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Schencking, J. Charles - The Imperial Japanese Navy and the First World War: Unprecedented Opportunities and Harsh Realities ISFWWS-Keywords: Asia | Naval Warfare | Britain | Germany | Economy | Politics The Decade of the Great War Tosh Minohara , Tze-ki Hon and Evan Dawley , (2014) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2014 e-ISBN: 9789004274273 DOI: 10.1163/9789004274273_006 © 2014 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Schencking, J. Charles

Riezler, Kurt (February 11, 1882, Munich – September 6, 1955, Munich), German diplomat. After studying philosophy and ancient history in Munich, and gaining his doctorate in 1905, in 1906 Riezler entered the Prussian Foreign Ministry as a press officer. Using the pseudonym Ruedorffer, he wrote a well-received book on the essential features of contemporary world politics in which he declared his belief that Germany should pursue and exercise the status of a world power. In relatively stark contrast with the conceptions of the “Pan-German…

Stibbe, Matthew - Elsa Brändström and the Reintegration of Returning Prisoners of War and their Families in Post-War Germany and Austria Keywords: Austrian society | Elsa Brändström | First World War | Germany | prisoners of war | women's activism ISFWWS-Keywords: Prisoners of War | Germany | Austria-Hungary | Russia | Scandinavia | Switzerland | The United States of America | Literature Abstract: Less is known about Elsa Brändström's contribution to the reintegration of returning POWs and their families in post-war German and Austrian society,…

Central Powers Title indicating the German-Austro-Hungarian alliance that expanded to include the Ottoman Empire in 1914 and Bulgaria in 1915. Before the outbreak of war in 1914, this title was seldom used. Reference was made instead to the Triple Alliance among Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. To be sure, Bismarck’s Dual Alliance of 1879 between Germany and Austria-Hungary still existed alongside the Triple Alliance of 1882. Furthermore, it was clear to contemporaries that the earlier Dual Alliance was closer …

Lavisse, Ernest (December 17, 1842, Le Nouvion-en-Thiérache [Département Aisne] – August 18, 1922, Paris), French historian. A “rationalist republican” since 1870/1871, and advocate of national educational renewal, Lavisse became a professor at the Sorbonne in 1888. His meteoric career took him to the Académie Française in 1892, and in 1904 he was appointed director of the École Normale Supérieure. He published various historical works, and, with his articles on the teaching of history in the elem…

Sharp, Ingrid - The Disappearing Surplus: The Spinster in the Post-War Debate in Weimar Germany, 1918–1920 Keywords: Hausfrau | post-war debate | surplus women | Weimar Germany ISFWWS-Keywords: Germany | Gender | Britain | Politics | Women and War | Society | Pre-war period | Culture | Literature | Masculinity | Economy Abstract: The concept of "surplus women" or Frauenuberschuss was absolutely central to the pre-war women's movement in Germany. This chapter examines the ways in which the single woman was represented in public discourse and in…

Nietzsche, Friedrich (October 15, 1844, Röcken – August 25, 1900, Weimar), German classicist and philosopher. It is rumored that German soldiers were sent into the field with Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra in their knapsacks. Nietzsche served as the representative for the new German philosophy, the founder of a philosophy of life in which the young war enthusiast was seeking to corroborate his image of war according to ideas and formulae. Most vindications of the war were related, albeit not always explicitly, to Nietzs…

Salonica (Thessalonika) Port in northern Greece. From October 1915 the base of the Entente’s so-called Army of the Orient. The multinational Entente campaign against Bulgaria was fought from the end of 1915 in inhospitable territory, and remained bogged down for long periods. In this theater of war the soldiers suffered most casualties from disease. The Entente forces finally achieved a sudden and decisive breakthrough in September 1918. After Bulgaria had received guarantees in respect of territorial gains in the Macedonian part of Serbia, its government signe…

Gallipoli A peninsula bordering on the Dardanelles. The military conflict at Gallipoli was a direct consequence of the failed naval operation in the Dardanelles. The British leadership wished to make up for this reverse by conducting a landing operation on the northern Turkish coast. This was remarkable inasmuch as it had always argued in front of the War Council that the great advantage of the Dardanelles operation lay in the fact that it could easily be called off in the event of a failure. It …

War Weddings Weddings celebrated at short notice or with no official notice at all, owing to the circumstances of war. Although the figures are not fully documented, it appears that war weddings were particularly common in Germany. There, unlike Britain and France, women living alone or not with their serving husband received no family support payments. The wave of war weddings in August 1914 was evidently an urban phenomenon. In the countryside, especially in the farming and agricultural communit…

Jurėnienė, Virginija - Political and Public Aspects of the Activity of the Lithuanian Women’s Movement, 1918–1923 Keywords: Constituent Assembly | First World War | Lithuanian Women's Movement | political activity | Seimas | women parliamentarians | women struggle ISFWWS-Keywords: The Balkans and Eastern Europe | Women and War | Society | Religion | Poland | Russia | Germany | Literature | Politics Abstract: This chapter analyses the social and political activities of the Lithuanian women's organisations in the aftermath of the First World War, a…

Bernhardi, Friedrich Adam Julius von (November 22, 1849, Saint Petersburg – July 10, 1930, Kunnersdorf, Silesia), German general and military writer. After serving in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871 Bernhardi was posted to Greece and then Switzerland as military attaché. This was followed in 1898 by his appointment as chief of the War Historical Section I at the Great General Staff, where he laid the foundations for his career as a military writer. From 1909, Bernhardi dedicated his entire time in retirement to that activity. Central to his writings was the propagation of t…

Ingrid Sharp, Matthew Stibbe (eds.), Aftermaths of War Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2011 Keywords: Women and War | Home fronts | Politics | Gender | French society during the war | Medicine | Germany | Balkans | Poland | Austria-Hungary Abstract: This volume of essays provides the first major comparative study of the role played by women’s movements and individual female activists in enabling or thwarting the transition from war to peace in Europe in the crucial years 1918 to 1923. Table of contents: Front Matter pp. i-xxii Introduction: Women’s Movements and Female A…

Communications Technology The purpose of communications technology is to convey information over distance. The Russo-Japanese War of 1904/1905 was to foreshadow developments during the First World War in communications technology, as in many other areas. In his conduct of the Battle of Mukden, the Japanese Marshal Oyama acquired the reputation of being the first modern commander in his use of communications technology as he directed his units from 20 km behind the front line with the aid of telephone lines installed across the entire battlefield, up to the most forward positions. …

Liebau, Heike - Kaiser kī jay (Long Live the Kaiser): Perceptions of World War I and the Socio-Religious Movement Among the Oraons in Chota Nagpur 1914–1916 Keywords: India | Religion | Home fronts | Politics | The French and British Empires | Germany | Literature The World in World Wars Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber , Katharina Lange , Dyala Hamzah and Ravi Ahuja , (2010) Publication Editor: Brill, The Netherlands, 2010 e-ISBN: 9789004188471 DOI: 10.1163/ej.9789004185456.i-618.59 © 2010 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands Liebau, Heike

Clemmesen, M. H. - The Development of the Air Defence of Copenhagen Keywords: army development | Copenhagen air defence ISFWWS-Keywords: Scandinavia | Aviation | The Military and Naval War | Science | Technology | Medicine | Germany Abstract: Military history and experience was considered highly relevant both by politicians and the professional military in Europe at the beginning of the last century. The natural place to be developed into a fortress was Copenhagen. The artillery defence should be supplemented with a …

Field Hospitals (Germany) At the start of the war, 12 field hospitals were available for each infantry corps, and four to eight reserve field hospitals for each reserve corps. Two replacement field hospitals were assigned to the replacement divisions, and in the winter of 1914–1915 two Territorial Army field hospitals were assigned to the Territorial Army brigades. A total of 461 Prussian, 64 Bavarian, 44 Saxon and 23 Württemberg field hospitals were set up (no new ones were created in 1918). In ad…

War Bonds A form of government borrowing for the financing of war expenditures. War bonds were issued by the belligerent states during the World War, thus allowing for the mobilization of significant parts of the social wealth. Both their attractive conditions – interest rates frequently better than in peacetime – as well as a massive propaganda…

Dix, Otto (December 2, 1891, Untermhaus [now part of Gera] – July 25, 1969, Singen [Hohentwiel]), German painter and graphic artist. Dix continued longer than any other German artist to reprocess his war experience in his work. Trained as a machine-gunner, he served in the army throughout the war. In 1914, even before reporting to the front as a volunteer, he painted a …

Freikorps (Free Corps) Generally, the term Freikorps (literally free corps) denotes military formations manned by volunteers. More specifically it refers to those units which were formed in Germany between 1918 and 1921 with the aim of conducting counter-revolutionary operations and to protect Germany’s eastern border against Poland and Bolshevik Russia ( …