Peace and War in the 20th Century
Random Highlights
A memorial plaque was unveiled in 1975 at Dachau concentration camp to four women who had been shot there by the Nazis thirty years earlier. The story of the heroism of Yolande Beekman, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan, and Eliane Plewman is preserved in journalist E.H. Cookridge’s account of the ceremony.
One of McMaster’s few holdings of German archival material, the letters of Otto and Ada Hartmann extend over a period of less than a year, between the spring and fall of 1915. Despite the relatively small size of the collection, amounting to some two dozen letters, it nevertheless provides valuable insight into military operations and attitudes in the German rearguard and into the daily life of a German soldier’s wife during this important first full year of international warfare.
Wounded for the second time, Captain Siegfried Sassoon produced a caustic poem from his hospital bed in August 1918 to attack the British elite. It was these Great Men whom he held accountable for the perpetuation of the First World War, those who were heedlessly disregarding its massive human cost for the sake of their own personal interests.
