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This study considers the various ways that tennis was implicated within First World War propaganda; more specifically, to consider tennis as both a lens to view and a context to understand and communicate perspectives about the war from a British perspective. In the midst of heightened nationalism, jingoism and Germanophobia, tennis featured in broader debates in both the mainstream and sporting press as a site of contested meanings of British national identity. This was seen through poetry and cartoons alongside public correspondence through letters to editors and various published discussions. These messages typically defended Britain's amateur games culture, utilising constructions of 'sportsmanship' to distinguish British and German approaches, while denigrating Germany's more functionalistic understanding of sport's role in training. These messages were far from one-sided, as some British correspondents sought to defend German tennis players as somehow 'above' their barbarous brethren in ethics. Moreover, through tennis, Germans also communicated their objections to Britain's apparently more 'frivolous' attitude toward sport and warfare. Thus, narratives were diverse and conflicting, and were indicative of ongoing confusions expressed publicly about the supposed role of amateur sport as a site of political expression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British war aims concerning Germany developed haphazardly during the Great War of 1914–1918. The vicissitudes of unexpectedly conducting total war–one lasting more than four years–periodically deflected their consideration. Inter-Allied diplomacy and pressures from non-governmental lobbyists from Central–Eastern Europe seeking independent states to succeed the Habsburg, Romanov, and Wilhelmine empires forced reconsideration at crucial moments, for instance, after the advent of the nascent Bolshevik regime in Russia in late 1917 to early 1918. So, too, did British public opinion. Nonetheless, the British government had a clear general strategy: return stability on the European continent. In this context, the prime minister after December 1916, David Lloyd George, became central. Beyond the general aim, however, he wanted to avoid firm commitments over a range of issues touching Germany to give him flexibility in negotiating with the other Allied leaders at the eventual Peace Conference. Thus, less concerned with the minutiae of transforming war aims involving German territorial losses, disarmament, and paying for the war, he looked to make deals that might lack strategic purpose. [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]

Some 50,000 German women served behind the lines during the First World War, as nurses, war auxiliaries and in the civilian administrations of Belgium and Russian Poland. After the war only nurses had a place in the collective memory while the women who served in the women's war auxiliary service and those who worked within the occupied territories were forgotten. Although women's war auxiliaries were held in disrepute by some contemporaries, an exploration of the service reveals not only the high regard in which the majority of women and their work were held by their employers but also the class and generational prejudices of the upper- and upper-middle-class women running the service and the tensions in their relationships with the German women working within the civilian administrations, who displayed organisational flair and strong collegiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive overview and critical discussion of recent scholarship on gender issues in Nazi Germany. In particular it examines how gendered approaches have both contributed to, and been shaped by, new research in three key areas: the formation of the Nazi Volksgemeinschaft (national or people's community); Nazi understandings of ‘space’ and empire; and memory and the legacy of the National Socialist regime. The article argues that there are some limits to what gender can explain, especially as the Third Reich prioritised race over gender when it came to reordering German and European society. Nonetheless, gender is a crucial category for analysing the everyday lives and experiences of real German men and women in the period 1933 to 1955, most notably in conjunction with ideas around ‘comradeship’, ‘honour’, individual and collective ‘performance’, and mobilisation for war. It also raises important questions about the process of coming to terms with the aftermath of total war and total defeat, and about the strength and validity of past and current theories of generic fascism. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article re-examines the role of sacrificial ideology in motivating Germans and Britons to fight between 1914 and 1918. Contrary to current historiography, it contends that the ideology remained relevant in the war's mass slaughter and even exacerbated the violence. It begins by noting the ubiquity of sacrificial rhetoric and symbolism during peacetime and explains their importance in the mobilization of August 1914. It then explores how the ideology adapted to the circumstances of modern combat. The article shows that concepts of sacrifice not only remained resonant for most soldiers, but actually encouraged them to endure and seek vengeance to vindicate their dead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares efforts to curb German military power after 1919 with attempts to limit that of Iraq after 1991. It argues that incomplete defeat in each case, compounded by disputes among the victors (exploited by the Germans and Iraqis) undermined a long-term maintenance of each settlement. UNSCOM's problems in Iraq in the 1990s replicated much of what had hamstrung the IMCC in Germany in the 1920s. Crucial was the lack of autonomous intelligence and verification capabilities, enabling the targeted regimes to defy inspections, whilst challenging the impartiality and legitimacy of the enforcers. Facing devious and unrepentant adversaries, both inspection regimes survived barely seven years. In both cases a second war would ensue against the non-compliers – Germany in 1939, Iraq in 2003. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In early November 1914 the German military authorities ordered the internment of all British male civilians aged between 17 and 55 then still resident in Germany. Over four thousand British subjects were affected by this measure. This article examines the domestic political background to the decision in favour of internment, focusing on the role of public opinion and of competing voices within the German war leadership. It also looks at attempts to negotiate the release and exchange of civilian prisoners after 1914. Internment was supported by the military and by most sections of the middle-class press. While partly a reaction to similar measures against Germans in Britain, it also reflected the government's growing frustration at the failure to achieve victory in the opening months of the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]