An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

rieties designed, and how do they unfold? How did they include and exclude in order to constitute community? Evident throughout the chapters is an assumed opposition of “humor” and “Jewishness.” The author examines examples of Jewish artists in the interwar period only, referencing, for example, the well-known German and Austrian humorists Fritz Grünbaum and Karl Farkas, who addressed the difficulties of the construction of a German nation. Humor thus remains illuminated from the point of view mostly of the antisemites. Once the author succeeds in showing the “in-between” (17), Kessel uses the collection of anecdotes by Julius Bab to show where there were overlaps despite the dichotomy of “German” and “Jewish” (30). On the whole, this is a meticulously researched book that deserves a wide readership. Kessel’s insight into humor helps us understand why laughter has held such an important role through different wars and political systems in the twentieth century. Rich in detail and innovative in its approach, Gewalt und Gelächter will undoubtedly provoke new research into many areas of cultural studies for years to come.

German-Balkan Entangled Histories in the Twentieth Century Edited by Mirna Zakić and Christopher A. Molnar. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. Pp. 381. Paper $35.00 ISBN 978-0822966753. - Volume 54 Issue 4

Previous articleNext article No AccessInternational Law and the Transformation of War, 1899–1949: The Case of Military OccupationJonathan GumzJonathan GumzUniversity of Birmingham Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 90, Number 3September 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/698960 Views: 532Total views on this site © 2018 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Struggle for the Eurasian Borderlands: From the Rise of Early Modern Empires to the End of the First World War. By Alfred J. Rieber.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Pp. x+640. $95.00 (cloth); $36.99 (paper); $30.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).Jonathan E. GumzJonathan E. GumzUniversity of Birmingham Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 90, Number 2June 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/697333 Views: 87Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe First World War and German National Identity: The Dual Alliance at War. By Jan Vermeiren. Studies in the Social and Cultural History of Modern Warfare. Edited by Jay Winter.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. Pp. xvi+442. $120.00 (cloth); $96.00 (Adobe eBook Reader).Jonathan E. GumzJonathan E. GumzUniversity of Birmingham Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 90, Number 4December 2018 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/700161 Views: 107Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Habsburg Empire's final years and its experience in the First World War have traditionally been a story of dysfunction and national disintegration. This article, by contrast, stresses that the prewar Habsburg state was far from dysfunctional and in many ways approximated its other nineteenth-century constitutionalist counterparts within Europe and across the world. Yet the war and the stresses surrounding it, especially along the seam of civil-military relations, tore that constitutionalist state apart as the Habsburg Army declared its own internal war against the Habsburg civilian state. The army focused its ire on the rule of law within that state, which it viewed as contributing to the state's weaknesses, and ultimately its initial failures, in the first year and a half of the war. Thus, the Habsburg Empire descended into a state of exception as the army took advantage of an array of legal tools designed to accompany initial mobilizations to make deep and lasting incursions into the practice of managing civilians. These incursions caused widespread dismay among broad sections of the Habsburg populace, while simultaneously undermining the practices and procedures of the Habsburg administration. Yet in plunging into a state of legal exception, the Habsburg Empire was hardly an anomaly in the twentieth century. Rather, it was a harbinger of what was to come as the nineteenth-century constitutionalist state came under assault in emergency situations in Europe during the First World War and beyond.

Citation for published version (Harvard): Gumz, J 2014, Losing Control: The Norm of Occupation in Eastern Europe during World War I. in J Boehler, W Borodziej & J von Puttkamer (eds), Legacies of Violence: Eastern Europe's First World War. Europe's east in the 20th century: Writings of Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena, R. Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich, pp. 69-87.

This essay first explores European assumptions regarding occupation and war in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These assumptions found their way into international law, but are best understood as a series of international norms. The article then goes on to examine how these norms changed over the course of the war, paying attention to the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia from 1916 to 1918. The European approach to war within Europe attempted to contain the expansion of conflict and created a strict divide between civilian and military realms. Occupiers were to maintain the sovereignty of the departed government until the conclusion of a peace treaty, while the occupied population owed obedience to the occupier. Austria-Hungary's war against Serbia and subsequent occupation two years later placed heavy pressure on these pre-war norms. In some cases, such as the use of military law in occupied Serbia, Austria-Hungary departed entirely from these norms. As the war progressed, however, a growing realization that such norms of contained conflict also buttressed Austria-Hungary's place in the international system led Austria-Hungary to restrain its occupation of Serbia. While Austria-Hungary attempted to resituate itself and its occupation of Serbia back within these norms from mid-1917 forward, this attempt went largely unrecognized. Broadly seen, such international norms fell under severe pressure in Eastern Europe with the implosion of imperial sovereignties in this region, most notably that of Tsarist Russia.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Cognitive Challenge of War: Prussia, 1806. By Peter Paret. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009. Pp. xii+164. $22.95.Jonathan E. GumzJonathan E. GumzU.S. Military Academy at West Point Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmailPrint SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 83, Number 2June 2011 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/659191 Views: 7Total views on this site © 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.