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Focuses on the experience of U.S. soldiers during World War I. Addresses topics, such as the difficulties and horrors the soldiers dealt with in the trenches, the problems with untrained soldiers, the sickness and injuries that affected soldiers, and heroes of the war. (CMK)

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Copyright of Bylye Gody is the property of Cherkas Global University Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Anglo-American relations in tennis are a fascinating subject, particularly in the period of the late-19th/early-20th century, during which on- and off-court developments reflected and indicated broader societal shifts, as the US gradually replaced Britain as the world's leading industrialized nation. This paper aims to discuss how Anglo-American relations in lawn tennis shifted throughout this period, from when lawn tennis was "invented" in Britain to the onset of the Great War, and to contextualize these developments in the light of shifting broader cultural relations more generally between both nations, alongside developments within sport and tennis more specifically. The following aspects are examined: attitudes toward the relative standards of both American and British players from correspondents of both nations in terms of their overall rank and possibilities of success; and, attitudes from tennis officials toward the formal organization of competitions between players of both nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes how Germans viewed defeat after the two world wars, and how these perceptions influenced subsequent political developments. Compares questions of guilt and responsibility following the two wars. Examines the growth of democracy, its defeat after World War I, and success after World War II. Discusses the influences of the occupation governments. (RW)

The Germans paid close attention to how Japan won not only on the battlefield but also in the arena of public opinion, having smoothly fused censorship and propaganda into their objectives. Germany did not fight in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. After the German censorship law of 1874, newspapers had a I Sitzredakteur i (sitting editor), a straw man who was legally responsible and would go to prison ( I sitzen i , to sit, means being in prison) when a paper violated censorship laws. For nearly 30 years, I have contemplated why wartime press-military relations have varied from war to war and country to country, starting with my first academic book, I Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II i . [Extracted from the article]

This paper assesses the causal relationship between POW assignments and labor productivity for a vital sector of the German World War I economy, namely coal mining. Prisoners of war (POWs) provided significant labor. Combining data on all Ruhr mines with a treatment-effects approach, I find that POW employment alone accounted for 36 percent of the average POW-employing mine's annual productivity decline over wartime. Estimates also suggest that the representative POW's productivity averaged 32 percent of the representative regular miner's productivity and that POWs' contribution to wartime coal output amounted to 3.9 percent. Violence did not serve as a powerful work incentive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From von Harnack's speech-writing for Kaiser Wilhelm II to the 'Manifesto of the Ninety-Three', theologians played an important role in justifying the defence of Kultur in the early stages of the First World War. This paper uses the war-pamphlet collection of William Sanday in the library of The Queen's College to explore how English - and particularly Oxford - theologians responded to, and publically justified, British involvement in the war. Asserting that Oxford theologians were hesitantly nationalist by comparison with their German colleagues, this paper suggests that this dissimilarity cannot be explained purely by reference to the intellectual - some said, Nietzschean - arrogance of German theological liberals. Rather, the more cautious relationship of theologians in Britain to political and wider ecclesiastical discourse can, to some degree, be viewed through the lens of significant institutional differences between German and British theological faculties at the outbreak of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on the aspect of family in the period after the First World War as portrayed in Georg K. Glaser's novel Secret and Violence (Geheimnis und Gewalt). The novel depicts the division of a family caused by the brutality of the father, who has returned from the war and has become completely estranged from his family. The paper finds a parallel between the plot of the novel and the political and social events that unfolded in Germany during the first half of the 20th century, which split society and thus often caused a complete alienation among people. In the novel, the Weimar Republic is presented as a battleground of progressive and radically ideological forces, whose success the study seeks to elucidate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the treacherous conduct of Germany during World War I. Germany treats its obligations as scraps of paper. For instance, it does not pay attention to its agreed armistice with Russia. After meeting all its conditions and the treaty of peace had been duly signed by the Bolshevik representatives, it keeps right on with her advance into the Russian territory. Germany is also pursuing the same policy with Romania.

Late nineteenth-century German–English rivalry changed attitudes in Hamburg. Previously, the once fiercely independent city and its burgeoning mercantile middle class had developed an Anglophilia that justified Hamburg being labelled a ‘London suburb’ and ‘the most British town on the Continent’. The affinity for all things English – from liberal politics to refined fashion sense – had developed on the back of close business links by seafaring merchant adventurers, Hanseatic traders and shipping magnates. Only hesitantly did the people of Hamburg join Bismarck’s Germany, but the prospect of war demanded a drastic shift towards German patriotism. Pragmatically, the Hamburg bourgeoisie complied – and severed their intellectual and emotional bond with England. This paper investigates the extent of Hamburg’s compliance by looking at essays that were produced at extreme ends of academe. The key sources are 1913 Abitur examination essays by secondary school students on the topic ‘England and Germany – two rivals’. They are assessed here alongside a 1914 public lecture from the English faculty at Hamburg’s university. The dual ambition of this study is to examine how Hamburg’s intelligentsia coped with new loyalties brought on by changing political contexts and to assess the validity of school essays and examination papers as historical sources (in so far they must be considered a niche interest). In many ways the results are sobering. While at university level Anglophilia prevailed in a strange form of nostalgia for agreatBritain of peaceful gentlemen and honest workers, who should have resisted the imperial ambitions of a corrupt banking elite that provoked the war, the students’ essays almost betray Hamburg’s heritage by simply repeating the popular and one-dimensional propaganda about warmongering British imperialists attempting to suffocate Germany’s earnest ambitions for its rightful place on the world stage. On paper at least, German nationalism had thoroughly replaced Anglophilia. There are, however, indications that while teachers and students were compliant with current popular opinion, they did not expect it to last: the England-bashing essays are written in perfect English. A lot of time and effort went into the study of English, which surely would have been superfluous if Anglo-German relations were not expected to improve again soon. Seen as a whole then, students’ essays can be valuable sources – if one looks beyond their content. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper looks at some similarities and differences between propaganda art used by Germany and the United States during World War I. The first section briefly looks at aesthetic theory and addresses the philosophical question of whether war propaganda posters are, in fact, 'art' at all. Then images of various posters that were popular and widely published by both nations are shown and discussed. This paper concludes that while there are many thematic similarities between the posters used by both sides, there are also some important differences. The most obvious difference between the German and American propaganda art was in regard to the overall tone of the posters and the colors used in the presentation. The images used have been downloaded from a reputable website that depicts reproductions of the posters that were used during WW1. Understanding the nature of the propaganda used by each side can help shed light on the attitudes and sentiments towards the war held by political elites and citizens alike. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The facts reported in this paper are the results of a study processed in December 1905 about the military policy of the German Empire and the Third Republic of France. The paper aims to analyze the complex events of international politics a few years before the outbreak of the First World War (1914). The assumptions of conflict and strategies concerning the German "enemy" and the contemporary French revanchism about a possible conflict between the French Third Republic and the German Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The richness and intensity of the three-day conference, promoted by the German Historical Institute in London from 13 to 15 October 2011, made the summary I was asked to provide unusually difficult. I had 31 pages of notes on the papers presented. The following summary suggests ways in which the standard accounts of the July Crisis need to be altered by new research on the Great Powers in the decade before 1914 and on the July Crisis itself, the days between the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the declarations of war. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Lectureships for Swedish in Germany in the Context of Cultural Diplomacy 1917-1930. During the Weimar Republic a significant number of lectureships for Swedish was established at German universities. This paper attempts to explain this development through an analysis of the political and academic context of these establishments. Focussing on the actors involved the lectureships are linked to the emerging interest of the German state for public diplomacy emerging after World War I and the following reactions of German academia. The paper also treats the importance of the main Swedish actor, namely the association for the preservance of Swedishness abroad for the establishments of the lectureships. At the end the different actors working for Swedish lectureships in Germany are placed in a broader European context and questions concerning the relationship between universities and cultural diplomacy are raised and answered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1917, the German-American scientist Jacques Loeb (1859-1924) published a short essay, entitled 'Biology and War', that summarized his disagreement with World War I. He was deeply saddened by the break-up of the international scientific community as a consequence of the actions of bellicose politicians. These actions were in direct opposition to his efforts to promote social reform, mechanistic biology and scientific internationalism. The aim of this paper is to examine Loeb's activities aimed at these efforts before, during and after the war. It attempts to explain how Loeb's scientific work was formed, what was special about it and why it was both successful and attacked. Particular emphasis is placed on how Loeb reacted to the War and the subsequent forced disintegration of his international scientific network. Loeb's attempts to integrate his interpretation of biology into post-war Europe's approach to the life sciences is analysed in connection with his social commitment. It is argued that his emigration to the USA, the circumstances of World War I, the reaction of his German colleagues to it and the demolition of the international scientific community changed: (1) Loeb's feelings towards his old home; (2) the direction of his scientific endeavours; and (3) his engagement in science politics. His correspondence with eminent scientists from all over the world serves as a key to Loeb's efforts in the context of the social elements of scientific networks and perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A substantive German tank force never materialized during the First World War. However, its military insignificance was not apparent to the British army anticipating its appearance. This article explores British intelligence reporting on the development of German tanks. It assesses the impact of this potential threat, particularly during the tense months of early 1918. It shows how the intelligence reporting also influenced British tank design. The article judges this work to have been an intelligence success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing phenomenological theory, this paper argues that German World War I soldiers’ introduction to the gas mask represents a salient historical moment in the human relationship to modern chemical technology. As a protective device, the gas mask was intended to save soldiers from a horrible death by asphyxiation. In doing so, it forced soldiers to directly confront the new technological landscape of the modern World War I battlefield. While the mask proved genuinely effective in its ability to filter poison gases, it required constant vigilance from gas-weary soldiers. This so-called ‘gas discipline’ would allow men to survive and even thrive in a newly dangerous modern world. However, the physical and mental stress of this existence, often led to breakdowns in soldier discipline and failures in gas protection. Thus, the soldiers’ relationship to the gas mask revealed the limits of technological trust for the earliest ‘chemical subjects’ of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper relates stage performances of dada artists to war neurosis and shell shock as sociocultural phenomena. The leitmotif of this investigation is the notion of simulation, as dada artists were referred to as malingerers (simulators) of madness by the press at the time. I hypothesize that the performers imitate/simulate with drums, shouting and 'bruitist' sound poems, the noises of war, staging themselves as war neurotics in a kind of shocking clinical demonstration. Both discourses intersect in the fact that many dadaists try to dodge the draft by simulating madness. The scandalizing anti-art of dada will be understood as contagious anti-pedagogy, trying to vaccinate against the madness of the era.

At the end of July 1919, members of the American, Continental, and British Provinces of the Moravian Church came together for the first time in five years to discuss the state of the church's missions after the end of World War I. The preceding years had resulted in problems in terms of finances, administration, and labor as well as put into question the future of many mission fields. Nationalistic tensions ran high between members of the church, and there was a real concern that the worldwide Moravian Unity would be dissolved. That it did not was in part due to the sustained efforts of many members of the administrative bodies of the church who discussed how to resolve these tensions in various internal, international, and ecumenical settings. Through examining the reports from various missionary conferences in the aftermath of World War I, this article postulates that the structure of the Moravian Church allowed for the reconfiguration of the mission stations to fulfill external political, economic, and social expectations. The structure, however, also limited the work of the Continental Province of the church and created artificial distance between the Provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The First World War was not only a military conflict but also an economic war. In all belligerent countries, labour and resources were shifted from civil production to military production. Factory workers, miners and farmers produced a steady flow of supplies for the frontlines. Financial mobilization provided the money for arms, ammunition, and other supplies. In contemporary understanding 'financial mobilization' comprised all fiscal and monetary instruments that were necessary to finance the war. The aim of this paper is to discuss the interaction between the government and the central bank in Germany in financing the First World War. Aspects include the pre-war plans for financial mobilization, the fiscal and monetary policies of the war years and their inflationary consequences, the financing of foreign trade and financial demobilization during the transition from war to peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a reprint of the article "Myths of the Great War" by Timothy Garton, which appeared in Working Paper number 188 of the periodical "Vox" is presented. It presents an analysis on the possibility of China to follow the footsteps of Germany during the Great War. Moreover, ways on how the Great War began in 1913 are also stated.

Copyright of Chronica Mundi is the property of Chronica Mundi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Turkish Yearbook of International Relations is the property of Ankara Universitesi, Faculty of Political Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper investigates the history of the Royal Prussian Phonographic Commission, a body that collected and archived linguistic, ethnographic, and anthropological data from prisoners-of-war (POWs) in Germany during World War I. Recent literature has analyzed the significance of this research for the rise of conservative physical anthropology. Taking a complementary approach, the essay charts new territory in seeking to understand how the prison-camp studies informed philology and linguistics specifically. I argue that recognizing philological commitments of the Phonographic Commission is essential to comprehending the project contextually. My approach reveals that linguists accommodated material and contemporary evidence to older text-based research models, sustaining dynamic theories of language. Through a case study based on the Iranian philologist F. C. Andreas (1846-1930), the paper ultimately argues that linguistics merits greater recognition in the historiography of the behavioral sciences., (© 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

Up to now, the impact of the 1918 influenza pandemic on the German Imperial Army has remained surprisingly understudied. This paper is concerned with the two pandemic waves which afflicted the army during the last year of World War I and the attempts of prevention and treatment done by military doctors. Furthermore, it will be discussed how the disease was assessed by both military doctors and generals and to what extent German troops were affected by the pandemic. Finally it will be discussed if the pandemic changed the course of war.

This paper presents a "new" set of data on German casualties in World War I, using the German medical corps's official history to resolve two major controversies concerning casualty comparisons in Winston Churchill's "Blood Test" chapter in The World Crisis: first, treatment of the 496,000 German casualties that Churchill could not assign to battle periods; and second, provision of German casualty data comparable to that of the French and British through the inclusion of "lightly wounded" German casualties. Finally, these data weaken somewhat, but do not overturn Churchill's argument that, in every battle period on the Western Front, Allied casualties were greater than German casualties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can wars breed nationalism? We argue that civilians' indirect exposure to war fatalities can trigger psychological processes that increase identification with their nation and ultimately strengthen support for nationalist parties. We test this argument in the context of the rise of the Nazi Party after World War 1 (WW1). To measure localized war exposure, we machine-coded information on 7.5 million German soldiers who were wounded or died in WW1. Our empirical strategy leverages battlefield dynamics that cause plausibly exogenous variation in the county-level casualty fatality rate—the share of dead soldiers among all casualties. We find that throughout the interwar period, electoral support for right-wing nationalist parties, including the Nazi Party, was 2.6 percentage points higher in counties with above-median casualty fatality rates. Consistent with our proposed mechanism, we find that this effect was driven by civilians rather than veterans and areas with a preexisting tradition of collective war commemoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within weeks of the outbreak of World War I, major losses of buildings and art monuments had already occurred. German troops were responsible for the destruction of the historic centres of Leuven in Belgium and Kalisz in the Russian partitioned area of Poland, as well as the shelling of the Reims cathedral. Russian offensives laid waste to small towns and villages in East Prussia and Galicia. Events in the Eastern theatres of the war barely struck a chord among the Western European population. However, in Belgium and France violations of international regulations of the Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907) 'for the preservation of cultural heritage during hostilities of war' were harshly condemned in the Entente states' war propaganda. As a result of growing international pressure, the Reich government implemented the approach of Kriegsdenkmalpflege, a plan that was substantially developed by Paul Clemen, a university professor from Bonn. This paper contains initial observations about the activities of the Kunstschutz from 1915 to 1918 in the General Government of Warsaw under German civil administration. The paper will then formulate research questions for a comparative analysis of the programme's activities in the various European theatres of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With its focus on the Franco-German War and World War I the present paper constitutes a first approach to the comprehensive topic of "homoeopathy and war". Sources used include articles from homoeopathic magazines, homoeopathic specialist literature, material from the estate of the homoeopathic lay organization "Hahnemannia" and individual testimonies from non-homoeopaths. The paper begins by examining the importance of the two wars for research into the history of homoeopathy compared to previous conflicts and demonstrates the value of the sources used. A brief outline of homoeopathy and the military forces in the decades before 1870 provides insight into the historical context. This is followed by the investigation of homoeopathic war hospitals at home with an analysis of the attitude of the homoeopathic physicians and lay-healers involved. The paper also describes the difficult relationship between homoeopathy and conventional medicine during the two conflicts.

The history of Jewish nursing in World War I has so far not been central to medical history research. Rosa Bendit's war diary is still the only source available on the voluntary service Jewish nurses provided during World War I. Their number was small compared to that of nurses in general. Jewish nursing in Germany has hardly been researched. Jewish nurses, like their Christian colleagues, took on wartime nursing tasks voluntarily. This paper will focus on the experiences of the nurses who were sent to various locations in East and West by the Stuttgart Jewish Nurses' Home. Based on quotations from the war diary their position within the medical service will be described, compared and analyzed. The paper draws attention to special characteristics in the comparison ofJewish and Christian nurses and explores issues such as religious observance, religious discrimination, patriotism and differences in the evaluation of the nurses' work. A brief outline of the history of the Stuttgart Jewish Nurses' Home illustrates their working conditions. The Jewish nurses applied themselves with as much effort and devotion as their Christian counterparts. Although there were only few of them, the Jewish nurses managed to establish a recognized position for themselves within the medical service. The history of Jewish nursing in Stuttgart ended in 1941 when the Jewish Nurses' Home was dissolved by the Nazis and four nurses were murdered in concentration camps.

An increase in interest for German scientific psychology followed the rise of liberalism in late nineteenth-century Spain. This paper deals with Spanish scholars' endeavors to participate in German psychology: It outlines the intellectual and institutional background of Spanish preoccupation with German philosophy and psychology, and deals with the personal experience and testimony of two Spanish philosophers, Eloy Luis André and Juan Vicente Viqueira López, who traveled to Leipzig, Berlin, and Göttingen between 1909 and 1914 to gain firsthand experience in the nascent science of psychology in Germany at that time.

This article considers the intelligence value of prisoners captured during the First World War. 3848 troops of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) were taken prisoner by the German Army on the Western Front between the years 1916 and 1918. Because their capture was at odds with a heroic representation of the Australian war experience in the post-war period, little has been written about their war in captivity. But historians who have written about captivity tend to dwell on the personal, subjective nature of captivity and rarely consider the benefit prisoners are to the armies that capture them. This study addresses both omissions, and looks at prisoners of war as intelligence sources through the experience of Australian troops captured by the German Army on the Western Front. This paper uses prisoner testimony and German intelligence records to demonstrate that most Australian prisoners were ‘sturdily determined’ not to reveal any information of value to the enemy, yet the German Army still managed to obtain ‘very important information’ from them. It looks at AIF counter-intelligence methods, German procedures for handling prisoners for intelligence purposes, interrogation methods, prisoner experiences, what the German Army learned from Australian prisoners, as well as examples of how the German Army used information obtained from prisoners. It also looks at two cases of Australian troops who willingly disclosed information about the AIF and its operations having deserted to the enemy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a reading of Albert Talhoff and Mary Wigman's poetry and dance spectacle, Totenmal (Call of the Dead 1930) with particular focus upon how the return of the dead soldier functions in the psychic healing of its postwar audience. Totenmal, whose use of mixed media classified it as a spectacle that played to the entire sensory field, functioned as a cathartic experience for its post-war audience, which was working through the mourning process. Sigmund Freud argues in his 'Mourning and Melancholia' ('Trauer und Melancholie' 1917) that the mourner must repetitiously return to the lost one until the mourner is able to accept the reality of the departed's death and begin the healing process. In Totenmal, the dead ominously appear both as disembodied voices offstage reading actual soldiers' letters and as shades that are conjured onto the stage, which both serve as a reminder for the living to remember the fallen. The psychic trauma of the mourning process is represented by the female chorus that is incapable of confronting these spirits from the other side. Reconciliation is only achieved by the medium character, played by Wigman, who is able both to summon the dead and to commune with them. My analysis of Totenmal will thus pay particular attention to the medium character. Mediumism was a common practice in Weimar Germany, and my discussion will explain this context by drawing on historical research regarding spiritualist practices of the day. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the significance of phrasebooks produced for soldiers who fought in the Great War. With particular reference to texts published in Germany, it argues that their historical importance lies in the manner in which they helped to transmit to soldiers expected norms of conduct for the engagement with civilian populations; that for German soldiers, the scenarios and dialogue of phrasebooks functioned as a kind of virtual-training, promoting the use of illegal methods of warfare in occupied Belgium and France. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the continuity of personal interlocks among German major companies from 1914 to 1938. Continuity in economic transactions together with concentration, cartelization and a corporative system is regarded as a main characteristic of the German production system. The paper analyses the continuity assumption concerning interlocks in a period of critical economic shifts and multiple changes of the political system. As a result, the extreme economic cuts after the First World War had lower impact on network change compared to the global economic crisis after 1929. Generally, the structure of the production system remained flexible. It was after 1933 when the National Socialists came into power that stability increased. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The impact of warfare on social policy development has interested scholars for some time. This research has focused on belligerent countries, while its impact on neutral countries has received little attention. This paper aims to address this gap through a comparison of the development of unemployment social policies in the neutral Netherlands, which nevertheless mobilised for war, and combatant Germany. While the crisis conditions accompanying mobilisation forced these states to become involved with such policies for the first time, at no time during or after the war did they fully surrender their increased interventionist position. The state assumed responsibility for enacting, regulating and funding private initiatives and this role was institutionalised after the war. This study contributes to an understanding of welfare state development in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses a polemic between French and German Catholics that erupted during the First World War. Building on earlier studies into the role of intellectuals during the war, it supports the view that intellectuals eagerly lent their support to the cause of the nation, and were thus part of a widespread 'mobilization of intellect'. But it goes further, and looks at how Catholic scholars sought ways to enhance their position within the nation. Because the war was of an order to call into question basic faith in the achievements of culture and civilization, intellectuals shifted to looking at how nations and their politics were governed by culture. As a generative substratum for national character and behaviour, however, culture provided scholars with a way to recast their commitment to universal truth. By looking at the specific ways French and German Catholics accused each other of a reversion to barbarism, the paper develops this insight by showing how such accusations served each side as a strategic ploy for their domestic rehabilitation in France and Germany, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses an incomplete information game model to describe and explain the so-called blank check issued to Austria by Germany in early July 1914. It asks why Germany would cede control of an important aspect of its foreign policy to another lesser power. The derived explanation is consistent not only with the actual beliefs of German and Austrian leaders but also with an equilibrium prediction of the game model. The issue of whether unconditional German support of Austria constituted either a necessary or a sufficient condition for the outbreak of major power war the next month is also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the outbreak of World War I Reuters was a public company with a widely dispersed and large group of shareholders, including shareholders in Germany. Under the pressure of wartime conditions, the British government determined that, for security reasons, it needed to find a mechanism to achieve greater control of the company and the news it distributed. Censorship laws were, on their own, deemed inadequate to this purpose. In the event, the public company, Reuters Telegram Company, was liquidated following a generous buyout offer to shareholders. It was replaced by a private company, Reuters (1916) Limited. Under secret arrangements, this company was structured so as to enable effective British government control of its operations. This paper examines the relationship between Reuters and the British government via an analysis of archival materials held in the British National Archives and the Reuters Company Archives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Communicatio Socialis is the property of Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article I explore the cultural impact of the First World War by analysing the work of libraries and librarians in different settings, from German-occupied Belgium and prisoner-of-war camps to Germany's own public and private libraries. By examining the work of German, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, and American librarians, the article makes a case for applying the notion of a 'long' First World War to cultural and intellectual history. Considering ephemeral and established libraries, along with new types of collections generated by the war itself, the article sheds light on the changes to library work as a result of mobilization, censorship, and the growth of mass readership. While these changes concerned librarians in all belligerent states, German librarians were particularly affected after the burning of the Leuven library during the city's occupation by German forces. This singular event damaged Germany's national reputation and thereby laid the groundwork for a significant politicization of library work all the way to the Second World War. In addition to tracing the importance of librarians for German foreign policy, the article reconstructs how this professional community, whose intellectual formation was ultimately supranational, responded to the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]