ISBN : 9780198803003
Wars have played a fundamental part in modern German history. Although infrequent, conflicts involving German states have usually been extensive and often catastrophic, constituting turning-points for Europe as a whole. Composed of the first two volumes of Mark Hewitson's three volumes series on German conflict, this pack explores how such conflicts were experienced by soldiers and civilians during wartime, and how they were subsequently imagined and understood during peacetime, from Clausewitz and Kleist to Junger and Adorno. Without such an understanding, it is difficult to make sense of the dramatic shifts characterising the politics of Germany and Europe over the past two centuries. The studies argue that the ease - or reluctance - with which Germans went to war, and the far-reaching consequences of such wars on domestic politics, were related to soldiers' and civilians' attitudes to violence and death, as well as to long-term transformations in contemporaries' conceptualisation of conflict.
Volume I
Introduction: Theories of War and Violence
1 From Cabinet Warfare to Mass Armies
2 Heroism and the Defence of the Volk
3 The Violence of Civilian Life
4 The Lives of Soldiers
5 War Memories
Conclusion: A History of Remembering and Forgetting
Volume II
Introduction: Military Violence in German History
Part I: The Romance of War, 1820-1864
1 Histories of Conflict
2 Life in the German Armies
3 Domestic Violence
4 Revolution and Civil War
5 War Reports
Part II: The Horror of War, 1864-1888
6 War and the Nation
7 Blood in the Sand
8 Brothers-at-War
9 The War of the Germans
10 Shock and Awe: The Aftermath of Conflict
Conclusion