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Tag: Second World War

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

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.

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

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.

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“The rockets, dearie? Can’t say I’ve ever noticed them” – Londoners respond to the V-2

By Charlie Hall

Asking a historian to choose their favourite primary source is a cruel assignment indeed. Any piece of historical scholarship we embark on necessarily involves engagement with a great volume of primary material, especially those of us who work on the abundantly well-documented modern period. With whichever primary sources we look at, we hope that we will gain an insight into the past – not just how events unfolded, or why, but also how contemporaries reacted to these developments. This enables us to humanise historical actors and witnesses and to draw out their stories in a way that has resonance for modern readers.

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Misinformation, Mass Observation and the Public Perception of the Norway Campaign, 1940

Written by Charles Taylor

If you ask the modern-day Briton about the Norway campaign of 1940, you will likely be met with a blank face or a simple shrug. Eclipsed by the evacuation of Dunkirk and the fall of France, Britain’s involvement in this theatre has undoubtedly drifted into the background of British memory of the Second World War. Though little known, the campaign holds many significances for the armed forces. Erupting on 9 April 1940 with Germany’s Operation Weserübung, Norway was the first land campaign of the Second World War for Britain, the earliest meeting of British and German troops on the battlefield, the first joint Allied land operation, and the first modern sea, land and air campaign. Despite these considerations, Britain’s military involvement remains all but forgotten, condemned as a humiliating background episode and often glazed over in the history books.

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Unlearning Eugenics: Sexuality, Reproduction, and Disability in Post-Nazi Europe

Review by David Peace

On 30 October 2020, in defiance of anti-COVID-19 measures to restrict public gatherings, over 100,000 mask-clad demonstrators took to the streets of Warsaw to protest proposed changes to Poland’s abortion laws. Only a few days earlier, on 22 October, Poland’s constitutional tribunal ruled that abortions sought on the grounds of ‘foetal defects’ or ‘congenital malformations’ were ‘incompatible’ with Article 38 of the Polish Constitution. Consequently, abortion has now become only legally permissible in Poland in either cases of rape and incest, or where there is potential threat to a mother’s life or health, or instances of irreparable damage to a foetus. Reportedly, these cases represent only 2% of all legal terminations in Poland. As Dunja Mijatović, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, stated in a tweet shortly after the announcement, the new ruling has in effect removed the basis ‘for almost all legal abortions in Poland’ and amounts to ‘a ban and violates human rights.’ However, despite the days of protest marches across Polish cities and popular backlash against the ruling, Poland’s shift towards a curtailment of access to abortion services echoes a growing trend among traditionally Catholic European countries as populist parties in Slovakia, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Croatia, seek to emulate the Polish legislative model to disrupt what they perceive to be the overt liberalisation of abortion as a reproductive right.

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The Life and World of Francis Rodd, Lord Rennell (1895-1978): Geography, Money and War

Reviewed by Edward Flint

More years ago than I care to remember, when starting my PhD, a colleague, Christopher Duffy, asked if I had found the people yet. I looked at him quizzically for my head was full of the big events, the organisations, theoretical frameworks, concepts and so forth – by the end of the process I knew exactly what he meant. Plenty of names had bubbled up in the PhD but three in particular had emerged as fundamental to the development and employment of British civil affairs and military government in the Second World War.

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Britain’s War: A New World, 1942–1947

Reviewed by Chris Smith

This book, the second volume of Daniel Todman’s mammoth history of Britain’s Second World War, picks up where the previous volume left off in 1941. Unlike the majority of histories of Britain’s conflict, which tend to focus on only one aspect of the war, Todman’s work aims to be completist – or rather as completist as any single history (even in two volumes) of Britain and the Second World War can hope to be.

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A Personal Reflection on the Recent War Graves Controversy

Written by Mark Connelly I first visited a Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery when I was sixteen years old. It was Dud Corner Cemetery and the Loos Memorial in France. I can remember the moment vividly. Having developed a deep interest in the First World War, I was on my first battlefield trip. Although my reading had made me aware of the work of the Commission, nothing prepared me for the beauty, calm and dignity of…

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Turkey and the Soviet Union during World War II: Diplomacy, Discord and International Relations

Reviewed by Edward Corse

The Second World War produced some intriguing quasi-conflicts amongst the much larger and better-known battles of that period. Onur İşçi’s analysis of the relations between Turkey and the Soviet Union at that time carefully plots out one such fascinating story – one that is understudied and often misunderstood.

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The Dig (Netflix, 2021)

Reviewed by Oliver Parken

The sleepy Suffolk village of Sutton seems an unlikely backdrop for a major feature film. The Dig, starring Carey Mulligan, Ralph Fiennes and Lily James brings a true story well known to Sutton’s locals to the big screen for the first time. Based on John Preston’s literary adaptation of the same name (2007), The Dig recasts one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the twentieth century on British and European soil––the excavation of a Dark Age ship, packed with a priceless collection of treasure, in the late-1930s.

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