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This volume provides examines anarchist responses to the First World War. The collection is divided into three sections. The first examines the interventionist debate, focusing on the acrimonious disputes between Peter Kropotkin and Errico Malatesta which split the anarchist movement in 1914. The second discusses the impact of the war and the Bolshevik revolution, presenting a historical analysis of German, Dutch, French and US movements and conceptual analysis of just war and intervention, prefiguration, nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism, anti-colonialism, pacifism and terrorism. The final section focuses on anti-militarism and discusses no-conscription campaigns, anti-war/anti-capitalist cultural resistance and ideas of memory and war myths, centring on the experiences of Herbert Read. The book discusses the impact of the war on anarchism by looking at the social, cultural and geo-political changes that the war hastened, promoting forms of socialism that marginalized anarchist ideas, but argues that even while the war destroyed many domestic movements it also contributed to a re-framing of anarchist ideas. The book shows how the bitter divisions about the war and the experience of being caught on the wrong side of the Bolshevik Revolution encouraged anarchists to reaffirm their deeply-held rejection of vanguard socialism and develop new strategies that drew on a plethora of anti-war activities. The currents of ideas that emerged from anarchism's apparent obsolescence were crystallised during the war.

Military Service Tribunals were formed following the introduction of conscription in January 1916, to consider applications for exemption from men deemed by the new legislation to have enlisted. Swiftly, they gained two opposing yet equally unflattering reputations. In the eyes of the military, they were soft, obstructionist ‘old duffers’. To most of the men who came before them, the Tribunals were the unfeeling civilian arm of a remorseless grinding machine. This book, utilizing a rare surviving set of Tribunal records, challenges both perspectives. The Tribunals were charged with balancing the needs of the army with those of the localities from which their members were drawn; they received instructions, recommendations and polite guidance from their masters at Whitehall, yet each was in effect a sovereign body whose decisions could not be overturned other than by appeal to similar bodies. Wielding unprecedented power yet acutely sensitive to the contradictions inherent in their task, they were obliged, often at a conveyer belt's pace, to make decisions that often determined the fate of men, their families, and ultimately, their communities. That some of these decisions were capricious or even wrong is indisputable; the sparse historiography of the Tribunals has too often focused upon the idiosyncratic example while ignoring the wider, adverse impact of imprecise legislation, government hand-washing and short-term military exigencies. Evaluating in depth that impact, and illuminating the social dynamics which often marked proceedings in the Tribunal chamber, this study attempts to redress the balance of an enduringly damning historical judgment.

This book explores the integration of children born of war (CBOW) into post-conflict societies by investigating children fathered by foreign soldiers in several conflicts spanning much of the 20^th and 21^st centuries: the Second World War, the Vietnam War, the Bosnian War, the sub-Saharan African conflicts around the Rwandan Genocide and the LRA conflict and late 20^th century peacekeeping operations. Using these case studies as starting points, the volume explores the challenges faced by the children themselves and their mothers within their post-conflict receptor communities by looking at the development of experience over time and across different geographical regions. It contextualises historically the conflict and post-conflict policies towards children born of war and their families and discusses the consequences of such policies. In particular, it analyses comparatively childhood adversities and psychosocial challenges as well as changes to the legal and political environments while being mindful of giving the CBOW themselves a voice through participatory research methods. The book is based on extensive archival research including archival research in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the United States Canada and the Netherlands as well as oral history research among CBOW in the UK, US, Germany and Uganda. Its insights will be of value not only for academic scholars in history, political and social science, development studies and psychology, but also for NGO practitioners, policy makers and those engaged in advocacy.

The book is the first systematic study of the ‘People’s Armies’ of ELAS and EDES during the occupation. Previous studies have either neglected the study of the guerrilla armies altogether or focused on their political and operational activities as a result we know very little about the lives, experiences and beliefs of the men who comprised them. Equally little is known about the nitty gritty of guerrilla life; provisioning, leisure, and relations with the civilian population. The book delves into this unexplored area and provides new insights on the formation of the resistance movements and the experiences of the guerrilla fighters. The book follows the guerrillas from enlistment to the battlefield, it examines the rise and origins of the resistance armies, explores how their experiences of hardship, combat and personal loss shaped their self-image and social attitudes and discusses the complex reasons that led partisans to enlist and fight. Existing studies have presented the guerrillas as political soldiers and underscored the importance of ideology in motivation and morale. The present study offers a more complex image and looks at a series of factors that have been neglected by scholars including kinship and group ties, violence, religious beliefs and leadership. Moreover the book discusses relations between the guerrillas and the civilian population and examines how the guerrilla armies governed their territories.

This book focuses on working class civilian men who as a result of working in reserved occupations were exempt from enlistment in the armed forces. It utilises fifty six newly conducted oral history interviews as well as autobiographies, visual sources and existing archived interviews to explore how they articulated their wartime experiences and how they positioned themselves in relation to the hegemonic discourse of military masculinity. It considers the range of masculine identities circulating amongst civilian male workers during the war and investigates the extent to which reserved workers draw upon these identities when recalling their wartime selves. It argues that the Second World War was capable of challenging civilian masculinities, positioning the civilian man below that of the ‘soldier hero’ while, simultaneously, reinforcing them by bolstering the capacity to provide and to earn high wages, both of which were key markers of masculinity.

This volume takes the metaphorical character of the Cold War seriously and charts how the bomb was used as a symbol for nuclear war at the very heart of this conflict. The contributions consider the historical relevance of the political, cultural and artistic ramifications of nuclear weapons as signifiers for a new type of conflict. Tis understanding of the metaphorical qualities of the Cold War is encapsulated in the notion of an imaginary war, or, more precisely, a war against the imagination. As an attack against the imagination, the nuclear threat forced politicians and ordinary people to accept the notion that preparations for nuclear annihilation would contribute towards peace, and that the existence of these weapons, and the anticipation of large-scale destruction that came with them, were an inescapable corollary of security, freedom and future prosperity on both sides of the Cold war divide.

Working in a World of Hurt uncovers and analyses the range of responses to psychological trauma by male and female medical personnel in wartime in the 20^th and early 21^st centuries. Until now, academic and popular studies have focused on the trauma experienced by soldiers and civilians, saying very little about the mental strain endured by their healers. Acton & Potter seek to understand the subjective experiences of British, American and Canadian doctors, nurses, and other medical workers by studying personal accounts contained in letters, diaries and memoirs, both published and unpublished, and in weblogs. Offering an interdisciplinary understanding across a large chronological sweep of both the medical experience and the literary history of war, Working a World of Hurt demonstrates that while these narratives are testaments to the suffering of combatants, they also bear witness to the trauma of the healers themselves whose responses range from psychological and physical breakdown to stoical resilience and pride in their efforts to assuage the wounds of war.