Sharp, Ingrid - The Disappearing Surplus: The Spinster in the Post-War Debate in Weimar Germany, 1918–1920 Keywords: Hausfrau | post-war debate | surplus women | Weimar Germany ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Gender | Britain | Politics | Women and War | Society | Pre-war period | Culture | Literature | Masculinity | Economy Abstract: The concept of "surplus women" or Frauenuberschuss was absolutely central to the pre-war women's movement in Germany. This chapter examines the ways in which the single woman was represented in public discourse and in…

Nicholas Nikolaevich, Grand Duke of Russia (November 18, 1856, Saint Petersburg – January 5, 1929, Antibes), Grand duke of Russia and supreme commander in chief. Nicholas was the son of Grand Duke Nicholas the Elder. In 1873 he completed the Nikolaevsky Military Engineering Academy, and then the General Staff Academy in 1876. He took part in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 under his father, the commander in chief. After 1901, he was a general of cavalry. In 1905–1908 Nicholas presided over the newl…

Film (Post-1918) Compared with the largely propagandistic style of films before 1918, postwar films reflected the immense destruction and cost of the war by making a different choice of material and narrative method. With the exception of a boom in explicitly anti-German films in the United States, which lasted a considerable time beyond the Armistice (the most significant of these is probably The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Rex Ingram, 1921), film transferred its main attention to experiences of loss, sorrow, and death. J’accuse (Abel Gance, France, 1919), with its pacifi…

Yudenich, Nikolai Nikolaevich ( July 30, 1862, Moscow – October 5, 1933, Saint-Laurent-du-Var near Nice, France), Russian General. Having entered the Imperial Russian Army in 1879, Yudenich was educated at the Alexandrovsky Military School and at the General Staff Academy. He went on to serve in a variety of staff assignments until 1902. Having participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, he was promoted to general in 1905. In 1913 he became chief of staff in the Ca…

Armed Forces (Austria-Hungary) The organization of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces during the First World War originated in the Compromise of 1867. Under this agreement the Habsburg Monarchy sported the outward appearance of a dual monarchy, yet internally there was minimal uniformity, and the merest balance of interests. The major weakness of the Compromise between the Kingdom of Hungary and the remainder of the Double Monarchy was the fact that the Slavs within Austria-Hungary, who had mainly s…

Tsingtao (Qingdao) Administrative center of Jiaozhou, a German colony established on the northeastern coast of China in 1897. It was militarily important as the base for their East-Asia Cruiser Squadron. Unlike the other German colonies, Tsingtao was controlled by the Reich Naval Office rather than the Reich Colonial Office. Tsingtao later lost its strategic significance when the Imperial Navy transitioned from war cruisers to a battleship-fleet based doctrine. Still, the 500 km2 protectorate of Jiaozhou (Kiautschou) remained important as the economic and political…

Compagnon, Olivier - 1914–18: The Death Throes of Civilization. The Elites of Latin-America Face the Great War Keywords: South America | Society | Culture | France | Literature | Legacy ‛Uncovered Fields’ Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004 e-ISBN: 9789047402596 DOI: 10.1163/9789047402596.017 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Compagnon, Olivier

Forced Labor It is entirely possible to see the development of state-organized forced labor in Germany between 1914 and 1918 as a kind of “trial run” for the Second World War (Ulrich Herbert). It is necessary first of all to distinguish between legitimate military forms of forced labor (in accordance with the laws of war as they stood at the time, for prisoners of war) and forced labor for civilians. The latter affected many civilians forced to work in Germany, and transported to Germany in breach of international law for that purpose. The use of the labor of captured ordinary soldiers…

Frank, Ludwig (May 23, 1874, Nonnenweier [today part of Schwanau in the district of Ortenau] – September 3, 1914 [killed in action], Nossoncourt, Département Vosges), German attorney, social democratic politician, and member of the Reichstag. Frank was first city councilor in Mannheim, then a member of the Landtag of Baden. In 1904, he founded the sozialistische Arbeiterjugendbewegung (Socialist Young Workers’ Movement), whose most prominent representative he remained for the rest of his life. Pol…

Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz (November 11, 1852, Penzing near Vienna – August 25, 1925, Bad Mergentheim), Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal. Conrad, who was made a baron in 1910 and a count in 1918, not only had a typical career in the General Staff which predestined him for a higher office in the future, his participation in the 1878–1879 campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 1882 in Dalmatia also provided him with direct battlefield experience. Service with various bureaus of the General Staff enha…

Australia Australia entered the First World War as a federal dominion of the British Empire (Commonwealth of Australia), having achieved that status in 1901. Although the Australian colonies had sent troops to the Boer War between 1899 and 1902, there was no military tradition in the sense of a high-echelon military leadership and administration and a defense policy, and precious little national experience of war. Yet, by the end of the First World War, almost seven Australian cavalry and infantr…

Smuts, Jan Christiaan (May 24, 1870, Bovenplaats [Cape Province] – September 11, 1950, Irene [near Pretoria]), South African general and politician. Born the son of a Boer farmer, Smuts became one of the most important politicians of South Africa. Between 1899 and 1902 he served as a Boer general in the Boer War against Great Britain. In 1907 he entered the cabinet of Louis Botha in the Transvaal and also worked under him in the government of the South African Union, founded in 1910. On the outbrea…

ANZAC The Allied operations on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli in 1915 marked the first time ANZAC forces fought in the European theater of war. The completion of this mission in January of 1916 also brought to an end the deployment of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) along this front. Troops from Australia and New Zealand were now sent to the more important theaters of the First World War. Initially the corps was transferred to Egypt for rest, training, and expansion. Divided into the I and II ANZAC Corps, the men were ordered in May of 1916 to …

Alpine Warfare When the Italian declaration of war was delivered on May 23, 1915, it plunged Austria-Hungary into a desperate situation. While this move by Italy did not come unexpected, almost all the forces of the Danube Monarchy were tied up on the Eastern Front and in the Balkans, where the Central Powers had in that year taken the initiative. Only weak, improvised forces were available to secure the 600-km long border with Italy, among them almost 30,000 militia reserves (Standschützen). By t…

Famine The long duration of the war, reciprocal blockades of food imports, and the exploitation of regions occupied by the Central Powers all caused occasional dramatic occurrences of famine in the World War. In the German Reich and Austria especially, the food situation during the second half of the war was appalling. In Germany, the lack of planning to maintain the food supply in case of war was partly the blame for the quantitative and qualitative decline in the diet of a majority of the German civilian population. The weekly flour ration fell…

Lviv/Lemberg Capital of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Land of Galicia. In late summer 1914 the territory around Lemberg (Lviv) in eastern Galicia became the focus of battles between Russian and Austro-Hungarian troops. While the Russian plan was for an offensive that would achieve the double encirclement of the Austro-Hungarian forces in eastern Galicia, the chief of the Austro-Hungarian General Staff, Conrad von Hötzendorf, envisaged as his first major offensive operation an advance to the north be…

Armed Forces (Russia) One year before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/1905, the standing Russian army comprised approximately 41,000 officers, 10,000 military service personnel (including army dentists), and approximately 1 million non-commissioned officers and other ranks. There was provision for about 2 million reservists. Some 3 million non-commissioned officers and other ranks could thus be mobilized in the event of war. The guard regiments had a particular role and status in the Russian Imperial Army until the end of the First World War.…

Shrapnel Artillery projectile for anti-personnel purposes, introduced in the 19th century. At the outbreak of the First World War shrapnel was the principal type of ammunition employed by the field artillery of all the combatant nations. Designed to scatter its contents in mid-air, a shrapnel shell can be imagined as a kind of “flying shotgun.” A time fuse caused the shell to burst at a certain distance from its intended target. The explosive charge was most often built into the bottom of the pro…

Carpathians A mountain range between Hungary and Galicia, the site of several battles from January to April 1915. The Austro-Hungarian general staff was quite aware of the Carpathians’ strategic importance. The Austro-Hungarian troops in Galicia, which were enclosed on all sides, were left with little possibility of evading attack due to the mountain range, while the enemy was at all cost to be prevented from overcoming it. Large parts of the Carpathians also placed mountain-trained or specially …

Hague Land Warfare Convention By Hague Land Warfare Convention one means the text of the Hague article concerning The Laws and Customs of War on Land. This article was the fourth of thirteen articles signed on October 18, 1907, along with the final declarations, at the conclusion of the Second International Peace Conference at The Hague. Forty-four nations had taken part in the conference, convened at the suggestion of Tsar Nicholas II. Article IV was ratified by most warring states of the First World War. In December 1911 the text of Article IV on The Laws and Customs of War on Land was includ…