Re: Homefront English Language Pack
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Home front is an English language term with analogues in other languages.[1] It is commonly used to describe the full participation of the British public in World War I who suffered Zeppelin raids and endured food rations as part of what came to be called the "Home Front".[2]
Civilians are traditionally uninvolved in combat, except when the hostilities happen to reach their residential areas. However, the expanded destructive capabilities of modern warfare posed an increased direct threat to civilian populations. With the rapid increase of military technology, the term "military effort" has changed to include the "home front" as a reflection of both a civilian "sector" capacity to produce arms, as well as the structural or policy changes which deal with its vulnerability to direct attack.
This continuity of "military effort" from fighting combat troops to manufacturing facilities has profound effects for the concept of "total war". By this logic, if factories and workers producing material are part of the war effort, they become legitimate targets for attack, rather than protected non-combatants. Hence, in practice, both sides in a conflict attack civilians and civilian infrastructure, with the understanding that they are legitimate and lawful targets in war. This military view of civilian targets has effects on the equity of applied legal principles on which the prosecution of crimes against humanity are based.
The concept of civilians' involvement in war also developed in connection with general development and change of the ideological attitude to the state. In feudal society and also in absolute monarchy the state was perceived as essentially belonging to the monarch and the aristocracy, ruling over a mass of passive commoners; wars were perceived as a contest between rival rulers, conducted "above the head" of the commoners, who were expected to submit to the victor. However even given this, in feudal societies the income of estates and nations, and therefore the wealth and power of monarchs and aristocrats, was proportional to the number of commoners available to work the land. By killing, terrorizing, destroying property and driving away a nobleman's serfs, a tactic known as chevauche, an attacker could hope either to diminish the strength of an opponent or to force an opponent to give battle.
The importance of civilian manufacturing and support services in a nation's capacity to fight a war first became apparent during the twenty-five years of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars when the United Kingdom was able to finance and, to a lesser extent, arm and supply the various coalitions which opposed France. Although Britain had a much smaller population than France, its global maritime trade and its early industrialisation meant that its economy was much larger than that of France, which allowed Britain to offset the French manpower advantage.
During World War I, the British Shell Crisis of 1915 and the appointment of David Lloyd George as Minister of Munitions was a recognition that the whole economy would have to be geared for war if the Allies were to prevail on the Western Front. The United States home front during World War I saw the first ring World War II.
During the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, Soviet soldiers and civilians moved their industries out of reach of the advancing Germans (sometimes disassembling and reassembling entire factories) and began turning out vast numbers of T-34 tanks, Il-2 attack aircraft, and other weapons.
We have created an information page about this park that has been translated into multiple languages. Over time, we plan to add more details in each language, but for now, we hope these pages help you to learn about visiting the Rosie the Riveter/WWII Home Front National Historical Park. Please click on the link of your preferred language.
Please Note: Our goal is to be accurate and respectful with our translations into your langauge. We apologize for any errors. You may contact us if you have any feedback about a translation. We will be adding additional languages and content, over time.
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There were two types of profanity that emerged at this time: euphemisms and explicit profanity. Examples of euphemisms include Tom-tit, Jane Shore, four letter man, and NBG. To civilians, these terms did not have any meaning, but in the trenches, these words were widely used and known by all. Tom-tit was another word for sh*t; Jane Shore was used to describe a promiscuous woman; four letter man was a man who was of bad character; and NBG meant no bloody good. These terms emerged as a way for soldiers to describe how they were feeling without having to be as graphic or vulgar in their speech. This was also a way for them to disguise what they were saying from other troops outside the Canadian forces.
In a way, the trenches became a linguistic free-for-all for soldiers, where they could speak in any way they desired. At home, this language would have been considered disrespectful, especially in front of women, but because there were few women involved in their daily activities during the war, the men did not feel as though they needed to censor themselves, and they expressed their masculinity with their vulgar language.
Although soldiers did not openly admit to their excessive profanity use, the songs that they sang within the trenches tended to include swearing. The image of song lyrics above shows some of these terms, such as arse and f*ck. This song illustrates how frequent the use of profanity was, as most lines contain some type of profanity.
As war began in August 1914, uses of carry (and carry on) were, as we might expect, plentiful. Carry on had already been given three senses by Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary of 1755; the recent entry in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (in a section published in 1888) had expanded this to five. Discussion of the need to carry on the war, to carry on work, or to carry on the fight or struggle are easily found. Carrying on is made a serious business often collocating with words of industry and labour. As in the example below, uses of this kind required a direct or indirect object.
As language history proves, business as usual would, in fact, assume a life of its own, often being used without the accompanying verb. Importantly, the same is also true of carry on in war-time usage. An interesting example of this separation appears in the Times in July 1915:
The summer of 1916 nevertheless brought a new and discrete sense into operation. As the original OED explained in a strikingly contemporary note, summer time had, in this respect, recently been redefined by parliamentary decree:
An Act to provide for the Time in Great Britain and Ireland being in advance of Greenwich and Dublin mean time respectively in the summer months..This Act may be cited as the Summer Time Act, 1916.
The enemy poured a deluge of shrapnel and high explosive shells from their heavy guns, and to escape annihilation our men had to fling themselves into depressions, or take cover in the dead ground of the slopes of the hills (Scotsman, October 1914)
War weather can, however, also be used in quite literal senses, and in ways which became especially pertinent for Britain in 1916. That certain types of weather could be advantageous for attack, and specifically for attack by air, had, for instance, received comment from early in the war. As the Daily Express had noted, here in describing an aerial attack on Ostend and Ghent in September 1914:
Suggestions that Britain, too, might be subject to attacks by air had earlier prompted caustic charges of Zeppelinphobia (a word used to suggest an unwarranted and groundless fear). By 1916, however, Zeppelin attacks were all too real, as was air raid itself (as noun and adjective) used in the specific sense of an attack made on non-combatants by enemy aircraft. While the deterrent effect of air reprisals remained a popular topic of debate, notions of air defence (in another new formation of the war) are therefore also of marked interest for language and history alike. Knowing the right weather for war could, in this light, be highly topical. As the Daily Express concluded in February 1916:
Lynda Mugglestone is Professor of the History of English at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. She has published widely on the history of the English, and on the social, cultural, and ideological issues that words and dictionary-making can reveal. Publications include Lost for Words. The Hidden History of the Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionaries. A Very Short Introduction , The Oxford History of English (updated edition, 2012) and Samuel Johnson and the Journey into Words. The book of the Words in War-Time Project was published as Writing a War of Words. Andrew Clark and the Search for Meaning in WWI in 2021. Thanks are due to the Leverhulme Fund for the award of a research fellowship to support this project and the resulting book.
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Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD)
Also known as IRA Charitable Rollovers, QCDs allow individuals age 70 or older to use their IRAs to maximize their charitable impact while minimizing taxable income. How, you ask? An IRA is typically the largest source of assets generating taxable income when paid to a beneficiary. Whether you want to make a QCD gift to Operation Homefront today, request a tax acknowledgment letter for a gift already made, or just learn more about QCDs, you can find resources you can find resources here.