Revisiting 20th Century Wars

The collection at hand is a subjective, but representative selection of articles in German and English on the representation of bellicose acts in modern times.§The wide range of wars treated in these essays begins with the Canudos Civil War in the Brazilian state of Bahia in 1896-97. The various articles include new perceptions and interpretations of the First World War, the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, the Holocaust, the Second World War, the Korean War, the wars in the former Portuguese colonies of Africa, and the Balkan Wars of the last decade of the 20th century, and close with the current war in Afghanistan, which began in 2001. The wars discussed, although having different origins, such as national pride, territorial expansion, fanatic religiousness, ethnic and racial conflicts, great social differences, the process of decolonization, and terrorism, have one thing in common: their significant and constant repercussion in the print and broadcast media over a long period of time. These modern wars have therefore often been the object of new readings and reinterpretations until today. The history of these wars could not have been written without the development of journalism, the mass media, and new technologies of war reporting in the 20th century.