Gerhard Hirschfeld, Gerd Krumeich, Irina Renz. Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg. Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh Verlag, 2004. 1002 S. EUR 58.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-3-506-73913-1.

Reviewed by Matthew Stibbe (Department of History, Sheffield Hallam University)
Published on H-German (January, 2005)

With 26 survey essays and over 650 individual entries, this is a substantial work of reference and a valuable resource for all those interested in First World War studies. In terms of format it has something in common with the Enzyklopädie des Nationalsozialismus, which appeared in 1997, although the subject matter is obviously different and the scope is necessarily broader, especially as several of the essays are written from a comparative or transnational perspective.[1] The volume also includes twenty-three maps and over one hundred photographs and illustrations from the period, many of which appear for the first time. The full range of contributions cannot be adequately dealt with in a short review, making it necessary to select just a few items for more detailed discussion below.

The survey essays are divided--not entirely satisfactorily--into four overlapping sections: states at war, societies at war, the course of the war, and the historiography of the war. The "states at war" section mainly deals with questions of domestic politics and decision-making at the national level, and includes essays on Germany by the late Wolfgang Mommsen, on France by Jean-Jacques Becker, on Belgium by Laurence van Ypersele, on Britain by Jay Winter, on Austria-Hungary by Manfried Rauchensteiner, on Russia by Dittmar Dahlmann, on Italy by Mario Isnenghi, and on the United States by Ronald Schaffer. Mommsen's essay traces the gradual breakdown of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Burgfrieden strategy and the ensuing slide towards military rule which led, ultimately, to the disastrous decision in favor of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917. Bethmann's successors after July 1917, Georg Michaelis and Georg von Hertling, were little more than puppets of the German supreme command under Hindenburg and Ludendorff whose "silent dictatorship" over all questions relating to strategy and war aims (Martin Kitchen) continued until the final weeks of the war. Becker, on the other hand, demonstrates that in France the army lost its battle with the civilian establishment for control over the war effort, in spite of the personal popularity of military leaders like Joffre. By 1917 at the latest, the Senate and Chamber of Deputies had reasserted themselves as the supreme representatives of the French nation at war and parliamentary democracy had been strengthened vis-à-vis its critics on the left and right. Nonetheless, the attitude of ordinary French men and women towards their rulers also changed in various ways, most notably in relation to what Becker describes as the "withdrawal into the private sphere" and the "retreat from patriotism" after the disappointing peace settlement of 1919 (p. 42). Jay Winter, in his piece on Britain, moves beyond the question of civil-military relations and wartime politics to discuss social and economic issues, especially the demographic impact of the war and its influence on the personal and cultural realms. Contrary to the belief of some historians--and in spite of the huge number of war widows and orphans--he shows that the war strengthened the institution of the family and led to an increase in the popularity of marriage, especially among the young (pp. 53-54). Likewise, Ronald Schaffer provides some interesting insights into the relationship between war and campaigns in America against alcoholism and prostitution, two apparent threats to "respectable" family life. White middle-class women in particular found new public roles as the guardians of moral values on the home front, helping to boost the case for female suffrage at state and federal levels. African Americans, on the other hand, remained marginalized from politics and society after 1918, in spite of their important contribution to the national war effort (p. 110).

The "societies at war" section is devoted more directly to comparative history. The essays by Dick Geary on workers and Benjamin Ziemann on soldiers stand out in particular as excellent examples of this genre. Jürgen von Ungern-Sternberg discusses the role of intellectuals on both sides, and Michael Jeismann does the same for propaganda (including film) and censorship. Annette Becker draws mainly on France in her essay on the religious experience of war, but also includes references to (Lutheran) Germany. Her conclusion is stark and depressing: after the disappointing peace settlement of 1919 Europeans forgot the patriotic and religious fervor that had been mobilized between 1914 and 1918 ("man konnte nun nicht mehr glauben, wovon man vordem überzeugt gewesen war"), allowing new ideologies to develop, which glorified the violence and modernity of war but not its spiritual and idealistic side (p. 197). Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau records the intrusion of the war into the lives of children and young people, including those who fought (as conscripts or volunteers) and those who were affected indirectly, through absent fathers, uncles, and elder brothers. Even those without relatives at the front felt the brutality of the war, especially those who lived under foreign occupation, as did the children of Belgium and northern France, or under economic blockade, as did the children of Germany. Finally, Ute Daniel considers the wide diversity of women's experiences of war, both at home and at the front, and the ambivalent impact of the war on women's emancipation. For instance, while the expansion of female employment and the practice of paying separation allowances to soldiers' wives gave women new powers over the household budget, such measures were accompanied by the rise of more negative images of women as irresponsible and frivolous consumers or as unpatriotic rioters and strikers. The rationalization of industrial production likewise tended to reinforce traditional gender stereotypes, with women placed at the bottom of the skills and pay hierarchy; many were fired from wartime jobs to make way for returning soldiers after 1918 (pp. 132-133).

In the third grouping of essays, on the course of the war, Jost Dülffer gives a brief account of international relations before 1914, and the late Wilhelm Deist provides an expert analysis of the military strategy of the Central Powers. Alan Kramer, in his detailed and perceptive essay, considers the vexed question of war crimes and the problem of definition in relation to international law. As he makes clear, in spite of their adherence to the Geneva and The Hague conventions, the Allied and German armies continued to interpret their obligations in a radically different way, particularly when it came to respecting the rights of non-combatants. The German air attacks on British coastal cities, which deliberately targeted civilians, are a case in point. The Geneva conventions regarding the treatment of wounded and captured soldiers presented fewer problems, but legal experts were divided in their reading of The Hague agreements, especially Hague IV concerning the laws and customs of war on land. The issue featured heavily in propaganda too, as both sides sought to highlight the alleged atrocities of the other while presenting their own actions as a legitimate form of retaliation or as a necessary means of self-defense ("Not kennt kein Gebot"). In this sense, the war had become total from a very early stage.

Meanwhile, both Kramer and Laurence van Ypersele provide detailed evidence of the particular suffering of Belgian and French civilians under German occupation. This is an important area of research, which has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years.[2] Roughly 5,500 Belgians and 900 French men and women were killed by German troops in the first weeks of the war, and tens of thousands were deported to work in the German war economy between November 1916 and November 1918. The Russians deported even larger numbers of non-combatants from the war zones on the eastern front, including many Russian subjects whose ethnic background made them suspect to the military authorities. This was part of a broader nationalization campaign carried out by the tsarist regime under cover of war which no international law had foreseen or, for that matter, was able to prevent.[3] In Serbia proper and Macedonia, under Habsburg and Bulgarian occupation from 1915 to 1918, thousands more civilians were massacred or expelled.[4] Indeed, it is one of the great strengths of the encyclopedia that it is able to devote so much attention to the "forgotten" civilian victims of the war, as well as to the role of soldiers as participants in acts of brutality against enemy populations.[5]

The final section contains two essays on the historiography of the First World War. Gerd Krumeich and Gerhard Hirschfeld survey developments in western historical writing from the 1920s to the present day, paying particular attention to the recent move towards the study of "war cultures" and "mentalities" as exemplified by George Mosse's Fallen Soldiers (1990) and the controversial work of French historians Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18. Retrouver la guerre (2000).[6] Meanwhile, Fritz Klein, one of the few remaining members of his generation of GDR historians, gives a concise overview of the achievements of East German research in the area of First World War studies. In so doing, he shows that it was possible, even within the confines of a communist dictatorship, to challenge conceived wisdom and make a lasting contribution to historical knowledge. The work of the Marxist labor historian Jürgen Kuczynski is particularly well known, but Klein too has achieved international recognition for his publications, pre- and post-1989, in this field.[7]

The essays are followed by a dictionary of key terms and issues, including references to the most important battles, weapons, treaties, politicians, military leaders, and cultural/intellectual figures of the day. As with any encyclopedia, individual readers will inevitably identify subjects that are either left out entirely or not covered in sufficient depth for their liking. It is noticeable, for instance, that there is barely any information on the involvement of Latin American countries such as Brazil, in the First World War, and even Stig Förster, in his overview essay Vom europäischen Krieg zum Weltkrieg, deals with this issue in just a couple of sentences (p. 247). In some of the comparative pieces, moreover, the emphasis is very much on France, Germany, and Britain, to the exclusion of other participants in the war. However, these are minor criticisms. In general, this is a superbly edited volume and includes a wealth of up-to-date information, even on relatively neglected or obscure topics such as civilian internment, prisoners of war, photography, military desertion, front theater, soldiers' humor, and so forth. An English-language edition must surely follow.

Notes

[1]. Wolfgang Benz, Hermann Graml, and Hermann Weiss, eds. Enzyklopaedie des Nationalsozialismus (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag, 1997).

[2]. See in particular Annette Becker, Oubliés de la grande guerre. Humanitaire et culture de guerre. Populations occupées, déportés civils, prisonniers de guerre (Paris: Éditions Noêsis, 1998); Helen McPhail, The Long Silence. Civilian Life Under the German Occupation of Northern France, 1914-1918 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1999); John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); see H-German review at <http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=48071096633975>.

[3]. Cf. Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire. The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens during World War I (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003).

[4]. See Gerhard Hirschfeld's detailed entry on Serbia in the main part of the Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg, pp. 833-836.

[5]. On this issue, see also the recent review article by Robert L. Nelson, "'Ordinary' Men in the First World War? German Soldiers as Victims and Participants," Journal of Contemporary History 39, no. 3 (2004): pp. 425-435.

[6]. George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers. Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14-18, retrouver la guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2000); see H-German review at <http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=187231093955271>.

[7]. Jürgen Kuczynski, Der Ausbruch des Ersten Weltkrieges und die deutsche Sozialdemokratie. Chronik und Analyse (Berlin (GDR): Akademie Verlag, 1957); idem, Die Geschichte der Lage der Arbeiter unter dem Kapitalismus. Vol. 4: Darstellung der Lage der Arbeiter in Deutschland von 1900 bis 1917/18 (Berlin (GDR): Akademie Verlag, 1967); Fritz Klein et al., Deutschland im Ersten Weltkrieg. 3 vols. (Berlin (GDR): Akademie Verlag, 1968-9). See also Fritz Klein, Drinnen und Draussen. Ein Historiker in der DDR. Erinnerungen (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 2000).

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Citation: Matthew Stibbe. Review of Hirschfeld, Gerhard; Krumeich, Gerd; Renz, Irina, Enzyklopädie Erster Weltkrieg. H-German, H-Net Reviews. January, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=10114

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