together Germans at home and Germans in uniform who carried the war beyond Germany's borders. “Between 1939 and 1945, there was no doubt that civilians were no longer excluded from the fighting; they found themselves right in the middle of it—as actors, as observers, and as those who bore the suffering” (part 1, p. 2) of the war. The Nazi leadership knew this from the start, and only days after the Nazi invasion of Poland, Hermann Göring was exhorting a factory workforce to remember: “We are now all fighters at the front!”(part 1, p. 8). Jörg Echternkamp reminds us of this in his introduction to this massive two-part volume, the latest installment in the history of Germany in the Second World War that has occupied historians of the Military History Research Office (Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, or MGFA) for the last twenty-five years. Echternkamp is the editor, and he deserves enormous credit for pulling together a collection of twenty essays—some of which could easily stand on their own as monographs, all of which are grounded in staggering amounts of original research—that not only summarize what we know about the impact of the war on the homefront in Germany, but also add considerably to that knowledge. Previous volumes in the MGFA series (seven of which are available from Oxford University Press in English translation) have focused primarily on the military planning, the war at the front, and the organization of the war economy at home. In the more than 2,000 pages of this two-part volume, contributors turn their attention to the impact of the war on German society. The results are extremely impressive, and what Echternkamp has brought together will be the starting point for anyone who wants to understand the war at home in Germany.

Cosmopolitanism in the Face of Gridlock in Global Governance

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-258
Author(s):  
David Held
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Global Politics ◽  
World War ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

The chapter examines the impact of gridlock on multilateral politics, and the pathways beyond gridlock that states could promote in order to advance a more cosmopolitan form of global governance. The chapter traces the extent to which global politics has been shaped by a cosmopolitan agenda since the end of the Second World War. It then argues that we are at a political crossroads, with one road pointing to the rise of nationalism and authoritarianism while the other to a more cosmopolitan future. The chapter explores pathways of change that yield avenues of possible progress through and beyond gridlock, including avenues for states and people to pursue greater cosmopolitan responsibilities. The concluding section assesses the balance of risks to cosmopolitanism. While precedents and practices of cosmopolitan politics have been put in place, they remain deeply contested.

scholarly journals Evelyn Waugh’s War Novels in Francoist Spain

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-84
Author(s):  
Cristina Zimbroianu
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
War Novels ◽  
Conservative Beliefs ◽  
The One ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

Evelyn Waugh’s experiences as captain in the Second World War represented the raw material for several novels, such as Put out More Flags (1942), Men at Arms (1952) and Brideshead Revisited (1945). These novels depict, on the one hand, the experiences of once immature bright young people who are now confronting the war reality, and, on the other, they satirize the military bureaucracy and portray the nostalgia for the conservative age of Catholic English nobility, which disappeared during the war. It could be assumed that these three novels might have been well received in Franco’s Spain as the Catholic theme as well as Waugh’s right-wing conservative beliefs could have influenced the censors’ approval or disapproval. Thus, the present paper will analyse the reception in Spain of Put out More Flags, Men at Arms and Brideshead Revisited considering the reports enclosed in the censorship files guarded at AGA (General Archive of the Administration) in Alcalá de Henares, Madrid. These documents reveal that Waugh’s novels were not easily approved by the Spanish censors during the Francoist dictatorship.

The Imperial Army Project

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas E. Delaney
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Archival Research ◽  
Military Cooperation ◽  
High Point ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

How did British authorities manage to secure the commitment of large dominion and Indian armies that could plan, fight, shoot, communicate, and sustain themselves, in concert with the British Army and with each other, during the era of the two world wars? This is the primary line of inquiry for this study, which begs a couple of supporting questions. What did the British want from the dominion and Indian armies and how did they go about trying to get it? How successful were they in the end? Answering these questions requires a long-term perspective—one that begins with efforts to fix the armies of the British Empire in the aftermath of their desultory performance in South Africa (1899–1903) and follows through to the high point of imperial military cooperation during the Second World War. Based on multi-archival research conducted in six different countries on four continents, Douglas E. Delaney argues that the military compatibility of the British Empire armies was the product of a deliberate and enduring imperial army project, one that aimed at ‘Lego-piecing’ the armies of the empire, while, at the same time, accommodating the burgeoning autonomy of the dominions and even India. At its core, this book is really about how a military coalition worked.

Blockade and the Civilian Population

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phillip Drew
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
Gulf War ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Maritime Trade ◽  
World War ◽  
Civilian Population ◽  
Strategic Bombing ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

Drawing on several examples through history, this chapter illustrates the devastating potential that maritime blockades can have when they are employed against modern societies that are dependent on maritime trade, and particularly on the importation of foodstuffs and agricutltural materials for the survival of their civilian populations. Revealing statistics that show that the blockade of Germany during the First World War caused more civilian deaths than did the allied strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War, and that the sanctions regime against Iraq killed far more people than did the 1991 Gulf War, it demonstrates that civilian casualties are often the true unseen cost of conducting blockade operations.

Post-Heroic Warfare Revisited: Meaning and Legitimation of Military Losses

Sociology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 898-914 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristian Frisk
Keyword(s):  
Social Order ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Social ◽  
Military Engagement ◽  
Military Campaign ◽  
The Military ◽  
Second World

The article challenges the thesis that western societies have moved towards a post-heroic mood in which military casualties are interpreted as nothing but a waste of life. Using content analysis and qualitative textual analysis of obituaries produced by the Royal Danish Army in memory of soldiers killed during the Second World War (1940–1945) and the military campaign in Afghanistan (2002–2014), the article shows that a ‘good’ military death is no longer conceived of as a patriotic sacrifice, but is instead legitimised by an appeal to the unique moral worth, humanitarian goals and high professionalism of the fallen. The article concludes that fatalities in international military engagement have invoked a sense of post-patriotic heroism instead of a post-heroic crisis, and argues that the social order of modern society has underpinned, rather than undermined, ideals of military self-sacrifice and heroism, contrary to the predominant assumption of the literature on post-heroic warfare.

scholarly journals Second World War conflict archaeology in the forests of north-west Europe

Antiquity ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 88 (342) ◽  
pp. 1275-1290 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Passmore ◽  
Stephan Harrison ◽  
David Capps Tunwell
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Recent Survey ◽  
Support Structures ◽  
World War ◽  
Conflict Archaeology ◽  
North West ◽  
Military Support ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

Concrete fortifications have long served as battle-scarred memorials of the Second World War. The forests of north-west Europe, meanwhile, have concealed a preserved landscape of earthwork field fortifications, military support structures and bomb- and shell-craters that promise to enhance our understanding of the conflict landscapes of the 1944 Normandy Campaign and the subsequent battles in the Ardennes and Hürtgenwald forests. Recent survey has revealed that the archaeology surviving in wooded landscapes can significantly enhance our understanding of ground combat in areas covered by forest. In particular, this evidence sheds new light on the logistical support of field armies and the impact of Allied bombing on German installations.

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