World War I in Central and Eastern Europe: Politics, Conflict and Military Experience

In the English language World War I has largely been analysed and understood through the lens of the Western Front. This book addresses this imbalance by examining the war in Eastern and Central Europe. The historiography of the war in the West has increasingly focused on the experience of ordinary soldiers and civilians, the relationships between them and the impact of war at the time and subsequently. This book takes up these themes and, engaging with the approaches and conclusions of historians of the Western front, examines wartime experiences and the memory of war in the East. Analysing soldiers' letters and diaries to discover the nature and impact of displacement and refugee status on memory, this volume offers a basis for comparison between experiences in these two areas. It also provides material for intra-regional comparisons that are still missing from the current research. Was the war in the East wholly 'other'? Were soldiers in this region as alienated as those in the West? Did they see themselves as citizens and was there continuity between their pre-war or civilian and military identities? And if, in the Eastern context, these identities were fundamentally challenged, was it the experience of war itself or its consequences (in the shape of imprisonment and displacement, and changing borders) that mattered most? How did soldiers and citizens in this region experience and react to the traumas and upheavals of war and with what consequences for the post-war era? In seeking to answer these questions and others, this volume significantly adds to our understanding of World War I as experienced in Central and Eastern Europe.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction Judith Devlin Part I New Frontiers of War: State Treatment of Non-Combatants 1. The Failed Quest for Total Surveillance: The Internal Security Service in Austria-Hungary During World War I Mark Lewis 2. Fellow Citizens, Unwanted Foreigners: The Refugee Crisis in Wartime Moravia Kathryn E. Densford 3. Population Displacement in the Habsburg Empire During World War I Francesco Frizzera 4. Italian – Austrian Prisoners of War and Italian Political and Military Involvement in the Eastern Front During World War I Alessandro Salvador 5. Violence, Destruction and Resistance: Serbia's and Montenegro's Experiences of the Great War Dmitar Tasic´ 6. 'We're Half-way to Asia Here': The Conduct of the German Army Units on the Eastern Front in 1914 and 1939 Jan Szkudlinski Part II Soldiers and Veterans: Experience, Understanding and Memory 7. Choosing Their Own Nation: National and Political Identities of the Italian POWs in Russia, 1914 – 21 Simone A. Bellezza 8. Red Peril or Yellow Peril? British Attitudes Towards the Russian Other: Northern Russia, 1918 – 19 Steven Balbirnie 9. 'I am Well and I Hope the Same of You. I Will Soon Change Location': World War I Field Postcards to a Disappearing Homeland Georg Grote 10. The Emperor's Broken Bust: Representations of the Habsburg 'Shatterzone' in World War I Andreas Agocs 11. A Mutilated Society: Disabled Ex-Servicemen of the Tsarist Russian Army Alexandre Sumpf 12. Keeping Up Appearances: The Aims of the Anglo-Russian Hospital in Petrograd, 1915 – 18 Shannon Brady 13. 'Who Died for the Homeland?' Celebrating Victory in East-Central Europe After World War I: An Overview of the Unknown Soldiers Isabelle Davion 14. Memory of World War I and Veterans' Organisations in Poland, 1918 – 26 Joanna Urbanek Conclusion Wartime Experiences and Ensuing Transformations John Paul Newman and Maria Falina Notes 264 Selected Further Reading 328 Index 330

About the Author :
Judith Devlin is Senior Lecturer in History at University College Dublin. Her research focuses on the political culture of Stalinism between the 1920s and 1950s. She has published monographs on the cultural history of France and the contemporary history of Russia and three edited volumes, most recently War of Words: Culture and the Media in the Making of the Cold War. John Paul Newman is Lecturer in Twentieth-century European History at NUI Maynooth. He has researched and published extensively on the history of the impact of World War I in Central and Eastern Europe and on the transnational history of World War I. He has edited a transnational study of veterans and their role in internationalist politics in the interwar period, The Great War and Veterans Internationalism and edited a study of the impact of the Great War in the successor states of Austria-Hungary, Sacrifice and Rebirth: The Legacy of the War in East-Central Europe. He is the author of Yugoslavia in the Shadow of War. Maria Falina is IRC postdoctoral fellow at the School of History, University College Dublin. Her research focuses on the history of religion and politics in Southeastern Europe and the history of political thought in East Central Europe in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She is co-editor of A History of Political Thought in East Central Europe. Her monograph, Religion and Politics in Interwar Yugoslavia: Serbian Nationalism and East Orthodox Christianity is forthcoming from I.B.Tauris.

Review :
This volume is an invaluable contribution to the recent re-evaluation of the story of the First World War in East Central Europe. It offers a set of often fascinating case studies that, skilfully put together, summarize recent trends in historical scholarship while confirming key paradigmatic shifts, further supporting the obvious need to move beyond nationalized meta-histories to actor-based, transnational perspectives.