Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars
Title | Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars |
Publication Type | Book |
Year of Publication | 1990 |
Authors | Mosse, George L. |
Number of Pages | 264 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
City | New York |
Abstract | At the outbreak of the First World War, an entire generation of young men charged into battle for what they believed was a glorious cause. Over the next four years, that cause claimed the lives of some 13 million soldiers—more than twice the number killed in all the major wars from 1790 to 1914. But despite this devastating toll, the memory fostered by the belligerents was not of the grim reality of its trench warfare and battlefield carnage. Instead, the nations that fought commemorated the war's sacredness and the martyrdom of those who had died for the greater glory of the fatherland. The sanctification of war is the subject of this pioneering work by well-known European historian George L. Mosse. Fallen Soldiers offers a profound analysis of what he calls the Myth of the War Experience—a vision of war that masks its horror, consecrates its memory, and ultimately justifies its purpose. Beginning with the Napoleonic wars, Mosse traces the origins of this myth and its symbols, and examines the role of war volunteers in creating and perpetuating it. |
URL | https://www.proquest.com/docview/2210174277/F770E701617D4E74PQ/2 |
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Chapters:
- 9. War and Gender: Nineteenth-Century Wars of Nations and Empires—An Overview
- 15. War and Gender: The Age of the World Wars and its Aftermath—An Overview
- 20. States, Military Masculinity, and Combat in the Age of World Wars
- 21. Colonial Soldiers, Race and Military Masculinity during and beyond World War I and II
- 24. Gender, Demobilization and the Reordering of Society after the First and Second World Wars
Library:
- WorldCat