Germany Military Officer

My character will be a senior military officer in the German army during World War I. He will have fought admirably in the Franco-Prussian War and received multiple promotions since then. My guy will have benefitted from the intense nationalism that militaristic Germany went through and the elevated social and political status of aristocrats during this time. He will be overseeing the German "war plans," the very precise military plans of the German army at the start of the war. He will have a large plan in shaping and executing the Schlieffen plan. News will trickle back to him about the horrors of the war, especially the horrors of German poison gas at Ypres against the French. He will begin to question Germany's ideals during the time, the futility of war and the realistic chances Germany has.

Meet My Alter Ego

The character I'll be creating for my historical fiction about nationalism in the time period was originally going to be a protester who witnessed Bloody Sunday and is appalled that their own tsar, Nicolas II, who he trusted would allow this sort of terror to exist within his country when the tsar is supposed to be one with the people. However, Bloody Sunday, while an important event in terms of stages of nationalism in Russia, does not cover enough of the Great War, so my character will continue to write journal entries that provide an idea of the public's perception of Nicolas II. He will witness Nicolas II's failure in battle, and inability to deal with the declining nation by writing about how the negative effects of the nation affected his life, personally. Lack of food and the declining nation push him and those around him to stage rebellion. By this time, around mid/late 1910's, he and the public began to see him as, more or less, what he actually was: a shallow, incapable leader of such a big country.

Meet Luka Schneider

Begin RESEARCH on your chosen nationalism topic. WRITE a brief blog post in which you introduce your character, referencing at least TWO HISTORICAL SOURCES.

Meet Luka Schneider. Luka is a soldier on the German lines who got drafted from his small home in the town, Monkowarsk. Luka is a kind person who wants peace and dislikes violence. He never wanted to go to the war and finds it terrible that all the men around him enjoy killing the other men on the battlefield. Luka is one of the many men on the front lines who are constantly risking their lives to fight for their country. He will be writing in his diary/ journal about what has happened since his last entry. There might be a time spand of days or weeks where he doesn't write anything in his journal because he doesn't have time and is too busy worrying about staying alive than writing about his life. Over time, seeing men die from numerous shots, poison gas, disease, and other gruesome ways, his perspective of the enemy and war change with the different experiences he will encounter. Nationalism plays a role in Luka's life during the war when he has to make life-saving decisions and when he has to change his attitude of the war to survive on the battlefield.

http://german.about.com/library/weekly/aa042699.htm

http://www.firstworldwar.com/origins/causes.htm

http://genealogy.about.com/cs/surname/a/german_surnames.htm

Vladmir Ovechkin

Vladmir Ovechkin is a 24 year old government worker from St. Petersburg, and is married to Svetlana Sharapova. He is very loyal to Czar Nicholas II. He is against the Bolshevik uprising and any attempt at a revolution. He despises Lenin and his Marxist views, but more than anyone he can not stand Rasputin for destroying the monarchy and he has a plot to kill both of them, although they have no affiliation with each other. Clearly he has strong conservative political views. Although he fails to kill them and the revolution eventually succeeds, he puts up a great fight which is described in his letters to his friend Igor who immigrated to the United States with hope for a better life. He had amazing foresight and sensed the problems in Russia before most people did.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/nicholas_ii.shtml
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/commandingheights/shared/minitext/prof_vladimirlenin.html
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/rasputin.htm

The Alldeutscher Verband

Meet Dieter Wagner, a member of the Alldeutscher Verband, which is a German group that supported pan-germanism and imperialism. He promotes the “German idea in the world” and justifies the imperialist movements of Germany as the rightful claim for world power. He is also a journalist of the Die Grenzboten, and his letters to the chief editor Georg Cleinow are of encouraging the war and discussing the news that must be put on the paper to persuade more people to join.

A Woman and a Soldier

Darya Vladyevna Mihailov is one of the first female soldiers of the Russian army. She chose this for numerous reasons: her family, once proud and wealthy was made poor by Russian industrialization, necessitating another source of income; her brother was conscripted although a cripple, making it such that another of his family must go in his stead; lastly, as a child she was something of a tomboy and had always dreamt of the valor in arms, so she jumps at this chance to experience it. In a letter written home to her brother, she describes her experience in the trenches. After a short trainging period (where she notes that many of the men are little better in war than she), her regiment is sent out as one of the many heading towards Austria-Hungary. The campaign is successful and they push well into the A-H region named Galicia. Still, she observes that their numbers are greatyl reduced and that in defense they are more likely to crumble. Nonetheless, they hold their position and continue forward march, but are headed of in the Battle of Tannenburg. In this time she begins to recount the horrors of modern warfare, and her anger towards the monarchs that they are not better prepared as a force. For this she blames the monarchy. She now wishes that she hadn't joined the army, not necessarily because she is afraid (which they all are), but because she recognizes that in the modern world, a victory cannot be won through valor, but only through strategic use of death machines. Her place, she now feels, is Petrograd. In the ranks she hears news of Lenin from his supporters and begins to see what he has to say as the hope of a better future. At the termination of her letter she encourages her family to go out to protest the monarchy and fight for revolutionary ideals.
Nationalism evidently plays an important role in her life as it pushes her to become a soldier, despite prejudices of the time. Furthermore, this experience completely changes her perspective on government, changing her from nuetral to strongly opposed to the monarchy which she believes has brought them down.

Meet Andjela From Serbia

Andjela Svetozar is a 17-year-old feminist whose life is changed for the better by the Great War. She lives in a very small village in Serbia with her father and two sisters. Her father is very strict and traditional. He hates the Black Hand and considers them terrorists that only want to cause more chaos and unnecessary change. Andjela’s father refuses to allow her to receive an education or to even desire one. Andjela dreams big: of being a writer, a doctor, or even a government official, but instead she is forced to cook, clean, and care for her two younger sisters, Senka and Natasa. Andjela’s mother died of childbirth and Andjela must take her mother’s place as the housewife of the family, a position that she absolutely despises. Although she loves her sisters dearly, she cannot help but imagine her life had she been a man and able to work real jobs.

Fortunately for Andjela, her father is forced to fight in the war, leaving Andjela with the freedom she has always desired. She writes in her diary about the jobs that are now becoming available to her as more and more men are drafted into the army. However, she still must care for her sisters and this proves to be a great challenge. She loves her sisters both, but she wants desperately to achieve her dreams.

Sources:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Wfirst.htm

http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/womenww1_six.htm

http://www.firstworldwar.com/features/haverfield_07.htm

Meet Igor the Angered Russian

For my Nationalism/Great War I have decided to write a diary of a disgruntled Russian citizen named Igor. Igor is inherently grumpy, but becomes especially steamed when the Russian Government fails to satisfy him. He is not very fond of the Tsar, often mocking his "divine right". Igor hailed from Pokrovskoye, the same Russian village that Rasputin had lived in before he was adopted by the royal family. Igor rejoices in the assassination of Rasputin because he believed that Rasputin was a fraud and his rise to power only led him to lose faith in the Tsar. He recognized that Russia was instrumental in starting World War One because of its religious ties to Serbia. He was ecstatic when the Tsar Nicholas II was overthrown by the bolshevik party and actually fought in a militia for the Bolshevik party in the Bolshevik Revolution

Meet Emilie Rocher

Bon soir. My name is Emilie Rocher. I'm 17 years old and I live in a small town just outside of Paris thats too small to even be recognized by most maps. Everyone in town knows each other. All my life I've lived next to Luc Aldridge and we've been best friends since we were little. Everyone said we were going to be married, but that was before the war. Luc got sent away just after the Germans invaded...there wasn't even time to say goodbye. I don't know where he is or how he's doing but I like to write him letters just so he knows that I love him. I write him once a week. I haven't gotten a response yet, but I know he's ok....isn't he?

Serbia During World War 1

Meet Lina! Lina is a 6 year old girl living in Serbia with her mother, grandmother and two older brothers. Her father was a part of the Black Hand, the movement that assassinated Franz Ferdinand, but was killed a month before the event actually took place. In my project, Lina will write a series of letters to her father telling him what's going on in their every day family life. Her oldest brother has gone off to war and her whole famliy is scrambling to try and help the war effort. Lina's mother, Annalise, volunteers for a Women's Hospital and spends most of her time away from home. Because of this, Lina is left with a lot of time alone to miss her father and worry about her brother's involvement in the Serbian army. Her other brother is desperate to prove himself and proceeds to get involved with some less than honorable friends, which adds to her concern. This is the story of a young girl trying to deal with the many traumas inflicted by war.

Historical Fiction

Meet Hannah Holden, age 12 in 1918. Her story is set in the "home front" of England, where she, her two sisters ages 8 and 15, her brother, age 14, and her mother struggle to make it through the outbreak of the "Spanish influenza." Her father is fighting in the trenches in France, where the pandemic is also taking countless lives. Hannah's story is told through a compilation of her own diary entries and her father's letters home.
Hannah's father, Jonathon, leaves his family to fight in late spring 1819, just after the spread of the three-day fever, a version of what was later called Spanish influenza that was only slightly less benign as a bad cold. Jonathon , along with several of Hannah's other family members, had caught the three-day fever and recovered. However, not long after Jonathon goes to war, the strain of flu mutates into a far more dangerous form that ends up infecting 1/5 of the world and killing more than world war one itself.
Jonathon blames the war and all countries involved, England included, for the wide-spread devastation of the influenza. Meanwhile, back home, Hannah tries to push past the struggles within and outside the family created by the flu, in order to aid her country on the "home front."

I will most likely have to scale this back some.

Sources I have used so far: (for general research)

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/flu-how-britain-coped-in-the-1918-epidemic-511987.html

http://www.vlib.us/medical/parsons.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/influenza/introduction

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWinfluenzia.htm

Meet Vladimir Ivanov: Russian Bartender

Meet Vladimir Ivanov, a Russian bartender who works and lives in Moscow. He is very tough in appearance, yet worrisome and somewhat emotionally destructed from the war, considering he was a soldier on the Eastern Front until he became injured and was sent back to Moscow. Therefore, through his bar interactions and his observations of the happenings in the Tsarist monarchy, he elaborates on the war and the Russian revolution, his position in society, the struggles he faces due to the war, and reflects on his experience in the battlefield. He is somewhat conservative, such that he generally supports the Tsar and royal rule. As the Tsar regime starts to deteriorate, he shares his sadness and loss of faith in the Russian population as new powers and political philosophies begin to skyrocket.

Warfare in the Eastern Front was brutal for Russian soldiers due to lack of advancement in military technology and infrastructure. Russia also had to balance its own revolution with the conflict of WWI, making the battle on the Eastern front a very tough fight. Eventually, Russian troops withdrew from the battle to attend to their own revolution. Therefore, the Russians' role on the Eastern Front resulted as incomplete, not to mention losing tens of thousands of troops in the chaotic violence. Germany's weaponry was extremely advanced, causing devastating losses to Russia. Tear/chlorine gas and the "stalemate" of the Eastern Front will forever haunt our narrator Vladimir.

Being an ex-soldier and a moderate believer in preservation of the traditional monarchy, Vladimir will also comment on the circumstances of Tsar Nicholas II's status, power, popularity, and safety. However, the presence of Rasputin in Russia's monarchy disturbs Vladimir, especially alleged interactions between Rasputin and the queen. Nicholas II's popularity the Russian Revolution slowly fell as generals and advisors plotted to remove him from power due to lack in leadership skills. Although Nicholas II had good intentions, he simply did not own the skills to be a great Tsar. This principle disturbs our friend Vladimir - the Tsar is a nice person and means well, yet people continue to wish violence against him. HOwever, Vladimir will start to see the effects of the absence leadership on the Russian population, complicating his views and provoking deep thought as to whether he supports the Tsar or not. It remains, however, that his morals are powerful in his mind, sometimes exceeding that of his logical thinking.

My Character

My name is Hans Kaiser. I am a german soldier, who is constantly demanded in a new region. In the past two months, Germany has declared war on so many countries, we cannot even keep track of where we must have our troops, and when we must have them there. I only have recently become a member of the army. The military experience so far is nothing like what I've heard. I have yet to see any trauma, as I am constantly dealing with the chaos and disorganization through my country. Being a quiet man, I have not developed any relationships with other people serving in the military with me. Because I left my parents when I was only 14, the only true relationship that I am a part of is my friend Gerald Meyer, who is at home right now not serving anything. I know that he is not being effected by the war, and I doubt he even remembers that I am gone.

Bogdana Demidov

Hello. My name is Bogdana Demidov, and I am 28 years old. I have two children, Valeriya, age 5, and Vladislav, age 3. My husband, Gennady, is also 28, and is in the Russian army. I live in Puchezh, Russia. I am against the tzar, and am a socialist. I am very close to my sister Antonina, who is a prostitute. My husband is currently fighting in the Great War. I write him letters telling him news of the children and myself, rumors I've heard about the war, and other events. I have only gotten one responding letter from him, but I assume he's so busy in battle that he does not have the time to write home. Or that it is not safe to send letters in his current position. I hope to hear back from him soon.