The First World War massively changed the scale and nature of the “military veteran question” in Europe. The enormous impact of mass deaths and destruction, the demise of old empires, and the rise of new nation states resulting from total war made the fate of ex-soldiers into a key issue that shaped all societies in interwar Europe. The unprecedented number of combatants, together with the severity and frequency of injuries incurred in industrialized warfare, meant that the relationship between ex-soldiers and the state became a crucial issue for all governments, raising major questions about welfare provisions, social policy, party politics and national memory cultures. While there has been much recent research on war veterans in Germany and other European countries, other regions of Central and East-Central Europe have attracted noticeably less attention. For this reason, this special issue presents research on the comparative history of World War One veterans in Austria and Czechoslovakia. This transnational investigation breaks new ground by investigating two neighbouring states that showed distinct patterns of immediate post-war reconstruction, as well as of subsequent development.
Contents
Laurence Cole / Rudolf Kucera Editorial 7
Articles
Rudolf Kucera / Hannes Leidinger Challenges for Science, Threats to the Nation. Austrian and Czech War Neurotics as Examples of a Transnational History of Trauma (1914–1938) 15
Verena Moritz Half-hearted Reconciliation: The “Federal Association of former Austrian POWs” and the Question of Veterans’ Internationalism in Interwar Austria 33
Julia Walleczek-Fritz Staying Mobilized: Veterans’ Associations in Austria’s Border Regions Carinthia and Styria during the Interwar Period 59
Vaclav Smidrkal The Defeated in a Victorious State: Veterans of the Austro-Hungarian Army in the Bohemian Lands and Their (Re)mobilization in the 1930s 81
Radka Sustrova The Struggle for Respect: The State, World War One Veterans, and Social Welfare Policy in Interwar Czechoslovakia 107
Abstracts 135
Reviews
Linda Erker Emmerich Talos, unter Mitarbeit von Florian Wenninger, Das austrofaschistische Österreich 1933–1938 141
Andreas Huber Lisa Rettl, Jüdische Studierende und Absolventen der Wiener Tierärztlichen Hochschule 1930–1947 / Lisa Rettl, Die Wiener Tierärztliche Hochschule und der Nationalsozialismus. Eine Universitätsgeschichte zwischen dynamischer Antizipation und willfähriger Anpassung 144
Nathalie Patricia Soursos Johannes Hürter/Hermann Wentker (Hg.), Diktaturen. Perspektiven der zeithistorischen Forschung 149
Authors 153