Modern Euro, Week Eight: Fascism

First Period:

A few weeks ago, I saw that Rick Steves (the Travels in Europe guy) had put together a special program on The Story of Fascism in Europe. These days, when one hears the term "fascism" they immediately think of Nazis and the Third Reich. Its beginnings, however, were with Benito Mussolini (one more link from the Great War user on youtube and not used in class today) in Italy about 1915. Rick Steves' program lays out the rise of fascism and the direction it took millions of people in the post World War I years. The link (above) is 56 minutes long and well worth the time. We covered about 30 minutes of the video. Bonus material: Fascism and Mussolini 

The Weimar Republic was the government of Germany following WWI. As the link says, the government lacked the ability to make any real change or efficiently help the country in post-war reconstruction. There was no majority of any party, and as such, there was no majority vote, stagnating the leadership. In fact, the Weimar Republic had over 40 political parties. Here are a few of the "main" parties, and for each one there was a handful of splintered groups as most parties could not maintain any type of agreed upon platform (hence the plethora of parties): KPD- Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (Communist), SPD- Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Socialist), DDP- Deutsche Demokratische (pro-Weimar), Zentrumpartei (Center), DVP- Deutsche Volkspartei (moderate, anti-Weimar), DAP- Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (German Worker's Party, became the NSDAP in 1920), NSDAP- Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, Nazis), DSP- Deutschesozialistische Partei (Julius Streicher, a name to look out for next semester, merged this party with the Nazi Party in 1922, and the Spartakusbund (Communist, led by Rosa Luxemburg).

Fascism grew out of the waste and want of war, a decimated economy, war reparations, loss of territory, hunger, and unemployment. Germany's "stab in the back" mentality was vehemently against the Weimar Republic, as they felt they had been betrayed by this government and President Ebert who signed the Treaty of Versailles. Not only was he to blame, but specifically Jews, Socialists, and Communists. Italy had a similar feeling of discontent over how the war ended for them, the "mutilation of victory. Fascist governments were violently encouraged by the roving paramilitaries (Black Shirts in Italy and Brown Shirts in Germany). The Freikorps were the paramilitary group comprised of German soldiers returning from the front. They were nationalist, anti-Communist, anti-Semitic, and desperate for the order and conformity they had experienced in the military. In essence, the perfect fit for enforcing Nazi ideology.

In the first five years of the Weimar Republic, two coup d'etat attempts were made against the Republic, The Kapp Putsch of 1920 and the Munich/Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. In 1919, a young, new member of the DAP Adolf Hitler made his first speech in a beer hall in Munich. By 1923, he had the support and the gall to march on Munich. The men surrounding Hitler in his march, had served in the Great War, and would continue to support the goals of the Nazi Party, many until the end of their lives. Here is a list of men involved with Hitler at the Beer Hall Putsch: 

1. Adolf Hitler: WWI, infantry
2. General Erich von Ludendorff: WWI general, died of liver cancer in 1937, age 72
3. Ernst Röhm: WWI, Freikorps member and future co-founder of the SA (Sturmabteilung), killed during The Night of the Long Knives as he was perceived to be a threat to Hitler
4. Rudolf Hess: WWI, infantry; loyal until 1941when he flew to Scotland in hopes of making peace with the Allies. He was tried at Nuremberg after the Second World War, convicted, and sentenced to life in Spandau Prison, where he hanged himself in 1987, upon which Spandau was demolished for the belief that it would be made into a neo-Nazi shrine if it were left intact.
5. Hermann Goring: WWI fighter ace, creator of the Gestapo (secret police), convicted of crimes at the Nuremberg Trials post WWII, sentenced to hang but committed suicide by taking cyanide.
6. Max Scheubner-Richter: WWI, served as German diplomat in Ottoman controlled Turkey, shot in the lung during the Beer Hall Putsch.
7. Alfred Rosenberg: son of a German Baltic father and an Estonian mother, he spent the war years in Russia, fleeing the Russian Revolution in 1918. He wrote The Myth of the Twentieth Century and many other tenants of Nazi ideology (repudiating the Treaty of Versailles, racial theory, persecution of Jews, and Lebensraum (living space). He was editor of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi newspaper, and he was with Hitler in his hatred for "degenerate" art (what we call Modern Art). He was hanged for his crimes after the Nuremberg Trials.
8. Julius Streicher: WWI, infantry, Iron Cross recipient. He believed it was his destiny to serve Hitler, and did so in a grotesquely virulent manner. He published Der Stürmer, an anti-Semitic paper that later became a staple of Josef Goebbles propaganda machine. He was convicted and hanged at Nuremberg.
9. Heinrich Himmler: WWI, infantry. However, war ended before he saw action. He was 17 when he joined up. Creator of the Einsatzgruppen (the paramilitary Death Squads) and concentration camps, the main architect of the Holocaust. He was captured a month after the fall of the Third Reich, where he was interrogated by the British, but committed suicide by cyanide.

These names you will continue to hear in the next semester.

Second Period:

A continuation of themes from the first period:

• The Establishment of the Weimar Republic
• Why Were the Germans Unwilling to Support the Weimar Republic; Rosa Luxemburg of the Spartakusbund (a Communist Party), executed by the Freikorps.
• Problems and Solutions in the Weimar Republic; inflation, reparations, the occupation of the Ruhr industrial region by the French and Belgians; the downfall of President Friedrich Ebert and his replacement by Gustav Stresemann
• How the Depression Helped Hitler Come to Power; the Dawes Plan, continuation of poverty, hunger, and disease; the swamp of political parties in the Weimar Republic
• The Role of Hitler's Public Appeal in the Nazi Rise to Power; unity behind one leader, the lure of one party that can accomplish things and hope for the future; Nazi ideology gave the sense of answers, unity, and help for those in desperate circumstances; Nazis standing in the breach against the Communists; Nazi propaganda
• When Adolf Hitler Declared War on Modern Art; art and politics, "degenerate" art
• Hitler Plans to Stash the Degenerate Art at Goring's; a parody, the subtitles are rewritten and not actual translations
• Bonus Material: German Expressionism: Crash Course Film History; Cinema in Weimar, the immigration of German cinema leaders to Hollywood in the face of anti-Semitic laws
• Adolf Hitler First Speech as Chancellor; Hitler's promises of Lebensraum, a good future, employment, prosperity. Just give him four years...

 The complete playlist for this class is here: Modern European History, WWI. A vast majority of the links used this semester were included in the weekly blog, yet some may have slipped through the cracks. If I only had all the time in the world...

And we finish the semester with a final few quotes from A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte. (At this point, if you have followed along with this blog, you should have this book. Exceptional bit of writing, and, although it doesn't always make the blog notes, it was used excessively in how I structured the class and our class conversations.)

""Only after all the fighting is done, when the bravest have fallen in battle, when the war against evil has been fought to its bitter end-- only after all this-- does the Myth of Fact complete the human story. Only then can joy, "joy beyond the walls of the world," become our permanent possession. There is not shortcut to the Land of Peace, no primrose path to the Mansions of the Blessed. First come tears and suffering in Mordor, heartless violence at Stable Hill-- and horror and death at Golgotha... Perhaps this is why the eucatastrophe is always mixed with grief: the knowledge of sorrows endured in the struggle against evil lingers on in the human heart... The conclusion of the Great War brought its own mix of celebration and sadness. The soldiers of this war had lived through endless days of mud, stench, slaughter, and death. Nothing like it had ever occurred in the history of the world; it shook the very foundations of civilized life... No war could end war for all time; or transform the nations into a brotherhood of man. "It was a loathsome ending to the loathsome tragedy of the last four years, " wrote Siefried Sassoon in his diary. T.S. Eliot saw the postwar world as a wasteland of human weariness. "I think we are in rats' alley, " he wrote, "where the dead men lost their bones." Erich Remarque predicted a generation of men "broken, burnt out, rootless, and without hope." Civilian life, he said, would bring no comfort to the survivors: "We will not be able to find our way any more."... In the end, the creators of Narnia and Middle Earth offer a vision of human life that is at once terrifying and sublime. They insist that every soul is caught up in an epic story of sacrifice and courage and clashing armies: the Return of the King... Here we find, beyond all imagination, the deepest source of hope for the human story. For when the King is revealed, "there will be no more night." The Shadow will finally and forever be lifted from the earth. The Great War will be won."å

Modern Euro, Week Seven: Memorial, Flanders Fields, and Poppies

First Period:

In the years after the war, much was done to memorialize the loss while at the same time trivializing the experience of soldiers and offering a sterilized version of events to the public. In World War I: A Very Peculiar History (pages 166-167, these are the bulleted points: during the war, press correspondents were not allowed on the fields of battle; most reports were pure propaganda, that left out the horrors of this war; official war photographers were not supposed to photograph the mountains of dead or the ugly way soldiers had died; soldiers were not allowed to own or use cameras at the front; The Battle of the Somme was a film we have talked about in this class that offered more propaganda than reality, film sets instead of battle fields, and yet still offered a glimpse of trench warfare. The need to make this war less brutal, with smoother edges, indirectly lead to the Second World War, a war that came to a close with General Dwight D. Eisenhower ordering the photography of the atrocities committed so that it would not be easily forgotten, denied, or made to be less than the reality.

The aftermath of the Great War was a quick "return to normal and pretend it never happened" across the world. The generation that were a part of this war and the Spanish influenza epidemic became known as The Lost Generation, those left struggling to find meaning in their experiences while the world demanded them to forget it. Humphrey Bogart, Bela Lugosi (Dracula from early film), Walt Disney, A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh), Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, President Harry S. Truman, General Douglas MacArthur, General George S. Patton... all part of The Lost Generation and many whose roles in the Second World War were defined by the First World War.

One of The Lost Generation was Sergeant Alvin York of Tennessee. In his memoirs, Sergent York and the Great War, the final chapter has his thoughts of the end of the war and what it meant for him: Before the war I had never been out of the mountains. I had never wanted to be. I had sorter figured that them-there mountains were our shield against the iniquities of the outside world. They sorter isolated us and kept us together so that we might grow up pureblooded and resourceful and God-loving and God-fearing people. They done that, too, but they done more'n that. They done kept out many of the good and worthwhile things like good roads, schools, libraries, up-to-date homes, and modern farming methods. But I never thought of these things before going to war. Only when I got back home again and got to kinder thinking and dreaming, I sorter realized it... Then I snowed we had to have them. We jes had to. And the more I thought the more I kinder figured that all of my trials and tribulations in the war had been to prepare me for doing just this work in the mountains. All of my suffering in having to go and kill were to teach me to value human lives. All the temptations I done went through were to strengthen my character. All the associations with my buddies were to help me understand and love my brother man. All of the pains I done seed and went through were to help and prepare me. And the fame and fortune they done offered me in the cities were to try me out and see if I was fitted for the work He, wanted me to do... I am blessed with a whole heap of most loyal and powerful friends all over America; and I still have and always will have my faith in God. I know he will not fail to help me. So I'm getting along tol'able well... I ain't going to show any favoritism nohow. I fought with Catholics and Protestants, with Jews, Greeks, Italians, Poles, and Irish, as well as American borned boys in the World War. They were buddies of mine and I larned to love them. 

 Thiepval Memorial, The Battle of the Somme

WWI: Aftermath and Memory

It's hard to "see" what war does. This clip shows the destruction in the aftermath of the war in comparison to how it looks now. The First World War Remembered

In that last video, there is a poppy on the left side. One of the books for this class has poppies on the cover. In talking with several local people, there was no understanding of what the poppy stands for in regards to the Great War. These days the poppy is sometimes handed out on Memorial Day, the 4th of July, or Veteran's Day (also the date of the Armistice). The red poppy has become the symbol of remembrance for the wars since the First World War, immortalized in the poem In Flanders Fields by Doctor John McCrae.

The Poppy Story tells of the history, the importance of the symbol, and how it is used today.

Bonus material: We Remember Them and World War I Memorial in America

Second Period:

Many videos from this point forward (definitely next semester) will be from the Unites States Holocaust Memorial Museum archives. The first for this class and what we began with this period was The Path to Nazi Genocide, Chapter 1/4: Aftermath of World War I and the Rise of Nazism, 1918-1933.

Joseph Loconte, the author of our book A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War, summarizes the experiences of Tolkien and Lewis post war: their friendship, their faith, and their works. It was well known that Tolkien maintained his faith, while Lewis went into the war as an atheist and came out with the same ideas, bolstered by the futility of this war. The Lost Generation was lost, trying to figure out why things went the way they did. Tolkien himself uses Frodo at the end of The Fellowship of the Rings to question what to do now, where to go, and how to pick things back up having experienced all the things that have changed him permanently forever. There really is no going back, but going forward seems just as hard.

In the book, page 150, Loconte says "Nevertheless, these authors anchor their stories in the ancient idea of the Fall of Man: just as a force of evil entered our world in a distant past, so it inhabits and threatens the worlds of their imaginations. It is the deepest source of alienation and conflict in their stories. Even so, it cannot erase the longing for goodness and joy, so palpably alive in the best and noblest of their characters. They are haunted by the memory of Eden: take away this fundamental idea, and their moral vision collapses... We might expect their stories, rooted in this belief, to lurch one of two directions: either toward triumphalism of the crusader, as we saw during the First World War; or toward fatalism, a cast of mind that renders men and women helpless victims in the storms of life. Instead, the heroes of Middle Earth and Narnia are much more complex. They are often hobbled by their own fears and shortcomings; they resist burdens of war. Yet we also see in them an affirmation of moral responsibility-- an irreducible dignity-- even amid the terrible forces arrayed against them... Yet they carry on... Tolkien's account of the condition of their hearts is as true to human life in the shadow of death as anything in modern prose. Each of them is faced with the appalling clarity of the choice laid before him: to continue in the quest, into dangers and horrors unspeakable, or to take the safe and easy way and turn back."

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien on the Power of Fiction details Lewis' move from atheism to Christianity, and the importance of their literary pursuits in using fiction to explain and gain understanding of their common experiences in life.

Bonus material: These C.S. Lewis doodles are the best things ever. Here is one on the topic of Right & Wrong.

Modern Euro, Week Six: Doughboys and Armistice

First Period:

When we talk war and battles in history, we tend to think they are clearly defined-- like World War One began 28 July 1914 and then ended 11 November 1918. The reality is a convoluted mess. For years I rather simplistically put the events of WWI in the mental order that follows: Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated, setting off the war; somewhere the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German U-Boat, upsetting Americans; the Germans sent the Zimmerman Note/Telegram to Mexico, leading to the US declaring war on Germany; then US soldiers were sent to Europe to slog it out in the trenches alongside the Brits and the French; finally, the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles happened, thus ending the war on 11 November 1918. That timeline does not work.

First, the sinking of the Lusitania happened 7 May 1915. 1,208 drowned with 128 of them being Americans. Germany claimed it to be carrying troops and munitions, but it was a cruise liner (but was carrying a small number of cartridge cases). This incident is nearly a full two years before America enters the war. It was concerning for the US, but then they were more than aware of the dangers presented by U-boats in Allied waters and had warned US citizens to refrain from that kind of travel. Bonus material on American involvement before joining the war here: The USA Before Joining WWI

*information on naval warfare here: Submarines, Dreadnoughts & Battlecruisers

The global picture wasn't just focused on continental Europe. While we have focused on this geographical location as this class is predominantly that history, the war was fought in places the world over: the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. Everyone wanted a piece of this war in the hopes it would bring about the political and social change they were desperate for. Revolutions and civil wars rocked nations internally even as they grasped at their interests on the fronts of global war. 24 April 1916, the Easter Rising/Rebellion, was the Irish attempt to throw off British rule. From March to December 1917, the Bolsheviks waged their own battles throughout Russia bringing Imperial Russia to its knees, bringing Communist ideology to power, and changing the global political landscape for every bit of modern history. For more information on the Russian Revolution (bonus material for the class) check these out: Russia Before the 1917 Revolution, The Russian February Revolution 1917, The Russian October Revolution 1917, and Lenin & Trotsky: Their Rise to Power. By 15 December of 1917, Russia was out of the war, signing an Armistice with Germany, and returning Germany to a single front war.

In the midst of the revolutionary chaos of 1917, the Germans sent the Zimmerman note to Mexico on 19 January, another country that was also in the midst of their own revolution and civil war. On 6 April 1917, the US declared war on Germany, with troops arriving in France beginning 25 June 1917. Europe had been at war for two years at this point. The US in WWI discusses America's neutrality, their concerns, and entering the war.

1917 was brutal, and the constant political changes of nations, made for absolute chaos in the grand scheme of the First World War. 1918 would be the year it all came to a head. World War I- 1918 puts it into perspective. By October of that year, Germany requested armistice talks with President Wilson of the US, as Germany (rightly) felt they would get a better deal than what France or Britain would offer, based off Wilson's Fourteen Points. Revolution and mutiny had been brewing in Germany for much of the year, and the people were done. 11 November 1918, the Armistice was signed. The Paris Peace Conference of early 1919 resulted in the Treaty of Versailles. David Lloyd George of Britain, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson presided over the talks. This clip outlines what they wanted in the treaty. The Terms of the Treaty are explained here.

The war was over. What came next was Disease, War, and the Lost Generation. Spanish Influenza raged, wiping out more of the young adult generation than four years of the war. Revolutions and violence continued. And the men and women left to pick up the pieces would later become known as The Lost Generation, coined by Gertrude Stein. We've discussed many figures of the Lost Generation:  Ernest Hemingway, TS Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald, JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, and we added another one to the list: A.A. Milne, creator of Winnie the Pooh. Last year a film was released called Goodbye Christopher Robin, which details the PTSD A.A. Milne was plagued with and his attempts to move forward.

Second Period:

Today's chapter in Joseph Loconte's book A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War was Chapter 5: The Land of Shadow. It is the end of the war for Tolkien and Lewis, and they are left floundering in the same disillusionment and waste four years of war have brought to the world. Tolkien describes war (p. 121) as "The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire." Page 124 states "The sheer destructive power of the war, the unimaginable number of dead and wounded, the apocalyptic hopes and claims of the participants, and the apparent futility of the outcome-- all of this instigated a new season fo religious doubts and experimentation." Bonus material for this portion is an imagined conversation between Tolkien and Lewis on the topic of myth and fantasy.

We continued with the involvement of the US in World War I, courtesy of Crash Course John Green. We extended our conversation on Peace, Revolution, and the Treaty of Versailles: Between Two Wars- 1919.

We ended these class periods with the Armistice and the first few months of "peace" if one could call it that. Here at the End of All Things

Modern Euro, Week 5, Total War & The Home Front

First Period:

As the months turned into years of the First World War and the opposing sides dug into the trenches, waging a war of attrition (method of warfare designed to wear down the enemy through the tremendous loss of man power and resources), manpower and resources at home were needed to support the war. This was the first war on a massive scale that required the people at home to provide for the needs of the military at the front. Previously, as we have discussed, warfare was generally waged in low populated areas, with professional armies, and was over and done in a matter of months. For those in Britain, the war effort was sending women to factories to make the necessary items of war-- ammunition and military equipment. The frontlines were far from their shores (yet, as some have claimed, the bombings could be heard in London on a calm day). Britains dealt with the first air dropped bombs from zeppelins in this war, so there was fear in regards to safety at home. 

This war and war effort at home became known as "total war." World War I: A Very Peculiar History (page 97) defines it as "millions of ordinary citizens caught up in the fighting or sent to work in  factories to make armaments." It brought war home. Sustaining Total War is a video that explains the lengths the home front went to.  Here is a bonus link for Britain's Home Front in WWI. If you think about it, this war and the following one are the only wars that were total, involving a war effort, a society whose main purpose was to support the war, and a culture that expressed this devotion to country, to military, to wins, and loss.

For Germany, the concept of total war floundered, and the German people suffered as their homegrown resources were sent to the front and the ongoing blockade of the North Sea by Britain kept foreign resources out. Instead of sustaining it, Germans were Starving for Total War; their bitterest winter was named the Turnip Winter, marking 1916 as the worst winter of the war,  just two years in and two years yet to go. 

Women in these countries faced exceptional hardships: overworked, underpaid, exhausted, and many times malnourished, and not properly sheltered, as the video links above show. Nurses were in high demand, and what was once considered highly inappropriate to have women at the front, many women left home to offer medical aid. Front Lines: Nurses offers first hand accounts of these women.

Although a highly mechanized war, animals still had roles to play. While the majority was good, it has been pointed out in class that even in the trenches, the rats were oversized and often ate the cats that were put there to remove the rats. Here is the Forgotten Army of WWI. 

The two world wars are unique in that they both grew a culture within their societies. The music, literature, and art all reflected how deeply ingrained this war was for countries. The music is easily recognizable, that marching cadence and lyrics of enthusiasm, patriotism, and much later, the reality of what they lived through. There are many WWI playlists on streaming sites. I know Amazon has a playlist that is filled with original recordings of these war tunes. Here are two of the widely remembered songs of the era: "Its'a Long Way To Tipperary" and "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag." Here is a German WWI song. 

For an entertaining ending to this period, we studied the spy culture that grew up in the first war and the super spy Sidney Reilly.

Second Period:

For the first portion of this class, we covered chapter four of A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, and a Great War by Joseph Loconte. This chapter reiterates many of the same themes we have covered so far, just from the point of view of C.S. Lewis. He believed it would be short war, that being "safely wounded" was the best way to get away from the front, war weariness, and he was in joint agreement with Tolkien that science had been abused in the making and undertaking of this war.

We continued the topics addressed in the first period, total war and the home front. While Britain had the buffer of the English Channel, those in the invaded territories faced decimation of every facet of their lives. When Northern France on German Time documents the invaded cities, the conditions the  locals lived in, and the destruction left in the wake of German retreat.

We discussed one nurse of the war whose imprisonment and death sparked outrage the world over: Edith Cavell. 

It's not always the most enjoyable thing to study history, especially when it is focused on war. So for fun, we rounded out the hour with The Top Ten Moustaches of World War One. Word to those who would like to know such things, there is a bleeped word of profanity in this video.

Bonus material for this hour as we ran out of time: Capturing the Horrors: The Art of World War One and The German Painter Who Fought in the Trenches- Otto Dix.