The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century.

This paper examines the connection between the war pamphlet ?Merchants and Heroes? (1915) of Werner Sombart, one of the greatest European sociologists of the 20th century, and geopolitical theories about the conflict between land and sea powers. Although Sombart?s pamphlet emphasizes the spiritual-moral and cultural-sociological dualism between Germany and England in the First World War, where the first represents the characteristics of heroes and idealists and the other of merchants and opportunists, the paper shows that this conflict was primarily a war for the territories - a geopolitical conflict, and, only secondary, a cultural-normative conflict. Historical anal?ysis shows that German geostrategic actions before the Great War (in their colonial policy) and during the Great War were not in opposition, but very similar to Great Britain`s policies. Therefore, it can be assumed that the war between Germany and Great Britain 435 broke out because of the rivalries based on their similarities, both in actions and pretensions. Moreover, Wilhelmine Germany was almost copying Britain?s colonial expansion, so it became the greatest threat to Great Britain`s geostrategic interest. Further, the research established the links between the views of Sombart and Karl Schmitt and, later, with the oversized opposition between land and sea powers as ?the second law of geopolitics? in the views of some geopolitical thinkers during the 20th century. The paper shows that the sources of both views are the same and that they lie in the German romantic-idealistic youth subculture movements at the turn of the 20th century adopted in academic circles before the Great War, primarily in the philosophy of Kurt Hiller and sociology of George Simmel, from which they were accepted by Werner Sombart.

Download Full-text

KEMIČNO OROŽJE – POSEBNOST PRVE SVETOVNE VOJNE ALI ŠE DANES PRETEČA NEVARNOST

CONTEMPORARY MILITARY CHALLENGES ◽

10.33179/bsv.99.svi.11.cmc.16.4.2 ◽

2014 ◽

pp. 31-49

Author(s):

VALERIJA BERNIK

Keyword(s):

World War I ◽

20Th Century ◽

Final Outcome ◽

Scientific Development ◽

Chemical Weapons ◽

Great War ◽

Mustard Gas ◽

Psychological Consequences ◽

World War ◽

The Great War

Kemično orožje je svoj največji razmah doživelo med prvo svetovno vojno, ko so ga uporabljale sile obeh v vojno vpletenih strani, čeprav je bila s haaškimi deklaracijami uporaba strupov v bojne namene prepovedana že pred vojno. Med prvo svetovno vojno je bilo razvitih in uporabljenih več vrst kemičnega orožja, pri čemer so največjo uporabnost ter uničevalno moč pokazali klor, fosgen in iperit. Odziv na uporabo smrtonosnega tihega orožja je bil razvoj zaščitnih mask, pri čemer pa mnoge niso zadoščale standardom in so se v kriznih trenutkih pokazale kot neučinkovite. Uporaba kemičnega orožja je v prvi svetovni vojni povzročila veliko žrtev, vendar ni odločilno vplivala na končni izid vojne. Zaradi izjemne smrtonosnosti in uničujočih fizioloških ter psiholoških posledic, ki jih je povzročilo kemično orožje v času tako imenovane Velike vojne, so si mednarodne sile po letu 1918 prizadevale zagotoviti, da se ta tihi ubijalec ne bi več uporabljal v bojne namene. To je bil tudi eden izmed vzrokov, zakaj ni prišlo do večjega razmaha uporabe kemičnega orožja po tem letu. Prizadevanja mednarodne skupnosti po izkoreninjenju bojnih strupov pa niso preprečila razvoja znanosti, ki je v 20. stoletju prinesel odkritja novih strupenih orožij, ki jih v prvi svetovni vojni še niso poznali. Chemical weapons saw their largest growth during World War I, when it was used by the forces of both involved parties despite the fact that the use of casualty agents had been banned by Hague declarations even before the war. Several types of chemical weapons were used and developed during World War I with chloride, phosgene and mustard gas proving to be most useful and destructive. As a response to the use of this lethal silent weapon protection masks were developed. However, many of them did not meet the standards and proved to be ineffective during crisis. The use of chemical weapons in World War I caused numerous casualties, but did not decisively impact the final outcome of the war. Due to the extremely lethal nature and devastating physiological and psychological consequences caused by chemical weapons during the Great War, international forces after 1918 made every effort to never use this silent murderer in combat again. This was also one of the reasons why chemical weapons did not see too large of a development after this period. However, international efforts to root out casualty agents did not prevent the scientific development, which in the 20th century brought the discovery of new toxic weapons which had not been known during World War I.

Download Full-text

Dotknięcia historii

Schulz/Forum ◽

10.26881/sf.2017.10.01 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Stanisław Rosiek

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Great War ◽

Election Campaign ◽

Historical Events ◽

The Holocaust ◽

Minor Part ◽

A Minor ◽

The Great War ◽

Bruno Schulz

Bruno Schulz did not live in “good times,” but still history shows up in his legend and biography just once, as the Holocaust of which he was a victim. All his earlier life has been usually described as a relatively quiet existence in a small, provincial town forgotten by history. This is very misleading. Schulz personally experienced a lot of what the unquiet 20th century had in store. Without much effort, one may assemble a fairly long list of historical events that determined the course of his life, such as the bloody election campaign to the Austro-Hungarian Parliament of June 19, 1911 or the mass escape in 1914. After the Great War, Schulz’s world slowly came back to normal. Demons woke up again in the 1930s. Do the historical events discussed in the texts included in the present Schulz/Forum issue point to some biographical constant that was influencing Schulz’s choices? Or perhaps, like Zbigniew Herbert’s Mr Cogito, Schulz chose to play a minor part on the stage of history?

Download Full-text

Wars and ways of deosmanization of the Balkans (1912-1923)

Historijski pogledi ◽

10.52259/historijskipogledi.2020.3.3.7 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

pp. 7-47

Author(s):

Safet Bandžović ◽

Keyword(s):

Ottoman Empire ◽

20Th Century ◽

The Self ◽

Great War ◽

The Balkans ◽

Self Confidence ◽

Balkan Wars ◽

History Of ◽

The Great War ◽

Vast Territory

The dramatic currents of the history of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Balkans cannot be seen in a more comprehensive way, separate from the wider European / world context, geopolitical order, influence and consequences of the interesting logics of superpowers, models of de-Ottomanization and Balkanization. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, the Ottoman Empire was in a difficult position, pressured by numerous internal problems, exposed to external political pressures, conditions and wars. Crises and Ottoman military defeats in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) and the "Great War" (1914-1918), along with the processes of de-Ottomanization and fragmentation of the territories in which they lived and the growth of divisions, disrupted the self-confidence of Muslims. Expulsions and mass exoduses of entire populations, especially Muslims, culminated in the Balkan wars. Bosniaks, as well as Muslims in the rest of "Ottoman Europe", found themselves in the ranks of several armies in the "Great War". Many Muslims from the Balkans, who arrived in the vast territory of the Empire in earlier times as refugees, also fought in the units of the Ottoman army. In that war it was defeated. On its remnants, a new state of Turkey (1923) was created after the Greco-Ottoman war (1919-1922).

Download Full-text

WHEN MOTHERS ATE THEIR CHILDREN: WARTIME MEMORY AND THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD IN SYRIA AND LEBANON

International Journal of Middle East Studies ◽

10.1017/s0020743814001032 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 46 (4) ◽

pp. 719-736 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Najwa al-Qattan

Keyword(s):

20Th Century ◽

Great War ◽

Civilian Population ◽

Specific Focus ◽

Wide Range ◽

The Great War

AbstractThis article explores the experience of the Great War in Syria and Lebanon with a specific focus on the famine that, combined with other wartime calamities, decimated the civilian population. Using food as its primary register, it looks at a wide range of largely untapped Syrian and Lebanese poems,zajal, plays, novels, memoirs, and histories written over the course of the 20th century, in order to illuminate the experiential dimensions of the civilians’ war and to delineate some of the discourses that structured it. More specifically, it argues that the wartime famine in Syria and Lebanon gave rise to a remembered cuisine of desperation that is deeply informative about the ruptured world of the civilians’ war.

Download Full-text