Recent Historiography of the First World War (Part II)Author(s): Alan Kramer

Source: Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift für moderne europäische

Geschichte / Revue d'histoire européenne contemporaine , Vol. 12, No. 2, Ideas, Practices
and Histories of Humanitarianism (2014), pp. 155-174
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26266127

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 FORUM 155

Alan Kramer
Recent Historiography of the
First World War
(Part II)

The first part (JMEH 12 (2014) 1, 5–28) dealt with the

internationalisation of First World War historiography and
transnational history. It asked why the war is almost entirely
unknown in the history and memory of some states, while it
has powerful symbolic value in others. It provided an overview
of the literature on the origins, combat on the Western Front,
other fronts and non-combatants. It located the international
historiography since 2001 within the long-term context.

5. The Global War

While the fighting in Europe, indeed on the western front, by the big three combat-
ants has continued to occupy the centre ground, we now have a rising tide of books
on the war as global history. Michael Neiberg’s engaging global history of the war
is a readable introduction to the topic. Its fast pace, clear maps and broad sweep
enable readers to orient themselves easily on a wide range of issues. Particularly
useful are the sections on the war in the Middle East (and its repercussions) and the
US contribution to the Allies. The main focus is on the major battles, but there is
very little economic and financial history.1 Peter Hart has published a survey which
is explicitly a combat history of the war.2 It treats all areas of fighting around the
world, not only from the command perspective but also that of the ordinary soldiers.
Hart lends his voice to those who have been arguing that the British had by 1918
learned the art of integrated warfare, and devotes due attention also to Germany,
Austria, Russia and Italy. Above all he argues that the French bore the brunt of the
German attack for most of the war and contributed most to Allied victory.
Oliver Janz’s Der große Krieg is a fresh approach to the global history of the war
that uses the entire instrumentarium of military, social, cultural, and political his-
tory.3 Apart from providing a lucid, reliable depiction of combat, war politics and
war economy in the European and other theatres, the book moves seamlessly from
the global perspective to the individual. Janz takes the trouble to define exactly what

1 M. Neiberg, Fighting the Great War. A Global His- USA The Great War. A Combat History, New York
tory, Cambridge, Mass. 2005. It is marred, unfor- 2013.
tunately, by many small factual errors. 3 O. Janz, 14. Der große Krieg, Frankfurt am Main
2 P. Hart, The Great War, London 2013; in the 2013.

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 156 Alan Kramer

is meant by «global war», showing how regions well beyond Europe, notably in Af-
rica and Asia, were profoundly affected. Wherever possible there are useful com-
parative discussions, showing for example the differences in censorship policy: in
France it was very strict, leading to newspapers printing exaggerated reports of
French achievements and primitive calumnies of the enemy (bourrage de crâne, as
the soldiers called it), while Germany and Britain had more relaxed censorship and
more plausible reporting. Janz includes some remarkable insights on an aspect that
is seldom examined closely: death, above all its impact on the bereaved. Those killed
were mainly young, single men, and the impact on parents who lost a child, psycho-
logical research has shown, represents the deepest possible trauma. Post-war societ-
ies were for a long time obsessed with death; the form and communicative content
of memorialisation, frequently using Christian and classical allegories, had a great
deal in common internationally, Janz finds. Monuments did not portray death real-
istically, but aestheticised and heroicised it, almost everywhere, as sacrifice for the
fatherland. In a particular twist, in Germany the cult of the fallen was appropriated
by the nationalist right to attack the democratic Republic and implicitly prepare the
next war.4
Essential for the economic history of the war is the collection edited by Broad-
berry and Harrison. This contains chapters on each of the major belligerents by
economists and economic historians on the basis of recent research.5 In his thought-
provoking piece, Albrecht Ritschl challenges the conventional assumption that Ger-
many borrowed while Britain taxed to pay for the war.6 The introductory essay is a
comparative synthesis that assesses the resources available to the Central Powers
and the Allies, and calculates the economic cost of the war. The editors argue that
the outcome of the war was ultimately determined by economic capacity and pro-
duction. However, this argument takes no account of vital factors such as morale
and mobilisation or logistics. If economic capacity were the main determinant, how
would we explain the remarkable performance of the Ottoman army? Nevertheless,
this overstated claim does not detract from the richness of the arguments and the
great quantity of useful data produced by the individual authors.
Economic warfare and naval warfare have long been a backwater of First World
War research. The more accessible topic of civilian suffering due to hunger has been
treated more frequently, but often without much rigour. Germany is usually the only
focus of attention, although almost all belligerent nations experienced hardship
and several countries’ populations suffered higher death rates. The civilian «excess
mortality rate» was at least 50 per cent higher in Italy than in Germany.7 The mass

4 Ibid., 351–358. omy at War, 1914–1918 and Beyond», in: ibid.,

5 S. Broadberry / M. Harrison (eds.), The Economics 41–76.
of World War I, Cambridge 2005. 7 A. Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction. Culture and Mass
6 A. Ritschl, «The Pity of Peace: Germany’s Econ- Killing in the First World War, Oxford 2007, 130.

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 157

hunger in Germany has traditionally been attributed to the Allied blockade. Avner
Offer’s book The First World War: An Agrarian Interpretation was the only work to
make much of an impact on broader historiography. He controversially argued that
while the German people ate less during the war and suffered sometimes from hun-
ger, Germany did not starve. Gross deficiencies in the system of rationing and distri-
bution, policy errors and deliberate interest-driven decisions by the state played the
greatest role in causing hunger.8
In his book on British economic warfare Nicholas Lambert argues that previous
generations of historians were wrong in assuming that blockade «must be a slow-
acting weapon» and have «overlooked evidence suggesting that the Admiralty devel-
oped a fast-acting plan for economic pressure».9 This is not convincing. Moreover,
by ignoring the effects of the policy in Germany, he fails to assess its impact. Since
the book omits the decisive period from early 1916 to late 1918, it tells the story of
the failure of economic warfare. The book provides a plethora of detail on the bu-
reaucratic and political struggle within the British administration in the first eigh-
teen months of the war. Lambert rightly shows how difficult it was for Britain to re-
strict neutral countries’ burgeoning exports to Germany, while not damaging
relations with them. But he also presents several questionable theses: the claim that
«confidence in an early victory remained both high and widespread» is contradicted
by much of his own evidence, and the idea that the blockade was a «hastily impro-
vised […] new approach to economic action» is curious, to say the least.10
One aspect of Allied economic superiority was their access to global labour sup-
plies. A major advance in our knowledge of this hidden history is presented by Xu
Guoqi on the Chinese labourers who worked for the British, French and American
armies, mainly in transport and behind the front.11 About 140.000 men were re-
cruited and sent by the Chinese government that hoped to gain some influence
in the post-war world; those expectations were dashed, and the workers encoun-
tered poor conditions, accommodation behind barbed wire, exposure to shellfire,
and racism.
The contribution of troops from the colonial empires of the belligerents is still
under-researched. Santanu Das has noted in the introduction to his collection of
essays that «the scope and magnitude of the experience [of the colonial and racial
aspects of the war] and its after-effects are inversely proportional to the attention
that has been paid to them.»12 His own introduction is a useful overview, and the

8 A. Offer, The First World War: An Agrarian Inter- History of the First World War, vol. 2: The State,
pretation, Oxford 1989. Cambridge 2014, 460–489.
9 N. A. Lambert, Planning Armageddon. British Eco- 11 X. Guoqi, Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese
nomic Warfare and the First World War, Cam- Workers in the Great War, Cambridge, Mass. 2011.
bridge, Mass. 2012, 3. 12 S. Das, «Introduction», in: idem (ed.), Race, Em-
10 Ibid., 498–499. On economic warfare as global pire and First World War Writing, Cambridge 2011,
phenomenon see A. Kramer, «Blockade and Eco- 1–32, here 25.
nomic Warfare» in: J. Winter (ed.), The Cambridge

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 158 Alan Kramer

contributions, which are based on memoirs, diaries and literary sources, focus on
both combatants and labourers in the global war from China, Vietnam, India, East
Africa, Jamaica, Australia and New Zealand. Colonial troops in fact featured promi-
nently in contemporary sources, with Germany raising the charge that deploying
«savages» against Europeans was an atrocity.
Germany did not commit African troops on European battlefields, although it
did so in East Africa to great effect, as discussed below. Some 130.000 Indian sol-
diers served with the British army on the Western Front, but most were withdrawn
at the end of 1915 and sent to the Middle East; smaller contingents of Indian soldiers
served in East Africa and at Gallipoli. Numerically more significant were the French
colonial troops, of whom 473.000 fought in Europe.13 Known collectively as troupes
indigènes, the presence of men from North and West Africa, Indochina and Mada-
gascar raised issues of race and national identity, both for France and their home
countries, as Richard Fogarty argues. French Republican rhetoric of egalitarianism
and fraternity collided with racist practice, as colonial troops were both glorified for
their martial values and «infantilised» even in benevolent discourse. Various types
of inducements and coercion were used to recruit men, including African agents
who captured and presented «volunteers» in order to receive a bounty. As news of
high casualty rates and poor conditions spread, the colonial administrations intro-
duced conscription, which led to unrest, desertions and revolts. One Tunisian com-
pany that refused to fight was punished by «decimation», Fogarty has discovered.14
But recruitment of volunteers in Africa in 1918 was remarkably successful, with
improved incentives and the help of black parliamentary deputy Blaise Diagne. It is
still an open question whether the West Africans served as «cannon fodder», but
casualty rates of the tirailleurs sénégalais, as all troops from French West Africa were
collectively known, were 20 per cent higher than those of French men. Race stereo-
typing and «military ethnology» divided peoples into races guerrières and races non-
guerrières. The High Command thus stressed the «highly developed warrior in-
stinct» and bravery of the tirailleurs sénégalais, and selected them for «energetic and
risky missions»; their exclusion from more technical arms such as the artillery ex-
posed them to greater danger. The judgment on the Indochinese troops was that
they lacked a «warlike nature», for they were «feminine, too small and delicate to
withstand the rigors of combat».15 Henry Kissinger would have been perplexed.
Adriane Lentz-Smith argues that the war was a transformative experience for the
200.000 black soldiers in the American army: temporary freedom from the racist
South, the encounter with white French women and colonial French troops, and the
Wilsonian ideals of self-determination and a «war for democracy». For African

13 R. S. Fogarty, Race and War in France. Colonial 14 Ibid., 29–35.

Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918, Baltimore 15 Ibid., 43–44; 85–87.
2008, 24–27.

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 159

American men, going to fight in France was a part of the «making and unmaking of
black manhood»; as one man said, it was about winning the «respect and right of
law» he was denied in civilian life.16 Not only the soldiers, but also a large part of the
black community saw the war as the occasion to stand up against segregation and
white supremacists. It lent momentum to the civil rights movement. Particularly
notable was the Houston mutiny of 1917 (in a chapter tellingly entitled «Fighting the
Southern Huns»), but there were also lynch murders and race riots across the USA.
There has been a veritable rush of research on German colonial history in the
last ten years. This has focused largely on German South-West Africa and the war
against the Herero and Nama, 1904–1908. But several works investigate the First
World War in East Africa. Uwe Schulte-Varendorff provides a competent critical bi-
ography of General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, whose fame as «colonial hero» was
founded in his leadership of the German Schutztruppe. Against numerically over-
whelming Allied forces, Lettow-Vorbeck’s small band fought a resilient guerrilla
campaign. The exploits of Lettow-Vorbeck and his success in avoiding capture or
defeat soon became the stuff of legend. His tactics of evading frontal battle were
intended to draw in ever more Allied men and divert them from Europe. The reality
of the heroic leader and his loyal African askaris was that his band of German sol-
diers – only 267 by November 1917 – survived through brutal coercion of Africans
(1700 askaris and 4500 porters and «boys») and a grand tour of pillage and destruc-
tion, stealing food and munitions, meting out punishment to rebellious Africans
with repeated Strafexpeditionen against the Maasai and other peoples.17 Eckard Mi-
chels’s more substantial biography analyses several reasons for the ability of the
Schutztruppe to defy the Allies for so long apart from the military skill of the «colo-
nial hero», above all the nature of the environment and the blunders of the British-
led forces.18
Michael Pesek focuses instead on the wartime transformation of society in Ger-
man East Africa. As both sides seized labour and resources, the military campaigns
were as catastrophic as the early phase of colonisation or enslavement, depopulating
vast districts. But it was the Germans, surprisingly, who were the first to abandon
racial shibboleths and deploy armed Africans in combat; better accustomed to their
environment, the askaris proved to be one of the reasons for the resilience of the
Schutztruppe.19
The war in East Africa features prominently in Bill Nasson’s book about South
Africa at war.20 Nasson’s multi-perspective approach provides the reader with a

16 A. Lentz-Smith, Freedom Struggles: African Ameri- Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck. Ein preußischer Kolonial-
cans and World War I, Cambridge, Mass. 2009, offizier, Paderborn 2008.
81. 19 M. Pesek, Das Ende eines Kolonialreiches. Ostafrika
17 U. Schulte-Varendorff, Kolonialheld für Kaiser und im Ersten Weltkrieg, Frankfurt am Main 2010.
Führer. General Lettow-Vorbeck – Mythos und Wirk- 20 B. Nasson, Springboks on the Somme. South Africa
lichkeit, Berlin 2006. in the Great War 1914–1918, Johannesburg 2007.
18 E. Michels, «Der Held von Deutsch-Ostafrika»:

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160 Alan Kramer

sense of place, a feeling for the characters involved and an overview of the global
and regional context. He reveals the internal political tensions behind the South
African contingent, struggling to keep the Afrikaner element away from the path of
rebellion, recruiting Cape coloured men while not encouraging them to expect
equality. He delights in exposing the blunders of the military commanders in
the East African imbroglio. General Smuts ignored the great logistical obstacles
caused by intense heat, tsetse flies, malaria, heavy rain, and German control of the
railway. By the end of 1916, his troops were undernourished, many were too ill to
move, and two-thirds of them had to be shipped home owing to sickness. The Allies
too, relied on porters, in their case over one million, of whom 100.000 died from
exhaustion and disease. Nevertheless, the relentless pressure applied by Smuts
meant that the South African forces had conquered three-quarters of German terri-
tory by early 1917. The British Empire’s numerical and material superiority com-
pelled the German forces to flee from pillar to post, with each encounter causing
casualties, although higher on the Allied side, that were proportionately greater for
the Germans. Still unacknowledged in mainstream historiography is the extent to
which a war regarded in London and Berlin as a sideshow devastated an entire
country.
If the South African government’s hope of consolidating white unity through a
swift, victorious campaign slowly withered in the febrile heat of East Africa, hopes
were high that the participation of a white South African contingent in Europe
might restore pride. Nasson describes with wry humour the attempt to create a
Union national sentiment, forged out of hardy colonial farming types, mixing Boers
with Brits, and a fair degree of inventing a «Scottish» South African identity. Kilts,
sporrans and «Scots-Zulu» war cries were all very well until the horror of Delville
Wood in July 1916. Greatly outnumbered and facing superior German artillery, the
South African brigade managed to capture and hold this important salient on the
Somme, but at staggering cost. Five days later, when they were relieved, the Spring-
boks counted only 779 survivors.
The Cape Corps Battalion, a force of some 1000 coloured men who fought on
the Palestine front, suffered the loss of 450, but like their white brethren were
buoyed by a record of courage and victory. In the Cape Corps Labour Battalion and
the Auxiliary Horse Transport Unit 5500 men worked in France. Another 25.000
black men served in the South African Native Labour Contingent. Enclosed in com-
pounds behind barbed wire, their poor conditions of work and pay underlined the
menial nature of their service.
Unlike in India, where the war lent impetus to the national movement, or in
Australia, New Zealand and Canada, where it virtually created a national identity,
the divided experience of South Africans did the opposite, Nasson argues. Return-
ing black and coloured men were denied the franchise, and not even among the
whites did a sense of common achievement emerge. Delville Wood itself became

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 161

a battleground of memory, as the Anglo community commemorated it as worthy

sacrifice, while republican Afrikaners saw it as confirmation of what they recalled
from the Anglo-Boer War – another case of incompetent British generals who
wasted South Africans’ lives.
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses’ pioneering study of Portugal reveals that its war expe-
rience was similarly divisive. Portugal’s intervention in 1916 was «the central ele-
ment» in the existence of the First Republic (1910–1926), a project embarked on by
a regime that hoped to consolidate its power base while continuing to exclude the
majority of the population from full citizenship.21 The fighting in Angola between
Portuguese and Germans took place long before they were formally at war with each
other. A badly-led Portuguese force was quickly defeated and fled in panic. The sorry
tale of poor performance was repeated in Mozambique, where the Portuguese faced
not only the incursion of Lettow-Vorbeck’s Schutztruppe, but also widespread revolt
by the African populations. The consequences for the men were terrible: of the force
of 50.000, 5800 died (twice as many as on the Western Front), but only 300 of these
in combat; illness had felled the rest. The repercussions for the indigenous peoples
were catastrophic – not content with drafting Africans as porters, the troops com-
mitted brutal atrocities.22
The Portuguese army’s experience on the Western Front was little more condu-
cive to national pride. Regarded with disdain by Britain and France, the two Portu-
guese divisions were seen as a liability rather than an asset. In the great German
offensive in spring 1918 the demoralised Second Division was crushed by two Ger-
man corps. Morale plummeted and several units mutinied. Inside Portugal, the
state’s attempt to promote a «sacred union» came to grief because it failed to ensure
equitable distribution of resources. People’s notion of a «moral economy» fuelled
the unrest, and heavy-handed repression further alienated the state from society.
The government’s loss of legitimation culminated in the coup of Sidónio Pais in
December 1917, who established a dictatorship that foreshadowed those of later re-
gimes in southern Europe.

6. Motivation and Endurance

One of the major themes of recent scholarship has been combat motivation. What
enabled soldiers to keep going through four years of mud, blood, lice, and existential
peril? To the more «casualty-averse» wealthy societies of the early twenty-first cen-
tury, it seems almost impossible to believe that men could tolerate the conditions,
but they did, with a few well-known exceptions. One was the French mutinies of
spring 1917. Guy Pedroncini in 1967 and Len Smith in 1994 rejected previous as-

21 F. Ribeiro de Meneses, Portugal 1914–1926. From 22 Ibid., 33–50.

the First World War to Military Dictatorship, Bris-
tol 2004, ix–xx.

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 162 Alan Kramer

sumptions that they were a mass revolutionary revolt or signalled the near-collapse
of the French army. Some 40.000 men in 68 divisions disobeyed orders to attack
after suffering high casualties in the offensive ordered by General Nivelle. Smith
interpreted the mutinies as part of a continuing struggle over authority relations
within the army and concluded that soldiers would cease to fight «when they consid-
ered that doing so was disproportionate to the sacrifices expected of them». Smith
argued that soldiers had successfully opposed the forces of authority in a rational
calculus.23
This has now been challenged by André Loez, who argues that the majority of
the soldiers who mutinied had not even engaged in the Nivelle offensive. In a study
based on intensive reading of court martial records, postal control reports and let-
ters, he explains that discontent resulted from a multitude of causes, from lack of
leave to harsh discipline. His social-historical analysis reveals that the mutineers
were mainly from the lower middle class rather than workers or peasants, younger
than average and more likely to come from Paris. He rejects the Péronne view that
the mutineers were «patriotic» and «moderate», merely looking for «negotiated obe-
dience»; rather, the mutinies took place in a context of a widespread «crisis of disci-
pline» throughout the army. The ordinary French soldier, Loez asserts, had little at-
tachment to the patrie, which was an artificial construct imposed from outside; the
mutinies expressed a broader desire to stop the war.24 This stretches the evidence
too far, especially in view of the fact that virtually all the poilus had fought and con-
sented to fight, consistently since 1914.
As Bruno Cabanes has shown, in summer/autumn 1918 the French soldiers,
despite their fatigue, were determined to see the war through to the end, merci-
lessly. In their letters the most frequent thought was that the moment for peace had
not yet come: «It is necessary to beat the enemy before talking with him.» The dis-
covery of the regions devastated by the Germans during their retreat and the mem-
ory of their fallen comrades made the men all the more resolute. After the armistice,
for all their joy and relief at the end of the war, soldiers continued to express hatred
of the Germans in the most violent terms.25
In The Embattled Self Smith asks what lay behind the «rational calculus» in sol-
diers’ experience; he finds that the limits of a metanarrative of tragedy can be over-
come by examining the myriad – and often contradictory – perspectives on the war
offered by the writings of individual soldiers. Soldiers could be heroes in one inter-

23 L. V. Smith, Between Mutiny and Obedience: The tary victims of executions and the controversies of
Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division during their memory see N. Offenstadt, Les Fusillés de la
World War I, Princeton 1994; citations from Grande Guerre et la mémoire collective (1994–
idem, The Embattled Self. French Soldiers’ Testimo- 1999), Paris 2002.
ny of the Great War, Ithaca 2007, 10–11. 25 B. Cabanes, La Victoire endeuillée. La sortie de
24 A. Loez, 14–18. Les refus de la guerre. Une histoire guerre des soldats français 1918–1920, Paris 2004,
des mutins, Paris 2010 (harsh discipline: 19; wide- 33, 58–70.
spread rejection of war: 545). On the French mili-

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 163

pretation, victims in another, or they could be both, or neither. Soldiers experiencing

combat are usually unable to make much sense of the event.26
Complementing Janz’s observation about death, Smith finds that «[a]ctual kill-
ing is surprisingly elusive in Great War testimonies. Millions died; very few indeed
seemed to have killed.» Most witnesses saw themselves in effect as «the heirs to
Renaissance humanism», so it was not so surprising they found it difficult to write
about the act of killing; the same goes for British, Italian and German testimonies.27
Along with the historians associated with the Historial de la Grande Guerre,
Smith has argued over the last two decades that the key concept to explain why sol-
diers kept fighting in the war was «consent». For a variety of reasons and motiva-
tions soldiers fought, out of a sense of national commitment, possibly religious
identity, small-group loyalty or hatred of the enemy. In France, this idea has been
controversial, even highly divisive. «Consent» has been criticised as an ideological
smoke-screen for nationalist «coercion» by historians such as Rémy Cazals, Fré-
déric Rousseau, François Bouloc, and André Loez, associated with the CRID (Le
collectif du recherche international et de débat sur la guerre 1914–1918). The latter
stress that the state used the apparatus of education and military discipline to en-
force obedience; coercion worked, but it was against the true interests of the French
peasants and workers who only wanted peace. Ultimately, as Smith argues, equating
«coercion» with «consent» is part of a debate about the identity of the Third Repub-
lic, «perhaps even the legacy of French republicanism itself». For if it was only «co-
ercion» that kept men fighting for the Republic, the legitimacy of the Republic itself
could be called into question. By contrast, Smith sees the French soldiers as a «com-
munity of citizen-soldiers» who obeyed «an authority whose source and legitimacy
lay in themselves and their compatriots». He shows how «combatants became wit-
nesses», how their experience transcended narrow categories of tragedy and victi-
misation.28
Another explanation of soldiers’ motivation to endure the war is to be found in
recent studies of trench newspapers. Older histories of the war often ascribed al-
most unlimited power to propaganda in moulding the opinions and mobilising the
aggression of soldiers. They assumed that propaganda meant top-down, state ma-
nipulation of opinion and often limited themselves to describing its content and
organisation. Anne Lipp innovatively analyses instead the reciprocal relationship
between producers, agents and recipients of propaganda. For example, the pro-
gramme of «patriotic instruction» (Vaterländischer Unterricht), which Ludendorff
initiated in 1917, often did not go down well with soldiers. Many junior officers
who were expected to give the instruction lectures either procrastinated or refused
to do so altogether; even some senior officers commented that one could not simply

26 Smith, The Embattled Self, 11–12, 32–34, 45–47. 28 Ibid., 106–109, 194–202.
27 Ibid., 90, 95–105.

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 164 Alan Kramer

command good spirit. Instructors noted how difficult it was to motivate the com-
mon soldiers, who could not see the point of listening to a lecture and even put up
«passive resistance». «Patriotic instruction» could be counter-productive when its
content failed to match the soldiers’ perceptions and experience.29
Robert Nelson’s investigation of German soldiers’ newspapers came to a some-
what more charitable conclusion. He found that they combined «top-down propa-
ganda» with «bottom-up sentiment»; their editors «knew they had to appeal to both
their superiors as well as to their […] mass audience». He regards the German troop
newspapers moreover as an unusually important cultural historical source because
they were more widespread than Allied newspapers, and because of the position of
the German army as an occupation force. In keeping with the best practice in mod-
ern comparative cultural history, he consulted hundreds of Allied as well as German
newspapers and found that the German papers provide insight into key concepts
such as comradeship and manliness, as well as on the German «civilising mission»
in eastern Europe. Unlike in British and French soldier newspapers, gender images
of the self and the enemy played a key role. On the other hand, he notes one great
similarity: on the evidence of the French, British and German soldier newspapers,
hatred of the enemy was «almost completely absent». While supporting the idea that
soldiers’ endurance of the war rested ultimately on consent, not coercion, he there-
fore concludes that «hatred […] should be dropped from the ‹war culture› argu-
ment».30
Combat motivation is the key theme in Alexander Watson’s Enduring the Great
War. He shows why the British army, for all its problems of command and temporary
phases of demoralisation, remained resilient at the level of the ordinary soldiers and
combat officers until the end, even overcoming the shock of the German Spring Of-
fensive 1918. In parallel, he explains how morale of the German army, strong until
that point, collapsed when the offensive foundered. While his argument in relation
to Britain is not totally original, the comparative dimension certainly is both original
and compelling. His explanation of the German mass surrenders in late summer
and autumn 1918, in particular his discovery of the crucial role played by junior
officers, is persuasive and finely nuanced.31 More contentious is his rejection of

29 A. Lipp, Meinungslenkung im Krieg. Kriegserfah- 30 R. L. Nelson, German Soldier Newspapers of the

rungen deutscher Soldaten und ihre Deutung 1914– First World War, Cambridge 2011, 237–243. Sté-
1918, Göttingen 2003, 70–73. Earlier examples of phane Audoin-Rouzeau started the modern study
works on propaganda: D. Welch, Germany, Propa- of this medium with his book: Men at War, 1914–
ganda and Total War, 1914–1918. The Sins of 1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in
­Omission, London 2000. Older studies of Brit- France During the First World War, Providence, RI
ish propaganda are deeply flawed, for example 1992 (French original ed. 1986).
M. L. Sanders / P. M. Taylor, British Propaganda 31 A. Watson, Enduring the Great War. Combat, Mo-
during the First World War, 1914–18, London 1982. rale and Collapse in the German and British Armies,
For the French case see C. Prochasson / A. Ras- 1914–1918, Cambridge 2008.
mussen (eds.), Vrai et faux dans la Grande Guerre,
Paris 2004.

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 165

­ ilhelm Deist’s thesis that up to one million German soldiers engaged in a «covert
W
military strike» in 1918; Watson shows that the statistical methodology for this esti-
mate was flawed, and he puts forward an alternative view that there was neither a
«covert strike» nor mass disobedience until the October peace note.32
Endurance and morale were closely connected with soldiers’ relationship with
the home front, and in recent years historians have begun to challenge the as-
sumption of an insuperable communication gap, as Martha Hanna has done in a
moving microhistory based on the correspondence between a French soldier and
his wife.33

7. Biographical Studies
One good illustration of how «propaganda» was not driven by the state but emerged
organically and spontaneously from its bourgeois producers is the invention of the
myth of Hindenburg, which is perceptively analysed in recent biographical studies,
above all by Wolfram Pyta and Anna von der Goltz. Originating at the battle of Tan-
nenberg, the Hindenburg myth appeared at just the right moment to compensate
for the half-suppressed bad news of the defeat on the Marne in September 1914 and
the dismissal of Moltke. The press, whether liberal or conservative, Protestant or
Catholic, and especially the illustrated press, began to worship Hindenburg for his
supposed qualities of calmness and strong nerves, as well as his «virile gravitas».
Official circles had not planned the invention of the myth, but once Hindenburg had
achieved his mythic status, the government and the military capitalised on it to re-
fresh popular mobilisation.34 Both Pyta and von der Goltz show the enormous ex-
tent of the Hindenburg myth, with its myriad expressions in material culture and
the media and fateful political repercussions after 1918. Goltz also relates myth and
propaganda to the real opinions of soldiers and civilians. Even before the failure of
the Spring Offensive in 1918, some were beginning to question the infallibility of
the hero. Public anger and disappointment at the end of the war, nevertheless, were
deflected onto Ludendorff, who was forced to resign, while Hindenburg was still
deemed unimpeachable.35
In turn, Hindenburg’s own «memory» of the war weighed heavily at a pivotal
point in history. As Pyta shows, Hindenburg overcame his well-known reluctance to
appoint the «Bohemian corporal» to office in January 1933 because he believed he
was restoring the «spirit of 1914», recreating the Volksgemeinschaft by integrating the
Nazis.36 But Pyta also has a great deal more to say about Hindenburg as wartime

32 Ibid., 214. 34 A. von der Goltz, Hindenburg. Power, Myth, and

33 M. Hanna, Your Death Would be Mine. Pierre and the Rise of the Nazis, Oxford 2009, 14–25.
Marie Pireaud in the Great War, Cambridge, Mass. 35 Ibid., 26–64.
2006. See also B. Ulrich / B. Ziemann’s introduc- 36 W. Pyta, Hindenburg. Herrschaft zwischen Hohen-
tion to German Soldiers in the Great War: Letters zollern und Hitler, Munich 2007, 259.
and Eyewitness Accounts, Barnsley 2010 (German
ed. Frankfurt am Main 1994).

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 166 Alan Kramer

commander. Contrary to his public image as military genius, he spent his time on
the Eastern Front hunting, eating well and sleeping long, while Ludendorff did the
hard work. That established a precedent the duo continued from 1916 as the chiefs
of the supreme command, although Hindenburg, as a highly political general, now
devoted himself full-time to the politics of warfare: intriguing, building his «sym-
bolic capital» and dodging responsibility for bad decisions.
The brains behind Hindenburg, Ludendorff, has been treated several times by
historians; a new biography by Manfred Nebelin confirms with more detail what we
knew rather than fundamentally changing our picture.37 He repeats Martin Kitch-
en’s notion of Ludendorff (and Hindenburg) as Germany’s «dictator», which is prob-
lematic in view not only of the Kaiser’s constitutional right of appointment – which
he used – but also the growing importance of parliament and civil society. Pyta
rightly regards the term «dictator» as inappropriate, and sees Hindenburg as some-
one who came to exercise «charismatic rule» in the tradition of Bismarck.38
No general in any other belligerent country attained such a high level of political
influence, which perhaps indicates the peculiar role of the military in Germany. Al-
lied generals’ careers confirm the rule that in democracies, at least, war was too
important to be left to them. Keith Jeffery’s biography of Sir Henry Wilson illumi-
nates decision-making within the British army and the political infighting between
army and government. Wilson played a decisive role in the military co-operation
between Britain and France; as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in 1918 he was
the head of the army, principal military adviser to the government and co-initiator of
the Allied Supreme War Council which began properly to coordinate coalition war-
fare.39 Elizabeth Greenhalgh’s study of Foch during the war shows that as Allied
supreme commander in 1918 Wilson was involved as much in the politics as in the
military leadership of coalition warfare.40 She argues that historians for too long
have been dazzled by the German gains in the Spring Offensive and are at a loss to
explain the Allied counter-offensives and victory.41 Her authoritative book redresses
that imbalance with a substantial contribution on the key role of Foch, in particular
his own «learning experience».
The long-awaited third volume of John C. G. Röhl’s biography of Kaiser Wilhelm
contains a 180-page treatment of the monarch’s war record. Contrary to what one
might expect from the leading proponent of the argument that the Kaiser was the
active arbiter of German politics, the «personal rule thesis», Röhl coolly states that in
the July crisis 1914 Wilhelm was not the key person, and not the main warmonger,

37 M. Nebelin, Ludendorff. Diktator im Ersten Welt- 40 E. Greenhalgh, Foch in Command: The Forging of
krieg, Berlin 2011 a First World War General, Cambridge 2011.
38 Pyta, Hindenburg, 242, 246. 41 On the German spring offensives see D. T. Za-
39 K. Jeffery, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. A Po- becki, The German 1918 Offensives: A Case Study in
litical Soldier, Oxford 2006. the Operational Level of War, London 2006.

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 167

but was nevertheless still responsible for what transpired.42 In the days after the as-
sassination of Franz Ferdinand his position oscillated between war and peace, but he
was evidently convinced of Belgrade’s complicity, indeed guilt, in the murder, and
demanded the final settling of accounts with Serbia «now or never», with full Ger-
man support. Röhl leaves no doubt that the German government had the Kaiser’s
backing for its risk calculation of the «great war».43 The account of the Kaiser’s cruise
in Norwegian waters shows how closely he was kept informed of the diplomatic de-
velopments and how his furiously scribbled marginalia backed the aggressive course
of the government. His own bumbling interventions (and that of his son, the Crown
Prince) almost let the cat out of the bag.44 Why the Kaiser suddenly changed tack
from his warlike course to urge some form of conciliation on 28 July, which amounted
to the proposal that the Habsburg army should merely «occupy Belgrade», Röhl ex-
plains convincingly by the fact that Bethmann Hollweg, aware that Wilhelm feared
above all British intervention, deleted from the telegrams from London the passages
in which ambassador Lichnowsky warned that Britain would not stay neutral. Even
Wilhelm’s half-hearted attempts at mediation were overruled by Bethmann.45
In theory, much of this was – or should have been – known, not least from Karl
Kautsky’s publication of the German documents in 1919 and articles published by
Röhl himself. But this authoritative biography, which reaches a mass readership,
enriches the account with exhaustive research in hitherto untapped archive files and
recently published documents.46 Above all, it leaves no room for apologetic or revi-
sionist accounts of the Kaiser’s belligerence and co-responsibility.
Röhl’s assessment of Wilhelm’s wartime activities is devastating: the supreme
commander was deliberately kept in the dark about military operations, but even if
he had been kept better informed he was intellectually incapable of independent
judgment, and despite complaining about being sidelined he never made an at-
tempt to form his own opinion.47 Even when he attempted to intervene, his propos-
als were brushed aside, especially by Hindenburg and Ludendorff. His remaining
area of competence was in the selection of the chancellor and military commanders,
but his only decision of substance in this regard was to plump for Max von Baden
against Ludendorff in the final crisis of October 1918.48
Thomas Weber’s sensationalist book on Hitler in the war is more useful as an
account of a Bavarian regiment in the war than as a contribution to the biography of
Hitler. We still know very little about Hitler’s war experience, mainly because few

42 J. C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II. Der Weg in den Abgrund, 46 E.g. H. Afflerbach (ed.), Kaiser Wilhelm II. als
1900–1941, Munich 2008, 1068–1069. English Oberster Kriegsherr im Ersten Weltkrieg. Quellen aus
translation to be published by Cambridge Univer- der militärischen Umgebung des Kaisers 1914–1918,
sity Press in March 2014. Munich 2005.
43 Ibid., 1080–1089. 47 Röhl, Wilhelm II, 1185.
44 Ibid., 1090–1108. 48 Ibid., 1240–1241.
45 Ibid., 1115, 1148. This indicates the real limits of
the Kaiser’s role.

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 168 Alan Kramer

written documents by or about him have survived. Weber believes that Hitler left the
war much the same as he entered it. He argues that Hitler’s position as regimental
headquarters despatch runner was far less dangerous than he (and many of his bi-
ographers) later claimed, and his Iron Cross, first class, was by no means a rare
distinction for bravery. In his thoroughly-researched new biography, Volker Ullrich
shows how the war was in fact fundamental to the development of Hitler’s ruthless
social Darwinist world-view.49 Ullrich rightly dismisses Weber’s claim that Hitler
was a cowardly Etappenschwein. Weber nevertheless deserves recognition for ex-
plaining that as the List regiment retreated under devastating Allied attacks from
late August to November 1918, Hitler was far away from the front. He therefore did
not experience or comprehend its collapse of morale and thus readily believed the
army had been stabbed in the back.50
Paul O’Brien’s study of Mussolini, by contrast, makes a substantial contribution
to our knowledge of the future Duce, largely because sources are more readily avail-
able: Mussolini, unlike Hitler, not only kept a diary but also published a great deal of
journalism in the war. Hitherto, biographies of Mussolini, notably that by Renzo De
Felice, have not discussed Mussolini’s activity during Italian neutrality and omit
most of his crucial war experience. O’Brien shows how Mussolini’s thinking devel-
oped during the war through his actions, re-inventing his persona as heroic combat-
ant and warrior politician. Mussolini’s interventionism was anti-socialist and anti-
democratic from the start, and he had fully absorbed a «war culture» before
Caporetto, which was related to an authoritarian vision of post-war Italy.51
Biographies of civilians can be equally valuable. Lothar Gall’s study of Walther
Rathenau shows how this multi-talented industrialist, banker, patron of cultural mo-
dernity, democratic critic of the Wilhelmine state, and early advocate of a European
economic community as a «civilisation of solidarity», suddenly transformed his vi-
sion when war came. Rathenau was plagued by the fear that Germany lacked the
economic base, above all in raw materials, to wage a long war. He aimed to help
Germany fend off defeat, but also to keep open the way into the future – which only
a policy of understanding with Germany’s enemies could attain. In August 1914 he
therefore offered Bethmann Hollweg his assistance and sent him a project for a
customs union with Austria-Hungary, Belgium and France, and secondly, he pro-
posed a raw materials organisation at the war ministry – which led to the formation
of the Kriegsrohstoffabteilung under his direction.52
The first measure he proposed was to requisition the Belgian stocks of raw ma-
terials – before 8 August, when German troops had barely begun their invasion.

49 T. Weber, Hitler’s First War. Adolf Hitler, The Men 51 P. O’Brien, Mussolini in the First World War. The
of the List Regiment, and The First World War, Ox- Journalist, the Soldier, the Fascist, Oxford / New
ford 2010; V. Ullrich, Adolf Hitler.Vol. 1: Die Jahre York 2005.
des Aufstiegs, Frankfurt am Main 2013. 52 L. Gall, Walther Rathenau. Portrait einer Epoche,
50 Weber, Hitler’s First War, 199–223. Munich 2009, 178–179.

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 169

Despite Rathenau’s energy and undisputed success as organiser of the war economy
(Albert Speer was to say that Rathenau’s policy was his model for the war economy),
he was in private pessimistic about the outcome. Worse, he was not convinced of his
nation’s goals. For Rathenau the war had only one sense – to produce a profound
transformation of continental Europe. The foundation of an economic community
could only take place on the basis of a peace of understanding. He wrote to Beth-
mann Hollweg in early September 1914: «The end goal would be […] central Europe
united under German leadership, politically and economically strengthened against
Britain and the USA, and against Russia.» These ideas were taken up by Friedrich
Naumann in his book Mitteleuropa in 1915. Rathenau had substantial support for
them in the Deutsche Gesellschaft 1914, which he co-founded in November 1915,
with 1200 influential members.53
In the last fifteen months of the war Rathenau became ever more pessimistic,
predicting defeat and the collapse of the Reich. His economic rationalism led him to
scepticism about the promise of swift victory through unrestricted submarine war-
fare, which he had initially supported, but it paradoxically did not stop him asserting
in October 1918 that Germany had ample human and natural resources to continue
the war and demanding a levée en masse, which would have been catastrophic. This
indicates the state of ignorance in which the Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL) kept
Germany’s leading circles if someone as well-informed as Rathenau could make
such outlandish claims.

8. Intellectuals
Intellectuals of most of the main belligerents were swift to announce their support
of the national cause. It is too glib to say, as Julien Benda did in 1927, that the nation-
alist intellectual was a German invention.54 Christophe Prochasson has provided a
more nuanced picture of intellectuals at war. The collapse of the international com-
munity of scholars into hostile blocs, charted through the publication of famous
declarations such as the «Appeal to the World of Culture» (4 October 1914) by 93 of
Germany’s most famous intellectuals, and similar petitions elsewhere, produced
«multiple intellectual realignments». For example, French philosophers, for whom
German philosophy had long been a lodestone, sought to redefine their relationship
with Germany; Catholic and right-wing intellectuals took the opportunity to attack
republican philosophers, even science and progress in general, as pro-German. Out-
right opposition to the war never involved more than a minority of intellectuals,
developing mainly in Russia, Britain and France, to a smaller degree in Germany
and Austria-Hungary.

53 Ibid., 182–189. J. Horne (ed.), Companion to World War I, Mal-

54 C. Prochasson, «Intellectuals and Writers», in: den, Mass. 2010, 323–337, here 323.

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 170 Alan Kramer

Prochasson points out that the intellectual avant-garde could be found at both
ends of the spectrum, with Italian Futurists who glorified war and Bulgarian mod-
ernists and German Dadaists who loathed war.55 Drawing on the recent research of
Nicolas Beaupré, he argues that especially young intellectuals sensed enormous
pressure to demonstrate their commitment by volunteering to fight; the experience
of combat was central to their artistic development. War literature of all kinds, but
especially war poetry and above all war novels, had an «immense impact upon how
society perceived the war», an effect intensified by the film adaptations of war nov-
els. Films «made the books they were based upon into iconic versions of the war that
were seen as ‹representative› of the individual experience».56
Artists reflected in their work all the ambivalence of war mobilisation, some be-
ing quite uncritical like Max Beckmann, who regarded it as an aesthetic inspiration,
while others wished fervently for peace such as Otto Dix, who nevertheless fought
loyally as machine gun unit commander throughout the war.57 German women’s art
responded in a different way. While many lent their support to the war, many ex-
pressed through their art emotions of loss and grief. Claudia Siebrecht argues in her
study of female artists that they developed a unique aesthetic response that reflected
the experience and feelings of mourning women in a wartime society. German female
artists produced moreover a cohesive body of work that was quite distinctive, charac-
terised by expressionism and without parallel in the art of other belligerent nations.58
A comparative study of philosophy in Germany and Britain by Peter Hoeres
finds that German philosophy in the period was dominated by neo-idealism, charac-
terised by the neo-Fichtean Ernst Bergmann.59 Hegelianism, to which British critics
ascribed great influence in Germany, was, Hoeres maintains, more influential out-
side philosophy than among academic philosophers; British propaganda overstated
the influence of the neo-Hegelian military writer Friedrich von Bernhardi. British
idealism, the dominant current in academic philosophy by the late nineteenth cen-
tury, was more practically oriented and politically influential than German philoso-
phy, and it gravitated towards liberalism. By 1914, British philosophy still saw Ger-
man idealism as a point of reference, but as a polar opposite: it rejected «formal
metaphysics» and «over-abstraction», and preferred empiricism, combined with a
rational belief in the improvability of the world.60
Hoeres sketches the break-up of the international networks of academic philoso-
phy in the war, adding detail to what is already known in outline. Philosophers,
along with most of the German educated elite, the Bildungsbürgertum, were espe-
cially susceptible to the myth of national unity, the «spirit of 1914». First World War
55 Ibid., 325–327 59 P. Hoeres, Krieg der Philosophen. Die deutsche und
56 Cf. N. Beaupré, Écrire en guerre, écrire la guerre. die britische Philosophie im Ersten Weltkrieg, Pader-
France, Allemagne 1914–1920, Paris 2006. born 2004.
57 Kramer, Dynamic of Destruction, 260–267. 60 Ibid., 51–52, 60, 64–72, 89, 92.
58 C. Siebrecht, The Aesthetics of Loss. German Wom-
en’s Art of the First World War, Oxford 2013, 1–22.

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 171

historians will find here a trove of information on the wartime publications of phi-
losophers and intellectual life in general. However, there are some contradictions.
Hoeres finds that bellicism featured more frequently among German than British
philosophers during the war; no German philosophers, unlike Russell, openly es-
poused pacifism. Yet in the end he concludes that there was no fundamental na-
tional difference between British and German war philosophy. His own evidence
suggests the differences were real and substantial.61
Several books have discussed religion at war. Annette Becker has rightly stressed
the importance of Christian beliefs in what were still religious – if no longer devout –
societies. The war led to a wave of popular religiosity, even to many conversions. The
surprising thing is not that men believed, or that the war shattered the traditional
beliefs of many, but that many continued to believe, even «after Tannenberg and
Verdun».62 The «fervour of wartime faith» that Becker found is directly contradicted
by the results of Edward Madigan’s study of Anglican chaplains in the British army.
Madigan revises the long-held view that Tommy regarded chaplains as effete, unsol-
dierly types lacking the courage to face action in the front line. Many were decorated
for bravery and a large number were injured or killed. Yet by contrast with Catholic
priests, «the Anglican clergyman had ceased, by 1914, to be an influential figure for
the men of the English industrial working classes […] who made up the bulk of the
British Army.» While Catholic chaplains were «generally preaching to the converted
[…] Anglican padres often had to struggle to get their troops, many of whom were
Anglican only in a very nominal sense, to respond to their ministrations». Most sol-
diers held religious beliefs, and in general they genuinely respected the Anglican
chaplains, but they had little confidence in the established church: chaplains found
it «difficult to convert this popularity and respect into a loyalty to the church they
represented». Madigan concludes that «no mass religious revival, or renewal of An-
glicanism, took place».63 By contrast, a recent examination of religion and American
soldiers by Jonathan Ebel has shown that their war experience actually reinforced
their faith. Drawing in part on the memory of the Civil War, men who fought in and
for the war saw it as a struggle for «redemption», a hope that was especially strong
for black soldiers. Ebel found that pre-war religious culture of America was «per-
fectly tailored to war», and contrary to his own expectation, the war affirmed and
strengthened these faiths. This applied, mutatis mutandis, to liberal Protestants, con-
servative proto-fundamentalists and Catholics. War was particularly suited to the
«muscular Christianity» movement that sought to remasculinise religion.64

61 Ibid., 477, 580–583. 63 E. Madigan, Faith under Fire. Anglican Army

62 A. Becker, La Guerre et la foi: De la mort à la mé- Chaplains and the Great War, Basingstoke 2011,
moire 1914–1930, Paris 1994; English translation: 162–163, 198, 242–243, 249.
War and Faith: The Religious Imagination in 64 J. H. Ebel, Faith in the Fight: Religion and the
France, 1914–1930, Oxford 1998. Idem, «Faith, American Soldier in the Great War. Princeton, NJ
Ideologies, and the ‹Cultures of War›», in: Horne 2010; quotations from introduction, 3.
(ed.), Companion to World War I, 234–247.

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 172 Alan Kramer

9. The End of the War

Myriad books and articles give lavish attention to the origins of the war, the July crisis
and the beginning of the war. The scarcity of studies on the end of the war is a curi-
ous contrast, and David Stevenson has sought to correct that imbalance. Stevenson
comprehensively analyses almost every conceivable aspect of the war in 1918, includ-
ing the tribulations of coalition warfare of both sides, economic warfare, the degree
of popular consent, and the armistice itself. The German spring offensives exposed
above all German weaknesses: Ludendorff’s lack of a strategy, his lack of consistency,
the army’s weakness in logistics, and the decimation of the best divisions. Using Ger-
man and British evidence, Stevenson confirms Wilhelm Deist’s thesis of the sharp
decline in German troop morale. He elucidates the strengths of the Allied counter-
offensives, led for the first time under unified command by Foch. What is new is his
integration of all facets of warfare, showing the nature of Allied superiority, not least
in the usually neglected field of logistics, and also showing the extraordinary expan-
sion of armaments production in France and Britain. His truly transnational, multi-
layered approach culminates in a profound analysis of the armistice.65

10. Memory
The memory of the war has been a topic of historiography at least since Jean Norton
Cru’s book Témoins of 1929; since 1945 tracing links between the First and the
­Second World War has been frequent concern of historians. This predated the
«memory boom» of the last decade or so.66 Thus the notion of the «second Thirty
Years War», which the German historian Hans-Ulrich Wehler revived in 1995, was
used by Winston Churchill as early as 1948.67 This approach emphasises the conti-
nuities and downplays or ignores the considerable discontinuities, radicalisation
processes and internal transformations of the later belligerents. Sniffing the spoor
of Nazism has been an established sub-genre for many years, but only recently have
systematic attempts been made to examine the elements transported from one war

65 D. Stevenson, With Our Backs to the Wall. Victory membering War. The Great War between Memory
and Defeat in 1918, London 2011. See my review in and History in the Twentieth Century, New Haven
The English Historical Review 127 (2012) 524, 216– 2006, especially chapter twelve, «Controversies
219. I was unable to obtain M. S. Neiberg, The and Conclusions». On Britain see A. Gregory, The
Second Battle of the Marne. Bloomington/India- Silence of Memory. Armistice Day, 1919–1946, Ox-
napolis 2008. See the informative review by Eliz- ford 1994; S. Goebel, «Großbritannien. Brüchige
abeth Greenhalgh, H-France Review 9 (July 2009 Kontinuität. Kriegerdenkmäler und Kriegsgeden-
96 (http://www.h-france.net/vol9reviews/vol9no ken im 20. Jahrhundert», in: M. Hettling / J. Ech-
96greenhalgh.pdf ). ternkamp (eds.), Gefallenengedenken im globalen
66 The key text here is J. Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites Vergleich: Nationale Tradition, politische Legitima-
of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural tion und Individualisierung der Erinnerung, Munich
History, Cambridge 1998. Winter uses the term 2012, 199–224, esp. 199–209.
«memory boom», partly in a critique of the trend 67 W. S. Churchill, The Second World War, vol. 1, The
towards memory as «re-enchantment» of the past, Gathering Storm, London 1948; H. U. Wehler,
in which memory replaces critical history and Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, 4 vols., vol. 3: Von
leads to an inward-looking group narcissism: Re- der «Deutschen Doppelrevolution» bis zum Beginn

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 Recent Historiography of the First World War 173

to the next. Jörg Echternkamp has rightly pointed out that the «brutalisation» of
politics and society that resulted from the First World War, according to the influen-
tial interpretation of George Mosse, was by no means an all-embracing phenome-
non. Moreover, the history of the two world wars cannot be reduced to the history of
a single nation: the «Thirty Years War» interpretation in fact makes international
comparison essential.68 The idea of a continuous progression from one war via po-
litical violence in the inter-war period into the next war does not work for the demo-
cratic states; it manifestly does not even work well for Germany.69 Perhaps the only
state that experienced something approaching continuous mobilisation from one
war to the next was Soviet Russia, with its foundation in war, the almost immediate
civil war and the mobilising dictatorship until renewed war in 1939.70
In several ways, the new historiography on the origins of the Bolshevik state
both draws on and makes its own original contribution to the history of the First
World War. The Bolsheviks extended into peacetime «the institutions and practices
of total mobilisation» using «the tools of wartime coercion». In three aspects of state
practice, they took key elements of common state policies in wartime Europe: «state
management of food supply; the employment of official violence for political ends;
and state surveillance of the population». It is the institutionalisation of violence in
politics that distinguished Russian development from the rest of Europe, even Ger-
many, Peter Holquist argues.71
There are other strands to the memory boom. The United States has been re-
discovering its own First World War history with the founding of a museum in
Kansas City in 2007 and a revival of scholarly interest. David Williams focuses in
Media, Memory, and the First World War on the impact of film on war literature and
hence on memory itself.72 Jay Winter points out that memory means also dealing
with the «affective dimension of the aftermath of battle and the wrenching prob-
lems of the wounded» – both physical and psychological. Influenced by the rise of
gender history, the history of emotions is now being taken seriously by historians
of war. This approach has enriched the study by Steven Trout on the American re-
membrance of the war. Trout discusses not only the political and commercial inter-
ests in the «memory business», but also acknowledges that there is no uniform,

des Ersten Weltkriegs 1949–1914, Munich 1995. 69 A. Kramer, «The First World War and German
J. Echternkamp, «1914–1945: Ein zweiter Drei- Memory», in: H. Jones / J. O’Brien / C. Schmidt-
ßjähriger Krieg? Vom Nutzen und Nachteil eines Supprian (eds.), Untold War, Leiden 2008, 385–
Deutungsmusters der Zeitgeschichte», in: S. O. 415.
Müller / C. Torp (eds.), Das Deutsche Kaiserreich in 70 This is to extend Peter Holquist’s argument in
der Kontroverse, Göttingen 2009, 265–280; Eng- Making War, Forging Revolution, Russia’s Continu-
lish edition: S. O. Müller / C. Torp (eds.), Imperial um of Crisis, 1914–1921, Cambridge, Mass. 2002.
Germany Revisited. Continuing Debates and New 71 Ibid. 6–7, 286.
Perspectives, London/New York 2011, 189–200. 72 D. Williams, Media, Memory, and the First World
68 Echternkamp, «1914–1945: Ein zweiter Dreißjäh- War, Ithaca, NY 2009.
riger Krieg?», 274, 277.

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 174 Alan Kramer

nationalised memory and stresses the multiplicity of varied, dissonant personal

memories.73
Some of the most intriguing questions in relation to the memory of the war are
outside the west European theatre. Italy, although well studied in Italian-language
research, is far less known elsewhere. Oliver Janz’s monograph on the cult of the
fallen in Italy is rooted in the comparative scholarship on mourning, remembrance
and the memory of war. One aspect of the study points to Italy’s particular wartime
development: unlike in Germany or Britain, the war seldom led to deep disillusion-
ment among the young Italian officers; in the last year of war, there was a distinct
rise in morale associated with the new mood of democratic hope. He concludes that
«there can be no talk of a weak or incomplete nationalisation [of the Italian middle
classes] at the end of the liberal era».74
The memory of the war that devastated Serbia is hardly known abroad, and a
memory of the war in Russia hardly exists at all. Explaining a non-phenomenon is
always a tough task, but Eric Lohr has provided a convincing explanation why there
is in all of Russia only one First World War monument, in a remote provincial town.
The Bolshevik state destroyed the few monuments that had been built during the
war and did not wish to commemorate heroes – or even victims – of the tsarist re-
gime’s imperialist war. Memory of the Civil War overlaid recollection of the previous
war, and even the Stalinist turn to national traditions during the «Great Patriotic
War» (1941–1945) largely ignored the First World War in its pantheon of great Rus-
sian military figures, with the exception of General Brusilov. Geography, too, has not
favoured memory, since the sites of most battles lay in territory that was outside
post-1918 Russia.75

We may conclude on this note. The history of the war in Russia, eastern and south-
eastern Europe remains a major task of future research. Likewise, the involvement
of Africa, Asia and South America, notwithstanding some recent publications, has
hardly been explored. The economic history of the war is still relatively underdevel-
oped. The return of labour history, which has been dormant for thirty years, would
be just as welcome as new approaches such as the history of emotions.

73 S. Trout, On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War I, 479–493, here 479–480; I was un-
World War and American Remembrance, 1919– able to obtain K. Petrone, The Great War in Rus-
1941. Tuscaloosa 2010. sian Memory, Bloomington 2011. Although Petro-
74 O. Janz, Das symbolische Kapital der Trauer. Na- ne argues that there was a Soviet memory of the
tion, Religion und Familie im italienischen Gefalle- war, Catherine Merridale in American Historical
nenkult des Ersten Weltkriegs, Tübingen 2009 Review 117/4 (2012), 1330–1331 indicates that the
(quotation: 267). jury is still out.
75 E. Lohr, «Russia», in: Horne (ed.), Companion to

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