Conscription A state’s compulsory enlistment of its citizens for military service. Conscription in the modern sense arose during the French Revolution. The new state, founded on the will of the people, demanded military service from its citizens. This enabled the state to expand its armed forces enormously, and to intensify its military activities accordingly. European monarchies too had to resort to this means of raising an army, if they wished to assert themselves militarily against France. Once Napoleon…

Albion (Celtic: white-land) Earliest known name given to the island of Great Britain by Greek geographers of the 5th century BC, transmitted by the Roman poet Avianus. In Roman times the term was also associated with the white cliffs of Dover (Lat. albus = white). During the Middle Ages, “Albion” came to be used as a synonym for the Kingdom of England, and later the British Empire, most often in a negative connotation as “perfidious Albion.” This derogatory slogan has its origins in France, where it can be traced as far back as the 14th…

Mobilization The conversion of a nation’s military forces to a state of war, callled specifically “military mobilization,” and the adaptation of its government and industry to the demands of the war, known as “military mobilization.” Military mobilization for the World War had been planned in detail during peacetime. The preplanned procedures were intended to outfit military units with personnel, uniforms and equipment so as to bring them swiftly up to war strength. When the war began, frontier p…

Carol I, King of Romania (April 20, 1839, Sigmaringen – October 10, 1914, Peleş Castle near Sinaia), born Karl Eitel Friedrich Zephyrin of Hohenzollern, Prince of Romania (1866–1881), from 1881 King of Romania. After Alexandru Cuza, the first ruler of the Romanian state created from the united principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, was deposed in April 1866, the Romanian Parliament elected Carol, a member of the House of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, as the new head of state. Despite the initial skepticism of Austria in particul…

Klinkert, W. - Fall K. German Offensive Plans against the Netherlands 1916–1918 Keywords: army leadership | Dutch neutrality | Netherlands | Operationsentwurf Fall K ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Netherlands | International Relations during the War | Naval Warfare | Britain Abstract: This chapter is divided into the following parts: 1914, when the fortified positions take shape, 1915, when the tension rose, 1916, when the Operationsentwurf Fall K took form, 1917, when attack on the Netherlands was planned and 1918, which …

Verdun A French fortress that was continually expanded since the Franco-Prussian War of 1870/1871. With its 20 forts and 40 intermediate redoubts, Verdun was without any doubt the strongest defense work in France. The principal forts in the vicinity of Verdun included Douaumont, Vaux, Souville, and Tavannes. Verdun was considered to be practically impregnable. During the German advance of August 1914, the German Fifth Army (under Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia) operated in the sector before Verd…

Meteling, Wencke - German and French Regiments on the Western Front, 1914–1918 Keywords: First World War | French armies | German army | Western Front ISFWWS-Keywords: Western Front | French Army and its combattants | Germany | Military organisation of combat | Experience of combat | Published memoirs and biographies | Science, Technology, and Medicine | Society | Legacy Abstract: This chapter talks about how the fundamental changes in the German and French armies developed at regimental level during the First World War. It explores a central …

Liebau, Heike - Kaiser kī jay (Long Live the Kaiser): Perceptions of World War I and the Socio-Religious Movement Among the Oraons in Chota Nagpur 1914–1916 Keywords: India | Religion | Home fronts | Politics | The French and British Empires | Germany | Literature The World in World Wars Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber , Katharina Lange , Dyala Hamzah and Ravi Ahuja , (2010) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2010 e-ISBN: 9789004188471 DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004185456.i-618.59 © 2010 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Liebau, Heike

Hindenburg Program Economic and armaments program of the Supreme Army Command. Two days after taking over military leadership in Germany, on August 31, 1916, the Operations Branch of the Supreme Army Command (Hindenburg/Ludendorff ) presented the Prussian War Ministry with demands for the wholesale impressment of all economic resources for the war effort and a considerable expansion of armaments production. It was soon common parlance to speak of the “Hindenburg Program.” The armaments program was…

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…

January Strikes Between January 28 and February 2, 1918, there arose in Berlin and other industrial and economic centers (Kiel, Hamburg, and the Rhine-Westphalia industrial area) mass protests and strike actions, in which between 200,000 and 500,000 workers took part. In contrast with the 1917 strikes, which may be understood primarily as social protest, the January Strikes had to a great extent a direct political motive. In light of the Soviet government’s offer of peace, and the brutally extreme claims for annexation of the German S…

Benoît, Majerus - Controlling Urban Society during World War I: Cooperation between Belgian Authorities and the Forces of Military Occupation Keywords: Belgium | Germany | Western Front | Home fronts | Society | Economy ‛Endangered Cities’ Marcus Funck and Roger Chickering, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004 e-ISBN: 9789047409812 DOI: 10.1163/9789047409812.005 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Majerus, Benoît

Kramer, Alan - The First World War and German Memory Keywords: First World War | German memory | lightning warfare | Weimar Republic ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Legacy | Intellectuals and the War | Literature | Culture | Politics | Belgium Abstract: This chapter outlines the German memory of the First World War. It discusses collective memory, political culture and historical scholarship in the period 1918 to 1939, the Second World War, and since 1945. The memory of the war was increasingly a battleground in the final …

Brockdorff-Rantzau, Count Ulrich von (May 29, 1869, Schleswig – September, 8, 1928, Berlin), German diplomat. The first foreign minister of the Weimar Republic was descended from the ancient nobility of Holstein. After obtaining his doctorate in law Brockdorff-Rantzau chose to pursue a diplomatic career which took him from Brussels via Saint Petersburg to Vienna, where in 1901 he became embassy secretary, and the influential German ambassador Count Carl von Wedel was his mentor. It was also thanks t…

Ottoman Empire The Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of the Central Powers in November 1914. The real decision to take this step was not made by the cabinet, but by an inner circle of Young Turk politicians on October 25. Two days later, on the orders of minister of war Enver Pasha, a Turkish naval force under the command of the German Admiral Souchon attacked the Russian Black Sea Fleet in its bases. The Turks later sought to justify this unprovoked attack by claiming that th…

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…

Norway Constitutional monarchy under Regent Haakon VII (r. 1905–1957). Norway’s attitude to the World War is only understandable in view of the fact that Norway had only achieved independence from Sweden in 1905, and that Great Britain was Norway’s most important guarantor nation. These security policy considerations, the mainstay of Norway’s foreign policy, were strengthened by a corresponding trade policy orientation. The war having begun, Norway followed Sweden’s lead on August 8, 1914, by iss…

Balloons The early 19th century saw the first balloons employed for military purposes. The use of free balloons in the Franco-Prussian War attracted much attention. The balloons helped the beleaguered capital maintain communications with the surrounding countryside. After 1871 most European Powers created military airship detachments in particular to operate tethered balloons, as they offered a controllable observation platform at altitude. Interest in balloons declined with the emergence of diri…

Marne River in France. Two battles of far-reaching significance in the First World War occurred on the Marne. In September 1914, after a long period when the Allies were retreating, the French Army and the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) resumed the offensive and forced the German Army to retreat, bringing about the failure of the original German operational plan. France had not been defeated in six weeks, and a long war became a possibility. This was the First Battle of the Marne. In July 1918…

Nicolai, Walter (August 1, 1873, Braunschweig [Brunswick] – May 4, 1947, Moscow), German officer and leader of the Military Intelligence Service of the German Supreme Army Command. Nicolai joined the 2nd Hessian Infantry Regiment, No. 82 in 1893; in 1907, he was promoted to captain. As a major in 1912, he was entrusted with the directorship of Department IIIb, the Military Intelligence Bureau of the General Staff. In early August 1914, he was named chief of the section. The work of Department IIIb…

Schulenburg, Friedrich von der (November 21, 1865, Bobitz – May 20, 1939, St. Blasien), German general. After completing his secondary education Schulenburg took a law degree at Heidelberg and then began a military career. In 1888 he became an officer in the Gardes du Corps Regiment in Potsdam, and in 1988 was transferred to the General Staff. There followed an assignment as German military attaché in London (1902–1906). In 1913 he was promoted and became commander of the Gardes du Corps Regiment. H…

Naumann, Friedrich (March 25, 1860, Störmthal [Leipzig] – August 24, 1919, Travemünde), German politician and publicist. After completing his theological studies, Naumann had many experiences at the Rauh Haus, a Protestant aid foundation for children and youth that influenced him regarding the social problems of his heavily industrialized era. He became a spokesman for the young Christian socialists at the Evangelical Social Congress of 1890, speaking out for a renewal of the institution of German Protestantism. Under the …

Entente Also referred to as the Triple Entente, this was one of the great alliances that had formed in Europe at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Although these alliances are ascribed a certain responsibility for the outbreak of the First World War, they were far less stable and less systematically structured than was later claimed. The system of alliances created by Reich Chancellor Bismarck after the war of 1870/1871 had as its goal the isolation of France in Europe, and to that end the maintenance of good relations with…

Zimmermann Telegram On January 16, 1917, after the German government’s decision to resume unrestricted submarine warfare (from February 1, 1917), Arthur Zimmermann, secretary of state at the German foreign ministry, sent a coded telegram to the German ambassador in Washington, Johann Heinrich Graf von Bernstorff, to be forwarded to the German ambassador in Mexico, Heinrich von Eckardt. The telegram instructed Eckardt to propose to the Mexican government an alliance against the United States. In re…

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…

Rationing The systematic registration and distribution of goods in short supply, in order to meet priority needs. The aim of rationing is to achieve distribution which is as fair as possible, and adequate to the war economy. All belligerent nations, and even the neutral countries, realized that the destruction of established structures of the international division of labor, together with enemy blockades and the enormous needs of the defense economy, created shortages of raw materials and foodstu…

Remarque, Erich Maria ( June 22, 1898, Osnabrück – September 25, 1970, Locarno; born Erich Paul Remark), German writer. Remarque was born into a working-class family, and trained in Osnabrück as an elementary-school teacher; conscripted into the army in 1916, he underwent initial military training at Osnabrück and Celle. He served as a sapper on the Arras and Ypres fronts from June 1917. On July 31 at Houthulst in Flanders he was seriously wounded and spent the rest of the war in a military hospita…

Takahara, Shusuke - The Wilson Administration and the Mandate Question in the Pacific: Struggle among the Powers over the Disposition of Former German Colonies ISFWWS-Keywords: Asia | The United States of America | Peacemaking and Continued Conflict | Politics | Germany | International Relations during the War | Naval Warfare | Britain 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_009 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Takahara, Shu…

Disability In 1934, the Medical Report of the German Army estimated the number of German soldiers who had died of wounds, accident, suicide, or disease between August 2, 1914, and July 31, 1918, at 1,202,042. This number, which rose considerably in the period between the cessation of military casualty reports in July 1918 and the end of the war, must be viewed alongside the 702,778 dismissed from the armed forces in the same period as being unfit for service (503,713 with medical support, 199,065 without…

Driant, Emile (September 11, 1855, Neufchâtel-sur-Aisne – February 22, 1916, Verdun), French author and officer. As the brother-in-law of General Boulanger, and a friend of both Paul Déroulède and Maurice Barrès, Driant stood at the very center of all the battles of French nationalism, although without becoming particularly actively engaged. He did not begin his political career until after leaving the army by his own desire in 1906. At the same time, under the pseudonym Danrit, he continued work …

Stinnes, Hugo (February 12, 1870, Mülheim an der Ruhr – April 10, 1924, Berlin), German industrial magnate. Stinnes was of the most influential industrialists of the Wilhelminian Empire and the Weimar Republic. The heir to a Ruhr family enterprise engaged in coal mining, trading, and shipping, the entrepreneur founded the Rhine Westphalia Electric Power Corporation in Essen in 1898, serving as chairman of the board after 1902, as well as the Deutsch-Luxemburgische Bergwerks- und Hütten-AG (German-Luxembourg Mining Inc.) in 1901. Stinnes advocated vociferously for the extens…

Hand Grenade Hand-thrown missile filled with explosives and designed to be detonated on impact (percussion) or by a timed fuse. The latter became the standard type on account of its greater reliability. Hand grenades was one of the infantry soldier’s most important close-quarters combat weapons in World War One, but until the turn of the century they were viewed as archaic instruments of earlier wars and attracted attention chiefly for being favored by anarchists. Beginning with the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, the use of …

Moeyes, P. - Neutral Tones. The Netherlands and Switzerland and Their Interpretations of Neutrality 1914–1918 Keywords: First World War | Netherlands | Scandinavian countries | Swiss federal republic | Swiss neutrality | Vienna Congress ISFWWS-Keywords: Netherlands | Switzerland | International Relations during the War | Home fronts | Neutral States | Politics | Germany Abstract: Switzerland's neutrality was guaranteed by the leading nations at the Vienna Congress in 1815, Belgium was proclaimed a neutral nation after its separation from …

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…

Deportations Forcible expulsions were practised for various reasons, and by all sides, during the First World War. Initially, they were a means of securing zones of conflict and occupation. During the German invasion in the West alone, at least 10,000 French citizens were deported to Germany and interned in barracks that stood vacant. The number of Belgians deported in 1914 is unknown, but may have amounted to several thousands. These first deportations, which included women and children, were in…

Japan Japan rose to become a Great Power in East Asia during the two centuries preceding 1914. Although the Japanese Empire had become the object of Western imperialism during the late 19th century, they had resisted all attempts at colonization. After victories in both the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japan itself stepped into the imperialist arena in East Asia as the new colonial power. As Japan expanded its empire upon the Asian continent before 1914,…

Salonica (Thessalonika) Port in northern Greece. From October 1915 the base of the Entente’s so-called Army of the Orient. The multinational Entente campaign against Bulgaria was fought from the end of 1915 in inhospitable territory, and remained bogged down for long periods. In this theater of war the soldiers suffered most casualties from disease. The Entente forces finally achieved a sudden and decisive breakthrough in September 1918. After Bulgaria had received guarantees in respect of territorial gains in the Macedonian part of Serbia, its government signe…

Total War This expression first appeared in the French press in 1917 as la guerre totale, meant to stir the French to their ultimate war effort. “Total war” and related expressions played a major role in international discussions concerning military policy in the 1920s and 1930s. The Italian General Giulio Douhet and German General Erich Ludendorff in particular promoted total war as the warfare of the future. In the Second World War the call for total war became a thoroughly universal phenomenon. Joseph Goebb…

Dix, Otto (December 2, 1891, Untermhaus [now part of Gera] – July 25, 1969, Singen [Hohentwiel]), German painter and graphic artist. Dix continued longer than any other German artist to reprocess his war experience in his work. Trained as a machine-gunner, he served in the army throughout the war. In 1914, even before reporting to the front as a volunteer, he painted a Self-portrait as a soldier, and in 1915 a Self-portrait as Mars. Dix thus bears a strong resemblance to the radical agitator and fighter, disruptive of all forms of order, invoked by the early Expressi…

Poincaré, Raymond (August 20, 1860, Bar-le-Duc [Département Meuse] – October 15, 1934, Paris), French politician, state president. Poincaré came from a prosperous French provincial bourgeois family. Despite a political career that took place predominantly in Paris, his home town of Bar-le-Duc (capital of the Meuse Department) remained for him a haven of social and political retreat. Poincaré became one of the defining personalities of moderate republicanism in France. A lawyer by profession, he wa…

Amersfoort, H. - Give Us Back Our Field Army! The Dutch Army Leadership and the Operational Planning during the Interwar Years Keywords: Dutch army leadership | Dutch field army | interwar years | operational planning ISFWWS-Keywords: Netherlands | Neutral States | Legacy | Germany | Military organisation of combat Abstract: The impasse in the Dutch defence policy that emerged in 1918 could only be broken by World War II and in the period following it. This conclusion makes the interwar years a fascinating and important period f…

Catholicism A view and attitude influenced by the Catholic Church and oriented to it, but not to be unconditionally equated with the Catholic Church as an institution. Within the German Reich before 1914 the Catholic Church, with just 40% of all Christian believers, constituted a political minority within the society of the Reich and was especially influential in the Center Party. The World War threw Catholicism in the warring European states into an insoluble dilemma. On the one hand, the Catholic Church maintained its claim to universalism. It was long …

Fischer, Christopher - Of Occupied Territories and Lost Provinces: German and Entente Propaganda in the West during World War I ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Western Front | Violence against civilians | International Relations during the War | Belgium | France | Politics | French society during the war | Children and War World War I and Propaganda Troy R.E. Paddock , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004264571 DOI: 10.1163/9789004264571_011 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Fischer, Christopher

Mayerhofer, Lisa - Making Friends and Foes: Occupiers and Occupied in First World War Romania, 1916–1918 Keywords: Austria-Hungary | civilian population | Germany | Military Administration | occupier | Romania | war experience ISFWWS-Keywords: Romania | Home fronts | Germany | Austria-Hungary | Politics | Russia | Economy | Prisoners of War | Bulgaria | The Ottoman Empire and the Middle East Abstract: The phenomenon of 'occupation' was thus an integral part of the war experience for numerous contemporaries. This chapter outlines how several Roman…

Bülow, Bernhard Heinrich Martin von (May 3, 1849, Klein Flottbek, now part of Hamburg – October 28, 1929, Rome), German politician (chancellor). Prince (from 1905) von Bülow, whose father was a high-ranking diplomat and whose mother came from a Hamburg bourgeois family, entered the diplomatic service at the age of 25 after completing his law studies. Rising quickly through the ranks, he became secretary of state for foreign affairs in 1897. In that capacity he directed the foreign policy of the Germa…

Lloyd George, David (January 17, 1863, Manchester – March 26, 1945, Llanystumdwy [Gwynedd]; from 1945 First Earl of Dwyfor), British statesman. This Welsh politician was one of the dominant figures on the British political scene during the First World War. Thanks to his extraordinary rhetorical talent, from the time of his first election to the House of Commons (lower house of parliament) in 1890 Lloyd George quickly made a name for himself as one of the leaders of the radical wing of the Liberal P…

Inflation An increase in the money supply and a rise of the monetary demand that is not matched by a corresponding amount of goods. Until long after the end of the war, people were accustomed to speak of “rising prices” instead of inflation or devaluation. In current research, the “age of inflation” denotes the period extending from the war to the beginning of the currency stabilization in November 1923. It also alludes to the economic, political, social, and cultural changes that resulted from the currency devaluation as well as to the ways of coming to terms with inflation. The causes of w…

Saint-Mihiel Salient Located southeast of Verdun, this salient was the theater of the first independent World War offensive of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF), September 12–15, 1918. Created at the very beginning of positional warfare in 1914, the Saint-Mihiel Salient extended from Combres to St. Mihiel, then from there to Pont-à-Mousson. It interrupted the French communication lines running from the south toward Verdun and posed the constant threat of a flanking attack on the fortresses. …

Caritas Association In 1897 the various charitable services of the Catholic Church were gathered in the newly formed Caritas Association for Catholic Germany (since 1921: German Caritas Association). The principal purpose of the association was peacetime welfare work founded on Christian principles. During World War I the Caritas Association cared primarily for German prisoners of war and returning former prisoners. In cooperation with the Prussian War Ministry steps were taken to ensure that in the transit camps for returning prisoners…

“Stab-in-the-Back” Legend ( Dolchstosslegende) The claim that Germany’s military defeat in 1918 was not, or not primarily, to be ascribed to the failure of the military leadership, or the exhaustion of the soldiers, but to failure or betrayal on the part of particular persons or groups on the home front. There were a number of quite different variants of the legend. Thus, for example, the inadequacy of supply in the battles for Verdun in 1916 was already referred to in military circles as a Dolchstoss. As early as July 1917, General von Seeckt gave voice to the typical accusati…

Abbenhuis, Maartje M. - Neutral Borders, Neutral Waters, Neutral Skies: Protecting the Territorial Neutrality of the Netherlands in the Great War, 1914-1918 Keywords: Netherlands | Neutral States | International Relations during the War | Home fronts | Naval Warfare | Aviation | Germany | Belgium | Economy Boundaries and their Meanings in the History of the Netherlands Benjamin Kaplan, Marybeth Carlson and Laura Cruz , (2009) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2009 e-ISBN: 9789047429814 DOI:10.1163/ej.9789004176379.i-258.30 © 2009 Koninklijke Brill NV, L…

Barrage Fire A “curtain of fire” created by the artillery, that is the intense, concentrated shelling of a section of terrain to prevent attacking infantry from approaching a defensive position, or to isolate an enemy position from its rear area. The barrage was not aimed at identified, visible targets, but instead sought to deny the enemy movement through a specific area by employing a maximum amount of firepower. Fire distribution and adjustment of the firing batteries had to be completed on schedule as part of the artillery prepara…

Hero Cult The First World War was the last war to have an explicit hero cult; it continued almost to the end of the war. Every day, and increasingly as the war situation intensified, the public was presented with war heroes, whether alive or killed in action, both collectively and individually. Their cult grew out of the national tradition; they were to be followed as examples of willpower and readiness for battle, staying power, and readiness for sacrifice. The World War, with its new weapon systems capable of killing anonymously, no longer provided any real basis for a …

Encirclement Concept The concept of encirclement was coined, or rather applied to the situation in international relations, by Reich Chancellor Bülow in a speech in the Reichstag on November 14, 1906. Reacting to the entente that had just been concluded between England and France, Bülow warned that the German Reich was being encircled “like the beast in the forest.” It is probable that no political conception received such wide currency in prewar Germany as that of encirclement. The mantra circulated not only among nationalists, but also in that portion…

Armed Forces (Italy) The defense of the Italian Kingdom proclaimed on February 18, 1861, was the duty of the Royal Army and the Royal Navy. The King was nominally the supreme commander of the military in peacetime, but the chiefs of the General Staff and the Admiralty functioned as the de facto Supreme Command in time of war. Italy’s new national army evolved from the Piedmontese Army that had fought in the Wars of Independence. Though gradually restructured into the Royal Italian Army, it maintained its traditional character, especially the imprint of…

Visual Propaganda The term refers to the use of modern visual media for the specific purpose of influencing attitudes among the population. Film and photography were systematically employed as propaganda tools for the first time during World War I. It was mainly during the second half of the war that new forms visual propaganda began to emerge, which were centrally directed and controlled by the military. In 1914 propaganda methods employed by the state were still largely based on traditional text media. It was only with some delay that film and photography we…

Showalter, Dennis - ‘It All Goes Wrong!’: German, French, and British Approaches to Mastering the Western Front Keywords: Western Front | Military organisation of combat | Science, Technology, and Medicine | Experience of combat | French Army and its combattants | Britain | Germany | The French and British Empires | Politics | Canada ‛Warfare and Belligerence’ Pierre Purseigle, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2005 e-ISBN: 9789047407362 DOI: 10.1163/9789047407362.003 © 2005 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Showalter, Dennis

Armistice This term refers to the cessation of hostilities between the Entente Powers and the Central Powers in 1918. In fact, the Armistice agreements concluded by the victors with Bulgaria (on September 30 at Salonica, now Thessalonika), with Turkey (on October 31 at the port of Moudros on the island of Lemnos), with the Habsburg Empire (on November 3 in the Villa Giusti near Padua), and with the German Reich (on November 11 at Compiègne-Rethondes) made it impossible for the Central Powers to resume hostilities. In reality, therefore, armistice amounted to capitulation. It was Genera…

Central Powers Title indicating the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance that expanded to include the Ottoman Empire in 1914 and Bulgaria in 1915. Before the outbreak of war in 1914, this title was seldom used. Reference was made instead to the Triple Alliance among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. To be sure, Bismarck’s Dual Alliance of 1879 between Germany and Austria-Hungary still existed alongside the Triple Alliance of 1882. Furthermore, it was clear to contemporaries that the earlier Dual Alliance was closer …

German Fatherland Party( Deutsche Vaterlandspartei – DVLP) An annexationist collective movement of nationalist-conservative circles in Germany. The DVLP was officially founded on September 2, 1917, (“Sedan Day”) in Königsberg. Honorary president was Duke Johann Albrecht von Mecklenburg-Schwerin, first chairman Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. The party’s guiding and driving spirit was the former Generallandschaftsdirektor (president of a regional land-owners’ council) Wolfgang Kapp, who, in reaction to the Reichstag peace resolution of July 19, 1…

Hejaz Railway Railway line between Damascus and Medina. In 1900 Sultan Abdul Hamid II commissioned the construction of a railway to link Damascus with Mecca. The railway was to help provide access to the remote Arab provinces, forge closer ties between Constantinople and the holy sites, and ease the pilgrimage of the Hajjis (pilgrims). In addition, it allowed for the rapid transport of troops to deal with renegade Bedouin tribes in Arabia. The German engineer Heinrich August Meissner was hired to …

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…

Ther, Vanessa - ‘Humans Are Cheap and the Bread is Dear.’ Republican Portrayals of the War Experience in Weimar Germany Keywords: Germany's war experience | Weimar Republic ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Society | Legacy | Literature | Culture | Experience of combat | Home fronts | Masculinity Abstract: The Weimar Republic was essentially defined by Germany's war experience, positively as a reaction against further bloodshed and negatively as a refusal to admit the reality of defeat. This chapter discusses the depiction of partic…

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…

Liebknecht, Karl (August 13, 1871, Leipzig – January 15, 1919, Berlin [assassinated]), German politician. The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, founder of the German Social Democratic Party ( Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD), Karl Liebknecht was a lawyer and a member of the SPD group in the Prussian lower house of Parliament, as well as later in the Reichstag. He also made a name as a writer of sociological and subversive literature. In 1907 Liebknecht was sentenced to 18 months in prison for antimilitary propaganda.…

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…

German Asia Corps German Expeditionary Corps established for the purpose of recovering Baghdad. – After the capture of Baghdad by the British on March 11, 1917, the German and Turkish High Commands decided to set up the Army Group F (Yilderim) in order to recapture the capital city of the ancient caliphate. The German core unit was to be the Asia Corps (Pasha II), raised in Neuhammer/Silesia (modern Świętoszów). Initially commanded by Colonel Werner von Frankenberg und Proschlitz, the well-equipped…

Emergency Money ( Notgeld) Money put temporarily into circulation, to replace either in whole or in part, the coinage that before its issue represented the currency, and that for a time could function as currency. Notgeld was mostly issued by other authorities than those issuing regular currency. During the war, a severe shortage of means of payment led to the issue of Notgeld in various states. The main reasons for this were the hoarding of coins and banknotes, the collapse of the system of payment, and the widening circulation of currencies of belligeren…

Psychiatry The science that is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of cerebral illnesses and functional brain disorders that primarily manifest themselves through psychological symptoms. Psychiatry constitutes a major aspect of the medico-military study and analysis of the effects of the World War on human beings. In 1916, the German psychiatrist Robert Gaupp (University of Tübingen) summarized the scientific-empirical value of the war for psychiatry in the following manner: “For psychiatr…

Sombart, Werner ( January 19, 1863, Ermsleben – May 18, 1941, Berlin), German economist and sociologist. In the first third of the 20th century Sombart was the best known German social scientist. As a pupil of Gustav Schmoller, he came from the historical school of political economy. He was one of the founders of sociology in Germany, and made an important contribution to it in his major work Der moderen Kapitalismus ( Modern Capitalism, 1902). In the 1890s he was still suspected as a sympathizer with the Marxist workers’ movement. He came to prominence as an advocat…

Volunteers In the strict sense volunteers were men who enlisted in the wake of mobilization without having been liable for military duty or without having been previously called up as draftees. In Germany these could include men who were either too young or too old to be drafted (under 18 or over 45), but also those men who were of an age to be drafted but had not yet received a draft notice. Volunteers were also all those who voluntarily enlisted in the further course of the war. After the beginning of the war, reports of an enormously high number of volunteers (between one and tw…

Military Courts This special law jurisdiction is limited to military personnel. It provides for a host of criminal offense categories that are not included in civilian criminal law. It is noteworthy that, as in civilian jurisprudence, criminal law is handled separately from procedural law. A comprehensive modernization of the military legal system was undertaken in numerous countries in the closing years of the 19th century. During the World War, the following regulations applied in the specified warring states: in Germany, the Militärstrafgesetzbuch of 1872; in France, the Code d…

Social Policy (Germany) In 1914–18 this was understood as including all legal and administrative measures of the German Reich, the federal states and the communal administrations for the regulation of the labor market and the welfare of soldiers’ relatives, war victims and surviving dependents. In addition, social policy extended in the war years to ensuring food supplies, regulating the residential property market, and amending previous social security conditions. After the outbreak of war, German…

Lavisse, Ernest (December 17, 1842, Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache [Département Aisne] – August 18, 1922, Paris), French historian. A “rationalist republican” since 1870/1871, and advocate of national educational renewal, Lavisse became a professor at the Sorbonne in 1888. His meteoric career took him to the Académie Française in 1892, and in 1904 he was appointed director of the École Normale Supérieure. He published various historical works, and, with his articles on the teaching of history in the elem…

Stibbe, Matthew - A Community at War: British Civilian Internees at the Ruhleben Camp in Germany, 1914–1918 Keywords: Home fronts | Germany | Britain | Violence against civilians | Society ‛Uncovered Fields’ Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle, Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004 e-ISBN: 9789047402596 DOI: 10.1163/9789047402596.006 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Stibbe, Matthew

Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von (November 29, 1856, Hohenfinow near Eberswalde – January 2, 1921, Hohenfinow), German politician (chancellor). After studying law in Strasbourg, Leipzig and Berlin, Bethmann passed his Referendarexamen (first state examination required to enter the Prussian civil and administrative services) in 1879. For ten years, from 1886 to 1896, he held the office of Landrat (chief administrator) in his home district of Oberbarnim. Promoted to the position of Oberpräsidialrat (dep…

Public Opinion, Study of Opinion polls, often systematically organized, were taken periodically regarding the outlook of different population groups on politics, the war situation, the economic situation, and other topics, with the object of obtaining information for official use concerning public opinion The study of public opinion was based upon various kinds of reports officially collected as part of government reforms after 1812, including the Prussian Zeitungsberichte, and the weekly reports on the workers’ movement beginning in 1848 in Bavaria, the Wochenberichte. Thes…

Barbarians In all warring societies, the topic of the Barbarians played a central role. In this war, it seemed to hinge upon nothing less than the survival, and the critical importance of humankind. Thus, there developed a script that depicted the war as a conflict between one’s own, idealized nation and a demonized enemy. “Civilization” was thereby commonly juxtaposed against “Barbarity.” This dualism was a powerful concept for two reasons. First, the nation-states of the 19th century were defined through a cultural construct that defined one’s own natio…

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…

Wolf, Susanne - Going Home Keywords: Dutch government | Germany | Netherland Abstract: The British ambassador in The Hague wrote to the Dutch government declaring that, as the war was over, all treaties concerning the POWs interned in the Netherlands and Switzerland were no longer valid. To this end the British proposed to send five ships to collect the approximately 5,000 British and Commonwealth men currently interned in the Netherlands. The need to mobilize the army had meant tha…

San Giuliano, Antonino Paternò Castello Marchese di (December 10, 1852, Catania – October 16, 1914, Rome), Italian politician (foreign minister). San Giuliano’s political career began in the ranks of the liberal right wing, at a time when many political figures of national standing, among them Francesco Crispi, were emerging from Sicily. A member of the Italian parliament from 1882, he became undersecretary of state in 1892, and in 1898 served as a minister in the reactionary government of General Pell…

Flanders A province in northwestern Belgium. Western Flanders was the theater of three major battles in 1914, 1915, and 1917, and to these must be added the battles fought during the course of the German spring offensive in 1918. For the British, the battles are inseparably associated with the market town of Ypres. It is accordingly not surprising that the British commission charged after the war with naming the battles and engagements designated the battles fought here as the First, Second, and …

German War Graves Commission Founded in 1919 this commission, entitled the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK), was the most important private organization of the interwar period concerned with the creation and maintenance of German war graves. After 1923 the Zentralnachweiseamt für Kriegerverluste und Kriegergräber (‘Central Office for War Victims and War Graves,’ or ZAK) in Berlin was officially charged by the Interior Ministry with the many tasks involved in the care of war graves, and of fallen soldiers’ next-of-kin, as wa…

Meuse-Argonne Offensive As part of the final Allied offensive on the Western Front the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) had been charged in September of 1918 with launching an assault against the sector of the front held by the German Fifth Army (Georg von der Marwitz) between the Argonne Forest and the River Meuse, and to advance in the general direction of Mézières. Heading the AEF was General John Pershing, who also took command of the newly formed United States First Army. After completing t…

Declarations of War 1914 July 28 Austria-Hungary on Serbia August 1 Germany on Russia August 2 German invasion of Luxembourg1 August 3 Germany on France August 4 German invasion of Belgium* August 4 Great Britain enters the war* August 6 Serbia on Germany August 6 Austria-Hungary on Russia August 7 Montenegro on Austria-Hungary August 11 France on Austria-Hungary August 12 Great Britain on Austria-Hungary August 12 Montenegro on Germany August 23 Japan on Germany August 23 Austria-Hungary on Japan August 28 Austria-Hungary on Belgium October 15 Montenegro on Bulgaria October 29 the …

Dreadnought British capital ship, and the name used for an entire type of modern battleships. By what has been termed the “Dreadnought leap” – superiority in firepower, protection, and speed – the Royal Navy rendered obsolete all large battleships built before that time. This qualitative advance in British naval technology was the consequence of military necessity. After the sea-battle of Tsushima on May 27/28, 1905, in which the Japanese fleet destroyed three Russian warships from a distance of …

Wilson, Woodrow (August 1856, Staunton – February 3, 1924, Washington DC), President of the United States. Nothing in Wilson’s career prepared him for leading the United States into an international political conflict. Born the son of a Presbyterian minister in Virginia, Wilson internalized the Protestant Ethic early. He felt called to commit himself to politics. Wilson was a professor of Political Science at Princeton University when nominated to become the university’s president in 1902. This sm…

Reims Northern French city located in the Département of the Marne. Even before the war, Reims had been an important memorial site. Its cathedral, a French Gothic gem begun in the 13th century, was the coronation site of kings, including the crowning of Charles VII in the presence of Joan of Arc in 1429. During September 4–12, 1914, the German Second Army occupied the city without its being destroyed. When the Germans withdrew from Reims, they took several citizens hostage, for here as elsewhere, the Germans feared the imagined attacks of Francs Tireurs (snipers). The front line stabiliz…

Naval Warfare In all theoretical discussions of a future war the war at sea was expected to play a major, if not the decisive role. For this reason all leading industrial nations had from the early 1890s onward been building massive, homogenous battle fleets. The “naval race” played a central role in souring Anglo-German relations during Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz’ tenure as the German Naval Secretary. The fledgling détente in the maritime sector, which was noticeable two years prior to the outbreak of the war, came …

Francs-Tireurs Abbreviation for the French “francais-tireurs,” meaning French snipers. First coined in 1792 during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871, francs-tireurs was used to indicate members of the volunteer French units, formed in October 1870, which officially constituted the foundation of the new Republican Army in the revolutionary tradition of the leveé en masse. From the point of view of the Germans, the francs-tireurs were illegal because they failed to wear complete uniforms. Accordingly, when captured they were normally executed, a…

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…

Ingrid Sharp, Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Aftermaths of War Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2011 Keywords: Women and War | Home fronts | Politics | Gender | French society during the war | Medicine | Germany | Balkans | Poland | Austria-Hungary Abstract: This volume of essays provides the first major comparative study of the role played by women’s movements and individual female activists in enabling or thwarting the transition from war to peace in Europe in the crucial years 1918 to 1923. Table of contents: Front Matter pp. i-xxii Introduction: Women’s Movements and Female A…

DiNardo, Richard L., - Modern Soldier In A Busby: August Von Mackensen, 1914–1916 Keywords: Soldiers and Combat | Russian Front | Germany | Balkans | The Balkans and Eastern Europe | Romania Abstract: Theo Schwarzmüller's biography was far more concerned with Mackensen's social attitudes than with his military exploits. This article tries to fill that gap and deals with August von Mackensen's career as a military commander, which essentially covered the years 1914-16. First, Mackensen was not simply the fro…

Women Serving behind the Front Women served as secretarial staff and catering personnel in the rear area and occupation zone, in order to release soldiers for frontline duty. More than 20,000 women auxiliaries worked behind the frontline in the German Army between April 1917 and November 1918, the majority of them on the Western Front. From 1917, women were also employed in the field in the armies of Great Britain (approx. 10,000), Austria-Hungary (approx. 36,000), and the United States (approx. 6,00…

Streubel, Christiane - Raps across the Knuckles: The Extension of War Culture by Radical Nationalist Women Journalists in Post-1918 Germany Keywords: culture of war | Der Tag | Deutsche Zeitung | German Right | Radical Nationalist Women Journalists ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Politics | Legacy | Society | Literature | Masculinity | Gender | Culture Abstract: This chapter explores the role of radical nationalist women journalists in rebuilding the nation after defeat and in contesting Germany's redrawn national boundaries by analysing two i…

Armed Forces (German Empire) In July 1914 the Army of the German Empire numbered 761,000 men, organized in 25 army corps. An additional 79,000 men served in the navy, and 9,000 in the colonial protection force. Those mobilized at the beginning of the war numbered 3.820 million in all, 2.086 million of whom made up the field army, divided into 40 army corps. Thus began a development that, during the years that followed, led to the general, extended mobilization of the German nation’s human resources for war. Some 13 million men served in the forces of the German Reich during the war. These figure…

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…

Riezler, Kurt (February 11, 1882, Munich – September 6, 1955, Munich), German diplomat. After studying philosophy and ancient history in Munich, and gaining his doctorate in 1905, in 1906 Riezler entered the Prussian Foreign Ministry as a press officer. Using the pseudonym Ruedorffer, he wrote a well-received book on the essential features of contemporary world politics in which he declared his belief that Germany should pursue and exercise the status of a world power. In relatively stark contrast with the conceptions of the “Pan-German…

Aerial Warfare A form of waging war in and from the air with airborne or ground-based weapons against war-critical targets and the air power of the enemy, and in direct or indirect support of land or naval forces. These forms and features of a war being fought in and from the air had been contemplated and partially put into practice in the years leading up to World War I, but the key concepts were laid down by the major powers based on their aerial operations between 1914 and 1918. In the highly-developed industrial nations, with th…

Bernhardi, Friedrich Adam Julius von (November 22, 1849, Saint Petersburg – July 10, 1930, Kunnersdorf, Silesia), German general and military writer. After serving in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 Bernhardi was posted to Greece and then Switzerland as military attaché. This was followed in 1898 by his appointment as chief of the War Historical Section I at the Great General Staff, where he laid the foundations for his career as a military writer. From 1909, Bernhardi dedicated his entire time in retirement to that activity. Central to his writings was the propagation of t…