German Revolution With the German Revolution of 1918/1919, the German Empire became a German Republic. The deep roots of this upheaval lay in the war-weariness of the exhausted and malnourished civilian population and the overburdened soldiery. The German Revolution was more a collapse of the traditional order than a militant mass rebellion. In this, it resembled the Russian February Revolution of 1917 rather than the revolutions of 1848. The Russian October Revolution, with Lenin’s proclamation o…

Naraoka, Sōchi - A New Look at Japan’s Twenty-One Demands: Reconsidering Katō Takaaki’s Motives in 1915 ISFWWS-Keywords: Asia | Politics | Britain | The French and British Empires | International Relations during the War | The United States of America The Decade of the Great War Tosh Minohara , Tze-ki Hon and Evan Dawley , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004274273 DOI: 10.1163/9789004274273_011 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Naraoka, Sōchi

Minohara, Tosh; Hon, Tze-ki; Dawley, Evan - Japan and the Wider World in the Decade of the Great War: Introduction ISFWWS-Keywords: Asia | Naval Warfare | Politics | Economy | The French and British Empires | International Relations during the War | Pre-war period | The United States of America | Legacy | Russia | Gender | Society | Scandinavia | Science, Technology, and Medicine | Australia | New Zealand | The Ottoman Empire and the Middle East | Poland The Decade of the Great War Tosh Minohara , Tze-ki Hon and Evan Dawley , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 978900…

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…

Parliamentarization From 1871 the German Reich was a constitutional monarchy. The Kaiser appointed and dismissed the chancellor, who was the only member of the imperial government responsible to the Reichstag (the lower house of parliament), and without whose agreement the Kaiser could not take political action. The chancellor could not rule for long against a majority of the Reichstag, since the Reichstag had the right to adopt the budget. Even before 1914, constitutional reality had changed in …

Zimmerwald Movement An alliance of antiwar Socialists from the belligerent states, named after the town where it first met (September 5–8, 1915, at Zimmerwald near Bern). The aim of the movement, which came to symbolize socialist pacifism, was to revive international cooperation, which had been disrupted by the First World War. The first conference was initiated by the Swiss social democrat Robert Grimm, and those attending included Lenin and Zinoviev for the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party, and Adolph Hoffmann …

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…

Haase, Hugo (September 29, 1863, Allenstein – November 7, 1919, Berlin [murdered]), German politician. One of the two chairmen of the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; Social Democratic Party of Germany) from 1911 onward, Haase opposed the Burgfrieden (Fortress Truce) policy that had been adopted by the majority of his party. He nonetheless bowed to party discipline. Speaking before the Reichstag on August 4, 1914, he read out the declaration in which the SPD approved the war credits – against his own conviction. Until…

Keene, Jennifer D. - Protest and Disability: A New Look at African American Soldiers during the First World War Keywords: The United States of America | Soldiers and Combat | Society | Legacy | Western Front | Home fronts ‛Warfare and Belligerence’ Pierre Purseigle, …

Epidemics None of the classic war plagues struck with their …

Social Democracy A political movement in the German Imperial Reich seeking social and political emancipation of the workers. In the First World War, it suffered its greatest crisis, culminating in 1917 in a permanent split. On the eve of the war, with about a million members, the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was the largest party in Germany, and with 110 members the strongest group in Parliament, but it split on the question of the “fortress truce” ( Burgfrieden) policy. Although shortly before the outbreak of war the party leadership called its membership to demo…

Film, The First World War in ISFWWS-Keywords: Australia | Britain | Canada | Culture | France | Germany | Italy | Russia | The United States of America First published in: Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War, Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich, Irina Renz, Markus Pöhlmann and James S. Corum, Leiden (2012) Documentaries and feature films, 1914–1943 (a selection) 1914–1918 England Expects (G.L. Tucker, Great Britain, 1914) The German Spy Peril (W. Barker, Gre…

Kuhlman, Erika - The Rhineland Horror Campaign and the Aftermath of War …

Bavarian Soviet Republic A soviet republic is a state in which all executive, legislate, and jurisdictional power is in the hands of elected spokesmen for workers and soldiers, excluding parliament. For a short time in early 1919 there existed in Germany Soviet republics in Cuxhaven, Mannheim, Braunschweig, Bremen, and Munich. Of these, the ones which lasted longest were those in Bremen (25 days) and Munich (24 days). In the first months after the revolution, Bremen was a stronghold of the Spartakus movement. Together with the SPD, Spartakus had a clear majority in the workers’ councils of large local enterprises (shipyards). On 14 November 1918 the local Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council (Arbeiter- und Soldatenrat – AuSR) overthrew the Senate and City Parliament as sovereign bodies, and created a mixed commission of members of the AuSR and the Senate to deal with current business. Later there were increasing tensions between the SPD and the radical left, in the course of which the SPD left the Council. After the conflict between the Communists and the Senate, and large demonstrations, on 10 January 1919 a Soviet Republic was proclaimed by the KPD and USPD. Its highest organ was now the AuSR, consisting of about 200 persons, which elected the nine members of the Council of the People’s Representatives, and as a controlling body the 15-memb…

Fraternizing Spontaneous and unauthorized ending of fighting and leaving one’s own position with a view to making direct contact with enemy soldiers. Precise details of the extent of fraternizing are, of course, not available. The available sources, however, show clearly that the center of these events is to be found in those sectors of the Western Front in which German and British soldiers fa…

Meehan, John D. - From Alliance to Conference: The British Empire, Japan and Pacific Multilateralism, 1911–1921 ISFWWS-Keywords: Asia | The French and British Empires | Naval Warfare | International Relations during the War | Australia | New Zealand | Canada | The United States of America The Decade of the Great War Tosh Minohara , Tze-ki Hon and Evan Dawley , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004274273 DOI: 10.1163/9789004274273_004 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Meehan, John D.

Grotelueschen, Mark E. - The Junior Partner: Anglo-American Military Cooperation in World War I Keywords: AEF operations | American …

China The largest state by population and area in eastern Asia; a republic from 1911 to 1949. Although China was scarcely involved militarily in the First World War, the war nevertheless represented an important turning point for the country. The consequences of the war fundamentally changed both China’s status in international politics and its internal political and social circumstances.…

Ginsburger, Nicolas - An American Geographer between Science and Diplomacy: The Mission of Douglas W. Johnson in Europe, May–November 1918 Keywords: The United States of America | Intellectuals and the War | Culture | Peacemaking and Continued Conflict | Britain | Politics | …

Neiberg, Michael S. - Cromwell on the Bed Stand: Allied Civil-Military Relations in World War I Keywords: Politics | Britain | France | …