Skip to content

Munitions of the Mind Posts

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
Leave a Comment
“New Woman,” Old Stereotypes: A Comparative Study of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany’s “New Woman” in Visual Culture

“New Woman,” Old Stereotypes: A Comparative Study of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany’s “New Woman” in Visual Culture

Published May 9, 2023

Written by Alisha Reid

If I asked you to picture the 1920s “New Woman”, the image that would come to your mind would most likely be based on what you have seen in films and TV shows – both old and modern – of a sexually and financially liberated woman with her short hair and vampy makeup, her boyish-figure draped in a flapper dress. This caricature is not incorrect but it is exactly that: a caricature. This style of woman is almost synonymous with Weimar German culture following the First World War. It is this “New Woman” that people remember seeing in the numerous films that German studios produced over the period. However, what people often fail to remember are the negative narratives surrounding the “New Woman” in Weimar films and the emphasis placed on abandoning this stereotype.

Continue reading“New Woman,” Old Stereotypes: A Comparative Study of the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany’s “New Woman” in Visual Culture
Leave a Comment
Red Cross Rose: An Aussie Civilian in France, 1916-1920

Red Cross Rose: An Aussie Civilian in France, 1916-1920

Published March 15, 2023

Reviewed by Emma Hanna

In recent years, the wartime service of civilians near the battlefields of the Great War has been highlighted by histories of the organisations with whom they worked. Historians such as Geoffrey Reznick and Michael Snape have worked to explain how and why voluntary-aid organisations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) sought to care for servicemen’s well-being wherever they were fighting. The service of hundreds of men and women who worked along the lines of communication, in camps, ports, hospitals and by prisoner of war camps, should be more visible in the war’s histories. These workers fulfilled the roles which military authorities were unable or unwilling to do. They were proud to have shared similar dangers and deprivations to those bearing arms, although they were not permitted to wear any uniform or identifying insignia until late 1917.

Continue readingRed Cross Rose: An Aussie Civilian in France, 1916-1920
Leave a Comment
Fighting under Foreign Flags: Transnational Soldiering in the Early-19th Century

Fighting under Foreign Flags: Transnational Soldiering in the Early-19th Century

Published March 13, 2023

Written by Mario Draper

When considering which primary source to select for this blog post, I kept on coming back to the significance of a letter written by a Polish officer Armand von Brochowski to King Leopold I of Belgium on 24 November 1846. In it he explained why he, and dozens of other Polish officers, had made the perilous journey across Europe in the early 1830s to join the Belgian Army.

Continue readingFighting under Foreign Flags: Transnational Soldiering in the Early-19th Century
Leave a Comment
Im Westen etwas Neues: The Modernisation of All Quiet on the Western Front

Im Westen etwas Neues: The Modernisation of All Quiet on the Western Front

Published March 1, 2023

Written by Helena Power

One of the legacies of the Great War Centenary is that there is a plethora of ‘forgotten’ stories about the war that remain to be explored. It is therefore somewhat ironic that the latest film about the conflict is a new adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 novel, All Quiet on the Western Front (Im Westen nichts Neues). The original film adaptation was released in 1930, so this presents an interesting opportunity to look at the retelling of an adaptation almost a century later. By comparing and contrasting the 2022 remake with the 1930 film, we can observe how modern filmography trends have changed the ways we tell stories about the past. For brevity, I will avoid the 1979 film adaptation. For ease of reference, the 2022 film will be referred to by its German title of Im Westen nichts Neues (or Im Westen), and the 1930 film as All Quiet on the Western Front (or All Quiet).

Continue readingIm Westen etwas Neues: The Modernisation of All Quiet on the Western Front
Leave a Comment
Black Form (Dedicated to the Missing Jews): The Destruction of A Holocaust Memorial

Black Form (Dedicated to the Missing Jews): The Destruction of A Holocaust Memorial

Published February 8, 2023

Written by Stefan Goebel

Today it would be scandal, but back then, 35 years ago in February 1988, hardly anyone raised an eyebrow when the Black Form (Dedicated to the Missing Jews) was bulldozed to the ground. To be sure, this black cube built of blocks of aerated concrete was never meant to be a permanent memorial; it had been commissioned as a temporary work of art. The American artist Sol LeWitt (1928–2007) had created it for the second instalment of the international Skulptur Projekte exhibition in my home town Münster in 1987.

Continue readingBlack Form (Dedicated to the Missing Jews): The Destruction of A Holocaust Memorial
Leave a Comment
Writing a PhD Thesis (on French Pacifism) during a Global Pandemic

Writing a PhD Thesis (on French Pacifism) during a Global Pandemic

Published February 2, 2023

Written by Lauren Jannette

A long and lonely road. When I began my PhD journey back in 2015, fellow graduate students described the process of writing a PhD thesis as just that: a long and lonely road in the wilderness of archives, libraries, and at home in front of the computer. Lacking a reason to come to campus, the process was devoid of human contact except for your roommates, if you had any, and the occasional meeting with your advisor. As first year PhD students, the slightly ominous warning prompted myself and members of my cohort to plan regularly scheduled meetings to discuss our research and comment on each other’s drafts when we reached the writing phase of our PhD theses. Plans made, we spent the next three years venting about papers and presentations for our remaining coursework. We shared the triumphs and frustrations of teaching introductory history seminars to first-year students who were only taking the class because it was required to graduate. We survived the intensity of comprehensive exams. Then after forging close bonds of friendship and comradery, we parted ways to our archives across the globe with the promise of future commiserating about thesis writing over a pint or two upon our return.

Continue readingWriting a PhD Thesis (on French Pacifism) during a Global Pandemic
Leave a Comment
Nordic Media Histories of Propaganda and Persuasion

Nordic Media Histories of Propaganda and Persuasion

Published January 11, 2023

Reviewed by Edward Corse

Nordic Media Histories of Propaganda and Persuasion, edited by Fredrik Norén, Emil Stjernholm and C. Claire Thomson, is a welcome addition to the historical literature on the topic of propaganda. The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, is Open Access and well worth downloading here to explore issues around propaganda and persuasion in a Nordic setting. The book stems from a conference held in the summer of 2020 in hybrid format hosted by Lund University. I attended this fascinating conference virtually and I am excited to see the final result of the work the convenors and contributors have compiled over the past couple of years. Written in English, the 18 authors are largely based in the Nordic countries themselves, with two exceptions: Nicholas J. Cull (University of Southern California, USA), who has written one of the afterwords; and one of the editors, C. Claire Thomson (UCL, UK).

Continue readingNordic Media Histories of Propaganda and Persuasion
Leave a Comment
On finding source material in the attic: Front Line, 1940-41

On finding source material in the attic: Front Line, 1940-41

Published December 14, 2022

By Jacinta Mallon

Front Line, 1940-41, a booklet published by the Ministry of Information and the Ministry of Home Security in 1942, claims to tell the ‘official story’ of civil defence during the blitzes on London and beyond. It arrived on my desk in 2019, as my family cleared out the attic of my grandparents’ old house – no mean task, as in over 60 years of living there they didn’t seem to throw much away! Tucked away in a forgotten cardboard box, we had found Front Line and a host of other propaganda publications which had been collected by my grandad during the conflict.

Continue readingOn finding source material in the attic: Front Line, 1940-41
Leave a Comment