War Land on the Eastern Front

2000/05/18 by Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius · 7 citations
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #German History and Society #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society

paper · doi:10.1017/cbo9780511497186

openalex publication_date 2000/05/18 · openalex created_date 2022/02/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/05

Abstract

War Land on the Eastern Front is a study of a hidden legacy of World War I: the experience of German soldiers on the Eastern front and the long-term effects of their encounter with Eastern Europe. It presents an 'anatomy of an occupation', charting the ambitions and realities of the new German military state there. Using hitherto neglected sources from both occupiers and occupied, official documents, propaganda, memoirs, and novels, it reveals how German views of the East changed during total war. New categories for viewing the East took root along with the idea of a German cultural mission in these supposed wastelands. After Germany's defeat, the Eastern front's 'lessons' were taken up by the Nazis, radicalized, and enacted when German armies returned to the East in World War II. Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius's persuasive and compelling study fills a yawning gap in the literature of the Great War.

Cited by

• Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjuncture: Soviet Nationality Policy in Its Comparative Context
• A City in Flux: Warsaw’s Transient Populations During World War I
• Tsarist Russia at War: The View from Above, 1914–February 1917
• Xiongnu and Huns
• Byzantium’s Eurasian Policy in the Age of the Türk Empire
• The German Myth of the East [wikipedia]
• Treaty of Brest-Litovsk [wikipedia]