Authority, Identity, and the Social History of the Great War

by Coetzee, Frans; Coetzee, Marilyn Shevin

• ISBN13: 9781571810670
• ISBN10: 1571810676
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1995-09-01
• Publisher: Berghahn Books

Summary

The unprecedented scope and intensity of the First World War has prompted an enormous body of retrospective scholarship. However, efforts to provide a coherent synthesis about the war's impact and significance have remained circumscribed, tending to focus either on the operational outlines of military strategy and tactics or on the cultural legacy of the conflict as transmitted by the war's most articulate observers. This volume departs from traditional accounts on several scores: by exploring issues barely touched upon in previous works, by deviating from the widespread tendency to treat the experiences of front and homefront isolation, and by employing a thematic treatment that, by considering the construction of authority and identity between 1914 and 1918, illuminates the fundamental question of how individuals, whether in uniform or not, endured the war's intrusion into so many aspects of their public and private lives.

Table of Contents

Introduction
The Construction of Authority
A "Latecomer" In War: The Case of Italy	p. 3
The Political Police, War, and Society in Russia, 1914-1917	p. 29
All Quiet on the Home Front: Popular Entertainments, Censorship and Civilian Morale in Germany, 1914-1918	p. 57
Restoring Moral Order on the Home Front: Compulsory Savings Plans for Young Workers in Germany, 1916-1919	p. 81
Shaping Identities: Religion, Nationality and Gender
French Catholics: Rumeurs Infames and the Union Sacree, 1914-1918	p. 113
Nationalism in Wartime: Critiquing the Conventional Wisdom	p. 133
Love and Death: War and Gender in Britain, 1914-1918	p. 153
Italian Widows of the First World War	p. 175
For Fatherland and Jewish People: Jewish Women in Austria During World War I	p. 199
Representations: Images of the Soldier
Soldiers, Civilians and the Warfare of Attrition: Representations of Combat in France, 1914-1918	p. 223
Masculinity, Memory, and the French World War I Novel: Henri Barbusse and Roland Dorgeles	p. 251
Russian General Staff Training and the Approach of War	p. 275
Knights of the Sky: The Rise of Military Aviation	p. 305
Communities in Mourning	p. 325
Notes on Contributors	p. 357
Index	p. 360
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