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 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…

Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer (November 30, 1874, Blenheim Palace – January 24, 1965, London), British politician. Churchill’s political development in the years leading up to World War I was significantly shaped by the events of the Second Moroccan Crisis of 1911, in the wake of which he was named first lord of the Admiralty. Churchill held several ministerial posts after switching from the Conservatives to the Liberal Party in 1904: from 1905 to 1908 he served as under-secretary of state for …

Zabecki, David T. - Railroads and the Operational Level of War in the German 1918 Offensives Keywords: 1918 | Amiens | German | offensives | operational art | railroads ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Military organisation of combat | Western Front | Science | Technology | Medicine | Pre-war period | Experience of combat | Britain Abstract: This paper evaluates the German approach to the operational art by analyzing the Ludendorff Offensives of 1918, and specifically the influence of railroads on the outcome of the entire campaign. The purpose…

Hugenberg, Alfred (June 19, 1865, Hannover – March 12, 1951, Kükenbruch [now part of Extertal, Kreis Lippe]), a leading figure in German commerce and industry, and politician. After studying law and economics from 1894 to 1899 Hugenberg worked for the Prussian Settlement Commission in Posen, where he distinguished himself as a rigorous champion of the Germanization policy. In 1890 he was one of the founding members of the extreme right-wing Pan-German League ( Alldeutscher Verband), for whom he subsequently remained active, if frequently behind the scenes. In 1909 Hugenberg becam…

Jewish Census A census of Jews in the German field forces, rear area, and army of occupation, including those rejected as unfit for service and those whose service had been deferred, ordered by Prussian War Minister Wild von Hohenborn in October 1916, and implemented on November 1, 1916. Owing to missing military documents, the administrative prehistory of the Jewish Census is largely unknown. It occurred at a time when the military position for Germany was characterized by a high casualty rate, fading prospects of victory, and a dire supply …

Lamszus, Wilhelm (July 13, 1881, Altona [now part of Hamburg] – January 18, 1965, Hamburg), German primary school teacher and writer. In 1912 he published a novel entitled Das Menschenschlachthaus ( The Human Slaughter-House), originally intended for young people. It is still considered one of the few pre-1914 treatments of a future war. It describes in an unheroic and disillusioning manner the scale and brutality of the forthcoming conflict. Lamszus completely dismantled all the hero clichés accepted at that time, creating an …

Brest-Litovsk, Treaty of The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk is the peace treaty signed on March 3, 1918, by Germany, Austria-Hungary, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Soviet Russia. After the October Revolution, the fact that the Bolsheviks had included a call for an immediate end to the war in their October Manifesto introduced the prospect of concluding a separate peace with the Central Powers. Already on November 8, 1917, one day after the fall of the Provisional Government, the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets rejected Lenin’s Decree on Peace, his proposal for an immediate “peace witho…

Porter, Patrick - New Jerusalems: Sacrifice and Redemption in the War Experiences of English and German Military Chaplains Keywords: Religion | Culture | Legacy | Politics | Germany | Britain | Society | Home fronts ‛Warfare and Belligerence’ Pierre Purseigle, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2005 e-ISBN: 9789047407362 DOI: 10.1163/9789047407362.005 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Porter, Patrick

Dmowski, Roman (August 9, 1864, Kamionek [near Warsaw] – January 2, 1939, Drozdowo [near Łomża]), Polish politician and commentator. As leader of the right-leaning National Democratic Party ( Narodowa Demokracja – ND) and member of the Russian Duma, Dmowski advocated a future Poland as a centralist-democratic national state, occupying large parts of the German Reich, and with close ties to a liberal-democratic Russia. He combined his commitment to the creation of a Polish state with a decidedly anti-German position (“Piasti…

German East Africa Situated on the coast of the Indian Ocean, between Portuguese Mozambique to the south, British East Africa to the north, and the Belgian Congo to the west, German East Africa comprised the modern states of Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. Declared a territory of the German Reich in 1885, with 7.5 million inhabitants the country was the most populous German colony, and at 995,000 km2 also the largest. Some 5,300 Europeans lived in the colony in 1914. The British government decided to capture German East Africa as early as August 1914. As with t…

Richthofen, Manfred Baron von (May 2, 1892, Breslau – April 21, 1918, Vaux-sur-Somme near Amiens [killed in action]), German fighter pilot. Richthofen joined a Prussian Ulan regiment in 1911 after graduating from the cadet corps. He undertook patrol duties in 1914 and after the cavalry was in part transferred to the infantry in 1915, signed up to the Imperial Air Service. He was initially an observer, then a reconnaissance and bomber pilot. Between 1916 and April 1918, when he was shot down at Vaux-…

Freikorps (Free Corps) Generally, the term Freikorps (literally free corps) denotes military formations manned by volunteers. More specifically it refers to those units which were formed in Germany between 1918 and 1921 with the aim of conducting counter-revolutionary operations and to protect Germany’s eastern border against Poland and Bolshevik Russia ( Grenzschutz Ost). When the German Army marched home in November 1918 it literally fell apart as it reached the homeland, with units simply disbanding themselves and going home. At the same time, …

Tisza, Count István (April 22, 1861, Pest [today Budapest] – October 31, 1918, Budapest [assassinated]), Hungarian statesman (prime minister). Tisza had already become a special confidant of the emperor and king of Hungary Franz Joseph during his first term of office as prime minister of the Hungarian Kingdom (1903–1905). He was not only a convinced supporter of the alliance with Germany, but also opposed the currents within Hungary that wished to dissolve the political union with the Dual Monarchy…

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…

Argonne Forest Densely wooded plateau between the Champagne region and the Côtes Lorraines (Meuse Valley), extending some 12 km east to west, and about 50–60 km north to south. In World War I it was the theater of a tenacious small-scale war of attrition that was being fought on the edges of the larger decisive battles. During the German advance in late August and early September of 1914, neither the German Fifth (operating immediately to the west of Verdun) and Fourth Armies, nor the retreating F…

Netherlands On the eve of the World War, the Netherlands held the same neutral stand regarding international relations as it had for the preceding three-quarters of a century. The Netherlands thus stood apart from the international alliances. This decision rested as much upon the safeguarding of Netherlands’s economic and military-political interests, as it did upon considerations of civil rights and ethics. The deciding question, however, was whether the Great Powers would respect Netherlands’s …

Headquarters Command centers for the supreme military, sometimes also political, leadership set up in the field for the duration of the war. Composition, location, and function of such a headquarters depended on the constitutional position of the supreme military command of each belligerent and the demands of modern mass and coalition warfare. – By far the most comprehensive headquarters at the outbreak of the war was the German “Great Headquarters.” Aside from the German Emperor as the nominal c…

Alsace-Lorraine As a Reichsland, part of the German Reich from 1871. The desire on the part of France to exact revenge for defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/1871, and reverse the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by the newly founded German Reich under the terms of the Frankfurt Peace Treaty, has often been regarded, particularly by the Germans, as an important causal factor in respect of the origins of the First World War. In the light of recent research, however, this conception must now be seen as o…

Hitler, Adolf (April 20, 1889, Braunau am Inn, Austria – April 30, 1945, Berlin [suicide]), soldier, private first class, subsequently German politician (1933–1945 Reich chancellor). By Hitler’s own account, the First World War was for him “the most unforgettable and greatest period of my life on this earth” ( Mein Kampf, 1925). Even during the Second World War, he repeatedly reminded those around him of his time as a soldier from 1914 to 1918, “when nothing troubled me”; he had “passionately enjoyed being a soldier” ( Monologe im Führerhauptquartier, 1941). Living as an artist in Mu…