World War Research Articles

The British sciences and the Great War: myths and histories

Abstract The history of the relations of science and war in the United Kingdom during the Great War has been the subject of much mythologising by scientists and by historians. Those myths need to be understood, not ignored. Contrary to those myths the UK had a powerful military-scientific complex prior to the Great War, which was greatly expanded during it, not least by the recruitment of physicists to it.

Zygmunt Łempicki im Kontext der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft der Zwischenkriegszeit

Abstract This essay rescues from oblivion the now almost forgotten work of the Polish philologist and publicist Zygmunt Łempicki, who was, due to his renowned German-language publications, a well-known figure in German literary studies in the period between the two World Wars. Of particular interest is Łempicki’s theoretical position in German literary studies at the time, which is examined here. Based on his education in Twardowski’s logical school of Lviv, Łempicki developed an analytical, conceptually and historically honed mode of reflection for literary studies concepts, which allowed him to develop a meta-theoretical critique, the main features of which are still relevant today.

Warfare and wind tunnel: engineers, physicists, and the evolution of combat aircraft 1914-1918

Abstract The British aircraft industry was transformed across the course of the First World War. Annual output grew exponentially, while by 1917-1918 the intensity of wartime research and development saw technologically advanced machines seeking air supremacy in all theatres of operation, most notably the Western Front. Capability had been inhibited by the absence of reliable, high performance power units, but ultimately production and procurement problems were resolved. This heroic narrative warrants qualification given the high ratio of poor to outstanding aircraft and the reality that in August 1914 Britain was by no means wholly unequipped to wage war in the air: the development programmes of the National Physical Laboratory and Royal Aircraft Factory, and the Royal Naval Air Service’s collaboration with science-based companies such as Short Brothers run counter to a popular belief that machines were still crudely built and militarily ineffective. There existed a working partnership between pioneer engineers and designers, schooled in applied science at metropolitan technical colleges, and graduate physicists and mathematicians encouraged by far-sighted dons to join a fledgling but fast-growing industry. That fusion of theory and practice, academic and industrial, was consolidated once British science’s human assets were mobilised to wage ‘industrial war’. Yes, aviation saw huge changes across the War, but the continuity is striking: before 1914 designers and air frame manufacturers were drawn from both the shop floor and the varsity, a wartime infusion of research scientists generated remarkable advances in aeronautics and in consequence a vital extension of Allied air power; and after 1918 companies survived retrenchment thanks to a durable combination of the entrepreneurial engineer and the experimental analyst.

Introduction: Esperantists in the Twentieth Century: Making Connections in an Age of Division

The transcending of borders marked a large part of the political experience of the 20th century. This aspiration took shape in a century that strengthened and multiplied national barriers and that witnessed two world wars. In response to growing nationalism, many individuals, political movements and communities adopted an enlarged identity bound up with cosmopolitanism, internationalism, pan-Europeanism or, more recently, globalism. These categories, often part of a broader political frame of reference, established a connection between estranged nations but still referred to national divisions. Transnational history has shown how these tendencies were experienced not as a withdrawal of the border framework but as a link between nations-states. In this context, a particular and powerful way of abolishing national constraints has remained unnoticed by historians: the community of Esperanto speakers. They emerged at the end of the 19th century as an alternative to internationalizing models. With this aim, they developed a linguistic and cultural space that would not be marked by one specific culture to the detriment of the others. Nevertheless, the international language and the social movement created around it had to face the dominant ideological trends of the time. Through three case studies from the history of the Esperanto movement we propose to deepen the debate on the links between ideology and transnationalism. The first investigates the epistolary relationship between two communists, one Bulgarian and the other Japanese, discussing the trajectory of their political life and most notably their rejection of Stalinism. The second focuses on the link between Esperanto and anticolonial thinking in East Asia during the 1930s and early 1940s. Based on the study of literature and in particular of post-war Esperanto poetry, the third contribution examines the reasons that led a number of authors to choose the international language Esperanto to formulate their own account of WWII and to perpetuate the memory of the collective tragedy.

‘For the Betterment of the Industry’: The establishment and work of the White Fish Commission, 1936–1939

Between the wars, the British fishing industry faced an invidious economic climate. Costs rose, over-fishing and falling prices depressed incomes, and structural faults that had mattered little in the years of growth prior to 1914 became serious handicaps. Government was thus obliged to intervene in a small but strategically important industry to a far greater extent than before, and did so in ways that reflected the broader thrust of interwar industrial policy. The Herring Industry Board has been well studied but the short-lived parallel body established to develop the bulk of the sea-fishing industry, the White Fish Commission, is all but forgotten, perhaps unsurprisingly since it did not even publish a report before it was suspended on the outbreak of the Second World War. This article surveys the situation facing the fishing industry between the wars and examines in detail the establishment of the White Fish Commission and its activities during its short life. It argues that, while the commission’s powers and resources were insufficient for the scale of its task, it laid the groundwork for much further-reaching intervention in the changed climate after 1945.

Teaching Methods and Tools in Professional Translation in Higher Education

The main objective of this study is to show how translation is a necessary act in literary and cultural exchanges. In literary communication between readers of different cultures, translation is no longer only a process of interpretation where people understand each other although they speak different languages, but an act that requires prior knowledge of culture, literature, art, faith, customs, characteristics and the place of others in society. In this context, Albanian culture, literature and language are often prejudiced and not included in translation programs or in higher education programs that offer studies on Balkan languages, literature and cultures ; although, with difficulty, large university centers began to offer advanced studies in Albanology in the beginning of the 20th century. Geographically, the largest number of universities that opened their doors to Albanian culture belongs to Europe and, if the data from last year is counted, also to the United States of America, since the Albanian language was added to the foreign language programs at Harvard University. Compared to the first few decades of the 20th century, where Albanian centers were constantly under foreign rule and suffering the fallout of the Second World War, preventing the full promotion of Albanian literature and culture in Europe, Albanian literature is now well-represented in European languages, especially in the last three decades. After the change in the political situation, in the beginning of the 90s in Albania and at the end of the 90s in Kosovo, the doors were opened and the possibilities for the penetration of Albanian literature in Europe increased. Publishing houses, universities, but also freelance translators were committed to make it known to the European reader. In this paper, we present the experience of the greatest translators of Albanian literature in the last five decades. The results of our analysis were generated with qualitative and comparative methods by conducting open and semi-open interviews with these translators, naturally relying on translation theories.

Poisonous Workplaces: What Workers Faced in British Chemical Weapons Factories.

Soldiers were not the only victims of chemical warfare in the twentieth century; the workers who produced these weapons also risked injury and death. Focusing on British chemical weapons factories during both world wars, this article advances our understanding of the human costs not only of war but also of the preparation for war. Technologies such as physical barriers, ventilation systems, protective equipment, and detection systems mitigated some hazards to workers, but financial constraints, wartime pressures, and limited knowledge of the damage caused by prolonged exposure to low levels of chemical weapons resulted in serious damage to workers' bodies.

Madeleine Lynch Dungy, Order and Rivalry. Rewriting the Rules of International Trade after the First World War. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2023

Madeleine Lynch Dungy, Order and Rivalry. Rewriting the Rules of International Trade after the First World War. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2023

Book Review: Order and Rivalry: Rewriting the Rules of International Trade after the First World War by Madeleine Lynch Dungy

Book Review: <i>Order and Rivalry: Rewriting the Rules of International Trade after the First World War</i> by Madeleine Lynch Dungy

Tobias A. Jopp, War, Bond Prices, and Public Opinion. How Did the Amsterdam Bond Market Perceive the Belligerents’ War Effort During World War One. (Economy and History, Vol. 2.) Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck 2021

Tobias A. Jopp, War, Bond Prices, and Public Opinion. How Did the Amsterdam Bond Market Perceive the Belligerents’ War Effort During World War One. (Economy and History, Vol. 2.) Tübingen, Mohr Siebeck 2021

Chess and Freedom

Abstract The tension between the game of chess as strictly regulated by rules and the idea of freedom can be traced in three radidal examples separated by media and different periods of the twentieth century. The first emphatic employment of the concept of freedom is in the title of a chess journal issued by the Communist opposition of the central German working-class chess organization at the end of the Weimar Republic. In the journal Frei Schach! the radical subsection of “Red Sports Unity” asserts its claim for supremacy, demanding revolutionary goals in the class struggle. But this journalistic appeal to freedom was countered by the use of the same concept by the moderate alternative central chess organisation, and soon even by the National Socialists suppressing both working-class organisations. In the cultural scene after the second world war there was a distant, strangely depoliticized echo of freedom in chess. In the Austrian avantgarde dramatist Wolfgang Bauer`s version of Ibsen`s modernist revision of classical drama in the play Ghosts there is a farcical use of everyday objects as a replacement of chess elements. They function as a postmodern parody of the conventional structures of a conversation play. Compared to such highly idiosyncratic ludic transformation of chess games, today`s digitalized chess in which the computer is the final arbiter makes the game more accessible to the masses. The surface democratic appeal in which average players can turn into critics of the chess elite is accompanied by the complete subjection to digitalisation on a late capitalist agenda. However, this does not completely deprive the traditional game of chess of its promise of playful enjoyment for an increasing number of people on a global scale.

Gheorghe I. Brătianu on the historical borders of Moldova and the place of Bessarabia within the romanian unity. Part I

More than seven decades after his physical disappearance, Gheorghe I. Brătianu appears as one of the most talented and fruitful Romanian historians, a fact due to the thorough education he had since his early childhood, his versatile erudition, the accuracy of his work, and to his interpretative flexibility. All these exceptional qualities ensured him a place of first rank in Romanian and universal historiography, a prestige undisturbed by the inexorable passing of the years. He believed in historical truth and in the fact that it would win, regardless of the fate of those who served it. For the scholar Gheorghe I. Brătianu, son of Ion I.C. Brătianu and Princess Maria Moruzi Cuza, Great Romania was not a fleeting idea, but an ideal for which he fought with the strength of creative ideas, but also literally, weapons in hand. At the outbreak of the First World War, he volunteered and took part in the battles in the Trotuș valley (1917) and Bucovina (1918), being wounded twice. He also took part in the War for Reunification, taking part in the campaigns in Bukovina (1941) and Crimea (1942). As rightly appreciated by Acad. Șerban Papacostea (1993), „The action of Gh. I. Brătianu’s was straightforwardly carried out in the direction of the broad national interest conceived in the spirit of tradition and the historical mission assumed by his family. The sense of duty, supported by this tradition, inspired both his strength to resist the temptations of power when it strayed from its traditional national purpose, the determination to expose his life on the battlefield when the supreme interests of the nation were at stake and, above all, the strength not to abdicate from the creed of his life when he had to pay for this act of fidelity at the cost of his existence”.

»Meine furchtbaren Träume / habe ich erlebt!«

Abstract This article focuses on Paula Ludwig’s dream texts (›Traumtexte‹) and her dream conception. Fundamental to understand her concept of dreams is her stay in Munich, where she encountered numerous intellectuals and lovers of culture, including Grete Weisberger and Karl Wolfskehl. It is likely in this context that she came into contact with Ludwig Klages’ dream theories, which have left clear traces in the paratexts of her dream collections. However the development of National Socialism and the outbreak of the Second World War soon disrupted European and world history, which was reflected in Paula Ludwig’s life and work. Accordingly, the article aims to shed light on the incursion of history into Paula Ludwig’s dream world, using a philological and hermeneutic method that also considers biographical, historical and cultural aspects.

The merging of knowledge? Lived experience of poverty and its place in public debate

This article reflects on the recent ‘turn to lived experience’ within academia and the third sector in the UK and discusses some issues arising. It then focuses on ways in which these issues might be addressed – including through a methodology employed by ATD Fourth World, an international human rights-based anti-poverty organisation founded after the Second World War that works in partnership with people affected by poverty. ATD developed the ‘merging of knowledge and practice’ to bring together different kinds of expertise, including that acquired from lived experience, to create a richer form of knowledge and better-informed practice. The article discusses this method and suggests various ways in which the lived experience of poverty can be embedded in public debate, policy and practice. People with experience of poverty can be involved in examining and conveying the many dimensions of that experience; providing training for officials dealing with people in poverty; and designing and evaluating relevant policies.

Luria's first steps in neuropsychology

Recent historical research has shown that the large complex of research conducted by Aleksandr Luria on aphasia in brain-damaged soldiers during the Second World War was already started at the end of the 1920s, under the theoretical influence of Lev Vygotsky and the results of his clinical studies. The first written document of Luria's interest in neuropsychological investigation is the abstract of a conference held on November 27, 1932, a text published in Russian in 1933 and never reprinted, and here translated for the first time into a Western language.

A Feminist Autoethnography of a Family Archive: Affects, Narratives and Practices During Two World Crises: World War II and Covid-19

What happens when we, as researchers, are living through a world crisis such as Covid-19, whilst studying a family epistolary archive produced during World War Two, another world crisis? What epistemological and methodological bridges can be made between the personal experiences of two women (great aunt and great niece) living in two moments of history but who are connected by the process of writing and reading epistolary documents? By conducting a feminist autoethnography of my experience in the Covd-19 pandemic, I reflect upon what it has meant to do feminist historic and archival research of the experience of Trixie Mayer, the first Mexican volunteer to join the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in Great Britain from 1942 to 1946 and who produced more than 200 personal documents during her war work and afterwards kept them, together with the documents she received form her family in Mexico, for more than 70 years. I analyse how living through a pandemic has helped me understand my great aunt’s crisis experiences from a different perspective, questions, partialities and, at the same time, how these personal and familiar writings have helped me understand and question our current reality and PhD thesis from an alternative perspective.

Competing Visions of Restraint

Abstract At least since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, a subset of realists, conservatives, and progressives have called for greater restraint in U.S. grand strategy. Given that restraint is a key position in the grand strategy debate, this article explores the variations within restraint's big tent in greater detail. Drawing on writings by and interviews with advocates of restraint, we identify the underlying beliefs that have led these disparate groups to converge on restraint. We find that there are competing visions of restraint. Realists want to prevent the emergence of regional hegemons without provoking great power war; conservatives seek to preserve what they identify as the American way of life; and progressives are motivated by the desire to combat inequality and injustice at home and abroad. Even within each group, there are a range of underlying beliefs and foreign policy preferences, and more divisions have emerged in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and China's rise. We explore how these groups’ positions may evolve in the future as the threat environment continues to change and new policy questions emerge.

Lviv’s Cinemas During World War II

The article discusses the functioning of cinemas in Lviv during World War II, with a focus on the years 1941-1944. The Nazi authorities introduced a division of Lviv cinemas into those for Germans, Poles, and Ukrainians. These three cinema categories therefore attracted different audiences (in terms of nationality), towards which the occupying authorities pursued separate repertoire policies. The article will analyse the nationality-oriented film policies of the Nazi authorities towards these three groups and their film preferences. The period of Soviet occupation (1939-1941) will also be addressed, albeit not in detail. By taking it into account, it will be possible to highlight some differences in the approach of the Soviet and German occupiers to film policy in Lviv. This research would not have been effective without the use of quantitative methods to compare large sets of repertoire data. There is an error in the paper edition of the journal in the table on page 119. The attached PDF file contains a table with the correct data.

Amplified psychological reaction to civil unrest among Holocaust survivor descendants.

The evidence regarding the intergenerational effects of the Holocaust points to a heightened sensitivity to traumatic and stressful events, as well as to threats. These effects were found across at least three generations: the survivors themselves, their children, and their grandchildren. More specifically, this sensitivity is manifested in increased psychological reactions to adverse circumstances, especially when such situations trigger associations with the Holocaust. During 2023 Israel has experienced unprecedented civil unrest and protests following the government's plan to promote a judicial overhaul. Many expressed fears for Israeli democracy and the integrity of the social fabric in Israel. The current study examined how Holocaust descendants (i.e., children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors) experienced this prolonged social unrest. A web-based random sample of 706 Israeli Jews born after World War II completed questionnaires several months before the unrest began (Wave 1, 2022) and seven months into the unrest (Wave 2, 2023). Supporting most of our hypotheses, Holocaust descendants reported higher civil unrest salience (i.e., more preoccupation with the political and social upheaval) relative to comparison descendants (i.e., children and grandchildren of those not directly exposed to the Holocaust). Relative to comparison descendants, Holocaust descendants were also at a greater risk of reporting exacerbation in anxiety since the judicial overhaul was introduced, but not in depression or somatisation symptoms. Results remained significant after controlling Wave 1 distress level, background characteristics, level of engagement in civil unrest, and participants' viewpoint on the judicial overhaul. The findings further corroborate unique reactions to stress among Holocaust descendants, this time by highlighting increased preoccupation and increased exacerbation in anxiety during a period of prolonged political and social turmoil.

The Post–World War II Rise of AmorePacific: Women’s Labor, South Korea’s Cosmetic-Product Industry, and the Park Chung Hee Regime of 1961–1979

Abstract AmorePacific, the creator of renowned product lines such as the Color Control Cushion Compact, Laneige, and Sulwhasoo, stands prominently among the top ten global cosmetic companies, epitomizing the pinnacle of “K-beauty.” This article delves into how K-beauty, beyond its contemporary global allure, is deeply rooted in the historical and politico-economic landscape of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–79). Through an examination of AmorePacific’s extensive archives, the article traces the company’s development, highlighting its pivotal role in shaping South Korea’s cosmetics industry since 1945. The evolving history of AmorePacific provides a lens to explore the often-overlooked roles of women in an industry previously characterized by underground trafficking, post exchange (PX) stores, and counterfeit production. As AmorePacific navigated new economic policy and rigorous rhetoric under the Park regime, Korean women began to assume new economic and sociopolitical roles, including in factory work, as door-to-door salespeople, and as models and moral consumers in state-led campaigns. Thus the work of women was vitally involved with AmorePacific, the nation’s growing cosmetic-product industry as a whole, and the Park regime’s stringent regulation of South Korea’s extensive black market, which was critical to its economic formalization.