„Our people are inventive...”

„Desk inventors” on the eve of World War II. 1938–1941.

Abstract

Desk general, coffee house Conrad... the figure of the outsider meddling in military and war issues has always been part of active public opinion, and the extent to which they were present in our era is evidenced by the fact that our language has created a separate word for them. There may be several reasons for this. Partly because the wars of the modern era, especially since World War I, have surpassed all previous wars in scale and intensity, and because civilian society provided the manpower to supplement the armed forces, it became involved, and thus, with its voice amplified by mass communication, it felt it had the right and competence to form an opinion. In addition to being affected by the war, this was reinforced by the defeat in the war and the tragedy of Trianon, which became a matter of concern for society as a whole. This gave everyone the „right” to participate in finding a solution.

An important element of the solution was preparation for a new war, which meant a kind of nationwide level of ideas about future warfare and military technology. Official military thinking can be clearly traced in the military literature and archival sources of the period, but there are also proof of a „folk search for a way.”

While researching documents in Department 3b of the Royal Ministry of Defense, I noticed a peculiar group of documents as a kind of by-product of my research. These were descriptions of military inventions submitted to the ministry, typically written by individuals outside the armed forces. In my presentation, I will use these documents to present and analyze the results of „folk” military science at that time.