University of Washington

The Great War... (cont'd from page 1) PAINTED IN 1915, THE YEAR ITALY ENTERED WORLD WAR I, GINO SEVERINI'S "ARMORED TRAIN IN ACTION" EXEMPLIFIES THE FUTURIST CELEBRATION OF WAR, AS SOME BELIEVED IT COULD GENERATE A NEW ITALIAN IDENTITY — ONE OF MILITARY AND CULTURAL POWER. A POSTCARD OF A STREET SCENE IN SALONICA, GREECE DEPICTING LOCAL RESIDENTS AND SOLDIERS FROM THE ALLIED ARMY OF THE ORIENT. THE RETURN OF A PHILOSOPHER: NIETZSCHE THE THINKER, HITLER THE PERPETRATOR." THIS 1981 COVER ILLUSTRATES THE BATTLE OVER NIETZSCHE'S HISTORICAL LEGACY — A STRUGGLE THAT TOOK A RADICAL "RIGHT" TURN IN 1914. WORLD WAR I PLAYED A DECISIVE ROLE IN TRANSFORMING NIETZSCHE FROM A THINKER OF MODERNIST CULTURAL CRITIQUE INTO A PROPHET OF FASCIST CULTURAL PRACTICES. DER SPIEGEL 24/1981 TRENCH WARFARE WAS ONE OF THE MOST NOTORIOUSLY GRUESOME ASPECTS OF THE FIGHTING ON THE WESTERN FRONT. IN THIS IMAGE, SOLDIERS UNDERSCORE BATTLE FRONT CONDITIONS WITH A DISPLAY OF RATS CAUGHT IN THEIR TRENCH. the bloody, scarred world of the men in the trenches and the sacred preserve of women and children non-combatants. Bailkin's lecture will look more closely at the idea of home fronts and battle fronts, considering the ways in which the Great War generated, but also ultimately challenged the idea of an absolute divide between the worlds of soldiers and civilians. On December 3, Professor John Toews will examine the ways in which the critical intellectual traditions of the central European fin-de-siècle were recreated and transfigured in the shadow of catastrophe. He will use the transformation of the legacy of Friedrich Nietzsche after 1914 as his primary historical example. Toews will place the Nietzschean legacy in the com- parative context of contemporaneous developments within the intellectual traditions of Marxism and psychoanalysis, showing how disillusionment with the foundational myths of Western humanism and historicism produced widespread commitment to the radical cultural construction of a "New Man" and new "World Order," a commitment that ultimately culminated in the fascist regimes of the 1920s and 1930s. Department of History PAGE 3 history matters history matters

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