Transcript

ANNIKA MOMBAUER

Hello, and welcome back to Week two. Last week you studied some of the devastating physical and psychological effects of the First World War on combatants. You saw that some 10 million soldiers died during the conflict, but they weren’t the only casualties of war. The First World War is often referred to as a total war, because it engaged and impacted on the entire populations of all the belligerent nations. As a consequence, non-combatants did not always escape the physical and psychological devastation wrought by the conflict. So this week you will be learning about two aspects of civilian war experiences, atrocities committed against civilians and the experience of hunger on the home front.

The effects of wars on children have only recently been studied by historians in any detail. As you study the material for this week, you might want to reflect on the trauma inflicted on children and other non-combatants and how it affected the rebuilding of societies after the fighting had finished.