engleski

The Great War from below in Croatian Memoirs

Although their publishing was influenced by several political turning points, more than 40 book-length autobiographic texts of broadly-defined Croatian origin, written by low-ranking officers, NCOs and common soldiers, represent a valuable starting point for a “history from below” type of approach, similar to the one previously demonstrated by historians dedicated to analogous English, German and French perspectives. However, in no case should these perspectives be seen as a uniform whole. Apart from briefly sketching the most important tendencies in memoir-publishing through the decades between 1914 and 2014, the author will present differing attitudes towards war goals, ideology and worldview, everyday life on the front, and relations with the enemy and civilians, thus tracing the whole scope of changing motives. This should allow us to make some comparative conclusions on the modernising impact of the conflict.

First World War; Croatia; memoirs; sources; modernization

Proširena hrvatska inačica objavljena u časopisu Hrvatska revija, 2014., br. 3.