Sharp, Ingrid - The Disappearing Surplus: The Spinster in the Post-War Debate in Weimar Germany, 1918–1920 Keywords: Hausfrau | post-war debate | …

Nicholas Nikolaevich, Grand Duke of Russia (November 18, 1856, Saint Petersburg – January 5, 1929, Antibes), Grand duke of Russia and supreme commander in chief. Nicholas was the son of Grand Duke Nicholas the Elder. In 1873 he completed the Nikolaevsky Military Engineering Academy, and then the General Staff Academy in 1876. He took part in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 under his father, the commander in chief. After 1901, he was a general of cavalry. In 1905–1908 Nicholas presided over the newl…

Film (Post-1918) Compared with the largely propagandistic sty…

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Armed Forces (Austria-Hungary) The organization of the Austro-Hungarian Armed Forces during the First World War originated in the Compromise of 1867. Under this agreement the Habsburg Monarchy sported the outward appearance of a dual monarchy, yet internally there was minimal uniformity, and the merest balance of interests. The major weakness of the Compromise between the Kingdom of Hungary and the remainder of the Double Monarchy was the fact that the Slavs within Austria-Hungary, who had mainly s…

Tsingtao (Qingdao) Administrative center of Jiaozhou, a German colony established on the northeastern coast of China in …

Compagnon, Olivier - 1914–18: The Death Throes of Civilization. The Elites of Latin-America Face the Great War Keywords: …

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…

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 La…

Conrad von Hötzendorf, Franz (November 11, 1852, Penzing near Vienna – August 25, 1925, Bad Mergentheim), Austro-Hungarian Field Marshal. Conrad, who was made a baron in 1910 and a count in 1918, not only had a typical career in the General Staff which predestined him for a higher office in the future, his participation in the 1878–1879 campaigns in Bosnia and Herzegovina and 1882 in Dalmatia also provided him with direct battlefield experience. Service with various bureaus of the General Staff enha…

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Smuts, Jan Christiaan (May 24, 1870, Bovenplaats [Cape Province] – September 11, 1950, Irene [near Pretoria]), South African general and politician. Born the son of a Boer farmer, Smuts became one of the most important politicians of South Africa. Between 1899 and 1902 he served as a Boer general in the Boer War against Great Britain. In 1907 he entered the cabinet of Louis Botha in the Transvaal and also worked under him in the government of the South African Union, founded in 1910. On the outbreak of war in 1914, Smuts was one of the strongest advocates of an offensive against German Southwest Africa, and together with Botha he was largely responsible for putting down the rebellion by some of the Boer population. In 1915 he took part in the conquest of German Southwest Africa, and then as commander led the British Expeditionary Corps in German East Africa. In 1917 he was sent to London as the South African representative to the Imperial War Cabinet. As one of the two South African representatives Smits also took part in the Paris Peace Conference, where he supported the idea of the League of Nations and German reparations. On his initiative the establishment of subordinate membership of the League of Nations for the former German and Ottoman territories was rejected. In 1919, after Botha’s death, Smuts became his successor as prime minister of South Africa, an office that he held until 1924 and again from 1939 to 1948. As already in 1914, so also in the Second Wor…

ANZAC The Allied operations on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli in 1915 marked the first time ANZAC forces fought in the European theater of war. The completion of this mission in January of 1916 also brought to an end the deployment of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) along this front. Troops from Australia and New Zealand were now sent to the more important theaters of the First World War. Initially the corps was transferred to Egypt for rest, training, and expansion. Divided into the I and II ANZAC Corps, the men were ordered in May of 1916 to embark for the Western Front, where they arrived at a crucial time for the British Army: the High Command was engaged in the preparations for the large-scale Somme offensive. The Battle of the Somme began on July 1, 1916, with high hopes but few considerations as to the possible aims of such an operation, or what measures would be required to achieve those aims. The offensive lasted four and a half terrible months.…

Alpine Warfare When the Italian declaration of war was delivered on May 23, 1915, it plunged Austria-Hungary into a desperate situation. While this move by Italy did not come unexpected, almost all the forces of the Danube Monarchy were tied up on the Eastern Front and in the Balkans, where the Central Powers had in that year taken the initiative. Only weak, improvised forces were available to secure the 600-km long border with Italy, among them almost 30,000 militia reserves (Standschützen). By t…

Famine The long duration of the war, reciprocal blockades of food imports, and the exploitation of regions occupied by the Central Powers all caused occasional dramatic occurrences of famine in the World War. In the German Reich and Austria especially, the food situation during the second half of the war was appalling. In Germany, the lack of planning to maintain the food supply in case of war was partly the blame for the quantitative and qualitative decline in the diet of a majority of the German civilian population. The weekly flour ration fell from 1,575 g in 1915 to 1,400 g in the final year of the war; the fat ration fell in the same period from 100 g to 70 g. In the winter of 1917/1918, the average calorific value of a daily ration fell to less than 1,000 calories, half the minimum requirement of an adult. At the same time, the quality of available products deteriorated. A so-called Kriegsbrot (war loaf ), made with a mixture of potato flour and other inferior varieties of flour, was made compulsory in Germany as early as the beginning of 1915. Milk was normally diluted with water. Resourceful producers set about creating surrogates for the basic products, although in most cases these ersatz products had only a superficial similarity to the original, and no equivalent nutritional value. Until the beginning of 1918, producers, inventors, and speculators were left a free hand in this area. When the government turne…

Lviv/Lemberg Capital of the Austro-Hungarian Crown Land of Galicia. In late summer 1914 the territory around Lemberg (Lviv) in eastern Galicia became the focus of battles between Russian and Austro-Hungarian troops. While the Russian plan was for an offensive that would achieve t…

Armed Forces (Russia) One year before the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904/1905, the standing Russian army comprised approximately 41,000 officers, 10,000 military service personnel (including army dentists), and approximately 1 million non-commissioned officers and other ranks. There was provision for about 2 million reservists. Some 3 million non-commissioned officers and other ranks could thus be mobilized in the event of war. The guard regiments had a particular role and status in the Russian Imperial Army until the end of the First World War.…

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Carpathians A mountain range between Hungary and Galicia, the site of several battles from January to April 1915. The Austro-Hungarian general staff was quite aware of the Carpathians’ strategic importance. The Austro-Hungarian troops in Galicia, which were enclosed on all sides, were left with little possibility of evading attack due to the mountain range, while the enemy was at all cost to be prevented from overcoming it. Large parts of the Carpathians also placed mountain-trained or specially …

Hague Land Warfare Convention By Hague Land Warfare Convention one means the text of the Hague article concerning The Laws and Customs of War on Land. This article was the fourth of thirteen articles signed on October 18, 1907, along with the final declarations, at the conclusion of the Second International Peace Conference at The Hague. Forty-four nations had taken part in the conference, convened at the suggestion of Tsar Nicholas II. Article IV was ratified by most warring stat…