Andrew Huebner's Love and Death in the Great War explores how ordinary Americans constructed war service as a citizenship obligation tightly linked to family responsibility. Specifically, Huebner argues the meaning of the war and “talk of ‘civilization,’ ‘democracy,’ or ‘nation’ often translated to the protection of women, family, and the rhythms of daily life” (1). Huebner elaborately traces this theme, using personal records such as letters and diaries and cultural sources such as propaganda, speeches, newspapers, books, and films. Huebner captures the intersections of personal emotions, individual war experiences, public discourse, national culture, and wartime policies and events at the national and local levels to reveal how behavioral expectations created a politically advantageous “white male monopoly” on chivalry and “martial honor,” which women and African Americans challenged during their wartime service (2).
The literature on the Great War tends to compartmentalize the study of World War I into categories like soldiers and the military, diplomats and politics, women and the home front, African Americans and race relations, or immigrants and ethnic identity. Huebner's ambitious and eloquent book synthesizes these topics to illuminate the personal and political intersections of wartime culture for Americans of diverse backgrounds. Across a prologue, seven chapters, and an epilogue, Huebner shares the lives and relationships of people who served during the Great War. Some of the most memorable narratives include Eliga Dees, a career soldier with a seventh grade education, and his wife, Mae, a young schoolteacher living in the Ozarks; Arthur Huebner, a German American draftee from rural Wisconsin; Waring Huston, a college-educated, homesick volunteer from an Alabama military family with both Confederate and Revolutionary War heritage; Natalie Scott, an accomplished Red Cross nurse; the African American soldiers of New York's segregated 369th Infantry; a decorated and celebrated combat soldier from Tennessee, Alvin York; and William Buckner, an African American Kentuckian serving with the 313th Labor Battalion who was accused of raping a French woman. Together their experiences “offer a vivid picture of wartime society” (2).
Huebner develops these stories over small sections in each chapter. Though these narratives compose the backbone of the book, Huebner also, between sections, establishes a broad national picture of wartime life and culture. While this writing style may feel jumpy at first, readers will quickly come to appreciate Huebner's stylistic brilliance as his organizational method enables them to fully trace the developing narrative of each individual's personal experience as he weaves the stories together to emphasize their periodic and thematic connections.
Love and Death in the Great War spans the United States’ involvement in World War I from 1917 through the aftermath of the war into the early 1920s. Huebner does not include detailed discussion of the fighting in Europe until page 88. This might seem late for a book on World War I, but it strengthens the reader's understanding of how the Great War intersects with U.S. military tradition, immigration, race relations, and gender. First, Huebner develops how the Great War builds on a distinctly American wartime cultural heritage. Rather than tying American mobilization efforts to the war in Europe alone, Huebner turns to legacies of the American Civil War and Spanish-American War to explore how upholding traditions of family honor inspired native-born white American men to fight. For those without military heritages to inspire them, wartime culture paired men's martial and domestic obligations to construct military service as a duty that men performed to protect women. In turn, national discourses encouraged American mothers to selflessly offer up their sons as soldiers no matter the risk, while American soldiers expressed their belief that this sacrifice earned them the affection, loyalty, and love of an American woman.
Huebner conveys that despite initial prejudices and challenges, World War I military service worked to assimilate immigrants into American life. Racial discrimination, however, often prevented African American soldiers from enjoying the same entitlements as white soldiers, and in a war fought for democracy, racial prejudice became glaringly apparent. Huebner explores how African American soldiers challenged racial double standards despite the merciless consequences they often faced for doing so. For instance, wartime assaults on black women by whites often inspired violent retaliation from black soldiers who believed fighting for democracy should start at home. While African American soldiers crossed racial lines as they applied wartime ideals to their own lives, communities often praised women who joined the war effort as nurses for their patriotism, “civic virtue,” and “selflessness,” though many such women also challenged social expectations (77). Natalie Scott, for example, nursed soldiers in France, yet during a bombing raid she risked her life to protect her patients and she physically rescued four male soldiers. With this action, she became the only American woman to receive a Croix de Guerre with Bronze Star, which as Huebner explains, essentially “flipped the chivalric narrative” (264–65).
Love and Death in the Great War shows how individuals from many walks of life came together to fight a war motivated by a common set of ideals to risk their personal safety and even their lives. While personal narratives drive this book, Huebner supports these histories with statistical data, military records, and other sources that make clear the quantifiable conclusions we may draw from his representative sample. This book is a must-read for war and society scholars, and there is much of interest here for nonspecialists. It is a hotbed of lecture material and will be an especially thought-provoking addition for any graduate course. With Love and Death in the Great War, Huebner has added the World War I perspective to the historical literature that highlights how personal motivations inspired Americans to wage war.
