Am 23. Juli 1914 unterrichtete Ministerpräsident Karl Stürgkh den Ministerrat Cisleithaniens von der Übergabe des österreichisch-ungarischen Ultimatums an Serbien. Am 22. November 1916 fand in der ersten Sitzung nur die „Trauerkundgebung anlässlich des Hinscheidens Sr. Majestät Kaiser Franz Joseph I.“ statt.

Die Sitzungsprotokolle des Minis…[Read more]

This article examines the mixture of hostile and amicable relations that Bavarian fighting men had with French civilians during the Franco-Prussian War, when civilians provided food, fodder and quarters to the invading armies and sometimes took up arms against them. Relying mainly on published personal narratives, this article looks at the…[Read more]

This chapter focuses on German soldiers and French civilians in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, using the example of the Bavarian contingent. It examines why soldiers sometimes departed from generally accepted standards in Europe about sparing civilians the effects of war as much as possible.

This essay offers a revisionist interpretation of the Imperial German officer corps, whose members have long enjoyed a schizophrenic reputation in the historiography as either consummate military professionals or feudalistic representatives of a bygone political system. Using the career of Wilhelm Groener (1867-1939). it reexamines the…[Read more]

Mark Bray is a historian of human rights, terrorism, and political radicalism in Modern Europe as well as a political organizer. This interview outlines what fascism is, the history of anti-fascist resistance, the debate surrounding free-speech, anti-imperialism, World War II, and the Trump Era.

Mark Bray is a political organizer and historian…[Read more]

While World War II was still raging in Europe and the Pacific, the onset of the Greek Civil War in December 1944 marked the beginning of the Cold War. For the people of Greece, the civil war would continue the devastation that the Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupations had initiated. The civil war’s catastrophic cleavages in Greek society are…[Read more]

Completed in early 1944, Robert Desnos’s militant series of 25 poems in Contrée evokes memories of a lost peace and calls for the defeat of the German occupiers. Suggesting the desecration of the human body by the occupiers, Picasso cut his cubist–surrealist frontispiece etching of Dora Marr to produce severed heads and dismembered body part…[Read more]

In post-conflict reconstruction there are many tasks that need to be accomplished. Immediate,
medium‐term, and long-term priorities need addressed by multiple national and international
stakeholders, all wanting their interests satisfied. This situation poses a question “what are the
most urgent priorities in post-conflict rec…[Read more]

In addition to the enigmatic The Codomas, Henri Matisse distinguished three other images with a name, Icarus, Monsieur Loyal and Pierrot’s Funeral for his landmark livre d’artiste Jazz. While the characters Loyal, Pierrot and Icarus were readily identifiable and the images could be interpreted within the context of the difficulties of the Ger…[Read more]

Henri Matisse’s images in Jazz, created during the disruption of the German Occupation of France, were embedded with symbols of cultural resistance, while his text, which he composed after the defeat of the Germans, reflected the transition to a post-Liberation France. The wartime symbols and allusions camouflaged within these images are readily r…[Read more]

How Changes in the Nature and Conduct of Warfare Since the End of the Cold War Affected the Relevance and Applicability of International Humanitarian Law. The end of the Cold War dramatically changed the focus of world politics, the Geneva Conferences, the nature and conduct of warfare and the relevance of international humanitarian law. The rise…[Read more]

This essay explores the challenge to the chivalric myth of the aviator in Willa Cather’s One of Ours and William Faulkner’s Soldier’s Pay. Revived during the First World War, this romantic myth cloaked the aviator in idealism and hid the actual body of the flyer in rhetoric. In this war of increasing mechanization, the air war was the last basti…[Read more]

Will a Trump presidency help to bring an end to the status quo? This essay, first published on Counterpunch days after the 2016 election, considers that possibility with reference to the long history of US interventions abroad.

Module Summary: Using the aftermath of 9/11 and the US invasion of Iraq as a case study, this module asks why states engage in torture, giving particular consideration to why liberal states euphemise, conceal, and downplay this practice. We will examine the ramifications of 9/11 across multiple legal domains, domestically within the US and…[Read more]

Throughout antiquity there has always been the tension between differentiating being civilians and non-civilians in conflict. In some of the earliest recorded times in history we have stories of the Israelites marching around Jericho and bringing its walls down, barbarian tribes facing off with Romans, peasants storming castles, and modern era…[Read more]

Discussion of the historiography of the reception of Edward Yang’s film and the specificity of it in terms of documenting Cold War Taipei, a tightly surveilled city torn and its emergence as a modern city with a critique of Fredric Jameson’s reading of the film.

The centenary of World War I has marked an abrupt change: historical events will never be commemorated in the same way, especially in Belgium. The federated entities have demonstrated the autonomous role which they intend to play in future events of this type. The Brussels-Capital Region was not outdone. While the political choice to be directly…[Read more]

Le Centenaire de la Première Guerre mondiale marque une rupture : on ne commémorera plus jamais de la même manière les événements historiques, tout particulièrement en Belgique. Les entités fédérées y ont démontré le rôle qu’elles entendaient désormais jouer, en toute autonomie, dans de futurs événements de ce type. La Région de Bruxelles-capita…[Read more]

The inter-allied memorial commemorates the First World War and the fallen, as well as the wartime cooperation between the Allies. Its inter-allied character and its scale make this memorial one of a kind.