In the Shadow of the Great War: Physical Violence in East-Central Europe, 1917–1923

Whether victorious or not, Central European states faced fundamental challenges after the First World War as they struggled to contain ongoing violence and forge peaceful societies. This collection explores the various forms of violence these nations confronted during this period, which effectively transformed the region into a laboratory for state-building. Employing a bottom-up approach to understanding everyday life, these studies trace the contours of individual and mass violence in the interwar era while illuminating their effects upon politics, intellectual developments, and the arts.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Jochen Böhler, Ota Konrád and Rudolf Kučera Chapter 1. The Baltikumer: Collective Violence and German Paramilitaries after 1918 Mathias Voigtmann Chapter 2. Pogroms and Imposture: The Violent Self-Formation of Ukrainian Warlords Christopher Gilley Chapter 3. Toward an Interactional Theory of Sexual Violence: The White Terror in Hungary between 1919 and 1921 Béla Bodó Chapter 4. The Many Lives of Mrs. Hamburger: Gender, Violence, and Counter-Revolution, 1919–1930 Emily R. Gioielli Chapter 5. “A Little Murderous Party”: Poland after the First World War in the Works of Joseph Roth Winson Chu Chapter 6. Suicide Discourses: The Austrian Example in the International Context from World War I to the 1930s Hannes Leidinger Chapter 7. The “Healthy Nerves” of the Nation: War Neuroses in Austria-Hungary and its Successor States Maciej Górny Chapter 8. Forging a “Winning Spirit”: The North American YMCA and the Czechoslovak Army 1918–1921 Ondřej Matějka Chapter 9. When the Defeated Become Victorious: Averting Violence with Football in Post-1918 Romania Cătălin Parfene Afterword: The End of the Great War and Postwar Problems—Research Conclusions Boris Barth

About the Author :
Jochen Böhler is director of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. His publications include Civil War in Central Europe: The Reconstruction of Poland, 1918–1921 (Oxford University Press, 2018).

Review :
““Despite the increased attention that the region and the era have received recently, there is much that we still need to learn, and this collection is a welcome addition to the existing historiography.” • The Journal of East Central European Studies “Overall, the volume offers a broad panorama of the history of violence in East Central Europe. The individual essays are thematically diverse and offer an excellent synthesis of multilingual sources of research literature and theory.” • H-Soz-Kult “This is an excellent collection of high-quality essays on a topic that is at the cutting edge of the field and which builds on a fast-growing interest in the impacts of the First World War.” • Roland Clark, University of Liverpool