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.

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. …

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 …

Investigation Of Chlorine Gas, Phosgene Gas, And Mustard Gas: Development, Use, Effects, And Treatments With A Focus On World War I, Kyle Zaremba

Honors Projects

The German attack in Ypres on April 22, 1915 ushered in a new era of warfare. For the first time in military history, large amounts of weaponized gas were being deployed. The first attack utilized chlorine gas while subsequent attacks used phosgene gas, mustard gas, or a combination of them. Scientific and medical communities scrambled to combat the new threat, leading to great advancements in the understanding of the pathophysiology and treatment relating to chemical gas attacks. New ways to bypass chlorine gas, phosgene gas, and mustard gas effects were proposed and tested and already existing medical interventions proved useful. …

The Impact Of World War One On The Forests And Soils Of Europe, Drew Heiderscheidt

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The First World War was one of the deadliest conflicts in human history thus far. With the human toll being over eight million deaths, and millions more wounded, and as such it has taken hold in peoples imaginations for over a hundred years. However, one overlooked impact of the war is the environmental impact it had. The forests of Europe were significantly changed, going from being diverse ecosystems pre-war to monocultures after the war, dominated by single species of trees. The soil was also affected, more heavily in some places, becoming contaminated with heavy metals, as well as becoming entirely …

Fashion Under The Swastika: An Analysis Of Women's Fashion During The Third Reich, Ayrika Johnson

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

This paper works to demonstrate women's fashion in Germany during WWII and how it was impacted by Nazi culture. Within Hitler's Germany, there was a desire to create a uniform community separate from the rest of the world, and greater than all others. Fashion is one way to analyze how the Nazis tried to accomplish this goal. The paper relies on speeches, magazines, and their fashion pages, and advertisement clippings to uncover the social, economic, and political factors at play. By using fashion as a means of expressing cultural, societal, economic, and political goals, the desires of the Nazi government …

Humanization Of The Enemy: The Pacifist Soldier And France In World War One, Daniel E. Stockman

Senior Theses

Not all French citizens were enthused by the prospect of war in 1914, nor were they all so willing to embrace a dehumanized view of the enemy. Some French citizens believed the “Great War” to be a patriotic endeavor. Propaganda encouraged this nationalism and the dehumanization of the enemy. “Political” pacifism existed within the French Third Republic psyche following France’s defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. However, these pacifistic undertones were systematically undermined as France began to militarize itself. Drawing from a series of notebooks, and established academic sources, this paper shows that some French soldiers endured a world at …

The Centennial Of The Great War, Thomas J. Crafa

Student Publications

A personal reflection on the centennial of America's entry into The Great War.

Paris Peace Conference 1919 Simulation, Kitty Lam

Kitty Lam

This lesson plan for high school students in World History and United States History courses is related to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Students will simulate a meeting of the Paris Peace Conference to determine the terms of peace after the First World War. Eight delegations are represented in this simulation: United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Kingdom of the Hejaz, Zionist League. The goals of this simulation are to develop student understanding about the post-war priorities of the "Big Four", the role of the First World War in shaping geopolitics in the Middle East, the significance …

Review Of Winnie: The True Story Of The Bear Who Inspired Winnie-The-Pooh By Sally M. Walker & Jonathan D. Voss, Christiana O. Manthei

Library Intern Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

Paris Peace Conference 1919 Simulation, Kitty Lam

World in the 20th Century

This lesson plan for high school students in World History and United States History courses is related to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Students will simulate a meeting of the Paris Peace Conference to determine the terms of peace after the First World War. Eight delegations are represented in this simulation: United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Germany, Kingdom of the Hejaz, Zionist League. The goals of this simulation are to develop student understanding about the post-war priorities of the "Big Four", the role of the First World War in shaping geopolitics in the Middle East, the significance …

The Wwi Middle East: Western Intervention And Modern-Day Political Conflict, Pauline Park

Global Tides

This paper analyzes three conflicting agreements made by the Allied powers between 1915 and 1917: the Husayn-McMahon correspondence, the Sykes-Picot arrangements, and the Balfour Declaration. It reveals the agreements as demonstrative of deeper patterns of political power and strategy in the Middle East that persist today. This paper moreover compares the Middle East with the European colonization of Rwanda in the 1880s, and how the nation's internal division was caused by external global powers seeking political and economic gain. This analysis seeks to connect global events as part of a wider political agenda propagated by Western powers.

To Whom Does The Body Of The Dead Soldier Belong?: An Examination Of British Imperial Strategy And The Making And Meaning Of World War I Memorials, Hannah M. Jeruc

Lawrence University Honors Projects

In 1915, one year into World War I, Fabian Arthur Goulstone Ware founded the Imperial War Graves Commission, the official body responsible for locating, identifying and burying the dead British and Commonwealth soldiers. By the end of the war, the British had lost about one million troops, and for the next 20 years, the Commission would work diligently to create 970 cemeteries, 600,000 graves and 18 larger memorials to commemorate the British losses on the Western Front. However, the significance of the British WWI memorialization process is about more than the Empire's architectural achievements, but rather, the story the architecture …

Flight Of The White Feather: The Expansion Of The White Feather Movement Throughout The World War One British Commonwealth, Kimberly Elisa Stevens

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The historiography of the First World War in Great Britain has focused mainly on military matters, leaving home front experiences temporarily unexplored. While the soldier’s experience remains invaluable to historians, studies of women and the home front are significant. The White Feather Campaign, which called for women to give white feathers denoting cowardice to men in civilian dress, who allegedly had not enlisted, remains vivid in British historical memory, but few scholarly works have examined it thoroughly. Historians such as Nicoletta F. Gullace and Susan R. Grayzel have shed light on British women in the war, but there remains further …

On The Fields Of Glory: A Student’S Reflections On Gettysburg, The Western Front, And Normandy, Kevin P. Lavery

The Gettysburg Compiler: On the Front Lines of History

I’m very fortunate to have had no shortage of opportunities to get out into the field and put my classroom learning into practice. I am especially lucky to have twice had the opportunity to travel to Europe. Two years ago, I went with my first-year seminar to explore the Western Front of World War I in France and Belgium. This year, I travelled with The Eisenhower Institute to tour the towns and beaches of Normandy where the Allies launched their invasion of Hitler’s Europe during World War II. Having experienced these notable sites of military history, and having taken a …

The Knights Of The Front: Medieval History’S Influence On Great War Propaganda, Haley E. Claxton

Crossing Borders: A Multidisciplinary Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship

Spanning a number of academic areas, “Knights of the Front: Medieval History’s Influence on Great War Propaganda” focuses on the emergence of medieval imagery in the First World War propaganda. Examining several specific uses of medieval symbolism in propaganda posters from both Central and Allied powers, the article provides insight into the narrative of war, both politically and culturally constructed. The paper begins with an overview of the psychology behind visual persuasion and the history behind Europe’s cultural affinity for “chivalry,” then continues into specific case studies of period propaganda posters that hold not only themes of military glory and …

Gettysburg Historical Journal 2015

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

No abstract provided.

Learning The Fighting Game: Black Americans And The First World War, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and …

Imperial Impulses: The Influence Of War And Death On The Writings Of Rudyard Kipling, Dylan J. Sirois

Honors College

This historical inquiry will focus on Rudyard Kipling's life, his works, and their relationship to British Imperialism. More specifically it will demonstrate how Kipling's attitude changed after World War One through his works. To understand Kipling and his place in the British Empire it is essential to understand the framework of imperialism at the time. Once an understanding of imperialism is formed it is possible to get to know Kipling and the world he grew into. The circumstances of Kipling's upbringing were undoubtably what drove him into his passion for empire, while his later experiences were what drove him to …

From Bread And Jam To Woolton Pie: Food Rationing And Improved Nutrition In Wwii Great Britain, Jennifer G. Joyner

History Undergraduate Theses

The practice of controlling food supplies has existed since ancient times—driven by urbanization, the controls were of a protective nature, as the commercialization of food production and retailing led to opportunities for graft and corruption. Authorities, motivated by the belief in a “moral economy” that held the public good in higher esteem than market forces, attempted to curb these abuses with various controls. However, in Great Britain in the eighteenth century, rapid industrialization led to a new economic and political approach to governance: that the public was best served by free trade.

This premise meant that market demands now superseded …

“To Fly Is More Fascinating Than To Read About Flying”: British R.F.C. Memoirs Of The First World War, 1918-1939, Ian A. Isherwood

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

Literature concerning aerial warfare was a new genre created by the First World War. With manned flight in its infancy, there were no significant novels or memoirs of pilots in combat before 1914. It was apparent to British publishers during the war that the new technology afforded a unique perspective on the battlefield, one that was practically made for an expanding literary marketplace. As such former Royal Flying Corps pilots created a new type of war book, one written by authors self-described as “Knights in the Air”, a literary mythology carefully constructed by pilots and publishers and propagated in the …

Ms-155: Lt. Francis M. Tompkins World War One Scrapbooks, Amy E. Lucadamo

All Finding Aids

Francis M. Tompkins created three scrapbooks with images and materials that he collected during his service in WWI from 1917-1920. Most of the images are official army photographs printed on postcard stock. They are labeled on the image and sometimes dated. Additionally, Tompkins provides detailed descriptions of the locations, battles, individuals, and views pictured in the photographs. He describes the movements of the 305th Engineers and the tasks they performed in each location, often building bridges to allow for the movement of soldiers and equipment.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide …

Ms-147: Lieutenant Andrew R. Kane Letters, Amy E. Lucadamo

All Finding Aids

This collection is made up of 28 letters sent to Andrew R. Kane of Philadelphia, PA from May 31-July 15, 1918 while he was serving with the 112th Infantry, Company C in France. They were sent by the women in his family: his mother, two sisters, his sister-in-law, and girlfriend. His younger sister, Frances, and girlfriend, Marie wrote most often. Letters reference family and friends in Philadelphia, their pride in Andrew’s service, and their worries about his safety. They express patriotic and religious sentiments. Letters from Andrew’s mother, Mary, contain the most spelling and grammatical errors and letters from his …

Ms-148: John Alexander Kinnear Wwi Letters, Dori L. Gorczyca

All Finding Aids

The letters of John Alexander Kinnear consist of 7 postcards and 92 letters which were written by Kinnear to his family living near Lexington Virginia. The letters range in dates from November of 1916 (before Kinnear joined the service) to May of 1919 (after he arrived home from Europe). The letters are mainly addressed to his mother, Mrs. J. J. L. Kinnear, but there are some that are addressed to his father and siblings.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information …

Ms-130: World War I Letters Of Henry W. Straus, Devin Mckinney

All Finding Aids

This collection comprises 48 letters from Henry W. Straus to his wife Anna. They were written between June 1918 and March 1919, when Henry, as a U.S. Army medical officer, was serving a British ambulance corps in France. Throughout the letters, Straus addresses his wife with great tenderness and yearning, anticipating their reunion and post-war life. He also displays a progressive attitude with respect to women’s independence, abilities, and right to do useful work.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information …

Gen Ms 27 Early 20th-Century German Print Collection Finding Aid, Julie Cismoski, Kristin D. Morris

Search the General Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Description:

Printed materials acquired by the donor's father while serving in West Germany during the Cold War. The Collection contains 37 items, books and ephemeral material. Materials deal with German history from the beginning of World War I to the end of World War II. Dates span 1914 to 1983, with the bulk evenly spread between the periods of 1915-1923 and 1934-1942. The collection includes propaganda, war humor, poems, songs, and a film promotional leaflet; stories from German prisoners of war during WWI; and materials related to revolution (following World War I). The two issues of Stern magazine were published …

Mata Hari: A Life Of Lies, Olivia Blessing

Olivia L Blessing

During the international scandal of her 1917 trial and subsequent execution, Mata Hari’s name became a universal title for a traitorous woman. Since then, spies like Tokyo Rose and Radient Jade were known respectively as the "Mata Hari of the airways" and the "Mata Hari of the East." However, unlike the other two women, Mata Hari was famous for being a woman who would do anything for a price years before the French accused her of treason, and this image hurt her during the trial as much as the accusations of treason did.

Ms-103: Jes Jerry Jessen World War I Letters, Kate Boeree

All Finding Aids

This collection contains 109 letters written by Jes Jerry Jessen addressed to his family in Spokane, WA, including his mother and father, his brothers George and Ralph, his sister Helen (“La La”) and his aunt Molly between June 6th, 1917 and June 22nd, 1919. These letters follow him through his training in Vancouver, Washington; Charlotte, North Carolina; France; and Germany, where his correspondence ends.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. …

Ms-095: John Wright Collection, Kayla Lenkner

All Finding Aids

This collection consist of letters and postcards received by John Wright between June 1917 and December 1919. Most of the correspondence is addressed to John Wright or the Knoxville Journal, however, some letters are addressed to other people who presumably passed the letters along to Wright for publication in the paper. The collection contains a mixture of letters from soldiers, sailors, cavalry men and officers.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of …

Ms-053: Charles D. Ryan, 66th Engineers, Meggan D. Smith

All Finding Aids

The collection consists primarily of letters from Charles Ryan to Elizabeth Dooling, his wife-to-be. The letters to Elizabeth begin on March 29, 1918 and the final one in the collection is dated June 3, 1919. The only other items in the collection is an envelope addressed to Elizabeth Dooling from Charles Ryan, a newspaper clipping of Ryan’s marriage to Elizabeth, a blank postcard with two soldiers on the front, and a letter to Ryan from the Treasury Department.

Although Ryan briefly mentions significant events, such as Germany being defeated and Italy leaving the Peace Conference, his letters focus largely on …