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Dynamic of destruction : culture and mass killing in the First World War / Alan Kramer.

By: Language: English Series: The making of the modern worldPublisher: Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2007Description: 434 s. illISBN:
  • 9780192803429
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 940.3 22 (machine generated)
Other classification:
  • K.51
Holdings
Item type Current library Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Book Biblioteket HKR Biblioteket 940 Kramer Available 11156000173011
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

On 26 August 1914 the world-famous university library in the Belgian town of Louvain was looted and destroyed by German troops. The international community reacted in horror - 'Holocaust at Louvain' proclaimed the Daily Mail - and the behaviour of the Germans at Louvain came to be seen as the beginning of a different style of war, without the rules that had governed military conflict up to that point - a more total war, in which enemy civilians and their entire culture were now 'legitimate' targets. Yet the destruction at Louvain was simply one symbolic moment in a wider wave of cultural destruction and mass killing that swept Europe in the era of the First World War. Using a wide range of examples and eye-witness accounts from across Europe at this time, award-winning historian Alan Kramer paints a picture of an entire continent plunging into a chilling new world of mass mobilization, total warfare, and the celebration of nationalist or ethnic violence - often directed expressly at the enemy's civilian population.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

  • List of Illustrations (p. viii)
  • List of Maps (p. x)
  • Abbreviations (p. xi)
  • Introduction (p. 1)
  • 1 The Burning of Louvain (p. 6)
  • 2 The Radicalization of Warfare (p. 31)
  • 3 The Warriors (p. 69)
  • 4 German Singularity? (p. 114)
  • 5 Culture and War (p. 159)
  • 6 Trench Warfare and its Consequences (p. 211)
  • 7 War, Bodies, and Minds (p. 230)
  • 8 Victory, Trauma, and Post-War Disorder (p. 268)
  • Conclusion (p. 328)
  • Historiographical Note (p. 339)
  • Appendix Hague Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907) (p. 347)
  • Notes (p. 349)
  • Bibliography (p. 394)
  • Sources and Acknowledgements for Illustrations (p. 416)
  • Index (p. 419)