La Greffe Générale: the voice of French facially injured soldiers

Like the combatants on the frontline, the wounded soldiers of the First World War wrote and published newspapers during the sometimes lengthy periods of time they spent in hospital. La Greffe Générale is the journal written by and for facially injured combatants treated at the Val-de-Grâce military hospital in Paris. Throughout the eight issues released between December 1917 and July 1918, the voices of these men can be heard. While the surgeons’ perspective prevails in most remaining documents to do with French maxillofacial wards, La Greffe Générale gives an insight into the experiences of injury and treatment from the point of view of the wounded and convalescent combatants. The specific challenges faced by facially injured men are reflected in their writings, as this article shows. At the same time, their newspaper is in itself an attempt to respond to some of these issues. Ultimately, the patients’ publication reveals how gueules cassées, as French disfigured veterans came to be known, tried to collectively cope with their changed lives. The ethos reflected in, and fuelled by, La Greffe Générale played, this article argues, a significant part in the later constitution of the facially disfigured men’s organisation, the Association des Gueules Cassées.     

Economic neutrality during the Cold War: the World Bank,the United States,and Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1977

This paper reconstructs the unknown Chile-World Bank interactions during the formative years of Pinochet’s dictatorship (1973–1977). Prevalent understandings of the WB portray it as a loyal Washington ally. However, new evidence from the WB Archives and additional documents reveal that US efforts to make lending contingent on human rights considerations, thereby forcing the Bank to abandon its so-called economic neutrality, were only partially effective. Pinochet’s case provides a new prism to examine the cold war in Latin America and the Bank’s use of its ‘neutrality’ as a means to reach increasing autonomy from its strongest member states, mainly the United States.     

Statisticians,economists and the ‘new economic order’ in wartime Italy (1940–1943)

From 1940 to 1943, Italian economists and statisticians were actively engaged in discussions that ranged from immediate concerns about war economy to more speculative issues that can be summarized under the then-fashionable label of the ‘new economic order’. The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of these debates by focusing, on the one hand, on the related themes of autarky, the new ‘Mediterranean order’ and postwar supranational economic complexes, and, on the other hand, on those of corporatism and economic planning. Both the idea of an economic plan and that of an organized division of labor among countries within a politically defined large economic space clashed directly with views associated with the tenets of economic liberalism, also dear to many Italian economists. On each theme, positions taken may be connected to expectations regarding the postwar world. Special attention will be given to various statistical devices and arguments put forward by protagonists to sustain their views or implement their projects.     

Pagan: the archaeology of a WWII battle never fought in the Northern Mariana Islands

Archaeological and historical investigation of WWII battles fought in the Micronesian archipelago of the Mariana Islands has generally concentrated on the fierce struggles for Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Smaller islands that were neutralised during the U.S. thrust to establish air bases for the bombing campaign over Japan beginning in 1944 have received less attention, but were a strategic link in the Absolute National Defence Sphere. This paper examines the archaeological evidence of Japanese military planning for the defence of the island of Pagan situated north of Saipan, a battle that was never fought. The strategy based on an analysis of fixed weaponry emplacement appears to have been conceived in terms of engagement evolving from a ‘defence-at-the-waters-edge’ tactic in the southern Mariana Islands towards a ‘defence-in-depth’ posture faced in Iwo Jima and Okinawa.     

Death by a Thousand Cuts: an archaeological assessment of souveniring and salvage on the Australian cruiser HMAS Perth (I)

In 2014, the Australian National Maritime Museum (ANMM) received reports from recreational divers that the shipwreck site of HMAS Perth (I) was being systematically salvaged by commercial divers. After extensive discussions with Indonesian Government departments and agencies the ANMM led the first Australian/Indonesian remote sensing survey of Perth in December 2016. This was followed by an in‐water survey in May 2017. These investigations revealed Perth has been devastated by systematic, large‐scale unauthorized salvage. Following the survey, ANMM and its Indonesian research partner Pusat Penelitian Arkeologi Nasional (ARKENAS), working in conjunction with the Royal Australian Navy and Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, successfully lobbied the Indonesian Government to have the site declared Indonesia's first Marine Protected Area.     

‘Where the F… is Vuotso?’: heritage of Second World War forced movement and destruction in a Sámi reindeer herding community in Finnish Lapland

In this paper we discuss the heritage of the WWII evacuation and the so-called ‘burning of Lapland’ within a Sámi reindeer herding community, and assess how these wartime experiences have moulded, and continue to mould, the ways people memorialise and engage with the WWII material remains. Our focus is on the village of Vuotso, which is home to the southernmost Sámi community in Finland. The Nazi German troops established a large military base there in 1941, and the Germans and the villagers lived as close neighbours for several years. In 1944 the villagers were evacuated before the outbreak of the Finno-German ‘Lapland War’ of 1944–1945, in which the German troops annihilated their military installations and the civilian infrastructure. Today the ruins of demolished German military installations persist around the village as vivid reminders, and act for the villagers as important active agents in memorising this vital phase in Lapland’s recent past. They also appear to facilitate nostalgia for the more independent days before traditional Sámi lifeways were ruptured by stronger Finnish State intervention in the post-war decades.     

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.     

The War of Seduction: The Anglo-American Struggle to Engage with the Portuguese Ruling Elite (1943–1948)

Emotions and perceived cultural differences have only recently been subject to sustained attention from international historians. By tracing the role of personal politics in Anglo-American relations with Portugal in the mid-1940s, this paper intends to introduce hitherto neglected culturalist approaches into the historiography. The purpose is to illustrate the importance of cultural factors to scholarly explanation of Anglo-American relations and rivalries, of the decline of British influence over Lisbon and of the continuation of the authoritarian Portuguese regime after the Second World War, albeit integrated into an American sphere of influence.     

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.     

War Time Hysteria, 1917: Senator Miles Poindexter, ‘American-ness’ and the Strange Case of Colonel Carl Reichmann*

When, on 6 April 1917, the United States entered into the First World War, a wave of anti-German sentiment captured the nation. The Army was not immune from accusations of subversion. In 1917 Senator Miles Poindexter accused a high ranking officer named Carl Reichmann of being in league with Germany. Despite the support from officers such as Hugh Lennox Scott and John J. Pershing, Reichmann was not permitted a promotion to general or service in France. Although most senators supported the promotion, Poindexter was able to prevent a vote on the subject using internal Senate rules. The resulting notoriety Poindexter gained made him a viable Republican candidate in the 1920 election. Although the military did not prevail over Poindexter — thereby continuing the constitutional expectation of military subservience to the civil government — the forces sent to France were without a commander who had gained a scholarly understanding of modern warfare well before the actual conflict.