World War Research Articles

Использование мемуаров в рамках преподавания региональной истории в школе

Рассматриваются возможности использования мемуарных текстов жителей Томской области в преподавании региональной истории. Представлена общая характеристика ситуации с учебно-методическим обеспечением преподавания региональной истории. Выявляются преимущества привлечения сборника воспоминаний томичей «Я вам, родные, излагаю быль» в образовательный процесс в школе. Показана информативность представленных в нем мемуаров в изучении отдельных тем по истории. The problems of teaching regional history at school are actively discussed by the pedagogical and scientific community. The article focuses on the possibilities of using memoir texts of residents of the Tomsk region in teaching regional history. The general characteristics of the situation concerning the educational and methodological support of teaching regional history are presented. It is emphasized that a full study of regional history is impossible without referring to the level of the oblast, acting as a link with local history. Considering that there are currently no educational and methodological materials on the history of the Tomsk region, emphasis is placed on historical sources that can be included in the anthology or collection of documents that are an obligatory part of the educational and methodological complex. The collection “I am telling you, my dear ones, a true story” is being considered, in which the memoirs of residents of the Tomsk region are published. The characteristic of the narratives contained in it is given. The advantages of involving the collection into the educational process at school are revealed. The appeal to the collection will help the teacher to demonstrate one of the leading features of modern historical science – interest in the “little man”, which arose in connection with the development of microhistoric approaches in historical research, to show the potential and uniqueness of family archives. It will allow schoolchildren to more seriously comprehend the diversity of the historical and cultural heritage of the Tomsk region. The informative value of the memoirs presented in the collection will be useful in the study of the following sections on the history of Russia: “The Russian Empire in the XIX – early XX centuries” (themes “The Ethno-cultural image of the Empire”, “National-religious features”), “Soviet society in the 1920s-30s” (themes “The USSR in 1929–1941: “Stalinist Socialism”, “Cultural space”), “The Great Patriotic War. 1941–1945”, “The apogee and crisis of the Soviet system. 1945–1991” (theme “Late Stalinism” (1945–1953)).

No Right to Family Life? Single Mothers and their Children in a “Mixed Economy of Welfare” in Switzerland, 1930s–1950s

In Switzerland single mothers, especially from the working class, were rarely able to support themselves and their children as a result of widespread discrimination against women in the labor market throughout the 20th century. Focusing on the case records of the social welfare of the city of Bern from the 1930s to 1950s, the article examines to what extent single mothers benefited from a ‘mixed economy of welfare’. The article points out that after the Second World War, social welfare measures were expanded with the introduction of widows’ and survivors’ insurance and the establishment of family allowances. While these new social insurance schemes undoubtedly brought improvements, the article shows that single mothers continued to experience practices of social exclusions. Especially, the combination of welfare dependency on the one hand, and guardianship measures on the other, often resulted in the out-of-home placement of the children of single mothers.

Modernist Monuments of Freedom Square In Kharkiv

Since February 24, 2022, the architectural heritage of Ukraine has been exposed to dangerous destruction. The government center on Freedom (Svoboda) Square in Kharkiv - the largest urban development of early modernist architecture and its pearl, included in the Tentative UNESCO World Heritage List (2017) and provisionally inscribed on the International List of Cultural Property under Enhanced Protection (2023) - Derzhprom (The State Industry Building), were hit by a missile attack on March 1, 2022. In the conditions of non-cessation of hostilities and non-priority, the only means of protecting monuments in the city for months were, and in many places still are, sandbags, adhesive tape and plywood. The architectural research community and Government of Ukraine, together with international organizations, must take all possible actions to protect and restore the damaged architectural monuments. The article deals with the modernist monuments of Freedom Square, the chronology of their reconstruction since the Second World War and the damage received over the past almost two years. The paper raises important questions regarding their future fate with the possibility of restoring some objects of the square to their original appearance of the modernist era.

Childhood in foster care institutions in Central Pomerania between 1945 and 1975

The study provides an overview of the situation of children, victims of the war nightmare, who found themselves in foster care institutions in Central Pomerania after the end of the Second World War. The post-war period of development of these institutions was very diverse. It was associated with the social, political, administrative and economic changes that were taking place in Poland at the time. In the difficult conditions of life in the Recovered Territories, care activities for abandoned children were carried out by childcare and educational institutions, health care, daycare, and aid institutions of different natures. The aim of the study is to show the theoretical assumptions and practical contexts concerning the child and childhood in the space of foster care institutions in Central Pomerania in the years 1945–1975 and the transformations taking place in these institutions, which had an impact on the quality of childhood of the pupils/foster children.The main research problem of this study is contained in the question: How did the areas of childhood (economic, social-emotional, learning, preparation for independent living) change in foster care institutions in Central Pomerania in the context of the State’s welfare policy between 1945 and 1975?Verifying the research assumption was mainly done using archival document analysis and interviews. The study fills a gap in the regional literature in this scope and provides a basis for further in-depth research.

Introduction

With the establishment of communism in Eastern Europe, the churches found themselves in a precarious situation after the traumatic experiences of the Second World War. The churches were challenged to coexist with autocratic regimes. Institutionally weakened by the attempts of political power to limit their autonomy, the churches were confronted with the overthrow of the socio-political order by the Soviet-backed installation of communist regimes. The Soviet model of the communisation of societies was also adopted by the regimes loyal to Moscow in terms of religious policy, which for most churches, it meant public and political marginalisation in exchange for limited autonomy. Thus, the regimes’ religious policies, which were not aimed at the total elimination of religious life and, implicitly, of the churches, included a range of practices and instruments that involved institutional control, informational surveillance and political repression. A special case was the Greek Catholic Church, which was abolished and its clergy and bishops repressed. These methodological premises served as the basis for organising the international conference “Churches and Political Power During Communism. Individual Biographies and Institutional Mechanisms”, which brought together leading scholars from Poland, Hungary, the Republic of Moldova and Romania in Alba Iulia from 21 to 23 September 2023. This academic meeting resulted in the publication of the present volume, which includes the most representative contributions. This volume is the result of a collaboration between the LIT publishing house and Annales Universitatis Apulensis (Alba Iulia), which publishes the volume as a special issue of this journal.

Gosprom Ensemble in Kharkiv and the Concept of Modern Style

The ideologists of Constructivism and “production art” of the 1920s put forward the slogan “not style, but method!”. However, the Constructivists-“productionists” movement carried a stylistic charge of great power. The intentions of the Constructivists-“productionists”, their manifestos and slogans are polemically pointed evidence of their awareness of their own place in the Soviet culture of the 1920s. Creative practice continued the development of a certain artistic tradition. It is necessary to reconstruct the development of the problem of style in the concept of “productionists” as a natural and historically determined stage of the movement. The manifestation of the rejection of the idea of style in artistic creativity in the concept of “production art” paradoxically corresponds to its specific conditions in setting the task of creating and identifying the mechanism for the development of modern style. They are analyzed in the article.The “anti-stylistic” orientation of “production art” was paradoxically opposed to the orientation towards a “Constructivist style”. In the late 1920s, it covered a wide range of architects and artists who did not belong to the Constructivist movement and who opposed them. In this regard, the fate of several outstanding monuments of the Modern Movement in the architecture of Kharkiv is indicative — the House of State Industry (Gosprom), the House of Projects and the House of Cooperation. They were the largest and most integral ensemble in their architectural and compositional solution, which embodied the ideas of the Modern Movement in Soviet architecture. The reconstruction of the ensemble after the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) showed the contradictions that were embedded in the Constructivist concept of the modern style. The duality of understanding the art form in it was revealed. On the one hand, it acted as an independent stylistic entity. On the other hand, it could also be considered as a framework, a “draft” of some further work with the form. The concept of modern style defended by the “productionists” was problematized by the practice of “Constructivist stylizations”.

Pothiti Hantzaroula, Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece: Memory, Testimony and Subjectivity

This article reviews Pothiti Hantzaroula's Child Survivors of the Holocaust in Greece: Memory, Testimony and Subjectivity (Routledge, 2020). It highlights how Hantzaroula’s book  represents a needed and much welcome addition to the study of child survivors of World War II by offering students and scholars of the Holocaust a comprehensive insight into the specifics of Greece, which can serve as a basis for subsequent comparative or kindred assessments in the case of other Southeastern European countries.

Xhafer Deva: Nationalism, Collaboration and Mass Murder in Pursuit of a ‘Greater Albanian’ State

Xhafer Deva is one of the most notorious figures in the history of World War II in Kosovo and ‘Greater Albania’. As Minister of the Interior of the ‘Greater Albanian’ state and a Nazi collaborator, he was responsible for the assassination, deportation and expulsion of countless Serbs. At the same time, he fought for the integration of Kosovo into Albania. As such, notwithstanding the mass atrocities for which he is responsible, he is still revered in nationalist circles to this day. In this contribution, Xhafer Deva, a controversial public figure, will be examined and presented against the backdrop of the shifting empires and loyalties during the end of the 19th and the first half of the 20th century.

Tourism research from 1945 to 2022

Purpose Existing tourism review articles have limited review topics and cover a relatively short period. This review paper aims to extend the coverage of the previous literature and enhances the completeness of tourism-related studies to provide comprehensive tourism-related literature from 1945 (World War II onward) to 2022. Specifically, this paper reveals the major research themes present in published tourism research during this time period and highlights the evolution of tourism research from the preliminary phase, the transversal phase, to the growth phase. Design/methodology/approach The present study visualizes tourism research through networks of coauthors and their countries and regions, cocitation analysis of keywords and explores the thematic evolution of tourism research after the World War II (i.e., 1945–2022) from Web of Science and Google Scholar through bibliometric analysis. Findings Findings reveal that the themes of tourism research in the past years can be divided into seven major research themes. The tourism research evolution from World War II to 2022 can be categorized into three stages: preliminary (1945–1970), transversal (1971–2004) and growth (2005–2022). In addition, the research themes of tourism are not static but evolve according to the dynamics of the society and the industry, and that seven main research themes have been formed, namely, “heritage tourism,” “medical tourism,” “adventure tourism,” “dark tourism,” “sustainable tourism,” “rural tourism” and “smart tourism.” Originality/value The present study expands and refines the comprehensive literature in tourism research, as well as reveals the trends and dynamics in tourism research through network analysis and thematic evolution research methods.

“We Found People…”

This photo essay shows human remains. Viewer discretion is advised. Death Valley in Chojnice, Poland, is the site of mass crimes committed by officers of the Third Reich against citizens of the Second Polish Republic during World War II. This photo essay describes the circumstances of the discovery of mass graves dating from late January 1945, when several hundred Poles were taken to the outskirts of the town, murdered, and their bodies burned to cover up the traces of the crime. The text advocates the presentation of human remains as irrefutable material evidence of the crime and of the the cover-up attempt. The reason it is presented as a photo essay is because the visual arts, in the context of documenting mass graves, are able to capture aspects of the site – the materiality of the crimes committed and the aura of the exhumation itself – that are not usually taken into account in archaeological field research. Such elements, however, are inherent to any field research that involves the exhumation of innocent victims.

Fight against Typhus in Turkey (1945-1950)

Abstract
 Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the struggle against typhus, which has been a scourge of humanity for centuries, in Turkey between 1945 and 1950.
 Method: The data of our study were obtained from archival documents, periodicals of the period and other studies in the literature. In addition, this study is a qualitative study and document analysis method was used.
 Findings: The fight against typhus, which became epidemic in Turkey during World War II, became one of the most important issues of the post-war period. In the fight against typhus, vaccination had begun in 1943, during the war years. This practice would be accelerated as of 1945. The vaccine produced in large quantities in a short period of time at the Refik Saydam Institute of Public Health played a significant role in this situation. In addition, the effective use of dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (D.D.T.) from 1945 onwards constituted one of the most important factors in achieving success.
 Conclusion: Thanks to the preventive health measures taken between 1945 and 1950, as well as the strict vaccination program and D.D.T. application, Turkey was able to reduce typhus disease, one of the most feared disasters of those years, from the country's agenda.

The Spirit of the Service: Dash, Discipline, and Flying Accidents in the Royal Australian Air Force, 1921–48

From its establishment in 1921, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) attracted political and public critique for flying accidents. This article explores how its nascent institutional ethos developed in relation to a problematic safety record. Military aviators were expected to balance airborne “dash” against obeying flying orders, risking castigation if they proved either too timid or too reckless. Despite vigorous attempts to isolate their service from scrutiny, Air Force leaders were forced to adapt the RAAF's safety culture in response to civilian expertise, media pressure, political machinations, and comparisons with other air arms — particularly Britain's Royal Air Force. Through the 1930s and the Second World War, responsibility was increasingly channelled toward individual personnel. Tactics included severe punishments, signed attestations that confirmed compliance with orders and an “endorsement” system that permanently recorded infractions in errant flyers' log books. These measures risked producing timorous and inadequately skilled pilots, unprepared to exploit their aircraft's capabilities to the full. In 1945, the establishment of a Directorate of Flying Safety profoundly changed the RAAF's institutional safety culture, but its accident record remained problematic. Over 1921–48, the “sweet spot” between initiative and dependability eluded the RAAF's quest to inculcate an enduring “spirit of the service”.

War veterans, minorities and crisis points in Yugoslav welfare

ABSTRACT This article provides an analytical overview of welfare policymaking and provision in the twentieth century in Yugoslavia at three decisive historical junctures. Those are: the Kingdom of Yugoslavia after the First World War; the socialist state after 1945; and the rump ‘Yugoslavia’ after the break-up of the state in 1991. In each of these periods welfare policies were crisis-driven, a response to massive social and economic upheaval caused by war, but they were also a reflection, of course, of the political ideals and the values of the state in which they were formed. The authors argue that the Yugoslav welfare state in its various incarnations was in part a response to socio-economic crisis caused by war, in part a mediation and an adaptation of the welfare regime it replaced (rather than a complete tabula rasa), and in part an articulation of the aspirations for national politics and citizenship held by the incoming leadership of the state. This comparative study of three important moments in Yugoslavia’s welfare history, then, offers an opportunity to look anew at the social history of the state itself. Study of the Yugoslav welfare model, or rather models, helps us understand the larger political transformations that were bound up in the lifespan of the South Slav state, how the state thought about and created minorities through welfare regimes, and how welfare policies withstood (or not) socio-economic crisis.

ГЕРОИЧЕСКОЕ СПАСЕНИЕ СЕВАСТОПОЛЬСКОЙ ПАНОРАМЫ В 1942 ГОДУ

The historical importance and value of each heroic deed is shown during the Great Patriotic war. The feat of the cadets who directly participated in the rescue of the panorama of Sevastopol is considered. The purpose of the study is to continue the formation of social memory, which is becoming particularly relevant in modern Russia. The history of the creation of the Sevastopol panorama is presented and, based on archival materials, the story of its salvation is told, the heroes who saved «our history» with improvised means are indicated.

Drone photogrammetry as a tool for modern conflict archaeology: a case study of a Second World War armament bunker in Bavaria

ABSTRACT Within this paper, a case study on the application of drone photogrammetry at the Second World War armament bunker Weingut I is presented. The aim of the project was the mapping of the preserved remains in advance to the installation of a memorial site. In particular, the preserved concrete arch and one of the ventilation shafts were mapped by this method in high quality. Therefore, even small details of the building structure as well as several damage spots needing remediation became visible. One important advantage of drone prospecting is an enhanced occupational safety and a cost and time reduction as no further manual resources are necessary. In areas without finalized clearing for Unexploded Ordnance, other manual survey method would be especially dangerous. By comparing the photogrammetric model of the bunker Weingut I with corresponding ALS Digital Surface Models (DSM) of varying resolution, the increase in information is shown.

Człowiek w obliczu sytuacji granicznej

The article presents the intellectual biography of Mieczysław Wallis in the light of his several years of experience as a prisoner of war. During World War II, the philosopher was sentenced to the German POW camp in Woldenberg, where he lived for several years. Wallis’ assessment of his stay in the POW camp is presented primarily in the text entitled The Psyche of a Prisoner of War, in which the philosopher describes the psychological threat– “barbed wire disease”, from which POWs often suffered. Importantly, Wallis himself did not succumb to the camp’s atmosphere of anxiety and did not mentally lose himself in danger of long-term captivity. His existential power was drawn primarily from the world of his own interior ‒turning to the sphere of values and experiences of an aesthetic nature. It was in the world of aesthetic experiences that Wallis found a refuge for human subjectivity, autonomy, freedom, and dignity. He was convinced that aesthetic experiences are a source of a special kind of joy that can balance suffering in human life.

Depleted Nerves

This essay explores the impact of shell-shock on individual soldiers, the collective understanding of wartime trauma during and after the First World War, and the discourse of mental health in the medical field and public sphere. Additionally, it aims to identify when the discourse of psychological trauma began to shift toward more contemporary understandings of mental health. In order to draw out the voices of Canadian soldiers who were not able to openly discuss their emotions due to the stigmatisation surrounding shell-shock, this study will utilise various sources such as soldier diaries, battalion orders, and the Library and Archives of Canada database. Moreover, this essay aims to uncover how shell-shock was suppressed by wartime officials and those with the power to appropriately aid soldiers inflicted with shell-shock. In order to search for the reticence and silence of shell-shock, I examine the censorship of soldiers' experiences on the homefront, the secrecy surrounding war-related trauma in the general public, and the hyper-masculinized attitudes within battalions that viewed shell-shock symptoms as a manifestation of mental weakness. While I focus primarily on Canadian soldiers during World War I within this essay, it is acknowledged that all soldiers, hospital staff, and those affected by the war were susceptible to various forms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Guiding Canada's Girls Toward the Empire

Through a critical analysis of Guiding's official programming books, the hierarchy of its organizational structure, and scholarly works on the history of the Guiding and Scouting Movements in Britain and Canada, this paper explores the early development of the Girl Guides of Canada; analyzing the early 20th century public's shifting views on girlhood and examining the relationship between Guiding and the British Empire. The central thesis of this essay is that the organization was originally founded in 1910 with a strict, conservative gender ideology and a strong imperial connection, but changed its messaging during the Interwar Period to reflect emerging modern notions of girlhood and imperialism; while still retaining its core values in its official programming. 
 Born out of the Scouting Movement of Great Britain, the Girl Guides of Canada were originally founded with the intention of preparing young girls for a domestic life; serving the British Empire by being dutiful wives and mothers. The organization's mission was to address the public's anxiety surrounding modern girlhood. As new economic and leisure opportunities appeared for women and girls in Canada's urban areas, so did the fear that these working women would lead lives of promiscuity, potentially causing the breakdown of domestic life. Guiding sought to prevent this issue by taking up young girls' spare time with gendered instruction on subjects such as how to run a home and the role of women in the British Empire. This messaging and ideology was incredibly popular at the time, and the Guiding movement spread like wildfire.
 Following the First World War, the Canadian public's views on the role of girls and the British Empire were changing: through Guiding's wartime volunteer efforts, girls had proven themselves to be capable of much more than domestic instruction, and Canada began to question its place within the empire. The emergence of alternative youth movements, with a specific focus on physical training and fostering a Canadian national identity, reflected this change. In response to these developments, the Girl Guides released introduced international camps with messaging surrounding peace and international friendship, and promoted a more progressive view of girls with new badges and activities. This new rhetoric made the movement more appealing to a wider array of girls, but only obscured the organizations original values of imperialism and domesticity. The structure of the organization still adhered to a hierarchy that favoured British Girl Guides, with the Canadian arm taking all direction from Britain. Upon analysis of Guiding's programming books, it is also clear that gendered instruction was still the primary focus of the organization. This paper also examines how Canadian Girl Guides' programming was used to naturalize and assimilate girls who did not fit the Empire's idealized model of white womanhood, such as Indigenous girls attending residential schools and girls from immigrant households, further complicating its notion of internationalism.
 The changes to the Guiding Movement's programming reflect the organization's desire to spread its ideology to a wider audience, rather than a commitment to more modern ideas of girlhood and progressive notions of international friendship. The programming, while becoming more refined over time, still centered around domestic skills and preparing girls for motherhood, while the organization's international structure relied on a hierarchy that placed Britain at the top, and kept Canada at an arms' length.

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.

The impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on public support for EU enlargement

ABSTRACT The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has become one of the greatest security crises since World War 2, with profound geopolitical and socio-economic implications for Europe and beyond. The upsurge of political and media attention to this war may have increased public support for EU enlargement, with new countries in the Eastern neighbourhood and the Western Balkans receiving the official EU candidate status. By drawing on mechanisms of securitisation and solidarity, this paper tests to what extent the Russian invasion has generated a positive politicisation of EU enlargement. While this crisis may have indeed fostered a permissive consensus in EU public opinion regarding Ukraine’s future accession, I observe no such effects for the Western Balkans or Turkey. This finding also remains robust to identity and socioeconomic controls, which have traditionally structured public support for European integration. The empirical part is based on descriptive and regression analyses of data from a representative survey of 7678 respondents in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain conducted at the end of 2022.