Soldiers, Bombs and Rifles: Military History of the 20th Century

Abstract

Though twentieth century historians have often considered military historians a variable to be reckoned with, the study of weapons and armies has nevertheless been seen as an “asset” to those who research political, social and cultural phenomena. After all, the scholars who work in this field end up studying, collecting, and most importantly, providing data. However, those who study armed conflicts from a broad perspective (which is, in fact, of a political, social or cultural nature) have often viewed military issues as a somewhat closed or concrete sphere; while the field leads to useful interpretations, these have always been seen as either subordinate in some way, since they are limited to or projected in the framework of a specific context, or decisive, yet isolated factors which disregard underlying, widely-accepted trends. However, there seem to be more and more convincing reasons for rethinking the position of military history among the methodological approaches used to study, understand and interpret twentieth century history...