An image of a book cover titled "BELARUSIAN NATION-BUILDING in Times of War and Revolution" by Lizaveta Kasmach. The background is a dark brown, leather-like texture. The word "BELARUSIAN" is in white text, "NATION-BUILDING" is in red, and the subtitle is in smaller white text. In the centre is an ornate, highly detailed coat of arms featuring a central red shield with a knight on horseback, surrounded by elaborate gold, green, and blue scrollwork containing several smaller shields. The author's name is at the bottom left, and the "CEU PRESS" logo is at the bottom right.

First, @marktkettler.bsky.social reviews Andrew H. Kless's "Broken Ground: Building Germany's Occupation of Poland in the First World War". Kettler highlights that the German occupation was not a systematic colonial project, but rather a confused, improvised bureaucracy.

We should require all AI generated text to be printed in Comic sans!

If you don’t take your writing seriously, I want to know immediately!

Broken Ground: Building Germany’s Occupation of Poland in the First World War Published in First World War Studies (Ahead of Print, 2026)

In "Broken Ground: Building Germany's Occupation of Poland in the First World War", Andrew Kless offers critical reading for historians of German war aims, occupation, or the war in general.

Read my full review for First World War Studies.

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/WRJRH...

This was a well-crafted and important piece of scholarship. I strongly recommend it for scholars of military occupation, German imperialism, and the First World War. Schluß.

Kless's account thus reinforces our increasingly textured understanding of German imperial policy during the First World War, agreeing with Jesse Kauffman's interpretation in "Elusive Alliance". 9/

The Polenpolitik that emerged under the leadership of Interior Secretary Clemens von Delbrück increasingly approached the occupied civilian population as potentially friendly. The Civil Administration sought to revive local mining, forestry, and industry. 8/

D) Kless’s account has significant implications. Germany’s occupation policy during the first year of the war was rapidly improvised. It did not enact the systematic plunder of occupied territory nor did it pursue a colonial or Germanizing project. 7/

But the resolution to these disputes left important questions unanswered, structural problems unresolved. 6/

C) The Civil Administration and imperial government, Kless argues, won important early victories in these debates. Prussian interests were subordinated to imperial priorities. Military leaders did not manage to assert unqualified access to Polish food and resources. 5/

The imperial government also constantly battled back an overambitious Prussian government, which correctly understood that Polish settlement would influence their own nationalities policy in Prussia’s eastern provinces. 4/

The occupation government, for example, struggled to rein in military foraging and requisitions. These siphoned food and other resources from local economies already battered by the war and contributed to widespread hunger in the spring of 1915. 3/

B) As a result, the Civil administration which emerged, Kless points out, did not reflect a coherent set of priorities. It was torn between competing factional interests, often contradictory priorities, and jurisdictional disputes. 2/

Kless makes several important interventions.

A) Germany did not arrive in Russian Poland with any clear war aims, much less a coherent occupation strategy. Decisions were improvised on the ground, on a shoe-string, with an administration cobbled together from bits and bobs. 1/

Broken Ground: Building Germany’s Occupation of Poland in the First World War Published in First World War Studies (Ahead of Print, 2026)

In "Broken Ground: Building Germany's Occupation of Poland in the First World War", Andrew Kless offers critical reading for historians of German war aims, occupation, or the war in general.

Read my full review for First World War Studies.

www.tandfonline.com/eprint/WRJRH...

My school, a top research university, gives us access to an institutional AI bot, HopGPT. As an experiment, I just asked it for the most important *academic* works on WWII. It gave me a list of 8 books. The first was Churchill, followed by David Irving, then Primo Levi. We are so, so screwed

Historians of Central and Eastern Europe! On this feast of Saints Cyril and Methodius, consider submitting a proposal for "Encountering the European 'East'", our seminar at this year's GSA in Phoenix.

Deadline’s coming up! Proposals must be submitted to the GSA application portal by 18 February. Please circulate widely.

ICYMI:📢🚨CFP: "Encountering the European ‘East’: Imagination and Practice." seminar for
@thegsa.bsky.social

We explore the contradictory ways in which Europeans imagined the ‘East’, and how their encounters with these regions transformed interpretations and projects.
www.thegsa.org/blog/cfa-gsa...

📢 🚨CFP: "Encountering the European ‘East’: Imagination and Practice." a seminar for @thegsa.bsky.social

We explore the contradictory ways in which Europeans imagined the ‘East’, and how their encounters with these regions transformed interpretations and projects.

www.thegsa.org/blog/cfa-gsa...

Oh man! we went back and forth on it! And i really wish we could have you in the seminar!

John Deak, Jesse Kauffman, Gregor Thum, and I are convening the seminar.

We welcome variety of approaches, including research on commerce, cultural contact, state-led development, nation-building, and empire.

Proposals must be submitted to the GSA's OpenWater Submission Portal by 18 February.

Please circulate widely.

📢 🚨CFP: "Encountering the European ‘East’: Imagination and Practice." a seminar for @thegsa.bsky.social

We explore the contradictory ways in which Europeans imagined the ‘East’, and how their encounters with these regions transformed interpretations and projects.

www.thegsa.org/blog/cfa-gsa...

📢 Now Open: #theGSA2026 Seminars

Applications are now open for participation in the GSA 2026 Seminars at our 50th annual conference in Phoenix, AZ!

📝 Apply via the OpenWater submission portal
🗓 Application deadline: February 18, 2026
👉 Seminar topics & full details: thegsa.org/blog/cfa-gsa...

A Death of Despair in Wisborg – Senses of Cinema

On Christmas 2024, Robert Eggers released his adaptation of Nosferatu. What does this latest version of the Dracula story reveal about our dread and the evolving terrors of modernity?

www.sensesofcinema.com/2025/feature...

We lost something when we stopped adapting classic literature with Muppets. Where is Muppet “Frankenstein”, Muppet “Pride & Prejudice”, Muppet “War and Peace”?

Global History Colloquium: Matt Fitzpatrick (Flinders University) on

I'm giving a talk on Monday in Berlin for those around.
**** Global History Colloquium: Matt Fitzpatrick (Flinders University) on "The Diplomacy of Colonial Cruelty: German Samoa and the Treatment of Chinese Labourers" *** share.google/s7sxXYD6xJmm...

I will be teaching my grad seminar on nationalism next semester, and I was wondering if anyone had recommendations on works concerning nationalism and internationalism. I'm open to books or articles on any region/time period. Thanks! 🗃️

Just one more!

These would later inspire the visual style of Fritz Murnau's 2-part epic, Die Niebelungen