000 02465cam a2200313 4500500
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041 _afre
042 _adc
100 1 0 _aDroit, Emmanuel
_eauthor
700 1 0 _a Offenstadt, Nicolas
_eauthor
245 0 0 _aThe Great War in the GDR. Front experience and communist narratives
260 _c2022.
500 _a56
520 _aThis article deals with the memories of the First World War in the GDR and more generally within the communist movement. The idea is to revisit a largely deserted field of research, treating of the relationships between the war experience (s) – and specifically trench warfare –, and the birth and history of communism as a mass movement and as a State. The article shows the ambivalence and ambiguities marking these connections. Though the founding fathers of the GDR (Ulbricht, Pieck, Grotewohl, Selbmann, etc.) fought as young men in the Great War, and like millions of others experienced its violence, as well as all the ruptures it provoked, the main communist writings and ideological frames embedded the intensity, depth and variety of these experiences into one master narrative which one might so characterize: a denunciation of an imperialist and therefore unjust war; a minimization of the effects and importance of individual experiences of trench warfare and fightings; a strong emphasis on the process of anti-imperialist and revolutionary conversion of the soldiers, especially following the successes of the Russian revolution; an offbeat narrative of the war, insisting first on the initial « treason » of the Social-Democracy (1914) and then on the years 1917-1920 and their revolutionary activism, especially by the Spartakists. This forms « the war of the communists ». This construction allows eventually to give a stabilizing meaning to one of the most distressing and painful experiences of the 20th century.
690 _aexperience
690 _acommunism
690 _aWord War One
690 _acollective memory
690 _aGDR
690 _anarrative
690 _aexperience
690 _acommunism
690 _aWord War One
690 _acollective memory
690 _aGDR
690 _anarrative
786 0 _nRevue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine | o 69-3 | 3 | 2022-08-12 | p. 23-49 | 0048-8003
856 4 1 _uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-revue-d-histoire-moderne-et-contemporaine-2022-3-page-23?lang=en&redirect-ssocas=7080
999 _c564965
_d564965