Todd, Lisa M. - The Hun and the Home: Gender, Sexuality and Propaganda in First World War Europe ISFWWS-Keywords: Gender | Home fronts | Violence against civilians | Germany | Visual Arts | Belgium | Britain | Prisoners of War World War I and Propaganda Troy R.E. Paddock , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004264571 DOI: 10.1163/9789004264571_008 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Todd, Lisa M.

Schlieffen Plan Right up to the outbreak of the war in August 1914, the memorandum submitted by Count Alfred von Schlieffen in the winter of 1905/1906 outlined the basic strategic conception with which the German Reich entered the First World War – albeit in a version that had been modified several times by Helmuth von Moltke (the Younger). Although the significance of the Schlieffen Plan has been radically challenged in recent historical research (Zuber, 2002), the plan’s offensive strategy has r…

Iconography The contents of the pictorial representation of wars only underwent minimal changes over the centuries. Individual wars could only be distinguished by way of figurative details: uniforms, weapons, and the characteristic features of well-known military leaders or landscapes made it possible to date the depicted event. The representation of the war itself, however, remained identical over a long period of time. Stated simply, two pictorial traditions can be distinguished: the painting o…

Cavell, Edith Louisa (December 4, 1865, Swardeston [Norfolk] – October 12, 1915, Brussels [executed]), British nurse. Cavell directed the nurses’ school ( École Belge d’Infirmières Diplomées) at Berkendael on the edge of Brussels from 1907 to 1915. In the autumn of 1914 she met Herman Capiau, a Belgian engineer engaged in aiding the escape of Allied soldiers caught behind the German lines after the fall of Mons. Capiau asked her to take in two British soldiers who had disguised themselves as Belgian workers. These two w…

Nicolai, Georg Friedrich (February 6, 1874, Berlin – October 8, 1964, Santiago de Chile; Georg Lewinstein until 1897), German physician. Nicolai studied medicine, specializing in electrocardiology. Before the war, he was already a respected physician in his private practice, and as the assistant medical director of Charité Hospital. As a war volunteer, in 1914 he became the medical superintendent of the military infirmary at Tempelhof. Nonetheless, from the beginning he spoke out very sharply against the war. He and other intellectuals signed Aufruf an die Europäer (Appeal to th…

Friedrich, Ernst (February 25, 1894, Breslau [modern Wrocław] – May 2, 1967, Le Perreux sur Marne), German pacifist. In 1924 Friedrich, a member of the SPD, published the still well-known volume of photographs titled Krieg dem Kriege! ( War against War!). With his multilingual captions he addressed an international audience. In 1925 he established the first International Antiwar Museum in Berlin. His life-long struggle against militarism and war was based on the conviction that an education for peace must start on the playground and, …

Greenhalgh, Elizabeth - Liaisons not so Dangerous: First World War Liaison Officers and Marshal Ferdinand Foch Keywords: DuCane | First World War | General Ferdinand Foch | liaison Officers ISFWWS-Keywords: French Army and its combattants | Military organisation of combat | France | Britain | Soldiers and Combat | International Relations during the War | Politics | Belgium Abstract: This paper examines the work of Foch's liaison officers in order to show how their reporting illuminates his actions in carrying out his various wartime command r…

Occupation (East) In 1915, the German Reich and Austria-Hungary conquered enormous areas of Eastern Europe, and subjected them to an occupation regime. Among the areas in question were Russian Poland and Lithuania, and parts of the Baltic provinces (now Estonia and Latvia), Belarus (White Russia), the Ukraine, Russia, and Serbia. These conquests were joined by Romania in 1916. As there was no detailed prewar planning for such an event, the occupation was initially characterized by improvisation and ad hoc policies with various different plans being proposed for the future…

Škoda 30.5-cm Siege Howitzer 30.5-cm M 11 mortar of the Austro-Hungarian army, a weapon specifically designed to destroy the most modern fortress complexes. At the beginning of the war, the Austro-Hungarian army possessed 24 howitzers of this type, designed and manufactured by the Škoda company. The gun could be dismantled into three parts, and was transported by a motorized tractor, which gave this “marvelous gun” (in the words of the Austrian general-staff manual) a degree of mobility not achieved…

Liemann, Bernhard - The Transformation of Local Public Spheres: German, Belgian and Dutch Border Towns during the First World War Compared ISFWWS-Keywords: Home fronts | Germany | Belgium | Netherlands | Violence against civilians Other Fronts, Other Wars? Joachim Bürgschwentner, Matthias Egger and Gunda Barth-Scalmani , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004279513 DOI: 10.1163/9789004279513_017 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Liemann, Bernhard

War Poetry Prophecies of a coming war had been a theme in German poetry since the beginning of the century. Expressionist poets conjured up the war in apocalyptic images that alternated between the fear of its violence and a yearning for its purifying and regenerative power. Feelings of restlessness and dissatisfaction over a long and “foul” peace gave rise to fantasies of war in the sense of a longed-for renewal, often expressed through theological formulations such as J…

Bissing, Baron Moritz Ferdinand von ( January 30, 1844, Bellmannsdorf, Silesia – April 18, 1917, Trois Fontaines, Belgium), German general. The son of a Prussian chamberlain and estate holder from a Saxon noble family Bissing chose a military career early, serving as an officer in the wars of 1866 and 1870–1871. In 1887 he became adjutant to Crown Prince Wilhelm, and after the latter’s accession to the Imperial throne in 1888, was named the emperor’s aide-de-camp. It was this appointment which laid t…

Mercier, Désiré Joseph (November 21, 1851, Eigenbrakel [Braine-l’Alleud near Brussels] – January 23, 1926, Brussels), Belgian cardinal. Ordained as a priest in 1874, Mercier was a highly successful teacher of philosophy and theology at the Catholic University of Louvain from 1882. In 1906 he became archbishop of the largest Belgian diocese of Mechelen, and was made a cardinal in 1907. With the outbreak of war in 1914, after the occupation of the country and the flight of King Albert I and the Belgi…

Mobilization The conversion of a nation’s military forces to a state of war, callled specifically “military mobilization,” and the adaptation of its government and industry to the demands of the war, known as “military mobilization.” Military mobilization for the World War had been planned in detail during peacetime. The preplanned procedures were intended to outfit military units with personnel, uniforms and equipment so as to bring them swiftly up to war strength. When the war began, frontier p…

Benoît, Majerus - Controlling Urban Society during World War I: Cooperation between Belgian Authorities and the Forces of Military Occupation Keywords: Belgium | Germany | Western Front | Home fronts | Society | Economy ‛Endangered Cities’ Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004 e-ISBN: 9789047409812 DOI: 10.1163/9789047409812.005 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Majerus, Benoît

Kramer, Alan - The First World War and German Memory Keywords: First World War | German memory | lightning warfare | Weimar Republic ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Legacy | Intellectuals and the War | Literature | Culture | Politics | Belgium Abstract: This chapter outlines the German memory of the First World War. It discusses collective memory, political culture and historical scholarship in the period 1918 to 1939, the Second World War, and since 1945. The memory of the war was increasingly a battleground in the final …

Norway Constitutional monarchy under Regent Haakon VII (r. 1905–1957). Norway’s attitude to the World War is only understandable in view of the fact that Norway had only achieved independence from Sweden in 1905, and that Great Britain was Norway’s most important guarantor nation. These security policy considerations, the mainstay of Norway’s foreign policy, were strengthened by a corresponding trade policy orientation. The war having begun, Norway followed Sweden’s lead on August 8, 1914, by iss…

Fortresses Sites provided with permanent, artificial reinforcement, so as to protect them from capture by the methods of field warfare. For this reason, the battle for fortresses was always given a particular designation as “fortress warfare,” to distinguish it from “field warfare,” or war as waged by mobile field forces. The technical design of fortresses closely paralleled developments in artillery, which made tremendous advances during the 19th century (introduction of guns made from drawn steel, long-range howitzers, armor-piercing shells).…

War Neuroses An increasingly accepted designation of the First World War for psychopathologically induced disorders that appeared among soldiers as a consequence of combat experiences. The specialized literature also spoke of traumatic neurosis, purpose neurosis (German Zweckneurose), fright neurosis (German Schreckneurose), shell-shock and nervous shock, war hysteria, or simply of nervous disorders. Due to the prevalent symptoms, the patients were colloquially known in Germany as “war-tremblers” (German Kriegszitterer) or “shakers” (German Schüttler). Careful esti…

Deportations Forcible expulsions were practised for various reasons, and by all sides, during the First World War. Initially, they were a means of securing zones of conflict and occupation. During the German invasion in the West alone, at least 10,000 French citizens were deported to Germany and interned in barracks that stood vacant. The number of Belgians deported in 1914 is unknown, but may have amounted to several thousands. These first deportations, which included women and children, were in…