This article provides an analysis of how military history museums in Germany, Britain, Belgium, Poland, and the United States exhibit and contextualize weapon technologies that were developed in the two world wars. The article focuses on technologies (gas warfare, the atomic bomb, tanks, and the V2 long-range rocket) that are directly connected to military success and innovation but also relate to dehumanization and destruction. By employing the analytical concepts of experientiality and of antagonistic, cosmopolitan, and entangled memory, this article demonstrates how museums can create open or closed narratives, steer the visitor toward particular interpretations, enhance or deconstruct the authentic aura of technological artifacts, and stage the symbolic potential of technologies. In addition, it shows how museums can educate visitors and allow them to experience the ambiguities, controversies, and complexities of these technologies.
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Narrating the Second World War
History Textbooks and Nation Building in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine
Lina Klymenko
and linguistic components of discourse about the Second World War in Ukrainian school history textbooks. 6 In contrast to these studies, this article conceptualizes a history textbook as an assembly of narratives, and explores how a narrative of a
Carl Strikwerda
World War I was an epochal event, given the sheer loss of life, the revolutionary changes that it set off in international relations, politics, and culture, and its legacy in communism, fascism, and World War II. To fully understand the historical
Rethinking World War I
Occupation, Liberation, and Reconstruction
George Robb and W. Brian Newsome
The centennial of World War I has brought forth an explosion of new history books, articles, conferences, exhibits, and documentaries, of which this special issue of Historical Reflections/R é flexions Historiques is but one example. This has also
Nationalism and Internationalism Reconciled
British Concepts for a New World Order during and after the World Wars
Antero Holmila and Pasi Ihalainen
As World War I caused autocratic dynasties to fall all over Europe, a unique moment for restructuring international relations seemed to be at hand. In most idealistic thinking, reflected not only in the rhetoric of US President Woodrow Wilson but
Elif Mahir Metinsoy
World War I, one of the most important historical periods of the twentieth century, deeply affected women’s lives. It was a “total war,” which required mobilization of all segments of society including women and children. 1 During World War I
Yves Pourcher
As seen from France, World War I was first and foremost a matter of transporting men who had to be brought en masse to the front. This article describes the first departures and analyzes the sentiments they elicited: sadness, resignation, fear. Men climbed into the trains and went off to war: these first voyages were followed by countless others that bore little resemblance to those of August 1914. Wounded, exhausted, discouraged, and occasionally rebellious, soldiers passed through the railway stations, which had become the heart and soul of the country. In the towns, fear spread as supplies began to be scarce and living conditions deteriorated. Life unfolded to the rhythm of the passing trains until, at the end and in the aftermath of the war, other train cars arrived bearing those who had died.
Representing Australia's Involvement in the First World War
Discrepancies between Public Discourses and School History Textbooks from 1916 to 1936
Heather Sharp
This article investigates discrepancies between narratives of national independence in public discourses surrounding the First World War and narratives of loyalty in school textbooks in Queensland, Australia. Five textbooks commonly used in schools from 1916 to 1936 are analyzed in order to ascertain how the First World War was represented to pupils via the history curriculum. This article argues that, although public discourses were in a state of flux, and often viewed Australia as a country that was becoming increasingly independent of its colonial ruler Great Britain, textbooks that maintained a static view continued to look to Great Britain as a context in which to teach national history to school pupils.
Leo Pavlát
The Jewish Museum in Prague has as many as 40,000 items in its collections, the uniqueness of which is underlined by the exceptional circumstances under which most of them were acquired by the museum. Nearly all of the items were confiscated during the Second World War from Jews who were sent to concentration camps and from Jewish communities that were closed down.
Kees Ribbens
Bruno Denéchère and Luc Révillon, 14–18 dans la bande dessinée: Images de la Grande Guerre de Forton à Tardi [‘World War I in [Franco-Belgian] comics: Images of the Great War from Forton to Tardi’], Collection La bulle au Carré (Turquant: Cheminements, 2008), 167 pp. isbn 978-2-84478-697-5 (€24).
Vincent Marie and L’Historial de la Grande Guerre, Images de la Grande Guerre dans la bande dessinée de 1914 à aujourd’hui [‘Images of the Great War in Comics from 1914 to the Present’] (Milan: 5 Continents Editions, 2009). 111 pp. isbn 978-88-7439-518-7 (€25).