War Front Research Articles

Photography as a Wartime Service to Family and Nation in Nazi-occupied Europe

Abstract Photography’s significance for German soldiers and their families during the Second World War is especially apparent when it is seen as a social practice rather than simply a series of images. As this article demonstrates, photography was critical for maintaining wartime sociability between war and home fronts, a function that Nazi state officials, military leaders and businesspeople promoted years before the war began. With the encouragement of the Nazi regime, deployed soldiers and their families understood exchanging photographs and compiling photo albums as more than mere acts of personal communication; they were a patriotic duty. This article explores how photography functioned as a wartime service to family and nation by focusing on the photograph collection of one member of Reserve Order Police Battalion 131, who between 1940 and 1942 sent his wife hundreds of photographs for their family albums. The policeman’s concerted emphasis on family and comradeship through his photography embodies what so many other German soldiers and civilians found appealing about wartime photography: as a communal practice, it allowed them to protect and honour the values of family, comradeship and community, which had taken on new significance during the Third Reich and would be tested during the Second World War.

“Little Goodies in His Kit Bag”: British Servicemen, Masculinity, and Feeding the Home Front in World War II

ABSTRACT In World War II, the British government called on all able-bodied men to join the forces and defend the country, enabling them to fulfill the role of ideal male in wartime. These men also performed masculinity by provisioning families with gifts of food from their service abroad. Such food added to the overall caloric levels of a population on rations, offered a material form of comfort, and sustained connections between the military and home fronts. This article utilizes written memoirs from the BBC’s WW2 People’s War website to examine people’s memories of servicemen’s work with food. These remembrances illuminate the diverse ways in which men, serving in all branches of the forces (Army, RAF, Navy, and Merchant Navy), helped to support the nutrition and well-being (physical and emotional) of British families. Through the lens of food, this article offers a complex and multifaceted view of wartime masculinity.

Historical Features Regarding the Neuropathic Outbreaks in Brazilian Troops in the Paraguayan War.

During the Paraguayan War, Brazilian army and navy officers attributed outbreaks of combatant limb weakness with particular features such as tingling to palustrian causes. A dietary basis was not fully suspected at the time, and the popular name beriberi had not been coined. During wartime, there was a shortage in the food supply in addition to poor environmental conditions and diarrheal diseases, and many reports of "palustrian cachexia" were made. There are also reports of the use of native flora to feed troops, as well as alcoholism. There are also accounts of the death of horses with symptoms similar to those of combatants. It was reported that black soldiers were more resistant to "palustrian cachexia." This article presents the disease ecology and clinical manifestations of beriberi at wartime, linked to starvation and consumption of pickled food and native flora. These military explorations and operations in the Paraguayan War happened more than 150 y ago and present some aspects of wilderness medicine in the past.

The Challenges of Identifying Juvenile Soldiers in the Spanish Civil War

AbstractEvery conflict referred to as a war results in the horror of loss and death. This is true of any war, and the Spanish Civil War is a good example. Many people disappeared and were never found again, mainly because nobody ever looked for them. There were several counteroffensives on the eastern war front in Spain's Levante region during 1938, which, although ending in Pyrrhic victories for the Republican Army, were forgotten for years, as were the bodies of the soldiers abandoned to the elements on the battlefields. In 2014, this research project was developed to locate, exhume, and identify four graves containing the bodies of Republican soldiers found at the site of Peña Salada, Spain. The graves were found to contain five individuals, including some considered to be juvenile soldiers, aged between 14 and 20. They displayed many signs of violence, and it was possible to infer differences in injuries from bladed weapons and firearms. There was also evidence of the pillaging and desecration of the burial site. The genetic profiles of the five individuals were obtained in order to create a DNA database, which would make it possible to compare their profiles with those of potential family members who still live with the uncertainty of not knowing the whereabouts of their loved ones. This study offers the first scientific evidence of the participation of juvenile soldiers on the Levante Front, within the context of the Spanish Civil War.

Intelectuales y compromiso en el antifascismo global: La Segunda República Española según Aníbal Ponce y Carlo Rosselli, 1935-1937

Aníbal Ponce, the highest figure of Argentine Marxism in the 1930s, was in Paris participating in the Antifascist Intellectuals Vigilance Committee, and was sent to Spain as a member of an international evaluation commission of the repressive events in the Asturias Insurrection. When he returns to Argentina after presenting a report and making an initiatory visit to Moscow, he speaks on the Spanish situation, on the political limits of the Second Republic and on the recent triumph of the Popular Front and its challenges. There he posits the idea of the events in Asturias as victorious defeat, as a prelude to the coming revolution. Since his Parisian exile, Carlo Rosselli, the leader of the Italian anti-fascist movement Giustizia e Libertà, reflected critically on the Spanish experience, eventually leading an Italian legion on the Aragon war front. Ideologically closer to the anarchists than to the communists, Rosselli warns of the limits of revolutionary action in Spain, but anticipates a similar opinion to Ponce on the momentary defeat of the working class. In both cases, the Spanish experience leads them to consider the transition from speculation to action as the greatest possible destination for the intellectual class.

Gender and the politics of war historiography in Buchi Emecheta’s Destination Biafra

Buchi Emecheta’s novel about the Nigerian Civil War, Destination Biafra (1982), challenges war historiography in ways that scholarship designating it a “female perspective” on the conflict can sometimes overlook. This article focuses on how Emecheta deploys a dual narrative approach that weaves an omniscient narrator with diverse Nigerian women’s points of view in order to position their lived experiences and subjective knowledges as collectively amounting to the definitive history of the Civil War. This draws the reader’s attention to the gendered effects of the civil war as the lens whereby which all facets of the war can be understood - even and especially its macro causes in neocolonialism and petrocapitalism. By writing women who know the economic imperatives behind the conflict; exercise agency under dangerous circumstances; and employ methods of survival that safeguard others, Emecheta reveals the gendered politics of war historiography, and tests these politics by collapsing distinctions between what is habitually conceived of as the war front (and therefore to be narrated by active combatants), and everywhere else (to be narrated by witnesses, refugees, or survivors). Destination can therefore be understood as an attempt to intervene directly in historiographical method, as it rejects the designation of women’s war experiences as mere addenda and questions gendered expectations of where to look for and find historical truths.

“Not Altogether Ridiculous”

Spanning a long literary history, from 1742 to 1934, this essay argues for the military epaulette as an important material signifier through which the arbitrary nature of rank and colonial authority was revealed and challenged. This essay connects the anxieties attending the introduction of epaulettes in newly nationalized European armies to the historical and rhetorical impact of such uniforms on depictions of so-called Black chiefs, including Toussaint Louverture, Lamour Derance, and Nat Turner. In the context of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century slave revolts and imperial and colonial war fronts, this otherwise semiotic feature of the military uniform was a catalyst for a particular kind of confrontation over authority of signification in the tug-of-war between rank and race. This essay tracks a consistent rhetoric of violence and ridicule in these confrontations as they appear in histories, novels, and plays. In the work of Walter Scott, Victor Hugo, William Wells Brown, and Martin Delany, attempts to read epaulettes produce a violent form of colonial desire that is only permitted when couched in the rhetoric of ridicule and the ridiculous. The essay’s final pages turn to the first half of the twentieth century, when the still violent stakes of subverting the uniform persist through an ambivalence stemming from the literal and figural “costuming” of the Black chief.

Linear programming for the analysis and virtual recreation of historical events: the allocation of the artillery during the Siege of Bilbao in 1874

<p class="VARAbstract">The current digital technologies development makes it possible to apply new forms of studying historical events considering the geographical point of view. They rely on the location and the relationships among the different elements that took part in them over a recreated space (e.g. relief, roads, rivers); once these elements have been laid out on the virtual space, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be used to analyse several factors, such as distances, visibility, connectivity and so on. Nevertheless, the development of the actions was also driven by the aims, needs and beliefs (either wise or misguided) of the people/actors involved in those situations; therefore, some ways of including reasoning would significantly improve the actual recreation and understanding of the episodes. In this sense, “linear programming” is a very versatile tool for system modelling and optimization that is broadly used in many fields (e.g. industry, transports, agriculture, etc.). Likewise, this technique can also be applied to past scenarios to simulate dynamics and cross-check sources. In this text, two models regarding the distribution and the allocation of supplies during the siege of Bilbao, in the framework of the Third Carlist War (1872-1876), from both parties —beleaguerer and besieged— were established based on the war front textual reports. In these models, the scenario is recreated through the system variables (which define the alternatives that can be or could have been taken) and the constraints (which limit the range of action); moreover, the actors’ goals that guided the course of events are defined by the objective. Despite the simplification in the modelling, the results show very interesting hints about the dynamics involved during the processes and are able to highlight some critical issues that significantly conditioned the final results. Besides, the modelling process itself proved to be an opportunity for collaboration between historians and computer scientists.</p><p><strong>Highlights:</strong></p><ul><li><p>Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow studying past events through the recreation of the geographical space and the interactions between the elements.</p></li><li><p>Linear programming can be a suitable option to include actors’ reasoning as a part of the modelling process.</p></li><li><p>The usefulness of the system models also enables the identification of critical issues, testing alternative scenarios and sharing information.</p></li></ul>

The Cultural Press in Times of War

Abstract Most of the times, societal crises lead to cultural recessions. Yet, there are times when they generate positive results, due to the reminding of the role of culture in society. The Romanian Independence War was an important historical event; at the same time, it unblocked the informational flux, increasing people’s interest in art, especially since, in times of trouble, culture and art have the ability to become a refuge for those who cannot stand the pressures of said times. The world of theatre did not remain indifferent; actors and playwrights got involved. They shared the vibration of the era, they were solidary with those fighting on the war fronts, so that the dream of the nation – independence – could become reality.

Using converted WW1 Army Grid Referencing Systems to identify locations where Australian soldiers fell Europe

ABSTRACT Topographic maps (1:40,000) used by the British Army on the Western Front in World War 1 had a five-part Grid Reference System consisting of: (1) Map Number; (2) Letter-Square – 24 letter squaresA to X on each map; (3) Number-Square – 36 (and sometimes 30) 1000-yard squares in each letter square; (4) Minor-Square – four 500-yard squares denoted a, b, c, d in each number square; (5) Small-Square – 10 × 10 = 100 small-squares in a minor-square. Letter and number grid Woesten references (e.g. X: 28.A.6.b.73) cannot be used by modern GPS navigation devices that require geographical coordinates (latitude and longitude) or current map grid coordinates. This paper provides the background behind this project and demonstrates a method of transforming WW1 grid references to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) grid coordinates using Google Maps to obtain geographical coordinates, Geographic to UTM grid conversion and a 2D Conformal transformation. As well, it provides a ‘snapshot’ of practical methods that were used to develop a software package that would allow amateur military historians to convert the WW1 Grid Reference System to contemporary coordinates.

Addressing an uncharted front in the war on COVID-19: Vaccination during pregnancy

Addressing an uncharted front in the war on COVID-19: Vaccination during pregnancy

Delivering patient care during large-scale emergency situations: Lessons from military care providers

BackgroundToday, physicians are at the front lines of a pandemic response. Military physicians are uniquely trained to excel in such large-scale emergency situations. Civilian physicians can harness military know-how, but it will require research into military healthcare responses—specifically, we need to learn lessons from military interprofessional healthcare teams (MIHTs).MethodsThis research answers two questions: What are the characteristics of successful MIHTs? Why are those characteristics important to MIHT success in large-scale emergency situations? Using a Grounded Theory approach, 30 interviews were conducted soliciting perspectives from the broadest range of healthcare professionals who had experiences working in and leading MIHTs. Purposive sampling was used to recruit participants broadly across: contexts where MIHTs work; military branches; ranks; genders; and healthcare professions. Data were iteratively collected and analyzed.Results30 participants were interviewed (18 male (60%); 21 officers (70%); 9 enlisted (30%)) who held various healthcare occupations (medic/tech/corpsman (9); nurse (7); physician (7); dentist (2); occupational therapist (2); chaplain (1); physician’s assistant (1); and psychiatrist (1)).Six characteristics of successful MIHTs that are directly applicable to large-scale emergency situations were identified thatthat clustered into two themes: own your purposes and responsibilities (through mission focus and ethical bearing) and get it done, safely (via situational awareness, adaptability, and leadership with followership).ConclusionsThis study provides insights, informed by decades of military service and training, to help civilian physicians succeed in large-scale emergency situations. These experiences from the war front can support today’s pandemic responses on the home front.

Nigerian Soldiers On The War Against Boko Haram

Abstract This study explores two main questions: What are the experiences of soldiers who have fought against Boko Haram? What can these experiences teach us about the seeming incapacity of the Nigerian military to defeat Boko Haram? Six major themes are explored. These are perspectives on the mission, morale of troops, military equipment and weapons, suicide and murder–suicide among troops, intelligence leaks, and relationships of troops with the Civilian Joint Task Force, an extralegal militia. Soldiers’ discourses on the mission against Boko Haram reveal three overlapping dimensions. First, there are suspicions about the sponsors and political godfathers of Boko Haram. This suggests a belief that Boko Haram is a conspiracy involving the government and top brass of the military. Second, the patronage system involved in deployment into key positions on the war front. Third, participants believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged because it is a moneymaking machinery for the political and military elites. The evidence suggests that availability of weapons varies by unit and the agency of commanders—their networks and influence within the military and willingness to disobey orders from superiors if their demands are not met. This situation produces radically variegated wartime experiences among troops. Non-commissioned soldiers believe senior commissioned officers perpetrate intelligence leaks and are responsible for the protracted war. Senior Army Generals interviewed in this study support this perspective. The study has major policy implications for successful operations against Boko Haram in the Lake Chad Basin area and the broader war against terrorism in the Sahel.

When war came home: air-raid shock in World War I.

During World War I, civilians became a target of the war machine. Air raids transformed the lives of those not involved in active combat and blurred the lines between the home front and the war front. This paper argues that the experience of air raids in World War I was comparable to the combat stress at the Western Front. The author bases her argument on contemporary publications in medical journals, measures taken by British authorities to prevent air-raid shock, and contemporary case records. The narratives of air-raid shock – similarly to those of shell-shocked soldiers – reflect the feelings of terror and loss of control, and demonstrate the profound effect these experiences could have on individuals’ mental health.

The optimistic utopia: sacrifice and expectations of political transformation in the Angolan Revolutionary Movement

The optimistic utopia: sacrifice and expectations of political transformation in the Angolan Revolutionary Movement

Risk Perception and Precautionary Behaviour Against Covid-19 Pandemic among Health Workers in Calabar, Nigeria

This study aimed at assessing risk perception and precautionary behaviour against COVID-19 pandemicamong health workers. Through descriptive cross-sectional survey, 400 respondents were convenientlysampled to elicit data using respondent’s self-administered questionnaire designed by the researchers. Datacollection which spanned through two months were collected, cleaned, sorted, coded, inputted and analyzedusing SPSS version 20 software. Association between risk perception and precautionary behaviour wastested using Chi-square statistics significant at 95% confidence level. Results were presented in descriptiveand inferential statistics. Risk perception and the feeling of being very susceptible to contracting COVID-19was high 382 (95.5%). This created a spike in improved and positive precautionary behaviour 398 (99.5%)by strict adherence to consistent use of Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) amidst the COVID-19pandemic. To majority 339 (84.8%), the frequently use of PPEs was to prevent COVID-19 and other hospitalrelated diseases while for some 312 (78.0%), the consistent use of PPEs has been habitual. The study founda significant association between risk perception and precautionary behaviour of healthcare workers againstCOVID-19 pandemic (P < 0.001; df = 1; Chi-square = 11.280). There is need for healthcare workers tocontinue in the habit of always being conscious in the use of their PPEs even after the COVID-19 pandemic.This is because, there are still and may still be re-emerging diseases that needs to be prevented. Therefore,there is need for healthcare workers to always be proactive and be at alert at all times because the healthcaresetting is like a war front for all manner of diseases where the first attack or target is the healthcare worker.

ТРУДОВЫЕ РЕСУРСЫ СЕВЕРНОЙ ДЕРЕВНИ В 1939–1959 гг. (НА МАТЕРИАЛАХ ВОЛОГОДСКОЙ И КИРОВСКОЙ ОБЛАСТЕЙ)

The article attempts to show changes in the number and composition of the rural population of Vologda and Kirov Oblasts during the period of history crucial for the village, the key event of which was the Great Patriotic War. To analyze the demographic processes that took place in Vologda and Vyatka villages, a wide range of sources were used, based on published and archived statistical materials. The published data include the all-Union population censuses of 1939 and 1959, which contain information about the total number of inhabitants of the regions and show the rate of urban and rural population. Information about the number of citizens mobilized to the front and those who died during the war years is taken from the federal and regional memorial books. Data from reports of civil registry offices and resettlement departments allowed characterizing changes in the natural migration of the rural population from the village to the city. The annual reports of the collective farms helped to form an idea of transformations of the working-age population and the gender and age composition of the villagers. The analysis of the presented sources allowed drawing the following conclusions. By the early 1940s, in the majority of the country's regions, including the areas under study, the rural population dominated, and their agricultural specialization determined their belonging to the collective farm system. The usual way of life was disrupted by the war, most of the citizens mobilized to the front were called up from rural areas. This situation had a negative impact on the village labor resources. In the village, there was a shortage of male workers, which was compensated by increasing the burden on women, children, and the elderly to meet the state agricultural indicators. The reduction of labour force affected the quality of work leading to delays in its timely completion. The end of the war and the Red Army demobilization could not fill the village labor resources as many men perished on the war fronts. The state policy in the post-war emergency period did not change in relation to the village, which continued to be used as a labor and raw material resource for urban reconstruction and development. The rural residents' active migration in the post-war period led to a further reduction in the population of rural settlements. The reduction of rural labor and the state policy of enlarging collective farms contributed to the formation of a new settlement pattern, demonstrating the decay of small villages. Disintegration of the peasantry in villages, which collectivization had started, entered the final straight in the 1940s-1950s.

A Dagestani woman's participation in social and political life of the Republic in the first five postwar years (1946 - 1950)

The article uses new documentary sources and special literature and examines the participation of a Dagestani woman in the social and political life of the Republic in 1945-1950. The relevance of the research is determined by the need to study the role of women in the post-war reconstruction of the state national economy. The author aims to show the increased role of women in the post-war reconstruction of the national economy. The active participation of women in all spheres of life was associated, first of all, with an acute shortage of men in the post-war period, because many died on the war fronts, and among the returnees there were many disabled people who could work. Hereinafter, the participation of women in the socio-political, socio-economic and cultural life in the post-war period was in great demand. Women replaced men in almost all areas of economic life. The conducted research allows the author to show the peculiarities of the development of female activity in the Republic in 1945-1950.

ACCORDING TO GERMAN ARM?ES REPORTS THE FRONT OF ALBANY IN WORLD WAR I

Although the political and economic relations between the Ottoman Empire and Britain were based on a long history, the Ottoman British relations began to weaken after the Ottoman-Russian War of 1877-1878 and the British did not support the Ottoman Empire in the Balkan Wars. The economic relations with Germany, which has completed the political union of the Ottoman Empire in 1871, have started to be better. The first blockade in Europe started in 1894 as the Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) and Entente (France, England, Russia) before World War I. Albanians were not interested because of the Muslim identity of the nationalization movement which started after the 1789 French Revolution. Although the Serbs, the Greeks, the Montenegrins, and the Bulgarians first took part in revolts against the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans, the Albanians continued to remain committed to the Ottoman Empire and to continue their activities in this process. During the Balkan wars that erupted in 1912, Albanians continued to remain within the Ottoman State. Islam has always been one of the most important factors in this loyalty. Although the Ottoman State declared it to be neutral at the beginning of World War I, it soon joined the war for the Allied Powers. At the end of the first year of World War I, Italy left the Alliance and continued the war alongside the Entente States. Later in the war Italy met Austria-Hungary and Albania. The Albanian side played a crucial role in the ending of World War I by Austria and Hungary. In this study, according to the reports of the German army, the struggles of the Albanian Front in World War I and the effects of these frontal struggles on World War I were searched.

A Lincoln Legacy: The History of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan by David Gardner Chardavoyne with Hugh W. Brenneman Jr.

Reviewed by: A Lincoln Legacy: The History of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan by David Gardner Chardavoyne with Hugh W. Brenneman Jr. Paul Moreno David Gardner Chardavoyne with Hugh W. Brenneman Jr. A Lincoln Legacy: The History of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2020. Pp. 372. Photographs. Hardback: $44.99. With this fine volume of judicial history, David Chardavoyne (whom I've worked with for the Michigan Supreme Court Historical Society) has helped abate the envy that those of us in the Western District of Michigan have for the Eastern District. Chardavoyne wrote a fine history of the Eastern District in 2012 and that district has its own historical journal. A Lincoln Legacy is a comprehensive and encyclopedic account of the origins and development of this Grand Rapids-based federal court. It contains biographical information about all its judges, for example, which contain historical context that provides a fine background for the entire book. It also describes, with excellent photographs, the various buildings that have housed Western District courts over the years. This will be of interest not just to anyone who has worked in the legal world of the Wolverine State but also to anyone interested in its general history. But A Lincoln Legacy is much more than an encyclopedia. Readers will enjoy its stories most of all. Given the rise of American and global "juristocracy"—the ever-greater power of courts in our world—every citizen should know something about how courts and judges operate, and Chardavoyne tells many interesting tales. American courts have grown with the country. The decision to divide the state of Michigan into two districts (this is the "Lincoln legacy") is a story in itself. The fact that the Court's first case was U.S. v. One Piece of Ingrain Carpeting and Thirteen Yards of Gray Cloth tells us something about what federal courts do, and about the relative youth of the state in the 1860s. Baseball fans will enjoy Chardavoyne's account of the 1914 Federal League antitrust suit against catcher William Killefer, who had "jumped" from the Philadelphia Phillies to the new Federal League Chi-Feds and then jumped back when the Phillies made a counteroffer. Judge Clarence William Sessions is said to have upheld the notorious "reserve clause" that bound baseball players to their team owners in near-involuntary servitude. The reverse is closer to the truth. Sessions held against the Chi-Feds only because they did not meet the "clean hands" requirement in equity suits. In fact, he said in an obiter dictum that the clause would be unenforceable as an "executory contract … a contract to make a contract." (93) But it [End Page 143] would be over a half-century before the de facto enforcement of the reserve clause would end. Chardavoyne tells many fascinating stories about the enforcement of national prohibition in Michigan in the 1920s. The Eighteenth Amendment placed a tremendous burden on the federal courts, especially in Michigan, whose proximity to Canada made it a highway for rum-runners. It also met with serious resistance all over the country. Iron City's State Attorney Martin McDonough told the Scalucci brothers—restauranteurs and vintners whom the feds were prosecuting—that if the Feds returned they were free to "open fire on them." The T-Men in turn sought to arrest the Scaluccis for "rebellion." Authorities in Washington were able to arrange a compromise and avoid another civil war. Another valuable vignette concerns Judge Fred Morton Raymond's creative adaptation of the common law to prevent the guilty from escaping justice in a case involving the search of infamous bank-robber John Dillinger's automobile. The home front in World War II is nicely illustrated in the Office of Price Administration's enforcement of price-fixing and rationing. Post-Warren Court judicial activism at the district-court level is seen in liberal stalwart Noel Porter Fox, whose clerk "likened him to a modern-day chancellor in a court of equity, doing what was 'right' instead of what some might characterize as technically legal." (138) Many other features of and stores...