In the English language World War I has largely been analysed and understood through the lens of the Western Front. This book addresses this imbalance by examining the war in Eastern and Central Europe. The historiography of the war in the West has increasingly focused on the experience of ordinary soldiers and civilians, the relationships between them and the impact of war at the time and subsequently. This book takes up these themes and, engaging with the approaches and conclusions of historians of the Western front, examines wartime experiences and the memory of war in the East. Analysing soldiers' letters and diaries to discover the nature and impact of displacement and refugee status on memory, this volume offers a basis for comparison between experiences in these two areas. It also provides material for intra-regional comparisons that are still missing from the current research. Was the war in the East wholly 'other'? Were soldiers in this region as alienated as those in the West? Did they see themselves as citizens and was there continuity between their pre-war or civilian and military identities? And if, in the Eastern context, these identities were fundamentally challenged, was it the experience of war itself or its consequences (in the shape of imprisonment and displacement, and changing borders) that mattered most? How did soldiers and citizens in this region experience and react to the traumas and upheavals of war and with what consequences for the post-war era? In seeking to answer these questions and others, this volume significantly adds to our understanding of World War I as experienced in Central and Eastern Europe.
Author(s): Judith Devlin, John Paul Newman, Maria Falina
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 352
City: London
Cover
Title
Copyright
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
Introduction
Part I: New Frontiers of War: State Treatment of Non-Combatants
1. The Failed Quest for Total Surveillance: The Internal Security Service in Austria-Hungary During World War I
2. Fellow Citizens, Unwanted Foreigners: The Refugee Crisis in Wartime Moravia
3. Population Displacement in the Habsburg Empire During World War I
4. Italian – Austrian Prisoners of War and Italian Political and Military Involvement in the Eastern Front During World War I
5. Violence, Destruction and Resistance: Serbia’s and Montenegro’s Experiences of the Great War
6. ‘We’re Half-way to Asia Here’: The Conduct of the German Army Units on the Eastern Front in 1914 and 1939
Part II: Soldiers and Veterans: Experience, Understanding and Memory
7. Choosing Their Own Nation: National and Political Identities of the Italian POWs in Russia, 1914 – 21
8. Red Peril or Yellow Peril? British Attitudes Towards the Russian Other: Northern Russia, 1918 – 19
9. ‘I am Well and I Hope the Same of You. I Will Soon Change Location’: World War I Field Postcards to a Disappearing Homeland
10. The Emperor’s Broken Bust: Representations of the Habsburg ‘Shatterzone’ in World War I
11. A Mutilated Society: Disabled Ex-Servicemen of the Tsarist Russian Army
12. Keeping Up Appearances: The Aims of the Anglo-Russian Hospital in Petrograd, 1915 – 18
13. ‘Who Died for the Homeland?’ Celebrating Victory in East-Central Europe After World War I: An Overview of the Unknown Soldiers
14. Memory of World War I and Veterans’ Organisations in Poland, 1918 – 26
Conclusion Wartime Experiences and Ensuing Transformations
Notes
Selected Further Reading
Index
