Barry, Gearóid - “The Crusade of Youth”: Pacifism and the Militarization of Youth Culture in Marc Sangnier’s Peace Congresses, 1923–1932 Keywords: 1923 | Crusade of Peace | International Democratic Peace Congresses | Marc Sangnier | militarization | pacifist movement | Volontaires de la Paix | youth culture ISFWWS-Keywords: Legacy | Children and War | France | Politics | Germany | Religion | Society | Literature Abstract: Focusing on the Freiburg Congress of 1923, the Bierville Congress of 1926, the formation of a new corps of boy scouts called the…

Lersch, Heinrich (September 12, 1889, Mönchengladbach – June 18, 1936, Remagen), German writer. The son of a boilermaker, after attending Volksschule (elementary school) Lersch completed an apprenticeship in his father’s trade, before traveling as a journeyman around Germany and becoming a boilermaker himself. He volunteered to fight in 1914, and took part in the Battle of Champagne in 1914/1915. Having been buried alive and wounded, in 1916 he was discharged as medically unfit. After the war, he resumed his trade as a boilermaker but later lived from his writing. Lersch began his w…

Protestantism In the years before the outbreak of war, Anglo-Saxon Protestantism made repeated efforts to establish closer international relations with other churches. The World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship through the Churches, financially supported by the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, with Friedrich Siegmund Schultze as its German contact, had called its founding assembly in Constance for the 3rd and 4th August of 1914. However, as the war began all the churches qui…

Constantine I, King of Greece (August 2, 1868, Athens – February 11, 1923, Palermo). The first-born son of George I and of Russian Grand-Duchess Olga, Constantine married Princess Sophia of Prussia in 1889 and thereby became a brother-in-law of Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom he personally admired along with his authoritarian rule. As the commander in chief of the Greek army, he had subsequently been partly responsible for a serious defeat during the Greco-Turkish War of 1896/1897. Suspected of nepotism, Con…

Gerlach, Hellmut von (February 2, 1866, Mönchmotzelnitz [near Wohlau, Silesia] – August 1, 1935, Paris), German journalist, jurist, and politician. As a member of the German Reichstag from 1903 to 1907 (in informal affiliation with the Freisinnige Vereinigung [Free-minded Union]), and since the turn of the century a collaborator and later editor in chief of the Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Gerlach went from being a follower of Adolf Stöcker to an advocate of a social-liberal and democratically oriented power state – a transformation that took place …

Kuhl, Hermann von (November 2, 1856, Koblenz – November 4, 1958, Frankfurt am Main), German general. Kuhl received a doctoral degree from the University of Tübingen for his thesis on the Carmen Saliare in 1878. That same year he joined the Prussian Infantry Regiment No. 53, rising to captain in 1893, and to major in 1899. Having taught at the War Academy from 1898, Kuhl became chief of Department III at the General Staff in 1906. Promoted to major general in 1912, he was raised to the hereditary nobility one year later. In 191…

Eichenberg, Julia - “Suspicious Pacifists”: The Dilemma of Polish Veterans Fighting War during the 1920s and 1930s Keywords: 1920s | CIAMAC | dilemma | FIDAC | pacifism | Polish Veterans ISFWWS-Keywords: Legacy | Poland | Politics | Germany Abstract: Polish veterans faced the dilemma of how to criticize war, when war was regarded as the origin and guarantee of the state's newly achieved independence. According to their specific political circumstances, the Polish veterans were furthermore confronted by the dilemma to …

Veterans’ Associations Associations for former combatants, established to articulate their social, economic, political, and cultural interests, and to organize social-action initiatives on their behalf. The traditional association for German veterans was the Kyffhäuserbund der Deutschen Landeskriegerverbände (Kyffhäuser League of the German Nation’s Warriors Associations), founded in 1900 as a national confederation of veterans’ organizations. With 3 million members belonging to 27 different national associations at its highest p…

Versailles, Treaty of The Versailles Treaty was negotiated and signed by the victors and the defeated Germany in the Parisian suburb of Versailles in May/June 1919. On May 7 at the Trianon Palace, the victorious powers, represented by Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, and Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George, and Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, the prime ministers of Great Britain, France, and Italy, together with representatives of Germany’s other opponents in the war, presented a draft…

Finland This small country (1910: 2.94 million inhabitants) located at the northeastern periphery of Europe entered the First World War as an autonomous grand duchy within the Russian Empire, and emerged from it an independent republic and parliamentary democracy. The process was not foreseeable, and by no means straightforward. Apart from the final months of the civil war, the sea change in the country’s status was primarily the result of external events – October Revolution, Peace of Brest-Lito…

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 t…

Franz Joseph I of Austria (August 18, 1830, Schönbrunn [now part of Vienna] – November 21, 1916, Vienna), Emperor of Austria after 1848 and King of Hungary after 1867. Franz Joseph mounted the throne in 1848, during a war that threatened the very existence of the monarchy. In 1916 he died during just such a war, which surpassed every earlier conception of a modern war in both its extent, and its form. Regarding the possibility of waging war as a political tool, Franz Joseph was heavily influenced by …

Music Theater There were only a very few voices calling for the cessation of public music-making after the outbreak of the First World War. So music continued to be performed for the duration of the conflict. However, musical institutions and music makers did not remain untouched by the effects of the war, which included the drafting of artists, financial restrictions, the changed character of concert programs and repertoires, and state censorship. In all belligerent states musicians were drafted or went to the front as volunteers. But conscription also affected te…

Sexuality The crisis-related effects of the World War also had consequences for the sexual life of human beings. The separation of (married and non-married) couples became a mass phenomenon of hitherto unknown extent. Extramarital sexuality and prostitution reached new dimensions. Even though the frequency with which soldiers sought extramarital contacts during the war cannot be assessed with precision, a number of indications suggest that soldiers no longer felt bound to middle-class sexual morals as a result of their direct experiencing of war and death. The debate over issue…

Intelligence Services Also called the secret service, these government organizations were employed to collect and interpret intelligence information of military, political, economic, and scientific importance about other states. Intelligence services were also assigned sabotage missions and diversion operations, as well as the safeguarding of their own state secrets against enemy espionage. During the age of nationalism between 1860 and 1914, most states established intelligence services. The Worl…

Briand, Aristide (March 28, 1862, Nantes – March 7, 1932, Paris), French politician (prime minister). For a period of more than 30 years Briand remained one of the most influential politicians in France; serving as a deputy in the National Assembly without interruption from 1902 to his death. He was a member of 25 governments, in various posts, and held the office of prime minister several times (e.g. between October of 1915 and March of 1917 in two separate cabinets of the “union sacrée”). Briand…

Louvain (Flemish: Leuven) Belgian university town west of Brussels, celebrated for its university and magnificent Gothic buildings. Here between August 25 and 28, 1914, German troops killed 248 civilians and destroyed a sixth of the buildings. The university library, with its valuable collection of manuscripts from the Middle Ages, was burned to the ground. One of the best known single events of the war, Louvain became known worldwide as a symbol of German war atrocities. The German military leadership explained the destruction of Louvain as a justified punitive measur…

September Program ( Septemberprogramm) A four-page document issued by the Reich Chancellery in its final version on September 9, 1914, with the innocuous title of Vorläufige Richtlinien über unsere Politik bei Friedensschluß (Provisional Political Guidelines for when Peace is Concluded). The September Program bears the signature of Reich Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg. It counts as the first, comprehensive war-objectives program of the German Reich leadership in the World War. It resulted from weeks of consultations by the Reich…

Turnip Winter The German expression Kohlrübenwinter or Steckrübenwinter (both mean “Turnip Winter”) refers to one of the worst food crises of the war in Germany. During the winter of 1916/1917 several developments came together, among others things a particularly poor harvest caused by bad weather. The entire price structure was configured in such a way that it was more profitable for the producers to use potatoes as fodder or to sell them to distilleries than to sell them to the consumers. The same wa…

Blobaum, Robert; Blobaum, Donata - A Different Kind of Home Front: War, Gender and Propaganda in Warsaw, 1914–1918 ISFWWS-Keywords: Poland | Women and War | Economy | Society | Germany | Russia | Politics | Home fronts World War I and Propaganda Troy R.E. Paddock , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004264571 DOI: 10.1163/9789004264571_013 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Blobaum, Robert and Blobaum, Donata