Skip to content

Munitions of the Mind Posts

Overlooked but not Overwhelmed: Lower Middle Class Experiences and Legacies of the First World War

Overlooked but not Overwhelmed: Lower Middle Class Experiences and Legacies of the First World War

Published October 29, 2025

Written by Andrew Whittaker

Many of the narratives surrounding British First World War experiences and legacies of service in the armed forces are derived from one of two contrasting class-based perspectives—the social élite or the working classes. The former made up an extremely small proportion of the pre-war male population, the latter a large majority. The experiences and legacies of the lower middle class (who, according to the social stratifications of the time, were situated in between) have been largely overlooked. These were the white-collar salaried employees and the shopkeepers and other small businessmen who comprised a significant one in five or so of the pre-war male population. A longitudinal study from birth to death of the 1350 largely lower middle class men eligible for service in the war who had attended Colfe’s Grammar School, Lewisham, reveals some alternative narratives.

Continue readingOverlooked but not Overwhelmed: Lower Middle Class Experiences and Legacies of the First World War

Leave a Comment
‘Prepared To Make a Fine Fuss’: The Council for the Preservation of Rural England’s Long Second World War

‘Prepared To Make a Fine Fuss’: The Council for the Preservation of Rural England’s Long Second World War

Published July 20, 2025

Written by Gary Willis

In 1928 the Council for the Preservation of Rural England (CPRE) produced a ‘Saint George for Rural England’ campaigning postcard. It depicted haphazardly located industry, petrol stations, road-side advertising and litter being slayed by CPRE in the image of St George. Soon, however, there was a growing threat from an entirely different direction – preparations for war.

Continue reading‘Prepared To Make a Fine Fuss’: The Council for the Preservation of Rural England’s Long Second World War
Leave a Comment
The British Latin American War Effort in Chile: A Transnational Network of Collaboration during the World Wars

The British Latin American War Effort in Chile: A Transnational Network of Collaboration during the World Wars

Published May 1, 2025

Written by Roberto Pérez Castro

Juan Alberto (“Jack”) Adams Langley, the son of an English engineer, was born and raised in Chile. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he could have stayed comfortably in a neutral country, unbound by any recruitment or conscription by the British government. However, he travelled halfway across the world to join the Royal Air Force, where, as a Flying Officer, he was shot down in northern France in July 1944.

Continue readingThe British Latin American War Effort in Chile: A Transnational Network of Collaboration during the World Wars
Leave a Comment
The German Nurse Memoirs of the Great War

The German Nurse Memoirs of the Great War

Published December 20, 2024

Written by Jerry Palmer

The majority of the nurse memoirs of the Great War, of all the combatant nations, focus overwhelmingly on their daily work; through this accumulation of detail, they demonstrate their dedication to the well-being of the soldiers, while by the same token their personal lives recede into the background. However, although they play down just how difficult nursing was under these circumstances, perhaps especially for the thousands who were volunteers with no previous medical experience, it is not difficult to work out just how draining it must have been. This is one example of a basic feature of memoirs: because they are inherently selective, what they don’t say is often as instructive as their contents.

Continue readingThe German Nurse Memoirs of the Great War
Leave a Comment
Mosquito: The RAF’s Legendary Wooden Wonder and Its Most Extraordinary Mission

Mosquito: The RAF’s Legendary Wooden Wonder and Its Most Extraordinary Mission

Published October 21, 2024

Reviewed by Tony Pratley.

According to my well-thumbed copy of ‘Popular History for Dummies’, there are a few basic rules to follow. A potential blockbuster must be long enough for the summer holiday and short enough for the beach. Five hundred divided by 50 is a publisher’s basic rule of thumb. Five hundred pages divided into 50 easily digestible chapters. Unremitting action and a host of compelling characters, good but better bad, is also to be encouraged.  As for prose style, a breathless simplicity is best with an occasional authorial nod and a wink.  The reader ought to be left in no doubt about the happy ending.

Continue readingMosquito: The RAF’s Legendary Wooden Wonder and Its Most Extraordinary Mission
Leave a Comment
Postcards from the Western Front: Pilgrims, Veterans, and Tourists after the Great War

Postcards from the Western Front: Pilgrims, Veterans, and Tourists after the Great War

Published January 22, 2024

Reviewed by Alison Fell

Mark Connelly’s wonderful new book would make a great companion for a tramp across the Western Front battlefields. It draws on an impressive range of primary sources: maps, letters, diaries, novels, press articles, battlefield guides and, of course, postcards, to evoke the landscapes of Northern France and Belgium that had been so devastated by the war. The landscape constitutes the point of connection between past and present, and makes you aware not only of the ghosts of soldiers who tramped the same battlefields, but of the thousands of ‘pilgrims’ – mourners, veterans and tourists – who followed in their footsteps.

Continue readingPostcards from the Western Front: Pilgrims, Veterans, and Tourists after the Great War
Leave a Comment
Australian War Graves Workers and World War One: Devoted Labour for the Lost, the Unknown but not Forgotten Dead

Australian War Graves Workers and World War One: Devoted Labour for the Lost, the Unknown but not Forgotten Dead

Published December 6, 2023

Reviewed by Christopher Kreuzer

Published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan, Australian War Graves Workers and World War One: Devoted Labour for the Lost, the Unknown but not Forgotten Dead, is a multi-author collaborative work between two university academics (Fred Cahir and Sara Weuffen) and three other authors (Matt Smith, Peter Bakker and Jo Caminiti). As such, it spans the academic and public history fields, with well-chosen archival photographs, biographical vignettes, and moving personal accounts giving an insight into the gruesome nature and psychological impact of this post-war work.

Continue readingAustralian War Graves Workers and World War One: Devoted Labour for the Lost, the Unknown but not Forgotten Dead
Leave a Comment
From Famine to Genocide: The Holodomor in Ukraine

From Famine to Genocide: The Holodomor in Ukraine

Published November 25, 2023

Written by Natalia Kuzovova

The famine of 1932–33 in Ukraine was a genocide of the Ukrainian people that claimed the lives of 3.9 million people. The total number of demographic losses amounted to more than 4.5 million. For a long time, archival documents about the famine were classified. But the surviving Ukrainians kept talking about the fact that ‘we are being killed by hunger’, ‘we were starved to death’. Therefore, the word ‘Holodomor’ became a signifier for this famine.

Continue readingFrom Famine to Genocide: The Holodomor in Ukraine
Leave a Comment
The Peoples’ War? The Second World War in Sociopolitical Perspective

The Peoples’ War? The Second World War in Sociopolitical Perspective

Published October 18, 2023

Reviewed by Charlie Hall

It is a good time to be a historian of the Second World War. Amid the upsurge of public interest generated by the 75th and 80th anniversaries of that conflict, scholars have seemingly endless opportunities to engage with the period. Even just within Britain, and just within the last few years, there has been the launch of entirely new Second World War and Holocaust galleries at the Imperial War Museum, a range of dedicated conferences and events (most notably ‘From the Personal to the Global: Lived Experiences of the Second World War’ at the University of Edinburgh), and a whole host of new publications.

Continue readingThe Peoples’ War? The Second World War in Sociopolitical Perspective
Leave a Comment
Entrenched

Entrenched

Published September 18, 2023

Written by Andrew McCarthy

“‘You’re in a tight corner, Richard Hannay’, I said to myself. I was crouching behind the Chesterfield in the drawing room. Von Schwabing’s men kept up a steady fire. Bullets had shattered the French windows, and the curtains billowed in the breeze. I knew that Sandy and his men were on the other side of the garden wall. If I could cut across the lawn and reach the wall, I might have a chance. I buttoned my Aquascutum, and made sure that my pistol was secure on its lanyard. I stepped through the shattered windows, and took aim at a rifleman kneeling beside a tree. A pistol bullet bored through my hat. I fired. The rifleman slumped to the ground. This was going to be a first-class show.”

Continue readingEntrenched
2 Comments