Militarised landscapes: mountains and plains on the eastern and south-western fronts of the First World War

Chair(s): Kerstin Von Lingen (University of Vienna, Austria)
Presenter(s): Gustavo Corni (University of Trento, Italy), Francesco Frizzera (Museo Storico Italiano della Guerra, Italy), Oksana Nagornaia (University of Tuebingen, Germany)

Organiser: Kerstin Von Lingen, University of Vienna, Austria

ESEH Conference - Panel

Abstract:
Due to industrial warfare, the First World War became a turning point in the conflict between man and the environment. Bomb destruction of soils, poisoning of waters and deforestation of virgin forests on a large scale made nature the first victim of war (T. Keller) and determined the emergence of specific anthropogenic (Kirges) landscapes. The high level of development of technologies created for the first time the possibility not only completely to destroy natural objects, but also to construct their technically designed analogues. This also gave rise to new branches of science - military geology and military hydrotechnics - which enabled a cold-blooded calculation of the potential of militarised nature and a forecast of the damage inflicted on it. Mountains and plains were evaluated as resources of a military strategy; their partial destruction and transformation were calculated on the basis of demographic, epidemiological and, in some cases, ecosystem consequences.

The panel will address the specific and universal ecological aspects of war experiences on the Western and Eastern Fronts, the long-term effects of the militarisation of mountain and lowland landscapes, the transfer of practices between the front and the home front. A comparative approach and the inclusion of new sources allows us to balance the hitherto dominant focus on the Western Front of the First World War and to raise the following important questions for discussion: To what extent did warfare (manoeuvre or positional warfare) influence the extent of environmental damage in the mountains and in the lowlands? What role did engineering play in the geo-deformation of mountain and lowland areas during the First World War? How radically different were practices of dealing with «own» versus occupied landscapes? Is it possible to trace a dynamic of change here?

Conference Agenda/Presentations:
https://www.conftool.com/eseh2023/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=138&presentations=hide