Brill’s Digital Library of World War I
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Subject: History
Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is an online resource that contains over 700 encyclopedia entries plus 250 peer-reviewed articles of transnational and global historical perspectives on significant topics of World War I. This collection includes Brill’s Encyclopedia of the First World War, an unrivalled reference work that showcases the knowledge of experts from 15 countries and offers 26 additional essays on the major belligerents, wartime society and culture, diplomatic and military events, and the historiography of the Great War.
The 250 articles address not only the key issues from political, historical and cultural perspectives, but also engages with aspects of the war which have remained underexplored such as the neutrals, the role of women before, during and after the war, and memory. The chapters have been drawn from a select number of Brill publications that have been published in the last 15 years. Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is a unique digital library that will allow researchers to discover new perspectives and connections with the enhanced navigational tools provided.
Subscriptions: see Brill.
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Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is an online resource that contains over 700 encyclopedia entries plus 250 peer-reviewed articles of transnational and global historical perspectives on significant topics of World War I. This collection includes Brill’s Encyclopedia of the First World War, an unrivalled reference work that showcases the knowledge of experts from 15 countries and offers 26 additional essays on the major belligerents, wartime society and culture, diplomatic and military events, and the historiography of the Great War.
The 250 articles address not only the key issues from political, historical and cultural perspectives, but also engages with aspects of the war which have remained underexplored such as the neutrals, the role of women before, during and after the war, and memory. The chapters have been drawn from a select number of Brill publications that have been published in the last 15 years. Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is a unique digital library that will allow researchers to discover new perspectives and connections with the enhanced navigational tools provided.
Subscriptions: see Brill.
War Aims
(1,667 words)
War Aims Prior to the outbreak of the war, none of the European Powers had pursued concrete territorial annexation aims that might have significantly influenced their decision to take up arms. Soon after the beginning of the war, however, the issue of war aims began to be debated in all countries, at first mostly behind closed doors. The British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey was able to prevent a public discussion of British war aims. Great Britain was quite resolute in its demand that the ind…
War Artists
(555 words)
War Artists Artists officially commissioned to preserve wartime events in drawings, paintings etc. The work of war artists normally forms part of the tradition of historic and predominantly apologetic battle art; that is, their main function is to make heroes and documents. However, there are also, in the 19th and increasingly in the 20th centuries, examples expressing a critical interest, though almost all of these were by artists working on their own account. The work of war artists has been lit…
War Atrocities
(955 words)
War Atrocities War atrocities may either be in direct violation of international law or contravene the generally accepted conventions of war, or else be conform to international law but nevertheless condemnable. The basic premise lies in the particular atrocity of the type of warfare or in the choice of victims. When defenseless people deliberately become the target of acts of war (civilians, shipwrecked persons, captured or wounded soldiers), the afflicted side perceives such acts as war atrociti…
War between Allies: Polish and Ukrainian Intellectuals 1914–1923
(8,422 words)
Górny, Maciej - War between Allies: Polish and Ukrainian Intellectuals 1914–1923
ISFWWS-Keywords: Russian Front | Politics | Russia | Poland | Intellectuals and the War | Literature | Legacy
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_020 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Górny, Maciej
War Bonds
(647 words)
War Bonds A form of government borrowing for the financing of war expenditures. War bonds were issued by the belligerent states during the World War, thus allowing for the mobilization of significant parts of the social wealth. Both their attractive conditions – interest rates frequently better than in peacetime – as well as a massive propaganda drive, ensured that the first war bonds were able to raise a considerable amount of capital. The bondholders typically reflected a broad spectrum of the p…
War Cemeteries
(1,285 words)
War Cemeteries The design of war graves and war cemeteries was first regulated during the First World War. Yet paradoxically at the same time as the enormous mass deaths, the status of individual war deaths became enhanced. Each of the fallen was now, as far as possible, to be given an individual grave, that, similarly to civilian tombs, would receive the body and perpetuate the name. In the 19th century it was normal for only officers to be interred in individual graves, while other ranks were bu…
War Chronicles
(301 words)
War Chronicles The war chronicles were the expression of a changed public awareness of journalism. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871 had already led to a serious boom of popular military literature. Military topics gained a wider appeal in the German Reich due the growing agitation of the colonial unions, navy leagues, and defense associations since the turn of the century. The first war chronicles were printed at the beginning of the World War, usually by book publishers (Beck, Franck, Insel) …
War Collections
(416 words)
War Collections From the first weeks of the war, so-called “war collections” were set up in many of the countries at war. Most people were convinced that they were witnessing a revolutionary event. They accordingly attempted to collect as many things as possible from this “great time,” in order to be able to inform future generations about the Great War. Collectors included museums, libraries, archives, and also private individuals. In 1917 in Germany alone more than 200 such collections are known…
War Comes to the Fields: Sacrifice, Localism and Ploughing Up the English Countryside in 1917
(7,308 words)
Grieves, Keith - War Comes to the Fields: Sacrifice, Localism and Ploughing Up the English Countryside in 1917
Keywords: English countryside | food production | localism | ploughing
ISFWWS-Keywords: Britain | Home fronts | Economy | Politics | The French and British Empires | Women and War | Children and War
Abstract: In 1917 the British home front faced a test of endurance and its most obvious expression throughout the year was the food question. The strategic importance of food production in 1917 was accompanied by the clamour o…
War Correspondents
(545 words)
War Correspondents During the World War selected domestic and foreign reporters and cameramen, as well as politicians, writers, and other public commentators were granted official permission, or even invited, to travel throughout the various war theaters in order to report on their impressions. These reports were published in newspaper articles and in weekly newsreels, and in speeches and books. All journeys to the front had to be approved by the military authorities. In the case of Germany, it was necessary to obtain a pass issued by Department IIIb (P…
War Credits
(773 words)
War Credits War credits were one of the crucial means of financing the war. They were raised in various forms, by various methods, and in various amounts, by all belligerent nations at home and sometimes abroad. War credits were necessary because some elements of normal state receipts fell drastically upon the outbreak of war, while the financial burden abruptly multiplied. War credits were raised at home in the form of short- or long-term government bonds, or by increasing the amount of paper cur…
War Damage
(2,196 words)
War Damage Damages and costs incurred during the war through the destruction of military equipment and weaponry, but also as a consequence of property damage in the regions directly affected by the war. War damage thus refers to the material costs of the war in the narrow sense. The calculation of war costs in the wider sense as well as of material losses in the narrow sense is so fraught with difficulties that all figures can only be seen as rough approximations. This already became evident during a first general assessment carried out for t…
War Economy
(7,950 words)
War Economy “War economy,” wrote the German national economist Franz Eulenburg in 1916, is “the national economy in a state of war.” This means that it does not follow its own principles, so there is no war economy. It represents rather “a quite specific modification of the general economy” that was subject to “important disturbances, direct and indirect,” because of the war. Such disturbances of the peacetime economy in production and consumption and in markets and prices,1 arose from the completely different task imposed by a war economy. The former was concerned with…
War Enacted: Popular Theater and Collective Identities in Berlin, 1914–1918
(92 words)
Baumeister, Martin - War Enacted: Popular Theater and Collective Identities in Berlin, 1914–1918
Keywords: Germany | Home fronts | Culture | Society | Visual Arts | Politics ‛Endangered Cities’ Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering,
Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004
e-ISBN: 9789047409812
DOI: 10.1163/9789047409812.008 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Baumeister, Martin
War Enthusiasm
(799 words)
War Enthusiasm In August 1914, the Germans went to war in a wave of general enthusiasm – or so it was claimed until recently in schoolbooks and in a number of representative works written by German historians. This stereotyped conception has, in the meantime, been increasingly challenged and corrected in a number of crucial points. Accordingly, it can now stated with certainty that an “August Experience” in the sense of an enthusiastic, nationwide approval of the war that would have mobilized all social classes did not take place. …
War Exhibitions
(775 words)
War Exhibitions In a number of warring countries, public exhibitions of war objects were already organized during the war for the purpose of informing the civilian population about the military aspects of the war, but also with the intention of influencing public opinion in a propagandistic manner. The first war exhibitions placed captured enemy cannons on display in order to demonstrate the superiority of the respective country’s own army. In Berlin, captured artillery pieces lined the
Siegesallee (Avenue of Victory); others stood in the inner courtyard of the
Zeughaus (a former a…
War Experience
(654 words)
War Experience Experience as such had been discovered around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century. Authors such as Wilhelm Dilthey and Georg Simmel popularized the concept, which expressed a longing for wholeness and a need for totality. Within the process of experiencing, distinctions such as those between reflection and sensory perception or thought and action were believed to disappear. Simmel gave this notion a more emphatic note by comparing experience with adventure. Experience thus stoo…
Warfare and Belligerence: Approaches to the First World War
(14,764 words)
Purseigle, Pierre - Warfare and Belligerence: Approaches to the First World War
Keywords: General | Literature | Reference and Bibliography | Legacy | Society | Economy | Home fronts ‛Warfare and Belligerence’ Pierre Purseigle,
Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2005
e-ISBN: 9789047407362
DOI: 10.1163/9789047407362.002 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Purseigle, Pierre
War Food Office
(392 words)
War Food Office The central authority under the Imperial Chancellor in the German Reich for managing supplies of food and animal feed in order to keep the population fed. The office was created, by an announcement dated May 22, 1916, to correct the previously divided and confused administration in the light of the dramatically worsening supply problem. To this end the War Food Office, as an organ of the Reich (against the opposition of the federal states and the Prussian Agriculture Minister), was …
War Guilt
(797 words)
War Guilt The question of responsibility for the First World War was actually the subject of controversial discussion even before the outbreak of war, during the July Crisis of 1914, and was even answered propagandistically, to justify positions taken. Proclamations at the outset of the war, such as the “balcony speech” of Kaiser Wilhelm II on August 4 (“It is not the desire for conquest that drives us . . .”) or Poincaré’s “
Union sacrée” address on the same date (“In the war now breaking out, France has right on her side.”) always emphasize the defensive character of…
War Interpretations
(2,359 words)
War Interpretations During the first days of the World War people already began to suspect that this was not an ordinary conflict that might be seen as a continuation of 19th-century European wars. This perception of the war called for an interpretation, which the writers, intellectuals, philosophers, and scholars of all warring nations were only too willing to provide. The prominent public persons (though seldom women) of all major powers and of their former colonies …
War Letters
(596 words)
War Letters War letters from soldiers were already published in large numbers during the war, but also in the postwar period. Just after the outbreak of hostilities, war letters were almost immediately published in all warring countries, at first in newspapers and later in book form. In the beginning, they were mostly intended to satisfy the population’s longing for eyewitness accounts, but also to support the public image of the war-enthusiastic nation and of the successful war in a propagandisti…
War Literature
(9,170 words)
War Literature The First World War is one of those historic events that with the passage of time does not pass into memory and fade but rather changes and acquires new meanings. The war acquired its meanings not only on the battlefields, but also, and especially, in literature, art, films, philosophical reflections, and public rites. Collective memory transformed the war not only into a fundamental crisis of civilization, but also into the founding myth of an epoch. In this conflict, literature, art, and the new media were fundamentally seized upon and changed in a compl…
War Neuroses
(1,326 words)
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…
War Neurosis and Viennese Psychiatry in World War One
(93 words)
Hofer, Hans-Georg - War Neurosis and Viennese Psychiatry in World War One
Keywords: Science, Technology, and Medicine | Intellectuals and the War | Home fronts | Austria-Hungary | Society ‛Uncovered Fields’ Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle,
Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004
e-ISBN: 9789047402596
DOI: 10.1163/9789047402596.015 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Hofer, Hans-Georg
War Office
(452 words)
War Office The War Office was established by a cabinet order of November 1, 1916, to administer the Hindenburg Program initiated by the Operations Branch of the General Staff. The War Office was to centralize war economy measures and serve as the enforcement authority for the Auxiliary Service Bill. Officially placed beneath the Prussian War Ministry, it was a peculiar mix of military war-economy staff and civilian government boards. Lieutenant General Wilhelm Groener was named the War Office’s fi…
War on Stage. Home Front Entertainment in European Metropolises 1914–1918
(6,871 words)
Krivanec, Eva - War on Stage. Home Front Entertainment in European Metropolises 1914–1918
ISFWWS-Keywords: Culture | Home fronts | French society during the war | Germany | Society | Portugal | Austria-Hungary | Science, Technology, and Medicine
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_018 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Krivanec, Eva
War Poetry
(1,081 words)
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…
War Press Office
(630 words)
War Press Office (German
Kriegspresseamt), a government department that was responsible for the control and censorship of the press in Germany. After the creation of the Central Censorship Office in February 1915, the German Supreme Army Command and the War Ministry intensified their efforts to exert a “positive” influence on the press. The visible expression of this policy was the establishment of the War Press Office on October 14, 1915, an agency that was directly subordinated to the Supreme Army…
‘War Profiteers’ and ‘War Profiters’: Representing Economic Gain in France during the First World War
(13,308 words)
Bouloc, François - ‘War Profiteers’ and ‘War Profiters’: Representing Economic Gain in France during the First World War
Keywords: 'War | Economic Gain | France | Representing | war profiteer | war profiter | World War
ISFWWS-Keywords: Society | French society during the war | Home fronts | Economy | Politics | Legacy
Abstract: This chapter analyzes questions, how wartime practices were understood, both internally and externally and how moral judgement operated in wartime societies to include or exclude various behaviors or attitud…
War Psychology
(806 words)
War Psychology Contemporary publications used this term to label the various outpourings of journalists, authors, theologians, intellectuals – and among them, psychologists – regarding the war. What they held in common was their interest in people’s mental processes on both the front and the home front. Military psychology, itself sometimes labeled as war psychology, is a separate field. For its part during the war, military psychology was mainly concerned with aptitude tests. War psychology, on t…
War Service Act (Kriegsleistungsgesetz)
(840 words)
War Service Act (
Kriegsleistungsgesetz) The German law of June 13, 1873, regarding war services subsequently amended by numerous implementing provisions that regulated “obligations of federal territories to all services” with respect to the German Reich. This law dealt with work service, billeting, and services and supplies in kind to the military by communes, individuals, and commercial companies, including the railways, which were obliged to convey men and materials at defined prices. These services were to be called upon only …
Wartime Coalitions
(2,117 words)
Wartime Coalitions Before the World War, the European system of states had become strongly polarized. On the one side stood the
Central Powers, namely the Dual Alliance of German Reich and Austria-Hungary that had been formed in 1879 as well as the (independently concluded) Triple Alliance of German Reich, Austria-Hungary, and Italy; however, the latter country declared itself neutral at the beginning of the war. On the other side stood the
Entente Powers, among which France and Russia had been bound by a military alliance since 1893/1894, while France and Great Bri…
Wartime Cookbooks
(280 words)
Wartime Cookbooks Recipe books from periods of war-induced food shortage are now largely no more than amusing flea-market finds. Wartime cookbooks are, in fact, tokens of a significant problem of the First World War. Important foodstuffs were rationed in most countries during the war. Food was “eked out,” for instance by adding a proportion of potato flour to bread dough. Bread produced with a high proportion of potato was disliked by consumers. Suggestions as to how food could be supplemented, an…
Wartime Enterprises
(818 words)
Wartime Enterprises The concept of wartime enterprises refers to mostly quasi-governmental societies or companies that operated in the warring countries and assumed regulatory functions in the context of the war economy. In Germany, wartime enterprises in the narrow sense refer particularly to those organizations created to control the procurement and distribution of raw materials; established as non-profit organizations and vested with governmental powers, they intervened in the economic cycle an…
“Wartime Hysterics”?: Alcohol, Women and the Politics of Wartime Social Purity in England
(10,502 words)
Moss, Stella - “Wartime Hysterics”?: Alcohol, Women and the Politics of Wartime Social Purity in England
Keywords: British Women's Temperance Association (BWTA) | Central Control Board (CCB) | female inebriation | female liquor consumption | wartime social purity | women's social positions | women's wartime drinking
ISFWWS-Keywords: Britain | Women and War | Home fronts | Society | Politics
Abstract: In exploring the manifold constructions of female liquor consumption, this chapter contributes to the historiographical debates over the impact o…
War Toys
(531 words)
War Toys The leisure activities of children changed during the First World War in conformity with national propaganda interests. Such pastimes had to adjust to the laws of the market as they applied to the youth culture in wartime. Children’s expectations (or the expectations of family circles) were to be met by the commercial production of toys, games, and children’s books. Long before the war of 1914, politics had found access to the nursery through the medium of toys in Europe. There was already a tradition of patriotic and military toys, and their pro…
War Weddings
(320 words)
War Weddings Weddings celebrated at short notice or with no official notice at all, owing to the circumstances of war. Although the figures are not fully documented, it appears that war weddings were particularly common in Germany. There, unlike Britain and France, women living alone or not with their serving husband received no family support payments. The wave of war weddings in August 1914 was evidently an urban phenomenon. In the countryside, especially in the farming and agricultural communit…
War Welfare Office
(930 words)
War Welfare Office Wide sections of the population that had never before been counted among the recipients of poor relief turned for help from the government care services. Many working women were dismissed from their jobs at the beginning of the war. These were joined by the families of soldiers and the surviving dependents of the fallen. The existing statutes in Germany, France, and Great Britain failed to fully address the real needs of those made poor by the war circumstances. The laws passed by the combatant nations early in the war still did not address the problem adequately. Wartime w…
War Widows
(505 words)
War Widows Most war widows were young women with children. According to estimates based on postwar pension budgets in Germany in 1924 there were 372,000 women receiving widows’ pensions, after approximately 200,000 had ceased to be dependent on state support because of remarraige. In France the figureof dependent widows was more than 700,000, in Great Britain in 1925 there were 248,000 widows. Relief schemes for war widows were inadequate in all countries during the war. In Germany, the level of t…
We and Homeland: German Occupation, Lithuanian Discourse, and War Experience in Ober Ost
(8,297 words)
Griffante, Andrea - We and Homeland: German Occupation, Lithuanian Discourse, and War Experience in Ober Ost
ISFWWS-Keywords: Russian Front | Violence against civilians | Germany | Home fronts | Russia | Religion
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_012 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Griffante, Andrea
‘Weary Waiting is Hard Indeed’: The Grand Fleet after Jutland
(9,716 words)
Hewitt, Nick - ‘Weary Waiting is Hard Indeed’: The Grand Fleet after Jutland
Keywords: Grand Fleet | Jutland | Western Front
ISFWWS-Keywords: Naval Warfare | Britain | Germany | Home fronts | Science, Technology, and Medicine
Abstract: The Grand Fleet is defined as the capital ships based at Scapa Flow and Rosyth and supporting elements based at harbours along the British East Coast. This chapter look at changes in strategic command and direction which were made during the period, plans to break the strategic d…
Weber, Max
(849 words)
Weber, Max (April 21, 1864, Erfurt – June 14, 1920, Munich), German political economist and sociologist. Important milestones in Weber’s academic formation included his law dissertation in 1889 and habilitation in 1892, and then posts as
professor extraordinarius of commercial law in Berlin in 1893, and
professor ordinarius of political economics at Freiburg im Breisgau (1894–97) and at Heidelberg (1897–1903). The years after 1898 saw frequent interruptions due to ill health. He ceased teaching activities in 1900, and resumed them only in 19…
Weddigen, Otto
(337 words)
Weddigen, Otto (September 15, 1882, Herford – March 18, 1915, in the North Sea), German U-boat commander. If not a particularly successful U-boat captain, Weddigen was at least the best known. A naval officer since 1901, Weddigen returned from duty with the German East Asia Squadron in fall 1908 for assignment to the U-boat service. In 1911 he became commander of one of the first U-boats,
U-9. On September 22, 1914, under Weddigen’s command,
U-9 sank three aging armored cruisers, the
Aboukir, the
Cressy, and the
Hogue, in an operation against British troop transports in the shipp…
“We Stand on the Threshold of a New Age”: Alice Masaryková, the Czechoslovak Red Cross, and the Building of a New Europe
(8,699 words)
Berglund, Bruce R. - “We Stand on the Threshold of a New Age”: Alice Masaryková, the Czechoslovak Red Cross, and the Building of a New Europe
Keywords: Alice Garrigue Masaryková | Czechoslovakia; Europe | Red Cross
ISFWWS-Keywords: Legacy | Society | Gender | Austria-Hungary | The United States of America | Religion | Politics
Abstract: Alice Garrigue Masaryková has long been left in the historical shadow of her father, who served seventeen years as Czechoslovakia's first president, and her brother Jan, the diplomat whose mysterious…
Western Front
(3,485 words)
Western Front The most important battlefield of the First World War in Western and Central Europe was the Western Front. The largest and bloodiest battles took place in the north of France and in Belgium, where most German, French, British, Belgian, American, and Portuguese soldiers lost their lives. The front was
Western from the German perspective, an indication of the German army’s crucial importance for the progress of the war. It began with the German invasion of Belgium and France in August 1914. The frontier battles fulfilled the expectat…
Weygand, Maxime
(527 words)
Weygand, Maxime ( January 21, 1867, Brussels – January 28, 1965, Paris), French general. Weygand’s military career began when he joined the 4th Regiment of Dragoons at Chambéry in 1888. After 1900 he was stationed in Lunéville, where he proved to be one of the most capable officers. In 1902 Weygand became a training officer at the Military School of Saumur. By 1912 he had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, and as an officer of very promising talent he joined the inner circle of commander in …