Wartime Correspondence Research Articles

Home is Together: Sounds of Belonging in the Correspondence of Two Japanese American Families Separated by Wartime Incarceration

AbstractDuring World War II, Japanese nationals and U.S. residents Shigezo Iwata and Masaru Ben Akahori were arrested and interned while their wives and children were incarcerated separately. Though wartime correspondence sent from Mr. Akahori to his wife and daughter and from Mrs. Iwata to her husband clearly identifies the United States as “home,” the primary emphasis on home is as a marker of familial reunification. This article posits that the memories and sounds imaginatively recollected and conveyed within the correspondence sent from Sonoko Iwata to her husband, Shigezo, and from Masaru Ben Akahori to his wife, Kiku, and their daughter, served to signify and nurture an ongoing sense of belonging to and togetherness with their respective family members with whom they hoped to once again be home, together.

Eesti mobilisatsioonipõgenike kirjasuhtlusest Soome Jätkusõja ajal

The article deals with the letters of young men who escaped from Estonia to Finland during the German occupation in order to avoid the mobilization announced in 1943. Almost immediately after arriving in Finland, some of the refugees illegally emigrated to Sweden, but the majority started looking for temporary accommodation and work in Helsinki and its surroundings. The Continuation War (1941–1944) was going on, and thus a large number of Estonian male refugees were recruited into the Finnish army as volunteers; they started fighting on the Karelian front against the Soviet Union. The letters analysed in the article come from the years 1943–1944 and were sent by the men who remained in Finland to their friends who escaped to Sweden. The letters show that both civilians and soldiers faced problems caused by the political situation resulting from the Second World War and the complicated allied relations between Finland and Germany. The refugees did not have enough knowledge of life in wartime Finland and their language skills were also poor. In the course of escaping from Estonia to Finland, friends had lost sight of each other. After arriving in Finland, they started to restore their contacts in order to share experiences and find some support. The main aim of the article is to demonstrate the role of epistolary communication in finding solutions to the problems of Estonian refugees. The article gives an insight into the main topics of the letters, in which the authors of the letters tell stories about their escape from Estonia to Finland, share information about the destiny of their schoolmates and friends, but also discuss fine arts, and dream about life in peacetime. The letters show that they wish to get away from the war and continue their unfinished university studies in some war-neutral country. In their letters, they came to understanding that in order to implement their future plans, they had to get to Sweden and thus, already in the late autumn of 1943, the topic of fleeing from Finland to Sweden became dominant. At that time, the legal emigration of Estonians to another western country was limited by Finnish legislation, and, as field post letters were censored, writing about this topic was risky. The letters contain interesting examples of what verbal and visual means of expression were used to hide the true content of the messages from the censor. Compared to ordinary private letters, war letters also have another peculiarity: they contain some features of collective communication. For instance, an envelope addressed by one person to another may contain a letter consisting of messages written by several people and these messages can be intended to be distributed to several persons. Thus, wartime correspondence has similarities with the principles of information transmission in modern social media networks.

Operation Friendship: Soviet and British Pen‐Pals Discuss War, Work, and Womanhood

AbstractDuring World War II, the British and Soviet governments permitted more personal contact between their citizens in hope that they would develop feelings of goodwill and become more supportive of their Alliance. This article examines the wartime correspondence exchanged between women of Britain and the Soviet Union as well as between two organizations, which facilitated their interactions. Participants from both countries used personal and gendered language to frame the Alliance and their contributions to it. Despite their ideological and political differences, the participants found common ground by focusing on their shared experiences as mothers, wives, and workers as well as by stressing a model of womanhood, which contained both radical and traditional elements. They combined essentializing concepts of femininity, which emphasized women’s maternalism and vulnerability, with arguments for women’s empowerment, based on their ability to change state policies and overcome gender inequities. The two committees that facilitated the exchanges wielded this feminine ideal to bolster the Alliance as well as to advance their own institutional agendas. Ultimately, these conversations shed light on: popular participation in the Anglo‐Soviet alliance, the power of emotion to forge political ties, and how womanhood was conceptualized and put in service of military and political goals.

Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea

Foreign Friends: Syngman Rhee, American Exceptionalism, and the Division of Korea

"I Love Country but I Love Family and Self Much Better": The Emotional World of Civil War Family Men

"I Love Country but I Love Family and Self Much Better"The Emotional World of Civil War Family Men John Patrick Riley Clabern L. Townsend was a Confederate who enlisted with the Florida Light Artillery from Tallahassee. At thirty-three years old, he left behind a wife, Liza Jane, and three children. As his service took him far from home, to Kentucky and Mississippi, Townsend admitted that he suffered from homesickness: "You must be cheerful & lighthearted in my absense I intend to see you & Laura & Cullen & My little babe again & live with you all once more I am cheerful enough except lonesomeness from you all." In the same letter, Townsend provided careful instructions for his children; Laura was to be a good scholar and study daily, and Cullen was not to fight with other children. Both were to obey their mother during his absence and give her no trouble. To sweeten the deal, he offered a vague bribe for their good behavior: "Pa will give you a great many more things than was to if you was not to mind your ma." He then instructed Liza Jane in the care of their youngest child until he could return: "My very heart is overflowing on these considerations."1 By April 1862, just a few months into his term of service, Townsend confessed to his wife that he had made a mistake enlisting and not putting his family first: "I love country but I love family & self much better. I believe I ought to love them before country & I believe I done wrong in volunteering when I did but I can't help it now."2 Townsend's letters home reveal the painful emotional conflict prompted by his enlistment in the Confederate army.3 Although he honored the call to duty to [End Page 255] his fledgling country, his decision hindered his ability to care and provide for his family, his primary responsibility as a man, husband, and father. His letters bare the concerns and anxieties created by the wartime conflict that emerged between allegiance to nation and obligation to family. Townshend's correspondence can be viewed as a desperate effort to fulfill his role as patriarch in absentia; he delivered direct instructions for his wife, professed love and affection, offered educational advice for his children and inducements for their good behavior. Ultimately, though, he recognized the inadequacies of his attempts to parent from afar and confessed regret that he could not be there with his family. Townsend's constrained efforts to assert paternal authority via letters unmasks a soldier's emotional struggle between commitment to country and family, a struggle shared by other soldiering family men in the American Civil War. The American Civil War presented a dilemma for fathers and husbands. Tapped to volunteer their service to the state through appeals to duty, honor, and patriotism, these men nevertheless remained their families' primary breadwinners and legal heads of household.4 In the nineteenth century, martial duty in time of war was the responsibility of every man, but fulfilling this obligation jeopardized the safety and security of soldiers' families. Military service physically separated family men from their homes. Unable to exercise the control they could during peacetime, these soldiers acutely felt the separation caused by their service. Consequently, family men employed numerous tactics in efforts to maintain complex interpersonal relationships with their wives and children and to continue to fulfill their responsibilities as providers, caregivers, companionate spouses, and devoted fathers. The contents of soldiers' letters gives evidence to the collective fears and concerns of Union and Confederate family men: wives might make poor financial decisions or mismanage the household affairs; children could grow up without adequate guidance or [End Page 256] spiritual nurturance; loved ones may fall ill or die, all of which highlighted Civil War soldiers' powerlessness to provide for, protect, and control their families as they believed they ought.5 The emotional turmoil that engulfed soldiers as evident in their wartime correspondence reveals the extent to which nineteenth-century American men embraced their roles as devoted husbands and fathers. Their letters are a window into their deep emotional attachment for their families, made even more poignant by the loss...

A Second Front: Canon Garland, Chaplain Maitland Woods and Anglo-Catholicism in the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War

This article explores the work and influence of Anglo-Catholicism in the Australian Imperial Force during the Great War, based on reading the wartime correspondence of key AIF Anglo-Catholics, especially that of Canon David Garland and Chaplain William Maitland Woods. Anglo-Catholics were enthusiastic in support of the war, but simultaneously used it to promote Anglo-Catholicism and combat what they perceived to be the errors of non-Anglo-Catholic Anglicanism and the various Protestant groups, opening what might be considered a second front against these religions.

Zur Schriftlichkeit der unteren Bevölkerungsschichten um die Jahrhundertwende Briefe im Ersten Weltkrieg

Der Beitrag thematisiert die Schriftlichkeit und Schreibpraxis in den letzten Jahrzehnten der k. u. k. Monarchie, dabei wird auch auf Briefe aus dem Ersten Weltkrieg eingegangen. Es werden die Rahmen der Alphabetisierung der unteren Bevölkerungsschichten überblickt, die entsprechenden Einschulungs- und Sprachgesetzte. Dabei werden Fragen zur Sprache und Ethnizität in den Blick genommen. Der Aufsatz versucht aufzuzeigen, dass durch die massenhaften Kriegsbriefe, die durch die „Not an Kontakt“ entstanden sind, die Kommunikationspraxis der unteren Bevölkerungsschichten erkennbar wird: zahlreiche Angaben zur Volks-Schriftlichkeit, zur Schreibpraxis und zum Sprachzustand sind darin verborgen.

The Wartime Correspondence (1939–1945) between South African Geologist A. L. du Toit and Indian Geologist D. N. Wadia

The Wartime Correspondence (1939–1945) between South African Geologist A. L. du Toit and Indian Geologist D. N. Wadia

Noblemen, Spies, and a Hindu Monk Going to War: Notes on Swami B. H. Bon in New York, 1940–41

Abstract Based on previously classified material from the India Office, London, this article looks at the wartime correspondence generated by the offer of Gaudiya Vaishnava missionary Swami B. H. Bon (1901–82), at this time working in New York, to volunteer as a ‘Hindu chaplain’ in the fight against Nazi Germany. Combining this material with media reports and reminiscences, this article not only sheds light on a period in the life on Swami Bon that is little known, but also illuminates some of the hopes and anxieties of the last years of British colonial rule over India.

The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox by Phillip Hamilton

Reviewed by: The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox by Phillip Hamilton Lauren Duval (bio) KEY WORDS Lucy Knox, Henry Knox, American Revolution, War, Marriage The Revolutionary War Lives and Letters of Lucy and Henry Knox. By Phillip Hamilton. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017. Pp. 224. Paper, $24.95). Phillip Hamilton’s edited collection of the letters of Lucy and Henry Knox during the American Revolution seeks to correct what he sees as a surprising lack of scholarship on the couple. Positioning the Knoxes’ correspondence as an alternative to the better-known and oft-cited letters of John and Abigail Adams, Hamilton contends that the Knoxes’ wartime exchanges offer an overlooked and accessible window into the American Revolution. Unlike the Adamses, the Knoxes were young (18 and 24 respectively), childless (at least at the start of the conflict), and newly married. Henry Knox was an officer in the Continental Army. Lucy Flucker Knox came from a prominent loyalist family, and split with her parents and siblings over the conflict. The Knoxes’ wartime correspondence, Hamilton asserts, therefore not only speaks to the wartime hardships of revolutionary couples, but offers perspectives on the daily workings of the Continental Army, military encounters, and loyalist families. The edited volume contains 104 letters (29 by Lucy and 75 by Henry) from the Gilder Lehrman Collection. Spanning the ten-year period from their courtship in Boston in 1773 through the end of the war in 1783, the annotated letters are largely unaltered, except for minor corrections. The volume includes the entirety of Lucy’s surviving wartime correspondence, and Hamilton selected Henry’s letters both for their discussions of important events and “their direct engagement with Lucy’s experiences and feelings” (8). Hamilton has organized the letters in five chronological sections, each of which contains a brief introductory essay situating the Knoxes within broader military and political contexts and highlighting pivotal moments in the couple’s evolving relationship. The letters tend heavily toward the early years of the war, as after the Philadelphia Campaign of 1777, Lucy Knox traveled more frequently to military encampments. Hamilton’s annotations are impressively detailed and reveal the extent to which he immersed himself in the Knoxes’ lives and social relationships. Hamilton joins a recent group of scholars who are reconsidering the American Revolution. This historiographical turn has reinvigorated [End Page 343] scholarship on the war by insisting that civilian conflicts and struggles are as integral to understanding the Revolution as are battles and politics. Hamilton’s introductory essays do just this—skillfully weaving together the Knoxes’ familial concerns with military strategy and political developments, demonstrating how these contexts shaped familial concerns and responses to hardship. Contributing to a growing body of scholarship on the history of emotions, Hamilton illuminates the complexity of the marital relationship in wartime. Both Henry and Lucy, the letters reveal, depended upon the other for support; together, they envisioned their future and planned for their postwar lives. Consequently, their experience provides insight how married couples—as partners—survived and adapted to the exigencies of wartime, and how they attempted to rebuild their lives after the conflict. In centering the Knoxes’ emotional lives, Hamilton reveals the couple’s evolving relationship. Throughout the Revolution, Hamilton argues, both Lucy and Henry “became more dependent on the other . . . in order to sustain both the war and home fronts” (96)—challenges that he contends transformed their marriage into a more equitable partnership. Using the spousal relationship as an analytical lens for studying the American Revolution, Hamilton illuminates how emotional connection, physical separation, household concerns, and wartime uncertainty shaped Lucy and Henry Knox both as individuals, and as a couple. The evolution of Henry and Lucy’s marriage, Hamilton contends, reveals “the dynamic interplay between the public and private spheres of wartime life” (3) and offers a new perspective on spousal relations during the revolutionary era by revealing how couples strategized and adapted their relationships to the hardships of war. For the Knoxes, it seems that the war was an equalizing experience —as Lucy Knox so charmingly informed her husband in 1777, he should not expect to be “commander in chief of your own house. . . . there is such...

Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat by Jonathan M. Steplyk

Reviewed by: Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat by Jonathan M. Steplyk Jennifer M. Murray Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat. By Jonathan M. Steplyk. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. Pp. x, 294. $29.95, ISBN 978-0-7006-2628-1.) Over the last three decades, Civil War scholars have expanded considerably historians' understanding of the war's soldiers, shifting the focus from political and military leaders to the war's common soldiers. Many of these studies explore the lives of Civil War soldiers and engage questions of motivation, thereby creating a vibrant, ongoing debate in the historiography. The focus on soldier motivation has left some subjects of the war's soldiers wide open. Few historians, for instance, have addressed the Civil War's most fundamental element: how soldiers understood fighting and killing. In Fighting Means Killing: Civil War Soldiers and the Nature of Combat, Jonathan M. Steplyk, an instructor at Texas Christian University, explores how Union and Confederate soldiers understood killing. In doing so, Steplyk offers an invaluable contribution to the Civil War literature. Although Steplyk's monograph is the first to explore Civil War soldiers' attitudes toward killing, military historians have engaged this topic in other conflicts. S. L. A. Marshall, for example, has studied the behavior of U.S. infantrymen in combat in World War II. Dave Grossman's On Killing (Boston, 1995) explores the psychology of killing and its consequences. Using Grossman's [End Page 457] framework as a point of departure, Steplyk argues that Union and Confederate soldiers demonstrated a "greater willingness in their attitudes and behavior to kill in battle than previously supposed" (p. 8). Rather than explore soldiers' attitudes toward killing in a binary way—those who embraced the act of killing in war and those who opposed it—Steplyk considers Civil War soldiers' attitudes toward killing on a spectrum. Indeed, attitudes toward killing were far from monolithic, and Steplyk skillfully examines a range of behaviors in combat and reactions to "seeing the elephant" (chap. 2). In doing so, he finds some soldiers to be "enthusiastic and purposeful killers," while others proved more reluctant, and some even tried to avoid killing the enemy (p. 75). Steplyk explores acts of "murder and mercy" beyond the fighting and killing on the war's battlefields, when soldiers were forced to grapple with lawful and unlawful killings (chap. 6). For example, Steplyk underscores acts of soldiers' restraining themselves from wanton killing. These acts included the merciful treatment of prisoners and the wounded as well as fraternization between Union and Confederate soldiers. The other end of the spectrum included non-battlefield killings. Here, situations such as the execution of foraging soldiers or revenge killings forced soldiers to consider laws of warfare and unlawful killings. Soldiers' wartime correspondence reveals much about their attitudes toward killing. In evaluating the "language of killing," Steplyk finds that Civil War soldiers used a variety of expressions and phrases to describe combat and killing (chap. 3). Euphemisms such as "bite the dust" and stating that a man had gone to his "long home" were popular expressions in soldiers' correspondence (p. 78). In constructing the "language of killing," Steplyk argues, soldiers built "a way to protect them [selves] from any guilt or anxiety they might feel in regard to killing in combat" (p. 76). When describing fierce firefights, soldiers commonly wrote of a "good execution," "murderous fire," and "deliberate aim" (pp. 83, 84). Steplyk suggests that this terminology allowed soldiers to develop a "businesslike attitude" toward combat and killing (p. 83). Fighting Means Killing offers a critical exploration of the psychological nature of Americans killing fellow Americans. Steplyk's engagement with wartime correspondence and postwar reminiscences of Union and Confederate soldiers who fought in regular units, in both eastern and western theaters, provides a balanced, engaging treatment. Steplyk's study brilliantly blends military history and social history, pioneering an interpretation of how Civil War soldiers understood fighting and killing, war's most important, inescapable element. Jennifer M. Murray Oklahoma State University Copyright © 2019 Southern Historical Association

A Soldier’s Faith: The Civil War Experiences and Reflections of William Porcher DuBose

AbstractThe noted Episcopal theologian William Porcher DuBose was a seminarian when the American Civil War began. He was torn between continuing his studies for ordination and joining the Confederate Army. He felt duty bound to defend his homeland, and he served heroically, wounded in combat, and taken as a prisoner of war. Troubled by the senselessness and inhumanity of war, he was eventually ordained and served as a military chaplain. He devoted himself to faith and ministry when he realized his country and culture were lost. DuBose vividly presents his views on war and faith in his wartime correspondence with his fiancée and later wife Anne Barnwell Perroneau, and other writings. His experiences of loss and poverty were the basis for his theology of the cross and his understanding of the role of suffering in the Christian life, and he subsequently dedicated himself to faith, peace, and reconciliation.

The Greatest Trials I Ever Had: The Civil War Letters of Margaret and Thomas Cahill ed. by Ryan Keating

Reviewed by: The Greatest Trials I Ever Had: The Civil War Letters of Margaret and Thomas Cahill ed. by Ryan Keating Angela M. Riotto The Greatest Trials I Ever Had: The Civil War Letters of Margaret and Thomas Cahill. Edited by Ryan Keating. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0-8203-5155-1, 248 pp., paper, $29.95. Aiming to preserve the Civil War experiences of one family, Ryan Keating has edited and published the letters of Thomas and Margaret Cahill of New Haven, Connecticut. [End Page 398] Limiting his changes to the original letters and by providing footnotes to clarify the narrative, Keating offers easy access to one family's wartime correspondence—an extensive collection spanning from November 1861 to October 1864. Thomas and Margaret's letters shed light on various topics, among them military service and leadership, occupation duty, financial responsibility and difficulties, and family dynamics. Although the Cahills—a well-connected, middle-class, Irish-Catholic family—may not be entirely representative of all northern families during the war, this collection nevertheless offers a fresh perspective of the northern home front. As a historian of the ethnic Irish wartime experience, Keating finds particular value in the Cahills' ethnic and religious heritage and community connections. The collection offers a glimpse into the interdependence between soldiers and their home communities and the role that the Cahills, as active community members, played in relaying information between groups. At first glance, Thomas's responsibilities as colonel of the 9th Connecticut and Margaret's role as a go-between in the affairs of men in the regiment and their families may seem unexceptional to historians of the northern home front. However, the high frequency with which the Cahills refer to messages or packages that must be delivered to individuals other than themselves or reminders to check on community members reveals that home front matters were never very far from the minds of at least one Union regiment. Along with insight into the Irish experience during the war, the correspondence illuminates less glory-filled wartime experiences. This reviewer finds the everyday difficulties of serving far from home and away from family one of the most enlightening and valuable contributions of this collection. Thomas and Margaret often discuss missing or delayed letters, spoiled food from long passage, and the trouble of sending letters or packages so far a distance—Connecticut to Louisiana. Moreover, Margaret's reminders that the children keep asking for their father reminds the reader of the difficulties faced and personal sacrifices made by military families. The reviewer finds little fault with collection, but one minor issue is the lack of narrative clarification in the later sections. In his footnotes, Keating thoughtfully recommends books and provides further information on community members, but this is the limit of his interjections. Any clarification of chronology is found in the introduction, which causes the reader to flip back to find the answers to questions not answered within the correspondence. Despite these minor issues, this collection is a valuable resource for historians interested in the northern home front. Instructors may also find this useful in the classroom, particularly for a primary source analysis assignment. Keating's introduction and footnotes provide the historical background and the Cahills provide the enjoyment. [End Page 399] Angela M. Riotto University of Akron Copyright © 2018 The Kent State University Press

"They Seem To Understand All About The War": Australian Children and the First World War

This article examines the nexus between children's experiences of the First World War in Australia and adults' attempts to shape their understanding of the conflict. Utilizing children's wartime correspondence and postwar reflections, it argues that in the effort to make total war, children found the war entering into all facets of their lives, from school to play and intimate family relations. But while adults attempted to mobilize children as symbols and as patriotic labor, children were also obliged to make sense of the war through their own encounters with it. Absences of loved ones, shifts in family roles, access to alternate channels of information, and the pain of loss and grief all beguiled the process of internalizing total war for children. It also meant that their efforts to make sense of their experiences could last entire lifetimes.

"˜So Pleasant to be a School Maam': The Civil War as an Educational Force for Women

Scrutinizing the documentary traces of women's lives reveals the significant variability in what constitutes women's leadership and advancement historically. During war time, even the act of writing a letter offered women opportunities to advance their learning. This paper draws from a collection of over 150 letters Northern women wrote during the American Civil War to consider aspects of women's educational experiences during this devastating national conflict that spanned four bloody years and involved millions of Americans (Bailey, 2008; Rhoades & Bailey, 2009). Women's historians have explored how the war shaped women's social roles, gendered consciousness, and political organizing, yet its educational implications remain an under-theorized aspect of the war's complicated legacy worth exploring further. The letters under study highlight four aspects of women's education during the American Civil War: (a) women's varied attitudes toward new opportunities to teach and attend school, (b) wartime correspondence as an educational tool, (c) home front demands as obstacles to women's pursuit of formal education; and, conversely, (d) war events as educational forces in women's lives. Each has implications for reconsidering women's leadership and advancement historically.

Letters from a Quiet Front: The Censored Correspondence of the Ejército de Andalucía during the Spanish Civil War

This article uses extremely rare extracts of soldiers' letters from the Republican Popular Army censorship services to examine combatant experience in Andalucía during the Spanish Civil War—the only region for which documents of this type produced by Spanish Republican soldiers have survived. It considers the mandate and methods of Popular Army censorship and offers a methodological approach to the ego-documents, as well as using the records to examine soldiers' experiences on a quiet front. Additionally, it assesses the war effort by analysing combatants' morale and the effectiveness of the government's propaganda. Finally, the extracts provide insights into day-to-day material conditions at the front, as well as Republican discipline and its infringements, such as desertion, fraternization and political differences at the front. It concludes that Republican soldiers' morale was, with some rear-guard exceptions, understandably low and serious shortages that contributed to the government's defeat were widespread. In sum, the collection of letter extracts provides an important window on the non-elite experience of the Spanish Civil War and contributes to the re-introduction of individual lives into the structural history of the period. Lastly, it adds a new case study to the large and international corpus of work examining wartime correspondence.

A Shared Rhetoric: The Western Front in 1914/15 as reported by Harry Gullett and Philip Gibbs

The newspaper articles written by the Australian Harry Gullett and his English counterpart Philip Gibbs during the opening months of the First World War provide important insights into the nature of war reporting, propaganda, censorship, and the relationship between the press and the military. Despite differences in background and temperament, their reports, which were written prior to official accreditation, were remarkably similar in tone and content for Gullett and Gibbs shared the belief that war was a regenerative force that would purify and strengthen a degenerate pre-war Britain. Both writers adopted a rhetoric in their initial wartime correspondence that emphasized traditional martial and patriotic values that they believed were an antidote to the weakness and disunity of a pre-war Britain beset by industrial, social and political upheaval. Battles would therefore be best presented as extended heroic narratives in which there was order, honour and greatness. This approach exerted an influence as pervasive as censorship itself.

Brothers in musical arms: the wartime correspondence of Dmitrii Shostakovich and Henry Wood

ABSTRACTWartime correspondence between the conductor Sir Henry Wood and the composer Dmitrii Shostakovich marks the earliest point of Anglo-Soviet musical exchange at the highest artistic levels. Though short-lived due to Wood’s death in 1944, the correspondence shows how genuine warmth and mutual regard could coexist with a relationship that was brokered by government officials. Other archive sources around them reveal the varying shades of cynicism and sincerity that underpinned the whole project of wartime cultural exchange between Britain and the USSR. Though this rendered Anglo-Soviet connections inescapably underpinned by political motivations, it could not prevent genuine artistic and personal relationships from forming, albeit on a limited basis. The result, in this case, was a brief correspondence that acted as a crucial element of goodwill in Anglo-Soviet diplomacy during the war.

Houses Divided: The Cultural Economy of Emancipation in the Civil War North

This essay examines late-antebellum portrayals of Irish servant women in popular culture and the Pennsylvania Abolition Society’s (PAS) wartime correspondence with northern employers eager to obtain access to southern freedpeople. In these sources, white northerners filtered their characterizations of women’s bodies and behaviors through ideologies of gender and race to create submissive and transgressive social types representing ideal and less-than-ideal workers. These declarations about workers, yoked to the northern argument that emancipation was both an act of benevolence and a period of necessary instruction for black southerners in the habits and practices of wage labor, propelled northern benevolent associations, armies, and the state to forge a transportation network that they hoped would ensure the flow of workers northward. This network proved short-lived, ultimately foundering on a lack of funding and employers’ and employees’ mutual disappointment with each other. And yet, because of their wartime cultural work, employers could pivot to a position of even greater strength over white and black workers in the political economy of wage labor.

BÖLL'S WAR: CATHOLIC INNER EMIGRATION, APOCALYPTIC DYSTOPIA, AND ‘STUNDE NULL’

ABSTRACTHeinrich Böll's stature in the canon of West German postwar literature grew out of his association with the so‐called cultural ‘Stunde Null’. Recent scholarship has questioned this commonplace paradigm, which suggests problematic distinctions between literature written before and after 1945 and inside and outside of the Third Reich. The posthumous publication of Böll's prewar juvenilia and wartime correspondence allows for new perspectives on his literary formation. This article demonstrates Böll's intellectual dependence on pan‐European interwar Catholic culture, in particular key German writers who became Christian ‘inner emigrants’ in the Third Reich. The motifs of this body of thought course through his wartime correspondence, so much so that his early postwar work deserves classification both as ‘Trümmerliteratur’ and as a continuation of the inner emigration. This continuity between Böll's pre‐ and post‐1945 thought contributes not just to our re‐reading of his oeuvre but also to a revision in inner emigration studies. The term deserves extension to include both writers who wrote against the grain of Nazi literary politics and their readers, with whom they formed a coherent interpretive community. Out of this shared discourse, Böll crafts a narrative of survival, foreseeing a kind of perpetual inner emigration in a dystopian and apostate postwar Germany.