Ottoman Entry Into WWI

I’ve begun my next course, this one on World War I. Only five discussion posts in this class, but a longer research agenda is coming soon.

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Of the countries participating in World War I, perhaps no country was undergoing quite as extensive a shift in national identity at the time as the Ottoman Empire. For hundreds of years a multi-national, multi-religious (although Muslim majority) empire run by a Turkish elite, a series of wars beginning in the early 18th century had taken their toll on the empire’s territorial integrity. These losses were most precipitous in North Africa and the Balkans, so that by 1912, the empire’s European holdings consisted only of parts of Albania, Bulgaria, and Serbia and the Greek areas of Thrace, Macedonia, and Epirus — and these territories were all lost by 1913. As a result of this contraction in territory, the Young Turks, in theory a modernizing party with ecumenical interests that had seized power in a 1908 revolution, turned to Turkish nationalism as a way of galvanizing the population around the national idea as a way of preventing further losses.[1] From the standpoint of Clausewitz‘s “trinity” of government — government, military, and popular “passions”[2] — the Young Turks’  nationalist campaign can be understood as a linchpin in the Ottomans’ decision to enter World War I and the side it chose.

Regarding government, the Young Turks as the ruling party saw its primary goal as the prevention of further territorial loss from the empire. However, it was not only wars that threatened the empire. The population of Anatolia — now viewed by the Young Turks as the launching ground for a larger pan-Turanian movement — was ethnically and religiously divided, particularly in the eastern provinces. There, in addition to Arabs and Kurds, who were Muslims, there were large populations of Christians, mostly Armenian, who were a focus of resentment exploited by the Young Turks to unify ethnic Turks.  Subjected to periodic massacres by previous governments, most recently in 1909, the Armenians sought international protection, which came in the form of a quasi-protectorate created in the six provinces in which Armenians constituted a majority, the security of which was guaranteed by Russia and France, the latter of whom held a large proportion of the empire’s debt.[3] While theoretically intolerable to nationalists like the Young Turks, the leadership had no option but to accept the “solution” imposed in February 1914 but knew a war would free its hand to alter the demographic situation through radical social engineering. This desire dictated, to no small extent, the Ottomans’  decision to side with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the war.[4]

However, military concerns were also important. Here, in addition to the aforementioned unwelcome influence of Russia in the eastern provinces, there was already Russian expansion into the Caucasus, including Georgia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Armenia, that threatened the eastern border directly. In addition, given the Orthodox  and Slavic causes that led Russia to enter the war on Serbia’s side, Russian intervention in the Balkans could directly threaten the imperial capital of Constantinople, which was still the most important city in Orthodox Christianity despite annexation by the Ottomans in the 15th century. This interest on Russia’s part was not merely religious; control of Constantinople meant control of the Dardanelles and, by extension, control over the entire Black Sea. Thus, Russia and the Ottomans both had economic motives underlying the military incentives that they saw as essential to their war goals. Thus, by allying with Russia’s enemies, the Ottomans hoped to maintain control of its remaining territory and perhaps extend its influence in the Caucasus.[5]

The most complicated piece of Clausewitz’s formulation is the “passion”  component. By 1914, the Ottoman population was extraordinarily war-weary. To this extent, therefore, the Ottoman people were certainly not clamoring for war when it broke out.  As a result, it was necessary for the Ottoman leadership to deploy two strategies to motivate the population. First, it was necessary, with German prodding, for the caliphate to declare that the war against the Entente was a jihad, and thus a religious obligation for all Muslims. Although this call motivated some, the response to this call was generally anemic; it also decidedly lacked an effect on non-Muslim populations in the empire, who were still fairly numerous.[6] Therefore, the second strategy of identifying internal enemies — particularly in the form of the Armenians to also extended to non-Turks generally at certain points — as fifth columns participating in the empire’s collapse. This was an effective strategy in so far as these populations also existed on the other side of the empire’s borders with Russia and Persia. Of course, it also resulted in murderous violence against the Armenian population, who, in keeping with the political motivations for war, were expelled en masse from their homes toward the Syrian desert and subjected to massacres along the way.

In conclusion, while political and military considerations are easy to identify for the Ottoman Empire in its choices at the beginning of World War I, the issue of popular enthusiasm was decidedly lacking. Unlike other participants in the war, rather than a primary goal of expanding its territory, the empire sought to prevent even further losses and to reverse what it considered to be foreign encroachment on its sovereignty. However, like the other participants, nationalism was a key component in the attempts to prevent such losses. The extent to which this nationalism was embraced by the population varied over time, although it eventually became the national ideology of the modern Turkish republic. Nevertheless, it did not save the empire from complete disintegration.

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     [1] Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 4.
     [2] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford UP, 2007), 1.
     [3] Notably, entering the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary afforded the Ottoman Empire the opportunity to renege on repaying this debt.
     [4] Eugene L. Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2015), chapter 3, page 5, EPUB.
     [5] Ibid, chapter 2, page 5.
     [6] Ibid, chapter 5, page 42.

Austrian Coup of 1934

Conventional wisdom has tended to see the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938 as inevitable, given the strong historical, cultural, and political ties between Germany and Austria. Indeed, the Anschluss was welcomed by many Austrians, who had desired union with Germany since the end of World War I and who shared the Nazis’ pan-German, authoritarian, and anti-Semitic beliefs. However, less than four years earlier, on July 25, 1934, an attempted National Socialist coup against the government of Austria was an abysmal failure. Why the so-called July Putsch failed can be understood as the result of Nazi Germany’s inability to appreciate the complexities of Austria’s authoritarian right wing and its resistance to key aspects of the Nazi Weltanschauung (world view). Examining the coup in its three stages demonstrates some of these complexities.
Background to the Coup
Almost from the moment that Hitler became Chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, he indicated the desire to annex Austria.[1]However, several factors worked against this desire. Perhaps most importantly, Austria and Germany had been forbidden to unite politically under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In addition, loans extended to Austria from the League of Nations, which had been instrumental in keeping the country economically viable during the 1920s, had similarly stipulated that Anschluss would continue to be forbidden. Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss had reiterated the agreement not to unite with Germany under the terms of a second loan from the League, which he managed to push through the Austrian legislature by two votes in the summer of 1933.[2]
Nevertheless, not all of the forces were against Anschluss. Most importantly, as noted, a significant proportion of the Austrian population desired annexation by Germany and had since the end of World War I. On October 1, 1921, the National Assembly had voted for Anschluss, only to be rebuked by the League of Nations. Moreover, of the three major political parties in Austria at the time, two of them — the left-wing Social-democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) and the right-wing German-nationalist Greater German People’s Party — viewed union favorably, albeit the former with certain stipulations. In addition, the small but growing National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) was pro-Anschluss. Only the right-wing Christian Social Party of Chancellor Dollfuss opposed annexation by Germany.[3]
For the first three months of Hitler’s term in office, however, the matter did not reach a crucial level. The NSDAP in Austria had logged significant gains in regional elections in 1932, and the belief grew among the party in both Germany and Austria that power could be gained by the NSDAP in Austria through electoral means, in much the same manner as it had in Germany. Dollfuss, for a variety of reasons, wanted desperately to prevent such a turn of events. Therefore, when a constitutional opportunity to dissolve the legislature arose in May 1933, Dollfuss exploited it and, on May 4, expressed his intention to rule by decree. Over the course of the following year, Dollfuss would fashion an authoritarian state based largely on the model supplied by Benito Mussolini’s fascist Italy.[4]
Hitler’s reaction to Dollfuss’s decision to suspend the legislature was to adopt a three-pronged attack on Austria, combining economic sanctions (principally a thousand-mark fee imposed on travel to Austria, which crippled Austria’s major tourism industry), broad use of pro-Nazi, anti-Dollfuss propaganda by radio, and terrorism committed by members of the NSDAP in Austria.[5]The country had already been facing political violence for years: Helmut Konrad of the University of Graz (Austria) has estimated that a political murder occurred in interwar Austria every two weeks.[6]With the Nazi terror campaign, the problem compounded significantly. Fearing for his country, Dollfuss banned the NSDAP in Austria and undertook a diplomatic campaign to support Austrian independence, finding that his most vehement supporter was Mussolini, who feared Nazi irredentist claims on the South Tyrol, the formerly Austrian territory that had been awarded to Italy at the Paris Peace Conference.[7]
Mussolini, for his own part, assured Dollfuss at a meeting in Riccione, Italy, on August 19, 1933, that Italy would intervene on Austria’s behalf. In return, Mussolini asked that Dollfuss eliminate the political left in Austria. This opportunity presented itself on February 12 of the following year, when the SPÖ militia, the Republikaner Schutzbund, launched an armed uprising against Dollfuss’s rule. The uprising was brutally crushed, and the SPÖ was subsequently banned, leaving Dollfuss free to combat the NSDAP and consolidate his own authoritarian rule. A formal alliance with Italy and Hungary was entered in March. Hitler and Mussolini discussed the situation in Austria at their first meeting on June 14 but came to no agreements. Hitler admired Mussolini and wanted to avoid conflict with him. Plus, the German military was still weak.[8]
Consequently, Hitler opted to allow for an NSDAP coup in Austria. The coup leaders, seeing Dollfuss as weak and unpopular and believing strongly in growing support for their movement in the Austrian populace at large, elected to decapitate the government in Vienna and replace Dollfuss with one of their own. Any resistance, they imagined, would be easily crushed by armed Sturmabteilung (SA) units throughout the country, which had been arming despite being forced underground. Mussolini would accept the NSDAP coup once it was too late to roll it back, they believed.
Assault on the Chancellery
We know the intentions of the July Putsch in part because of the so-called Kollerschlag Document, which was found on an Austrian SA member attempting to cross the border back into Germany after the coup attempt failed. Although it was coded, the SA member was carrying the key as well, which was also found during the search. Although tactics on the first stage of the putsch are lacking, the strategy is clear: Dollfuss was to be deposed as Chancellor and the “period of inertia” that followed his resignation would be used for the SA to seize power.[9]
Ultimately, the tactic chosen to force Dollfuss’s resignation was an armed attack on the Chancellery in Vienna. This attack was carried out by a special unit of the Schutzstaffel (SS), the SS-Standarte 89, which itself had been an Austrian SA unit until a couple of months earlier.[10]The coup leaders had believed that, in striking in the particular time and date chosen, they would seize not only the chancellor but also his entire cabinet, which was scheduled to meet at the time. In addition, it was known that the vice chancellor, Ernst Starhemberg, who was also a prominent figure in the Heimwehrindependent right-wing militia, was in Italy on a state visit, so he would not be able to take over the government in his absence.[11]
While we will never know whether the coup against Dollfuss as planned would have been successful without the chancellor being killed, events did not unfold as intended. A large proportion of the responsibility for this failure in planning falls to Johann Dobler, a Vienna police inspector and member of the Austrian NSDAP, who developed pangs of conscience on the morning of July 25 and reached out to Emil Fey, the previous vice chancellor under Dollfuss and a current minister without portfolio, as well as a prominent Heimwehr leader. Although Dobler was not able to reach Fey, he met with Karl Wrabel, an aide to Fey, at a Vienna café later that morning and alerted him to the coup to take place that day. Wrabel subsequently made contact with Fey, who warned Dollfuss, who in turn dismissed the cabinet and tried to mobilize police to beat back the coming attack.[12]
When the assault team arrived at the Chancellery between noon and one in the afternoon, Dollfuss was shot twice almost immediately at close range and bled to death over the course of the next two hours. Angry at having been foiled in seizing the whole cabinet and specifically mad at Dollfuss, who refused to resign, the SS men with him refused to call a priest to administer the late rites of the church. As these events unfolded, elsewhere in the city, the President of the Republic, Wilhelm Miklas, named as chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, then serving as Foreign Minister, because Starhemberg was not in the country. At the same time, Fey mobilized the Heimwehr and police against the coup leaders, who surrendered before seven that evening.[13]
Dollfuss’s assassination notwithstanding, the first stage of the coup — the attempt to decapitate the government — failed. Understanding why it failed offers some insight into how the Nazis had misjudged the nature of Austria’s authoritarian right wing. Julie Thorpe of the University of Western Sydney (Australia) has offered a sort of taxonomy of the authoritarian right in interwar Austria. Opposing the traditional Lager (camp) theory of interwar Austrian politics, Thorpe instead characterizes the Dollfuss movement as explicitly fascist and pan-German, with the latter ideology distinguished among the Christian Socials as a Danubian pan-German imperialism based in Vienna, rather than a strictly völkisch(i.e., ethnic) pan-Germanism based in Berlin. Thorpe writes, “Austrian proponents of a pan-German identity claimed that the Austrian state was the fullest expression of German hegemony over non-German nationalities and of a German historical mission in Central Europe.”[14]Consequently, while the Nazis might have seen the Christian Social electorate as sympathetic on the basis of its fascist authoritarianism and pan-Germanism, they misjudged the specifically Austrian-Viennese nature of this ideology.
Moreover, the loyalty of the Heimwehr, to whom Dobler as informant reached out, was emblematic of this erroneous assessment of the Nazis. Bruce Pauley of the University of Central Florida, in elucidating the history of Austrian National Socialism, has also treated the history of the Heimwehr at some length. In May 1930, the Heimwehr had publicly sworn the so-called Korneuburg Oath, which included explicitly fascist and pan-German expressions of ideology.[15]The following year, the Austrian Nazis and the Heimwehr organization in the federal state of Styria formed a Kampfgemeinschaft (fighting alliance).[16] Here, the Nazis seem to have misjudged the Heimwehr as a whole on the basis of the actions of its Styrian wing. Nazi ideology in Austria was always more popular in regions of Austria bordering non-German nations, including Styria, Burgenland, Carinthia, and parts of Tyrol. Believing that the sympathies of the Styrian Heimwehr existed in the Heimwehr in, e.g., Vienna or Salzburg was a fatal miscalculation.
Finally, there was a miscalculation on the Nazis’ part with regard to their own organizations. As noted above, while the SA was the primary armed organization executing the coup nationwide, it was a former SA unit now subordinated to the SS that began the assault in Vienna. Importantly, less than one month before the July Putsch, the SA had been violently purged in Germany on the famous “Night of the Long Knives” of June 30, 1934. Anger about the purge spread to the SA in Austria, and as noted by prominent German historian Peter Longerich, “Although the Austrian SA had promised the plotters its support in principle, the Viennese SA failed to come to the assistance of their unpopular SS comrades.”[17]
The Uprising in the Provinces
We know that the coup leaders in Vienna attempted and failed to seize a radio station in Vienna on July 25, from which they would have broadcast Dollfuss’s removal from office as a signal for SA units throughout Austria to seize power on a local basis. On this point, the Kollerschlag document states, “On news of Dollfuss’ resignation, the entire SA will immediately and without further instructions undertake ‘unarmed propaganda marches’ … for the purpose immediately occupying public offices and buildings in the provincial capitals and local administrative centres [sic] and of seizing power.”[18]Elsewhere, it is stipulated, “Armed confrontation with the police or gendarmerie is preferably to be avoided for as long as possible. Where it proves necessary, however, it is to be carried out with the utmost vigour [sic] and maximum forces. Clashes with the Federal Army are to be avoided if at all possible.”[19]
This stage of the coup failed as well. Part of this failure can be attributed to Nazi misjudgment of the sympathies of the Heimwehr, which was mobilized with the Austrian army nationwide against the Nazis. However, the reasons for the failure of the coup in the provinces ran deeper. Writing to the German foreign ministry on July 31, just one day after the coup was put down finally, Hans Steinacher, head of Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland, a Berlin-based government organization dedicated to engendering German unity outside of Germany’s borders, laid out the reasons for the coup’s failure. After indicating the mistakes of staging the coup while the vice chancellor was out of the country and of not preparing an option to abort the plan, Steinacher remarks, “The ‘masses’ are lacking. We are unable to prove that they exist and, at the moment when the matter was becoming really dangerous Italy intervened.”[20]Clearly, there was no popular support for the Nazi coup beyond the Nazi party itself.
Here, the assassination of the chancellor itself seems have been a key mobilizing factor. As noted above, Dollfuss had been refused a priest for last rites by the SS. According to Philip Scheriau, in his Master’s thesis written at the University of Vienna, this information was transmitted to the deeply Catholic Austrian population via newspapers both domestically and internationally before the coup attempt was even completed. The core of Scheriau’s thesis states that “Dollfuss is represented in the [newspaper] coverage as a martyr in two primary ways. On the one hand, he is a hero who fell in the fight for his country, and on the other hand, he is represented as a hero and martyr in the Christian tradition.”[21]
Beyond this, Dollfuss had enjoyed the support of the Austrian Catholic Church for his authoritarian policies. Not only was one of Dollfuss’s most popular predecessors as chancellor, Ignaz Seipel, a Catholic priest, but Seipel had actually contributed to the creation of the Heimwehr that defended the Austrian state against the Nazis. Moreover, Dollfuss’s funeral mass, held on July 28, before the coup was over, was said by the Archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, and was attended by half a million faithful. Those Austrians not already put off by the Nazis’ anti-clericalism were surely disgusted by the reports of how Dollfuss had died, and if their sense of being Austrian was not offended, their Catholicism was.
Italian Intervention
As indicated in Steinacher’s letter to the German foreign ministry, the final reason the July Putsch failed was the threat of Italian intervention.  Misjudgment of how Mussolini would react to the coup attempt was the final miscalculation of the Nazis in June 1934. Not only was Vice Chancellor Starhemberg in Italy at the time of the putsch, but likely unbeknownst to the coup leaders at the time, so were Dollfuss’s wife and children. Mussolini’s reaction to the putsch was deeply personal, and he mobilized Italian army troops to the Brenner Pass and Italy’s border with Carinthia, in a clear threat of intervention if the Nazis did not stand down.[22] It was largely on the basis of this threat that Hitler withdrew support for the coup, and it collapsed.
However, it also seems that there was a miscalculation by the Nazis of the Austrian position on Italy as well. There was a not insignificant number of right-wing Austrians who resented Italy’s annexation of South Tyrol at the end of World War I. Hitler, for his own part, had recognized Italy’s claims to the territory as a way of appeasing Mussolini, for whom he had great respect. In June 1934, Hitler and Mussolini had met for the first time in person in Venice, and at this meeting, Mussolini had made clear his support for Dollfuss and for Austria’s independence from Germany. That the coup went forward six weeks later would seem to be a grave error on Hitler’s part.
The irredentist positions of the Austrian far right undoubtedly played a role in this error. Given the resentment about South Tyrol both in the Nazi Party and in the Heimwehr, it could have been believed that a Nazi seizure of power in Austria would create sufficient momentum for the reclamation of South Tyrol, or at least provide enough of a show of force at the Italian border that Mussolini would think twice before intervening. Here, the Nazis seem to have misjudged Dollfuss, himself initially an irredentist on South Tyrol, and his own willingness to compromise on the matter in exchange for Mussolini’s support. As Gottfried-Karl Kindermann of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munichnotes, this guarantee of independence was stipulated in a secret attachment to the Rome Protocol of 1934, signed among Italy, Austria, and Hungary as a hedge against German aspirations of continental hegemony.[23] In essence, Dollfuss had conceded South Tyrol in exchange for Italian military protection. While this concession did not save his life, it did save Austria — at least for the time being.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the complexity of the authoritarian right wing in Austria and the extent to which its ideals were different from those of Nazi Germany explains why the Nazis failed to seize control in Austria in July 1934. At the core of Dollfuss’s authoritarian lay Austrian nationalism that was deeply Catholic, and the loyalty of the people and state institutions to this ideology was fatally misjudged. It would require another four years and a vastly changed international landscape before Anschluss could be carried out successfully. The reasons why the Anschluss of 1938 succeeded, however, are beyond the scope of this paper.

[1] Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1889-1936: Hubris (New York: Norton, 2000), 522-23.
[2] Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-1934, trans. Sonia Brough and David Taylor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 32-33.
[3] Steve Beller, A Concise History of Austria (New York: Cambridge UP, 2007), 209-10.
[4] Kindermann, ibid, 78-79.
[5] Ibid, 33-35.
[6] Helmut Konrad, “The Significance of February 1934 in Austria, in Both National and International Context,” in Routes Into the Abyss: Coping With Crises in the 1930s, ed. Helmut Konrad and Wolfgang Maderthaner (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 22.
[7] Kindermann, ibid, 39.
[8] Ibid, 95,
[9] “The ‘Kollerschlag Document,’” in Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-34, ed. Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, trans. Sonia Brough and David Taylor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 196.
[10] Peter Longerich, Heinrich Himmler, trans. Jeremy Noakes and Lesley Sharpe (New York: Oxford UP, 2012), 177.
[11] “The ‘Kollerschlag Document,’” ibid, 196-98.
[12] Kindermann, ibid, 101-02.
[13] Ibid, 102-03.
[14] Julie Thorpe, “Revisiting the ‘Authoritarian State’ 40 Years on,” Journal of Contemporary History 45, no. 2 (April 2010): 319.
[15] Bruce F. Pauley, Hitler and the Forgotten Nazis: A History of Austrian National Socialism (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 74.
[16] Ibid, 76.
[17] Longerich, ibid, 178.
[18] “The ‘Kollerschlag Document,’” ibid, 196.
[19] Ibid, 197.
[20] Hans Steinacher, Head of the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland to the Foreign Ministry, 31 July 1934, in Hitler’s Defeat in Austria, 1933-1934, ed. Gottfried-Karl Kindermann, trans. by Sonia Brough and David Taylor (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1988), 205-06.
[21] Philip Scheriau, “Mediale Reaktionen auf den Juliputsch 1934 in In- und Ausland” (Masterarbeit, University of Vienna, 2014), 71, translation mine.
[22] Kindermann, ibid, 116.
[23] Ibid, 43.

The Dissolution of Yugoslavia

In 1989, Yugoslavia was a federation of six republics: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, Slovenia, and Montenegro. Today, the process of Yugoslavia’s breakup is still not complete. Although all six former constituent republics are now independent sovereign states, it was not without serious conflict that Yugoslavia was broken up. In addition, a seventh republic, Kosovo, has been carved out of Serbia, but its future remains uncertain. Despite the tragic process of Yugoslavia’s disintegration, however, some positive aspects of this process have emerged.

Like World War I, at the core of Yugoslavia’s breakup was Serbian nationalism, which had been on the rise throughout the 1980s following the death of Yugoslavia’s longtime communist dictator, Josip Broz Tito, who had been effective at maintaining Yugoslavia’s cohesion and stifling nationalist tendencies. Following Tito’s death, some Serbs increasingly began to feel that their supremacy within the federation, which had been a fact throughout Yugoslavia’s existence, was being lost. Other ethnicities embraced nationalism in response. Complicating the problem was the fact that no single republic of Yugoslavia was ethnically homogeneous; rather, each republic had a mix of ethnicities, with one in sometimes only a slim majority. Serbs, in particular, existed in communities in all six republics, particularly Croatia and Bosnia. Frequent political crises and sporadic outbreaks of ethnic violence became commonplace.

The dismantling of the Soviet system and communism in Eastern Europe in general expedited Yugoslavia’s dissolution. Free elections in most republics brought independence-minded parties to the fore. The first republic to break away was Slovenia, in early 1991, followed swiftly by Croatia. With Croatia’s declaration of independence, Yugoslavia’s army attacked. However, it was in Bosnia that the bloodiest battles were fought — indeed, some of the bloodiest incidents in Europe since the end of World War II. When the dust settled in 1995, Bosnia was independent but itself had become a federation of a Bosnian state and a Serbian state within Bosnia, the Republika Srpska.

More complicated and extended has been the attempts of the Albanian province of Kosovo to secede from Yugoslavia and later the independent state of Serbia. First with an uprising in the 1990s that occasioned NATO intervention and UN administration and since 2008 with a declaration of independence, Kosovo has sought to separate itself from Serbia. However, unlike the constituent Yugoslav republics, Kosovo has not received universal recognition and has not been admitted to the UN, although some progress has been made toward normalizing relations with Serbia.

Sadly, ethnic tensions remain fairly high in these now six or seven independent states. However, one positive development is that the world community sought to punish war criminals who committed acts of genocide during the breakup of Yugoslavia, convening the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia in 1993. The ICTY continues to prosecute war criminals and has successfully prosecuted several, including the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. In the ICTY, the world community kept its promise in the UN Convention on Genocide to punish these crimes, which is one of the only positive results of a sad period of chaos in the Balkans.

Immigration to Europe

Immigration has played and continues to play an enormous role in European history since the end of World War II. In response to several factors, including decolonization of Africa and Africa, decimated populations as a result of the war and subsequent zero (or even negative) population growth, and later the Schengen Agreement all contributed to the changing demographic nature of native- and foreign-born Europeans. Examining the situations of immigration in several European countries can elucidate our understanding of the impacts of immigration on post-war Europe.
In the United Kingdom, decolonization of Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia resulted in an influx of immigrants from these countries, with a large uptick in the rates of immigration in the 1960s and 1970s. On the one hand, the policy toward immigrants in the U.K. of social integration has been successful. Second and third generations of British citizens of African and South Asian descent have arisen in the U.K., with such varied outcomes as the first Muslim mayor of London elected earlier this year, a proliferation of curry restaurants in the major metropolitan centers, people of Asian and African descent holding peerages, and so on. At the same time, politically there has been some reaction. The rise of the National Front and later the National Party in the U.K. was largely a reaction to non-white immigration. In addition, the U.K. population’s electoral decision to leave the European Union was significantly motivated by a desire to stem immigration, including from elsewhere in Europe under the Schengen Agreement. Clearly, the U.K. continues to navigate the experience of immigration, but its overall experience seems to have been a net positive.
In France, immigrants came during the same period from North and West Africa and Southeast Asia. Here, the predominant policy practiced by French governments vis-à-vis immigrants has been one of multiculturalism, i.e., to encourage immigrants to maintain their customs to as great an extent as possible, while simultaneously becoming French citizens. As in the U.K., the rise of mass politics on the far right in the form of the Front National is one result of this increased immigration. However, it is clear that the overall experience of France with immigrants — and equally important, of immigrants with France — has been more problematic than that of the U.K. Multiple generations of people of African and Asian descent live in the banlieux of Paris, where they are subject to occupation-style policing and discrimination when they attempt to venture outside. At the same time, in opposition to France’s centuries-long tradition of laïcité, both the discrimination and the government’s encouragement of multiculturalism have contributed to increasing demands by communities of African and Asian descent to have their religious beliefs accommodated, which in turn has fueled ethnic and racial tensions even more. The spate of recent terrorist attacks in France, while not directly correlated to France’s troubled experience with immigration, are nevertheless related.
Germany experienced a much larger population decline as a result of the war, not to mention partition, and its fast-growing economy during the 1960s and 1970s necessitated the influx of immigrants. In this particular case, the majority of the workers came from Turkey and were originally as guest workers, rather than as immigrants. When the economic need for these workers persisted, guest workers ultimately brought their families and became immigrants. A third generation of Germans of Turkish descent has now been born. Germany has largely chosen the strategy of the U.K. in seeking to integrate these immigrants, rather than encouraging multiculturalism. A newer, greater challenge is now being faced in Germany as the result of accepting more than a million refugees over the course of the past year, with the ultimate settlement status of these refugees undetermined. There have been the expected political reactions from the right, although laws in Germany generally keep the public discourse more civil than elsewhere. That said, much remains to be decided in Germany, and just in the past week, terrorist attacks have occurred there as well, although it is still unclear at this point the extent to which immigration and/or religion has played a role.
Ultimately, Europe to some extent is experiencing a struggle between, on the one hand, a commitment to human rights and acknowledging that there is a certain strength in diversity and, on the other hand, the long-term effects on the continent’s demography of the immigration of non-Europeans with different cultures and beliefs. I do not personally see this as a crisis like some commenters do so much as a challenge. It took Europe hundreds of years to develop a political culture that was not only adopted in the United States but that has also become the model for much of the world. The ideologies of some immigrants might stand in diametrical opposition to this European ideal. The solution will be to encourage absorption policies that successfully integrate the immigrants into their new homes, rather than subject them to further alienation.

The Cold War in Europe and the Developing World

While the Cold War has been largely understood as a non-shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1991, the effects on the nations of Europe and the developing world cannot be overestimated. In both Europe and the developing world, sides were created by the U.S. and USSR and proxy wars emerged from time to time. In addition, the burgeoning political landscape of the developing world, including the frequent outbreak of civil wars, was a principle outcome of the Cold War. In examining specific historical examples, we can better understand why Europeans and people in the developing world perceived the Cold War so differently from the U.S. and USSR.

In Europe, alliances were built centered on the U.S. and USSR in the forms of, respectively, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact. However, where this fault line was most pronounced was in Germany, where, by 1949, NATO- and Warsaw Pact-aligned nations emerged in West and East Germany, respectively. From the standpoint of the superpowers, the division of Germany was most acute during the Berlin Blockade and when the Berlin Wall was built. However, for average Germans, the experience was more consistently anxiety-producing. As the textbook points out, haggling by the superpowers over positioning of missiles in Europe, with a common adage in Germany at the time stating that “The shorter the distance of the missile, the deader the German.”[1]

In addition, proxy wars erupted in both Europe and the developing world. In Europe, the most prominent case was the Greek Civil War, with the U.S. and USSR backing disparate sides for control over the country. The war was particularly destructive for a country that had suffered enormously under Nazi occupation, and for Greeks with no specific sympathy to a particular side, the war left the lasting impression that their lives were less important to the superpowers than the establishment of spheres of influence. This sense of superpower callousness also occurred in the civil wars that erupted in Korea and Vietnam, to varying extents.

The wars in Korea and Vietnam were the consequences of wartime partitioning of territories between U.S. and USSR spheres of influence. Elsewhere in the developing world, proxy wars arose in situations of power vacuums due to decolonization, which itself came as recompense for the participation of soldiers from developing nations. A key example of such a proxy war was the Angolan Civil War that began in 1975, with the decolonization process that began with Portuguese withdrawal. Sides were drawn between guerrilla organizations supported by the U.S. via South Africa, on the one hand, and those supported by the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Cuba, with this side’s support dating back to guerrilla war against Portugal. The war went on far longer than many other post-colonial civil wars largely because of the claiming of interests by superpowers.

Ultimately, the effect of the Cold War on Europe and the decolonizing world was one of extensive anxiety and suffering. Because the primary battleground of the Cold War was Europe, the constantly looming threat of nuclear war left generations of Europeans anxious about their destruction by callous superpowers. In the developing world, this callousness was magnified by the proliferation of proxy wars like that in Angola that were devastating for the general population. Although U.S.-USSR proxy wars ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new ones have arisen since then, particularly in Africa. Superpower positioning over spheres of influence has ended, but callousness with human life, unfortunately, has not.

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     [1] Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009), 502.

Effects of the Holocaust

For this week’s assignment, I chose to write about a topic with which I’m very familiar, the Holocust. For years, I’ve conducted independent research on the topic and have published a fair amount of material. I think it’s therefore safe to say that the Holocaust had extensive politics effects on Europe and the rest of the world. Although it is important to acknowledge that there were many innocent victims of the Nazis, not the least of whom were non-Jewish Polish citizens, Soviet POWs, and religious and political enemies, my focus here is on the largest victim group, i.e., the nearly six million European Jews killed during World War II.

Probably the most important political effect of the Holocaust was the creation within three years of the end of the war of the State of Israel. Although the Zionist movement had existed in its political form since the 1890s, it had had limited impact on the Jewish world at large. Because Orthodox Judaism rejected Zionism as heresy, while left-wing political organizations largely rejected it as bourgeois in its embrace of ethnic nationalism, Zionism in Europe was the province of eastern European, largely left-wing Jews, mainly in Poland, the Baltic States, and the Soviet Union. By the time the Holocaust happened, the political leadership of these Zionist groups was already in Palestine. The political effect of the Holocaust was a massive increase in support for Zionism, not only among the international community, which now agreed with the Zionism movement on the need for a Jewish state, but also among Jews themselves who had previously rejected Zionism but who now believed that continued Jewish survival in Europe was impossible. Although I believe that it is important to emphasize that the Holocaust did not “cause” Israel to exist — the Zionist movement would ultimately have been successful in its goals; in fact, the Peel Commission under the U.K. Mandate for Palestine had voted for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1937 — it is undeniable, I believe, to state that the Holocaust expedited Israel’s creation.

Obviously, given the long-term Arab-Israeli conflict that arose in connection to the creation of Israel, the Holocaust clearly had repercussions outside of Europe as well. Several important works on the topic have demonstrated an important role of Holocaust remembrance — not to mention, unfortunately, some exploitation on one hand and denial on the other — in post-World War II politics. In his book The Holocaust in American Life, the late historian Peter Novick argued that the Holocaust had a lasting impact on American culture and foreign policy over the course of the 20th century.[1] From the Israeli perspective, Tom Segev has argued quite convincingly that the Holocaust has been a frequent topic evoked by Israeli politicians, particularly when they find their own governments to be experiencing moments of crisis (e.g., a series of crises for David Ben-Gurion in the late 1950s culminated in Israel’s capture, trial, and execution of Adolf Eichmann).[2] Finally, scholars of Holocaust denial have repeatedly noted a strong current of denial in the Arab world, particularly in the 21st century.[3]

Finally, recognition of the Holocaust, not to mention the Armenian Genocide of World War I, resulted in the U.N.’s adoption of its Convention on Genocide in 1948. Although the efficacy of this convention has been debated extensively, particularly given the failure of the United States to ratify it, it nevertheless was evoked when genocidal violence erupted in the former Yugoslavia beginning in the late 1980s, with the ultimate result being the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, which has tried and convicted several war criminals, not the least of whom was the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Arguably, had the Holocaust not happened, the ability of the U.N. to enact the Convention on Genocide — and perhaps even its inspiration to do so — might well have been absent.

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     [1] Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Mariner Books, 2000).
     [2] Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (London: Picador, 2000).
     [3] See, e.g., Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2009).

How Dictatorships Mobilize Support

The ability of extremist political movements of the interwar period might have maintained their power on the basis of coercion, but there was nevertheless a core group of people at the center of these movements — not to mention a not insignificant number of the rank and file — that supported them. In Germany, National Socialism ultimately garnered a plurality of voters to place Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany. In Italy, Mussolini’s March on Rome with Fascist supporters culminated in his achieving the office of Prime Minister. In the Soviet Union, Stalin might have attracted a smaller personal following than either Hitler or Mussolini, but his cadre of supporters was sufficiently loyal to guarantee that supreme power rested in his hands.

Selections from Hitler’s autobiography/political manifesto Mein Kampf provide insights into how Hitler was able to attract supporters to National Socialism. For instance, in the first section on anti-Semitism, Hitler writes, “Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord”[1]. Hitler was raised Catholic but was not religious as an adult; nevertheless, the line is crafted to combine an appeal to many people’s religious sense with the mobilizing effect of anti-Semitism in identifying a common enemy. Other anti-Semitic sections provide appeals to German authorities (Schopenhauer, e.g.), appeals to racism and politics, and even appeals to conspiracy (i.e., The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion). In short, no stone remains unturned by Hitler to explain his anti-Semitism and convince others to feel the same way. More direct and honest is the section on propaganda, in which Hitler plainly states that propaganda must be simple and memorable, rather than complex or scientific; as Hitler writes, “The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be.”[2]

Hitler learned about the ability of propaganda and simple symbolism to encourage the masses in part from observing Mussolini, who rose to power eleven years earlier than he did. In “What Is Fascism?” Mussolini, assisted by Giovanni Gentile, appeals to romantic notions of action (rather than thought), emotion (rather than intellect), and war (rather than peace). A line from the essay that is characteristic is “The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others — those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after.”[3] However, although “What Is Fascism?” lacks the intellectual depth of Gentile’s Doctrine of Fascism, it nevertheless asserts nationalism as a core belief of the Fascists. By appealing to potential followers’ patriotism and militarism, Mussolini can better mobilize a party ready to undertake action. When Mussolini writes, “For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence,”[4] he is relying on the ability of jingoism to overshadow any possible objection to the subordination of the individual and his/her rights, as expressed elsewhere in the excerpt.

Finally, with the speech “The Tasks of Business Executives,” from 1931, when the industrialization plan of the first Five-Year Plan was in full swing, Stalin argues that the goals for growth in the coming year must be met, although they had not been for the previous year. To encourage his audience to achieve these goals, Stalin evokes the enemies of the Communist Party thus far identified: Shakhty and the so-called Industrial Party, accused of sabotage and wrecking since the beginning of the Five-Year Plan. Beyond these internal enemies, Stalin mentions the historical international enemies of Russia:

She was beaten by the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her — because of her backwardness, because of her military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness.[5]

In this way, Stalin is able to motivate his audience by fear. Although there are other appeals interspersed in the speech (support for the party, socialism’s superiority to capitalism, etc.), ultimately it is the specter of foreign invasion and control that Stalin knows will mobilize the party the most.

In conclusion, Hitler and Stalin both mobilized support for their radical causes by appealing to enemies, respectively, Jews and internal and external opponents of Soviet communism. Hitler added an uncharacteristically honest acknowledgement of how propaganda generally works as a force for mobilization. In contrast, although there are abstract enemies such as democracy, liberalism, etc., evoked by Mussolini, his primary mobilizing force is nationalism and the promise of empire, although, to be fair, elsewhere in his writing and speeches, Hitler evoked the same ideas to garner support for the Nazi Party. Even Stalin makes a faint appeal to patriotism, albeit in a negative sense by hoping to encourage his followers to defend Russia against its enemies. In the end, all three political ideologies gained supporters, although they all eventually lost them as well, demonstrating that mobilization itself cannot sustain a movement; ultimately, it has to deliver on what it promises to attain longevity.

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     [1] Adolf Hitler, Excerpts from Mein Kampf, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed July 4, 2016, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kampf.html, p. 60, para. 4.
     [2] Ibid, Chapter 6, para. 3.
     [3] Benito Mussolini, “What Is Fascism, 1932,” Modern History Sourcebook, accessed July 4, 2016, http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp, para. 2.
     [4] Ibid, para. 9.
     [5] J.V. Stalin, “The Tasks of Business Executives,” Marxists Internet Archive, accessed July 4, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/02/04.htm, para. 42.

Source Analysis: Women in Interwar Radical Politics

On the surface, the ideologies of the Soviet and Nazi regimes were diametrically opposed. On the one hand, the Soviets were on the far left and sought (at least in theory) to create a society in which everyone was equal; on the other hand, the Nazis were on the far right and sought to impose an order on society in which Aryans were on top and Jews were on the bottom. These differences were also reflected in their policies on women. The Soviets publicly stated that their goal was the full equality of women under the law, with equal participation and contribution to the state in exchange for equal benefits and protections. The Nazis, as radical traditionalists, wanted to roll back the progress in women’s rights of recent decades and return women to Heim und Herd(home and hearth). However, as the horseshoe theory of politics posits, as political ideologies tend more toward the extremes, they tend to resemble each other more. If we consider writings and speeches from both societies and compare the actual policies, we can see the truth of this theory. 
Approaching the writings chronologically, the speech by Clara Zetkin from November 1922 comes first, and it poses certain problems because, while Zetkin was German, the speech was given in Soviet Russia and its topic is Soviet communism. That said, Zetkin’s speech is intended to explain to her audience the role of the International Women’s Secretariat within the Communist International (Comintern), i.e., both to integrate women who are already communists into the structure of the Comintern and to persuade working- and middle-class women to become communists. On the former point, Zetkin’s speech offers a sort of “state of the union,” with some parties within the Comintern (e.g., Bulgaria) doing better than others (the United Kingdom). On the latter point, Zetkin references the “pitiless inroads present day conditions make into the lives of millions of women, causing many of them to awaken from their torpor.”1On the whole, Zetkin’s speech is a call to action to communist women to mobilize women inside and outside the party to transform the conditions for women worldwide.
The second selection, from the writings of Aleksandra Kollontai — one of only a very small number of women to have held a position in the government of the Soviet Union — addresses the topic of transformation of male-female romantic and sexual relationships in the wake of communist revolution. Broadly speaking, Kollontai argues that the free love engendered the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Civil War, which she characterizes as “wingless Eros,” might have been appropriate for the time, but “winged Eros” must soon displace this free love, which poses a challenge because its “love is woven of delicate strands of every kind of emotion,”2i.e., it is based on interpersonal commitment rather than momentary pleasure. To accommodate this paradigm shift, Kollontai argues that the traditional bourgeois notion of married love must be replaced with “love-comradeship,” based on equality, mutual recognition by each partner of the rights of the other, and “comradely sensitivity,” all packaged within a communist collective that demands a greater tie to itself than either partner to the other.3Such love, according to Kollontai, would be more equal and more rational.
Unfortunately for both Zetkin and Kollontai, the reality of women’s position in the Soviet Union was inferior to that envisioned by both women. As already noted, Kollontai was part of a very small minority of women with real political power, and Zetkin enjoyed political power, but in Germany and not Russia. Moreover, as noted by Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, economic realities kept women in a subordinate position in the post-Civil War USSR because, under the New Economic Policy, women “were generally the first to feel the pinch of job cutbacks.”4In the seventy years of its existence, no woman ever held supreme political power in the Soviet Union, in comparison to several other countries that afforded significantly less lip service to the equality of women (e.g., India, Pakistan, Israel, the United Kingdom, and others). As a consequence, the Soviet experiment in communism, while making big promises, ultimately delivered comparatively quite little in real results, notwithstanding the legal equality of women.
Turning to the case of National Socialist Germany, the 1934 speech by Adolf Hitler to the National Socialist Women’s League makes a clear case for radical traditionalism. In a society in which, since World War I, women had received a variety of legal rights, including suffrage, the Nazis made it clear that it was time to return to an earlier time where a woman’s place was in the home. Hitler states, “We do not consider it correct for the woman to interfere in the world of the man, in his main sphere. We consider it natural if these two worlds remain distinct.”5As was his wont, Hitler characterizes women’s emancipation as a “Jewish” creation that must be reversed.6In addition, Hitler ties the traditional role of women to natalist policies, implying that women being ensconced in the home results in stronger family ties, which in turn result in “the willingness of the woman to risk her life to preserve this important cell and to multiply it.”7
In her speech from two years later, Getrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the same organization addressed by Hitler, characterizes this role for women in a more revolutionary sense than the Führer. Like Hitler, she denounces the proto-feminism of the preceding generation and its emphasis away from family and particularly from childbirth and motherhood. She goes a step further, however, in stating, “It is therefore our task to awaken once again the sense of the divine, to make the calling to motherhood the way through which the German woman will see her calling to be mother of the nation. She will then not live her life selfishly, but rather in service to her people.”8Interestingly, despite the very different final role that Scholtz-Klink sees for women, her exhortation to the greater good is not unlike that of Kollontai thirteen years earlier. Importantly, also like Kollontai, Scholtz-Klink sees the role of women as being equally important to that of men.
Given the clear point of view expressed by Hitler and the emphasis placed in Nazi German society on the Führerprinzip, or leadership principle, it is unsurprising that the place of women largely returned to a more traditional context in the National Socialist period. At least legally, the law tended to reflect this principle, particularly the natalist anti-abortion laws and the positive incentives offered for couples to have large families. Nevertheless, as in the Soviet Union, economic realities undermined the full implementation of this goal. Again, as pointed out by Gilbert and Large, only four years in Nazi rule in Germany, some of these pro-birth policies were reversed to provide incentives to women to go back to work, given the urgent need for workers in the context of German rearmament.9Even when slave laborers were brought to Germany during the war, a percentage of these laborers were women, even if they were largely domestic workers for upper-class Germans and party elites.10
1 Clara Zetkin, “Organising Among Women,” Marxists’ Internet Archive, accessed July 4, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1922/ci/women.htm, para. 13.
2 Aleksandra Kollontai, “Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth, Love as a Socio-Psychological Factor,” in From Symbolism to Socialist Realism: A Reader, ed. Irene Masing-Delic (Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 162.
3 Ibid, 171.
4 Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009), 209.
5 Adolf Hitler, “Hitler’s Speech to the National Socialist Women’s League (September 8, 1934),” Germany History in Documents and Images, accessed July 4, 2016, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1557, para. 4
6 Ibid, para. 1.
7 Ibid, para. 4.
8 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, “To Be German Is to Be Strong,” German Propaganda Archive, accessed July 4, 2016, http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/scholtz-klink2.htm, para. 12
9 Gilbert and Large, 266.
10 Ibid.

Four Writers on Interwar Europe

Between World War I and World War II, European culture underwent a remarkable transformation as a result of both the continuation of philosophical traditions that had begun in the previous century and the massive loss of life that the war caused. On the one hand, writers and thinkers like Sigmund Freud saw during the interwar period the opportunity to push humankind forward based on the previous foundations of rationalism. On the other hand, literary writers like and José Ortega y Gasset, T.S. Eliot, and George Orwell saw decadence with little hope in sight, although it is worth noting that some of these writers offered small indications of a better future.
Sigmund Freud‘s theory of psychoanalysis built on the findings of previous scientists and philosophers, including Charles Darwin and William James. Darwin posited evolution on the basis of natural (i.e., sexual) selection, and James introduced the notion of identity arising from a stream of consciousness; Freud sought to explain how the drive to reproduce sexually impacted the consciousness. While this approach might seem individualized, it reflects societal concerns because societies are collectives of individuals; therefore, the extent to which the individual can improve his/her psychological functioning is directly proportional to how well society functions. Freud demonstrates this line of thinking in “The Structure of the Unconscious,” in which he describes his division of the mind into the id, ego, and superego. He writes, “In popular language, we may say that the ego stands for reason and circumspection, while the id stands for the untamed passions”[1]; in championing the ego over the id, Freud indicates that humankind in general can eliminate neurosis and become more rational, enunciating a positive vision for the future.
However, Freud’s selection is the only one for the week with a positive, or even neutral, outlook. In comparison, the José Ortega y Gasset‘s Revolt of the Masses is quite negative. In the selection, the author discusses fascism as a movement of mass mobilization, and he draws conclusions based on this nature about the lack of independent, strong intelligence among the mass followers of leaders such as Mussolini. “The characteristic of the hour,” he writes, “is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.“[2] This characteristic, Ortega y Gasset writes, results in barbarism and the abandonment of reason. The average person acts without thinking; “Hence, his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words.”[3] In so far as Freud had identified the id with the appetites and appealed to humankind to override the id to overcome neurosis and embrace reason, Ortega y Gasset sees Europeans in the interwar period doing the opposite. Offering no solution, at least in the selection, the tone is decidedly negative.
Whereas Ortega y Gasset addresses political disintegration, George Orwell‘s emphasis in Down and Out in Paris in London is primarily on social decay, although political decay is present as well. On the latter point, the sheer volume of Russian emigrés whom Orwell encounters in Paris is a direct result of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, from which they are refugees; e.g., Orwell’s friend Boris seems emblematic of the refugees, although there is dead wood as well: “Boris told me of an exiled Russian duke whom he had once met, who frequented expensive restaurants. The duke would find out if there was a Russian officer among the waiters, and, after he had dined, call him in a friendly way to his table [to arrange for a free meal.”[4] In London, Orwell encounters the true economic consequences of the post-war recession, finding himself in flophouses and unable to find gainful employment. Nevertheless, the memoir ends on a note of hope, with Orwell recognizes that he has found his own sense of empathy: “I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.”[5]
Finally, T.S. Eliot‘s “The Waste Land” examines spiritual decay. In its fragmented form, the poem repeatedly evokes the war, e.g., in lines concerning the wife of a demobilized soldier who has had an abortion in his absence (“I can’t help it, she said, pulling a long face, / It’s them pills I took, to bring it off, she said.”[6]. These lines evoke the destroyed morality of the post-war “unreal city” of London. In addition, the repeated references to the blind prophet of Greek myth, Tiresias, makes oblique mention of Freud (Tiresias is a character in Sophocles’s Oedipus the Tyrant), while those to the Tarot and the Arthurian cycle of mythology evoke an unending but futile cycle of life and death. However, even in this bleak landscape, Eliot is able to find a glimmer of hope. At the end of the poem, in the shadow of London Bridge falling, the final line — “Shantih shantih shantih,” which Eliot renders in his note as “The Peace which passeth understanding,”[7] indicates the possibility of finding peace by escaping the unending cycle of life and death. While perhaps not “hopeful” in the sense that Orwell’s ending is, it nevertheless offers more hope than Ortega y Gasset’s observations, while simultaneously concluding that interwar society is in ruins.
In conclusion, Freud offers a utopian vision of the future in which, through psychoanalysis, humankind can transcend their inherent neuroses and, as more functional individuals, form more functional societies. Ortega y Gasset sees in fascism not that ideology’s own utopian promises, but rather the dystopian effects of mob mentality. Orwell sees a dystopian post-war Europe in political and economic upheaval, but he is able to wrest some sense of a greater understanding of the human condition as a result. Eliot collapses under the sheer weight of this postwar European dystopia, offering instead a possible way out through renunciation of the cycle of life and death.
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     [1] Sigmund Freud, “The Structure of the Unconscious,” accessed June 26, 2016,http://anupamm.tripod.com/freudst.html, para. 9.
     [2] José Ortega y Gasset, Revolt of the Masses (excerpt), The History Guide, accessed June 26, 2016,https://web.archive.org/web/20121019190503/http:/historyguide.org/europe/gasset.html, para. 4, emphasis in original.
     [3] Ibid, para. 9.
     [4] George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Complete Works of George Orwell, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London/index.html, Chapter VIII, para. 1.
     [5] Ibid, Chapter XXXVIII, para. 4.
     [6] T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land,” accessed June 26, 2016, http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/, lines 160-61.
     [7] Ibid, line 433.

Isaac Rosenberg on Trench Warfare

Trench warfare was comparatively horrific when contrasted with earlier forms of warfare, primarily because of the very instruments listed by the textbook authors in discussing combat during World War I: “the hand grenade, the spade, and the machine gun.”[1] In their own ways, each tool is emblematic of how warfare had changes from earlier generations. The spade was the tool with which the trenches were dug, the hand grenade was the weapon that was most feared by the men while in the trenches, and the machine gun posed the threat to men when going “over the top.” In the poetry of the British poet Isaac Rosenberg, himself killed at the Battle of Arras in 1918, all these new aspects of trench warfare make appearances.
The most important aspect of trench warfare was the trenches themselves. Each side dug long trenches in which their combat soldiers would wait to launch or defend against a charge. In rainy seasons, the trenches would fill with water, giving rise to the worsening of already poor sanitary conditions. In addition, the presence of rotting corpses both in the trenches and on the battlefields between the trenches of each side proved a fertile ground for rats, who would also infest the trenches. Rosenberg addresses one of these rats in his poem “Break of Day in the Trenches,” in which the poet writes, “Now you have touched this English hand / You will do the same to a German / Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure / To cross the sleeping green between.”[2] In these lines, Rosenberg as a British combat soldier recognizes the common predicament of soldiers on both sides. While the home fronts and home governments demonized enemies, World War I soldiers often recognized the common humanity of the men on the other side.
While men in the trenches awaited a charge, a common experience was to lob grenades at the other sides’ trenches or to have grenades thrown at oneself. Given the confining nature of the trenches, the fear of a grenade landing in one’s trench and the certain injury or death it promised made combat in World War I frightening in a way combat had not been before. Lines from Rosenberg’s poem “Marching” evoke the image of the hand grenade when, considering the Roman god of war, Mars, and how his craft has changed, the poet writes, “Blind fingers loose an iron cloud / To rain immortal darkness / On strong eyes.”[3] The soldier in the trench is blind to the soldiers on the other side and throws a weapon that rains iron on its victims. Rather than meeting his enemy face to face as in previous wars, in World War I, soldiers could for the first time kill one another without seeing each other.
Finally, the mettle of the men in the trenches was tested when they were commanded by their platoon leaders to go “over the top” and charge the other side, which usually waited with machine guns trained on the chargers. Again, Rosenberg describes the scene in a poem, “Dead Man’s Dump”: “The air is loud with death / The dark air spurts with fire, / The explosions ceaseless are.”[4] Here, Rosenberg makes clear the real wages of war: in the end, dead is dead. Whereas earlier poetry about war written by British poets had been celebratory, whether it was the “band of brothers” monologue from Shakespeare’s Henry V or the far more recent “Theirs but to do and die” of Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” war was seen as a noble endeavor in which man met his destiny. With Rosenberg, this tradition seems to have ended. In no small part, we can see that it was the very different nature of combat in trench warfare that contributed to this change of perspective on the nature of war.
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     [1] Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009),  106.
     [2] Isaac Rosenberg, “Break of Day in the Trenches,” Poetry Foundation, accessed June 20, 2016, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/13535, lines 9-12.
      [3] Isaac Rosenberg, “Marching,” Poetry Foundation, accessed June 20, 2016, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/13534, lines 14-16.

      [4] Isaac Rosenberg, “Dead Man’s Dump,” poetry Foundation, accessed June 20, 2016, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47411, lines 36-38.
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