An Argentine reporter in the European trenches: Lieut. Col. Emilio Kinkelin?s war chronicles

MARÍA INÉS TATO; LUIS ESTEBAN DALLA FONTANA

The Global First World War. African, East Asian, Latin American and Iberian Mediators

Routledge

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2021; p. 164 - 185

Between 1914 and 1918, Emilio Kinkelin - an officer ofthe Argentine Army - travelled around the Western and the Eastern Fronts of theGreat War and offered his impressions on this direct experience of modernwarfare to the readers of the Buenos Aires newspaper La Nación. In a sense, he acted as a mediator between the crudeevents of the conflict and neutral Argentina. Hischronicles are interesting for different reasons. In the first place, hisprofessional training as a soldier provided him with the ideal tools to observethe transformations introduced by the Great War. In the second place, unlikeother correspondents who had a limited geographical and temporal range ofaction, Kinkelin had access to both the Western and the Eastern Fronts foralmost the entire war. Finally, he transmitted an interpretation of theconflict and a representation of Germany in contrast with the pro-Allied attitudeof the Argentine press and public opinion.