remembrance a n d s o l i d a r i t y First World War Centenary The Imprint on National Memory, Social Groups, and Individual’s Memories 1914-1918 as the Starting Point and Impulse for in 20 th century european history Discussion about Memory of other Armed Conflicts in the 20th Century issue number 2 – march 2014 www.enrs.eu EDITORIAL BOARD EDITORS: Ph. Dr. Árpád Hornják, Hungary Ph. Dr. Pavol Jakubčin, Slovakia Prof. Padraic Kenney, USA Prof. Ph. Dr. Róbert Letz, Slovakia Maria Luft, Germany Prof. Jan Rydel PhD, Poland Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel, Germany Prof. Matthias Weber, Germany EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Prof. Jan Rydel PhD, Poland EDITORIAL SECRETARY: Ph. Dr. Przemysław Łukasik, Poland REMEMBRANCE AND SOLIDARITY STUDIES IN 20TH CENTURY EUROPEAN HISTORY PUBLISHER: European Network Remembrance and Solidarity ul. Wiejska 17/3, 00-480 Warszawa, Poland tel. +48 22 891 25 00 www.enrs.eu [email protected] GRAPHIC DESIGN: Katarzyna Erbel TYPESETTING: Marcin Kiedio PROOFREADING: Marek Darewski Cover DESIGN: © European Network Remembrance and Solidarity 2014 All rights reserved ISSN: 2084-3518 Circulation: 1000 copies The volume was funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media upon a decision of the German Bundestag. In cooperation with the Institute for the Culture and History of the Germans in North Eastern Europe. Photo on the front cover: The Royal Artillery Memorial for Those Who Died in World War I at Hyde Park Corner © Walter Bibikow / Corbis / FotoChannels Photo on the back cover: © Karel Cudlín REMEMBRANCE AND SOLIDARITY STUDIES IN 20TH CENTURY EUROPEAN HISTORY ISSUE NUMBER 2 MARCH 2014 CONTENTS Editor’s Preface 6 Editors ARTICLES Interpretation AND MEDIA Was the War Inevitable? 15 Andrzej Chwalba Turning Points in the History of War: Criteria for the Meaning 25 of Violence in the Great War of 1914–1918 Christian Wevelsiep Memory in the Digital Age: First World War and Its 47 Representation on the Web Aleksandra Pawliczek The Christmas Truce of 1914 – Remembered in 2005. 73 The Staging of European Similarities in the Movie Merry Christmas – Joyeux Noël Maja Bächler The Murder of Armenians – Armenocide – Genocide – 91 Genocide Prevention: Aspects of Political and Historical Comparative Genocide Studies Richard Albrecht NationaL perspective Sites of Memory, Sites of Rejoicing. The Great War in Czech 109 and Slovak Cultural History James Krapfl “Neither for King nor Empire”: Irish Remembrance 147 of the Great War in the 1920s Mandy Townsley The Great War and Its Consequences from 173 a Swedish Perspective Paweł Jaworski Warsaw’s Forgotten War 185 Robert Blobaum European Intellectuals at the Intersection of War, Memory 209 and Societal Responsibility: Gaetano Salvemini, Thomas Mann and the Interpretation of the Two World Wars Mark W. Clark CEMETERIES AND MEMORY Warriors and Victims: Commemorating War on the 229 Stadtfriedhof Tübingen – A Local-National Perspective Benedict von Bremen Mourning Aachen’s War Dead: Cultures of Memory during 257 the First World War and the Postwar Period Jens Lohmeier, Stephanie Kaiser Burdened by Imperial Memory: Rudyard Kipling, Collective 279 Memory and the Imperial War Graves Commission Chelsea Medlock The Military Cemetery as a Form of the Cult of the Fallen 299 Soldier: The History of the Idea and Its Destruction on the Example of Austro-Hungarian Cemeteries in “Russian Poland” Jerzy Pałosz BOOK REVIEWS The Black Cross. Remembering the Victims of War – for Peace 327 Sabine Stadler Jan Salm, The Reconstruction of Eastern Prussian Cities 331 after World War I Małgorzata Popiołek Elisabeth Kübler, European Politics of Memory. The Council 335 of Europe and the Remembrance of the Holocaust Jenny Wüstenberg CONFERENCE REPORTS European Remembrance. Second Symposium of European 341 Institutions Dealing with 20th Century History Dominik Pick First World War and... FIRST WORLD WAR AND MODERN MEMORY. Editor’S PREFace The First World War centenary has been an inspiration for historians, popu- larizers of knowledge, museologists and exhibition curators in many coun- tries all around the world for several years. Such an outburst of interest most likely results from the specific magic of round anniversaries, which seem to organize popular memory effectively and in the manner desired by society. Also, one should not underestimate the fact that for many decades our memory has become saturated with the subject of the Second World War. For many researchers and authors the recollection of the First World War is a kind of fresh breeze; and offers them an opportunity to deepen their reflection on the history of the twentieth century. And the First World War by all means deserves deep reflection because it radically changed the political map of Central and Eastern Europe, overthrew a number of pow- erful dynasties (as they seemed to be), became an extremely strong impulse for the development of anti-colonial movements all around the world and proved to be a necessary (though not sufficient) condition for the formation of both communism and fascism, and also Nazism. Likewise a number of researchers and journalists notice many resemblances between the situation of the world in 1914 and 2014, worthy of consideration and discussion. They include globalization, the rapid progress in pure and natural sciences and technology (military and otherwise), tensions over social and ethical issues, and serious shifts and changes in the top places of the list of world powers. The invention and productivity of writers reexamining this war amazes. Psychologist Richard Ned Lebow throws to the market his book Archduke Franz Ferdinand Lives! A World without World War I. According to this counter- factual text, in the 1920s Hitler organized a mail-order trade in products of alternative medicine which was a great success and Lenin lectured Russian history and politics at the Columbia University (incidentally, he was not liked by his students). Neither JFK nor Barack Obama – obviously – ever became Presidents of the USA. The American pioneers of jazz emigrated to Europe and together with the klezmers created a new music genre which was adored by audiences; and so on, and so forth. Joe Sacco, a popular cartoonist, edited a book without words entitled The Great War: July 1, 1916, which is REMEMBRANCE AND SOLIDARITY 7 First World War and... composed of an extremely detailed, black-and-white drawing on one paper band, more than seven meters long, depicting the panorama of the events of the first day of the Battle of the Somme. In France, among the flood of new and renewed positions sur la Grande Geurre there are numerous, highly unconventional books for children. However we are most interested in the achievements of contemporary historiography. It is hardly surprising that nowadays historians concentrate on the re-examination of the reasons for the outbreak of this war and the reconstruction of the events of the so-called July Crisis, i.e. the 4–5 weeks after the assassination in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, during which decisions directly leading to the initiation of war were taken. It is interesting that the two most widely read books on this subject, The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 (2013), by the famous prizewinning Canadian historian, Mar- garet MacMillan (nowadays working at Oxford), and The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 (2013) by Christopher Munro Clark, an Australian historian (working at Cambridge) specializing in the history of Germany, return to a personalized perspective of historical events. They treat these events primarily as a result of the actions of particular individuals and hence as phenomena deprived of inevitability arising from the operation of some great historical processes and regularities, but rather dependent on the will, knowledge and emotional structure of the participants in political decision-making processes, and also – quite simply – on coincidences. With this approach, the question of causes, agency and indirect responsibility for the outbreak of the Great War begins to be perceived as a very complicated issue. It is also important that the claim which, until recently, belonged to a kind of canon of knowledge even in Germany (since the addresses of Fritz Fischer in 1961), that German authorities were mainly responsible for the outbreak of the war, appears to be highly disputable. The second issue of Remembrance and Solidarity. Studies in 20th century European History, in accordance with the profile of our periodical, is devoted primarily to memory: the memory of the First World War, i.e. the issue of the late and very late impact of the First World War on our mentality. The issue is divided into three parts. The first;Interpretation and media, opens with a short essay by Andrzej Chwalba Was the War Inevitable?. The author, an experienced researcher of the history of the nineteenth and twentieth century, analyses what we know now of the international relations, and of economic, social and cultural problems within Europe and the world at the time, and comes 8 REMEMBRANCE AND SOLIDARITY First World War and... to the conclusion that although the assassination in Sarajevo did not have to provoke it, the war was in fact inevitable. Christian Wevelsiep in the article Turning Points in the History of War: Criteria for the Meaning of Violence in the Great War of 1914–1918 undertakes historical and anthropological consid- erations concerning the meaning of uncontrollable violence which affected front line soldiers during their many years’ struggle in the First World War, the totalitarian visions of man which began to infiltrate into the society’s consciousness, and also early and later attempts to derive sense from the events of the First World War. Aleksandra Pawliczek in her text Memory in the Digital Age: First World War and Its Representation on the Web offers a critical analysis of a number of online presentations focusing on different aspects of the First World War.