Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914-1918

Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies 1914-1918
Author: J. G. Fuller
Publisher: Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1990
Genre: History
ISBN:

The front-line soldiers of the First World War endured appalling conditions in the trenches and suffered unprecedented slaughter in battle. Their morale, as much as the strategy of their commanders, played the crucial part in determining the outcome of `the war to end all wars'. J. G. Fuller examines the experience of the soldiers of the British and Dominion armies. How did the troops regard their plight? What did they think they were fighting for? Dr Fuller draws on a variety of contemporary sources, including over a hundred magazines produced by the soldiers themselves. This is the first scholarly analysis of the trench journalism which played an important role in the lives of the ordinary soldiers. Other themes explored include the nature of patriotism, discipline, living conditions, and leisure activities such as sport, concert parties, and the music hall. Dr Fuller's vivid and detailed study throws new light on the question of warfare, and in particular how the British and Dominion armies differed from those of their allies and opponents, which were wracked by mutiny or defeat as the war went on.

Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914-1918

Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914-1918
Author: J. G. Fuller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 218
Release: 1990
Genre: Commonwealth countries
ISBN: 9780191675010

This is a study of the factors which sustained men through the ordeal of trench warfare. It examines how the means of maintaining morale in the British and Dominion armies differed from those used among their allies and opponents, which were more susceptible to mutiny and defeatism.

British Popular Culture and the First World War

British Popular Culture and the First World War
Author: Jessica Meyer
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 399
Release: 2008-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 9047433386

Much of the scholarship examining British culture of the First World War focusses on the 'high' culture of a limited number of novels, memoirs, plays and works of art, and the cultural reaction to them. This collection, by focussing on the cultural forms produced by and for a much wider range of social groups, including veterans, women, museum visitors and film goers, greatly expands the debate over how the war was represented by participants and the meanings ascribed to it in cultural production. Showcasing the work of both established academics and emerging scholars of the field, this book covers aspects of British popular culture from the material cultures of food and clothing to the representational cultures of literature and film. The result is an engaging and invigorating re-examination of the First World War and its place in British culture. Contributors are: Keith Grieves, Rachel Duffett, Jane Tynan, Krisztina Robert, Lucy Noakes, Stella Moss, Carol Acton, Douglas Higbee, John Pegum, Eugene Michail, Victoria Stewart, Virginie Renard, Claudia Sternberg, Richard Espley and Stephen Badsey. Erratum Introduction, Jessica Meyer, page 11 in the first sentence of the second paragraph, for 'talke' read 'talk.'

The Great War and the British Empire

The Great War and the British Empire
Author: Michael J.K. Walsh
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 335
Release: 2016-11-25
Genre: History
ISBN: 1317029836

In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies went to war in 1914 against the Central Powers, history's first global conflict was inevitable. It is the social and cultural reactions to that war and within those distant, often overlooked, societies which is the focus of this volume. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Iraq and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes are addressed, offering new perspectives on imperial and colonial history and theory, as well as art, music, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender, class, race and diplomacy at the end of the pax Britannica.

Behind the Front

Behind the Front
Author: Craig Gibson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 481
Release: 2014-03-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0521837618

This book uncovers the vital relationships between British troops and local inhabitants in France and Belgium during the First World War.

The British Army and the First World War

The British Army and the First World War
Author: Ian Beckett
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1316824543

This is a major new history of the British army during the Great War written by three leading military historians. Ian Beckett, Timothy Bowman and Mark Connelly survey operations on the Western Front and throughout the rest of the world as well as the army's social history, pre-war and wartime planning and strategy, the maintenance of discipline and morale and the lasting legacy of the First World War on the army's development. They assess the strengths and weaknesses of the army between 1914 and 1918, engaging with key debates around the adequacy of British generalship and whether or not there was a significant 'learning curve' in terms of the development of operational art during the course of the war. Their findings show how, despite limitations of initiative and innovation amongst the high command, the British army did succeed in developing the effective combined arms warfare necessary for victory in 1918.

Making Sense of the Great War

Making Sense of the Great War
Author: Alex Mayhew
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2024-03-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009168754

This interdisciplinary account explores how English infantrymen in Belgium and France experienced and coped with war between 1914 and 1918.

War in the Age of Technology

War in the Age of Technology
Author: Geoffrey Jensen
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 407
Release: 2001-04-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 0814743307

Technology of one kind or another has always been a central ingredient in war. The Spartan king Archidamus, for instance, reacted with alarm when first witnessing a weapon that could shoot darts through the air. And yet during the past two centuries technology has played an unprecedented role in military affairs and thinking, and in the overall conduct of war. In addition, the impact of new technology on warfare has brought major social and cultural changes. This volume explores the relationship between war, technology, and modern society over the course of the last several centuries. The two world wars, total conflicts in which industrial technology took a terrible human toll, brought great changes to the practice of organized violence among nations; even so many aspect of military life and values remained largely unaffected. In the latter half of the twentieth century, technology in the form of nuclear deterrence appears to have prevented the global conflagration of world war while complicating and fueling ferocious regional contests. A stimulating fusion of military and social history, extending back to the eighteenth century, and with contributions from such leading historians as Brian Bond, Paddy Griffith, and Neil McMillen, War in the Age of Technology will interest lay readers and specialists alike.

Violence and the German Soldier in the Great War

Violence and the German Soldier in the Great War
Author: Benjamin Ziemann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2017-09-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1474239609

Translated into English as the Winner of the Geisteswissenschaften International Translation Prize for Work in the Humanities and Social Sciences 2015. During the Great War, mass killing took place on an unprecedented scale. Violence and the German Soldier in the Great War explores the practice of violence in the German army and demonstrates how he killing of enemy troops, the deaths of German soldiers and their survival were entwined. As the war reached its climax in 1918, German soldiers refused to continue killing in their droves, and thus made an active contribution to the German defeat and ensuing revolution. Examining the postwar period, the chapters of this book also discuss the contested issue of a 'brutalization' of German society as a prerequisite of the Nazi mass movement. Biographical case studies on key figures such as Ernst Jünger demonstrate how the killing of enemy troops by German soldiers followed a complex set of rules. Benjamin Ziemann makes a wealth of extensive archival work available to an Anglophone audience for the first time, enhancing our understanding of the German army and its practices of violence during the First World War as well as the implications of this brutalization in post-war Germany. This book provides new insights into a crucial topic for students of twentieth-century German history and the First World War.

The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain During the First World War

The Show Must Go On! Popular Song in Britain During the First World War
Author: John Mullen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2016-03-03
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1317016114

Using a collection of over one thousand popular songs from the war years, as well as around 150 soldiers’ songs, John Mullen provides a fascinating insight into the world of popular entertainment during the First World War. Mullen considers the position of songs of this time within the history of popular music, and the needs, tastes and experiences of working-class audiences who loved this music. To do this, he dispels some of the nostalgic, rose-tinted myths about music hall. At a time when recording companies and record sales were marginal, the book shows the centrality of the live show and of the sale of sheet music to the economy of the entertainment industry. Mullen assesses the popularity and significance of the different genres of musical entertainment which were common in the war years and the previous decades, including music hall, revue, pantomime, musical comedy, blackface minstrelsy, army entertainment and amateur entertainment in prisoner of war camps. He also considers non-commercial songs, such as hymns, folk songs and soldiers’ songs and weaves them into a subtle and nuanced approach to the nature of popular song, the ways in which audiences related to the music and the effects of the competing pressures of commerce, propaganda, patriotism, social attitudes and the progress of the war.