Growing up in the shadow of the Second World War: European perspectives

In this Special Issue, the authors explore the various ways in which the Second World War shaped children's experiences in the post-war period. They map the multifaceted interest or non-interest of states all over Europe for children in the years after the war, filter out groups of children who recall that the consequences of the Second World War significantly influenced their childhood, and investigate the childhood policies directed towards them, as well as their childhood experiences and the memories they foster about their childhood. In addition, they have included case studies from Western, Central and Eastern Europe with the aim of sparking a debate as to whether it was only a similar lifecycle that war children in early post-war Europe shared, or if they also had some life experiences in common.     

From war service to domestic service: ex-servicewomen and the Free Passage Scheme 1919-22

At the end of the First World War, the British government put into operation a Free Passage Scheme for ex-servicemen, ex-servicewomen and their dependants to emigrate to the colonies and dominions of the Empire. This scheme was driven by a complex network of interlinked beliefs and policies concerning both the relationship between the metropole and the Empire, and the perceived necessity for social stability in Britain and in the dominions and colonies. This article examines the Free Passage Scheme, paying particular attention to the ways in which it was envisaged as a means of restoring a gendered balance of the population in Britain, where young women outnumbered young men at the end of the war, and in the dominions, where men outnumbered women, and was also seen as a way of emigrating women whose wartime work experiences were understood to be in conflict with gendered identities in the post-war period. The article argues that the Free Passage Scheme needs to be understood as gendered, as it envisaged the transformation of female members of the auxiliary wartime services into domestic servants for the Dominions. The scheme's failure, it is argued, prefigures the failure of the far larger Empire Settlement Act of 1922 to emigrate large numbers of British women as domestic servants.     

Race and hospitality: Allied troops of colour on the South African home front during the Second World War

Though often marginalised in histories of the Second World War, South Africa, in addition to contributing manpower and economic support to the Allied war effort, was a transport hub and a site for military training. Millions of Allied servicemen and women spent time in South Africa, which became an important node in both imperial and Allied wartime networks. Examining the varied experiences of Allied personnel of colour in South Africa, with a focus on the Māori battalion, this essay, working towards a transnational social history of the conflict, highlights the ways in which wartime hospitality both reflected and subverted ideologies and practices of racial segregation.     

The Nazi equation of Jewish partisans with ‘bandits’ and its consequences1

This article deals with the history of Jewish partisans during the Second World War, with the general aim of encouraging further research into the subject. Despite the facts that partisan activity was a significant part of the war experience for Jews, and an important dimension of the conduct of the war against the Third Reich and its accomplices, the history of Jewish partisans occupies only a minute portion of Holocaust and World War II historiography. This article analyses the treatment of Jewish partisans from the perspective of the Nazi perpetrators, while also seeking to shed light on the evolving self-perceptions of the partisans themselves. The focus is the Nazi categorization of the Jewish partisans as ’criminals’, equating them with ‘bandits’ and ‘plunderers’. In large part, this accusation shaped Nazi actions and simultaneously played a critical role in the partisans' imagination of, and construction of their own identity as ‘Jewish fighters’.     

Northern Ireland, British-Irish Relations and American Concerns, 1942-1956

This article considers the political impact of particular Irishcontroversies during the Second World War and the post-war period.It highlights the American dimension to these controversies,and examines what they reveal about different sets of inter-governmentalrelations, especially that of London and Belfast. The articleargues that the context of wartime, and the circumstances ofthe post-war era, should have led to more effective cooperationbetween the Westminster and Stormont governments to the endof improving the operation of devolution and ensuring the curtailmentof corrupt practices. The article also contends that there weresignificant tensions between different areas of successive Londongovernments which hampered the effective handling of Irish matters.     

Women and War in the British Empire

This provocation stimulates reflection on the Eurocentricity of Second World War histories and reflects on how new work can extend the boundaries of the subjects of the war. It argues that women in the British Empire were affected by the war in ways which have, thus far, been under-appreciated.     

‘Stepping into history’: reading the Second World War through Irish women's diaries

This article examines two very different wartime diary accounts by Irish women, Romie Lambkin, a driver in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, and Mary Morris, who nursed in England, France and Belgium. Both texts assert the legitimacy of the Irishwoman's wartime story through consciously placing themselves in history, affirmed by the difference between their ‘real’ existence as participants in the war, and the ‘unreal’ Eire, outside history and reality, a ‘fairyland’, as Lambkin calls it, of lights and food set against a blacked out and bombed out Europe. More broadly, drawing on theoretical perspectives on life-writing and identity, the discussion focuses on these accounts as dynamic, vividly written contributions to our understanding of the war experience, showing how the subjective experience narrated in a diary has an important place in the collective historical narrative of the Second World War.     

Urban Space and Civil War： Hefei, 1853-1854

Previous scholarship has made it abundantly clear that the Taiping War impacted urban hierarchies in the Yangzi delta region, wreaking havoc in economic, commercial, administrative, and cultural centers like Hangzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou, Changzhou, and Wuxi, thereby hastening the rise of Shanghai. But how did this war affect cities beyond the core Jiangnan region？ In a case study of the prefectural city of Hefei （Luzhou）, this article explores the ways in which war led to the reconfiguration and reimagining of urban space, both through wartime destruction and the patronage of post-war reconstruction.     

The German-Jewish soldier: from participant to victim

The story of German-Jewish soldiers and veterans of World War I illustrates how, under circumstances of inclusion (even if incomplete) rather than vicious persecution, Jewish suffering in wartime, and with it the forms of collective memory and strategies for commemoration of the dead, could closely parallel, even intersect with, the suffering of Germans as a whole. To be sure, the points of intersection were accompanied by points of deflection. Even when Jews served, fought, suffered and died as German soldiers, their interpretations of the war experience, and their communities’ postwar memory and commemorative practices, differed from those of other Germans. In many ways, however, German-Jewish veterans suffered the aftermath of the war as did other Germans; they shared the prevailing fury over war guilt and reparations, and they retained a strong pride in their military service, a pride through which they interpreted the events of 1933–1945.     

Double Displacement: Western Women's Return Home from Japanese Internment in the Second World War

This article examines the homecoming of Western women from Japanese internment camps at the end of the Second World War. It focuses on British women returning to the United Kingdom, but makes reference to women from other Allied nations such as the United States, Australia and the Netherlands. The paper argues that interned women posed contradictions to gendered understandings of wartime experience and that homecoming further exacerbated this ambiguity. Return from imprisonment exposed the dual meaning of home as the natural realm for women and a national space. Women internees had been away from both and were subjected to control by non‐white men; responses to their liberation reflected these tensions. Homecoming prompted questions about released women's femininity and sexual integrity, but they faced even more difficulty having their war experiences recognised as part of a national story about war.     

Nation,College, Wartime: Archaeology at a WWI Student Army Training Corps Camp at New Hampshire College

During World War I, the U.S. War Department contracted with 157 universities to form the National Army Training Detachments whose mission was to train college-age draftees in 66 critical army trades (subsequently the Student Army Training Corps). This program is an overlooked part of First World War history and has received little to no archaeological inquiry. This paper investigates the New Hampshire College camp. Working between documentary and archaeological materials, this paper explores how the interrelated duties of educational institutions, businesses, government, and individuals merged with an American wartime imagined community here but also how in their lived experiences of the camp, people materialized the complications of balancing citizenship, difference, duty, and nation. The social lives of the lower-rank men who inhabited these camps, the composite communities formed at them, and the impact of the government’s assertion of control over institutions of higher education all carry material ramifications that deserve further investigation.     

Childhood in the shadow of war: filled with work and play

This study was focused on war-time childhood. The target period covers the war years 1939–1945 and the years of post-war reconstruction. The research was based on memories of 13 participants who lived in the countryside in northern Finland during the Second World War. The purpose of the study was to find out what children's everyday life was like during the war. According to the results, children did play regardless of the war situation. Children also participated in household work actively. By highlighting children's experiences and perspectives, this study provided important information about children's survival during war time. The study also helps understanding the effects of wars from children's point of view.     

从天皇制法西斯论到总体战体制论——战后日本农村战争动员研究范式的变迁

战后日本关于农村战争动员的研究从“天皇制法西斯论”出发,重视法西斯主义与传统村落社会秩序的内在关系,不但从农村运动和村落传统的角度分析法西斯主义产生的根源,也从村落共同体及其机能组织方面揭示农村战争动员的广度和深度。但是,经历了战后经济高速发展阶段,特别是在冷战结束之后,由于对战争批判的减少和战争责任意识的淡化,加上后现代主义的影响,出现了肯定战时动员政策的“总体战体制论”。虽然这种观点受到一些学者的严厉批评,但其影响不容忽视。从学术史角度讲,“总体战体制论”虽然在意识形态和价值观上与“战后历史学”存在着巨大隔阂,但是在方法论上,将“战前”特别是“战时”与“战后”联系起来考虑,重视战时动员体制及其所引起的社会深层变动与战后历史发展的关联,这给其后的农村战争动员研究带来广泛而深刻的影响。     

Wages of War: Manufacturing Nationalism During World War II

Abstract: During World War II the state created a new and deeper set of relationships with defense contractors. These contractors manufactured the vast majority of war materials and relied extensively on the state for financing. These same contractors also encouraged workers and civilians to understand their every minute action as contributing to the war effort. In order to fully integrate workers’ and civilians’ lives into the war effort, the state and industry created and distributed a war wage—a sense of contribution, national belonging, and sacrifice. In this paper I analyze the wartime records of the Westinghouse Electric and Manufacturing Company in order to understand how the state and industry created the war wage alongside the military–industrial complex. With the help of the war wage, the state and industry radically expanded the production of war materials and enlisted a more compliant population of workers and civilians into the war effort.     

二战后美国对日本的粮食战略及其影响

二战后,日本经济凋零,粮食短缺问题严重,国民生计惨淡,社会矛盾丛生。为了解决这些问题,美国占领当局分别从外部和内部开展粮食援助和粮食强征。这一系列政策在实现美国自身的经济需求与政治目的的同时,也确实对日本的农业与社会步入正常化发挥了重要作用,为之后日本的经济腾飞奠定了坚实基础。战后初期的粮食政策连同日本经济复苏后美国长期实施的粮食倾销,共同构成了二战后美国对日粮食战略的主要内容。美国的粮食战略缓解了战后初期日本严重的粮食危机,部分解决了美国国内的粮食过剩问题,改变了日本人的饮食结构与饮食习惯,挤压了该国粮食的生存能力和发展空间,影响了日本的粮食安全乃至政治、经济主权与独立发展进程,也加剧了美日间的贸易摩擦。     

American Red Cross posters and the cultural politics of motherhood in World War I

Scholars have long held that World War I markedly impacted women's participation in the public sphere as questions of appropriate wartime participation for women arose. Posters were an important tool for communicating notions of feminine citizenship and patriotism during the US involvement in the war. In this article, I explore the influence of the US involvement in World War I on social constructions of white femininity and citizenship through their portrayal in American Red Cross posters produced between 1914 and 1919. These posters offer a distinct visual documentation of the cultural shift in the portrayal of, and the insistence on, white women's – particularly nurses’ – responsibilities during wartime. I argue that the sentiments and language of the newly splintered women's movements were co-opted into the service of the war and were further emboldened with religious sentiments. American Red Cross posters called upon women to enact their presumed innate nurturing tendencies, and by extension, their feminine citizenship, at both the home and warfronts. In this way, the labor of the private sphere was drawn into the service of the war but without fully admitting women into the public sphere.     

The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War

During the First World War, the German and British Governments supplied culturally appropriate rations and secured special facilities for food preparation and consumption for South Asian prisoners of war whose loyalty both governments sought. The food provided in POW camps to South Asians serves as an index of the political status of colonial subjects at a moment when the future of European empires was far from certain. The British Government’s approach to feeding its South Asian servicemen held by the enemy thus reveals this population’s place within Britain’s wartime national and imperial imaginary and in its post-war planning.     

Economic Protectorate in Britain’s Informal Empire: The Trucial Coast during the Second World War

This article examines the economic and political impact of the Second World War upon a small outpost of Britain’s informal empire. It analyses the multiple ways in which the economy, trade and governance of the Trucial Coast were disrupted, disturbed and challenged by the exceptional circumstances of the war. In response to these circumstances, a variety of emergency arrangements were introduced, resulting in an unprecedented degree of involvement of outsiders and foreign agencies in the management of the local economy. The transformation of Britain’s traditional policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the Trucial Coast is traced back to the exigencies of wartime conditions.     

Regulating Body Boundaries and Health during the Second World War: Nationalist Discourse,Media Representations and the Experiences of Canadian Women War Workers

This article examines the intersections of gender, wartime nationalist rhetoric and the production of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies in both the Canadian workplace and the home during the Second World War. Analysing government, industry and media discourses in relation to oral history interviews with thirty‐eight women aircraft workers, we discuss women's distinctive role in shaping the health and morale of the social body during wartime, to ensure the maintenance of family, nation and the Allied war effort. While health in wartime was defined in terms of worker productivity for both men and women, anxiety about women's expanded roles heightened the emphasis on moral respectability as a marker of the ‘healthy’ female body. This was further complicated by the wartime emphasis on women's responsibilities to boost morale as part of their role in maintaining health and productivity for both men and women. Through such examples as workplace regulations and domestic advice, we examine the increased monitoring of women's individual and collective bodies and the intensified demands on female war workers as they crossed between the public and private spheres. We use our oral histories to examine women's embodied memories of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ bodies within a regional context and their responses to government, industry and media discourses.