World War I and British Left Wing Intellectuals: The Case of Leonard T. Hobhouse

1973 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 261-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Liberal Party ◽  
Post War ◽  
Extension Of State ◽  
The Right ◽  
Military Victory

World War I brought about a crisis within the British Liberal Party for it confronted Liberals with issues which they found difficult to resolve on the basis of traditional liberal principles. On numerous occasions, Liberals were placed in situations in which they were forced to choose between liberal principles and illiberal measures which were necessary for the effective prosecution of the war. The dilemma of whether or not to support British involvement in the war was a painful one which many Liberals would have preferred to avoid, and it was followed by other scarcely less painful decisions involving conscription, the extension of state controls over the economy, freedom of expression and personal liberties, the future of free trade, the right to refuse military service on the ground of conscientious objection, and the larger problem of whether to seek military victory or a negotiated peace.The effect of the war on those Radical Liberal intellectuals who comprised an important segment of the left-wing of the Liberal Party was especially profound. Although they were not a highly organized group before 1914, there did exist a number of Radical Liberals who were bound together by their common agreement on the overriding importance of a “pacifistic” foreign policy and additional measures of social reform. This loose coalition of Radical Liberals was shattered by the war, for a large proportion of the group supported the war while others did not. Moreover, the issues generated by the war tended to drive the dissenting Radicals further to the Left, while the conservative assumptions of pro-war Radical Liberals became more prominent. By the end of the war the gulf between the two factions of Radical Liberals had become a deep chasm, and in the post-war years the division became a permanent one; many of those who had been dissenters during the war joined the Labour Party, while pro-war Radical Liberals tended either to remain in the Liberal Party or adopt an independent position.

Left-wing generation, right-wing generation. Ivan Meshekov and Ernst Jünger (preliminary notes)

Proglas ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Sabourin ◽  
◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The Political ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Literary Critic ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
World War ◽  
Lost Generation ◽  
Black Sheep ◽  
The Right

This article is an introduction to the comparison between the constituting of the “left-wing generation” of the Bulgarian literary critic Ivan Meshekov (1891–1970) and the “right-wing generation” of the German writer Ernst Jünger (1895–1998) in the frontline experience of World War I. Both authors are emblematic figures of the leftwing and the right-wing intellectual spheres respectively, being, at the same time, black sheep in their own political camp. In the well-grounded existential and conceptual temerity of decisions which led them to a categorical generational binding of the aesthetical with the political, Ivan Meshekov and Ernst Jünger are shown to be brothers in arms in a decesionistic situation of the “lost generation” which seeks and finds itself (or finds death) on the battlefields of World War I.

The Making of a Cause Lawyer

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Meierhenrich
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Social Democracy ◽  
Early Years ◽  
World War ◽  
The Third ◽  
Nazi Era

This chapter provides the biographical and historical context necessary for understanding Fraenkel and his time. The analysis is organized into three sections: his early years, the Weimar Years, and the Nazi years. In the first section, I trace Fraenkel’s upbringing in a secular household influenced by the so-called Jewish Enlightenment, or Haskalah; explore the origins of his life-long predilection for social democracy; and recount the intellectual effects of his military service in World War I. In the second section, I reconstruct Fraenkel’s education and socialization as a young lawyer and interpret Fraenkel’s most important Weimar-era writings. I explicate the roles they played in preparing the ground for the writing of The Dual State. In the third section, finally, I commence my analysis of Fraenkel’s Nazi-era thought and conduct up until his escape to freedom in 1938.

Karikatur als Kriegsdienst: Aby Warburgs »neuer Stil zwischen Wort und Bild«, 1914–1918

2021 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-95
Author(s):  
Dorothea McEwan
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Active Role ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
War Effort ◽  
War Propaganda

Abstract This article attempts to throw a light on Warburg’s little-known engagement in political caricature during World War I. Though deemed unfit for military service, Warburg was eager to contribute to the German war effort. Perceiving Allied war propaganda as anti-German lies, he recorded what he considered its half-truths and falsehoods in his Kriegskartothek, or war archive. But Warburg, as indicated by his involvement with the short-lived La Guerra del 1914: Rivista illustrata in the early stages of the war, kept looking for a more active role in influencing public opinion: From privately commenting on the output of the Allied press, he went on to offering his own ideas for political caricatures to leading artists like Olaf Gulbransson and Max Slevogt, and to well-established satirical journals such as Simplicissimus and Kladderadatsch.

Two post-war paths: Popular violence in the Bohemian lands and in Austria in the aftermath of World War I

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (5) ◽  
pp. 759-775 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ota Konrád
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
New World ◽  
Collective Identities ◽  
World War ◽  
Habsburg Monarchy ◽  
Successor State ◽  
Post War ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Wartime Experience

The study explores the phenomenon of popular violence in the first months and years after the end of World War I on the basis of a comparison between the Bohemian lands, forming the central part of the newly established Czechoslovakia, and Austria, as another successor state to the former Habsburg monarchy. Aside from the continuities, new forms of violence increasingly emerged in the first years after the end of the war, and also the “language” of violence was transformed. While in Czechoslovakia, the framework within which people were learning to understand the new world was shaped by the national and republican discourse oriented to the future, in Austria the collective identities and mentalities were being formed along the lines of particular party political blocks. In both cases, the nationalization and politicization of violence respectively contributed to the emergence of new forms of popular violence; but at the same time they could also be used for its de-escalation, necessary for the re-integration of society disrupted by the wartime experience. However, even if both countries went out from the war on different paths, the violence stayed part of their political culture and it could be mobilized again.

Life conditions of Turkish prisoners on nargin island during the first world war

2021 ◽  
Vol 69 (08) ◽  
pp. 7-14
Author(s):  
Джамиля Яшар гызы Рустамова ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Caspian Sea ◽  
First World War ◽  
Prisoners Of War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Caspian Sea ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
The First World War ◽  
The Right ◽  
First World

The article is dedicated to the matter of Turkish prisoners on the Nargin Island in the Caspian Sea during the First World War. According to approximate computations, there were about 50-60 thousand people of Turkish captives in Russia. Some of them were sent to Baku because of the close location to the Caucasus Front and from there they were sent to the Nargin Island in the Caspian Sea. As time showed it was not the right choise. The Island had no decent conditions for living and turned the life of prisoners into the hell camp. Hastily built barracks contravene meet elementary standards, were poorly heated and by the end of the war they were not heated at all, water supply was unsatisfactory, sometimes water was not brought to the prisoner's several days. Bread was given in 100 grams per person per day, and then this rate redused by half. Knowing the plight of the prisoners, many citizens of Baku as well as the Baku Muslim Charitable Society and other charitable societies provided moral and material support to prisoners, they often went to the camp, brought food, clothes, medicines Key words: World War I, prisoners of war, Nargin Island, refugees, incarceration conditions, starvation, charity

Comrades Betrayed

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Geheran
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Third Reich ◽  
World War ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Social Death ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Nazi Persecution ◽  
The Third Reich ◽  
The Great War

At the end of 1941, six weeks after the mass deportations of Jews from Nazi Germany had begun, Gestapo offices across the Reich received an urgent telex from Adolf Eichmann, decreeing that all war-wounded and decorated Jewish veterans of World War I be exempted from upcoming “evacuations.” Why this was so, and how Jewish veterans at least initially were able to avoid the fate of ordinary Jews under the Nazis, is the subject of this book. The same values that compelled Jewish soldiers to demonstrate bravery in the front lines in World War I made it impossible for them to accept passively, persecution under Hitler. They upheld the ideal of the German fighting man, embraced the fatherland, and cherished the bonds that had developed in military service. Through their diaries and private letters, as well as interviews with eyewitnesses and surviving family members and records from the police, Gestapo, and military, this book challenges the prevailing view that Jewish veterans were left isolated, neighborless, and having suffered a social death by 1938. Tracing the path from the trenches of the Great War to the extermination camps of the Third Reich, the book exposes a painful dichotomy: while many Jewish former combatants believed that Germany would never betray them, the Holocaust was nonetheless a horrific reality. In chronicling Jewish veterans' appeal to older, traditional notions of comradeship and national belonging, the book forces reflection on how this group made use of scant opportunities to defy Nazi persecution and, for some, to evade becoming victims of the Final Solution.

scholarly journals World War I and its aftermath: Reaching for the past and across the Atlantic

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 304-317
Author(s):  
Jana Gohrisch
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Predominantly White ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Political Commitment ◽  
World War ◽  
Mother Country ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Political Activist ◽  
African Caribbean

This article focuses on the British West Indies beginning with the involvement of African Caribbean soldiers in the Great War. It challenges the enduring myth of the First World War as a predominantly white European conflict. The main part focuses on C. L. R. James, the Trinidadian historian and playwright, following his paradigmatic trajectory from the colony to the ‘mother country’ and his involvement in the protracted transnational process of decolonization after the First Word War. It concentrates on one of his political pamphlets and on his play Toussaint Louverture. The work of the British writer and left-wing political activist Nancy Cunard is also presented as another ‘outsider’ text which can further an ongoing methodological project: the re-integration and cross-fertilization of received knowledge about the war with seemingly outlying knowledge, unorthodox political commitment and challenging aesthetics to produce a richer understanding of this formative period across the Atlantic divide.

scholarly journals ’Det er easy at tale engelsk også’. Amerikadansk i 1960’erne og 1970’erne

2015 ◽  
Vol 47 (47) ◽  
pp. 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karoline Kühl
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War I ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
The United States ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Language Loss ◽  
World War ◽  
Melting Pot ◽  
Post War ◽  
American Society

The conditions for the Danish language among Danish emigrants and their descendants in the United States in the first half of the 20th century were tough: The group of Danish speakers was relatively small, the Danes did not settle together as other immigrant groups did, and demographic circumstances led many young, unmarried Danish men to marry non-Danish speaking partners. These were all factors that prevented the formation of tight-knit Danish-speaking communities. Furthermore, US nationalistic propaganda in the wake of World War I and the melting-pot effect of post-war American society in the 1950s contributed to a rapid decline in the use of Danish among the emigrants. Analyses of recordings of 58 Danish-American speakers from the 1970s show, however, that the language did not decline in an unsystematic process of language loss, only to be replaced quickly and effectively by English. On the contrary, the recordings show contactinduced linguistic innovations in the Danish of the interviewees, which involve the creation of specific lexical and syntactical American Danish features that systematically differ from Continental Danish. The article describes and discusses these features, and gives a thorough account of the socioeconomic and linguistic conditions for this speaker group.

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