At Home and under Fire: Air Raids and Culture in Britain from the Great War to the Blitz (Literature in Context)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 1/9/2012
EAN 9780521874946, ISBN10: 0521874947
Hardcover, 356 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.4 cm
Language: English
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 the arrival of air power reveal the particular role that gender played in defining civilian participation in modern war.
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.