Military Cultures of Violence among British and Commonwealth Armed Forces in the First and Second World Wars (1914–1945)

世纪上半叶，大英帝国统治着世界四分之一的人口，控制着全球四分之一的陆地面积。它的武装部队经历了几代人的海上和殖民战争，并参与了世界各地的冲突。在殖民地时期，英国部队经常犯下暴行，并有详细记录。 然而，在常规的国际战争中，英国的暴行似乎是一个罕见的例外，特别是当英国军队与德国或苏联军队进行比较时。这个子项目将通过识别，描述和分类英国和英联邦武装部队在第一次世界大战和第二次世界大战中的军事暴力文化来解释这种差异，因此涵盖了1914年至1945年，埃里克霍布斯鲍姆的特点是“三十一年战争”。 讨论这一时期允许比较两次世界大战沿着的重要论述的非法暴力发生在社会和军队在两次世界大战之间的岁月。它还使人们能够审查一个明显的现象，即第二次世界大战中英国和英联邦部队的非法暴力行为比第一次世界大战少，对这种暴力行为的接受程度也更低。这与几乎所有其他交战国，例如德国，美国，俄罗斯/苏联和罗马尼亚，都有很大的不同，我们看到这两个全球冲突之间明显的激进化。然而，英国似乎与这一趋势背道而驰。其原因和所涉过程值得探讨。(The以下分别概述两个组成项目，以反映子项目6中的权重：组成项目A，用于博士后职位，是主要组成项目，将在此首先概述。相比之下，组件项目B是博士职位。）

In the first half of the twentieth century, the British Empire ruled over one quarter of the world’s population and controlled one quarter of the global land surface. Its armed forces had been shaped by generations of maritime and colonial warfare and were involved in conflicts all over the world. In the colonial context, atrocities committed by British forces were frequent and are well recorded. In regular international wars, however, British atrocities appear to be a rare exception, especially when comparing the British forces, for example, to the German or Soviet armies. This sub-project will explain this discrepancy by identifying, describing and classifying military cultures of violence among British and Commonwealth armed forces in the First World War and the Second World War, thus covering the years from 1914 to 1945, characterised by Eric Hobsbawm as ‘the Thirty-One Years War’. Addressing this period allows for a comparison of the two world wars along with the important discourses on illegitimate violence that took place in society and in the military during the interwar years. It furthermore enables an examination of the apparent phenomenon that the Second World War witnessed less illegitimate violence by British and Commonwealth forces than the First World War had done and also less acceptance of the same. This is a major difference to almost all other belligerents, for instance Germany, the United States, Russia/the USSR and Romania, where we see a clear radicalisation between the two global conflicts. Britain, however, appears to buck this trend. The reasons for this and the process involved are worth exploring. (The two component projects are outlined separately hereafter to reflect the weighting within Sub-project 6: Component Project A, which is for a postdoctoral position, is the main component project and will be outlined here first. Component Project B, by contrast, is for a doctoral position.)