During and after the First World War, authors in several of the main belligerent nations presented the war as a young man's war. The young man's war proved to be a powerful trope, and a myth emerged about the typical trench soldier as handsome, white, and eighteen. In this article, I examine literature about the Great War across several nations – primarily Germany, Great Britain, and France – to demonstrate how and why youth became embedded in the collective memory and representation of the war. I argue, in part, that notions of youth in the early twentieth century allowed participating nations to emphasise innocence and tragedy, claiming the moral high ground in the process. As a result, it is now difficult to accurately depict the First World War soldiers as fathers as well as sons, husbands as well as fiancés, men with careers as well as boys fresh from school. The generation of 1914 must be conceived more broadly, which would disallow easy teleologies to later tragic events in the 1930s.

中文翻译：

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第一次世界大战与西欧青年战争的神话

第一次世界大战期间和之后，几个主要交战国的作者将这场战争描述为年轻人的战争。这个年轻人的战争被证明是一个强大的比喻，一个关于典型的战壕士兵英俊、白人和十八岁的神话出现了。在这篇文章中，我研究了几个国家（主要是德国、英国和法国）关于一战的文献，以展示青年如何以及为何融入战争的集体记忆和表征中。我认为，部分原因是 20 世纪初的青年观念使参与国能够强调纯真和悲剧，并在此过程中占据道德制高点。因此，现在很难准确地将第一次世界大战的士兵描绘成父亲、儿子、丈夫和未婚夫，有事业的男人和刚从学校毕业的男孩。1914 年的一代必须被更广泛地设想，这将不允许对 1930 年代后来的悲剧事件进行简单的目的论。