Brill’s Digital Library of World War I
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Subject: History
Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is an online resource that contains over 700 encyclopedia entries plus 250 peer-reviewed articles of transnational and global historical perspectives on significant topics of World War I. This collection includes Brill’s Encyclopedia of the First World War, an unrivalled reference work that showcases the knowledge of experts from 15 countries and offers 26 additional essays on the major belligerents, wartime society and culture, diplomatic and military events, and the historiography of the Great War.
The 250 articles address not only the key issues from political, historical and cultural perspectives, but also engages with aspects of the war which have remained underexplored such as the neutrals, the role of women before, during and after the war, and memory. The chapters have been drawn from a select number of Brill publications that have been published in the last 15 years. Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is a unique digital library that will allow researchers to discover new perspectives and connections with the enhanced navigational tools provided.
Subscriptions: see Brill.
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Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is an online resource that contains over 700 encyclopedia entries plus 250 peer-reviewed articles of transnational and global historical perspectives on significant topics of World War I. This collection includes Brill’s Encyclopedia of the First World War, an unrivalled reference work that showcases the knowledge of experts from 15 countries and offers 26 additional essays on the major belligerents, wartime society and culture, diplomatic and military events, and the historiography of the Great War.
The 250 articles address not only the key issues from political, historical and cultural perspectives, but also engages with aspects of the war which have remained underexplored such as the neutrals, the role of women before, during and after the war, and memory. The chapters have been drawn from a select number of Brill publications that have been published in the last 15 years. Brill’s Digital Library of World War I is a unique digital library that will allow researchers to discover new perspectives and connections with the enhanced navigational tools provided.
Subscriptions: see Brill.
Foch, Ferdinand
(633 words)
Foch, Ferdinand (October 2, 1851, Tarbes – March 20, 1929, Paris) French field marshal. In the course of the large-scale German offensive in March of 1918 the Allies realized that the lack of a central military command on the Western Front might result in a defeat. Up to that point, British generals (with some exceptions) had categorically refused to serve under French command. Now, however, General Foch was given the task of coordinating the operations of the French and British armies; later he r…
Food Supplies
(2,616 words)
Food Supplies The supply of food to the civilian population, as well as to the fighting forces, is one of the most important elements in the waging of any war. This applies especially to the First World War, in which food supplies to millions of people had to be assured in the face of mutual blockades that severely compromised trade routes. A deterioration in food supplies was experienced in all belligerent nations and occupied territories during the course of the war, causing governments repeatedly to revise and modify their supply strategies. All sides …
Forced Labor
(1,842 words)
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…
Foreign Representatives in the Netherlands 1914–1918
(201 words)
Wolf, Susanne - Foreign Representatives in the Netherlands 1914–1918
Keywords: foreign representatives | Netherlands | Germany | Great Britain | Belgium | France
Abstract: This chapter contains Appendix Two of this book on diplomacy and internment in the Netherlands during the First World War</i>. It presents a list of foreign representatives in the Netherlands 1914-1918. This list includes the names of representatives of Germany, Great Britain, Belgium and France.
Guarded Neutrality Susanne Wolf, (2013)
Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2013
e-ISBN: 9789004249066
D…
Foreword
(1,158 words)
Foreword The First World War endures in human memory as an event of especial significance. The French still refer to it as the “Grande Guerre”; the Germans and Austrians, “der Große Krieg”; and the British and Americans, the “Great War.” Those who survived it are no more. Even the children of the war years have died by now. Yet the war did not pass away with the generation that waged and endured it. World War One will remain the defining experience of the 20th century. The war evolved from a localized European conflict to a global catastrophe. The swift disintegration of multina…
Foreword to the Revised Edition
(148 words)
Foreword to the Revised Edition The lasting interest in our
Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, released in 2003, has motivated us to publish a third edition, revised and expanded, as part of the
Universitätstaschenbücher (University Paperbacks Series,
UTB). In order to include the intensive research on the First World War undertaken since its original publication, we have added a number of new entries. A comprehensive record of the persons and places increases the usefulness of this reference work. The bibliography has likewise been …
Forging The Industrial Home Front: Iron-Nail Memorials in the Ruhr
(92 words)
Goebel, Stefan - Forging The Industrial Home Front: Iron-Nail Memorials in the Ruhr
Keywords: Home fronts | Germany | Visual Arts | Economy | Society | Culture ‛Uncovered Fields’ Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle,
Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2004
e-ISBN: 9789047402596
DOI: 10.1163/9789047402596.010 © 2004 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Goebel, Stefan
Fortresses
(737 words)
Fortresses Sites provided with permanent, artificial reinforcement, so as to protect them from capture by the methods of field warfare. For this reason, the battle for fortresses was always given a particular designation as “fortress warfare,” to distinguish it from “field warfare,” or war as waged by mobile field forces. The technical design of fortresses closely paralleled developments in artillery, which made tremendous advances during the 19th century (introduction of guns made from drawn steel, long-range howitzers, armor-piercing shells).…
Fourteen Points
(899 words)
Fourteen Points Fourteen Points stands for the peace aims of American President Woodrow Wilson, who made them public in a speech before the United States Congress on January 8, 1918. The basic reasons for American participation in the war were already clear. To justify America’s joining the war in April 1917, Wilson stressed that the United States was not interested in realizing any narrowly defined national demands. Rather, he meant to for liberal political principles to be implemented globally, …
France
(7,979 words)
France The “Sacred Union” On August 4, 1914, the prime minister of France René Viviani read out a message from President Raymond Poincaré before the French National Assembly, whereupon the minister of justice proceeded to do the same before the Senate. This procedure, to begin with, illustrates the French politicians’ fear of evoking any resemblance to a monarchy: the president of the republic was not allowed to address the parliamentary assemblies himself, and his “message” had previously been disc…
Francs-Tireurs
(355 words)
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…
Frank, Ludwig
(289 words)
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…
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este
(274 words)
Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este (December 18, 1863, Graz – June 28, 1914, Sarajevo [murdered]), Archduke of Austria-Este. Obligatory for archdukes, Franz Ferdinand underwent military service, soon advancing in royal succession after the suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf in 1889. Convinced that the struggle for independence of the Magyar political elites would very soon destroy the Habsburg Empire, Franz Ferdinand opposed, without compromising, every concession to Hungary. Instead, he planned a…
Franz Joseph I of Austria
(380 words)
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 …
Fraternizing
(470 words)
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 faced one another. Individual acts of camaraderie at Christmas, and informal truces, were also reported from German-French sectors and from the Eastern Front. The most spectacular case of frat…
Frederick Augustus III, King of Saxony
(334 words)
Frederick Augustus III, King of Saxony (May 25, 1865, Dresden – February 18, 1932, Sibyllenort, district of Oels). After studying in Strasbourg and Leipzig and completing his princely military training, Frederick attained the rank of lieutenant general in 1898. In 1902 the crown prince was named commanding general of XIIth (Saxon) Army Corps. Following the death of his father George he was crowned King of Saxony on October 15, 1904. A major general in 1909, he became a Prussian field marshal in 1912. …
Freikorps (Free Corps)
(1,196 words)
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, …
French, Sir John
(383 words)
French, Sir John (September 28, 1852, Ripple Vale, Kent – May 21, 1925, Deal), British field marshal and British Army Commander in Chief on the Western Front 1914/1915. French’s early career included the usual colonial postings in Egypt and India. He first gained a reputation as a courageous and energetic officer as commander of a cavalry division in the Boer War (1899–1902). The war led to further key posts, not least owing to the fact that French mixed easily with politicians, especially liberal …
Freud, Sigmund
(626 words)
Freud, Sigmund (May 6, 1856, Freiberg [now Přibor, Czech Republic] – September 9, 1939, London), Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis. Freud’s attitude to the World War was at first little different from that of most intellectuals at that time. Freud is recorded as having said in the first phase of the war that his “whole libido” belonged to Austria-Hungary (1915). When this position changed, turning into one critical of the war, is disputed. In relation to fear of war and “infringement…
Friedrich, Archduke of Austria
(367 words)
Friedrich, Archduke of Austria (June 4, 1856, Gross-Seelowitz near Brünn [now Židlochovice near Brno in Moravia, Czech Republic] – December 30, 1936, Ungarisch-Altenburg [now Mosonmagyaróvár in Hungary]). Until 1914, Friedrich’s career as an army officer largely followed the traditional path set out for a Habsburg prince. In 1905 he became inspector general of all the armed forces of Austria-Hungary, a position which also placed him in line for a wartime command. After 1907, as the commander in chie…