Burned Oil Rigs and Cut Woods: The Environmental Dimension of the First World War on the Eastern Front (original) (raw)
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Embattled Nature: Men and Landscapes on the Eastern Front of the First World War
Science, Technology, Environment, and Medicine in Russia’s Great War and Revolution, 1914– 22, 2022
The starting point for this chapter is the proposition that the First World War in Eastern Europe had a significant impact on the course and character of modernization in that area. Measures that were planned and partially implemented during the war became prototypes for mega-projects for mastering natural landscapes, forerunners of ecological and technological catastrophes. The industrial character of the armed confrontation rapidly transformed landscapes through the construction of railroads and canals, the draining of marshes, the development of new sources of raw materials, the search for substitute materials, the felling of forests, and the contamination of the ground. In addition to blurring the boundaries between front and rear, the mobility of the Eastern Front and the accompanying militarization of its vast territories witnessed efforts to achieve mastery over the environment, which led to the reckless mobilization of resources and the subordination of nature to the logic of military discipline. The states that arose from the ruins of the multiethnic empires on the Eastern Front were forced to grapple with the toxic—literal as well as metaphorical—legacy of wartime ecological policy. Studying this multifaceted theme offers the prospect of interesting new contributions to modern historiography.
'Introduction: Modern Warfare and the Environment', Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism
Since the First World War, industrial warfare has harnessed the power of ‘nature’ to create ever-more efficient means of destroying human life through its use of chemical, biological and nuclear technology. At the same time, it has developed the potential to cause what has been termed ‘ecocide’, examples of which include the long-term impact of high density herbicides in Vietnam, and the Kuwaiti oil fires. In this timely issue of Green Letters – published during the four-year anniversary of the First World War – authors address the range of approaches that ecocriticism can bring to examining representations of modern warfare, and how the language of war has been appropriated for ‘environmentalist’ causes.
Late modern war and the geos: The ecological 'beforemaths' of advanced military technologies
Security Dialogue, 2024
This article develops the idea that late modern war's relationship with the geos (the ground and the life it sustains) is doubly destructive. While part of this is recognized in a recent focus on slow violence and ecological aftermaths, there is little consideration of the 'beforemath', or the sites of extraction that make advanced military technologies possible. Drawing attention to mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the article connects military technologies to arms manufacturers and their use of extracted minerals (e.g. cobalt, tantalum, copper, uranium). Shared patterns of environmental and public health effects across parts of Iraq, Gaza and the DRC indicate the doubly destructive nature of late modern war's relationship with the geos: toxic materials threaten life after war as the deposits of bombardment and before war as mineral commodities at the beginning of arms supply chains. The article explicates how a perspective from the beforemath radically refigures the ways we think about war and spatiality, temporality, and the range of bodies affected in ways that promise a fuller understanding of the violence distributed by practices of late modern war.
Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Archaeologica, 2020
Title: The Use of Chemical Weapons on the Eastern Front of World War One (1915) and its Material and Discursive Remains – the Challenge and Stimuli for Attentive Travel, Systematizing, Storage, Connecting, in situ Preservation and Making Public Real Virtual and Digital Heritage of Weapons of Mass Destruction The article includes a theoretical and practical proposal for perceiving and treating material and discursive remains of using chemical weapons – wherever they still exist – as stimuli for reflection on weapons of mass destruction and as warnings. Based on the specific example of the outcomes of the archaeological and historical research conducted in the historic battlefield – the section of the Eastern Front between Sochaczew in the north and Skierniewice in the south, the following more general appeals have been formulated: – for inalienability of collecting, systematizing and interpreting source information and studies that could together make up a real and digital repository of knowledge on material and discursive remains of historical uses of chemical weapons (CW) and potentially further on of weapons of mass destruction (WMD); – for documenting, digitalising and protecting in situ remains of the past that, despite representing a challenge for contemporary people, constitute a part of important, however difficult, transnational painful heritage; – for undertaking more intense, systematic and coordinated activities to disseminate knowledge about past use of CW and about the mission and activities of individuals and organisations involved in the process of minimizing the threats of weapons of mass destruction in the modern world (such as the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons – OPCW). It is worth exploration, as well as documentation and protection (with the aid of archaeology, history, memory studies, ethnology, landscape studies, educational studies – especially on Peace Education, tourism studies etc.) e.g. by means of transdyscyplinary research and working on establishing real and virtual repositories of knowledge on CW, OPCW, outreach, education on transnational painful heritage, reflective cultural tourism, attentive travel etc. The historical gasscapes (landscape marked with gas attacks) – such as an element of the landscape of today’s central Poland, sketched in this article, that bore witness to the very first mass use of gas shells in January 1915, as well as wave attacks with poisonous chlorine (possibly combined with phosgene) in the battlefield, has been presented as particularly predestined to serve as a symbols of CW painful heritage, triggers for reflection on BMR and carriers of even though weaker and disappearing living memories. Additionally, the attention was drawn to the fact that certain activities aimed at documenting, consolidating, systematizing and disseminating knowledge about the experiences related to CW (or more broadly, WMD) should be undertaken immediately. Some disappearing material remains prove it. The area (in present days Poland) of a former battlefield, where the army of the German Empire repeatedly used chemical weapons in 1915, still conceals the bodies of – until recently – almost completely forgotten victims of CW. Hence the emphasis put on the significance of that area and other similar places as destinations for attentive travel (real and virtual) following evocative remains will not leave us indifferent and uninterested.
Ecological consequences of warfare
Војно дело, 2017
uring 20 th century several wars were conducted in the world. It can be claimed that these wars caused serious ecological consequences, which affected the quality of the environment, the health and life of people, a decrease in population, slowing down the development of economy and many others. Four wars were waged solely at the territory of the Republic of Serbia: from the Balkan Wars via World War I and II to the NATO aggression in 1999. The NATO bombing caused the most severe consequences for the environment. Due to a rather negative effect of warfare on the environment, such effect is visible at the beginning of most famous wars. However, it was present in some wars and remained the threat for many years. This paper deals with the examples of warfare in the world that data and concrete indicators exist for and it focuses public attention to problems and consequences of warfare.
Oil as a Resource and Element of Defence: the Cases of Galicia in 1915 and Romania in 1916
The Great War and the Anthropocene. Empire and Environment, Soldiers and Civilians on the Eastern Front, 2024
The chapter will address, firstly, the situation of the Eastern European oil industry prior to World War I, the economic and environmental aspects of mining, and the impact of the war on the oil mining sector. Next, it will analyse two cases of intentional destruction of large oil stocks before anticipated enemy offensives: the first operation was carried out by the Russian army during the Great Retreat of 1915; the second was the mission of an international British–French–Romanian unit supported by the Russian forces during the fast offensive launched in Romania by the Central Powers in 1916. The final section of this chapter will compare these operations and assess their consequences for the Eastern European environment. The chapter concludes by stating that the Great War saw the destruction of major production facilities emerge as a method and means of warfare, something which had been uncommon for any armed conflicts prior to World War I.