Themes - International Encyclopedia of the First World War

The centenary of the First World War has been a catalyst for battlefield tourism…

The First World War centenary saw an emergence of new portrayals of the conflict…

The centenary of the First World War revealed palpable anxieties around a loss o…

Innovative historical scholarship played an important role in the shaping of mem…

The centenary events surrounding the First World War have produced a significant…

Libraries (local, specialist, and national) contributed in numerous and importan…

This article discusses how European museums – in particular, national war museum…

The commemorative period between 2014 and 2018 was marked globally by numerous e…

The First World War saw the colonial empires of France and Britain mobilised to …

The First World War ushered in an unprecedented wave of commemorations. Mass dea…

The end of fighting in 1918 raised hopes for swift and equitable military demobi…

The First World War was not only the precondition of the rise of fascist movemen…

There have been four generations of historical writing about the 1914-1918 war. …

By examining the origins, pathways, demographic impact and consequences for the …

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, establishing both the Leagu…

The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 28 June 1919, the same day on which the L…

What role do representations of the First World War play in media that reach a w…

This article examines the lessons derived by the military organizations that par…

This article describes the lives and afterlives of the First World War museums i…

Post-war economies were beset with problems, ultimately leading to the Great Dep…

The First World War caused unprecedented disruption to societies across the glob…

The Great War gave new impulses to the further development of public welfare sys…

The Russian civil war was not simply a conflict between Red communists and White…

The debate about the origins of the war remains a vibrant area of historical res…

This article offers an overview of peacemaking after the First World War from th…

This article offers an overview of peacemaking after the First World War from th…

Veterans’ associations formed an influential social movement during the interwar…

There are in the literature on the economic history of the Great War different a…

Arab historiography of World War I is situated between commemorative writings in…

This article considers patterns of bereavement and mourning in Australia both du…

War victims left a huge vacuum both for their kin and society, which showed sign…

In the midst of the First World War centennial, the centenary of the Armenian Ge…

From 2010-2020, Australia fielded the longest, most expensive, and arguably most…

While for the official Austrian state it was in some ways an uneasy task to comm…

Belarus is in a region that was greatly affected by the First World War. For var…

Though 100 years have elapsed since World War I, it has not enjoyed the due atte…

This paper explores Canada’s response to the Great War centenary of 2014-2018, s…

Modern Chinese collective remembrance of the First World War is composed of thre…

The article describes commemorative acts and festivities marking the centenary o…

The centenary of the Great War was, in France, a unique commemorative phenomenon…

The paradox of the German centenary lies in the fact that this country played a …

In Hungary, World War I commemorations have been mainly organized by the Centena…

Irish engagement with the First World War was active and intense and yet, for mu…

The closing months of 2017 saw a number of organized events unfold in Israel and…

This article illustrates the main characteristics of the long commemorative cycl…

In Madagascar, between 2014 and 2018, there were many initiatives to commemorate…

There was a large investment of government funds in the centenary commemoration …

Contrary to the Great War, the regaining of Polish independence in 1918 has long…

The centenary of the end of the Great War was celebrated in Romania as the “Cent…

In Russia, the eve of 2014 and the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the o…

The anniversary has reaffirmed the belief that the First World War still has a v…

Between 2014 and 2018, there were no state-organized events to mark the centenar…

Slovakia has a double memory of World War I: the one of former Austro-Hungarian …

The National Committee for Commemorating the 100th Anniversaries of World War I …

This article provides an assessment of how society and the state in post-aparthe…

On 22 July 1917, King Vajiravudh of Siam declared war on Germany and Austria-Hun…

This article provides an overview of commemorations of the centenary of the Firs…

In Ukraine, commemorations of the centennial of the First World War were sporadi…

How did the British nation-state, visibly divided in the early 21st century alon…

The centenary of the First World War brought greater focus on how the war was re…

In 1914, Allied leaders plunged Africans into a conflict that was not their own.…

Some 70,000 Canadians died while in military service during the First World War,…

From 1919 through the early 1920s, Americans energetically memorialized their ro…

Commemoration in the form of ceremonies and monuments was for the most part alie…

The memory of the First World War has played a prominent role in Australian poli…

The scope of the commemorations that developed in Belgium and in the remainder o…

In the countries of East Central Europe, the commemoration of soldiers who fell …

The First World War was commemorated in numerous ways in post-1918 Germany. Loca…

The commemoration of the First World War in Britain and Ireland has a complex hi…

The betrayal of popular political aspirations by the colonial state, followed by…

Memorials designed to commemorate Indochina’s war dead were generally spearheade…

In Newfoundland, the cult of the fallen followed the military disaster that befe…

Anzac Day is the primary method of New Zealand public engagement with the Great …

The fundamental factor in the existence of a Russian cult of the war dead was th…

The article examines the main characteristics of commemorative processes which t…

South Africa’s First World War cult of commemoration has long centred around the…

This article examines how Switzerland has remembered and commemorated the First …

This article explores how British cinematographers filmed the war and how the fi…

This article outlines the historiographical development from Africa’s treatment …

Charles E.W. Bean’s twelve-volume Official History of Australia in the War of 19…

Apart from a few brief words regarding the relevant scientific work of internati…

After a promising start, academic historiography of the First World War in Belgi…

The Bulgarian historiography of World War One can be divided into three periods:…

Canada’s historiography of the First World War has tended to emphasize the war a…

The First World War has been a neglected topic in Chinese historiography from 19…

East Central European historians of the First World War have focused and continu…

The history of the Great War has always been written by an array of actors, incl…

This historiographical piece surveys trends and key interventions in scholarship…

This article details the historiography of South Asian involvement in the First …

This historiographical article surveys key interventions in scholarship of Irela…

Italian historiography of the Great War has been deeply affected by the close li…

Still largely overlooked in the international scholarship on the First World War…

Scholarship on Latin American history has for decades largely ignored the First …

Anglo-French historiography on the Arab lands during World War I originated as E…

This article surveys New Zealand historiography of the First World War since 191…

This article attempts to chart the historiography of the First World War in Port…

Serbian historiography was analysed in light of Serbia’s historical position and…

This article examines the evolution of the Spanish historiography of the First W…

In a rapidly expanding universe of publications it is important to reflect from …

The First World War in Africa has been considered a sideshow compared to the cat…

This essay covers the historiography of military, political, social, and cultura…

This article provides the first continent-wide overview of the catastrophic, wor…

This article seeks to analyze how the International Committee of the Red Cross (…

The Russian Civil War of 1917-20 was closely related to the World War in terms o…

For Italy, the mass death of soldiers in the First World War was a completely un…

Portugal’s participation in the First World War, first in Africa and then on the…

The Armistice agreement foresaw the occupation of the left bank of the Rhine, th…

While on the Western Front there were only limited territorial movements, the Ea…

This article surveys the occupation of the formerly German-leased territory arou…

This article examines the politics of the German (Generalgouvernement Warschau) …

This article studies Germany’s experiences of occupation during and immediately …

During and after the First World War, Italy experienced different kinds of occup…

The occupation of the Arab lands of the Ottoman Empire was essentially the by-pr…

Memories of occupation by foreign forces are not usually articulated except when…

Occupation played a crucial role in Eastern Europe between 1914 and 1921: the hi…

The occupation of South East Europe 1915-1918 had a complex structure reflecting…

During the First World War, Józef Piłsudski and his followers invented the legen…

Agrarianism became a major political force in the independent states that emerge…

This article argues that the shifts in the colonial administration after World W…

The outbreak of war in 1914 interrupted a political crisis within the United Kin…

The economic development of African territories in the years following World War…

World War I had a damaging effect on the economy. Although it stimulated new ind…

The Austrian economy went through several phases in the interwar period, beginni…

Belgium had suffered considerable economic losses during the war, which was foug…

Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland – all countries founded after Wo…

At the end of the war, all the belligerent countries had to face the dramatic co…

Beginning with a discussion of whether the war led to a structural break, this a…

The political and economic history of Britain during the 1920s and 1930s was mou…

Starting from the essential parameters of the Italian economy and finance in the…

Latin American countries continued to pursue export-led growth after the First W…

The Arab states that emerged from the Ottoman Empire after the First World War r…

The post-war economy was shaped by wartime changes. Compensation issues for sold…

In the context of the Russian economy’s spectacular collapse under the strain of…

The First World War devastated the human workforce through death and invalidity …

The First World War devastated the human workforce through death and invalidity …

In 1923, Turkey was declared a republic after fighting against the Allied occupa…

The armistices of 1918 officially ended the First World War in Europe, but viole…

This article will address the key political features in the post-war years of th…

Two factors made it especially important for Portugal’s interventionists not onl…

This article focuses on the Africans who fought in the First World War and the r…

Australia’s Great War was both unifying and divisive. The Anzac legend that cele…

The following deliberations approach the “post-war” situation of the young Austr…

The end of the First World War marked, to a certain extent, Belgium’s entry into…

Although the Czechoslovak Republic experienced social breakdown and a wave of vi…

Although in late 1918 countries of East Central Europe had different forms of go…

French post-war society had to face the consequences of a mass death experienced…

Identifying the three processes of “normalization”, liberalization, and militari…

The post-war years in Great Britain and Ireland witnessed a period of transforma…

The decades between the two world wars seethed with tumultuous and momentous eve…

Post-war Italy was the only country that proved unable to use victory as a rheto…

The immediate post-war Middle East formed part of a Eurasia-wide arc of instabil…

High inflation, strikes, labour organization, war profiteering and “moral corrup…

In contrast with the war in the West and its aftermath, the First World War in E…

South East European societies faced several challenges in the post-war period. T…

Incessant wars from 1912 to 1922 accelerated socio-political change and facilita…

World War I transformed the United States in so many important ways that it is c…

In peacemaking in the former Ottoman Empire, a discrepancy developed between the…

In November 1918, massive popular unrest broke out in the Hungarian countryside,…

Great War veterans both helped build Yugoslavia and aided in its collapse. Throu…

No British government had ever formed or provided for an army of the size requir…

Portugal financed the extraordinary expenditures of the First World War in the s…

Since 1914-1918 various practices of remembering World War I have coexisted and …

China, which joined the Allied cause in 1917, profited economically from the Fir…

Although the military and geopolitical relevance of World War I to Japan must be…

Though Switzerland was not conquered, its economy was strongly affected by the F…

The anti-war novel Im Westen nichts Neues (All Quiet on the Western Front) by Er…

This entry explains the Amritsar Massacre of 13 April 1919. It charts the events…

The Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney, is the state war memorial of New South …

Arditi were elite assault troops in the Italian army. They also emerged on Ital…

Askari is a word that means “soldier” or “police” in Kiswahili, Arabic, Turkish…

Fulfilling the archetype of the war writer, Henri Barbusse is the embodiment of …

Max Bauer was a German artillery expert and a key suborndinate in the German Sup…

The Great War was a severe trial for Belarus and its population. It ruined the l…

Edvard Beneš was a Czech politician, diplomat, and close collaborator of Tomáš G…

The "Black and Tans" were British ex-soldiers recruited to reinforce the United …

As a Flemish nationalist, August Borms actively collaborated with the Germans du…

Elsa Brändström was the only neutral representative to work amongst prisoners of…

Brazil was the only South American country that participated actively in the Fir…

The British Mandate for Palestine (1918-1948) was the outcome of several factors…

During the First World War, the Bureau of Investigation, a division of the U.S. …

Mehmed Cavid Bey was born in Thessaloniki to a Sabbatean (dönme) family in eithe…

The life and works of the poet Blaise Cendrars testify to a disturbing paradox: …

The Cenotaph is a major British war memorial. Standing in Whitehall, London, it …

Michael Collins was a revolutionary leader who rose to become chairman of the Ir…

Cossacks were warrior subjects who provided the tsars with mounted troops in ret…

An extreme-right movement, the Croix de Feu was a prominent political phenomenon…

From 1918–1920, Czechoslovakia and Hungary claimed their rights over Slovakia an…

The Czechoslovak Legion was a military formation of Czechs, Slovaks, exiles, and…

One of Italy’s leading literary figures, Gabriele D’Annunzio agitated for Italia…

Anton Ivanovich Denikin was a Russian general, politician and writer. He fought …

De Valera was a prominent figure in the Easter 1916 rebellion against British ru…

In his oeuvre, the German painter Otto Dix dealt more intensively with wartime e…

The First World War, the Russian revolutions of February and October 1917, and t…

Eupen-Malmedy is the name given to the two districts that Germany ceded to Belgi…

The Finnish Civil War was fought between the socialist Reds and the non-socialis…

Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis, expressed a war-weariness …

Juozas Gabrys was one of the major advocates of Lithuanian political aspirations…

At the start of the First World War, tens of thousands of Germans lived in Belgi…

Count Rüdiger von der Goltz was a German army general during the First World War…

Hermann Göring was a highly decorated and well-known fighter pilot of the First …

As head of the Railway Section at the General Staff, Groener was responsible for…

The artist George Grosz was a keen observer of post-war Germany and highly criti…

General Józef Haller was one of the best known Polish military commanders of the…

Ernest Hemingway was an American who served as a Red Cross ambulance lieutenant …

Paul von Hindenburg shot to fame after the Battle of Tannenberg in August 1914. …

After the First World War, Hitler created a mythical account of his war years fo…

The Great War had a decisive influence on Hồ Chí Minh. In France, his acquaintan…

Horthy was a naval officer of Austria-Hungary. During the First World War he was…

The so-called “Wars of Independence” in the Baltics were part of a larger confli…

The Inter-Allied Games were held at the Pershing Stadium in Paris, France from 2…

Ernst Jünger was a German writer. His book Storm of Steel (In Stahlgewittern) is…

The "khaki" general election of 1918 was held in Great Britain almost immediatel…

The Khilafat movement was an agitation by Indian Muslims, allied with Indian nat…

Aleksandr Vasil'evich Kolchak was a Russian admiral and political figure. He par…

Prince Fumimaro Konoe was a pivotal figure in Japanese history during the first …

During World War I, V. K. Wellington Koo worked in the Chinese foreign ministry …

Karl Kraus was one of the 20th century’s most significant satirists. While his p…

Béla Kun was a Hungarian communist politician. He began his career as a social d…

Johan Laidoner, Estonian general and statesman, started his career in the Russia…

Japan joined the League of Nations from its outset in 1920 as one of four perman…

In 1921 and 1922 the highest German court, the Reichsgericht in Leipzig, under p…

Vladimir Il’ich Lenin was the founder and leader of the Bolshevik Party and of t…

Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck was commander of the German colonial troops in East Afri…

Liang Qichao was the driving intellectual force behind the Chinese decision to j…

B.H. Liddell Hart served as a British infantry officer on the Western Front in 1…

Karl Liebknecht was the leading German socialist opponent of the First World War…

The Treaty of London was a secret agreement signed by Italy, Great Britain, Fran…

A few weeks before his entry in Brussels, on 22 November 1918, Albert I, King of…

Felix Graf von Luckner, the so-called “sea-devil”, was a German naval officer. D…

Erich Ludendorff was the effective commander of the German armed forces during t…

A Socialist and a vocal critic of the German Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) war…

Nestor Makhno was a commander of peasant insurgents who fought the Bolsheviks, W…

A Finnish aristocrat, Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim served as cavalry commander in…

Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk was a Czech politician who started the Czechoslovak indep…

The Mémorial de Verdun is a museum built in the centre of the 1916 battlefield, …

The inter-allied memorial commemorates the First World War and the fallen, as we…

British mandate Mesopotamia marks the beginning of the formation of modern Iraq.…

Georg Michaelis is usually portrayed as the politically failed chancellor of 191…

Japanese interest in expansion into the South Pacific began in the 1870s. World …

During the Great War, the Ottoman state mobilized its citizens under two war pol…

The Austrian writer Robert Musil served as a soldier throughout the entire perio…

Italian Socialist Benito Mussolini envisioned war as the prerequisite for revolu…

The Treaty of Neuilly was signed on 27 November 1919 between Bulgaria and the Al…

Francesco Nitti was minister of the Treasury in the Orlando Cabinet after the de…

Gustav Noske was a social democratic politician and the first politician to be a…

The 1920 Olympic Games in Antwerp, Belgium were the first instalment of the Game…

War, massacres, displacement, famine and economic crisis left over 100,000 child…

Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a virtuoso pianist. He made use of his popularity in t…

The Palmer Raids were efforts by the United States Department of Justice to arre…

Konstantin Päts, a leading Estonian politician, was a key figure in the establis…

Friedrich von Payer was vice-chancellor of the German Empire from November 1917 …

During the Russian Civil War, peasant uprisings swept the former Russian Empire.…

Accused of refusing to collaborate with the German authorities, the Belgian hist…

Józef Klemens Piłsudski was a Polish statesman, socialist politician, freedom fi…

In the 19th century, the German-Polish borderlands became the object of national…

The Związek Legionistów Polskich (Polish Legionaries Union), or ZLP, was an asso…

The Polish-Lithuanian border conflict (1914-1924) was a consequence of the proce…

The hostilities between Bolshevik Russia and Poland started as early as 1919. In…

The Polish-Ukrainian conflict over Eastern Galicia in 1918-19 refers to an armed…

To many, the remembrance poppy is the defining symbol of the First World War, em…

After fifty months of German occupation, a minority of French, and the majority …

This entry revisits the political upheavals that swept across several towns and …

The Red Army was a paradoxical force created by a party deeply suspicious of reg…

The Red Scare was a period of heightened fear of radicalism in the United States…

Erich Maria Remarque was a German writer and pacifist who became world-famous fo…

As early as 1915, France considered celebrating those who died for the nation. A…

Karl Renner quickly became one of the main theoreticians of a policy of support …

The Treaty of Riga was signed by Poland and the Soviet state on 18 March 1921 an…

Joseph Roth was a Jewish writer and journalist. His experiences at the Eastern F…

The Belgian Force Publique occupied Ruanda and Urundi in 1916 after taking contr…

The 1923-1925 Ruhr occupation by France and Belgium was triggered when Germany d…

The Treaty of Saint-Germain was signed by Austria and twenty-seven Allied and as…

Schwarze Schmach was a racist epithet for France’s colonial troops stationed in…

The Swiss Patriotic Federation (Schweizerischer Vaterländischer Verband, or SVV)…

Woodrow Wilson proposed a joint intervention with Japan to “rescue” the Czech le…

During the First World War, political writer and editor of Lithuanian magazines,…

Upon their defeat in the First World War, German citizens developed strong consp…

Joseph Stalin lived in Siberian exile from 1913 until the revolution of March 19…

Having gained success throughout Europe with his compositions for the Ballets Ru…

The Last Days of Mankind (Die letzten Tage der Menschheit) is the major work by …

The Thiepval Memorial commemorates “the Missing of the Somme”: more than 72,000 …

Ernst Toller was one of Germany’s best-known playwrights and a leading left-wing…

At the end of the Great War, many countries determined that they would bury an a…

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Warsaw was originally built to honor the fall…

The Treaty of Trianon is one of the Paris peace treaties that ended the First Wo…

Leon Trotsky's communist leadership was partially responsible for bringing about…

At the beginning of the 20th century Ukrainian lands were part of the Austro-Hun…

Kārlis Ulmanis was the first prime minister of the Republic of Latvia. His four …

The Union des Nationalités, alternatively called the Office Central des National…

Founded in Lyon in February 1918, the Union fédérale was the largest veterans’ a…

Founded on 11 November 1918 with the support of French Prime Minister Georges Cl…

A race riot is a mob-related domestic disturbance in which specific racial group…

Jukums Vācietis commanded the 5thZemgale Latvian Rifle Battalion. After the Octo…

The Franco-German battle of 1916 quickly became emblematic of the entire war to …

The Treaty of Versailles was the first peace treaty that the victorious powers s…

War veterans’ associations had a significant public voice in Weimar Germany as t…

Gabriele D’Annunzio’s phrase “mutilated victory” infers that Italy’s wartime sac…

During the First World War, as professor at the University of Perm (Russia), Aug…

The Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge e.V. (German War Graves Commission o…

The Volunteer Army was the operational formation of anti-Bolshevik forces in Sou…

The latter Austrian Land Vorarlberg saw the rise of a grass root movement for a …

During the interwar years, mourning and political exploitation were often closel…

War Communism refers to policies, particularly economic, pursued by the Bolshevi…

German war memorials were sites of both political conflict and personal mourning…

One third of the 9.7 million soldiers killed or declared missing during the Grea…

The Washington Conference was held from November 1921 to February 1922 with the …

The wake of the Great War saw mobilizations against empire across the world, wit…

At the end of the First World War, Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils spread throug…

The Menin Gate in Ypres is the best known of the memorials to the missing in the…

Since 1905 Britain had paid the Afghan ruler, Amir Habibullah, a subsidy and had…

Though largely understudied to date, the regions in the western Balkans inhabite…

The impact of the First World War on Australia was so profound that its memory d…

The article surveys the social and military history of Austria-Hungary during th…

This article presents a survey of the First World War in the region of today’s s…

Belgium, a neutral state, was forced into the First World War by a German ultima…

From 1912 to 1918 Bulgaria engaged in a prolonged conflict that began in victory…

The Dominion of Canada automatically went to war in August 1914 when Britain did…

This article discusses China’s role in the First World War with a focus on the c…

With its economy highly reliant on Great Britain, Germany and other European nat…

Egypt played an important role in World War I. Although it saw limited combat op…

Great Britain was with its Empire the most powerful of the major belligerents, t…

Ireland’s war experience cannot be separated from Irish politics. Indeed, the st…

Despite its neutrality, Luxembourg was occupied in August 1914, mainly for its s…

Montenegro entered the First World War politically and militarily exhausted. The…

New Zealand was the British Dominion furthest from the conflict in Europe, the M…

The Ottoman and European colonial contexts are the necessary background for unde…

During the Great War, the Ottoman Empire fought on several major and minor front…

The outbreak of the First World War coincided with a period in Persian history w…

This paper presents the process of building an independent Polish state during t…

World War I afforded the first opportunity for modern Romania to participate in …

The Russian Empire entered the war in order to preserve its Great Power status, …

A short synthesis on Serbia's role and experience in the Great War encompasses s…

Siam (Thailand) declared war on Germany and Austria-Hungary in mid-1917. In 1918…

This article examines Spain’s neutrality during the Great War, highlighting fact…

For Sweden, the impact of the war was twofold. On the one hand, it was a test to…

The Netherlands remained neutral during the First World War, but was nevertheles…

In 1914, the Union of South Africa was four years old; its military only two. Br…

The American debate over neutrality ended when Woodrow Wilson decided in April 1…

The idea for the unification of the Southern Slavs emerged in the 19th century a…