Great. Now I have a Berlin song stuck in my head.

🎶I remember a soldier sleeping next to me/Riding on the metro-o-o🎶

check this live version! www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiJL...

I hear that in countries like the US the trains do run on time. Hope that’s helpful.

📌

if there are any, I bet @drdrehistorian.bsky.social would know

Hmm, I mainly know the Aus/NZ historiography, where war looms as an external strain on use and investment in public transport—there is sadly very little on the use of railways as "pacifying" the King Country after the end of open fighting in the NZ Wars and integrating it into the settler state

Other historians have examined transportation during war more broadly: Civil War scholars studied how railroads and wagons transformed military logistics and civilian life. www.blair-murrah.org/the-american...

She argues that WWII reinforced a culture of driving while exposing the vulnerabilities of car-centered societies, and that public transit became a site of racial conflict and shifting mobility norms.

Sarah Frohardt-Lane, whose dissertation Race, Public Transit, and Automobility in World War II Detroit explores how wartime resource shortages reshaped public transit systems and social tensions.

that's a good one

along the same lines, there is also: Donald F. Davis and Barbara Lorenzkowski, "A Platform for Gender Tensions: Women Working and Riding on Canadian Urban Public Transit in the 1940s," Canadian Historical Review (1998) #cdnhist

I know @hcrichardson.bsky.social was talking about the control on her vid post.

Might want to check the foot/endnotes of Kenneth Jackson's Crabgrass Frontier. Good book, too.

@alanallport.bsky.social may know this. Blitz historians have certainly done a ton on the Underground being converted into air-raid shelters.

This might be of interest: www.casematepublishers.com/978139906317...

This is a fucking fascinating question I wish I had thought of

Maybe @andreapitzer.bsky.social knows?

I know some about public transport in concentration camp regimes (which sometimes coincide with war), but haven't done specific research on the war-but-not-camps settings. I'll try to think of someone who has...

cc @rmartincole.bsky.social

Attn: @yonahfreemark.com

Certainly some will have strong opinions on French taxis during early WW1.

Does the movement of French armies from Paris to the front via taxicab in 1914 count?

by armies?

Everything has a history, so everything has (at least) one historian.

You've been listening to last week's The Rest Is History podcast episode on WWI about how ze Germans used Belgian railways to invade France, haven't you?

Came here to say this too. Also, it's just a great podcast in general.

One of the best in any category! Their accounts of The French Revolution, the lead-up to WWII and what led to the battle of Hastings completely changed my perspective on things I knew very well.

i haven't, but i will now

Don't forget the taxis of Paris. www.smithsonianmag.com/history/flee...

The WWII Museum in NOLA might be able to help you find some scholars...you might also look at it from a rationing point of view since there were coupons for tires and people were encouraged to take the subway in Boston especially to the Navy Yard etc

press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

Brian Ladd has done both Germany and automobiles/urban planning so he may be a source.

There’s also a reasonable amount on women’s war work and staffing public transport—a quick summary of London & same here, and of course there’s plenty out there on other places

Sometimes I teach students about the 1944 Philadelphia transit strike, in which white workers imperiled the war effort in protest that Black workers would be promoted: philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/phila... exhibits.temple.edu/s/civil-righ...

I know a guy who does just clean rooms/tech and a (brilliant, stunning, unbelievably good and kind) woman who does markets and food riots in Barcelona: someone out there does, for sure.

Good question. Feeling that vibe today myself.

Maybe @hcrichardson.bsky.social knows or knows someone who does? Perhaps the tribe from Yale that fled to Canada? 🫤

Cc @jimaloisi.bsky.social

like, public transportation generally, and war generally? Hmmm. I can think of some names, but it's more like they've written about specific wars and/or specific modes. I'd send you to T2M first. t2m.org They're very international and interdisciplinary.

@zacharyschrag.bsky.social you want to make some recommendations?

oh I see @vscharff.bsky.social is reading this thread too. What do you think?

I wrote about women driving in World War I, and have written about the Montgomery Bus Boycott, but haven’t done as much with public transport as I would like. I’m trying to think about who might have done work in that area and am sticking on this thread to find out!

Of course, the great Barbara Welke has touched on these topics repeatedly. Here's her bio: cla.umn.edu/about/direct...

@hcrichardson.bsky.social

Tim Dunn would probably be able to point you to some. www.facebook.com/timdunnagain

I would ask @bretdevereaux.bsky.social

www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...

I think you'd need to be more specific. In Nazi Germany, for example, all transportation became "public", i.e. under the control of the RVM.

One book that touches on this is Lincoln on the Verge which covers the importance of the railway, with continuous service in the north, to transit and also the distribution of newspapers which got info to the masses.

The south deliberately did not allow train tracks to connect from one line to another because they didn’t want to be connected to the north, and they wouldn’t allow the line to go into what would become TX. So the Civil War was largely waged first as a sort of transportation war. Fascinating book.

Oh, and the book is written by a professor…

One of the Historians at the archives of Ontario studies public transit in Toronto.

I'm thinking @garius.bsky.social would be a good starting point

Yup, plenty of good stuff out there! Gets quite niche as well (which is nice).

Obviously lots of differences based on nation as well (as you'd imagine, wartime public transport use in London is VERY different from, say, the Los Angeles experience)

Have you asked @kevinmkruse.bsky.social?

This feels like it’s @garius.bsky.social adjacent.

I just went to scholar.google.com and queried "public transportation use during wartime." Check out those results.

i often think there should be more on gasoline, tire, and parts rationing for autos. its a topic students always enjoy. on the us govt's effort to slow gas consumption, see Bradley Flamm "Putting the Brakes on ‘Non-Essential’ Travel: 1940s Wartime Mobility, Prosperity, and the US Office of Defense"

You might want to look into England in WWI as well as things stateside.

@caitlindeangelis.bsky.social, do you know of any?

not sure if this is what you’re looking for but you could talk to almost any civil war historian and they could tell you about the use of trains with troop movement.