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.

‘A Wave on to Our Shores’: The Exile and Resettlement of Refugees from the Western Front, 1914–1918

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 427-444 ◽  
Author(s):  
PIERRE PURSEIGLE
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Collective Memory ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Western Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Social Mobilisation ◽  
First World

AbstractIn the wake of the German invasion of Belgium and France in August 1914, four million persons went into exile. While such a displacement of population testified to a dramatic change in the character of war in western Europe, historiography and collective memory alike have so far concurred in marginalising the experience of refugees during the First World War. This article examines their unprecedented encounter with host communities in France and Great Britain. It demonstrates that the refugees' plight reveals the strengths as well as the tensions inherent in the process of social mobilisation that was inseparable from the First World War.

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.

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.

Military casualties and exchange rates during the First World War: did the Eastern Front matter?

2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 1312-1334 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pablo Duarte ◽  
Marcel Freidinger ◽  
Andreas Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
Exchange Rates ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
First World

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

On the Terrible War of 5675

2012 ◽  
pp. 299-309
Author(s):  
George (Gedaliah) Silverstone
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
First World War ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Masses ◽  
First World

This chapter studies an early example of a sermon which focuses more on the toll taken by the First World War on the masses of Jewish civilians living on the contested territories of the Eastern Front rather than on the implications of the war for the general values of culture and civilization. Here the sermon of George (Gedaliah) Silverstone does not underline the patriotism of Jews towards all the countries where they lived, but rather emphasizes the underlying unity of the Jewish people, and the sometimes painful tension between that unity and such patriotism. The preacher introduces it by speaking of the reaction of his listeners to the story they have read ‘in the newspapers’, apparently within the past few days. In addition to narratives drawn from the contemporary newspapers, there are two other major components of the sermon's message, drawn from traditional Jewish literature. The source provides hope for a providential, redemptive dénouement to the bloodshed, in the traditional homiletical style.

The East’s Eastern Front: The Ottoman–Russian Clash in the Great War and Its Legacies

2019 ◽  
pp. 096834451982733
Author(s):  
Michael A. Reynolds
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Eastern Front ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The Great War ◽  
First World

This article provides an overview of the neglected Caucasian front of the First World War and explores its impact on the overall course of the war and its legacy for the Middle East and Eurasia. By unexpectedly prolonging hostilities and leading the Russian empire to overextend itself, the conflict with the Ottoman empire contributed critically to Russia’s revolutionary crisis and collapse and thereby altered decisively the fate of the Middle East and Eurasia. The article places the Ottoman–Russian conflict in the context of the relentless growth of Western European military and economic might from the eighteenth century onward.

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