The First World War and British military history

Historians have generally accepted the notion that Hitler's war against France was planned and conducted as a Blitzkrieg from the very beginning. Recent research, however, has shown the fallacy of this assumption by firmly establishing that Hitler and his generals expected the war in the West to become a re-enactment of the First World War. This review puts the new findings in military history in the context of other recent studies on Nazi plans to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ after the surprisingly fast victory over France. It links Nazi war and extermination planning with Hitler's underlying ideology and strategy and looks more closely at the still controversial Madagascar plan. One of the questions discussed is why there were no plans to ‘solve’ the ‘Jewish Question’ under the cover of the war against France, a war expected to last for years.

Download Full-text

‘A War Imagined’: Postcards and the Maintenance of Long-Distance Relationships during the Great War

War in History ◽

10.1177/0968344519831039 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 096834451983103

Author(s):

Alex Mayhew

Keyword(s):

Military History ◽

First World War ◽

World War ◽

Long Distance ◽

Archival Material ◽

The First World War ◽

The Great War ◽

First World ◽

Cultural Turn

This article explores the role of postcards in the maintenance of relationships between combatants and civilians during the First World War. By drawing on untapped archival material found during wider research into the morale of English infantrymen, it concentrates on the multiple uses of this medium in correspondence between the Western and Home Fronts. Following the ‘cultural turn’ in military history it has become increasingly apparent that the gulf between those fighting and those left at home was much narrower than previously assumed. This analysis charts the variety of ways in which postcards helped to bridge this divide.

Download Full-text

Mark Harrison, The Medical War: British Military Medicine in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. xv + 346, £65.00/$125.00, hardback, ISBN: 978-0-19-957582-4.

Medical History ◽

10.1017/s0025727300000417 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 56 (1) ◽

pp. 108-110

Author(s):

Michael Bresalier

Keyword(s):

Military Medicine ◽

First World War ◽

World War ◽

Oxford University ◽

British Military ◽

The First World War ◽

First World ◽

Oxford University Press

Download Full-text

DOCTRINE AND ORGANIZATION IN THE BRITISH ARMY, 1919–1932

The Historical Journal ◽

10.1017/s0018246x01001868 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 44 (2) ◽

pp. 497-515 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

DAVID FRENCH

Keyword(s):

Continuous Process ◽

First World War ◽

Great War ◽

World War ◽

General Staff ◽

British Military ◽

The First World War ◽

The Great War ◽

First World ◽

Common Understanding

It is widely assumed that after 1918 the British general staff ignored the experience it had gained from fighting a first-class European enemy and that it was not until the establishment of the Kirke committee in 1932 that it began to garner the lessons of the Great War and incorporate them into its doctrine. This article demonstrates that in fact British military doctrine underwent a continuous process of development in the 1920s. Far from turning its back on new military technologies, the general staff rejected the manpower-intensive doctrine that had sustained the army in 1914 in favour of one that placed modernity and machinery at the very core of its thinking. Between 1919 and 1931 the general staff did assimilate the lessons of the First World War into the army's written doctrine. But what it failed to do was to impose a common understanding of the meaning of that doctrine throughout the army.

Download Full-text