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A Minor Apocalypse

Warsaw During the First World War

By: Robert E. Blobaum

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Hardcover | 21 February 2017

At a Glance

Hardcover
320 Pages

Age
18+

Dimensions(cm)
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8

Hardcover

RRP $61.60

$59.75

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In A Minor Apocalypse, Robert Blobaum explores the social and cultural history of Warsaw's "forgotten war" of 1914-1918. Beginning with the bank panic that accompanied the outbreak of the Great War, Blobaum guides his readers through spy scares, bombardments, mass migratory movements, and the Russian evacuation of 1915. Industrial collapse marked only the opening phase of Warsaw's wartime economic crisis, which grew steadily worse during the German occupation. Requisitioning and strict control of supplies entering the city resulted in scarcity amid growing corruption, rapidly declining living standards, and major public health emergencies. Blobaum shows how conflicts over distribution of and access to resources led to social divisions, a sharp deterioration in Polish-Jewish relations, and general distrust in public institutions. Women's public visibility, demands for political representation, and perceived threats to the patriarchal order during the war years sustained one arena of cultural debate. New modes of popular entertainment, including cinema, cabaret, and variety shows, created another, particularly as they challenged elite notions of propriety. Blobaum presents these themes in comparative context, not only with other major European cities during the Great War but also with Warsaw under Nazi German occupation a generation later.

Industry Reviews

"A Minor Apocalypse is the first history of Warsaw in World War I to appear in decades and the first ever in English. Few people in Poland want to remember World War I except as the prelude to independence, and, as a result, the horrible suffering experienced in Warsaw during the war is never discussed. Until reading this book, I had no idea that the situation in the city was so bad, and many readers will be surprised to learn of the events Robert Blobaum describes so clearly. Blobaum's earlier work is mandatory reading in the history of Poland and Eastern Europe, and this meticulously researched, well-written, and persuasively argued book is sure to join that list."-Brian Porter-Szucs, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of History, University of Michigan, author of Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom "In A Minor Apocalypse, Robert Blobaum presents a powerful new narrative of the occupied East during 1914-1918. We know that the Eastern Front was horrific during World War II, and Blobaum's social history of life in Warsaw during wartime shows that conditions during World War I were not dissimilar. Blobaum has done an extraordinary job of teasing out ordinary people's experiences from between the lines of public proclamations and from the silences he has mined from extant sources."-Robert L. Nelson, University of Windsor, author of German Soldier Newspapers of the First World War

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