Veterans Of World War Research Articles

The Reluctant Broadcaster: C.S. Lewis Finds a New Voice

ABSTRACT C.S. Lewis conquered a variety of communication outlets before being asked to address the British people over the airwaves. In the eyes of the BBC, Lewis was the perfect candidate to speak to the nation about what it meant to be a Christian in a time of crisis. However, Lewis was not a natural behind a microphone; the BBC producers shaped him into a masterful broadcaster. This training would have a lasting effect on Lewis’s audiences and writing style. Very little has been written about the historical context of Lewis as a wartime broadcaster, its impact on him, his relationship with the BBC, and his role in creating contemporary Christian-mediated apologetics. This study utilizes a historical, cultural approach to explore C.S. Lewis’s transition from writer and lecturer to religious broadcaster and his influence on Britain’s cultural and religious attitudes during wartime as he mastered a new communication style. Early in the Second World War, Lewis contemplated the significance of scholarly activities while the world was at war. A wounded veteran of the First World War, he understood the realities of war. As a middle-aged writer, lecturer, and apologist, he was now looking to define his potential contribution to the raging global conflict. In the end, the answer to Lewis’s question was found in the most unlikely place … behind a microphone.

The return home: Disability experiences of Second World War Veterans with amputations

LAY SUMMARY Analysis of oral history interviews conducted with Canadian Second World War Veterans with amputation identified themes of disability experiences. Overall, the experience and understanding of disability by Veterans with amputation was based on activities they could perform independently, how others saw them, and how they viewed their injuries. The inherent pride and masculinity in not showing a disability was celebrated by the Veterans and is still relevant today, where life-changing injuries, such as amputations, are often thought of as tragedies an individual needs to be strong enough to overcome. The way disability was understood during this time as an individual responsibility influenced today’s military culture. Rehabilitation professionals working with military personnel are encouraged to be conscious of reinforcing injuries as tragedies that need to be independently overcome.

Fall of a New Soviet-Jewish Person: The Unmasking of Anti-Antisemite Aleksandr Litinskii, aka American Spy Big Boss

The paper examines the unmaking of an exemplary individual in Stalin's Soviet Union, a New Soviet Person, caught in the anti-Jewish campaign of Stalin's last years, often remembered for the notorious Doctors’ Plot. Aleksandr Litinskii was a Soviet true believer, a veteran of the Second World War, and a Jew whose father died in the Holocaust. When confronted with the anti-Jewish campaign, he was not disillusioned but decided to save the Soviet project through an elaborate attempt at reverse psychology. He posed in letters as an American spy bent on undermining the Soviet Union through antisemitism. Evidence from this bizarre case, collected from police archives that Ukraine declassified after the Maidan Revolution and from Litinskii's memoir, suggests new insights into Soviet Jewish experiences and into the legacy of persecution among Eastern Europeans who supported the regimes that repressed them.

Health impacts of war: case studies of New Zealand veterans of the First World War.

Armed conflict remains a tragic feature of the modern world and so it is necessary to continue to study its health impacts. Even the study of historical conflicts is relevant given that certain health impacts are common to most wars e.g., post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This study built on a previous quantitative analysis of a randomly selected group of 200 New Zealand veterans from the First World War (WWI). From this sample we selected 10 cases that illustrated particular themes around morbidity impacts. The theme of severity of impacts was illustrated with a case who was severely wounded and died from suicide when back in New Zealand, and another case with severe PTSD. The theme of the high frequency of non-fatal conditions was revealed with cases illustrating new diagnoses (a case with n=8 diagnoses), hospitalisations for new conditions (n=6), non-fatal injury events (n=3) and for sexually transmitted infections (n=3). The theme of chronic debility as a consequence of various conditions was illustrated with cases who had suffered from being gassed or having gastroenteritis, malaria or pandemic influenza. These 10 selected cases reiterate how severe and extensive the morbidity burden for military personnel in WWI could be. Also illustrated is how the morbidity could contribute to adverse impacts on some of their lives after returning to New Zealand.

American Veteran Noirs: Investigating Exceptionalism and Its Post-World War II Trauma

Abstract This essay looks at some of the American film noir that focus on traumatized veterans in the post-World War II era, up to the twenty-first century and argues that noir thrillers centering on mentally disturbed veterans of World War II allow for both commemoration and criticism of the global interventionism that American exceptionalism legitimized during the Cold War and the Wars on Terror. Paradigmatic noirs construct traumatized veterans to investigate their symptoms of amnesia and paranoia as responses to historical interventions. While the analysis of Fred Zinnemann’s Act of Violence (1948) challenges idolizations of members of the Greatest Generation as morally superior immediately after their return home, that of Alan Parker’s Angel Heart (1987) probes into how the projection of a Faustian tale upon amnesia connects a post-World War II identity conflict to an anti-communist climate ripe with social tensions. The third veteran noir, the post-9/11 film Shutter Island (2010) by Martin Scorsese, conclusively reveals how two paranoid narratives overlap in the films under scrutiny, aiming to deconstruct the patriotic trope of American heroism in their subtexts. (AG)

Mr. Gilbert's World Tour: Rethinking Disabled Veterans Across British Imperial Spaces.

This article provides a comparative analysis of the treatment of disabled First World War veterans in 1920s Britain and the simultaneous care of Imperial Pensioners residing in Australia and South Africa via the detailed administrative reports of a British civil servant, G.F. Gilbert. Imperial Pensioners were disabled veteran migrants of the British Army residing overseas. A study of these veteran populations in Australia and South Africa provides two primary insights into the broader historiography of disabled veterans. Firstly, a comparative case study helps to show the way in which cultural notions of disability were part of broader ideas of nation-building overseas. Secondly, the specific disability diagnosis category chosen as a more in-depth case study can further complicate and contradict broader assessments of national responses. This article attempts to build upon recent transnational histories of veterans by transcending national boundaries and homogenous veteran profiles with an extension in methodological scope by providing an intra-national case study via the Imperial Pensioner.

Commemorating the Great War on Film: Veterans, Pilgrimages and Amateur Filmmaking

This article explores the work of four amateur filmmakers from the Canterbury area, between the late 1920s and early 1970s focusing on the films relating to the battlefield visits of First World War veterans and their families. It argues that film provides a fascinating insight into veteran behaviour and culture. Of particular interest is the manner in which the films reveal the continuities and developments in the behaviour of ex-servicemen. The films of the late 1920s and 1930s reveal a highly masculine culture which remained closely aligned with military ceremonial and codes of conduct, whereas the later, post-1945, films show the veterans with wives and family members engaging in a wider range of activities. The article also sets the films within the culture of amateur filmmaking of the time discussing equipment, techniques and exhibition, thus engaging with an element of film history which remains under-explored compared with the degree of research commercial cinema has attracted. The article is supplemented by a short film providing excerpts from all films discussed.

Psychiatric Casualties during the Korean War: Focusing on American and Common Wealth Soldiers.

A crucial gap in the medical history of the Korean War is the history of psychiatry during the Korean War. War puts those who participate in it through physical and mental extremes, inflicting not only physical injuries but also psychological trauma and damage. However, studies of the medical aspects of the Korean War have been limited to topics related to physical injuries and their treatment, and there are no studies that systematically summarize the traumatic effects on the human mind thrown into the midst of the war, the consequences of these effects, and the medical efforts made to deal with these problems. As the Korean War was fought only five years after the end of the Second World War, the experiences and achievements of the Second World War were used in the Korean War. In terms of personnel, many of the soldiers who fought in the Second World War also fought in the Korean War. This continuity with the Second World War had both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, treatment and transport systems were quickly put in place to respond to the large numbers of soldiers with psychiatric problems on the front lines early in the war. This is an example of a positive use of the legacy of the Second World War. On the other hand, the negative side of the coin was the much higher frequency of psychiatric symptoms among veterans of the Second World War. This could be explained by the fact that the psychological trauma experienced on the battlefield during the Second World War remained latent and was reactivated in the Korean War as a kind of conditioned reflex. In addition, the brainwashing of prisoners of war and their subsequent psychological problems are also characteristic of the Korean War in the context of the Cold War. These psychiatric features of the Korean War will provide a useful historical example for understanding and helping those who are inevitably involved in war and suffer from mental distress.

"I did not expect the doctor to treat a ghost": a systematic review of published reports regarding chronic postamputation pain in British First World War veterans.

Limb trauma remains the most prevalent survivable major combat injury. In the First World War, more than 700,000 British soldiers received limb wounds and more than 41,000 underwent an amputation, creating one of the largest amputee cohorts in history. Postamputation pain affects up to 85% of military amputees, suggesting that up to 33,000 British First World War veterans potentially reported postamputation pain. This qualitative systematic review explores the professional medical conversation around clinical management of chronic postamputation pain in this patient cohort, its development over the 20th century, and how this information was disseminated among medical professionals. We searched The Lancet and British Medical Journal archives (1914-1985) for reports referring to postamputation pain, its prevalence, mechanisms, descriptors, or clinical management. Participants were First World War veterans with a limb amputation, excluding civilians and veterans of all other conflicts. The search identified 9809 potentially relevant texts, of which 101 met the inclusion criteria. Reports emerged as early as 1914 and the discussion continued over the next 4 decades. Unexpected findings included early advocacy of multidisciplinary pain management, concerns over addiction, and the effect of chronic pain on mental health emerging decades earlier than previously thought. Chronic postamputation pain is still a significant issue for military rehabilitation. Similarities between injury patterns in the First World War and recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts mean that these historical aspects remain relevant to today's military personnel, clinicians, researchers, and policymakers.

The Social and Cultural Impact of Post-War Measures on the Zimunya and Bvumba Communities, Colonial Zimbabwe, 1940s–1970s

Abstract This study investigates the social and cultural effects of post-war measures on Zimunya and Bvumba communities of colonial Zimbabwe (then known as Southern Rhodesia). Guided by a combination of primary and secondary sources, the article argues that dispossession and forced relocations of Africans who had continued staying on the so-called European land after the passing of the Land Apportionment Act (LAA) of 1930 became acute in the immediate years after the Second World War. The granting of vast tracts of land in the Zimunya community to veterans of World War II by the colonial government under the Ex-Servicemen Land Resettlement Scheme and the purchasing of land for a timber estate in Bvumba by the Rhodesian Wattle Company (RWC) in the immediate post-Second World War period dispossessed rural residents of their land and curtailed the growth and development of peasant agriculture. People affected were forcibly displaced to “native” reserves where they responded to challenges they faced by resorting to various coping mechanisms such as hunting, foraging, and, attending to riverine gardens.

The Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association and Irish Ex-Servicemen of the First World War, 1922–1932

In 1925, the Southern Irish Loyalists Relief Association (SILRA), originally founded for the relief of southern Irish loyalist refugees in Britain, created a fund for ex-servicemen resident in the Irish Free State (IFS). Populated primarily from among the ‘diehard’ right of the British Conservative Party, SILRA’s charitable work was inevitably influenced by the world view of its membership and their audience. But it also had a Dublin sub-committee that operated in very different circumstances in the IFS. This study of SILRA’s efforts to provide welfare to southern Irish veterans of the First World War highlights the extent to which conditions in Ireland – real or perceived – continued to animate British Conservatives long after the Irish Revolution (1916–23). It also adds to the growing literature on ex-servicemen in post-revolutionary Ireland through the lens of SILRA’s lobbying and fundraising.

Patriotism and Protest: Joseph T. Angelo and the Bonus March

Joseph T. Angelo quit a well-paid job at the DuPont Powder Works in Carney’s Point, New Jersey, to join the army. On September 26, 1918, he saved the life of then Lt. Colonel (temporary) George S. Patton Jr., an act that earned him the Distinguished Service Cross and provided him with a lifetime of minor renown. By 1931, during the Great Depression, Angelo was unemployed. He walked 160 miles to Washington, DC, from his hometown of Camden, New Jersey, to testify in front of Congress in support of immediate payment of the wartime bonuses promised to veterans of World War I. The following summer, he was among the Bonus Marchers who were brutally driven out of their encampments in the nation’s capital by the same U.S. military in which they had served during wartime. 
 This article tells Angelo’s story, and by doing so, it tells the story of the tens of thousands of desperate veterans of the Great War who united to form an ethnically and racially diverse movement to protest for what they believed was right and just. They had made sacrifices to defend American values on the battlefield and now sought to be treated in a manner they saw as fair.

Ludwig Ganz: a German-Jewish family business

ABSTRACT Felix Ganz (1869–1944) developed his family’s fabric and furniture store in Mainz into a public company with subsidiaries and branches across Europe and the Middle East. The business was restructured after the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression and was lost to the family as a result of Nazi anti-Jewish persecution. This article reconstructs the history of the Ludwig Ganz AG and the entrepreneurial biography of its owner Felix Ganz, a member of Germany’s business elite in the Wilhelmine and Weimar eras, a veteran of the First World War, and a victim of antisemitism during the Third Reich.

«ЛИЧНАЯ ДРАМА, ОПРЕДЕЛЕННАЯ ИСТОРИЕЙ»: ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННЫЙ МЕТОД Ф. РОТА В РОМАНЕ «АМЕРИКАНСКАЯ ПАСТОРАЛЬ»

The article analyzes the implementation of Philip Roth’s (1933–2018) artistic method in the novel “American Pastoral”, which connects the historical events with a personal family drama and problematizes the Jewish identity in diaspora. The analysis shows that several key events from the history of the United States (the second half of the 20th century) were used as a conceptual basis for narrative structure and for the set of characters. World War II, the Vietnam War, which Roth had not previously discussed in a comprehensive manner, the 1967 Newark riots, and the Watergate scandal turn out to be not a panoramic background, but a dynamic force. References to the events help the narrator – Nathan Zuckerman, Roth’s alter ego – form a non-linear plot: the large-scale events are to center each part of the novel and determine the nature of the period and the characters. The protagonist of the novel is Seymour “The Swede” Levov, an entrepreneur, a veteran of World War II, the embodiment of the American dream, symbolizing good old America during the times of economic growth. Seymour's pastoral life is destroyed by the inevitability of historical process that intrudes the family idyll: a terrorist attack committed by Seymour's daughter Meredith in support of the Vietnamese people “returns the war” to Lyndon Johnson and breaks the family ties. Attempts to find the root of evil retrospectively lead Seymour and Zuckerman to the idea of the cruelty of American history and the atomic nature of society. The ongoing dialogue between Jewish and American cultures is represented by the images of Seymour and Merry as both, individualized and collective images, actors of history who (re)shape the American dream.

Primary Care Considerations for Elderly U.S. Veterans of World War II and the Korean War: A Narrative Review.

Many of the United States' more than 18 million veterans obtain healthcare through the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Veterans Health Administration system; however, recent legislative changes have expanded veterans' access to non-VA care in their communities, particularly for those who do not live near VA medical centers. Veterans are seen by physicians in outpatient practice across the United States and are admitted to non-VA hospitals; this is particularly salient for older veterans, who may require a more frequent and high level of care. We present a review of characteristics of U.S. veterans from two conflicts: World War II (WWII) and the Korean War. While non-VA clinicians are well equipped to provide care for patients of all different ages, veterans of armed conflicts have a unique constellation of exposures and cultural considerations that must be accounted for when providing them care. In this review, we describe characteristics of the generations of American veterans who served in WWII and the Korean War conflicts in a brief historical context. We then note conflict-specific exposures and potential long-term sequelae to watch for during physical examinations and to monitor thereafter, age-specific health and emotional concerns, and best practices for providing care to this cohort of veterans.

Decolonization the what, whyand how: A treatieson Indigenous nursing knowledge.

Decolonization the what, whyand how: A treatieson Indigenous nursing knowledge.

Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines by Gregory A. Daddis

<i>Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men’s Adventure Magazines</i> by Gregory A. Daddis

The Vietnam War in Cormac McCarthy’sNo Country for Old Men

ABSTRACTCormac McCarthy’s ninth novel No Country for Old Men is at points a thriller, a shoot-em-up, a novel of violence, a novel of the Border Southwest, but at its heart, it is a novel of the Vietnam War. Set in 1980, the text is populated by veterans of the war in Vietnam, and even those not explicitly identified as such carry the Vietnam War in their person and psyche. Llewelyn Moss and Carson Wells are sniper and Special Forces, respectively, while Anton Chigurh is too trained to be anything but a special operator. All three return from war to participate in war—a war based on the narco-economy and the violence secondary to such. In the work, each of the three uses military-taught skills to survive or not as the author conjoins each veteran’s postwar life with his peri-war training. Subversively, McCarthy creates a fourth Vietnam War veteran though the character of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell, a veteran of World War II. Bell’s psychological makeup, his guilt, his regret, his self-ostracization, is that of the Vietnam veteran. But, while McCarthy creates a novel of the Vietnam War, the Coen brothers’ film of the same title marginalizes the Vietnam War and cuts the theme from the film. The novel could not exist without the Vietnam War, but the film can, and does.

From devastating warfare to deficient welfare: the Ottoman-Turkish disabled veterans of the First World War (1918–1930)

Although disabled veterans have usually been described as the First World War’s most visible legacy in European history, there has been a lack of interest in them in Ottoman-Turkish historiography. This article aims to fill this gap by examining the hardships the Ottoman-Turkish disabled veterans encountered and the treatment they received at the hands of the authorities from the end of the First World War through the formative years of the Turkish Republic (1918–1930). The article demonstrates the dismal state of the early twentieth-century Ottoman-Turkish welfare system and social state policy regarding war veterans, and, more importantly, reveals the ideological and cultural reasons for the neglect of First World War veterans. Choosing the victory in the War of Independence, rather than the defeat in the First World War, as its foundation myth, the new Turkish nation-state tended to ignore the disabled veterans of the First World War and prioritized those of the former. The weakness of disabled veterans’ associations prevented them from becoming an influential civil pressure group. Moreover, the militarist image of the healthy masculine warrior as a representation of the strong society made the visibility of disabled veterans less desirable.

Обзор личного архивного фонда Б. А. Смысловского в Национальном архиве княжества Лихтенштейн - Holmston-Smyslowsky, Arthur Graf von. 1831-1988 гг.

This is a traditional archival review of the personal provenance fond of Boris Alekseevich Smyslovsky, deposited in the National Archive of the Principality of Liechtenstein (Liechten stein Landesarchiv). The object of the study is formation of Boris Alekseevich Smyslovsky’s personal provenance fond and its information capacity. The article attempts to reconstruct the biography of B. A. Smyslovsky; to clarify the circumstances of acquisition of B. A. Smyslovsky’ documents by the archive of the Principality of Liechtenstein; to identify major document groups and their value to researchers. Boris Alekseevich Smyslovsky was born into a noble family of Lieutenant Colonel Alexei Smyslovsky on November 21, 1897 in the village of Terioki near St. Petersburg. He was a First World War and Civil War veteran. After the end of the Civil War, he lived in emigration in Poland. After German invasion in Poland, he worked at the headquarters of the German military intelligence in Warsaw “Abvernebenstelle-Warsaw.” In the days of the Great Patriotic War, he ran reconnaissance and sabotage units of the German army. In 1945, he was interned in the Principality of Liechtenstein with the remnants of his units. He was able to avoid repatriation and leave for Argentina. In September 1948, he created and headed the “Field-Marshal A.V. Suvorov Union of Russian Former War Veterans” in Argentina. He was a counter terrorism security advisor to the President of Argentina Juan Domingo Peron. Since 1966, he lived in Germany, collaborated with the foreign intelligence service of Germany, and held the position of adviser to the General Staff of the Bundeswehr. In 1973, B. A. Smyslovsky retired. In 1975, he moved to Liechtenstein with his wife. He died there on September 5, 1988. After his death, his documents were handed over to the National Archive of the Principality of Liechtenstein by his wife Irina Nikolaevna Holmston-Smyslovskaya (Kochanovich). In total, there are 90 files in the fond, including biographical documents; creative materials (books and articles by B. A. Smyslovsky); correspondence; documents collected by B. A. Smyslovsky; photographs; printed materials (books and periodicals). B. A. Smyslovsky’s personal provenance fond, deposited in the National Archive of the Principality of Liechtenstein, is of great interest to historians of the Second World War and history of post-war displaced persons. The author contends that these documents have not been sufficiently studied by the Russian researchers. This very article is an attempt to inform of the documents of the the B.A. Smyslovsky fond.