Abstract
While approaching the centennial of the First World War, the International Society for First World Studies (ISFWWS) has been busy organizing large events every two years, discussing new lines of research and topics. Other Fronts, Other Wars? is the byproduct of the ISFWWS conference held in Innsbruck in 2011. The overall purpose of this volume is to take the readers through a multitude of war theatres, not just in the geographical sense, away from the Western Front. The organizers first and the editors later certainly should be commended for their work, as this book represents a new approach and an exciting read among the hundreds of books published commemorating the centennial of the War. Nevertheless, the book still shows a Eurocentric approach to First World War studies: despite two chapters discussing a non-European front – the Ottoman Empire – there is still a long way to go before writing a fully global history of the First World War.
The 20 chapters collected in this work, grouped in seven parts, vary in quality, and though some are certainly outstanding, others seem to be either re-writing of previously published research or hastily wrapped up new material. The first chapter by Nicolas Patin, ‘Lethal journey between four fronts’, shows that a large number of German soldiers experienced the war fighting on more than one front as they were moved according to military necessities. The Western Front was perceived as the space of civilization and modernity, the east was the space of barbarity, while the southern front was the space of disease. Patin’s analysis shows how Germans used these divisions in order to prove their superiority, however, more importantly, his approach illustrates the necessity to consider the mobility experienced by soldiers in other armed forces. Mobility was also experienced by Ottoman soldiers as discussed by Altay Atlı, who has successfully examined the well-known Ottoman campaign in Sarıkamış together with the less-known Ottoman campaign on the eastern front in Galicia. Atlı is right to suggest that a closer and more rigorous investigation of the Ottoman experience would enable us to better understand the global dynamics behind the conflict.
Part two is dedicated to captivity and, though the chapters by Mahon Murphy and Christian Steppan are very interesting, the chapter by Kate Ariotti ‘Australian Prisoners of the Turks’ shows a neglected aspect of the war. Australians captured by the Ottomans, regardless of their condition, developed a strong sense of racial superiority as they perceived that the ‘natural’ racial order had been overturned. The cultural clash exposed by Ariotti is one that needs to be developed on both sides of this encounter. Part three is dedicated to occupation practices in Eastern Europe; the three chapters in this section show the necessity to look with renewed effort at the policies of occupation or their absence, but above all to discuss the daily life of occupiers and occupied. Three chapters are also included in part four dealing with the medical history of the First World War. Philipp Rauh and Livia Prüll in their ‘Other Fronts, Other Diseases?’ discuss the routine treatment of German soldiers with a particular focus on the treatment of physically and mentally exhausted soldiers. Their ‘history from below’ approach shows that the medical history of the First World War cannot be based only on the publications of specialists or official reports: they are indeed right to suggest that this is uncharted territory that needs more work.
Part five is a weaker section as the chapters are barely connected with a leading topic. However, the work by Bernhard Liemann, comparing three border towns during the war, deserves to be highlighted. His work shows how commonalities between three border towns – Eupen (Germany), Tongeren (Belgium) and Roermond (Netherlands) – were set aside by the war and its nationalist ideology. Liemann successfully shifts the focus from the national to the local, bringing the local public sphere to the centre and giving agency to the local populations who experienced the war from a different perspective than the soldiers in the trenches. Part six includes a chapter by Tilman Lüdke, a well-known scholar on the German battle for Islam: a topic he developed through many high quality writings. The chapter by Maciej Górni shows an unusual layer of the war: the battle between Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals that eventually shaped the relations and mutual understanding between these two populations. The last part is dedicated to the remembrance of the war, a topic that, with the commemoration of the centennial, certainly cannot be overlooked. Katarina Todić takes the readers through a journey dedicated to the various ways in which the war had been remembered in Serbia, suggesting that narratives are still influenced by the past and the events that brought to the creation of Yugoslavia and its disintegration at the end of the twentieth century.
This is indeed a very interesting volume that includes cutting-edge research on the war. Despite the length and the inconsistencies of some the chapters included, scholars, students, and occasional readers will find this book an excellent choice in order to get a better understanding of the First World War. Other Fronts, Other Wars? at the same time shows the necessity to deepen the efforts to bring the various fronts together, to look at the war from different perspectives and to include aspects so far neglected: a challenge awaiting scholars and researchers of the First World War.