The Great War

Culture, Economy, and Politics in the Interwar Period

Background Reading
Merriman, History of Modern Europe, vol. 2 on World War One (pp. 964-1015) and interwar instability (pp. 1077-1089). You might also want to look at the detailed chronology of the Weimar Republic and Third Reich, available here.

Discussion: 4-5 March 2009, Inflation and Anxiety
Students whose last names begin with R-Z must submit written answers to Reading Questions this week.
Sigmund Freud, “Thoughts for the times on War and Death” (1915), on-line.

Friedrich Kroner, “Overwrought Nerves” (1923), on-line.

Further Reading
Jean-Jacques Becker, The Great War and the French People (1985).

Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men's Bodies, Britain, and the Great War (1996).

Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (1990).

Paul Fussell, The Great War and Modern Memory (1975).

Susan Grayzel, Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (1999).

Rudy Koshar, From Monuments to Traces: Artifacts of German Memory, 1870-1990 (2000).

George Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (1991).

Daniel Pick, War Machine: The Rationalization of Slaughter in the Modern Age (1993).

Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995).