History Commons^™

A Sense Of Loss: The Effect Of Prisoner Camp Conditions On German Pows’ Masculinity During The First World War, Analucia Lugo

The Purdue Historian

During the First World War, almost a million German soldiers became prisoners of war (POW) and held captive in enemy camps. The moment of capture and arrest caused these men to experience debilitating emotions, including guilt and fear. Varied conditions at POW camps bolstered these responses and often determined prisoner health and morale throughout the war. This article examines how camps in Britain, France, and Russia treated German POWs, and how German nationalism affected these soldiers' senses of masculinity and patriotism during and after the war.

Geopolitical Actions Of The German Empire Prior To The First World War – A Modified Dime Analysis –, Gregory A. Mauck

Masters Theses

It is said that the victors write the history. That adage is demonstrably true for the history of the First World War. The German Empire, Das Deutsche Kaiserreich, has shouldered most of the blame for the war for most of the past century. Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles declares this German guilt in no uncertain terms. But is this a fair assessment? A study of pre-war German diplomatic and military actions provides a method to partially assess the culpability of Germany for the Great War. A fair analysis of that geopolitical activity shows that the actions of the …

Performing Masculinity: Calgary Men In The Great War, Andrew J. Hawkes

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the masculinity of soldiers from Calgary during the Great War using a theoretical framework of hegemonic masculinity. The first chapter establishes a normative masculine standard in Calgary using local newspaper coverage of battalion departure parades. These events were rituals that celebrated militarized masculinity and reinforced the hegemonic ideal that existed across the British Empire in the early 20^th century. The second chapter assesses how masculinity was performed in letters during the war. Although men strove to embody the masculine ideal, their letters were not uniform endorsements of martial masculinity. The third chapter analyzes how hegemonic masculinity …

Heroes, Victims, And Future Citizens: Representations Of French Children During World War I, Megan R. Outtrim

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

The effects of total war society in France during WWI dramatically altered the daily lives of both adults and children, witnessing increasing levels of patriotic rhetoric, wartime propaganda, and anti-German sentiment. Children were often made the focal point of this propaganda, as they represented the future of the nation. As such, three specific representations of children emerge from WWI propaganda in France: the heroic child, the victimized child, and the malleable future citizen. Some of these representations were depicted in propaganda meant for children specifically, while others were depicted in propaganda meant to mobilize adults in the name of children. …

With Sand In Their Pockets: Lessons Of The American Expeditionary Force’S Mobilization For The First World War, Kasey James Comstock

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

When the Eleventh hour rang on November 11th, 1918, the United States Expeditionary Force, now the United States Army was no longer a mere constabulary organization. In fact, it had grown from just over 200,000 total soldiers to a staggering 4.2-million-man army. However, the growth of the army was not easy, through political and organizational in-fighting the army grew painfully. The inability of the United States government, especially its commander-in-chief, to implement reform measures ensured, and ultimately sealed the fate of thousands of American dead Doughboys in France. Additionally, the Army War College, General Staff, and War Department deliberately curtailed …

With Every Means At Our Command: Burlington’S Dead In World War I, Michael Carter

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

When the United States entered the First World War in April of 1917, the people of Burlington, Vermont, pledged to support the cause “with every means at our command.” Some were indeed called upon to give the utmost: the core of this project will be the examination and exploration of the identities of those people of Burlington who lost their lives as a result of the conflict. This approach fills a historical gap, as little has been written about the experience of Burlington, or Vermont, in the war since the late 1920s. There were 55 men and women of Burlington …

Canadian Prisoners Of The First World War: The Struggle For Resilience, Grace Peeters-Rosien

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In the First World War, 3,500 Canadian soldiers were taken prisoner. Throughout their captivity, they endured intense humiliation, dehumanization, and abuse. Despite this, the men were able to remain resilient and even found ways to fight back. By using memoirs and letters written by the prisoners, this paper will analyze how these Canadians were determined to keep fighting. This paper will be using an analogy of a bank account to explain how close the prisoners came to breakdown, and how they continuously struggled to endure. Society and war had taught these men that prisoners were weak and cowardly, but they …

Unsung Equine Heroes: An Analysis Of Equine Care And Management During The Great War, Emma E. Kuiack

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the use of equines by the British Expeditionary Forces throughout the First World War, particularly examining various aspects of war equine care and management. It addresses the significance behind the use of these animals in the war before delving into the reality of how equines were cared for in terms of farrier work, skin care and management, feeding and watering, as well as psychological understandings of horses, donkeys, and mules. Through the implementation of various primary and secondary source materials, this thesis considers care mistakes that were made and the corrections that were enforced to alleviate injury …

“Long And Strenuous Duties In France:” Neurasthenia And Nervous Debility Among Canadian Nursing Sisters During The First World War, Ariane Gauthier

Canadian Military History

This article endeavours to understand the strenuous circumstances which caused neurasthenia and nervous debility in Canadian nursing sisters during the First World War. By examining the treatment they received for their condition at the Canadian Red Cross X Special Hospital and at Northwood Hospital for Sick Sisters in Buxton, this article also explores how Canadian medical authorities handled the nurses’ treatment and momentarily challenged previous conceptions concerning mental illness in women.

Bearing Report: A Roundtable On Historians And American Veterans, James Marten

History Faculty Research and Publications

Five historians—each an expert on a specific era and issue related to veterans—were asked to ponder the following questions: 1. What are the most important questions explored by historians in veterans studies? 2. What are the books that have been most useful to your particular area of interest in veterans studies? 3. How can the history of veterans help us understand larger cultural, social, and economic issues during the time periods in which the veterans you study lived? 4. What are the particular contributions that a historic sensibility can bring to the study of veterans of any war? 5. How …

Making The Mandates System, Benjamin Gladstone

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

After the First World War the international order was reorganized by the victorious powers, including the creation of the League of Nations, and under its supervision the mandates system. This system was designed to manage the colonies detached from the defeated Central Powers and to mitigate the worst effects of colonialism through international oversight and the imposition of conditions on the rule of these territories. This paper investigates the origins of this system, tracing it back through earlier precedents and discerning between different variations of colonialism practiced by different empires. This analysis shows that the mandates system was an Americanized …

Media Combat: The Great War And The Transformation Of American Culture, Andrew Steed Walgren

Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the role of professional musicians, stage performers, civilian entertainment organizations, and the federal government in the formation of a nationalized, wartime cultural apparatus during the United States' involvement in the First World War (1917-1919). This process was contested, fragmented, and incomplete, but it laid the foundational groundwork for federal cultural initiatives and programs during the 1930s and 1940s. In many ways, the war forever altered the relationship between American citizens and the federal government. Specifically, this project examines two major cultural arenas – music and theater – by looking at the institutions and actors that transformed them. …

Coalition Warfare—Echoes From The Past, Michael Neiberg

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

"Between The Two Great Battlefields:" Scottish Medical Women's Encounters With The Eastern Front, Fiona Gale Holter

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation discusses the role of medical women on the battlefront during the First World War. Using the Scottish Women’s Hospitals as a case study, it argues that frontline medical women occupied a liminal space on the fronts. As both witnesses and participants, they confronted wounds, trauma, and violence wrought by total war. Since this was typically reserved for the combatant, contemporary notions of gender refused to acknowledge medical women’s authority within the war story. This dissertation employs medical women’s wartime experiences to argue that their war story redefines our understandings of combatancy, allowing us to see it as a …

Muddying The Lens: Photographs Of The Canadian Expeditionary Force, Sarah Leilani Hart

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Over the course of the First World War 4, 507 photographs were produced by the Canadian War Records Office. These photographs were used as propaganda to promote victory overseas and were popularized in exhibitions, magazines, books, and other wartime ephemera. Produced simultaneously to this official record was private soldiers’ photography which is comprised of albums, scrapbooks, personal snapshots, and soldiers’ portraits and communicate a narrative that is both similar and disparate from the official record. This thesis examines the ways in which private and official photographs were formed and how they were used to communicate soldiers’ wartime experience. It argues …

Shell Shock In The First World War: An Analysis Of Psychological Impairment In Canadian Soldiers., Brigette A. Farrell

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the question of standardization in the First World War Canadian Army Medical Corps ideologies and procedures through a case study of fifty soldiers discharged for being medically unfit. In analyzing their service records, this thesis demonstrates that there was generalized diagnosis, treatment, and common experiences for Canadian soldiers being treated for mental health afflictions in the First World War. However, because of different medical ideologies, scientific-based beliefs in how humanity was hierarchically organized, the influence of class and rank, the impact of the opposing fields of neurology and psychology, and the need for military efficiency over individual …

Indentured On The Western Front: The Chinese Labour Corps And The British Coolie Trade, Emily Sanders

Honors Theses

This thesis examines the recruitment, transport, and working conditions of the Chinese Labour Corps in World War I in comparison to the twentieth century British ‘coolie’ trade of Chinese indentured laborers on the basis of labor contracts, written testimonies, newspaper articles, books, photographs, and historical records. This thesis argues that the Chinese Labour Corps methods of recruiting, transport, and conditions of work were very similar to, if not the same as, the twentieth century British coolie trade. The Chinese Labour Corps can in many ways be said to be an extension of the preexisting British coolie trade, rather than an …

"They Were Only Playin' Leapfrog!": The Infantryman And The Staff Officer In The British Army In The Great War, Benjamin M. Roy

Student Publications

The British Infantryman of the First World War hated Staff Officers more than any other supporting or service branch in the BEF. This essay explores this attitude, its motivations, and the ways complaining helped British Infantrymen endure the Great War. It argues that the British Infantryman felt separate from the Staff Officers because of his intimate understanding of combat and killing and manifested his frustration with the helpless circumstances of war by hating Staff Officers, but ultimately understood the Staff Officer's role and the necessity of their service. By reconsidering the hackneyed views of the 'Poor Bloody Infantry' a new …

From The Trenches: Cross-Campus Digital History Collaboration, Amy E. Lucadamo, Ian A. Isherwood, R.C. Miessler, Jenna Fleming, Meghan E. O'Donnell

R.C. Miessler

In September 2015, our team launched The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs (www.jackpeirs.org), a digital history initiative built on collaboration between faculty, students, and library staff. The project is founded on amazing primary source material, but with limited financial support and little dedicated staff time. We leveraged the creativity and hard work of our team members to build a website that is maintained by students and enhanced whenever possible with features and commentary from faculty and staff. Members of #TeamPeirs discussed the evolution of the project, the nature of our collaboration, and the intersection of audiences …

"We Germans Fear God, And Nothing Else In The World!" Military Policy In Wilhelmine Germany, 1890-1914, Cavender Sutton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the Second Reich’s short life, military affairs were synonymous with those of the state. Indeed, it was the zeal and blood of Prussian soldiers that allowed the creation of a unified German empire. After solidifying itself as a major power, things grew more complicated as the Reich found itself increasingly surrounded by hostile rivals. To the west, French humiliation over their catastrophic defeat in 1870-71 continued to fester while, in the east, Russian sympathies for the new empire waned. The finalization of a Franco-Russian alliance in 1894 meant Germany faced formidable adversaries along her eastern and western borders. That …

Casualties Of War? Refining The Civilian-Military Dichotomy In World War I, Eric Grube

Madison Historical Review

Throughout the First World War, newspapers around the world mocked the British state for its lavish spending on captured German officers kept at Donington Hall, a refurbished English estate. Why was this camp such a controversial space of perceived decadence? I argue that its comforts seemed to linger from an earlier era, one in which military men exuded genteel civility as integral to their supposedly heroic service. The British state essentially enabled such treatment, and the public decried this space for sustaining the anachronism of aristocratic privilege in the face of a globalized total war. However, the German inmates expected …

The Ghost Story Of The Great War: Spiritualism, Psychical Research And The British War Experience, 1914-1939., Kyle Falcon

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines the role of the Great War in shaping British spiritualism and psychical between 1914 and 1939. Spiritualism can be defined as the belief in the survival of the human personality and the possibility of communication with the dead, particularly through the séance. Psychical research represented a more scientifically oriented and research focused approach to the supernatural. These movements originated in the nineteenth century as traditional religious authority waned. Meanwhile, scientists had harnessed unseen forces to make wireless communications possible, while others probed the mysterious world of the unconscious mind through trance. Spiritualism and psychical research flourished in …

Charting Continuation: Understanding Post-Traditional Six Nations Militarism, 1814-1930, Evan Joseph Habkirk

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Until recently, military historians failed to consider First Nations military participation beyond the settlement of a particular region, including the end War of 1812 in Ontario and Quebec, and the post-Northwest Rebellion era in the Western Provinces. Current historiography of Six Nations military between the end of the War of 1812 and the First World War has also neglected the evolution of First Nations militarism and the voice of First Nations peoples, with most military histories including First Nations participation as contributions to the larger non-First Nations narrative of Canada. By charting the military participation of one First Nation community, …

Migration, Colonialism, And Belonging: Tunisians Around The First World War, 1911-1925, Chris J. Rominger

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the little-examined transnational experiences of ordinary North Africans around the First World War, demonstrating how the war catalyzed a wide and unexpected range of concepts of political and social belonging. With the Mediterranean once again the site of massive migration provoked by war and economic inequality, scholars and commentators have begun to revisit the First World War’s legacy in the Arab world. Yet much work focuses on the emergence of Arab nationalism or on the diplomatic folly of the European victors. My research confronts scholarly assumptions about the temporal and geographic boundaries of the First World War …

Occupation During And After The War (China), Lukas K. Danner

Dr. Lukas K. Danner

No abstract provided.

100 Years Ago: The Death Of Quentin Roosevelt, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

This blog post focuses on the life and military career of Quentin Roosevelt. Lieutenant Roosevelt died in an aviation firefight in France on July 14, 2018, Bastille Day. He left behind his fiancee Flora Payne Whitney, an heir to the Whitney and Vanderbilt fortunes.

100 Years: The Death Of John Purroy Mitchel – New York City’S Boy Mayor, Keith J. Muchowski

Publications and Research

The blog post focuses on the life and times of John Purroy Mitchel, the mayor of New York City during the First World War. Mitchel was active in the Preparedness Movement and eventually killed in a military training exercise in July 1918, six months after leaving office.

Tribute To The Fallen: The Evolution Of Canadian Battlefield Burials During The First World War, Jeremy P. Garrett

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation focuses on the burial of Canadian soldiers during the First World War. This study explores the ways in which the body was treated upon death during the early, middle, and late years of the conflict to show the drastically different practices and customs that were implemented and modernized throughout the war. While nineteenth century military burial customs were suitable for religious beliefs at the time, a religious shift among the general populace occurred at the end of the century. Subsequent conflicts showcased the inadequacies of established military practices.

While the Boer War demonstrated soldiers’ need to ensure a …

From The Trenches: Cross-Campus Digital History Collaboration, Amy E. Lucadamo, Ian A. Isherwood, R.C. Miessler, Jenna Fleming, Meghan E. O'Donnell

All Musselman Library Staff Works

In September 2015, our team launched The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs (www.jackpeirs.org), a digital history initiative built on collaboration between faculty, students, and library staff. The project is founded on amazing primary source material, but with limited financial support and little dedicated staff time. We leveraged the creativity and hard work of our team members to build a website that is maintained by students and enhanced whenever possible with features and commentary from faculty and staff. Members of #TeamPeirs discussed the evolution of the project, the nature of our collaboration, and the intersection of audiences …

Belonging To The Imperial Nation: Rethinking The History Of The First World War In Britain And Its Empire, Susan R. Grayzel

History Faculty Publications

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the First World War in 2014–18, the British government set aside funds for a range of commemorative activities. These included a number of “engagement centres” that aimed to bring together academics and local community members in addition to providing separate arts-related programming.1 The Imperial War Museum reworked its main First World War galleries, which opened with great fanfare at the centenary’s start. This denotes a kind of publicly sanctioned interest in a war that Britain had won, after all, but that popular memory had enshrined as something quite different, something that required …