michael mann, fascists (2004)

Chapters 1 and 2

(1): study of rise of fascist movement, and not the regimes in power [obviously a place to push back, with paxton point about stages of development]

(1-4): seven reasons to take it seriously

1. a major political doctrine of 20th century
2. embraced nation-state
3. ideology must be taken seriously
4. 'core fascist constituencies' is a live problem
5. take seriously the movements behind them
6. seek to understand the evil in which they culminated
7. take seriously the chance that they might return--"some of the substance lives on"

(4): here Mann caricatures, as is his wont, the materialism-idealism "traditional polemic".

(5): four forms of social power [push back majorly, here]

1. ideological
   
2. economic
3. military
4. political

(13-17): a definition--"fascism is the pursuit of a transcendent and cleansing nation-statism through paramilitarism", five key terms.

1. nationalism
2. statism--goal and organizational form
3. transcendence of class conflict (here he pushes back against Paxton)
4. cleansing
5. paramilitarism--key value and key organizational form

(18): key--here, again, Mann caricatures 'class'-based theories of fascism (which he thinks are limited to middle-class interest, and capitalist interest). he cannot acknolwedge that, in fact, these are much more complicated--and that, importantly, they don't rise and fall with the question of movement 'composition'. they are also, at the very least, meant to say something about the ideology/motivation that impelled these movements. [his argument, here, speaks also to his gross misunderstanding of the role of 'class' as structuring social life]

(21-22): classically bad!!!--because fascists weren't materialists, you can't use materialism to explain them (this is his argument at the bottom of this page, more or less--"fascists focused elsewhere")

(22): again, an impoverished understanding of materialism ('material interests') [plus, here, there's also the problem of foresight--people can pursue their material interests without the pursuit being in their long-term interest]

(25): the overreaction of the old regime [does this have to do with his understating the threat?]

(26-27): three core constituencies

1. favoring paramilitarism
2. favoring transcendence
3. favoring nation-statism

(32): state size 'explosion' in the 1700s

(34): organic vs. liberal conceptions of the nation-state (indivisible people, etc)

(36): complete excision of colonialism from his narrative of State expansion! (didn't Arendt say that Europe built fasicsm in the colonies before it built it at home?)

(38): 1920-1945 retreat of liberal democracy on the continent

(44): distinction between modern authoritarianism and those past--the former had to deal with the "organized political pressure from masses"

(45-47): four ascending degrees of authoritarianism

1. semi-authoritarian--"dual" state, but in mildest form
   
2. semi-reactionary authoritarian
3. corporatist regimes--integrated, hierarhchical
   
4. fascist regimes--corporatism plus paramilitarism

(48): here he starts his discussion of the four forms of power/crisis

(48-64): economic power, economic crisis

(49): first candidate--late-development theory (he will say this explains authoritarianism, partly)

(51): rise of authoritarianism mainly happened in the less developed countries (see his table on page 50)

(52): his critique of the Rueschemeyer et al. -- but why is it banal to state that the majority has an inherent interest in extending the franchise? it's critical.

(56-57): second candidate--the slump (but what about NW europe, he's saying?)

(58): third candidate--class conflict (see below)

(59): strength of left does not map onto the strength of reaction, either--their was an overreaction, from the right (he's stressing the weakness of the left, after 1920)

(62): important--claim that he will repeat, later, about capitalist interest in property vs. capitalist interest in profit. we ought to push back here, because he's neglecting their interdependence under capitalism. moreover, his counterfactual (that something less would have been in capitalists' long-term interests) is simply ahistorical, and not how 'capitalist interests' are typically calculated. though perhaps his formulation does let us say something interesting about 'old regime' interests.

(64): here is a key place where ideology takes on a life of its own, in his argument (the right in one-half of europe was more attracted to certain values). push back time.

(64): in sum, economic explanation is only partial.

(64-70): military power, military crisis

(67): importance of war dislocation--acquiring new territories, debts, etc., which was unique to the South, East, Center of Europe

(68): key--WWI made possible civic paramilitarism. this will be one of his key pegs.

(70-78): political power, political crisis

(71): important, as a place he's pushing back against RSS--participation vs. contestation (the NW didn't have the former, he agrees, but it did have the latter). it's unclear, though, that this is incompatible with what they were arguing.

(72): and, of course, his deployment of this fact is question-begging, completely, insofar as he's not discussing their causes.

(80): fascism as 'reactionary modernism'

(91): overdetermined outcomes--and total spectre, in this conclusion, of a descriptive analysis

---

Chapter 3, Italy

(94): three preconditions, for union between nationalists and Left

1. distinction between nation and state, in Italy
2. Italian labor movement
3. nationalism had leftist elements.
   

(95): this was the "leftist nationalist interventionism" that turned into fascism (from 20,000 in late 1920 to 320,00 in Nov 1921)

(96-97): the class-based interpretation of Italian fascism -- as a 'petty-bourgeois' nationalism, that promised the world but that would likely have to sell out to the capitalists [Salvatorelli]. Mann's rejoinder is classically weak, even barbaric (consists, again, of asserting that materialism cannot take 'ideology' seriously)

(97-100): and Mussolini's own account of what explains fascism (!) -- some kind of transcendent, imperial, nationalist project, valuing action over ideology.

(102-103): extraordinary statistics about military veterans in the fascist movement, attracted by 'paramilitarism'

(105): three bursts of violence (quite tame while in power, until Ethiopia)

(106): this is an important point, that needs to be responded to carefully --in Italy, fascism spread in those places where "civil society" was most dense (both in rural areas with varied relations of production, and in urban areas)

(107-109): beginning to discuss the class composition of Italian fascism--in short, more middle-class than the figures reveal, especially in the cities, but not so much in the rural areas

(110): key point--"fascism could not penetrate the organized working class", but had an easier time (see also 116)

(112): this is his central critique of the 'middle-class' theories, i think -- those that were attracted to fascism, within the middle-class, can't be distinguished on the basis of their social position, but rather perhaps simply on their attachment to 'nation-statist values' and 'paramilitary means' [but then, doesn't this become, simply, a non-explanation?]

(113-115): PNF popularity in rural areas -- split the socialists by offering an attractive program

(116-117): BUT, again--where the working classes were dense and organized in rural areas, they were rarely fascist. he's making quite an important point, here, about "organization" [the 'organized working class' is not the same as the 'working class']

(117): a key point, that's obscured in his presetntation--"rural fascism became increasingly conservative," an alliance between landlords and the middling to lower-middling peasants.

(119): his take-home point, if we're being charitable, is to focus our attention on the important question of 'violence' as means of organization (and, thus, question of why the fascists could become so popular) (see also 122)

(120): key--here, quite clearly, the distinction between 'fascism-as-movement' and 'fascism-as-power'; Mussolini is coming around to appease big capital.

(121): fascism didn't attack the state; attacked those who said they were attacking the state (i.e. Leftists)

(123): 'propertied classes' in Italy were afraid because of biennio rosso (1919-1920)(self-styled soviets, general strike in April in Turin, 500,000 workers occupying their factories at its height, etc.)--but, Mann, is arguing, their fears weren't commensurate to the facts. "fascism as preventative counterrevolution."

(125): and this, really, is the clincher--HE QUOTES MUSSOLINI TO PROVE THAT THE COMMUNISTS WERE DONE FOR.

(119-126): in sum, he has given us three economic reasons for elite support of fascism, all of which he finds useful, but incomplete. we can push back, here.

1. propertied classes' fear of pervasive and growing violence
2. fear of political revolution
3. repression of labor in order to protect profits (what was wrong with gilotti, he is saying?)
   

(127): defection of the state apparatus to the fascists (hollow monopoly of armed force)

(128): speaking of a 'class crisis' intertwined with a 'political crisis' -- but maybe this calls for some theorizing? he seems distinctly uninterested in the possibility.

(131): high recruitment in the Northern border regions.

(132): useful summary of his claims, thus far

(134): fascism in power as a "loose corporatism" -- conceding power to elites, etc. all this seems critical, but it is distinctly underemphasized (3 pages!) ('fascism as a movement' represented a very small fraction of the time we ought to be concerned with, surely)

(135): wow--only nine political executions, from 1927 to 1940. low level of repression, more generally.

(136-137): summary of his claims, re: Italian fascism. he calls his explanation "multifaceted", but it seems to me, rather, overdetermined and disorganized.

---

Chapter 4, Nazis

(129): a 'slower' rise to power

(141): Jews made up 0.76% of the German population (only 2 percent of Germany's bankers/stockbrokers)

(142): early Nazis' socialism, and then the retreat from it in the late 1920s -- primacy of worker over exploiter, livelihood/welfard for citizens, take action against big finance, and radical land reform program (abandoned in 1928) [again, this is something that needs to be foregrounded]

(143): goal, again, was transcendence, and an 'organic community of the people'

(144): 63% of entry essays saw Marxists/socialits as principal enemies.

(146): fascism as regime, fascism as movement--alluding to the sidelining of the SA as the regime calcified, but is not making this systematic, at all. (see also 167)

(151): Nazis and military veterans (84% had served in the war, somewhat overrepresented; but later cohorts would be needed to replenish the movement--see 361)--and the importance of the military as a right/left faultline (German left had been antimilitarist). Two main explanations for why this is: (1) economic, demobilized soldiers, etc.; (2) translation of military into paramilitary values

(157): key--many Nazis were workers; alternatively, workers were slightly underrepresented in the Nazis (this disappears if we include the paramilitaries). but I don't think this is an empirical challenge to the Marxist thesis, at all. (see 160, also--where he says that the Nazis were 'multiclass'. the descriptor 'petty-bourgeois' is an adjective that is meant to describe the leading element, the ideological orientation. it has some claim on membership, certainly, and should be roughly correct--but not at all hard-and-fast.)

(159): the SPD and the KPD really were proletarian parties, he's acknowledging.

(163): key membership from the civil service and professionals, and white-collar workers (civil servants were most overrepresented occupational group--four times as likely)

(165): an 'antimaterialist' explanation of the way in which they were attracted to the Nazis ('blood and soil' nationalism) that is crying out for--in fact--a materialist explanation to save it from its being question-begging.

(167): SA was proletarian

(170): again, here what's critical, again, is a dense "civil society" -- the Nazis were at the heart of it. very important.

(171-172): critical, six points about class and the Nazis (again, this is where we stress that 'petty-bourgeoisie' is not a claim about composition, but about character; nor does this obviate materialism, at all)

1. all classes well represented
2. rural classes moved from under- to over-representation
3. nation-statist, educated bourgeoisie was overrepresented; business bourgeoisie underrepresented
4. difficult penetrating organized working-class communities
5. not marginals and economic losers that joined the fascists (heart of civil society)
6. distant from the main arenas of modern class conflict. indirect observers of the most pronounced class struggle.
   

(175): the nation congeals in violence--they managed to convince elite s that violence was needed to solve the country's anarchy.

Chapter 5, German Sympathizers

(177): three reasons that the Nazis could seize power

1. activism of militants
2. votes of the electorate
3. ambivalence about Weimar/assistance of the elites

(178): "strong nationalism" characterized Nazi propaganda.

(179): claim, here, he's making about how the Nazi program of transcendence mirrored the 'classless' composition of their movement.

(182): EXTRAORDINARY--the Nazis didn't believe in the "laws of the capitalist economy," hence they didn't apply to them!!!

(182): socialists believed the class/nation were opposed; Nazis saw that, for most Germans, they were not [interesting, though not unproblematic (effect or cause?)--does open to the question of revolutionary internationalism]

(183): important--discussion of Strasser, Hitler and the Left--but there's not enough chronology, here. this, if anything, cannot be treated as static across time.

(185): the election figures (from 3% in 1928 to 33 percent in November 1932).

(189): core voting areas were primarily Protestant and secondarily rural.

(190); artisans as workers, not petty-bourgeois?

(190-191): many fascist workers voted for it, but they weren't at the heart of the class struggle (again, though, there's a real problem about taking a snapshot at their high-point in 1932 and then running with it to disprove theories about the movement and the regime)

(191): Nazis took votes from the bourgeois parties--they radicalized the conservatives, in essence.

(194): elites began to gravitate towards authoritarianism after the gov't started to creak, following the Great Depression. first they had turned to the semi-authoritarians; then they turned to the fascists.

(197): relationship between business and the Nazis (Mann's very confused paragraph, here)--but business had no choice, in a sense.

(199): the complicity of the army and state apparatus in the rise to power, quite critical.

(200): key--Nazi accession to power--no coup, and uneven elite support. but complicity of state apparatus. and Schmitt, in the background (the fear of 'mass politics' diluting integrity of elite debate).

(201): his four objections to empirical theories

1. economic crisis is important, but only partial
2. Nazi constituencies were least affected by economic crisis
3. capitalists did not actively support Nazis (though they didn't support the Weimar republic, either)
4. crisis period was too short to explain a break with democracy

(202): Eley's important re-working of the class thesis, where it is protracted class fonrontation which produces the political stalemate that allows the Nazis in. this seems critical, insofar as the appeal of 'transcendence' needs to be explained. (see also 205 -- what was the Nazis' appeal, why did they emerge in the way they did at the time they did; all this needs to be explained, not wished away)

(203): here, the second of the two claims that seem worth pursuing/tackling

1. paramilitarism
2. the fact that the core support was 'away from the front lines'

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Chapter 10, Conclusion

(353): important--his is a two-part explanation--first, explaining the rise of authoritarianism (353-358); second, the turn to fascist in some of the countries that went authoritarian (358-363)

(353-354): economic crisis--very underdeveloped claims, here

(354): his presentation of the political crisis, that produced authoritarianism and then fascism--the phenomenon of 'dual states', attempting to undercut democracy, find alternative ways of mobilizing masses. [this is compelling, but we need to, in general, account for the 'bedrock' -- what does the explaining, here? i.e., a Barrington Moore or RSS account, which would engage material explanations quite obviously--see also 365]

(355): ideological crisis--"civilization needed rescuing"

(356): five reasons for the elite overreaction

1. revolution seemed a real possiblity, after 1917
2. agrarian landlords were particularly vulnerable, because radical land reform was on cards
3. military officer corps were perturbed
4. churches, too
5. geopolitical disorder, which made some territorial issues particularly prominent
   

(357): key passage, to unpack--claims about instrumental and value-rationality, which seem muddled. better solutions available to elites, etc.

(359-360): another key point--he is arguing that fascists were outside of the class struggle because they sought to transcend it. this is nonsensical, even conceptually. and empirically, as his stuff on the next page, shows, it was too--this posturing served the interests of the status quo.

(363): Franco as authoritarian rightist

(364): only weakened old regimes let in fascism

(365): merger of Enlightenment and Romanticism

(368): the new right mobilizes a different kind of racism

(369): a lot of the supoprt is 'protest voting'

(370): stability of institutionalized liberal democracy

what is fascism?, jim wolfreys

KEY: "To identify fascist ideology as a projection onto another plane of fears and anxieties deriving from social turmoil is not to dismiss its role, but to begin to explain why so many took it so seriously. Studies within the Marxist tradition which have situated ideological, programmatic and organisational features of fascist parties in the context of their relationship to broader social, political and economic questions have been able to provide rich and detailed analyses of the phenomenon, and to distinguish it from other forms of reaction in a way that makes it possible to identify contemporary variants of fascism."

(...) [KEY, this is precisely what Mann fails to do -- temporal aspect to analysis] According to Paxton it is not the themes taken up by fascism that define the phenomenon, but their function. Since fascism is based on a rejection of universal values, it is more disparate than other political movements, and must be understood not ‘as the expression of the same fixed essence’, but within specific historical contexts. He rejects the way some historians have offered separate definitions of fascism and Nazism, arguing that this leads to the study of fascism in isolation from other factors. Analyses which reduce fascism to a tool of a particular interest group, meanwhile, ignore the fact that the movement won independent popular backing. Instead Paxton proposes to examine the development of fascism through five stages: the creation of a movement; its rooting in the political system; the seizure of power; the exercise of power; its fate in the long term (radicalisation or entropy).

(...) Fascism emerged as a response to the development of mass democracy, seeking out, ‘in each national culture those themes that are best capable of mobilising a mass movement of regeneration, unification and purity’, and directing it against liberal individualism, constitutionalism and the left.16 Here the distinction between function and themes becomes clearer. Action, not doctrine or philosophy, is what drove the major fascist movements of the inter-war period. In a new era of mass politics, ‘emotions…carefully stage-managed ceremonies, and intensely charged rhetoric’ counted for more than ‘the truth of any of the propositions advanced in its name’. In place of rational debate, fascism substituted the immediacy of sensual experience, turning politics into aesthetics.

(...) [yup] ...strong subtext to this book, which clearly exercises Mann at least as much as its actual subject, is what he refers to as ‘class theory’, by which he means explanations of fascism which focus either on its relationship to capitalist elites or on its middle class base. Mann claims that Marxists simply reduce ideas ‘to their supposed socio-economic base’.20 His argument is that most ‘class theorists’ do not take enough account of fascists’ own beliefs, which reject both class theories and materialism of any kind. Leaving aside the question as to whether fascists must believe they are pursuing class interests for that to be the case, ‘class theory’ appears, in Mann’s hands, as something of a straw man. This is unfortunate because his determination to portray class as just one sociological descriptor among many diminishes his own attempt to provide an adequate explanation of what makes fascism tick.

(...) As a consequence—and this is also true of Paxton’s book—there is no satisfactory explanatory framework for the conflict between radicals and opportunists at the heart of fascist movements and regimes. Mann refuses to accept that fascism represented one side of the class struggle, ‘or indeed any single class at all’.23 As others have pointed out this does rather beg the question as to what the paramilitaries were engaged in, if not a ruthless class struggle against the organisations of the labour movement.24 Despite acknowledging that once they neared power fascist movements ‘became biased on questions of class struggle’ and ‘tilted toward the capitalist class’, he offers little explanation as to why this should be the case and overall his analysis lacks sufficient feel for the texture of the motivations exercising fascist activists.

eric hobsbawm, the age of capital (chapter 1: 'springtime of peoples')

(10): "There have been plenty of greater revolutions in the history of the modern world, and certainly plenty of more successful ones. Yet there has been none which spread more rapidly and widely, running like a brushfire across frontiers, countries and even oceans."

(10): French Republic proclaimed February 24, 1848; German revolution(s), Italy and Hungary in March... "Within a matter of weeks no government was left standing in an area of Europe which is today occupied by all or part of ten states [France, West Germanyh, East Germany, Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakea, Hungary, part of Poland, Yugoslavia, and Romania] not counting lesser repercussions in a number of others."

(10): YET--"within six months of its outbreak its universal defeat was safely predictable, within eighteen months of its outbreak all but one of the regimes it overthrew had been restored, and the exception (the French Republic) was putting as much distance as it could between itself and the insurrection to which it owed its existence."

(12-13): Radicals, Hobsbawm's suggesting, had a simple model--a French revolution towards a "unitary centralized democratic republic of Germany, Italy, or Hungary or whatever the country happened to be..." But "moderates... were enmeshed in a web of complex calculations, based essentially on the fear of democracy which they believed to equal social revolution."

(13-17): "Their common characteristics:"

(1) "They all succeeded and failed rapidly, and in most cases totally..." (France counter-attack by April, when conservatives made it to the assembly en masse on the backs of a "politically-inexperienced" peasantry; and then the revolutionary workers were defeated in Paris, in June; Hapsburg reaction by June; in Germany and Austria the old regimes regained power "between the summer and the end of the year); remaining parts of Italy and Hungary recaptured by summer 1849). "There had been one and only one major irreversible change: the abolition of serfdom in the Habsburg Empire."

(2) "All the revolutions had something else in common, which largely accounts for their failure. They were, in fact or immediate anticipation, social revolutions of the labouring poor. They therefore frightened the moderate liberals whom they pushed into power and prominence... at least as much as the supporters of the old regimes." Adding that though the communists didn't have a major role in events in Germany, events in France in February, where the 'leaders were socialists and communists and its provisional government included a mechanic,' frightened them. In sum, page 17: "Eighteen forty-eight failed because it turned out that the decisive confrontation was not between the old regimes and the united 'forces of progress', but between 'order' and 'social revolutions.' Its crucial confrontation was not that of Paris in February but that of Paris in June, when the workers, manoeuvred into isolated insurrection, were defeated and massacred... It is characteristic of the ferocity of the hatred of the rich for the poor that some three thousand were slaughtered after defeat, while another twelve thousand were arrested, mostly to be deported to Algerian labour camps." The revolution was strongest, Hobsbawm adds, where radicals were able to lead or do without the moderates--this was most likely in lands where national liberation was the point of unity (i.e., Italy and Hungary, which is where the revolutions lasted the longest)

(20): KEY: "As we shall see the reactionary 1850s were to be, in economic terms, a period of systematic liberalization. In 1848-9 moderate liberals therefore made two important discoveries in Western Europe: that revolution was dangerous and that some of their substantial demands (especially in economic matters) could be met without it. The bourgeoisie ceased to be a revolutionary force."

(20-21): discussing the role of 'intellectuals' and of the petty-bourgeoisie -- many of them, he's arguing, were important for the 'democratic left,' but certainly not 'foundational'. many of the youth of this class, in fact, would do very well for themselves in the reactionary years of the 50s and 60s.

(21): KEY: "As for the labouring poor, they lacked the organization, the maturity, the leadership, perhaps most of all the historical conjuncture, to provide a political alternative. Strong enough to make the prospect of social revolution look real and menacing, they were too weak to do more than frighten their enemies." The weaknesses, enumerated: (1) "numerical deficiency"--not always a majority in the cities, which were anyway counterbalanced by the weight of the peasantry; (2) ideological and political immaturity. "The most politically conscious and activist stratum among them consisted of the pre-industrial artisans... The poor and unskilled in the cities and, outside Britain, the industrial and mining proletariat as a whole, had hardly any developed political ideology as yet."

(22-23): KEY: even though he is noting their political non-organization, he is also arguing that "we should not underestimate [their] potential." in one sense, they were yet to be 'bought off' by capitalism, as their pauperism was very evident. moreover, they weren't able to concentrate on their economic demands; their demands had an invariably 'political' content, without which "no revolution is made." It was "organization, ideology and leadership" which were underdeveloped.

(24): "They ought to have been bourgeois revolutions, but the bourgeoisie drew back from them."

(25): important--a lasting consequence of 1848, Hobsbawm is arguing, was that it forced "the defenders of the social order... to learn the politics of the people." Absolutism for its own sake--or tradition for tradition's sake--no longer withstood popular scrutiny.

lecture 15, "the home front"
john merriman

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1917 and 1918--the mutinies.

the mutinies have to be seen in the context of all this, but in particular they have to be seen in the context of the Battle of the Somme in 1916, which was the darkest period in four years of dark days.

began on July 1st, 1916--on the first day, almost 40,000 British soldiers were wounded, 20,000 were killed. there was a casualty for every half-meter of the front line. there were more British soldiers killed in the first three days of this battle than there were Americans killed in WWI, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq combined(!). those are phenomenal losses.

it's easy, perhaps, to poke fun at Oxbridge class society--but, in WWI, the flower of British youth perished in these battles.

1917 is the crucial year in determining the outcome of a war that seemed like it was going to go on forever. by the end of 1917 and into March 1918, the military planners begin to think that they'll win the war by 1920, 1921. as so many people died, to win a few kilometers, there were wags who said we'll reach the Rhine by 2007(!).

but two things happen in 1917, that are crucial.

(1) Bolshevik Revolution, after the February 1917 overthrow of the Tsar--people wake up and discover that the Emperor has no clothes. Kerensky's provisional government keeps Russia in the war. But by October the Bolshevik's take power, and withdraws Russia from the war by March 1918 at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (there was a deceleration in the war effort before this; and there were any way quite a number of desertions, though less than you might have thought.) (2) the other thing that happens is that the Americans enter the war. they were officially neutral, though the majority of the population supported the Allies, but it's not really that that brings the US into the war. the German High Command had decided that the only way they could win was to knock Britain out of the war. and the way they were going to do that was to sink ships supplying munitions, etc. to the British (a submarine campaign). they placed warnings at ports in US and Philadelphia. sunk the Lusitania on her maiden voyage on 1915, killing 1,200 civilians. (in the 1960s/1970s divers found that the ship was carrying munitions, and that was the German claim). over the long run, the man that was going to keep the US out of the war, Woodrow Wilson, ends up taking the US into WWI (despite widespread domestic opposition--Wilson couldn't get the Treaty of Versailles ratified by Congress, after returning home).

what did the entry of the Americans really mean? not so much troops--troops don't really make the difference, really. the big difference is that the curves cross--the ability of the Germans to supply their own war-machine cannot compete with the combined power of American industrial might. factories easily transformed into the production of arms. and it's at that point when many people in the French and British High Command realize that they will win the war--though they're still unsure at what cost.

all this helps set up March 1918, when the Germans decide that "it's now or never"

--------------

what about the mutinies?

most people in France did not want war in 1914. but because it was easy to portray Germany as the aggressors, the vast majority of the population recognized the urgency of the fight.

to be sure, there are tensions within French society re: the war. there was tremendous resentment. at the Opera, they distributed coal as per rations--as people waited in line, they saw the fancy people in their big cars going off to the restraunts (people who had profited tremendously from Big Business' role in war). so there is class tension fueled by the War.

more than that, you have tensions felt by peasants, who are conscripted without any real possibility of refusing (unless they've already had two brothers killed!).

you have refugees, as well--refugees from the North (sometimes even German-speaking, and Flemish), settling in other areas, as a strain on local resources. you have grumbling, then, about these "Germans" of the North.

many women and men also go on strike in 1917 (689 strikes, affecting 300,000 workers--as compared to 98 strikes in 1916)--not defeatist strikes, but they're agitating for better conditions. why should you work in terrible conditions when the "Big Hats" are simply getting more wealthy?

there are attempts to break these strikes.

but, in sum, 1917 is a year when morale on the home front is lower than ever. (prof just noting that conditions are worse in Berlin than they are in Paris; better in London than in either place)

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what about the mutinies? how serious?

there were probably only two totally reliable divisions standing between Paris and the Germans, after these mutinies.

nobody on the home front really knew about them (part of this is that letters sent home were censored, remember). nor did the Germans, nor did the British.

it's not too hard to say why these mutinies take place when they do. or why they take place at all. it is not defeatism, but these tactics of trench warfare were killing hundreds of thousands of people for nothing--for no reason. there isn't any hope, in this sense.

the mutinies were, indeed, widespread--refusals to "go over the top" simply spread like wirefire. soldiers say they don't want to get killed any more for five cents a day (in some places red flags go up--in some places black flags). though remember socialists had joined the war effort (jules guesde ends up a minister in 1915).

two regiments decide that they're going to march on Paris, and convince the Chamber of Deputies to stop the war. most of the Generals foolishly claim Bolshevik propaganda behind this.

in May and June about 40,000 soldiers were involved in collective acts of refusal (other statistic goes as high as 70,000). the first signs that the soldiers supposed to go "over the top" started ba-ing like sheep on their way to the slaughterhouse. there was socialist and anarchist literature that had gotten into the trenches, but it was obviously not a Bolshevik conspiracy.

a General ends the policy of these mad attacks, over the tops. there were some people who were put up against the wall and shot, for sure, but we don't know. there were 3427 condemnations--about 10% of the people who were court-martialed. 49 were condemned to death, which were carried out immediately.

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in the Spring of 1918, the Germans launch a major offensive (Ludendorf Offensive)--their first since 1914.

at the same time, the Austro-Hungarian Empire is having all sorts of problems (Franz Joseph I, Emperor-King since 1867, dies in 1916). all the predictable cracks are opening up--the Germans are quite unsure whether the Austrian-Hungarian Empire will be able to hang on, fighting against the Italians, for example.

the Americans have, by the Spring of 1918, 325,000 soldiers.

so Ludendorf decides on a massive offensive. encouraged by the fact that there are younger soldiers, barely 18, that have newly arrived in the ranks. and older troops have arrived, as well. so on the 21st of March, 1918, after a relatively brief bombardment of 5 hours, 1.6 million men attack the allied defenses in five separate offenses across a front of 40 miles. and they do break through--some pass 40 miles to the other side.

on Easter Sunday, shells fall on Paris, and they begin taking lives.

but what happens, is predictable. as on a small scale, the Germans begin to outrun their cover and supplies. they begin to encounter stiff resistance at all of these five points. in July, they try a final offensive, they fail, and know that they're simply not going to win.

at that point, morale plunges dangerously in Germany. in January 1918, 250,000 workers had anyway defined the government by going on strike. in July, the British, French, Americans counter-attack quite effectively, using tanks. on the 8th of August, 1918, the German army's darkest day, a British force moves 8 miles(!). at this point, Ludendorf tells Wilhem II that "it's all over but the shouting."

and, at the end, Willhelm the II will slink over the Dutch border, and sign an armistice in a railroad car north of Paris. the war ends on the 11th of November, 1918 (people were killed, afterward, because they didn't know that the armistice had come along).

and, alas, the Spanish Flu comes on the tail of the War. the biggest pandemic since the Black Death.

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the statistics, which are simply staggering:

Russia (1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded--nothing like WWII, of course, when 25 million died)
France (at least 1.4-1.5 million dead, 4.3 wounded)
British, including the Empire (908,000 dead, 2 million wounded)
Italy (508,000 dead)
Serbia (208,000 dead)
Belgium (38,000 dead)

Germany (2 million dead, 4 million wounded--how do you explain losing this many and losing the war? well that's something that the Right would latch on to, in the war's aftermath. it was the socialists, of course)
Austria-Hungary (1.1 million dead, 3.6 million wounded)

in France, there are 36,000 communes, and there were only 12 that didn't have somebody killed. that's why you see war memorials everywhere.

"if God exists, how could he let this happen?"

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lecture 13, "the origins of WWI"
john merriman

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showing a map of "the new imperialism"--from the mid 1880s to 1914. (in particular, the "scramble for Africa")

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so, just to put this in context--the diplomatic origins of WWI

the traditional image is not a bad one: entangling alliances that create a house of cards, ready to collapse.

how does it happen? (for France, this is also the story of a shift from England seen as France's greatest rival, to Germany)

much of the diplomatic history of this period revolves around the rivalry of France and Germany--one can debate the extent to which revenge played a role (most people in the 1890s would have likely said France were more likely to go to war with Britain).

the other major issue upon which WWI hinged on was the hatred between Russia and Austria-Hungary--Russia sees itself as the protector of the Slavic peoples, and that Austria-Hungary is a polyglot Empire (about 15 national communities--a perpetual destabilizing factor in their national politics). particularly when Russia is fanning the flames of pan-Slavism and Slavic nationalisms within the A-H Empire (which had become the dual empire in 1867).

by 1900, Russia is fanning the flames of pan-Slavic fervor in the mountainous territories of Bosnia-Herzogivina, which includes Serbs, Muslims, and Catholic Croats.

now, the alliance system of the late 19th century hinges on German and French antagonism, and the competing interests of A-H and Russia in the Balkans, and Germany's fear of being attacked from both East and West by Russia and France. you have two potential free agents, Italy (which goes to highest bidder in 1915), and Great Britain (it wasn't a given that it would ally with France and Russia, remember--Britain and Russia and Britain and France had been fighting each other for ages).

so, how does it happen that it in 1914 that France finds it with these bizarre bedfellows? (remember, if you're a republican/socialist, how do you explain an alliance with the Tsar, represser of the peoples and encourager of vicious pogroms against the Jews).

later on, i will make the case that, most of the people who looked at such things expected a war in their lifetimes. they're had not been a major conflagration since Waterloo, basically. you have wars, but basically this period is referred to as the Pax Britannica. but most people thought there would be a war in their lifetime--and many people wanted one.

but nobody wanted one that would carry away four empires, a million lives, and last for four years, and unleash the demons of the 20th century.

in 1879, Bismarck forges the cornerstone alliance, between Germany and Austria-Hungary, against Russia's activity in the Balkans. and this is one of the continuities of the entire period.

and this explains why, in July 1914, the Germans give the famous blank cheque to Austria-Hungary--you can do whatever you want to Serbia, and we will back you all the way (even if it involves going to war with "these guys"). (they all know that it will take Russians two weeks to mobilize--furthermore they had lost badly to Japan in 1905, remember).

this is the first chip, the first block.

a year later, 1n 1880, Italy allies itself with these two, but there are all sorts of conditions, and it's more of a free agent.

the last thing that Bismarck wants (remember he's out of it by 1894) was to see Germany attacked from both sides. they don't want France, in other words, to ally with Russia.

so how does that happen?

well, it has to do with a fear of Germany (aside from some scattered cultural tries; some Russian elite spoke French). other facts: tied together by economic investment (French investors are frequently investing outside of France, remember, and they have invested heavily in Russia--particularly in railroads). these economic ties help solidify the arrangements of Great Powers. think of the irony of the Russian Tsar being received France in 1892, when they sign a military treaty! there is a formal alliance in 1894--and everybody knows the rough outlines of this. this ends what Bismarck had intended, which was the diplomatic isolation of France.

how does Britain get into this?

because Germany becomes a much bigger economic rival than anyone else--the German economy grows rapidly (nipping at British heels in terms of steel production, they're producing huge battleships, and that sort of thing). they go way ahead, in chemistry. so, with this economic rivalry (expressed in Africa, as well), goes the naval rivalry, that heats up after the turn of the century. industrialists, of course, love to build big ships. Britain's control of the seas has persisted for centuries, don't forget.

so the last thing the British think they can do, is lose control of the seas.

for a long time, Britain has not seen the need for an alliance, but now looking towards the French in the face of this economic and naval tension. again, in the 1890s, people in Bourdeaux/London, etc. had expected to go to war with Britain/France (people were writing future war novels at this time, don't forget--and one of the more ridiculous ones was a novel in England that predicted a war with France, after the French arrive in Dover, digging a tunnel under the English channel!).

events in 1905--the first Moroccan crisis, followed by, in 1911, the second Moroccan crisis--demonstrate German saber-rattling in Morocco. and this convinces the British that maybe allying with the French isn't such a dumb idea after all. they begin to have informal military talks, that develop into a military understanding viz-a-viz Germany (French on Mediterranean, England on North Sea).

so this explains how these two unlikely allies came together. moreover, the birth-rate--the French realize, that if it's more than just a short encounter, their birth-rate is so miniscule that they'd better have allies. and military planners know this stuff. that means that it's all that more important, if they're contemplating that war, to rely on allies.

remember: when the Tzar orders Russia to mobilize, it is well-known that it will take two weeks. So: the Germans know, then, that they have two weeks to defeat France. they're sure that they can do it, but then they'd better get ready for the Russians on their Eastern frontier. and the only way that they can do that is by violating Belgian and Dutch neutrality (Alsace-Lorraine is not a viable place to launch invasion from). That guarantees, above all else, that the British will go to war--it's bad enought hat they have the French across the Channel. now they have the Germans, as well. you can't have that, so you're going to go to war.

why was that a risk that the Germans were willing to take? because the English do not have a conscript army, but only an expeditionary force. it would take them a month to raise an army that could make any difference, in effect.

these are the competing alliances/considerations that precede 1914, essentially. and this is why the assasination of the Archduke triggers the Great War (prof recounting putting his feet where the 16-yr old gunner had killed Franz Ferdinand). this leads to the blank cheque, and it brings this dreadful war.

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now, like revolutions, wars don't entirely break out according to the hydraulic model--that things get worse and worse and worse and then BOOM, war. but there are moments that raise tensions, and make it possible for the popular press to target potential enemies.

and that's why the incident of Zabern is interesting to discuss, says prof.

the German empire doesn't really trust its Alsatians--residents of the area are not allowed to vote on certain key policy matters (war, treaties, constitutional amendments), for example. Alsace-Lorraine, though, at the same time--is basically German-speaking. 77% of the communes in Alsace-Lorraine are German-speaking, YET, many people consider themselves French. (multiple identities, etc.).

Alsace, is, of course, terribly important, strategically/military.

and what this incident in 1913 does is it confirms the image of German aggressiveness (there are other reasons, too, that Germany does not trust Alsatians--Bismarck is terribly anti-Catholic, don't forget, and this region is overwhelmingly Catholic).

this incident, then: a German officer, speaking to some Alsatian soldiers that were there, refers to them in very scatalogical terms. then, someone else says, "I don't care if you kill these bastards..." And word spreads. tensions build--some German officer slept with a 14 year old Alsatian girl, he's beaten up. the French and German press picks this up and inflames the tensions on both side. they don't go to war, but it confirms the stereotypes that take off during the first years of the war.

so this minor incident, essentially a shouting match, a rape, and a fight, has huge implications. it confirms these military plans. it confirms, for the French, that when the war starts, you'd better get into Alsace-Lorraine and take it back (they're not really going to go into Belgium, are they?).

1914-1944 becomes a new, terrible Thirty Years War. and there were anti-war sentiments, but it was unclear what could be done to stop it.

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in conclusion: it's not just these diplomatic factors and military planning, of course, but really there are deeper, underlying factors. the imperial rivalry helps create this culture of popular imperialism, and popular aggressive nationalism. and the Other, becomes an object of perpetual disdain. jingoism explodes--feeds this expectation that war with come. everyday people dreaming of the next war. social darwinist rivalries, almost. have to pay attention to the popular imaginaire, prof is arguing--public jingoism. only this can help us explain the initial, public, urban enthusiasm for the war (and of course people did not know what it would portend).

privatizing europe:
We are living in difficult times. In Italy privatisation began with the state-owned industrial corporations. Now the Prodi government is carrying it through to essential local public services – to what we consider to be ‘common goods’. In Germany they are still in the process of selling off their infrastructure: energy, railways, telecoms and so on. Everywhere, the views that emerged during the Thatcher and Reagan years in conservative parties have become all too common in parties of the centre-left – in spite of the growing evidence of the failure of privatisation and liberalisation from the standpoint of both consumer satisfaction and public finance efficiency.
(...) Privatisation in the UK has gone furthest. The sell off of industrial corporations such as steel and coal is historical memory. Britain is now engaged in opening up local government, health, education and part of the criminal justice system to private business. Public bodies are to become commissioning organisations, purchasing services from public, private and voluntary sector organisations. They are also being required to create new markets of competing providers where they do not already exist.
(...) In theory at least, governments claim to use liberalisation to stimulate competition and to make it difficult for institutions with a monopoly or near monopoly to fix prices. Hence liberalisation of services is said to benefit the consumer. Privatisation, on the other hand, is the partial or complete transfer of public industries to the private sector. It was used by Margaret Thatcher in its purest form – the outright sale of those industries – to defeat the trade unions.
(...) Italy provides a good example of how the impact of privatisation in reality conflicts with the theoretical claims of liberalisation. Last year, Perluigi Bersani, the minister for economic development during the first Prodi government (June 2006-February 2007), launched a liberalisation programme with the aim of attacking the privileges of monopolistic corporations, including taxi, insurance and pharmaceutical companies and mobile phone companies that impose unreasonable pay-as-you-go tariffs. Bersani’s attempt to protect consumer interests in the private sector will no doubt come up against strong corporate vested interest. The fact that it is necessary illustrates how disastrous were the consequences of the privatisations in the 1990s, when Italy went from being an economy dominated by state monopolies to one dominated by the oligarchies of private companies.
(...) Our experience in Italy illustrates one of several problems with privatisation and liberalisation that are common throughout Europe: the end of a state monopoly has not translated into the realisation of a competitive market. Instead it has produced private oligarchies and massive profits for private companies, with very little going to public authorities, which continue to face dire problems of underfunding and debt. Financial institutions have been the main beneficiaries of the privatisation of infrastructure in Europe. Across the continent it is the same story: a deterioration in those services that were liberalised and a shared experience of huge job cuts and a weakening of trade unions.
(...) The passage from public to private that has taken place in Europe has demonstrated the link between privatisation (of industries, infrastructure and public utilities) and the increasing influence of financial markets on the direction of the economy and society. In many European countries, privatisation has been directly linked to diffused shareholding and ‘popular capitalism’, whereby shares in what were public industries and services are sold on the financial market and bought up partly by private citizens but mostly by international investors such as insurance companies.
(...) The political implications of this need seriously to be discussed; it underlies many of the contradictions facing left-wing parties today. There is only one explanation for the propensity of erstwhile parties of the left to support privatisation: in rejecting their past these ex-socialist and ex-communist parties decided they wished to strike a deal with the new holders of financial power.
(...) Democracy is another fundamental problem that needs to be addressed. Privatisation has gone hand in hand with ‘individualistic’ and authoritarian political ideologies. The EU is witnessing a disastrous lack of civic participation in its policy-making. This has been highlighted in research by Greenwich University’s Public Services International Research Unit (see www.psiru.org), on behalf of the European Federation of Public Service Unions, that is highly critical of the official report of the European Commission on services and liberalisation.