At Home and Under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz

ISBN-13: 9780521874946 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 356 str.

Susan R Grayzel

Opis

Although the Blitz has come to symbolize the experience of civilians under attack, Germany first launched air raids on Britain at the end of 1914 and continued them during the First World War. With the advent of air warfare, civilians far removed from traditional battle zones became a direct target of war rather than a group shielded from its impact. This is a study of how British civilians experienced and came to terms with aerial warfare during the First and Second World Wars. Memories of the World War I bombings shaped British responses to the various real and imagined war threats of the 1920s and 1930s, including the bombing of civilians during the Spanish Civil War and, ultimately, the Blitz itself. The processes by which different constituent bodies of the British nation responded to arrival of air power reveal the particular role that gender played in defining civilian participation in modern war.

Recenzje

'This detailed, well-written book chronicles the cultural transformation wrought by the air raid, in reality and in the British imagination, between the early Zeppelin raids of the First World War and the end of the Blitz in the Second … This is an exemplary monograph: deeply researched, attentive to the production and reception of culture, and elegantly argued. Its main claim is convincing, and its de-emphasizing of the uniqueness of the reaction to the Blitz is important.' Journal of British Studies

Spis treści

1. Modern war and the militarization of domestic life; 2. Destroying the innocent: the arrival of the air raid, 1914–16; 3. Redefining the battlezone: responding to intensified aerial warfare, 1917–18; 4. Writing and rewriting modern warfare: memory, representation, and the legacy of the air raid in interwar Britain; 5. Inventing civil defense: imagining and planning for the war to come; 6. Trying to prevent the war to come: efforts to remove the threat of air raids; 7. Facing the future of air power: responding to interwar air raids; 8. Preparing the public for the next war: the expansion of air raid precautions; 9. Protecting the innocent: gas masks and the domestication of air raid precautions; 10. Responding to the air war's return: the militarized domestic sphere from Munich to the Blitz; 11. Representing the new air war: morale and the domestication of the air raid in wartime popular culture; 12. Conclusion: air raids and the domestication of modern war.