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This article investigates the origins of World War I through the correspondence of Ottoman diplomats between 1912 and 1914, namely from the formation of the Balkan League in early 1912 until the Ottoman-German alliance in August 1914. However, the emphasis is on how Ottoman officialdom interpreted 'the Albanian issue' in conjunction with the Austro-Ottoman rapprochement on the eve of the Great War. This close relationship between the Austrians and Ottomans influenced Ottoman decision-making on declaring war on the Balkan allies in October 1912. More significantly, however, on the eve of the Great War, despite the reluctance of German officials, it was again the influence exercised on Germany via the Austrian Embassy in İstanbul that finalised the Ottoman-German alliance on 2 August 1914. With new sources and reasoning, this article hopes to contribute to current debates on the origins of the Great War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on Imperial German strategic planning prior to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. The author discusses Germany's lack of an integrated national strategy before 1914, explores the military power of Prusso-German king-emperor Wilhelm II, and examines the German constitutions of 1867 and 1871 in regard to military planning and authoritarianism. The strategy known as the "Schlieffen plan" is also analyzed.

At the onset of the First World War, Germany was subject to a shipping embargo by the Allied forces. Ostensibly military in nature, the blockade prevented not only armaments but also food and fertilizers from entering Germany. The impact of that blockade on civilian populations has been debated ever since. Germans protested that the Allies had wielded hunger as a weapon against women and children with devastating results, a claim that was hotly denied by the Allies. The impact of what the Germans termed the Hungerblockade on childhood nutrition can now be assessed using a newly discovered dataset based on heights and weights of nearly 600,000 German schoolchildren measured between 1914 and 1924. Statistical analysis reveals a grim truth: German children suffered severe malnutrition due to the blockade. Social class impacted risk of deprivation, with working-class children suffering the most. Surprisingly, they were the quickest to recover after the war. Their rescue was fuelled by massive food aid organized by the former enemies of Germany, and delivered cooperatively with both government and civil society. The ability of former belligerents to work together after an exceptionally bitter war to feed impoverished children may hold hope for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The state of the German Army’s morale in 1918 is central to our understanding not only of the outcome of World War I, but also of the German Revolution and, indeed, through the pernicious ‘stab-in-the-back-myth’, on Weimar politics and the rise of the Nazis, too. This article presents new evidence from the German archives, blended with statistical analysis, to show that the morale of some units held up better than previously thought almost to the end, and thus to suggest three things. First, it proposes that some historians have placed too much reliance on English-language sources alone, such as British Army intelligence reports, which have various flaws as evidence. Second, it argues that, while historians have increasingly moved away from generalisations about German morale, this process has further to run. Third, it suggests that no single tipping point can be identified, and that morale alone does not provide a sufficient explanation for battlefield defeat. Indeed, much of the data can only be explained if the tactical realities of the war in late 1918 are clearly understood. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study uses prices for the German 3 percent imperial loan issued in several tranches since 1890 and still traded during World War I to measure capital market players' real-time perceptions of the prospects for Germany as the war proceeded. Price data are gathered from the Amsterdam market for government bonds; the Netherlands remained neutral throughout war. Focusing on the window from August 24th 1915 to August 11th 1919, ten (twelve) turning points are identified in a baseline (extended) model. Each implies a significant adjustment of lenders' confidence in Germany being able, or willing, to service its debts in the future. Two turning points stand out. In early January 1916, the price plummeted by 14.3 percent between the first and eleventh of the month, which was most likely due to the Military Service Act discussed in the British parliament. On September 19th 1918, the price dropped by 17.5 percent compared to the last available price quote from the end of July. This coincides with the Allied Powers' revival on all fronts since the summer, leading to the ultimate collapse of the German lines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

War was over, the nations that had participated in it were burdened by enormous war debts. They had financed their war expenditure to a large extent on credit. War bonds had been taken up by the people and, in addition, foreign loans, mostly from the United States, had also been raised. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the evolution of the Germany strategic thought in 1919-1935. The author looks into the defeat of Germany during the First World War. Also tackled is the move of the German armed forces to begin the detailed process of distilling relevant military lessons from the conflict and applying them to their perception of a future war.

The article looks at the practice of catholic theology in Germany at the outbreak of World War I. It states that the popular piety in times of war did not agree with the idea. It notes that soldiers held to religious beliefs when they were exposed to nervous onslaughts, going to combat, and in trenches. It mentions that experience and community were important in non-neoscholastic theology after 1918.

Copyright of Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte is the property of De Gruyter 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.)

It is generally believed that the younger Moltke altered the Schlieffen plan in 1914 by reducing the relative strength of the German right wing, but that is a myth: in proportion to the rest of his forces Moltke’s right wing was just as strong as Schlieffen’s. The real difference lay in the absolute number of troops involved in their respective plans. From his assessment of French defensive capability Schlieffen concluded that the German army would need at least 48.5 corps to succeed with an attack on France by way of Belgium, but Moltke planned to attack through Belgium with just 34 corps at his disposal in the west. The Schlieffen plan amounts to a critique of German strategy in 1914 since it clearly predicted the failure of Moltke’s underpowered invasion of France. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article focuses on the life of the liberal Jew, Ruth Weyl. Topics discussed include discriminatory legislation in 1935 due to Nuremberg Laws which made the Jews return their weapons or medals from the First World War, Weyl hailed from German Jewry that had the good fortune to develop freely since the Enlightenment, and Weyl's paternal great-grandfather developed linen-manufacturing business. Other topics discussed include artists, journalists and writers were regular visitors at her home.

World War I witnessed the admission of large numbers of German soldiers with neurological symptoms for which there was no obvious organic cause. This posed a considerable challenge for the military and medical authorities and resulted in an active discussion on the etiology and treatment of these disorders. Current historiography is reliant on published physician accounts, and this represents the first study of treatment approaches based on original case notes. We analyzed patient records from two leading departments of academic psychiatry in Germany, those at Berlin and Jena, in conjunction with the contemporaneous medical literature. Treatment, which can be broadly classified into reward and punishment, suggestion, affective shock, cognitive learning, and physiological methods, was developed in the context of the emerging fields of animal learning and neurophysiology. A further innovative feature was the use of quantitative methods to assess outcomes. These measures showed good response rates, though most cured patients were not sent back to battle because of their presumed psychopathic constitution. While some treatments appear unnecessarily harsh from today's perspective and were also criticized by leading psychiatrists of the time, the concentration of effort and involvement of so many senior doctors led to the development of psychotherapeutic methods that were to influence the field of psychiatric therapy for decades to come. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the history of the German standard of living in World War I. The author examines the effects of food shortages caused by a British naval blockade on the German food supply, discusses wartime austerity measures enacted by the German government such as rationing and price controls, and questions the nutritional soundness of alleged preferences of German citizens for particular forms of food including meat based on black market prices. The need for self-sustaining agricultural industry in Germany during the war is emphasized, and the anthropometrics of Germans during the war are examined for signs of nutrient deficiencies.

The bequest for the Church Peace Union—the predecessor of today's Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs (and the publisher of this journal)—was given by Andrew Carnegie in February 1914. The Church Peace Union subsequently sponsored the first worldwide gathering of religious leaders, which was held in Constance, Germany, on August 2, 1914. Convened under the shadow of an impending war, not all delegates made it to the gathering. Six months previously, Carnegie had stipulated that the Church Peace Union devote its funds to the deserving poor “after the arbitration of international disputes is established and war abolished, as it certainly will be some day.” This could happen, he noted, “sooner than expected, probably by the Teutonic nations, Germany, Britain, and the United States first deciding to act in unison, the others joining later.” The outbreak of war was a catastrophic blow to such hopes, as the very nations expected to be at the core of this civilized project descended into an orgy of destruction the likes of which the world had never seen. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article the main phase (1961–5) of the Fischer Controversy will be analysed. The hostile rejection by fellow German historians will be seen in contrast to the more neutral and sometimes even positive responses by leading journalists. The controversy advanced to become a media event and ultimately was seen as the ‘decisive incident in the historiography of the Federal Republic’. The thesis that Germany had pushed more for war in 1914 than any other power electrified the debate in the public. His demolition of politically and historically ‘comfortable’ views led to a strong defensive reaction among conservative historians. Even members of the CDU-government intervened in 1964 and warned of the dangers to the ‘national consciousness’ of the Federal Republic. The intensity of the controversy reached new heights at the two historical congresses in Berlin in October 1964 and in Vienna in September 1965. Against the background of the Eichmann and Auschwitz Trials the Fischer Controversy led to a very intensive and wide-ranging debate about the political and historical identity of the Federal Republic. It marked the beginning of a much more critical interpretation of German history in the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Brest-Litovsk Peace Agreement was supposed to be a grand solution. Germany and Austria-Hungary, under increasing domestic pressure, wanted to create facts on at least one front and demonstrate to the world at large their willingness to accept peace. In reality, the German Supreme Army Command's main goal was to bring large parts of Eastern Europe under German control and permanently weaken revolution-torn Russia. Since late 1917, Ukraine appeared to be the key to controlling the entire region: it was considered the ‘breadbasket’ of the former Russian Empire, it possessed heavy industry in the East and it offered access to the Black Sea. But the Brest Treaty proved to be brittle and the contracting states showed themselves to be either politically unstable (Ukraine) or unreliable (Bolshevik Russia). Additionally, Ukraine was not even remotely capable of fulfilling its economic pledges. Furthermore, the ‘dictated peace’ proved to the entente that there could be no negotiated peace with Germany and that fighting would have to continue until the capitulation of the Central Powers. This article will analyse, first, the position of Ukraine within the Central Powers' foreign-policy and military-strategic conception until the invasion in early 1918; second, the occupation policies of 1918; and, third, the Ukrainians' own perception of the Central Powers. The Ukrainian ‘failing state’ exemplifies, with particular clarity, the Central Powers' strategic overstretch and their ill-considered policy in Eastern Europe at the end of the First World War. Finally, this essay will place the wartime conduct of the Central Powers in Ukraine into the larger scholarly discussion of the ‘German Way of War’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

During the First World War, Bion fought in three major battles over a period of two years. He left ample writings both honest and soul searching. Travelling to The Front under raging pressure from his father, he enlisted in a state of mind, which fluctuated wildly between wanting to be a ‘hero’ and sudden fears that made him join the Tank Corps under the illusion that in a tank he would be protected. While the tank was disappointing in this respect, it put him in charge of a crew, thus giving him the first glimpse of group processes. This article charts some of Bion's experiences of war, their emotional impact on him and the transformation he underwent. The origins of some of his later thinking can be glimpsed in some of the experiences he had at this critical time in his life. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Using the German Army from 1916 to 1918 as a case study, this article demonstrates a different form of military innovation than has hitherto been analysed by literature on the subject. During World War I, the German Army innovated by spreading knowledge between units rather than up and down the chain of command. Thus, this army used ‘horizontal innovation’, rather than vertical innovation to change how it fought in the midst of battle. Although combat in World War I is significantly different from operations today, horizontal innovation offers armed forces a means by which to transform themselves much more rapidly than the traditionally recognised forms of military innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses the relationship between the disciplines of history and science history at the beginning of the 20th century. Particular focus is given to the scholars Henri Pirenne and George Sarton. According to the authors, the study of social history within science history is traceable to Sarton, who in turn was influenced by Pirenne. Details related to their attitudes towards history, socialism, and industrialization are presented. It is suggested that the works and philosophies of both historians were shaped by modernist thought and by the social forces of their time. Other topics include the first World War, the role of race in history, and Germany.

This article examines the Polish-speaking soldiers who served in the German Army during the First World War in order to resolve a longstanding interdisciplinary debate on the importance of patriotic ideology for performance in combat. Current research is divided on whether patriotic commitment is essential to motivate men in mass conscript armies, or whether purely military factors, especially so-called ‘primary group’ solidarity, can suffice. While most work has been hindered by its focus on soldiers who served in their own national armies, and who therefore possessed both ‘primary group’ and patriotic allegiances, this article overcomes the problem by investigating a minority fighting for a foreign Fatherland. Drawing on Prussian military and civil documentation, soldiers’ personal testimony and Allied intelligence records, it investigates Polish-speaking troops’ loyalties, their treatment by the German Army and their consequent conduct in battle. The article demonstrates, through comparison of the behaviour in 1914-15 of three distinct groups within the minority, the Polish nationalists of Posen and West Prussia, nationally-neutral Upper Silesians and the ‘Polish-speaking Germans’ of Masuria, that a close correlation exists between soldiers’ identification with the nation they defend and their willingness to fight. Yet by analysing the effect of military reforms in 1916-18 on the conduct of the most alienated group, Posen and West Prussian Poles, it also shows that such identification is not indispensible. The article argues that while patriotic ideology is a powerful motivator, a judicious mix of coercion, assimilation and military-identity building can induce from even reluctant minorities operationally acceptable performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Copyright of Romanian Journal for Baltic & Nordic Studies/Revista Romana de Studii Baltice si Nordice is the property of Sciendo 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 article discusses aspect of the learning process in the tactical warfare used by the German Infantry Division in the battlefield during the World War 1 (WW 1) in 1918 against superior enemy coalition. An overview of the war strategy introduced by Carl von Clausewitz which concerns the attack, delaying engagement, and defense is offered. It focuses on the France soldiers of the 11th Bavarian Infantry Division (11th BID) under the command of Lieutenant General Paul Ritter von Kneußl which are considered as an elite division during the war.

Drawing on women's visual responses to the First World War, this article examines female mourning in wartime Germany. The unprecedented death toll on the battlefronts, military burial practices and the physical distance from the remains of the war dead disrupted traditional rituals of bereavement, hindered closure and compounded women's grief on the home front. In response to these novel circumstances, a number of female artists used their images to reimagine funerary customs, overcome the separation from the fallen and express acute emotional distress. This article analyses three images produced during the conflict by the artists Katharina Heise, Martha Schrag and Sella Hasse, and places their work within the civilian experience of bereavement in war. By depicting the pain of loss, female artists contested the historical tradition of proud female mourning in German society and countered wartime codes of conduct that prohibited the public display of emotional pain in response to soldiers’ deaths. As a largely overlooked body of sources, women's art adds to our understanding of the tensions in wartime cultures of mourning that emerged between 1914 and 1918. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

From the beginning the 1914 Ottoman jihad proclamation was portrayed by the Allies as the linchpin of a German scheme to revolutionize Muslim populations in the territories of Berlin’s enemies: in British Egypt and India, in French North Africa, and in the Russian Caucasus and Central Asia. This article questions the cliché of the German jihad by situating the 1914 declaration in its deeper Ottoman historical context. Did the Ottomans need Berlin’s blandishments to convince them of the advantages of issuing a jihad (jihād) declaration in 1914? [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Following a calamitous British performance in Stockholm, the British Olympic Association (BOA) embraced the 1916 Olympic Games in Berlin as a viable platform through which to restore British prestige. Cognizant of the inadequate organization that had hindered previous British Olympic teams, the BOA established a Special Committee to help raise and prepare a team for the Berlin games, an event that generated extra importance given the escalation of Anglo-German antagonisms during the early twentieth century. The Special Committee's attempt to raise vast sums of money through a public appeal in order to revolutionize British amateur sport evoked charges of professionalism from across the British Isles. The fear that athletic specialization would erode the traditions of Britain's amateur sporting culture, combined with the nation's general apathy towards the Olympic movement significantly hindered the BOA's reform efforts, before the outbreak of World War I overran the Berlin games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German Army generally failed to capitalize on early developments in mechanization and armoured vehicles during the second half of the First World War. This article argues that, while the German military was certainly not technophobic nor resistant to change, the developments in 'machine warfare' were fundamentally inimical to the dominant cultural assumptions held by German officers concerning the nature of war, and that this goes a long way in explaining the decision not to mass-produce armoured vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the First World War, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB) supplied occupied Belgium with food, provoking discord between military and political leaders on both sides. The CRB's work undermined the Allies' economic blockade of the enemy, attracting military criticism. In Germany, politicians favoured sustaining the food supply to prevent unrest, whilst the Army wanted to exploit Belgium's resources. From 1916 onwards, the CRB became a bone of contention in Germany in the dispute between military and political leaders about unrestricted submarine warfare. It also loomed large in the political and military debate about the attitude to neutral countries: the Allies wanted them to brave the German threat and cooperate with the blockade policy-otherwise, food imports from Allied countries would be forbidden. Tonnage and food for the CRB were incorporated into the negotiations with neutral countries about their imports and the use of home-grown produce. The debates about the CRB thus exemplify the relationship between military events and the war's economic and social significance. This study of the CRB shows that political/diplomatic historiography can bridge the gap between the military and socioeconomic history of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the changing German perceptions of Romania in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The impact of growing economic and political interaction, coupled with orientalist assumptions about the nature of Balkan society, shaped a particular understanding of Romanian society. Romanian elites were often portrayed as westernizing and modern, whereas the peasantry was backward and effeminate. The Romanian entry into the First World War on the side of Germany's enemies prompted a radical revision in German attitudes toward Romanians, as the Romanian elite suddenly emerged as a degenerate and effeminate force preying on an honest peasantry. The alleged unchecked power of women over an emasculated male elite was blamed for moral degeneracy and political disaster. The experience of occupation and ambitions for post-war domination prompted yet another revision, as Germans sought a usable collaborationist class. As a result, the Romanian elite was bifurcated between good and bad, pro-Entente and pro-German, and the peasantry emerged as a legitimizer of Germany's modernizing mission. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines major epidemics of bacillary dysentery in the German army as well as among civilians in eastern Europe and in Germany during World War I. These epidemics were all the more surprising in light of prewar advances in understanding the disease and limiting dysentery outbreaks. Three major reasons are adduced for the incapacity of German military hygienists to prevent wartime epidemics. First was the difficulty of bacteriological testing at the front, especially early in the war, with negative consequences for diagnosis, therapy, and disease control. Second was inadequate hygiene including major shortcomings in latrine cleanliness and attempts to grapple with the "fly plague." Third was the lack of a Pasteur-type vaccine until late in the war. Susceptibility to dysentery was also heightened by war-related nutritional deficiencies. Taking off from an article by the English medical historian Roger Cooter, this article shows that the concept of "war dysentery" was socially constructed and served a variety of professional interests but at the same time takes issue with Cooter's arguments against linking "war" and "epidemics" pathogenetically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article looks at the response of the aristocracy to militia and mob violence in Hungary between 1919 and 1922. It argues that the experience with radical paramilitary groups in the era after the first world war colored the political behavior of the aristocracy and its political representatives, especially in their attitude to fascism, in the 1930s and 1940s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article I discuss the prosthetic phenomenon during the First World War and Weimar Germany. As opposed to contemporary trends, with their inflationary use of the 'prosthesis', sometimes even hypothesizing 'prostheticization' as a paradigm, I seek to return the debate about the prosthesis to its historical concreteness. I describe the phenomenology of the prosthesis in three senses: first, in the statistical sense, in the form of a dramatic growth in the number of prostheses; second, in the visual sense, in the form of a dramatic growth in the visibility of the prosthesis. Basing myself on the Heideggerian perception of the 'phenomenon', I seek to reveal an additional, third, aspect of the phenomenology of the prosthesis. It is my contention, against the background of the major catastrophe of the First World War and the frequent crises that afflicted Weimar Germany, but also in the light of additional contexts -- technological, economic, cultural -- that the prosthesis was increasingly perceived as a phenomenon, i.e. as something which appeared in a wide range of ways -- as prosthesis, as tool (hammer, writing instrument), as an organic limb (hand, leg), and even as a paradigm (man as 'prosthetic God', man as 'Dasein'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of World War I on the publication of the German travel guides generally known as Baedekers, focusing particularly on the popularity of Baedekers' outside of Germany. Scottish brothers James and Findlay Muirhead published the English-language Baedekers prior to the war, but created their own guidebooks after the war to sell to customers living in Allied countries. The author also considers the physical effect of the war on Europe's landscapes and how changes to landmarks and destruction of property had an impact on the accuracy of guidebooks.

The article examines the ways in which French officers manipulated the image of the "savage and violent" African colonial soldier. While the background for the development of this image was the general European perception of Africa as a violent space, during World War I, officers, as well as parts of the French public, began to see Africans as "grown children" rather than savages. However, as this image served French military purposes and made the soldiers useful on the battlefields, it was not rejected outright. I look at the debate around recruiting Africans to serve in Europe on the eve of World War I, and the French attempts to refute the German accusations around the deployment of African soldiers in the Rhineland during the 1920s. Finally I examine how, thirty years later, during the Indochina War, African officers dealt with these conflicting images in reports about violent incidents in which African soldiers had been involved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gerhard Gross says that he has discovered new documents which show that there was a Schlieffen plan. His description of those documents is both cursory and inaccurate. A thorough analysis of these documents proves that there never was a 'Schlieffen plan'. Gross also attempted to refute my 'Schlieffen plan' thesis. I show that Gross's rebuttal is unconvincing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the life of Karl Breul, the first professor of German language and literature at Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the Anglo-German academic encounters for whom he considered outbreak of the First World War the end of a busy academic life. It notes the Breul has joined the Anglo-German Friendship Committee at the time when antagonisms between Germany and Britain began to cloud the horizon. The said committee had gathered together many prominent political and academic figures and was one of the few citizens peace organizations lobbying for an improvement of bilateral relations and a peaceful settlement of national disputes.

In 2004, the site of a prisoner of war camp from the First World War was investigated archaeologically during a large rescue excavation project initiated by highway construction works in the municipality of Quedlinburg in the north of the Harz Mountains in Central Germany. During the excavation, numerous structures and finds from the camp were recorded, throwing light on the everyday life of the soldiers imprisoned there. With the addition of previously unknown historical research about the camp, new aspects of an area of modern history that has hitherto received little attention have been revealed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on a biographical case study of the first women to obtain doctorates in economics at the University of Berlin between 1900 and 1925. Their educational opportunities and experiences were linked to the networks that tied the women's and social reform movements, as well as to the disciplinary differentiation of the German social sciences and the development of social work. These connections allowed them to exploit particular employment niches before and during the First World War, but the foundations of the expertise upon which women economists could call did not hold in the new political and institutional context of the Weimar Republic. What these early graduates patched together in response reveals a complex of opportunities and limitations presented by their simultaneous exploitation of essentialist and expertise-based arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the First World War, youth groups all over Europe went through a period of radicalisation that would later make them an important part of the international communist movement during the interwar years. This article describes the development of the socialist youth movements in Germany and Italy, comparing their organisation, practices and their relations to both the adult labour movement and the state. Though the two groups existed within very different political contexts, the article shows how they both allied themselves with the extreme left of the movement. Also, this radicalism was in both countries explicitly connected to the concept of youth as the vanguard of the revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on how the migration of Eastern European Jews to Germany during the German Empire and the Weimar Republic affected the German politics. Several topics are discussed, including how many Eastern European Jews traveled through Germany on their way to the United States from 1880 to 1929, how the German military recruited Eastern European Jews during World War I, and how civil war and political unrest in Eastern Europe between 1914 and 1922 caused the persecutions of many Jewish people and started mass migrations.

The First World War was marked by a series of violent reprisals against prisoners of war which have long been overlooked by historians. This article explores one such sequence of collective reprisals, instigated by the German army in spring 1917, when it opted deliberately to use British and French prisoners of war to carry out forced labour on starvation rations under shellfire in the German trenches. As this article shows, this German reprisal occurred in retaliation for the British and French armies' use of German prisoner labourers, in particular, the French army's appalling treatment of German prisoners forced to work on the Verdun battlefield. The German army's use of harsh prisoner reprisals on the Eastern Front in 1916 is also revealed here as the model for these 1917 reprisals. Ultimately, this article contends that the 1917 reprisal action was successful: reprisal prisoners were encouraged to write home about their predicament, leading to public pressure upon the British and French governments that forced them to agree to limit their use of German prisoner labour to a distance of thirty kilometres from the front in exchange for Germany ending the reprisals. This study contends that prisoner reprisals illustrate new forms of violence--and thus a process of escalation or totalization operating during the war, It also emphasizes, through a comparison of the British, French and German armies' use of prisoner labour, that such totalization was not inevitable or unlimited. Finally, it suggests that prisoner reprisals reveal wartime violence in a new light--as highly rational and discriminating, deliberately directed towards obtaining a particular goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reception in Germany and Austria of the writings on international politics of British playwright George Bernard Shaw before, during, and after World War I. Shaw's views on Anglo-German relations as related in letters published in British, German, and Austrian newspapers are discussed, in particular his criticisms of jingoism, nationalism, imperialism, and the brutality of modern warfare, and his support for an international organization to maintain peace. Wartime productions of his plays in Germany and Austria are also discussed.