ABSTRACT
Few events left a greater mark on the modern metropolis than the industrial wars of the twentieth century. While no place was safe, the great cities were in the forefront in the transition to the era of total warfare: they were sites of heightened anticipation, dense experience and concentrated commemoration of military conflict. Yet the metropolitan dimension of total war remains an underexamined theme of both urban and military history. Mainstream urban historians and historical geographers have shown only a peripheral interest in the subject matter, perhaps because war appears an aberration on the urban path towards modernity.1 Urban historians have generally more to say about the electrification of cities than the periods when, often quite literally, ‘the lights went out’. To be sure, certain facets of the relationship between total war and the metropolis have been studied in some depth (notably, post-war replanning and rebuilding), but the overall picture emerges in a fragmentary way. The Historical Urban Studies have left few corners of the city unexplored, but, significantly, this is the first volume in the series to address the impact of total war on urban space.2
