War Land on the Easte Front: Culture, National Identity, and German Occupation in World War I: 9 (Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Mode Warfare, Series Number 9)

by: Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius (Author)

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (18 May 2000)

Language: English

Print length: 320 pages

ISBN-10: 0521661579

ISBN-13: 9780521661577

Book Description

War Land on the Easte Front is a study of a hidden legacy of World War I: the experience of German soldiers on the Easte front and the long-term effects of their encounter with Easte Europe. It presents an ‘anatomy of an occupation’, charting the ambitions and realities of the new German military state there. Using hitherto neglected sources from both occupiers and occupied, official documents, propaganda, memoirs, and novels, it reveals how German views of the East changed during total war. New categories for viewing the East took root along with the idea of a German cultural mission in these supposed wastelands. After Germany’s defeat, the Easte front’s ‘lessons’ were taken up by the Nazis, radicalized, and enacted when German armies retued to the East in World War II. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius’s persuasive and compelling study fills a yawning gap in the literature of the Great War.