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HISTORY OF WARFARE General Editor
kelly devries Loyola College Founding Editors
theresa vann paul chevedden VOLUME 20
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UNCOVERED FIELDS Perspectives in First World War Studies EDITED BY
JENNY MACLEOD and PIERRE PURSEIGLE
BRILL LEIDEN BOSTON 2004 •
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This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Brill Academic Publishers has done its best to establish rights for the use of the illustration printed on the cover of this volume. Should any other party feel that its rights have been infringed, we would be glad to hear from them.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Uncovered fields : perspectives in First World War studies / edited by Jenny Macleod and Pierre Purseigle. p. cm. – (History of warfare, ISSN 1385-7827 ; v. 20) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 90-04-13264-3 1. World War, 1914-1918. 2. World War, 1914-1918—Study and teaching. 3. World War, 1914-1918—Historiography. I. Macleod, Jenny. II. Purseigle, Pierre. III. Series. D521.U63 2003 940.3–dc21 2003052331
ISSN 1385–7827 ISBN 90 04 13264 3 © Copyright 2004 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands
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CONTENTS
Contributors ................................................................................ Acknowledgements ......................................................................
vii xi
Introduction: Perspectives in First World War Studies .......... Pierre Purseigle and Jenny Macleod
1
A Uniform of Whiteness: Racisms in the German Officer Corps, 1900–1918 .................................................... Michelle Moyd
25
Soldiers’ Suffering and Military Justice in the German Army of the Great War ........................................................ Anne Duménil
43
Cromwell on the Bed Stand: Allied Civil-Military Relations in World War I .................................................... Michael S. Neiberg
61
A Community at War: British Civilian Internees at the Ruhleben Camp in Germany, 1914–1918 .......................... Matthew Stibbe
79
Beyond and Below the Nations: Towards a Comparative History of Local Communities at War ................................ Pierre Purseigle
95
Stereotypical Bedfellows: The Combination of AntiSemitism with Germanophobia in Great Britain, 1914–1918 .............................................................................. 125 Susanne Terwey Leave and Schizophrenia: Permissionnaires in Paris During the First World War ................................................ 143 Emmanuelle Cronier
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Forging The Industrial Home Front: Iron-Nail Memorials in the Ruhr .......................................................... 159 Stefan Goebel The Great War Between Degeneration and Regeneration .... 179 Jean-Yves Le Naour ‘Gladder to be Going Out Than Afraid’: Shellshock and Heroic Masculinity in Britain, 1914–1919 .................. 195 Jessica Meyer Tears in the Trenches: A History of Emotions and the Experience of War ................................................................ 211 André Loez La Dame Blanche: Gender and Espionage in Occupied Belgium .................................................................................... 227 Tammy M. Proctor War Neurosis and Viennese Psychiatry in World War One ................................................................................ 243 Hans-Georg Hofer How a Pro-German Minority Influenced Dutch Intellectual Debate During the Great War .......................... 261 Ismee M. Tames 1914–18: The Death Throes of Civilization. The Elites of Latin-America Face the Great War ................................ 279 Olivier Compagnon Index ............................................................................................ 297
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CONTRIBUTORS
Olivier Compagnon, PhD in History (2000), University of Paris-Sorbonne, is ‘agrégé’ and graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm). A historian of Latin America, he has just published his doctoral dissertation, Jacques Maritain et l’Amérique du Sud. Le modèle malgré lui (Lille: 2003) and is now working on the First World War. Emmanuelle Cronier studies at Paris I University, and is finishing a PhD on soldiers on leave in Paris during the First World War. She teaches History in secondary school. Anne Duménil is a lecturer at the University of Picardy (Amiens). A graduate from the Ecole Normale Supérieure and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris, she wrote her PhD dissertation on ‘The German soldier of the Great War: military institution and combat experience’. She is a member of the editorial board of the journal 14–18 Aujourd’hui. Today. Heute. Stefan Goebel is a Leverhulme Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for Metropolitan History, Institute of Historical Research, London and a Research Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. He is currently preparing a monograph on medievalism in the commemoration of the Great War in Britain and Germany. Hans-Georg Hofer received his doctorate from the Karl-Franzen’s University of Graz. Formerly a Junior Fellow at the International Research Center for Cultural Studies, Vienna, he now teaches History of Medicine at the Institute for the History of Medicine, University of Freiburg. His book on the cultural history of Neurasthenia, War and Psychiatry in Austria will be published in 2003 with Boehlau Publishers Vienna. Jean-Yves Le Naour, PhD in History (2000), University of Picardy, teaches political studies in Aix-en-Provence and previously taught at the University of Toulouse (1997–2001). He has published Misères et
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tourments de la chair durant la Grande Guerre. Les moeurs sexuelles des Français 1914–1918 (Paris: 2002) and Le soldat inconnu vivant (Paris: 2002). André Loez studied history at the IEP and EHESS in Paris, and received a Lavoisier Scholarship for the European University Institute in Florence, where he is writing his PhD on the French mutineers of 1917. Jenny Macleod is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of History and Classics, University of Edinburgh. She was previously Lecturer in Defence Studies, King’s College London at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. She wrote her PhD at Pembroke College, Cambridge. Her books on the cultural history of the Gallipoli campaign will be published in 2004. Helen McPhail is a freelance translator and writer, specialising in First World War material and has translated display texts and academic books for the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne. As well as co-writing brief military/literary guides to English writers involved in the First World War, she has written an account of French civilians’ experience of occupation in northern France in 1914–1918. Jessica Meyer is a PhD candidate at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. She previously studied at Yale University. Her current research is on perceptions of masculinity in Britain after the First World War. Michelle Moyd is a PhD candidate in African history at Cornell University. Her dissertation is on the cultural and social history of the German colonial army. Previously, she was an instructor in the Department of History at the United States Air Force Academy. Michael Neiberg is professor of history at the United States Air Force Academy. He is the author of Making Citizen-Soldiers: ROTC and the Ideology of American Military Service, 1916–1980, Warfare in World History, and Foch: Supreme Allied Commander in the Great War. Tammy M. Proctor is Chair of the History Department at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. She received her PhD from Rutgers University and has written two books, On My Honour: Guides and Scouts
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in Interwar Britain (2002) and Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (2003). Pierre Purseigle is a member of Pembroke College and a Visiting Research Scholar at the Modern History Faculty, University of Oxford. He graduated from the Institute of d’Études Politiques, Lyon and studies History at the University of California, Berkeley and at the University of Toulouse where he is completing his PhD on social mobilization in World War I England and France. Matthew Stibbe is lecturer in history at Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of German Anglophobia in the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Women in the Third Reich, 1933–1945 (forthcoming with Arnold). He is currently writing a new book on the Ruhleben internment camp for British Civilians in Germany, 1914–1918. Ismee Tames is a researcher at the Duitsland Instituut bij de Universiteit van Amsterdam where she is currently writing her PhD thesis on public debate in the Netherlands during the First World War. Susanne Terwey finalized her PhD dissertation on ‘British anti-Semitism, the functions of prejudice and the changing concept of British national identity, 1899–1919’ in early 2003 at the Simon-Dubnow Institute for Jewish Culture and History, Leipzig. She studied at the Universities of Munich, York, and Essen.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The editors would like to thank all the people and institutions that made possible this book and the conference upon which it is based. At the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Lyon: its director Professor Daniel Dufourt, Professor Bruno Benoit who offered the support of the Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Pluridisciplinaires at the IEP, Marie-Claude Dunand and Marc Sabin and the rest of the staff. At King’s College, London: the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies and its head, Professor Carl Bridge; the Department of War Studies and its head Professor Christopher Dandeker; War Studies’ Webmaster, Andrew Steele, and the Department of Defence Studies at the Joint Services Command and Staff College. At the Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre at Péronne: Caroline Fontaine. At Lyon City Council, Alderman Me Cédric Putanier. At Brill Academic Publishers: Julian Deahl and Marcella Mulder. Amongst those historians who encouraged our project were: Professor Jay Winter (Yale University/Historial de la Grande Guerre); Professor Annette Becker (Université de Paris X-Nanterre/Historial de la Grande Guerre); Professor Jean-Louis Robert (Université de Paris I—Sorbonne), Professor Giorgio Rochat (University of Turin); Professor Rémy Pech (University of Toulouse); and Gail Braybon (University of Brighton). The senior historians who chaired our sessions and acted as discussants were: Professor Jean-Jacques Becker (Université de Paris X—Nanterre/Historial de la Grande Guerre); Professor Dennis Showalter (Colorado College/American Society of Military History); Dr Adrian Gregory (Pembroke College, Oxford); Professor John Horne (Trinity College, Dublin/Historial de la Grande Guerre); Professor Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau (Université de Picardie/Historial de la Grande Guerre); Professeur Christophe Prochasson (EHESS/Historial de la Grande Guerre); Professor Arthur Marwick (Open University); Professor Antoine Prost (Université de Paris I—Sorbonne). Helen McPhail’s work as our translator at the conference and for this book has been invaluable. Finally, our warmest thanks goes to all those who attended the conference and made it such an enjoyable couple of days.
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INTRODUCTION: PERSPECTIVES IN FIRST WORLD WAR STUDIES Pierre Purseigle and Jenny Macleod
The papers gathered together in this book were originally presented at a small conference held in Lyon on 7 & 8 September 2001. The conference brought together young scholars—defined loosely as postgraduate or postdoctoral—who work upon the First World War at universities in seven different countries.1 There were various motivations behind the conference: an awareness of recent renewed interest in 1914–18, a desire to explore the influence of perceived historiographical shifts, an ambition to lower some intra-disciplinary boundaries, to foster international collaboration and comparative history, and to share preliminary or more polished findings. The conference was prompted, above all, by the perception that communication between historians who had recently entered the fray was relatively weak. More than 50 academics, including some of the historians who have been involved in the historiography of the First World War since the 1970s, joined together to discuss the work of the newest scholars in the field. Some of their research is presented here to a wider audience. The following fifteen papers reflect the individual undertaking of postgraduate students and postdoctoral scholars, and represent a broad assessment of the state of First World War studies in 2001. As organizers and as editors, we will now attempt—somewhat untraditionally—to distance ourselves from a project we coordinated. Our aim is to provide a critical assessment of the intellectual and academic environment which made it necessary, and prompted the questions we tried collectively to address. The approach adopted here has been inspired by Gérard Noiriel’s Sur la crise de l’histoire.2 His book issued several important challenges 1 In order to build upon the connections made at the conference, the International Society for First World War Studies has been established. For further information, see its website: http://doc-iep.univ-lyon2.fr/wwi/. 2 Noiriel (1996). For a critical and yet fair appraisal of Noiriel’s book, see Kramer (1998).
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to historians in their work. Drawing from a wide set of philosophical, sociological and historical ideas, Noiriel stresses the way in which the historical profession is not only involved in the production of knowledge, and the creation of collective memory, but is simultaneously engaged in power relationships. Noiriel’s ‘pragmatic approach’ attempts to resolve the traditional tensions between theory and practice and to reinstate historical scholarship in its social environment. Having observed the fissiparous tendencies at work within academia, he urges historians to spell out their point of view, method and approach in order to safeguard the unity of the discipline and ensure ongoing exchanges. What, then, might be suggested as the particularities of our situation? In an increasingly competitive academic job market, professional advancement depends on the public submission of one’s research, peer-reviewing, and of course publication. These activities establish one’s position within the historical community at large. By convening a conference and selecting speakers (and ultimately the contributors to this book), we took upon ourselves a responsibility with which junior scholars are rarely entrusted. In further explaining our choices, we hope to stress both the characteristics and limits of this project, as well as to suggest ways of moving forward towards a better understanding of the conflict. We will first attend to the recent renewal of interest in the First World War and the relationship between the re-kindling of commemoration and the vitality of academic activity. Then, we will present the state of historical studies of the Great War as we perceived it in 2001 and the way in which we reflected our perceptions in our call for papers. Its characteristics owe a great deal to intellectual trends and structural factors that ought to be highlighted. Whilst this edited collection is not exhaustive, it nevertheless reveals one of the strongest and most dynamic undercurrents in the history of modern warfare: the emphasis on the cultural and social dimensions of the World War I experience. The works presented here could therefore be rallied under the banner of the ‘new cultural history of the war’. In accepting a pre-existing label, we make no claim to write as a new generation of historians, nor hold any pretension to a paradigmatic breakthrough. The contemporary relevance of an historical topic is unusually clear in the case of First World War studies. The conflict continues to intrude on the public sphere of former belligerent societies, and
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in many instances, historians have been called upon to engage in controversies that have produced more heat than light. Indeed, it seems that World War I has gained in importance since the 1990s. The growing interest in commemoration and the increased ‘social demand’ addressed to professional historians account, to a certain extent, for the dynamism of First World War studies. These trends can be illustrated by the situation in Australia. The experience of the First World War, particularly the activities of the Anzacs3 in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, lies at the heart of Australia’s national identity. Numerous state-sponsored and personal commemorative activities demonstrate this. On 25 April each year, the anniversary of the early morning landings on the Gallipoli peninsula is marked as ‘Anzac Day’. Dawn services are held across the country, followed by marches later in the morning. Thousands of Australian backpackers in Europe include a visit to Gallipoli on their itinerary each year. The Australian cricket team even made a pilgrimage there en route to the Ashes series in England in 2001. Furthermore, upon his death in May 2002, the last veteran of Gallipoli, Alec Campbell, was honoured with a state funeral. Yet, the public importance of Gallipoli in Australia has not remained constant. There was a discernible decline in interest during the 1960s and 70s, before the spectacular flowering of commemorative activities with the 75th anniversary of the landings in 1990.4 Given the importance of Gallipoli in Australia, historians are occasionally drawn into public controversies on the subject. A recent example arose in the wake of a conference, ‘Australia in War and Peace’ convened by the Australian War Memorial and Curtin University and held at Canakkale, the nearest town to the Gallipoli peninsula. The interesting and scholarly research on the military and cultural history of the campaign was reported in the Australian newspaper as the ‘Charge of the rewrite brigade’.5 The story was picked up by talk radio in Australia and the press in New Zealand, by which time the supposedly self-styled ‘rewrite brigade’ were said to have called upon Australia to apologise for the 1915 ‘invasion’ of
3
A name derived from the acronym Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. Macleod (2002). See also, Macleod, Reconsidering Gallipoli (Manchester University Press, forthcoming). 5 Jonathan King, ‘Charge of the rewrite brigade’, The Australian, 20 December 2002. 4
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Gallipoli and to have compared it to the British invasion of Aboriginal land in 1788.6 Yet, the academics drew no such political conclusions. What they did do was to attempt to examine the basis of a story that is invested with tremendous significance. Sober academic endeavour became hyperbole; such is the resonance of the First World War in Australia and New Zealand. The public importance of historical debate may be heightened in a country that is struggling to come to terms with its colonial and Aboriginal heritage and its new Asian orientation and multicultural identity.7 However, the First World War also remains of central importance in countries like Britain and France that have a more richly documented historical legacy to draw upon. Such is the depth of the scar inflicted by previously unparalleled casualties of the war. As in Australia, World War I can prompt public controversies. For example, the parallel debates aroused by military discipline. In Britain, a campaign developed in 1997–8 to grant a posthumous blanket pardon for soldiers who had been ‘shot at dawn’ in punishment for crimes in the war zone.8 This controversial issue was reignited by Julian Sykes’ and Julian Putowski’s historical research. It promoted both public debate and further academic research that demonstrated the limitations of their argument.9 A parliamentary review followed, but concluded that a formal pardon was impossible. The campaign continues.10 In France—as well as in Italy—a similar controversy broke out during the celebrations of the 80th Anniversary of the Armistice of 1918. At a ceremony held in Craonne on 5 November 1998, the French Prime Minister, Lionel Jospin, asked for the ‘reintegration in the collective national memory’ of the soldiers who were shot ‘for the sake of example’ in 1914–15 and those who mutinied in 1917.
6 ‘Anzacs “should say sorry” for Gallipoli’, New Zealand Herald, 18 January 2003; Martin Johnston, ‘Apology absurd for “invasion”’, New Zealand Herald, 20 January 2003; Christopher Pugsley, ‘Did historians have too much to drink?’, New Zealand Herald, 24 January 2003. 7 Prime Minister John Howard and his predecessor Paul Keating, provide a stark contrast in their views on Australia’s history. Howard rejects the ‘black armband’ view of history associated with Keating. 8 The campaign’s website is www.shotatdawn.org.uk. 9 Sykes & Putkowski (1989). See also: Moore (1974), Babington (1983), Sellers (1993) and Oram (1998). Alternative views include, Pugsley (1991), Sheffield (1994), Peaty (1999), Corns and Hughes-Wilson (2001). 10 Bond (2002), pp. 82–4.
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As Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau pointed out, the fierce debate that followed bore witness to the increasing ‘presence’ of the First World War in the French collective memory. This ‘presence’ is paradoxical, however, since the renewal of societal and political interest in the conflict has led to public discourse that is based on the victimization of the belligerent societies, yet to a large extent this view remains at odds with the historiography of the conflict. This gap prompted Audoin-Rouzeau to talk with regard to the 1998 commemoration of a ‘cognitive reversion (recul)’.11 Whilst acknowledging the lack of any systematic comparative history of the ‘presence’ of the First World War,12 Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker claimed that France was the country in which this phenomenon manifested itself most forcefully.13 We cannot agree. Various statistics suggest a significant level of public engagement in Britain. In 1998 the Public Record Office received, on average, 130 questions each week about soldiers of the Great War.14 The same year, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission dealt with more than 35,000 queries specifically related to the war.15 Many of these queries will have come from people investigating their family history. A more general illustration is the British Legion’s annual campaign to sell poppies as an emblem of remembrance for Britain’s war dead. Each November, this symbol is a pervasive presence; featuring on the front pages of newspapers, on car stickers, and worn proudly by politicians across the political spectrum. Although representing all wars, the poppy remains closely associated with the battles in Flanders. However important the ‘shot at dawn’ controversy was in France in 1998, it seems that it subsequently subsided whereas in the British case, the popular commitment to the memory of the war is still being channelled by charities and voluntary organizations.16 And as the calls upon the PRO and the CWGC demonstrate, this is a phenomenon imbedded in family memory as much as in national commemorative forms.
11
Audoin-Rouzeau (1999). On the soldiers shot ‘for the sake of example’ see Offenstadt (1999). 12 Audoin-Rouzeau, Le Débat (1999), p. 123. 13 Audoin-Rouzeau, Becker (2000), p. 10. 14 R. Stummer, ‘The War we can’t forget’, Guardian, 5 November 1998, p. 12. 15 Moriarty (1999), p. 653. 16 The sale of poppies raised £21.3 million in 2001 for the British Legion’s charitable work. www.britishlegion.org (accessed 24 March 2003).
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Similarly, the comparative literary or cultural landscapes show a common pattern rather than a French exception. The public success of novels like those of Jean Rouaud,17 or Sébastien Japrisot,18 of the comic strips of Tardi, or of the recent films inspired by the war experience,19 are undoubtedly significant, but they can barely substantiate the claim of a uniquely French phenomenon. Indeed, some of the most successful recent English-language literature has been based on the World War I experience such as Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong or Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy.20 The popularity of Blackadder Goes Forth (BBC TV, 1989), voted the number nine in 100 Great Television Moments of the century21 and of the re-broadcast of the 1960s documentary series, The Great War in 2003, in addition to less well received films such as The Trench (1999) or Deathwatch (2002) and the BBC TV documentary The Trench (2002) also testify to enduring interest. The First World War thus remains a powerful subject in several countries, both in terms of public discourse and academic endeavour. In this respect, as the liveliness of debates about military discipline or Gallipoli suggest, the relationship between history in the public sphere and historical research ought now to be systematically and comparatively addressed since it accounts for the conditions in which World War I historians have been operating in recent years. For example, it has been recently suggested that this renewed interest in the First World War may be interpreted as a ‘reaction against the overwhelming weight of the Second World War’ both in collective memory and in the historiography.22 In parallel to this public phenomenon, it has also seemed that the community of scholars dedicated to the history of the First World War has grown significantly in recent years. Random meetings with colleagues or students, and the experience of historical conferences or gatherings, appear to confirm the vitality of academic activity in
17
Les champs d’honneur (1990). Un long dimanche de fiançailles (1997). 19 For example, La vie et rien d’autre (1989) and Capitaine Conan (1996) by Bertrand Tavernier, and La chambre des Officiers (2001) by Francois Dupeyron. 20 Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong (1993); Pat Barker, Regeneration (1991), The Eye in the Door (1993), The Ghost Road (1995). Birdsong sold approximately 1.5 million copies by the end of the 1990s (Todman, PhD thesis, submitted May 2003). 21 Bond (2002), p. 86. 22 Becker and Rousso (2001), p. 14. 18
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our field. This impression encouraged the idea of the conference as a means to foster intellectual exchanges in this growing community. It may be useful here to chart the development of this subjective perspective through a simple but significant indicator, the number of publications listed in one of the major databases: Historical Abstracts. This database has been published since 1954 and covers over 2,000 journals in the social sciences and humanities whose publications interest historians across period and geographical area.23 Out of the 619,002 books and articles listed by the database, 6,860 references were explicitly related to the history of the First World War. As the figure above shows, the overall increase in World War I publication is undeniable and on average 200 articles or books were published annually between 1980 and 1999. Despite the structural limitations and especially the linguistic imbalance inherent in this survey, it can at least be taken as a conservative estimate of activity in our field. It is likely that the upsurge would be more noticeable if it were possible to measure book sales or overall publications, including fiction, referring to World War I.24 Our first conclusion thus confirms a ‘common sense approach’ and the overall increase vindicates our initial premises. Yet in relative terms, the steady increase shown since the 1980s only means that First World War studies constitute between 1 and 1.5% of the global historical production. World War I studies may indeed be a booming field, but its growth took place in an environment which, related to the ‘democratization’ of higher education, led to an increase in historical studies altogether. It is possible that some of the surges in output on the graph correlate with the 50th, 70th and 80th anniversaries of the war. To speculate further requires this numerical overview of academic activity to be placed within a broader intellectual context in order to observe some historiographical trends. In a recent survey, David Cannadine highlighted a “shift away from the search for causation to the search for meaning”25 as one of the key developments in historical enquiry. This change is central to the influence of cultural
23 Cf. ABC-Clio website at http://serials.abc-clio.com/it must be noted that Historical Abstracts excludes publications related to the United States and Canada which are covered in a different database, America: History and Life. 24 Todman (Phd thesis). 25 Cannadine (2002), p. ix.
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56 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 64 19 66 19 68 19 70 19 72 19 74 19 76 19 78 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00
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All Languages
English
French
German
Italian
Source: Historical Abstract, CD-Rom ABC-Clio
Graph 1. Publications in First World War Studies 1954–2001
Russian
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Number of publications per year
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54 19 56 19 58 19 60 19 62 19 64 19 66 19 68 19 70 19 72 19 74 19 76 19 78 19 80 19 82 19 84 19 86 19 88 19 90 19 92 19 94 19 96 19 98 20 00
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Percentage of WWI Source: Historical Abstract, CD-Rom ABC-Clio
Graph 2. Publications in First World War Studies: percentage of overall historical production 1954–2001
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history on all varieties of historical scholarship. Miri Rubin has explained its nature thus: the ‘cultural turn’ is served by a hybrid of critical strategies which illuminate modes of communication, the circulation of ideas and practices and the agency of the individual, and which always attend to meaning. It is best when practised with an awareness of the intellectual roots of its concepts and procedures, alert to the allure of its rhetoric. To deal with culture is thus to deal by definition with the mixing of categories, for it is the system of meanings which makes order, ranks priority and suggests useful connections between things— real, felt, and imagined. [. . .] contexts of use; use and practice are the ways in which we gain entry into the world of meanings of those among whom we have never lived.26
In the context of First World War studies, this agenda has reinvigorated research. A decade ago, Jay Winter surveyed a series of recent books that constituted ‘a new cultural history of the Great War’.27 His later survey identified the significant trend inherent in this new development as a shift from social history (‘the history of defiance’) to cultural history (‘the history of consent’).28 French historiography does not quite fit this pattern, but nonetheless demonstrates the centrality of cultural history. In what has been described as a somewhat ‘muted and artificial’29 controversy the French co-directors of the Historial (notably Annette Becker & Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau) have disagreed with a small group of historians30 who refute their emphasis on ‘war culture’ as a critical concept in the understanding of the conflict. It has been observed that one of the weaknesses of cultural history is its eclecticism and that the solution is to adopt a comparative approach.31 Furthermore, a phenomenon such as the First World War requires comparison since it was, by definition, a trans-national event, yet a truly exhaustive comparative study of the conflict remains a daunting ideal. Given the scale of the conflict comparison can only be achieved in limited fashion or through extensive coordinated coop-
26 27 28 29 30 31
Rubin (2002), p. 90. Winter (1992), p. 532. Winter (1998), p. 88. Prost (2002). Rousseau (1999); Cazals & Rousseau (2001); Abbal (2000). Winter (1995), p. 10.
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eration.32 The comparative study of the cultural history of the war has been implemented by the scholars associated with the Historial de la Grande Guerre. Behind their determination to gather together scholars from different countries, lay the conviction that the system of representation of the belligerent societies was the unifying factor which shaped the common experience of the conflict through the mobilization of state agencies and civil societies, regardless of nationalities and allegiances. However, despite its continuous influence on the historiography, the programme of comparative history that Marc Bloch, himself a World War I veteran suggested, still faces inherent difficulties and criticism which partly explains its minor status. The response to our call for papers, which explicitly encouraged comparative history, offers an illustration here. Out of the 92 proposals received, only a dozen were based on a comparative study. This quantitative weakness of comparative history betrays the difficulties associated with this kind of study. The necessity of immersing oneself in one or two different cultures and more than one national historiography is a formidable challenge. Moreover, the need to work in more than one language, not only requires significant linguistic ability, but may in itself raise intractable problems. That is, historians build their narrative and analysis on categories which belong to a particular culture or at least to a linguistic area. In doing so, translation difficulties naturally crop up, but they may also be symptomatic of a deeper historiographical problem with which comparativists have then to grapple—the history of shell shock is a case in point.33 Michel Espagne has made further important criticisms of the comparative approach. In his work, Espagne aims to break with the national perspectives that dominate historical studies and which, he argues, amount to a ‘historiographical ethnocentrism’.34 His programme of research investigates cultural contacts, processes of cultural cross-fertilization, circulations, and supranational acculturation. However, Espagne underestimates the heuristic value of comparative history and misrepresents it. To focus on his fundamental premise, Espagne argues that: 32
Winter and Robert (1997). See the special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History (2000), 35, 1 and Winter (2000). 34 Espagne (1999), pp. 35–36. 33
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To compare two objects means to oppose them in order to enumerate their resemblances and differences as well as, by an unavoidable shift, to petrify the oppositions [. . .] the comparison comforts the national divide and makes its questioning problematic
He thus implies that comparative history is limited to the study of national identity or structures and hampers the breaking down of the nation as a cultural entity.35 Yet the individual comparative essays presented here suggest otherwise. Espagne views comparative history as a study of cultural structures; his focus on cultural transfers is such that he seems oblivious to the usefulness of comparison in analysing a social or cultural process. Whereas, the comparative history of the First World War is, first and foremost, the history of a process of adaptation to industrial warfare. Undeniably, there is still a long way to go before comparativists can claim a major part of scholarly production. Many intellectual and professional hurdles remain in the path of comparative history but there is hope that the structure of the profession may be changing in its favour. The Historial de la Grande Guerre has been influential here. It is not simply the type of history it physically embodies or fosters financially that has achieved this. The Historial’s impact lies primarily in the communication and teaching dispensed by its founders and scholars. Through their publications and their other activities in the public sphere,36 the body of scholarship which can be associated with the Historial has influenced both historical production at large and the teaching of Modern European History.37 The collective and individual curricula embodied in this book have clearly been shaped by the Historial’s agenda. In a more direct way, many of our contributors were or still are supervised by historians who have been contributing to the Historial’s development since its foundation. The Historial also provided moral and material support to the editors in the run-up to the Lyon conference. For these reasons, the issues discussed at our conference were closely aligned with the Historial’s main preoccupations, that is, the challenge of think-
35
Espagne (1999), p. 36. Jay Winter was the co-producer, co-writer and chief historian for the PBS series The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century, shown on the BBC as 1914–18: The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century; special issue of Le Monde in 1998 dedicated to the war. 37 Horne (2001), p. 70. 36
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ing about the Great War in terms of the entire century and the entire world, and of viewing the war’s cultural aspects as the heart of the conflict.38 Yet if the vertical links between established and younger scholars may be detected, horizontal links at the lower levels are less readily established. The youngest scholars largely remain ignorant of their peers in other institutions. There are many reasons for this relative isolation; they include the individualistic culture that predominates in intellectual circles, the lack of funding in history departments for travel, and the dominance of established scholars at conferences and seminars. All of which leaves relatively little space for the newest historians to submit their work to critical assessment, even when they have the confidence to do so. One of the crucial motivations behind the Lyon conference was the ambition to create a forum dedicated to this purpose. The conference thus presented an opportunity to view the research being conducted on World War I by the youngest cohort of the profession. With the aforementioned observations in mind, we thus intended to reflect in our call for papers our desire to address the issues raised by the history of the Great War in an interdisciplinary and comparative approach by organizing an event at which different generations of scholars would get together and exchange ideas. Our call for papers identified four themes and a specific set of questions resulted from each of them. 1– Waging war: To what extent have cultural and military historians truly colonized each other’s areas as the epigraph to the Cambridge University Press series ‘Studies in the social and cultural history of modern warfare’ suggests?39 Can the social history of war be studied without a thorough engagement with events at the front or vice versa? Does the recent and provocative Niall Ferguson’s Pity of War 40 point to an original and proper way to combine military, economic, diplomatic, political and cultural history?
38
Audoin-Rouzeu, Becker, Becker, Krumeich, Winter (1994), p. 8. Jay Winter’s Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History inaugurated this series in 1995. 40 Niall Ferguson, The Pity of War (London, 1998). 39
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2– Communities at war: From the individual to the state, how did the different levels of social organisation deal with the conflict and its consequences? What kind of solidarities, discrimination and mobilisation processes were at work in 1914–18? What relationship was established between military and civilian needs? Can new light be shed in this way upon the economic and political life of the belligerent societies?
3– The First World War and the intimate: The ‘totalizing logic’ of the Great War meant that it pervaded the most intimate spheres of the belligerent societies. How did the conflict impinge on sexual morality and gender relationships, on individuals and families? From shellshock to home front anxieties and mourning process, how were the variegated sufferings faced? How did contemporary medical science and practices cope with the war?
4– Intellectual responses to the war: What kind of artistic, literary and scholarly responses did the war provoke? Where did the dividing line run through these different responses? What should be deemed as paramount: degree and qualities of participation in the war effort, nationality, or intellectual generation?
The responses elicited by this appeal illuminated the range and diversity of the research being carried out in our field at the time. It is now up to the reader to determine if the papers we selected,41 which form the basis of this book, live up to the challenges issued by our call for papers. They illustrate both the editors’ subjective preferences and some significant aspects of the history of the First World Was as it is currently being written. The most important division that is traditionally drawn in the historiography of war is that between military and cultural history. Our
41 Eight of our speakers chose not to appear in the present collection, some of their works have since appeared in scholarly journals or as books. (Aaron Cohen ‘Meta-myth-making: the memory of Russia’s First World War 1917–1939’; Santanu Das ‘“Kiss me Hardy”: intimacy, gender and gesture in the First World War trenches’; Susan Grayzel ‘militarizing civilians: gender and cultural responses to aerial bombardment during the First World War’; Eric Lohr ‘Russian economic nationalism during WW1: the campaign against enemy aliens in the Imperial economy’; Jenny Macleod, ‘The persistence and renewal of the romance of war: Britain, Australia and Gallipoli’; Helen McCartney ‘Local identity and motivation in war’; Andrew Parsons, ‘The British response to Chemical Warfare in WW1’ and Dan Todman ‘Sans peur et sans reproche: the death of Sir Douglas Haig, January 1928’.)
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collection illustrates some ways in which this division is being bridged. For example, the coming together of military and socio-cultural histories has given credence to the notion of the ‘home front’ in historiographies whose national language has no direct equivalent. In French for instance, ‘l’arrière’ (the rear) is the closest translation, but it misses the critical point now raised by the historiography of the conflict: the blurring of boundaries between soldiers and civilians during the Great War whose ‘totalizing logic’42 determined the social responses to the war. Thus the scrutiny of the mechanisms of social and cultural mobilization in this collection leads to a reconsideration of the distinction between combatants and non-combatants and envisions societies as agents of warfare as much as victims of the conflagration. It therefore refutes the argument, at the heart of the collective memory of the Great War, that the experience of the conflict was solely one of victimization.43 Tammy Proctor’s paper on an intelligence service in occupied Belgium, which saw the militarization of both men and women, illustrates this point precisely. Similarly Susan Grayzel’s conference paper explored the way in which aerial bombardment targeted the home and created notions of ‘civic virtue’ and heroism that were available to both men and women. Such papers typify both the influence of the rise of women’s and gender history, and the colonisation of military history by cultural history, just as Jay Winter called for the jettisoning of “outworn distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, and between both the political, economic and military history of the day. In the 1914–18 conflict, all were mobilized; all were transformed.”44 Military history has benefited from the extra breadth this has brought to the discipline,45 but there are limits to this colonisation. Although war must rate as one of the central shaping experiences of humanity, an historical topic that must be explored in all its aspects, the attentions of cultural historians and social historians before them have not served to draw military history fully into the body of the kirk. Witness the decision, acknowledged by the editor, to omit military history
42
Horne (1997), p. 3. ‘dans la conscience mémorielle, mieux vaut être victime qu’agent de souffrance et de mort. Celle-ci est, toujours reçue, toujours anonyme, n’est jamais donnée: on en est, toujours, la victime’ Audoin-Rouzeau, Becker (2000), p. 9. 44 Winter (1998), p. 92. 45 Bond (1991), p. 9. 43
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with others from a survey of What is History Now? 46 The failure to include operational military history here, despite the intention evidenced in the call for papers to give military history equal weighting to other genres, reflects the paucity of proposals from this area, the editors’ taste, and ultimately a serious flaw for which Mike Neiberg’s study of civil-military relations in Britain, France and the U.S. and Michelle Moyd’s scrutiny of racism in the German Officer Corps partially compensate. They respectively illustrate the potential of a comparative approach, and the way in which attention to cultural themes can enrich military history. Despite their diversity, it is possible to discern some other themes running through our chapters. Several of them reflect the attention paid by the historiography to the pervasiveness of the war which seeped into the intimate and issued dramatic challenges to every belligerent society whose very humanity was then at stake. In the wake of seminal studies by George Mosse, Joanna Bourke, and Paul Lerner,47 Anne Duménil’s paper on suffering and military discipline, André Loez’s on soldiers’ tears, Jessica Meyer’s on shell shock and masculinity and Hans-Georg Hofer’s on shell shock and multi-ethnicity address the psychological consequences of the conflict and provide us with rigorous yet sympathetic analyses of individual suffering in wartime. Although their respective preoccupations are somewhat removed from these studies, Jean-Yves Le Naour’s paper on decadence and regeneration, Emmanuelle Cronier’s on soldiers on leave, Matthew Stibbe’s on a community built by civilian internees, Susanne Terwey’s on anti-Semitism, and Pierre Purseigle’s on the mobilisation of local communities interestingly supplement them. They cannot be rallied under the banner of ‘social psychology’ but they nonetheless show how the mental and emotional aspects of the war experience are now being systematically encompassed in the social history of the conflict. Taken as a whole, the following studies demonstrate that it is not only its sheer size and its industrial and technical dimensions that make the First World War of outstanding importance in modern history. The conflict impinged so dramatically upon individuals, challenging their definitions and assertions of self so extensively, that a 46 Cannadine (2002), p. vii. Operational history in France is even more peripheral in the historical profession. Alexander (2001), pp. 191–5. 47 Mosse (1996), Bourke (1996), Lerner (1996).
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collective, if not necessarily concerted, historical endeavour has been prompted in order to understand the intimate dimension of the war experience. In this undertaking, World War I historians face a thorny question, that of the articulation of the collective and individual levels of experience. This issue is likely to beleaguer cultural historians for some time to come, as witness the debates about micro-history and the relations between social and cultural history. This willingness to unravel the arcane lineaments of the war experience takes place amidst changes in the usual scale of historical explanations.48 This is obviously implied in the turn towards comparative methods. What may be more significant here is an equal commitment to reconsider the very chronology of the conflict.49 Tracing aspects of the conflict back into the 19th century and onwards to the advent of the Second World War is vital to understanding the First World War in context. The central debate in the chronology of the cultural history of the war has opposed the traditional and the modern. Paul Fussell, Modris Eksteins and Samuel Hynes50 have argued that the conflict constituted a profound break which forced social and cultural modernity on to the world. Whereas Jay Winter has pointed to the continued consolatory power of ‘traditional’ forms of imagining warfare.51 In their works, Stefan Goebel and Susanne Terwey present two arguments based respectively on the resonance of medievalism in German commemorations of the war and on the combination of anti-Semitism and Germanophobia in Britain, which lead, in this respect, to different conclusions. Dissonances of this kind speak to the complexity of the social responses to the conflict. Olivier Compagnon also examines the idea of the war as a watershed. This chapter encompasses the conflict in Latin America’s modern cultural history and assesses its position, contrasting it with traditional European perspectives. This paper also prompts another challenge: that of adjusting the scale of analysis to the geographical dimensions of the conflict and recovering the aspects that made this a world war. Our papers thus look beyond the Western Front and beyond the three main belligerents. Ismee Tames explores the 48 49 50 51
Jacques Revel, Jeux d’échelle. Prochasson (1998). Fussell (1975), Eksteins (1989), Hynes (1991). Winter (1995).
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intellectual challenges that war posed in a neutral country. It is disappointing that we were not able to include more papers in the conference and in the book from neutral and non-belligerent countries, Italy and the Balkans are also notable absences from the line-up. In an interview published in 1996, Paul Fussell said of his book The Great War and Modern Memory, ‘It’s really about the Vietnam War as much as it is about the First World War’.52 Fussell’s remark illustrates that, as Jay Winter has pointed out, the new cultural history can be seen as the product of a generation that began writing about the Great War in the shadow of Vietnam.53 Similarly, Pierre Nora has compared the ‘historiographical upheaval’ of the First World War to the reappraisal applied to the French Revolution a decade ago, describing it as ‘the generational advent of an international team, German, English, French, and through a collective and original experience’, that of the Historial.54 Building on Kuhn’s definition of a paradigm and on Noiriel’s ‘pragmatism’, the perspective adopted here has stressed the social dimensions of our historiographical undertaking. Moreover, the priority given to young scholars in our project is likely to raise a similar kind of question for one may indeed wonder if the collection presented here comprises the work of a new intellectual generation. However gratifying this would sound, it does not. If an ‘intellectual generation’ is based on the notion of engagement and commitment to the social and political life of one’s time,55 it is difficult to identify a unifying political factor. Where the 1960s were marked by ideological quarrels and the heyday of social history, or the 1970s by liberation movements and the rise of gender history and the linguistic turn, it is more difficult to identify a political movement with a similar intellectual legacy in the 1990s. War in Europe did make it back to the headlines in this decade, at the very time when most of us were entering higher education. Yet, it is difficult to see war in the Balkans as the defining moment of our generation. How this conflict played out in terms of the study of the First World War—beyond glib observations on the implications of 52 Paul Fussell interviewed by Sheldon Hackney in ‘The initial shock . . . A conversation with Paul Fussell.’, Humanities, November/December 1996. The interview can also be read online at http://www.neh.gov/news/humanities/1996–11/fussell.html. 53 Winter (1998), p. 91. 54 Nora (2000), p. 243. 55 Sirinelli (1988).
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assassinations in Sarajevo—is a story which remains to be told. One exception may be that the creation of the European Union has encouraged historians to view 1914–18 as a transnational event. Beyond this, the collapse of communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the claimed triumph of liberal capitalism in the ‘end of history’,56 provided the ideological backdrop against which we started exercising our citizen’s rights but it would be near to impossible to identify common political grounds on which our relationship to History has been built. Although the idea of a politically apathetic ‘Generation X’ is an unfair caricature, it is the case that our approach to historiographical controversies is not obviously motivated by political agendas. Nor did particular national historiographical debates spill over into our collective discussions. Indeed, this may point to a characteristic of international gatherings of the sort. While the fierce debate which in France pits the respective advocates of the schools of ‘consent’ and ‘coercion’ rings somewhat hollow beyond French academic circles, the controversy prompted by Niall Ferguson’s Pity of War although explicitly mentioned in our call for papers, fared no better in this respect.57 Such debates indeed remain circumscribed within national boundaries just as the debate about the ‘learning curve’ which animates the anglophone military historiography of the First World War does not seem to find an echo on the continent.58 At any rate, neither the editors nor the collective would claim to have given birth to a new paradigm. Indeed, there is not even agreement among us on key concepts. For example, the editors continue to disagree over the idea of ‘war culture’ and its ‘matrix’ function. While the importance of the wartime system of representations is acknowledged in many of the papers here, there is divergence on the degree to which cultural aspects might have counterbalanced or determined other factors which like technology or innovation held sway over the way the conflict ultimately was waged. As Dennis Showalter observes: This point is particularly significant within the context of an historiography increasingly stressing compliance rather than cozening or coercion as the crucial element in maintaining support for the war effort. Emotional investment in national identity certainly was important. [. . .] 56
Fukuyama (1989). Reviews by Prior and Wilson (2000) and by Jay Winter (with the author’s reply) at http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/paper/ferguson.htm. 58 Bond (2002); Sheffield (2001). 57
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One might also suggest, however, that Verdun, the Somme, and the endless battles of the Isonzo were all manifestations of morale sustained by a culture of competence and a technology of everyday whose proper functionings were as crucial to the Great War as any of the more obviously martial manifestations of the machine age.59
The importance of the coming together of military and cultural history lies in the new perspectives it has prompted both disciplines to encompass. In their respective works, military and cultural historians have been incorporating previously overlooked factors, and have consequently refined their traditional approaches to the First World War. To a large extent, the following collection illustrates a common willingness to address the complexities of the war experience and to engage critically with all quarters of the historiography. The distinctions once drawn between a French school concerned with a history of the representations of the war and its German and Anglo-Saxon counterparts, respectively presented as the study of the presence of the war in the political sphere and as the history of wartime mass and popular culture, have now lost their relevance.60 Although these themes remain central in World War I historiography, the circulation between different national historiographies and their crossfertilization are now too important to allow these sorts of national distinctions. A comparativist attitude can only further undermine such boundaries. However variegated, our approaches seem to have broken with the traditional opposition between the idea of function and the idea of human agency. Setting aside philosophical arguments about determinisms and individual freedom (as well as their political offshoots), the cultural historians of the Great War acknowledge this critical tension and recognize the necessity of taking agents seriously. In a context where the growth of state apparatus and coercive instruments were conspicuous, representations are not only uncovered as delusions of the ‘truth’ or by-products of propaganda, but also account for the meaning given to events and social practices.61 In line with the overall evolution of historical studies, World War I historians thus address the ‘social construction’ of the war experience.62 In this process, as this collection illustrates, the ‘multivocality’ of cultural history is once more asserted. 59 60 61 62
Showalter (2002), p. 82. Audoin-Rouzeau, S. et al. (1994), p. 7. Dosse (1997), p. 266. Berger and Luckman (1966).
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This last qualification leads us back to Gérard Noiriel and the historiographical crisis he engages with. The historiography of the First World War now presents a complex picture of the conflict and draws on multiple approaches to a common object. Yet, the splitting up of the historiography regretted by Noiriel for the divisive tensions it has brought about does not in this case constitute a crisis. Indeed, the vitality of First World War studies lies in a renewed commitment to Lord Acton’s call to ‘study problems in preference to periods’.63 As Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau pointed out, the goal of understanding the Great War seems out of reach, a nagging issue in the cultural historian’s consciousness.64 The bewilderment brought about by this conflict undoubtedly accounts for the energy dispensed in studying it. Yet, by introducing the following collection, we would like to strike a more hopeful note than the gloomy tone induced by the 1998 commemorations. In many respects, a proper understanding of the Great War may seem a remote prospect, rendered all the more difficult by a century’s distance from the attitudes which made the slaughter possible. Nonetheless, we remain convinced that we present here a set of chapters which offer a significant contribution to our field. We hope that our project has laid foundations which will encourage sociability amongst the newest World War I historians. A network has been formed that will enable the sharing of a set of common reference points and the exchange of ideas. The contributors to this book may be seen as a cohort who are implementing and elaborating on earlier insights. Such a mobilisation both tests and pays tribute to our mentors’ hypotheses and previous works. In doing so, we will continue to pursue that demanding ambition of the total history of a total war.
B Abbal O. (2001) Soldats oubliés. Les prisonniers de guerre français (Bez-et-Esparon: 2001). Alexander M. (2001) ‘The French view’ in The Battle of France and Flanders 1940: Sixty Years On, eds. Brian Bond and Michael D. Taylor (Barnsley: 2001), 179–204. 63
Lord Acton, Lectures on Modern History, London, Macmillan, 1906. ‘Tout se passe en effet comme si nous voulions, plus que jamais auparavant, comprendre la Grande Guerre. Mais sans avoir désormais, peut-être, les moyens d’y parvenir jamais’ AudoinRouzeau (1999), p. 130. Some military and international historians however, deny that the war is unique, intangible or ‘outside history’ (Sheffield (2001), pp. 14 & 232; Bond (2002), p. 100). 64
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Audoin-Rouzeau S., A. Becker J.-J. Becker, G. Krumeich, J. Winter (1994) Guerres et cultures, 1914–1918 (Paris: 1994). —— (1999) ‘La Grande Guerre, le deuil interminable’, Le Débat, 104, Mars–Avril 1999, 117–130. —— and A. Becker (2000) 14–18: Retrouver la guerre (Paris: 2000). Babington A. (1983) For the Sake of Example: Capital Courts Martial, 1914–1920 (London: 1983, new edition 1993). Becker Annette and H. Rousso (2001) ‘D’une guerre l’autre’ in La violence de guerre. 1914–1945. Approches comparées des deux conflits mondiaux, eds. S. Audoin-Rouzeau, A. Becker, C. Ingrao, H. Rousso (Bruxelles/Paris: 2002). Berger P. and T. Luckman (1966) The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: 1966). Bloch M. (1997) Apologie pour l’histoire ou Métier d’historien (Paris: 1997). Bond B. (2002) The Unquiet Western Front: Britain’s Role in Literature and History (Cambridge: 2002). Bourke J. (1996), Dismembering the Male (London: 1996). Cannadine, D. (2002), ‘Preface’ in What is History Now?, ed. David Cannadine (London: 2002). Cazals R. and F. Rousseau (2001) 14–18: Le cri d’une generation (Toulouse: 2001). Corns C. and J. Hughes-Wilson (2001) Blindfold and Alone: British Military Executions in the Great War (London: 2001). Dosse F. (1997) L’empire du sens. L’humanisation des sciences humaines (Paris: 1997). Eksteins M. (1989) Rites of Spring. The Modern in Cultural History (New York: 1989). Espagne M. (1999) Les transferts culturels franco-allemands (Paris: 1999). Fukuyama F. (1989) ‘The End of History?’, The National Interest 16 (Summer 1989) 3–18. Fussell P. (1975) The Great War and Modern Memory (Oxford: 1975). Horne J. (ed.) (1997) State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War (Cambridge: 1997). —— (2001) ‘Une Histoire à repenser’, Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, 71, July– September 2001, 67–72. Hynes S. (1991) A War Imagined. The Great War and English Culture (London: 1991). Kramer L. (1998) ‘Gerard Noiriel’s pragmatic quest for paradigms’, French Historical Studies, 21, 3 (Summer 1998), 399–414. Lerner P. (1996) ‘Hysterical Men: War, Neurosis, and German Mental Medicine, 1914–1921’ Ph.D. dissertation Columbia University (New York: 1996). Macleod J. (2002) ‘The fall and rise of Anzac Day: 1965 and 1990 compared’, War and Society, 20, 1 (May 2002), 149–168. Moore W. (1974) The Thin Yellow Line (London: 1974). Moriarty C. (1999), ‘The material culture of Great War remembrance’, Journal of Contemporary History, 34, 4 (1999). Mosse G. (1996) The Image of Man (Oxford: 1996). Noiriel P. (1996) Sur la ‘crise’ de l’histoire (Paris: 1996). Nora P. (2000) ‘Grande Guerre et lieux de mémoire’, in 14–18. Aujourd’hui. Today. Heute. 3 (2000). Offenstadt N. (1999), Les fusillés de la Grande Guerre et la mémoire collective (1914–1999) (Paris: 1999). Oram G. (1998) Worthless Men: Race, Eugenics and the Death Penalty in the British Army in the First World War (London: 1998). Peaty J. (1999) ‘Haig and military discipline’ in Haig: a Reappraisal 70 Years on, eds. B. Bond and N. Cave (London: 1999). Prior R. and T. Wilson (2000) ‘Review article: the First World War’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 35 (2), 319–328.
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Prochasson C. (1998) ‘La guerre et sa périodisation’, 14–18. Aujourd’hui. Today. Heute. 1 (1998) 158–160. Prost A. (2002) ‘La guerre de 1914 n’est pas perdue’ Le Mouvement social, 199, June– April 2002, 95–102. Pugsley C. (1991) On the Fringe of Hell: New Zealanders and Military Discipline in the First World War (Auckland/London: 1991). Revel J. (1996) Jeux d’échelle. La micro-analyse à l’expérience (Paris: 1996). Rousseau, F. (1999) La guerre censurée. Une histoire des combattants européens de 14–18 (Paris: 1999). Rubin M. (2002) ‘What is cultural history now?’ in What is History Now?, ed. D. Cannadine (London: 2002). Sellers L. (1995) For God’s Sake Shoot Straight: the Story of the Court Martial and Execution of Temporary Sub-Lieutenant Edwin Leopold Arthur Dyett, Nelson Battalion, 63rd (RN) Division during the First World War (London: 1995). Sheffield G. (1994) The Redcaps: A History of the Royal Military Police and its Antecedents from the Middle Ages to the Gulf War (London: 1994). —— (2001) Forgotten Victory. The First World War: Myths and Realities (London: 2001). Showalter D. (2002) ‘Mass warfare and the impact of technology’ in Great War, Total War. Combat and Mobilization on the Western Front, 1914–1918 eds. R. Chickering and S. Förster (London – New York: 2000). Sirinelli J.-F. (1988) Génération intellectuelle. Khâgneux et Normaliens dans l’entre-deux-guerres (Paris: 1988). Sykes J. and J. Putkowski (1989) Shot at Dawn (Barnsley: 1989). Todman D. (2003) ‘Representations of the First World War in British popular culture 1918–1989’ (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, submitted May 2003). Winter J.M. (1992) ‘Catastrophe and culture: recent trends in the historiography of the First World War’, Journal of Modern History, 6 (September 1992), 525–532. —— (1995) Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: 1995). —— and Jean-Louis Robert (eds.) (1997) Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: 1997). —— (1998) ‘Recent trends in the historiography of Britain and the First World War: cultural history, comparative history, public history’ in Change and Inertia: Britain under the Impact of the Great War, eds. Hartmut Berghoff and Robert von Friedeburg (Bodenheim: 1998). —— (2000) ‘Le choc traumatique et l’histoire culturelle’, 14–18. Aujourd’hui. Today. Heute, no 3 (2000), 100–107.
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A UNIFORM OF WHITENESS: RACISMS IN THE GERMAN OFFICER CORPS, 1900–1918 Michelle Moyd
Within German military historiography, the Officer Corps of imperial Germany has received considerable scholarly attention.1 Historians have concluded correctly that the Officer Corps was a bastion of German rightist anti-liberalism and that ‘its members had always regarded themselves as the first estate of the realm and the principal bulwark against the nation’s foreign and domestic foes’.2 Similarly, historians3 have demonstrated the prevalence of anti-semitic attitudes and behaviours within the Officer Corps, culminating in the notorious Judenzählung of 1916.4 Domestically, the Officer Corps pursued a politics of self-preservation and conservatism that contributed directly to the outbreak of war in 1914. Much less discussed, however, is their role in the Schutztruppe of their African colonies. This is not surprising, given the relatively small numbers of German troops stationed in the colonies, and the marginality of the colonies to German economics and politics. Yet in at least one regard, their colonial experiences prove instructive. The Schutztruppe officers effectively maintained a loyal African fighting force that fought the arduous East African campaign of World War I to its bitter end in November 1918. In spite of contemporary European notions of black inferiority, the African troops forged for themselves a mythical reputation as brave, loyal and professional troops. Although other European powers also built colonial armies from indigenous populations while operating with similar racist assumptions, the German case stands out because of the ‘myth of
1 In this paper, “Officer Corps” refers specifically to the officers of the Prussian Army. Officers of the Schutztruppe will be referred to as such. All translations are my own. 2 Angress (1976), p. 96. 3 Angress (1976), Jochmann (1971). 4 This incident, in which the Army took a census of Jews in order to determine how many were actually fighting in the war, is discussed below.
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the loyal askari’ that emerged from the East African campaign.5 Given the stereotype of the German officer as racist, and considering the myth of the loyal askari, what was the true nature of the relationship between the officer and the askari, and what were the particular characteristics of the German officers’ racism? Further complicating the view of the German officer as racist, this essay examines anti-Semitic behaviours within the Officer Corps in Germany before and during the war. A comparison of German officers’ treatment of Jews at home with their treatment of African troops abroad yields a complex picture that defies a simple explanation. Why did officers participate so readily in anti-Semitic behaviours in Germany, while treating their African troops abroad as professional soldiers? How was ‘racism’ manifested in these two very different environments? How did ‘professionalism’ manifest itself ? Why did the Officer Corps refuse to accept patriotic Jews into their ranks at home (except when required by ‘military necessity’), while singing the praises of their African troops abroad? Answers to these questions shed light on broader questions in several overlapping areas— German military history, colonial history, and the interpretation of racism in theory and practice. Historical analyses of German officers usually focus on their socioeconomic origins as the root of their conservative attitudes. Historians agree that the German Officer Corps retained its homogeneity and aristocratic predilections throughout the Wilhelmine period, despite enormous social and economic changes occurring within Germany.6 These included rapid increases in the size of the army, an overall weakening of the aristocracy’s position within society, and the dilution of the agrarian aristocratic ethos through increasing intermarriage and incorporation into the circles of the industrialists.7 The Officer Corps was keen to keep out ‘new and alien forces,’ which included the bourgeoisie, liberals, working class, Social Democrats, and Jews.8 In order to keep up with the growing size of the Army and its corresponding need for more technically proficient officers, however, the German Officer Corps grudgingly had to accept bour-
5 6 7 8
“Askari ” Angress Kitchen Angress
is the Kiswahili word for “soldier.” (1976), pp. 96–7. (1968), pp. 22–3. (1976), pp. 96–7.
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geois and liberal officer candidates into their ranks.9 Apart from the General Staff technicians, the Officer Corps viewed the growing presence of the bourgeois within its ranks disdainfully. Although aristocratic Prussian officers feared the encroachment of liberal and democratic values, superficially the Officer Corps remained unchanged. Bourgeois officers were expected to uphold the attitudes of their aristocratic comrades as the ideal.10 Yet the influx of officers of bourgeois backgrounds provoked important, if subtle, changes in the Officer Corps. After all, by the beginning of World War I, seventy percent of all officers were of commoner origins.11 Between 1871 and 1914, a number of these commoners reached the senior ranks of the Prussian Army.12 Though the prestigious branches of cavalry, infantry and field artillery remained closed to officers of commoner backgrounds, they nevertheless filled a wide variety of key positions within the less prestigious branches. At least some built careers within this bastion of elitism. The Schutztruppe did not differ in its ideology or social origins from other parts of the German army.13 It may, however, have generated a slightly different ethos based on both the nature of the assignment to the colonies and the types of officers who applied for colonial service. More applicants sought colonial service than could be accommodated, and there were long waiting lists for Schutztruppe assignments. This was true despite the ‘relatively modest’ status of the Schutztruppe within ‘Wilhelminian Germany’s military pecking order’.14 Service in the Schutztruppe might help an officer sustain a career, and might even help him gain a command, though in peacetime, top jobs went to those who had General Staff experience.15 Although Schutztruppe regulations stated that only the most qualified officers would be selected for colonial service, Petter posits that the colonies served as a place where scandalized officers could be sent without forcing them from the Army.16 The normal tour of duty in East Africa lasted two and one-half years. Once assigned to the colonies, officers fell out
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16
Kitchen (1968), pp. 31–6. Ibid., p. 27. Trumpener (1979), p. 30. Ibid., pp. 32–3. Gann and Duignan (1977), p. 107. Ibid., p. 110. Ibid., pp. 110, 113. Petter (1980), p. 167.
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of step with the domestic assignment system. Upon returning to Germany, they had to accept garrison assignments in remote locations, or wait months for an appropriate position to become available. Only twelve percent of the officers assigned to the colonies stayed for more than two tours of duty. In short, “the Schutztruppen officers lived in a constantly fluctuating environment, which prevented a strong sense of esprit de corps or a specific work ethic from leaving its mark on the majority of individuals” who served in the colonial force.17 The small numbers of German troops deployed to East Africa may also have undermined the development of a more intense group identity. Yet it seems they must have developed an ethos suited to their situation in East Africa. Denied the comforts of home, but free of the strictures of Army life in Germany, and recognizing that their deployment to the colony jeopardized their chances of promotion, these officers arrived in East Africa partly as adventurers, partly as patriotic representatives of the Kaiser. They had much to learn when they arrived, such as how to speak the local lingua franca, Kiswahili, and how to operate in this physically hostile environment. For his field education, he had to rely on the more experienced and seasoned askari. The German officer also had much to learn about the nature of colonial warfare. As one author notes, ‘[f ]or the Germans trained in European methods of warfare, service in Africa necessitated a radical rethinking of the dynamics of battle and the askari supplemented the officers’ dearth of information with their own experiences of African warfare’.18 In their knowledge of the terrain and local flora and fauna, the askari were indispensable. Because of the utterly foreign setting in which the Schutztruppe officers found themselves, they depended on the advice of their subordinates.19 German Schutztruppe members adapted their Prussian military backgrounds to include flexibility, receptivity to ideas outside the mainstream of the Prussian officers’ training, and a willingness to cooperate with their black troops to enhance their ability to carry out their duties as commanders as well as in more mundane aspects of life in the station. Both primary and secondary literatures indicate that the officers viewed their African troops as professionals despite the expected bar17 18 19
Ibid., p. 165. Von Herff (1991), pp. 91–2. Ibid., p. 93.
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riers to such respect—differences in culture, environment, and of course, race in its various contemporary European articulations. Theories of racial difference had permeated German society by 1900, and thus coincided with a groundswell of petty-bourgeoisie political activism that grew tremendously in the years leading up to World War I.20 Racial theories were an integral part of the secondary educational system from which the Officer Corps drew its candidates. The increasing numbers of bourgeois officer candidates within the Officer Corps meant a corresponding presence of candidates educated in the humanistic curricula of the Gymnasien and Realschule. Students who completed six years of secondary school did not have to serve as conscripts, but instead could enlist as EinjährigFreiwillige (one-year volunteers), assuring them reserve officers’ commissions later on.21 Thus within the ranks of the regular Officer Corps, and certainly within the reserves, the values of the German secondary school system thrived. These values may have included those of their schoolteachers, many of whom subscribed to the völkisch ideologies of the Pan-German League and other nationalist groups of the age, which were bolstered by the upsurge in petty-bourgeoisie conservative activism against the working class.22 George Mosse claims, for example, that “[the schoolteachers] were the most outspoken advocates of völkisch ideology, particularly in connection with the racial question”.23 Shortly after the turn of the century, a fusion of the ideas of the race philosopher Arthur de Gobineau and the theorist of evolution, Charles Darwin, emerged as an integral part of the Pan-German agenda, and “[t]he Pan-German League developed into the single most important public forum for the discussion of Rassenwissenschaft in Germany.”24 The Jews, cast as “agents of cultural degeneration in all its forms,” became the main target of their agenda, which sought to clearly identify all of Germany’s perceived domestic and foreign enemies.25 That officer candidates may have brought these ideas with them into
20
Eley (1978), pp. 118–125. Craig (1964), p. 192. 22 Eley (1978), pp. 130–1. 23 Mosse (1964), p. 156. See also Chickering’s figures on Pan-German social origins in Chickering (1984), pp. 102–121, 306–330. 24 Chickering (1984), p. 242. 25 Ibid., p. 243. 21
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the German Army seems plausible. The very conservatism and insularity of the Officer Corps reinforced such thought patterns. German officers would also have known something of the supposed inferior status of blacks in the accepted racial hierarchy, although discussions of ‘the black’ did not occupy the same space as discussions of ‘the Jew’ within Germany. Germans had not come into substantial contact with black populations until their colonial empire took shape in the 1880s. In his 1853 Essay on the Inequality of Human Races, which became a key document in Pan-German ideology, Gobineau imputed to blacks “little intelligence, but overdeveloped senses which endowed them with a crude and terrifying power”.26 Leading German liberal anthropologists of the early 1900s attempted to dispense with the more harsh animalising rhetoric on blacks that had prevailed amongst German Darwinians since the 1860s. They instead described blacks with another prominent stereotype, which represented Africans as ‘big children’ who could “understand practical things but could not grasp abstract ideas; easily excitable, and liable to commit atrocities when ‘enraged,” they required strong control’.27 In this view, blacks were members of the human community who were not to be treated cruelly by Europeans in the colonies. For these ‘humanitarian liberal . . . anti-Darwinist’ anthropologists, the implicit hierarchy of races went unquestioned, and was linked through racial correlates to a corresponding cultural hierarchy.28 As harbingers of the ‘triumph of natural-science research’ in the universities, they helped to instil within the population an appreciation for such theories as an interpretive tool in thinking about the social order. According to one historian such ideas had “thoroughly . . . penetrated the ideologies of the prewar generation.”29 Helmut Walser Smith provides evidence of just how deeply such views, whether of the ‘animalistic’ or ‘paternalistic’ variety, had insinuated themselves into the thought patterns of the German population. Analysing Reichstag debates on colonial policy between 1904 and 1914, he argues that parliamentarians from across the political spectrum found common ground upon which to debate “the terms,
26 27 28 29
Mosse (1978), p. 53. Massin (1996), p. 98. Ibid., p. 97. vom Bruch (1996), p. 363.
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the images, and the categories they used to describe the Herero”.30 He continues: One might see in this common ground the terms of a discourse of rule, shared across the political spectrum, and part of a larger, seamless orientalism that insisted on the silence of colonized peoples, denying them, literally and figuratively, their humanity.31
While the Socialist parliamentary whip August Bebel spoke in 1904 of the Herero in terms that granted their humanity while conceding their ostensible primitiveness, a conservative counterpart, Graf zu Reventlow, refused to even acknowledge that the Herero were human.32 Yet they found common ground in their mutual increasing willingness to accept brutality in the service of an idea and the increasing blindness to the violence done, not to nations or classes, but humans. And this was possible . . . because—increasingly—they did not see that the individual humans involved were quite as human as a white man or a white woman.33
The Reichstag debates indicate a broad currency of certain notions of race that formed a discourse within the society, informing a wide variety of political and social issues. German officer candidates could not have been immune to this discourse, and since a number actually served in Southwest Africa, these attitudes could have been transmitted based on firsthand experience in suppressing the rebellion. To what extent, and by what means, did members of the Officer Corps act on their beliefs during their careers? How did the differences in environment between Germany and East Africa evoke different manifestations of these beliefs about race? Both before and during World War I, the Officer Corps participated in efforts to either exclude Jews from their ranks, or to vilify them so that they would receive concentrated negative attention from the public. In the decade before the war, the main battleground was the issue of Jewish commissions in the Reserve Officer Corps. The controversy emerged as a result of agitation by activist organizations to secure the promotion of Jews within the reserves. Not a single Jewish Einjährig-Freiwilliger 30 Smith (1998), p. 107. The Herero and the Nama fought an armed rebellion against German colonial rule in Southwest Africa from 1904–7. The suppression of the revolt amounted to a genocide of the Herero and Nama peoples. 31 Smith (1998), p. 108. 32 Ibid., p. 107. 33 Ibid., p. 123.
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serving in the Prussian army or one of the contingents received a reserve commission after 1885, even though by 1910 an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 had completed their year of service.34 While Jewish organizations conceded that they were unlikely to get any commissions in the regular Officer Corps for Jewish candidates, they thought that they might be able to crack the ranks of the reserves through organized political pressure. They focused on this issue instead of other areas of discrimination against Jews—for example, in judiciary appointments, universities, and public schools—because of the symbolic power of an Officer Corps commission, which both had the power to “signif [y] their unequivocal acceptance as equals” or conversely to “[place] a stigma on their standing within society”.35 This issue was of profound symbolic importance in helping Jews secure their position within German society. The exclusion of Jewish candidates from the Reserve Officer Corps operated on at least three levels. First, anti-Semitic unit commanders might simply deny a regimental position to a Jewish candidate. Secondly, even if he secured a regimental position, he might nevertheless be denied a position in the officer training course, or be eliminated in training.36 If candidates inquired into the reasons they were not selected, they met with vague explanations claiming unsuitability for officership, or no explanations at all. In this ‘silent conspiracy,’ the Kaiser, the Prussian War Minister, and the regimental officers were all complicit.37 When rejected candidates’ appeals reached the Reichstag as part of the deputies’ interpellations of the War Ministers, they generally replied in similar ways. General von Einem gave a typical response in the Reichstag in 1909: I am convinced that there have been instances in the Army whereby a young man of the Israelite faith has been denied the opportunity to become a reserve officer simply because he is a Jew. Having said that, I do not by any means wish to conceal that this is in fact just my opinion. But if religion is given as the reason [for denying them commissions], that is against the highest orders. (cheers from the Social Democrats) [. . .] I hope that this [order] will have the positive effect that all judgments of one-year volunteers and can-
34 35 36 37
Angress (1976), p. 105. Ibid., p. 103. Angress (1976), pp. 105–6. Deák (1990), p. 17.
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didates will be based only on their proficiency [. . .] These same principles should also apply in the selection of reserve officers. Thus it is not permissible for a Reserve Officer Corps to deny admittance to an otherwise qualified young man simply because he is a Jew. (Hear! Hear! And cheers.) In recent years, we have worked towards this goal.38
In the decade before the war, War Ministers reiterated this refrain time and again. In denying that such behaviour was condoned at the highest levels of the military, and admitting that anti-Semitism existed within the Army, they avoided addressing the heart of the issue—that regimental officers culled Jewish candidates based on other nebulous claims, such as lack of character, poor military bearing or aptitude for command, physical inabilities, or inappropriate occupational or family backgrounds, all of which disguised the antiSemitic reasons behind their decisions.39 In 1914, Jews responded to the outbreak of war with ‘electrified enthusiasm,’ as did most Germans.40 The Jews viewed the war as an opportunity to prove once again their patriotism and loyalty to the Kaiser, as they had in previous wars of the nineteenth century. Jews hoped that the ideal of the Burgfrieden (civic truce), announced by Kaiser Wilhelm at the outset of hostilities, would help them realize their constitutionally guaranteed rights. At first many existing discriminations against the Jews dissipated and qualified Jewish noncommissioned officers received promotions to officer’s rank throughout the Empire.41 Unfortunately, this condition was short-lived. As the war dragged on, völkisch organizations launched a vicious anti-Semitic press campaign in the late fall of 1914.42 The press attacks, which accused the Jews of shirking their military obligations and of engaging in shameless profiteering, continued into 1915. Within the Army, officers began establishing connections with the radical anti-Semites in order to prevent Jews from being recognized or promoted.43 This connection proved to be a lasting one that assured the Pan-German propaganda network access to frontline soldiers.44
38 39 40 41 42 43 44
Loewenthal (1911), pp. 103–4. Kitchen (1968), pp. 38–9. Pulzer (1992), p. 194. Angress (1978), p. 118. Ibid., p. 119; Chickering (1984), pp. 241–2. Jochmann (1971), pp. 421–2. Mosse (1964), p. 91; Mosse (1978), p. 56.
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By 1916, the slandering of Jews had reached a fever pitch. As the war dragged on, anti-Semitism manifested itself more blatantly in the Army. These manifestations included not just abuses directed against Jewish soldiers, but also attempts at all levels within the military hierarchy to conceal anti-Semitic acts or to mislead the public and the Reichstag about the nature of these acts. According to Jochmann: Many officers spread allegations that the Jews were fundamentally bad soldiers and shirkers who used money or connections to get positions in the offices, rear commands, or the Kriegsgesellschaften and thus to get through the war safely, and where possible, also earn good money.45
Furthermore, German officers claimed that the Jews’ ‘poor soldierly performance’ caused disquiet amongst the troops.46 Jewish officers could hardly hope to increase their chances of promotion in this environment. The worst was yet to come. In October 1916 Prussian War Minister von Hohenborn ordered all commands to conduct a census to ascertain how many Jews eligible for military service were actually serving. This order appeared in response to civilian complaints that large numbers of Jewish men fit for military service were evading military service under questionable pretexts.47 Commanders were to supply specific information on the current status of all Jewish military members—whether or not they were serving as volunteers, how many had died in battle, how many were serving in the rear despite being fit for combat, and how many had received decorations while serving in the rear.48 The effects of the Judenzählung, which Angress labels “a tactless blunder committed by a handful of high-ranking and most probably anti-Semitic army officers,” are hard to measure.49 However, there is little question that it had an impact on how Jewish troops and their comrades related to each other. If nothing else, the attention surrounding the issue of the Judenzählung order would have influenced non-Jewish soldiers to wonder about the Jewish soldiers’ ability and commitment to fight the war. The order undermined the authority of Jewish officers and non-commissioned officers by specific45 46 47 48 49
Jochmann (1971), p. 423. Ibid., pp. 423–4. Angress (1978), pp. 124–5. Ibid., pp. 117–8, 136–7. Ibid., p. 135.
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ally referring to the stereotype of the Jew as ‘shirker’ and ‘coward.’ Statistics, gathered haphazardly, were manipulated to include wounded and ‘detailed’ troops as ‘rear-echelon’.50 Some non-Jewish officers also moved Jews deemed fit for combat service from the rear to the front specifically because they were Jews.51 After receiving the order in October 1916, Dr. Georg Meyer, a Jewish reserve captain and battery commander in the 8th Bavarian Field Artillery Regiment, wrote in his wartime diary: This after 2 long years and complete devotion to our homeland! It’s as though I’ve had my ears boxed. In peacetime I would just take my leave, but now I must of course simply bear it. The famed ‘great spirit of great times’ has disappeared, not in the Army, but at home, where people have enough time for such grumbling . . .52
The results of the census were never published, so its underlying assumptions were left to percolate beneath the surface of the increasingly downtrodden German populace. During World War I, the Officer Corps continued to view Jews, some of whom were now at least nominally fellow officers, as a threat to the façade of homogeneity which they had sought to protect since the late nineteenth century. Because the stereotyped Jew represented everything that the Officer Corps despised, and indeed represented the ‘enemy within,’ their ascendancy to the Officer Corps during wartime was even more threatening than usual. While Germany was trying to defend itself against its foreign enemies, it was vulnerable to its domestic ones, and to most officers, the Jews would have been included in this appellation. In addition from the war emerged a ‘new’ German stereotype and myth—“the iron hard man of decision, slim and lithe, with fair skin and clear eyes”.53 According to Mosse, ‘[i]t was the Jewish stereotype which became the foil of this manly ideal. For unlike the new race of which [ex-stormtrooper and novelist Ernst] Jünger spoke, the Jewish stereotype had over a century of history behind it and was quite ready for use.’54 In fact, nothing about ‘the Jew’ fitted into the new world that men like Jünger imagined. During the war, Jewish officers were perceived as 50 51 52 53 54
Jochmann (1971), p. 426. Angress (1976), pp. 99, 102. Ibid., pp. 99, 139. Mosse (1977), pp. 20–1. Ibid.
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inherently weak, disloyal, lazy, rootless, conniving, and greedy—the antithesis of the idealized German soldier. In 1916, these perceptions gained new import within the Officer Corps, whose members not surprisingly viewed themselves as defenders of the Heimat against all enemies, but most important, against those who might further upset the status quo ante. For German officers assigned to the Schutztruppe in East Africa during World War I, the war and the enemy would turn out to be altogether different from what anyone had anticipated. The force had been founded for the purpose of conquering Tanganyika, and for suppressing rebellion within the colony—not for fighting against other colonial armies as would occur during the East Africa campaign. The relationship between the German Schutztruppe officers and their African troops in this context provide important insights into the expression of colonial power. How did the brutality of the colonial regime and its racist paradigms translate into a functional working relationship between white officer and black subaltern? And what particular qualities of this relationship made it possible for General Lettow-Vorbeck to lead this mythically loyal force on a campaign often referred to as a stroke of genius in the annals of twentieth century warfare? Historian Juhani Koponen argues that localized “[c]olonial racialism was a flexible ideology which took many forms”.55 Therefore within one colonial setting, there need not be a disjuncture between the stereotype of Africans needing to be kept in line by the application of colonial violence, on the one hand, and the “mixture of domination and humanitarianism known as paternalism” on the other.56 Precisely because of this flexibility in racial notions about ‘the African,’ it is difficult to pinpoint exactly what dynamics defined the relationship between the officers and the askari. As explained earlier, Schutztruppe officers developed their own methods to cope with their new surroundings, and part of that involved being a student of their askari. A number of Schutztruppe officers applauded the resourcefulness, mobility, simplicity, discipline, and of course, loyalty of their troops.57 However, they also generally believed that “[t]he relation55
Koponen (1992), p. 89. Ibid., p. 89. 57 For a sampling of this type of writing, see Deppe (1919), Lettow-Vorbeck (1920), Nigmann (1911), and Paasche (1907). 56
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ship of the Negro to the European is something like that of an apprentice to a master in the sense of medieval crafts”.58 In this view, the best means of dealing with blacks was with a mixture of kindness and harshness. In the end, as one German observer wrote, “Every black is what his master makes of him”.59 How could it be that the officers thought of their troops both as their teachers and as children in need of guidance? The purpose of the Schutztruppe was to protect the colony from internal threats, and in order to carry out this mission, the Germans were dependent on their askari. Yet unlike the situation in Germany, where officers felt threatened by the presence of an ‘inferior’ race in their midst—the Jews—the Schutztruppe officers had little to fear professionally from their askari. By virtue of the unspoken assumptions upon which the colonial project rested, succinctly described by Christopher Fyfe as ‘the uniform of a white skin,’ the askari could not realistically expect to challenge white officers for their positions.60 For the officers then, much less was at stake in this land far away from the Heimat. For them, “all African reactions to German rule were explicable in racial terms”.61 If the askari helped the Germans learn the lie of the land, maybe it was because they were essentially Naturvölker anyway in German eyes.62 On the other hand, if they disobeyed orders or committed infractions, they were simply like children who needed discipline. Thus askari loyalty, and all of the other positive traits that the Germans found so helpful in their campaigns, could be explained within the race discourses they had learned at home. The relationship between officers and askari might also be examined through the lens of martial races theories, which permeated colonial European military thought, especially in the British colonial militaries.63 The German theory of martial races in the Schutztruppe “took the shape of a pyramid with their first successful recruits, the Sudanese, occupying the apex. Throughout [the colonial period] Sudanese tenacity and loyalty to the German cause fascinated their commanders and earned them a special status”.64 Eventually, the 58 59 60 61 62 63 64
Deppe (1919), p. 48. Ibid., p. 51. Fyfe (1992), pp. 19–20. Ibid., p. 18. Massin (1996), p. 97. Parsons (1999), pp. 54–6. Von Herff (1991), p. 56.
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Germans had to recruit from different groups all over the colony to secure the necessary numbers of troops. However, the ethnicities of the various recruits are less important for this analysis than the simple idea that once recruits became a part of the Schutztruppe, they merged into the local askari communities, which were purposely kept separate from other surrounding villages and towns. The German officers sought to build a separate identity for the askari through privileges—a high rate of pay, uniforms, and a variety of other benefits— that would secure a loyal, and dependent, force. The Germans secured their troops’ loyalty by providing for almost all of their needs, and by elevating them to a position of significant power within the colony. The Germans thus constructed their own martial race out of the various ethnicities who volunteered to serve as askari. As part of that construction, they expected, and apparently received, unremitting loyalty and bravery. Yet while the askari may have been loyal and brave in the field, at home in the askaridorf, they immersed themselves in the normalcy of garrison life. A closer look at the mundane events within an askaridorf during the war in East Africa further clarifies the nature of the relationship between white officer and black soldier. Colonial military records provide a glimpse into the lives of the characters who made up the askari community, but more importantly, they further complicate the problem of identifying the nature of colonial racism in this setting, and demonstrate the complexity of the professional relationship between officers and askari. Despite the reports of laudatory conduct, the askari did sometimes behave in a less than exemplary fashion. Transfer records from June 1914 annotating the movement of askari between their original post at Gitega to their new assignment at Usumbura in the RuandaUrundi military district included brief descriptions of each askari’s behaviour, as well as special remarks on their past disciplinary problems. These documents and other records of military court proceedings show that the askari often failed to measure up to their image.65 These records include reports of drunkenness, violence against local civilians, and desertions. In reviewing one case, the judge hinted that disciplinary problems with the askari were not anomalous:
65 “Überweisungs-Pass für farbige Soldaten”, Bundesarchiv Berlin R1001/923, no page numbers, June 1914.
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The behavior of the defendant during his service was not good; his conduct barely merited the designation ‘adequate’. Most importantly, he was a serious alcoholic. Since the majority of Askari of the present Urundi unit are just like him, it is necessary to impose a severe penalty on the defendant in order to maintain unit discipline. It is especially important that he also be dismissed from the unit.66
Although such cases never appear in the usual German descriptions of the askari, such instances prove that there was more to the ‘loyal askari’ than met the eye, and therefore the relationship between the German officer and his African troops must also have been more complex than the sources have led us to believe. The administration of military justice, and particularly the punishments associated with it, required officers’ participation. While the documents are devoid of any language that would signal race as a consideration in these proceedings, the punishments are certainly in keeping with the brutal punishments practiced throughout the German colonial era.67 The officers may have learned from their askari and even respected their military virtues, but that did not negate the fundamentally paternalist and racist assumptions that anchored their colonial authority. Because these key beliefs were interwoven with the hierarchies that also determined military relationships between senior and subordinate, they are that much more difficult to isolate when looking at the evidence, but it would seem prudent to consider racism as a factor influencing the relationship between officer and askari. In discussing the German Officer Corps as a profession, and analysing the historiographical contradictions inherent in depictions of the German Officer Corps as a professional organization, Michael Geyer asserts: . . . we have to realize that the German military was not just invented in different ways by different historians, but that it was different things; furthermore, this was not just because it assumed different appearances or potentialities, but because it was simultaneously different realities.68
His point seems particularly salient in discussing the racisms of the German Officer Corps. In the homeland, professionalism required adherence to a set of beliefs rooted in a long tradition of exclusionary practices. As Geyer recognizes, “Reactionary as the Wilhelmine 66 “Hauptverhandlung gegen den Polizei-Askari Marjani”, Bundesarchiv Berlin R155F/6672, pp. 11–14. 67 Stoecker (1987), p. 123. 68 Geyer (1990), p. 185.
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officer corps was, it stood at a cusp from which it looked backward in the defence of a regime of military professionals, but was driven forward in organizing violence”.69 As a profession, the German Officer Corps rationalized both its management of violence and the management of its homogeneous social structure, though with the latter issue it received valuable assistance from the real experts on homogeneity and the danger of domestic contamination—German völkisch ideologues. In the colonies, on the other hand, the German Officer Corps took on a new identity that prefigured the ‘front-line officer’ of World War I. If “[t]he German front-line ideology was modernist and based on skill and performance”,70 the Schutztruppe officer implemented a modernism of a different kind. In the colonies, modernism played itself out as a baptism by fire in which the officer’s skills of independent thought, leadership, and warfare were put to the test in an alien environment. His experiences in Africa, leading the askari, challenged his racial notions. To be a professional in East Africa, the officer had to be willing to engage in a mutual exchange relationship with his askari. Yet he also had to be careful not to weaken the foundations of white colonial rule by demonstrating weakness in front of his black troops. Behind the myth of the loyal askari was a complicated blend of mutual respect and mutual fear. For the askari, respect was tainted by fear of colonial justice, and possibly the loss of privilege and livelihood in the harsh colonial economy. For the white officer, respect for the askari was blended with a fear of the askari’s inherent advantage over him—his knowledge of the country and languages, his strength in numbers and family. The German East Africa setting would have challenged the individual professionalism of any officer who set foot there. One of the dynamics at work in this question of racisms in the German Officer Corps was a notion of Kolonie und Heimat that reinforced a spatial and psychological dichotomy between the homeland and the colonies.71 To Germans at home, “German-speaking colonists in distant climes seemed remotely German at best; at worst, [they seemed] corrupted by the pernicious cultural and racial influences 69
Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., p. 196. 71 O’Donnell (2000), p. 4. Kolonie und Heimat was a magazine published between 1907 and 1914 by the Deutschkolonialen Frauenbundes. 70
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of their locales and cut off from the true source of Germanness in the Heimat”.72 In the case of the German officers, lenient interpretations of race in the Heimat were distinctly unprofessional. Racial leniency in the Kolonie was, on the other hand, necessary, but only to the extent that it allowed the German officer to first gain, then maintain, his superiority over the askari in order to lead and discipline. To go further than that was to undermine the project they were sent there to defend. When General Lettow-Vorbeck concluded his memoir on the East Africa campaign, he wrote poignantly of the unique circumstance of the German Officer Corps, in Kolonie and Heimat: I believe it was the transparency of our aims, the love of our Fatherland, the strong sense of duty and the spirit of self-sacrifice which animated each of our few Europeans and communicated themselves, consciously or unconsciously, to our black soldiers that gave our operations that impetus which they possessed to the end. In addition there was a soldierly pride, a feeling of firm mutual co-operation and a spirit of enterprise without which military success is impossible in the long run. We East Africans know only too well that our achievements cannot be compared with the military deeds and devotion of those in the homeland. No people in history has ever done more.73
Indeed, on a number of levels, there was very little comparison to be made between the officer’s experience of war in Europe, and that of the East African campaign. Viewed in this light, the utility of the term ‘racism’ to describe the behaviours of the Officer Corps seems lacking, and in fact seems to obscure much more than it reveals in explaining why officers behaved the ways they did in two different contexts.
B Angress W. (1976) “Das Deutsche Militär und die Juden im Ersten Weltkrieg”, Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen 1 (1976) 77–146. —— (1978) “The German Army’s Judenzählung of 1916: genesis-consequencessignificance”, in Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook (London: 1978). Bruch R. vom (1996) “The academic disciplines and social thought”, in Imperial Germany: A Historiographical Companion, ed. R. Chickering (Westport: 1996).
72 73
O’Donnell (2000), p. 4. Lettow Vorbeck (1920), pp. 325–6.
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Chickering R. (1984) We Men Who Feel Most German: A Cultural Study of the Pan-German League, 1886–1914 (London: 1984). Craig G. (1964) The Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640–1945 (London: 1964). Deák I. (1990) Jewish Soldiers in Austro-Hungarian Society (New York: 1990). Deppe L. (1919) Mit Lettow-Vorbeck Durch Afrika (Berlin: 1919). Eley G. “The Wilhelmine Right: how it changed”, in Society and Politics in Wilhelmine Germany, ed. R. Evans (London: 1978). Fyfe C. (1992) “Race, Empire and the historians”, in Race & Class 33 (1992) 15–30. Gann L.H., and P. Duignan (1977) The Rulers of German Africa 1884–1914 (Stanford: 1977). Geyer M. “The past as future: the German Officer Corps as profession” in German Professions, 1800–1950, ed. G. Cocks and K. Jarausch (New York: 1990). Herff M. von (1991) “‘They walk through the fire like the blondest German’: African soldiers serving the Kaiser in German East Africa (1888–1914).” Thesis (M.A.), McGill University. Jochmann W. (1971) “Die Ausbreitung des Antisemitismus”, in Deutsches Judentum in Krieg und Revolution 1916–1923, ed. W.E. Mosse (Tübingen: 1971). Kitchen M. (1968) The German Officer Corps, 1890–1914 (Oxford: 1968). Koponen J. (1992) “Colonial racialism and colonial development: colonial policy and forms of racialism in German East Africa”, in Rassendiskriminierung, Kolonialpolitik und ethnisch-nationale Identität: Referate des 2. Internationalen Kolonialgeschichtlichen Symposiums, 1991 in Berlin, ed. W. Wagner (Münster: 1992). Lettow-Vorbeck P. von. (1920) My Reminiscences of East Africa (London: 1920). Loewenthal M. (1911) Das Jüdische Bekenntnis als Hinderungsgrund bei der Beförderung zum Preuszischen Reserveoffizier (Berlin: 1911). Mann E. (1998) “The Schutztruppe and the nature of colonial warfare during the conquest of Tanganyika, 1889–1900.” Thesis (Ph.D.), University of WisconsinMadison. Massin B. (1996) “From Virchow to Fischer: physical anthropology and ‘modern race theories’ in Wilhelmine Germany”, in Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition, ed. George W. Stocking (Madison: 1996). Mosse G. (1978) Towards the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (New York: 1978). —— (1977) The Jews and the German War Experience, 1914–1918 (New York: 1977). —— (1964) The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New York: 1964). Nigmann E. (1911) Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika (Berlin: 1911). O’Donnell K. (2000) “Home, Nation, Empire: domestic Germanness and colonial citizenship”, in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness (Forthcoming). Paasche H. (1907) Im Morgenlicht: Kriegs-, Jagd-, und Reise-Erlebnisse in Ostafrika (Berlin: 1907). Petter W. (1980) “Das Offizierkorps der Deutschen Kolonialtruppen 1889–1918”, in Das Deutsche Offizierkorps, 1860–1960, ed. H. Hofmann (Boppard: 1980). Smith H. (1998) “The talk of genocide, the rhetoric of miscegenation: notes on debates in the German Reichstag concerning Southwest Africa, 1904–1914”, in The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and its Legacy, ed. S. Friedrichsmeyer et al. (Ann Arbor: 1998). Trumpener Ulrich. (1979) “Junkers and Others: The Rise of Commoners in the Prussian Army, 1871–1914”, Canadian Journal of History XIV (1979) 29–47.
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SOLDIERS’ SUFFERING AND MILITARY JUSTICE IN THE GERMAN ARMY OF THE GREAT WAR Anne Duménil
Self-mutilating soldiers, fugitives suffering from nervous afflictions, deserters no longer capable of enduring the exertions, challenges and privations of combat: some of these soldiers of the Great War were brought before military tribunals. Soldiers’ suffering, the mental or physical suffering provoked by life at the front, was a central element in the disciplinary structure and, for armies on campaign, one of the factors in managing the war. In this way, pain and suffering1 meet a history of army disciplinary practices in wartime. The example of Germany should enable us to understand how the army used particular judicial norms and disciplinary practices to meet the challenge of this specifically military criminality. Three requirements had to be accommodated: the maintenance of discipline which demanded sanction for infractions—obedience guaranteed the effectiveness of the soldier under fire and shaped military success—the will for equity, visible in a military justice that respects modern legal principles, and finally the concern to maintain intact the fragile balances which, in relations between men and their officers, ensured individual and collective consent to an authority recognised to be legitimate. Faced with the radicalised violence of industrial war,2 a phenomenon little anticipated, the disciplinary apparatus of the German army was forced to question the relevance of its norms: did the dispositions of the 1872 code of military justice make it possible to deliver an equitable form of justice when battle conditions had changed radically, battlefield violence had increased substantially and when war mobilised men whose age or physical aptitude in no way prepared them to meet the challenge of the front line?
1 On this point see the collective article, “Pour une histoire de la douleur, pour une histoire de la souffrance”, 14–18 Aujourd’hui, Today, Heute, 1 (1998) pp. 100–105. 2 On this question, see Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker (2000), chapter 1, ‘La violence’.
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Military justice constitutes a privileged observation point, for this is where a discourse is established—between the different parties: judges, accused, witnesses—on the nature of authority, the manner of its exercise and the conditions of its acceptance. These representations must be seen within their context and are themselves affected by developments in the forms of war activity. Far from being fixed, disciplinary norms are open to daily reappraisal through the action of military judges. Heinrich Dietz, specialist in German military law and its principal commentator, noted: ‘Justice in the field, particularly at the front, demanded a juridical practice adapted to the new conditions affecting armies in the field, and in particular the technique of modern war’.3 Judicial sources,4 a corpus made up of verdicts handed down by military tribunals for the First, Second and Third Bavarian divisions,5 enable us to grasp the confrontation between men accused of serious crimes who spelled out the suffering they had endured in order to explain their action or to exonerate themselves, and their judges. An examination of the verdicts—frequently merciful in view of the rigour of legal norms—shows officers aware of the futility and obsolescence of a disciplinary system designed to be exclusively repressive. This war of an infinite violence to which the individual had consented, sometimes to the point of exhaustion and even indiscipline, called for a disciplinary structure based on more than coercion alone. These readjustments were forced through by the astonishing novelty of the war. This chapter studies their development in the practice of the judges, including their dilemmas and contradictions, and the way in which the army assimilated these adaptations by modifying the dispositions of the code of military justice.
3
Dietz (1923), pp. 111–146, 130. See Jahr (1998). 5 Respectively HSTAM [Bayerisches Haupstaatsarchiv München, Abteilung IV Kriegsarchiv] Militärgerichte 1. Bay. Infanterie Division 3339–3632; HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6195–6500; HSTAM Militärgerichte 3. Bay. Infanterie Division 6546–7370. 4
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Suffering: a Motive for Military Crimes and Misdemeanours, a Dilemma for the Institution 1.9 million dead, 5.6 million wounded,6 3.32 million men unfit and sent back to the front after their recovery.7 In their dryness, their inadequacy, the German health statistics8 reveal an initial approach to the impact on the body of the extreme violence of the battlefield. Wounding became more frequent and much more serious: the figure of the invalid in post-war Germany was to be the ambiguous badge of courage and of sacrifice but also of vulnerability and, finally, of defeat.9 On a monthly average, for every hundred men in the army in the field, 60 had to be replaced. Numbers were then made up by 30 soldiers returned as fit for service and 30 new recruits who replaced 11 dead, 7 missing, and 12 permanently unfit.10 Mortality and the statistical frequency of permanent invalidity—strictly calculated because Germany was short of men—indicated the severity of impairment inflicted by modern weapons, notably by artillery as shown by a study undertaken in 1917 by the health department of the Ministry of War: out of a sample of two million non-lethal wounds, 50.6% were ascribed to rifle shots, 43% to artillery,11 2.6% to grenades and 0.58% to hand-weapons.12 These figures express the paroxysms of violence of this war that is also the violence of the men who are its agents. We should not be misled by the ease of expression that designates the machine as the wounding agent. The new forms of warfare—in particular the changed temporal and geographical scale of battle and the changed intensity of destruction in the area of battle—greatly intensified the daily suffering 6 For the period between 2 August 1914 and 31 July 1918, Sanitätsbericht (1934), p. 65. The figure for military losses was established, as at 31 December 1933, at 2,036,897 dead. Mortality for the classes of mobilisation age-groups was six times higher than in peacetime. Comparison with the censuses of 1920 and 1914 shows a reduction of 35–37% in the number in cohorts of men born between 1892 and 1895. 7 Ibid., p. 32. 8 Sanitätsbericht (1934). These data should be used with caution, being based on indications transmitted through structures set at the front line. 9 See the works of Sabine Kienitz. 10 Sanitätsbericht (1934), p. 33. 11 A study carried out on a sample of 15,452 deaths that occurred on the field of battle shows a greater proportion of losses attributable to artillery (54.7%, against 39% of deaths following a rifle-shot). Ibid., p. 67 and table p. 63. 12 Ibid., p. 62.
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endured by the combatants. In a few lines an officer with a unit engaged in the Battle of Arras in the spring of 1917 seized the nature of the war of attrition: ‘the essence of battle in the periods of major offensives consists not so much in decimating troop numbers by inflicting vital losses as in exhausting them physically and nervously’.13 Prolonged exposure to very poor conditions of hygiene and the many onslaughts of their surroundings, the intensity of physical effort demanded by marches, work in the trenches and on guard duty explain the exhausted state of front-line soldiers. The alternation of phases in the front line, in reserve and at the rear certainly made a relative degree of rest possible, but it also prevented any regular pattern of life and the disturbance of biological rhythms by guard duties also intensified symptoms of exhaustion. Only lengthy periods of rest at the rear, in zones away from the constant noise of artillery, made genuine recovery possible. In 1917, in the words of an infantry regiment commander who was attentive to bodily factors: Morale is barely affected by suggestion, it depends essentially on the physical conditions of life. To have steady nerves, certain conditions are required: to sleep sufficiently, not to be overstrained by too much heavy digging, not to spend too much time in poorly ventilated and badly lit dug-outs, to retain pleasure in service. On this last point, it supposes not being demanded to make efforts which are not visibly required by management of the war.14
This experience is far from universal since it depended on conditions specific to the sector to which the individual was posted—the intensity of military activity, geological and climatic conditions, logistical efficiency, the duration of rest periods—all contributed to the influencing factors. The experience was always individual as it was related to this bodily economy that anthropologists characterise as a ‘precise management of the body’15 elaborated by the individual throughout his life, but this suffering was the common denominator of the war as it was lived by millions of combatants.
13 HSTAM Armee Oberkommando 6. Bund 419. 18. Infanterie Division Abt Ia No. 3391. Div. St. Qu., 27.4.17. Erfahrungen aus dem Einsatz der 18. Infanterie Division bei Arras. 14 HSTAS M 39 27. Infanterie Division. Bund 8C. Infanterie Regiment No. 120. 23.4.17. Der 53. Infanterie Brigade. Bericht des Kommandeurs des Infanterie Regiments Kaiser Wilhelm No. 120. 15 Le Breton (1999), p. 94.
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In courts martial, the accused invoked it to explain and to justify their actions. Beyond the deployment of a defence argument which sought to arouse judicial indulgence, the statements of the accused and witnesses enable us to perceive the extent to which the radicalisation of wartime activity, and its increasingly serious consequences for individual body and psyche, weighed heavily on discipline. Crimes, including the most serious, regularly had a situational element, a consequence of serious individual distress. Acts of cowardice involving soldiers who fled the field of battle through fear of danger—the tribunal was required to prove that this psychological motive was the determining factor—were those in which this suffering expressed itself most directly. Invoking the psychological cause enabled the accused to prove that it was not fear but a physical or nervous inability which led them to flee. In this way they hoped to obtain a re-evaluation of their crime to ‘unauthorised absence’, a category that was liable to lesser sanction. Others admitted their terror, often linked to anguish at the prospect of mutilation or death. Thus in May 1916, facing Douaumont, soldier M., famous for his courage—a volunteer for dangerous patrols, he had been recommended for the Military Merit Cross—abandoned his post. He had seen several corpses and soldiers had described to him the terrible conditions in operation at the front, with wounded men abandoned to their fate. Seized by uncontrollable fear, he then remained at the rear, fled and then, finally, returned to his unit.16 Another infantryman, who removed himself at the beginning of the battle of March 1918, stated that he could no longer cope with the sight of dead and wounded men lying on the battlefield.17 For soldiers at the front, death was not abstract and remote but an event which the individual witnesses, repeatedly, and in a violent form. Together with doctors and medical staff they occupied a very specific place:18 the battle setting made them see another man’s death as it took place or had just happened, in forms of extreme brutality. In his study of the psychical traumas of war, Professor Louis Crocq isolates ‘the sight of another’s death’ as ‘a primordial traumatic factor’:
16
HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6353. HSTAM Militärgerichte 1. Bay. Infanterie Division 3440. An identical case in HSTAM Militärgerichte 3. Bay. Infanterie Division 6622. 18 Delaporte (1999), pp. 651–657. 17
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whether it is a matter of the presence of death, actually taking place (a comrade was alive, he suffered a bullet strike or a shell-burst and he becomes a corpse) or of death having taken place (there is nothing but a corpse), the spectacle of death gives reality and presence to that which hitherto resided in the register of a watered down imagination. It makes present, it concretises, the dangerous fantasy of destruction and nothingness. And the sight of a man dying, like the contemplation of corpses, is always for the subject the anticipation of his own death.19
Several cases of disobedience or of unauthorised absence20 posed the problem of soldiers’ fitness at the moment of their actions. The accused declared that they had endured a suffering which had not been recognised by military doctors. This denial, genuine or subjective, led to the criminal action. Through disobedience or flight, the individual had attempted to remove himself from the violence of the battlefield, sometimes they had endured a lengthy period there but it had finally become unbearable. At the heart of their moral conscience they perceived the attacks suffered as disproportionate and therefore illegitimate. The commanding officer was therefore confronted with two mutually contradictory imperatives: he could not overestimate the fitness of the men—in the double concern to maintain the true value of the troop and to show himself fair—but he also had to maintain rigorous criteria in order to limit dispensations and ‘the evaporation of numbers’. The dilemma was all the sharper because the physical condition of the soldiers was mediocre, as a result of the poor sanitary and nutritional conditions and the frequency of wounds. On average, of the 132,209 soldiers sent to the front each month, 67,320 were men who had recovered from wounds or illness.21 The troops’ hygienic conditions and the lowering of standards of fitness, under the effect of material manpower constraints, were such as to falsify the evaluation of the seriousness of emotional or organic disturbances, since the signs of suffering were commonplace. The stereotype of virile valour and the demands of service for the nation, the general features of war culture and the practical conditions of life at the front combined their effects to make suffering into a normal aspect of existence in the front line.
19 20 21
Crocq (1999), p. 198. HSTAM Militärgerichte 1. Bay. Infanterie Division 3531, 3545. Sanitätsbericht (1934) 32.
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The case of disobedience which in June 1917 involved three noncommissioned officers and 32 private soldiers of the 20th Bavarian Infantry regiment was typical of this situation.22 During the battles of the Chemin des Dames in June 1917, the 1st working company was ordered to transport materials to the advanced posts. The men refused and judicial procedures were then put in motion. During the court hearings, the soldiers asserted that they were physically incapable of undertaking the task. The medical expert confirmed that the accused, all fit only for garrison service, did not possess the necessary physical qualities. Twelve of them suffered from serious heart problems, several from nervous afflictions, two were almost blind in one eye, and several had immobility of the joints following wounds from shell-bursts. For the tribunal, the accused could not plead their state of fitness as a legitimate excuse: they should at least have tried to carry out their mission. In showing that the order was lawfully given, it was a matter of establishing the order’s legitimacy, a legitimacy that was challenged and unsafe as a consequence of the obvious physical incapacities of the accused. The tribunal responded to this concern with a challenge: How can an order be illegal when, through a task which does not necessarily have to be executed by soldiers fit for armed front-line service, it is designed to relieve soldiers who have spent weeks pinned down in shell-holes facing the enemy, in harsh conditions?23
The accused were seen as guilty of aggravated disobedience; but in view of the seriousness of their physical problems the judges recognised a case of lesser gravity. The verdict pronounced recalled that in 1914 these men were fit for armed service and that they had shown proof of their courage. The penalty of 28 days’ strict imprisonment was modest in relation to the gravity of the facts, a collective disobedience that could have been described as mutiny. Although it was impossible to find it a matter of ‘no case to answer’, the verdict was merciful. The judges perceived that, in the disciplinary management of the combatant group, an excessive penalty in respect of the combatants’ sufferings, and seen as disproportionate, would weaken their authority.
22 23
HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6469. Ibid.
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These cases illustrate one of the points of tension in disciplinary relations. In order for the constraint exercised on the body of soldiers to remain legitimate, the military institution must maintain the concept of fitness. The exclusion of certain categories, based on determined criteria (age, physical form, psychological aptitude), remained essential in structuring the combatant world. But during the Great War the institution faced a contradiction: maintaining the mechanisms of accepted discipline demanded respect for the barrier of incapacity while this barrier was weakened by the increased need for men and the scale of losses, and by the tendency towards totalisation in war activity and its brutalising effect.
Judicial Clemency Analysis of the practice of military tribunals makes it possible to consider another contradiction in the institution. The demands of discipline and its maintenance imposed sanctions against criminal actions, but legitimacy, both judicial and moral, of the verdicts might appear less certain: faced with the extreme violence of the battlefield, the intensity of sufferings endured, was it not only legal but fair to condemn a soldier exhausted by combat and incapable of supplying the required efforts? In a context of general consent to war, the dilemma was all the more striking in that an abusively repressive attitude could have nullifying effects on troop discipline. An instruction of 1915 delivered to infantry officers stipulated the following: “As each soldier is animated by the greatest determination, recourse to sanctions must be made as little as possible”.24 This double concern helps to explain why the institution did not wish for systematic repression. The number of guilty verdicts (between 300 and 500 for the three Bavarian infantry divisions studied) remained small. For the whole duration of the war, 803 soldiers in the Bavarian contingent25 were found guilty of cowardice, 12,700 for desertion and unauthorised absence (this figure including brief absences). The
24 HSTAM Stv. Generalkommando I. Armee Korps. Bund 472. Ausbildung, Kriegserfahrungen bei allen Waffengattungen, 1914–1916. Anhaltspunkte für den InfanterieOffizier im Felde zusammengestellt nach Mitteilungen von Feldzugsteilnehmern (Berlin: 1915). 25 When it reached its maximum size in 1918, the Bavarian contingent had 900,000 men, of whom some 500,000 served in the army in the field.
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sanction for criminal acts remained out of proportion with the probable frequency of the facts. Behaviour capable of being brought before a military tribunal was therefore tolerated or deliberately ignored; company leaders26 chose not to undertake judicial action against men who had indeed lapsed briefly from their duty but who otherwise behaved correctly in general and did not undermine the discipline of the group. Further, evaluation of the impact of the violence of the battlefield influenced the verdict. It led to a re-evaluation of the crime or misdemeanour, to invoking cases of lesser gravity, even to bringing into play causes for release or no case to answer. The example of Georg B. illustrates this practice of German military tribunals, and their concern for judicial precision and attention to the sworn words of the accused. Initially accused of cowardice—the prosecution had sought a two-year sentence—he was condemned to ten months’ imprisonment for unauthorised absence. During a march in the Somme in October 1916, he had dallied and had had to run to catch up with his company. Experiencing breathing difficulties, he took some time to follow them. But with the pain in his chest becoming overwhelming, he remained behind and deserted: he spent four weeks away from the troop and returned to Germany, where he was arrested. At the time of his appearance before the tribunal, it noted his sickly appearance and struck out the charge of cowardice: invoking his physical problems, B. had convinced his judges that he had not acted out of fear and he gained a reassessment of his misdeed.27 Tribunals also noted the effects of a prolonged period at the front as extenuating circumstances. Six of the 33 accused, charged with cowardice before the court martial of the 2nd infantry division, benefited from this measure. Military judges were also sensitive to the personal experiences of men under fire. Thus, during the case of Infantryman G. who absented himself from the battle on two occasions during the Battle of the Somme, the judges decided not to punish him too severely. In his baptism of fire at Thiaumont in July 1916 he had been wounded immediately, for this reason he escaped a prison sentence.28 Infantryman S., who hid for three days in September 1914, found himself benefiting in a case of lesser gravity: 26 27 28
See for example HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6431. HSTAM Militärgerichte 1. Bay. Infanterie Division 3351. HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6272.
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although the prosecution had demanded a penalty of two years’ imprisonment for cowardice, he was condemned to one year in prison and benefited from a reprieve. The tribunal took into account the fact that, fit only for garrison duties, he had volunteered for field service and at the time of the action in question he was under fire for the first time.29 The full circumstances were also considered by the judges, as seen in the case of a soldier condemned for cowardice on 10 August 1916. Arriving at the front on 16 June 1916, he had his first experience outside Verdun. On 26 June the move up the line had been testing: the unit had lost 50 men. When his detachment, charged with going to fetch supplies, was caught under artillery fire on the morning of the 27th, the accused hid, fled and crossed the German frontier. Although the charge had demanded two years’ close imprisonment, the tribunal upheld a case of lesser gravity and condemned him to a simple penalty of imprisonment: the accused was not yet an experienced soldier, he was undergoing the move up the line to the front for the first time with his company in the night of 26th–27th June when he experienced the effects of violent artillery fire and on the morning of 27th June, in daylight, these impressions operated repeatedly and still more powerfully on the new arrival.30
Far from ignoring the conditions of being under fire, the courts martial took into consideration the extreme violence of the battlefield. The pronouncements in the judgements took account of the subjective and situational elements. The personality of the accused, in particular the manner of his introduction into the body of the combatant group, and his statements of service which made mention of any wounds, were examined with care. The circumstances of the crime were described in order to assess the impact of conditions at the front on the origins of the misdemeanour or crime. This merciful judicial practice reveals a reluctance to punish men too severely in whom, in most cases, the crime showed neither an attitude of refusal to service nor behaviour caused by lack of discipline but was rather the consequence of a state of exhaustion. Cases in which there was doubt as to the mental state of the accused were more complex.
29 30
HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6407. HSTAM Militärgerichte 2. Bay. Infanterie Division 6412.
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Psychological Wounds and Responsibility In this context of radicalisation of action in waging war, the judges in military tribunals were faced with the question of the accused’s responsibility. The seriousness of the psychological consequences of exposure to battlefield violence gave a particular immediacy to this questioning. Military psychiatrists listed exposure to bombardment as one of the major traumatising processes. It formed one of the operative factors in the genesis of psychological disturbances, whether immediate or postponed, capable of affecting individuals confronted with these circumstances.31 The application of Article 51 of the penal code made it possible to solve the question of responsibility in the case of claimed mental disturbance. According to this clause, which was applicable to military law under Article 2 of the code of 1872, the absence of awareness or a morbid disturbance of mental processes, excluding the exercise of free will, lifted the burden of responsibility from the accused. Medico-legal expertise, accepted in Articles 217 and 218 of the military code of criminal instruction, was widely used: it was enough for an accused to claim mental disturbance on his discharge for him to be seen by a specialist. Establishing the lack of responsibility was simple when the doctor confirmed the existence of a mental illness. On the other hand, it was much more difficult to come to a decision in the case of intermittent psychological disturbance, or troubles linked to states of nervous exhaustion. Soldier M., for example, was condemned to seven months in prison after returning two months late from a period of leave: having set out from home too late, he failed to find his unit but wandered from one garrison to another, returned with permission to Munich and, instead of returning to his posting at the front, went back home again. According to psychiatric experts, this man had shown nervous disturbance since being buried by an explosion in December 1915. He said that he suffered from severe migraines and cardiac problems as soon as he was upset, for example during shell-fire; often he did not know what he was doing. His friends, in particular a non-commissioned 31 This aspect of the subject relates to a specific survey. See the work published on this theme in the case of Germany: Riedesser & Verderber (1996); FischerHomberger (1975); 14–18 Aujourd’hui, Today, Heute, no. 3, Lerner (1996); idem (1997) in Berg and Cocks (ed), (1997), pp. 121–148; Kaufmann (1999), pp. 125–144.
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officer, confirmed his statement and stated that M. had served courageously. The doctor stated that M. did not have full possession of his mental faculties but that he could not be considered as irresponsible. In pronouncing the verdict, the judges stressed that, at the time of his appearance before the court, the accused appeared to be aware and that, in coming to their verdict, they had taken into consideration his long period at the front and the fact that he had been wounded.32 The phenomenon of inappropriate stress linked to combat which brought on a temporary inhibition of capacities posed a particular problem for the medical world. Indeed, examination of the subjects destroyed the then-dominant medical ideas that imputed nervous disturbances to ‘psychopathic states’ or to ‘constitutional pathologies’. Some doctors at the front, however, managed to recognise the specificity of these disturbances, notably the phenomenon of centrifugal exodus characterised by behaviour such as aimless flight followed by voluntary return to the troop. This was the case of the doctor who examined Blasius G. who had been at the front since July 1916. After a briefing on the objectives of the offensive of March 1918, Blasius G. was overcome by shaking and fled without any precise aim. The next day, during the evening of 20 March, he reached Hirson after covering 45 km, without sleep or food, and reported to the military authorities. The doctor described an ‘impulsive act’ of which G. was not aware; under Article 51, the tribunal of the 1st Division declared ‘no case to answer’.33 The case corresponded exactly to what modern military psychiatry as a ‘panic flight’, one of the forms of ‘pathological and inappropriate reactions to overwhelming stress’.34 At first sight the attitude of psychiatric experts and tribunal judges, faced with these manifestations of combat stress and the mental consequences of exposure to fire, appear uncoordinated and reveal the difficulty of dealing with unprecedented situations.35 This touches on
32
HSTAM Militärgerichte 1. Bay. Infanterie Division 3519. HSTAM Militärgerichte 1. Bay. Infanterie Division 3422. 34 Crocq (1999), p. 75. 35 My conclusions on this point remain cautious because, in the decisions of the front-line courts-martial, psychiatric experts are rare: when such a proceeding was undertaken, the accused were sent back to Germany, placed under observation and the files transferred to tribunals at the rear. The study remains incomplete on this point. 33
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a sensitive point, illustrated in the attitude of the commanding officer of the 3rd division of Bavarian infantry: hostile to any measure leading to a relaxation of disciplinary demands, he admitted the need to reduce by half the sentences passed on those who, without benefit of Article 51, were declared to be in a state of ‘diminished capacity of judgement’.36 Recognition of this concept of ‘diminished capacity of judgement’ remained in suspense throughout the war but it was an element in contemporary thinking on the revision of the code of military justice which came to its first conclusion in the spring of 1917, with the adoption of measures enabling lesser sanctions to be imposed for certain acts committed at the front.
Soldiers’ Suffering and the Evolution of Judicial Norms Since the beginning of the nineteenth century the evolution of German military justice had been characterised by a reduction of sentences and a softening of judicial practices. Far from reversing this trend, the Great War confirmed it. In April 1916 the Reichstag had adopted a resolution demanding approval of a law designed to reduce minimum penalties in the code of military justice, in particular for acts committed in the field.37 The government decided to consult the military authorities in July 1916, and a questionnaire was sent to army units.38 Available sources show that the military authorities were at the very least not hostile to these measures, and even supported them, so their adoption in April 1917 is not surprising. Several of the units consulted defended the need to take into account the specific conditions of recruitment and the structure of the mass army in wartime as well as the violence of modern combat. The 12th field artillery regiment, for example, suggested suppression of minimum penalties in order to give the judge full latitude:
36
HSTAM General Kommando II. Armee Korps. Bund 177. 3. Bay. Infanterie Division an das G.K.O. Bay. II.A.K., Div. St. Qu., 1.9.1916., no. 4606 II/866 II. Betreffend: Herabsetzung der Mindestrafe. 37 Jahr (1998), pp. 299–301. 38 HSTAM General Kommando II. Armee Korps. Bund 177. Kriegsministerium no. 436/6.16 C4, Berlin W66, 13.7.1916. An annex reproduces the list of clauses of the military justice code potentially liable to modification: §57–60, 63, 66–68, 71–73, 77, 78, 84–86, 93, 95–100, 102, 106–108, 110, 129–136, 141, 146.
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otherwise, severity is inevitable, particularly since prolonged and violent artillery fire, in the context of poor nutrition, has such an influence on many brave and stout-hearted soldiers that their condition, at that moment, could not be described as normal.39
The long note sent by the 8th Bavarian infantry regiment40 specified reform as quickly as possible: as the war dragged on, the severity of minimum sentences was felt increasingly. Several modifications of the code of military justice were laid down. For sanctions applicable in cases of desertion (§71), the author of the note suggested a reduction from five years to one year as the minimum sentence and justified his point of view: the minimum sentence demanded is heavy for it must be dissuasive since, in his eyes, “the need to avoid mass desertions through the threat of severe sanctions does not exist for the German army”.41 He also evoked the case of exhausted soldiers who could no longer cope with the challenges of war: through crime, they intended merely to remove themselves from a situation that they had come to find unbearable and so took different paths: mutilation, disobedience, desertion. These crimes and misdemeanours attracted sanctions of various kinds: a year in prison for mutilation, five years for desertion. These acts, when committed by an individual in a state of physical or mental exhaustion, arose from similar motivations and should not be the object of such widely differing sanctions. A delicate sensitivity to the exercise of authority at the front inspired the proposals responding to Articles 95, 96 and 97, relating to crimes and misdemeanours against military subordination. While the minimum penalty available for the severest cases of insubordination (Article 95) was ten years, the author of the note wanted to reduce it to three months. He evoked the example of a man of good conduct who, having received bad news from home, got drunk, was reprimanded, refused to obey an order and ended by insulting a superior. This would be regarded as a commonplace situation, well known among troops in the field although such cases remained extremely rare in peacetime:
39 HSTAM General Kommando II. Armee Korps. Bund 177. 12. F.A.R. an das k. Feldgericht der 3. Bay. Infanterie Division, R.St.Qu., 23.8.16, no. 4722. Betreffend: Herabsetzung der Mindeststrafe. 40 HSTAM General Kommando II. Armee Korps. Bund 177. 8. Infanterie Regiment, R.St.Qu., 16.8.16, no. 13138. Herabsetzung der Mindeststrafen der Kriegsgesetze. 41 Ibid.
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With nerves weakened by the war, an acquired or innate intolerance to alcohol, a long absence from home, his concern for his family, particularly among married and relatively senior men, easily nourished an explosive state of mind, initially without any link to army service. A harsh word or a forceful measure from a superior, perhaps inexperienced in managing men, may then be enough for a link to be formed suddenly between this state of mind and the behaviour of the man during his service.42
In such a context he found the severity of the code disproportionate. The outcome of this consultation was the adoption of a ‘law relating to the reduction of minimum sentences in the military code of justice’.43 It reduced minimum penalties for several crimes or misdemeanours committed in the field. Thus the minimum penalty for an unauthorised absence of more than three days in the field shifted from 43 days in prison to 14 days under arrest; for absences of more than seven days in the field, the minimum penalty was reduced from six to three months. The law modified dispositions for sanctions against infractions against obedience to military orders. The new edition of Article 93 no longer set a lower limit and thus suppressed the one-year minimum sentence provided for acts of disobedience liable to severe penalty. The dispositions of subsection 2 in Article 95, relating to cases in which these criminal acts in the form of insubordination occurred in the face of the enemy, were relaxed. The code made the death penalty available for these crimes and, in cases of lesser gravity, a minimum penalty of ten years or in perpetuity. The new version of the law certainly sustained the death penalty or perpetuity or a minimum sentence of ten years but it established that henceforward in the least serious cases, a minimum sentence of at least one year could be specified. In his commentary on the law, the Marine-Oberkriegsgerichtsrat Coester stressed that these new dispositions made it possible to take into account the particular circumstances of the crime or misdemeanour. He felt it was necessary to shift away from the rigours of the law since the circumstances of war showed certain misdeeds under another light:
42 43
Ibid. Reichsgesetzblatt 84 (1917), pp. 381–384.
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It need not be feared that the reduction in minimum penalties may exercise a negative influence on the strict military discipline which is absolutely essential to our army. The constitution of our army is undoubtedly sufficiently strong—we can count on this with confidence— to sustain this reduction without the slightest difficulty.44
The institution emphatically did not ignore the impact of the conditions of modern warfare on the exercise of disciplinary power and thus on the conditions of definition and functioning of military justice during the war. Soldiers’ suffering specific to the context of modern war was taken into account by a hierarchy concerned to adapt the normative framework to the contemporary conditions of wartime activity.
Conclusion The analysis of judicial norms, their evolution during the war and the practice of tribunals reveals a relatively merciful German military justice, conforming to the demands of the code of law. The text of the 1917 law is symbolic of this. According to Christoph Jahr, this evolution bears witness to the adaptation of the institution to a long war which would make it impossible to maintain the authoritarian disciplinary principles envisaged in the hypothesis of a short war. Further, German society would have been sufficiently engaged on the road to political modernisation for the judicial principles accepted in civilian spheres to be imposed on the military institution.45 Changes in disciplinary relations also make it possible to interpret this evolution, in which soldiers’ suffering held an essential role. Military judges, officers who served at the front, were fully aware of the extreme conditions endured by the troops. Through having shared these conditions, sometimes having suffered them both physically and psychologically or having seen their marks on the faces of men returning from the front line, they managed to make allowance in their verdicts for the impact on individuals of the conditions of modern combat. These officers thus showed a sensitive empirical recognition 44 Marine Oberkriegsgerichtsrat Coester vom Generalkommando des Marinekorps, Flandern, ‘Das Reichsgesetz betr. Herabsetzung von Mindeststrafen des Militärstrafgesetzbuches’, in Deutsche Straferechtzeitun 3–4 (1917), pp. 118–126. 45 Jahr (1998), p. 250.
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of the men’s moral circumstances, set in a tension between the determined consent to war and the exhaustion of war. Although the demands of discipline and the imperatives of courage and self-control inherent in the military ethic required misdeeds to be sanctioned, this was rarely pronounced with extreme severity. The promiscuity of the trenches, of which the high command deplored the deleterious effects on the disciplinary rigour supposed to regulate relationships between men and their superiors, helped to modify the view of the soldiers, their sufferings and their misdeeds, and also of the qualities of discipline that they demonstrated. Military justice thus appears to be one of the instances in which the intelligence of the subtle mechanisms of legitimate authority is visible, and also of the accepted discipline that ensures the intimate functioning of groups of soldiers, the military effectiveness of the troop and the integration of individuals. For nearly four years, despite the efforts imposed on the men, their suffering and the constant threat of death to which they were exposed, the institution managed to ensure the discipline, relative effectiveness and cohesion of combatant units. In this respect, the final phase of the war, beginning in the spring of 1918, constituted a major break that reveals the fragility of these processes.
B Sanitätsbericht über das Deutsche Heer (Deutsches Feld- und Besatzungsheer) im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (1934) bearbeitet in der Heeres-Sanitätsinspektion des Reichswehrministeriums, vol. 3, Die Krankenbewegung bei dem Deutschen Feld- und Besatzungsheer im Weltkrieg 1914–1918 (Berlin: 1934). Audoin-Rouzeau S., and A. Becker (2000) 14–18, Retrouver la guerre (Paris: 2000). Crocq L. (1999) Les traumatismes psychiques de guerre (Paris: 1999). Delaporte S. (1999) “Le corps des morts dans le témoignage médical: une écriture du trauma?” in Médecine et armées, 27, 8 (1999). Dietz H. (1923) “Das Militärstrafrechtswesen im Kriege” in Schwarte M., (ed.), Der Grosse Krieg, vol. 10, Die Organisation für das geistige Leben im Heere (Leipzig: 1923). Duménil A. (2000) ‘Le soldat allemand de la Grande Guerre: institution militaire et expérience de combat’, University of Picardie Jules Verne (Amiens: 2000). Fischer-Homberger E. (1975) Die traumatische Neurose. Vom somatischen zum sozialen Leiden (Bern: 1975). Jahr C. (1998) Gewöhnliche Soldaten. Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer 1914–1918 (Göttingen: 1998). Kaufmann D. (1999) ‘Science as cultural practice: psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany’ Journal of Contemporary History 34 (1999) 125–144. Le Breton D. (1999) Anthropologie du corps et modernité (Paris: 1999) (first edition 1990).
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Lerner P. (1996) Hysterical Men: War, Neurosis and German Mental Medicine 1914–1921 in 14–18 Aujourd’hui, Today, Heute, 3 (Columbia University: 1996). —— (1997) ‘Rationalizing the therapeutic arsenal. German neuropsychiatry in World War I’ in M. Berg and G. Cocks (ed), (1997) Medicine and Modernity. Public Health and Medical Care in Nineteenth- and Twentieth Century Germany (Cambridge: 1997). Riedessser P., A. Verderber (1996) ‘Maschinengewehr hinter der Front’ Zur Geschichte der deutschen Militärpsychiatrie (Frankfurt: 1996). Ziemann B. (1997) Front und Heimat. Länliche Kriegserfahrungen im südlichen Bayern 1914–1923 (Essen: 1997).
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CROMWELL ON THE BED STAND: ALLIED CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS IN WORLD WAR I Michael S. Neiberg*
“I only hope that now we have won,” stated Douglas Haig to reporters in December, 1918, “we shall not lose our heads, as the Germans did after 1870. It has brought them to this.”1 The ‘we’ in Haig’s statement refers to the senior officers of the British army. It is an ironic statement, coming as it does from a man whose political activity during the war had done much to deteriorate the already precarious condition of civil-military relations in Britain. Haig had seen officers threaten mass resignation in 1914 over proposals concerning Home Rule in Ireland, intrigue against the Asquith government in 1915, and publicly accuse the Lloyd George government of misleading the House of Commons in 1918. Many Liberal politicians believed that Haig had covertly supported the intriguers in all three incidents, while deftly keeping his own hands clean. Perhaps because of his personal experience, World War I scared Haig enough for him to express his concern that the British officer corps of the postwar years might come to resemble the German officer corps of the pre-war years. Haig’s concerns reverberated across the English Channel as well. During the Paris Peace Treaty negotiations, Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau and his military advisor, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, had several public disagreements about the future of the Rhineland. These conflicts echoed the long and difficult history of civil-military relations in the Third Republic, characterized by intense political intrigue, vicious personal and partisan acrimony, and frequent public squabbling on strategic and political issues. As events in Britain and France demonstrate, civil-military relations need to be examined closely and taken seriously by students * I would like to thank Dennis Showalter, Bill Astore, and Michelle Moyd for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Address for correspondence: mike.neiberg@ usafa.af.mil. 1 Quoted in Strachan (1997), p. 143.
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of military history. In particular, civil-military relations before and during World War I impacted operations, strategy, and the choice of commanders to a much greater degree than current historiography allows. As the historiography on World War I continues to evolve in new and fruitful ways, we must make sure that civil-military relations receive a share of the attention to which they are surely due. The nature of domestic politics and the historical models available to each society shaped the character of civil-military relations in Britain, France, and the United States. Although World War I saw no coups in these countries, it would be a grave mistake to presume that their respective civil-military relations operated smoothly. It is impossible, for example, to agree with one historian of France who wrote admiringly of how well the “hallowed republican tradition of civilian control of the military” functioned during the war.2 Instead, the military systems of all three nations reflected fundamental cleavages within their social and political systems. Furthermore, it is important to note that in 1914 the exact relationships between officers and civilians was still in flux. All three nations had made recent reforms that fundamentally changed their military structures. The United States transitioned its military from the largely local and volunteer force that fought the war with Spain in 1898 to the centralized, professionalized military that went ‘over there’ in 1917. Reforms included war colleges, promotion by merit rather than seniority, and the creation of a general staff in 1903. Britain’s reforms after the frustrations of the Boer War created an entirely new defence infrastructure as well, including the establishment of the Committee of Imperial Defence in 1902, the abolition of the office of commander-in-chief in 1904, and the creation of the general staff in 1906. France’s civilian war ministry was still less than twenty-five years old in 1914 and did not attain the right to name colonels and generals until 1899. The following year, political intrigue by some generals led the war ministry to authorize the Sûreté to monitor the army.3 In 1913, France approved an extension of the draft law from two years’ service to three. The debate on extending the length of service centred on a long-standing philosophical disagreement in
2 3
Keylor (1997), p. 188. Porch (1981), pp. 68, 95–98.
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French political and military circles that had its roots in the FrancoPrussian War and the Commune as much as it did twentieth-century realities. The French Left, preferring an army that would presumably be politically reliable, preferred a nation-in-arms militia. The Right, desiring an army of professionals, argued more forcefully for conscription. The debate on conscription was still intense and unresolved when the war began. Minister of War Adolphe Messimy was working on a revision of the three-year law even as France began to mobilize. Raoul Villain, the assassin of socialist leader Jean Jaurès, defended his actions on the grounds that Jaurès was a ‘traitor’ to France for “conducting the campaign against the three-year law.”4 Political and philosophical differences contributed to the many high-profile scandals in France that heightened tensions between the army and republic, the most famous being the Dreyfus, Boulanger, and Fiches scandals. From 1900 to 1904, the French army, under the direction of Minister of War Louis André, compiled ‘fiches’ on the political leanings of French officers and aggressively promoted men with republican credentials. One republican officer whose career received a boost from the policy was Maurice Sarrail, who spent just a year and a half at the rank of lieutenant colonel. The Jesuit educated Ferdinand Foch, by contrast, spent five years at that grade.5 Less well known today are the many controversies in the pre-war years regarding the use of French troops as strikebreakers. The French Army’s refusal to suppress a protest by vineyard workers in 1907 pleased socialists, but terrified conservatives. Unlike the Boulanger Affair, this incident involved the enlisted ranks, not the officers, and threatened mass disobedience, not coup d’état. It was the first Army mutiny since the Revolution and ‘spread fear in the bourgeoisie’ and the Army’s high command.6 The British, too, had their share of scandal. In what one contemporary observer called “an incident without parallel in the history of the army,” fifty-seven British officers threatened to resign rather than march against Ulster unionists (many of whose leaders were retired Army officers) in the event of a government declaration of Home Rule for Ireland.7 The so-called Curragh Incident of 4 5 6 7
Krumeich (1984), pp. 14–15. Strachan (2001), p. 226. Krumeich (1995), p. 34. Editor of the Times quoted in Holmes (1981), p. 184.
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March 1914 revealed that the British Army was not as apolitical as many had believed. When the mutiny’s ringleader, General Sir Hubert Gough, refused to back down, Haig warned Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Field Marshal Sir John French, that the entire Imperial General Staff might resign if the Asquith government punished Gough. The King himself called the incident a “disastrous and irreparable catastrophe.”8 The repercussions for British civil-military relations were severe. Four months after the Curragh Incident, in July 1914, the British general staff was discussing grand strategy and operations for the BEF in the event of a continental war. The incident had led to the resignations of both French and the secretary of state for war, J.E. B. Seeley. As a result of the dislocations, the ‘army was in no position to speak coherently’ over where, when, and how it would be used. French’s resignation raised his stock in Liberal eyes; he became Asquith’s choice to command the BEF in 1914 despite Haig’s personal objection to the King. Lord Kitchener’s appointment to replace Seeley as secretary of state for war was an attempt by Asquith to restore public confidence in his government’s ability to handle military affairs. Kitchener himself did not want the job and the appointment was constitutionally questionable, as Kitchener was still a serving officer. His two years in office were ‘disfigured’ by mutual suspicions left over from the Curragh Incident and other political intrigues.9 Once again, civil-military relations set the parameters within which the Asquith government made critical personnel decisions. Scandals and mutual suspicions were endemic to a system of careful distinction between military and civilian spheres. Hew Strachan is correct in describing both the ‘narrow political vision’ of military officers and the ‘remarkable military ignorance’ of the politicians.10 Few politicians had military experience; even fewer felt comfortable in the insular world of senior military officials. Some, like Lloyd George and Clemenceau, were flatly not welcome in that world. Military officers, for their part, were just as uncomfortable with politicians who, as a group, they tended to see as overly intrusive, glib, and manipulative. Haig was so tongue-tied in front of politicians that
8 9 10
Quoted in Holmes (1981), p. 182. Strachan (2001), p. 203. Strachan (2001), p. 99.
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Lloyd George thought him a ‘dunce.’11 Haig thought Lloyd George was ‘shifty and unreliable.’12 Most pre-war relationships between politicians and officers were therefore weakened by a lack of common understanding and by fundamental philosophical differences. In short, no one in 1914 could reliably predict how armies might behave or how civil-military relations might function in the event of a continental war. As noted above, the structures through which civilians managed military affairs had undergone fundamental changes in all three nations since 1900. None of these systems had anticipated a war as long or as total as World War I. In all three nations, questions about the loyalties of officers and enlisted men alike existed in the minds of people of all political inclinations. The Third Republic, which ‘kept the army poor, politically constrained, and on the parade ground’ even banned soldiers from voting.13 Furthermore, the social and cultural gaps between politicians, officers, and enlisted men remained wide, even in republican France and democratic United States. Given the mutual fears and suspicions that existed in all three nations, it is hardly surprising that domestic politics played the largest role in determining the nature and quality of civil-military relations. All three societies were representative democracies with legal oversight by elected officials over the military. Legislative bodies in all three nations controlled funding and had committees that could legally inquire into military affairs. All three had civilian secretariats of war and navy, though in France and Britain senior officers sometimes held the posts. All three had established general staffs designed to centralize the advice given by senior officers to the civilian government. Once the war began, the nature and quality of civilian oversight varied significantly. In France the ignominious departure of the French government to Bordeaux in the face of advancing German armies in September 1914 undermined the government’s constitutional and moral authority. In the absence of the government (until General Joseph Joffre ungraciously invited it to return in December), Joffre
11
Marshall-Cornwall (1973), p. 84. De Groot (1988), p. 227. De Groot also writes that Haig ‘was inclined to believe any rumour about Lloyd George’, including one that claimed that Lloyd George had used the shell crisis to enrich himself and his friends. See p. 223. 13 Smith (1994), pp. 23–24. 12
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ruled as a putative military dictator in eastern France.14 Thereafter, Parliament’s efforts to reassert its authority ran directly counter to Joffre’s unwillingness to cede his. Joffre successfully banned all parliamentarians, including members of the Senate Army Committee that included Georges Clemenceau, from his Zone of the Armies. Joffre also threatened to arrest Minister of War Alexandre Millerand if he entered the Zone. Joffre later refused to allow the President of the Republic, Raymond Poincaré, to visit the front unless Joffre accompanied him and unless he consented to Joffre setting the president’s agenda. Moreover, the French government changed so often that it could not effectively supervise its generals. Georges Clemenceau was France’s sixth wartime prime minister and ninth war minister when he assumed both jobs in 1917. Parliament’s own decision to silence partisan criticism as part of the union sacrée left it too weak to exercise effective control over Joffre. When Parliament’s choice to replace Joffre, General Robert Nivelle, failed at the Chemin des Dames, Parliament’s own prestige declined further, paving the way for what Jere Clemens King called the ‘Jacobin rule’ of Clemenceau.15 The British system was, in structure, broadly similar to the French, but with one important exception: the monarchy. All army commissions were Royal Commissions, and George V (as Edward VII had before him) demanded the right of review for all promotions above colonel. The existence of a monarchy allowed British generals to have a safe and controlled outlet for their disagreements with the government. While acknowledging Parliament as the “legitimate source of political authority,” the generals saw themselves as “servants of the monarch not of the politicians.”16 The most senior among them had direct access to the King and frequently complained to him personally about decisions that they believed to be unwise, as Haig had done when Asquith named French commander of the BEF.17 Since George V had little real power or sway on British strategy, the generals’ appeals to the monarch allowed them to feel that they had satisfied their honour, without directly challenging the authority or prerogatives of the government. 14 15 16 17
King (1951), pp. 28–29. King (1951), p. 190. French (1996), p. 76. French (1996), p. 90.
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The King understood the important but symbolic role he had to play in this system. In 1917 Haig wrote him a personal letter to protest Lloyd George’s proposal that he accept a unified command under Nivelle. The King told Haig that he would support him against Lloyd George, but that under no circumstances could Haig resign, as he had threatened to do. Haig’s personal and professional honour was thereby satisfied; the King worked out an acceptable compromise; and a crisis was thereby averted.18 The Lloyd George government further benefited from its coalition status. Conservatives filled important positions in the Lloyd George government and, therefore, the Conservative party was closely tied to government decisions. As a result, the opposition’s criticisms of the government’s decisions had to be muted. This situation prevented the Conservative party from becoming a conduit for disenchanted generals who sought a change of government. Major General Sir Frederick Maurice learned this lesson the hard way when he published an open letter critical of Lloyd George in four London newspapers in May 1918. Maurice blamed the government for withholding necessary resources from Haig at Passchendaele and for mishandling the crisis brought on by the German Spring Offensives in March. The letter encouraged some of Maurice’s Conservative allies to begin a debate to force a vote of confidence in the House of Commons. Unfortunately for Maurice, most Conservatives were unwilling to discredit a wartime coalition government that they had helped to build. Lloyd George therefore survived by a comfortable margin of nearly three to one. Haig himself was careful to publicly call the letter “a grave mistake,” but it is unclear whether he thought the graver mistake was in challenging the government or in doing so in such a public fashion. He clearly sympathized with Maurice, calling Lloyd George’s response to the letter in a speech to the House of Commons ‘claptrap’ and criticizing that body for not convening a special committee to investigate the prime minister.19 Nor was Haig above using similar tactics himself, though, as he had done during the Curragh Incident, he was careful to cover his own tracks. In 1916, Haig had used his connections in the media, convincing Sir Phillip Sassoon to
18 19
Marshall-Cornwall (1973), pp. 220–222. De Groot (1988), pp. 379–380.
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write letters to British press baron Lord Northcliffe urging him to publicly criticize Lloyd George, then serving as War Minister. The critical articles that subsequently appeared as part of the Daily Mail’s ‘Hands Off the Army’ campaign led to Lloyd George’s public denunciation of press bias.20 Northcliffe and Haig maintained a close relationship until the battle of Cambrai in November 1917. Just as the workings of a parliamentary system diffused political debate in Britain, the absence of such a system was critical to the stability of American civil-military relations. Woodrow Wilson’s presidency was ensured until at least 1920, despite the closest American election since 1884 and despite the irony that he had won the 1916 election partly on the slogan, ‘He kept us out of war.’ Moreover, his party, the Democrats, controlled Congress. Because the American system does not require coalition building, the Wilson cabinet, like most presidential cabinets, was comprised of men that Wilson trusted, especially after Robert Lansing replaced William Jennings Bryan as secretary of state in 1915. There were, therefore, few channels for generals to exploit, even if they had desired to do so. Furthermore, Wilson and his Secretary of War, Newton Baker, neutralized the largest potential centre of conflict by defining World War I as a federal, professional war. By doing so, they were able to deftly sidestep the efforts of former president and Rough Rider Theodore Roosevelt to raise and command four divisions of volunteers. With Roosevelt and his ally, the vocal and partisan former Army Chief of Staff Leonard Wood, thus neutralized, Wilson encountered little interference with his conduct of the war from his numerous political opponents, Republican and Democrat alike. His wartime power contrasts sharply with his post-war weakness. In 1918, the Republicans regained control of the Congress and were able to vote down the Treaty of Versailles and American participation in the League of Nations. Political structures therefore muted dissent in the United States, created a safety valve to relieve dissent in Britain, and created vacuums of authority in France. These differences were the result of both the constitutional and legal structures of government and the result of particular trends in the domestic politics of each nation. Often, these trends, such as Democratic control of the American
20
De Groot (1988), p. 264.
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Congress between 1916 and 1918, owed more to the pre-war period than to unrelated experiences during the war itself. Domestic politics therefore conditioned the way that civilians made many military decisions. In all three nations, the process of selecting commanding generals often had as much to do with domestic politics and how generals handled themselves during political discussions and civilmilitary scandals than with their performance in the field. French and Joffre both received their commands largely on their ability to find politically safe harbours during domestic storms. Legislative bodies in all three nations failed to have much influence on the war. In Britain, the House of Commons quickly and quietly surrendered its right to scrutinize the effectiveness of the war. In France, the union sacrée served a similar purpose. Later efforts by legislatures to reassert their authority ran into the strength of executive power that grew during the war years, in part to fill the vacuums left by legislative abdication. The result for civil-military relations was a system in which generals had to deal with the ‘dynamic purposefulness’ of strong executives like Lloyd George and Clemenceau.21 To these men, suspicious of the generals’ motivations, their dealings with military officers almost constituted another front. In the United States, too, executive authority expanded greatly, though President Wilson was unwilling to use that authority to meddle in military affairs, one of the few areas in which he conceded his ignorance and discomfort. Politics were, in turn, conditioned by the immediacy of the war. Michael Desch’s ‘mission model’ posits that a military facing external threats will be more compliant to civilian leadership than one facing internal threats. The immediacy of the external threat, this model suggests, will force the subordination of military officers to the will of political leadership.22 World War I does not bear his model out. France, the nation facing the most dire external threat, had the most tumultuous civil-military relations of the three nations under study here. The United States, the nation least threatened, had the most harmonious. In France and, to a lesser extent, Britain, the lack of harmony was due to fundamental disagreements over how best to deal with
21 22
French (1996), p. 79. Desch (1996), pp. 12–29.
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the crisis. In some cases, these disagreements were between what Douglas Bland calls “friendly adversaries.” Disagreements between friendly adversaries, however intense they may be, are rooted in a common desire to do what is best for the nation. In this ideal type, each side respects the legal sphere of the other. Therefore, although disagreements are commonplace, there is no fear of a coup and there are no constitutional crises.23 All three nations attempted to operate under a ‘friendly adversary’ system, but the pressures of war soon overrode the cooperative ideal and left complications for civil-military relations. In France, the union sacrée attempted to bury the fundamental political differences that nearly paralysed the Third Republic. Still, the evacuation of Paris, the presence of German soldiers in eastern France, and the mutinies of 1917 created constant frustrations that undermined the stability of French politics. Domestic politics intruded into French military strategy so often that the lines between the two virtually disappeared. When French politicians attempted to investigate the Army’s 1915 Soissons offensive, which forced a French retreat and left the Germans just sixty miles from Paris, Joffre became enraged and threatened to resign.24 Joffre’s refusal even to acknowledge the right of Parliament to investigate did much to undermine his relations with left and centre Parliamentarians, and was one of the root causes of his dismissal the following year. The immediacy of the war, therefore, did not bring civilians and officers closer together, as Desch’s rather ahistorical model posits. Nor did French politics always follow the friendly adversary model. When Joffre removed from command the darling of the French left, General Maurice Sarrail, he set off a controversy that contributed to the replacement of the Viviani government by the Briand government in October 1915. The French left saw Sarrail’s dismissal as a political act that violated the spirit of the union sacrée. Parliamentarians pushed for Sarrail’s return and the resulting compromise, naming Sarrail commander of the ill-starred Salonika operation, pleased no one. Joffre, whom Briand named generalissimo so that he would be forced to take a stake in Sarrail’s success, bristled at having commands named by Parliament without his prior approval. The French
23 24
Bland (1999), pp. 7–26, quotation at 19. Torrey (1997), pp. 398–410.
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left, including Georges Clemenceau, disliked having Sarrail placed under the very man who had fired him. As King argued, the ‘L’Affaire Sarrail was an unpleasant reminder of the precariousness’ of the union sacrée and revealed how closely linked domestic politics were to the management of the war.25 For Britain, the immediacy of the war often intruded on civil-military relations through the empire. British officers, especially those with familial and sentimental ties to the empire, feared that a German victory would mean that large parts of the empire would be taken from British hands. Many senior British officers also worried that the war could produce a Pyrrhic victory if Britain won, but was left too weak to deal with issues close to the hearts of the British army, namely maintaining the strength to manage the empire and resisting Home Rule in Ireland. The Easter Rising of 1916 underscored these fears and brought home the reality that events in Flanders reverberated in Dublin, Delhi, and Dover. The dominions feared being transferred into German hands in the event of an allied defeat. Dominion politicians therefore wanted to be kept fully informed of British military strategy and operations. This trend increased further as dominion blood was shed on the Western Front and at places like Gallipoli. The dominion prime ministers eventually won the right to circumvent the Colonial Office and communicate directly with the Lloyd George cabinet and with Haig.26 British generals now had to deal not only with their own government, but with imperial representatives like South African Defence Minister Jan Smuts and Australian Prime Minister William Morris Hughes. Smuts in particular had ample confidence in his own military acumen to meddle in military affairs. Hughes came to London in 1918 to lambaste the War Office for its treatment of Australians and its lack of attention to the Pacific Theatre. Neither was particularly welcome to Haig and his staff, who saw the ‘annoying’ visitors to GHQ as ‘thick as midges on a summer day.’27 In the United States, the distance of the war provided a cushion for the unprepared nation to establish its systems for war making. Ironically, America’s lack of preparedness helped to smooth civilmilitary relations. Because the Army was so manifestly overwhelmed 25 26 27
King (1951), p. 87. French (1996), p. 85. De Groot (1998), p. 227.
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by the task of training, equipping, and shipping an army to Europe, civilians were recruited to fill many gaps. To a much greater extent than in Europe, civilians managed previously military spheres like transportation and supply. On the other hand, the Department of War remained small and thereby exercised little direct control over Army operations. The resulting system accustomed civilians and military personnel to working together while at the same time it reduced several potential areas of conflict by keeping civilian and military chains of command as separate as possible. Naturally, historical models weigh heavily on the present. In the case of civil-military relations in World War I, the leaders of all three nations acted in the shadows of past tensions and crises. French civil-military relations were the most tense in part because the French had so many models to draw on and each of them presented a threat to some element of French society. These models included a latter-day levée en masse, defensive in character and the preferred solution of Jean Jaurès and the French left. Such a model, with its focus on national spirit over professionalism, was anathema to senior military leaders who feared that an army so created would fare poorly against the well-trained German army. Of course, France remembered its history of military dictatorship. This memory produced the widespread anxiety that accompanied the Boulanger Affair. Both the left and the right had reasons to fear such a course. Minister of War (and former career army officer) Adolphe Messimy’s comment, “Laissez-moi la guillotine, et je garantis la victoire” did not go unnoticed.28 Neither did Messimy’s unwavering support of Joffre. To the left, Joffre, and later Foch, seemed the most likely candidates to lead a coup, though there were others as well. The right recalled the republican rule of Léon Gambetta in 1871 and grew alarmed when Paul Painlevé, then, more alarmingly, Clemenceau merged the prime ministry and the war ministry. French historical models therefore conditioned members of all political leanings to be vigilant and suspicious. This suspicion meant that events such as the parliamentary investigation of the Soissons offensive in 1915 or the dismissal of General Sarrail took on political lives of their own. Domestic suspicions and memories of past civil-military models constantly intruded on French military operations. In large part, these suspicions were so strong because memo28
Strachan (2001), p. 128.
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ries of 1870–1871 often attributed defeat not to the superiority of the German army, but to domestic failings. While French ideology was more complex than a simple ‘stab in the back’ mode of thinking, Frenchmen of all political leanings feared a repeat of 1871. The fear that perfidy on the left or right could once again lead to German victory (and another humiliating peace treaty) polarized politics and civil-military relations. Despite what Richard Holmes called the ‘well-polished veneer’ of an apolitical British military, historical models intruded here as well.29 The conservative leanings of most senior British officers contrasted with the liberal leanings of the Lloyd George government. The Curragh Incident and the Maurice letter (on which many Liberal politicians saw Haig’s fingerprints) revealed an officer corps that was not averse to meddling in politics. Lloyd George saw Haig as a man who ‘loved intrigue for its own sake’ and held the potential to bring down his government if Lloyd George pushed too hard for his removal.30 Indeed, Haig’s inability to work with Britain’s civil government cost him his job in 1920. His dismissal came after he continued to advocate the use of live ammunition against strikers even after the government had expressly stated its opposition to live ammunition. Nor was intrigue within the system the only cause for civil consternation. Old models nevertheless cast long shadows. Lloyd George would have been less than pleased to learn that Haig kept three books on his bed stand: the Bible, Pilgrim’s Progress, and a biography of Oliver Cromwell.31 For his part Lloyd George felt that he was stuck with politically unreliable generals like Haig and Robertson because to dismiss them would risk angering the Conservatives on whom his coalition government depended. When in 1918 Lloyd George finally did ask Robertson to represent Britain at the Supreme War Council at Versailles, Robertson saw the move as a politically motivated demotion and resigned.32 Only Robertson’s connection with planning for the disaster at Passchendaele kept Conservative MPs from turning the incident into a larger political issue. American models suggested a very different course to Wilson and his advisers. Wilson, a careful student of his country’s civil war, 29 30 31 32
Holmes (1981), p. 167. Lloyd George (1937), p. 359. Sixsmith (1976), p. 181. Strachan (1997), pp. 137–138.
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believed that the Lincoln Administration had interfered too much in military operations. Wilson was also aware of the shortcomings of his military advisers, whom he chose on the bases of political loyalty and progressive ideology. His secretary of war, Newton Baker, made his name as a reformist mayor of Cleveland, Ohio. His secretary of navy, Josephus Daniels, was a progressive journalist who became famous as an opponent of railroad and tobacco trusts. He was a populist and prohibitionist who alienated the Navy’s senior admirals by eliminating the officers’ wine mess and by allowing enlisted men to enter the United States Naval Academy. Neither had an understanding of military affairs adequate for running a world war. The Wilson Administration thus saw the futility of trying to exercise the same level of operational control over General John Pershing that European executives were exercising over their generals. Baker told Pershing that he would receive only two orders from Washington: one to go and one to return. Such a system could have been disastrous. Despite the conventional view of American generals as apolitical, nothing in the American tradition necessarily guaranteed smooth civil-military relations. During the Civil War that Wilson had studied so intently, generals often found themselves making political decisions that impinged on the proper sphere of politicians. Even a general as popular and successful as William Sherman ran into difficulty when he crossed the line between military and political responsibilities. Sherman’s negotiations with Confederate General Joseph Johnston at Durham Station near the end of the war caused several tense moments between Sherman, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, and Henry Halleck. Neutralizing the challenge from Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood helped Wilson tremendously, but did not guarantee smooth civil-military relations. Several other potential sources of friction existed. Although most historians treat General Pershing as an example of how American officers should behave in the political arena, he was not always seen as such a paragon. Pershing had been openly critical of Wilson’s Mexican policy in letters to influential friends.33 He also had connections in the Senate through his influential fatherin-law, Wyoming Senator Francis E. Warren, who had held a seat as a Republican since 1890 and had chaired the Military Affairs Committee from 1905 to 1911. 33
Vandiver (1977), pp. 672–677.
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The American system nevertheless functioned smoothly because it accorded so closely with American traditions of sharply divided spheres between officers and politicians. The politicians avoided interference on operational questions and the generals, seeing what had happened to the popular Leonard Wood, largely stayed away from political matters. The American officer corps, after unglamorous operations in the Philippines and Mexico, lacked the domestic clout that the British and French militaries had. Because of America’s more ambiguous relationship with quasi-colonial operations, those operations produced no active-duty American military heroes with the kind of clout wielded by Kitchener and Roberts in Britain or Joffre in France. Lastly, Wilson, Pershing, Baker, and Warren all agreed on fundamental questions such as the need for conscription and for keeping American forces as separate from European forces as possible. Although Americans were by no means unanimous in their support for the war, once the nation was engaged, a consensus emerged in both major political parties that put into practice a working version of the French union sacrée that endured throughout America’s relatively brief wartime experience. There is, of course, no way of knowing how long that alliance would have lasted had the war extended into 1919. The main point here is that, due to common agreement on the main points, it did last until November 1918, allowing Pershing to run military operations without the political interference his British and French colleagues were facing. Civil-military relations in World War I in the United States, Great Britain, and France experienced severe periods of crises and constantly intruded on military strategy and operations. That no Ludendorff or Hindenburg emerged should not mislead us into thinking that civil-military relations operated smoothly. That civil-military relations did not break was not due to the inherent superiority of the west’s republican and democratic systems. Rather, it was primarily due to the eventual emergence of powerful, popular executives that took sustained interest in military affairs, most notably France’s Clemenceau and Britain’s Lloyd George. The United States, on the other hand, entered the war with a powerful executive. Henry Asquith once told a friend that in wartime the only really effective executive was a dictatorship.34 While Asquith may have been
34
French (1996), p. 81.
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overstating the case, effective civil-military relations only emerged as strong, popular executive leaders emerged. Clemenceau’s handling of the generals came with a heavy-handedness that produced its own frictions, but left few people in doubt as to who was in command. When Pétain attempted to influence the Tiger through the timehonoured threat to resign, Clemenceau called his bluff with the reply, ‘There can be no question [of resignation]. I alone am responsible here.’ In a heated public argument with Foch at the Paris Peace Conference, Clemenceau shouted, ‘Shut up! It is I who represents France here!’35 The emergence of strong executives who understood the military’s need to retain operational control became hallmarks of the British and American models—for World War II. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had been in government during World War I and learned first-hand of the need to walk the tightrope necessary for such a model to work. Both were powerful, popular, and knowledgeable about national defence. Politics continued to intrude in both nations during World War II, but a system for diffusing crises had been established. Tragically for France, the 1930s witnessed the continuation of the Third Republic’s turbulent civil-military relations. After Clemenceau, France did not produce another executive with the Tiger’s authority and willingness to challenge senior army leaders. From 1932 to 1939, France had nineteen governments and eight ministers of war. This instability, combined with the absence of what Jere Clemens King called a ‘good history’ of civil-military relations, led to the political and military paralysis that gripped France in 1940. The turbulence of the inter-war years owes much to the crises of the World War I period and is further proof of the need to keep civil-military relations at the forefront of military historiography.
B Bland D. (1999) “A unified theory of civil-military relations,” Armed Forces and Society 26 (Fall, 1999) 7–26. Bond B. and Nigel Cave, eds. (1999) Haig: A Reappraisal 70 Years On (South Yorkshire: 1999).
35
King (1951), pp. 201 and 211.
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De Groot G. (1988) Douglas Haig, 1861–1928 (London: 1988). Desch M. (1996) “Threat environment and military missions” in Civil-Military Relations and Democracy, ed. Larry Diamond and Marc Plattner (Baltimore: 1996). French D. (1996) “‘A one-man show’? civil-military relations in Britain during the First World War” in Government and the Armed Forces in Britain, 1856–1990, ed. Paul Smith (London: 1996). Holmes R. (1981) The Little Field Marshal: Sir John French (London: 1981). Keylor W. (1997) “France and the First World War” in The Transformation of Modern France, ed. William Cohen (Boston: 1997). King J.C. (1951) Generals and Politicians: Conflict Between France’s High Command, Parliament, and Government, 1914–1918 (Berkeley: 1951). —— (1960) Foch versus Clemenceau: France and German Dismemberment, 1918–1919 (Cambridge: 1960). Krumeich G. (1984) Armaments and Politics in France on the Eve of the First World War: The Introduction of Three-Year Conscription, 1913–1914, translated by Stephen Conn (Warwickshire: 1984). Marshall-Cornwall J. (1973) Haig as Military Commander (New York: 1973). Lloyd George D. (1937) War Memoirs of David Lloyd George, 1918 (Boston: 1937). Porch D. (1981) March to the Marne: The French Army 1871–1914 (Cambridge: 1981). Sixsmith E.K.G. (1976) Douglas Haig (London: 1976). Smith L. (1994) Between Mutiny and Obedience: The Case of the French Fifth Infantry Division (Princeton: 1994). Strachan H. (1997) The Politics of the British Army (Oxford: 1997). —— (2001) The First World War, Volume I: To Arms (Oxford: 2001). Torrey G. (1997) “L’affaire de Soissons, January, 1915,” War in History 4 (November, 1997) 398–410. Vandiver F. (1977) Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing, volume II (College Station: 1977).
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A COMMUNITY AT WAR: BRITISH CIVILIAN INTERNEES AT THE RUHLEBEN CAMP IN GERMANY, 1914–1918 Matthew Stibbe*
In peacetime Ruhleben was a racecourse for trotting races, and there were three fairly large houses, eleven stables, three grand stands and a teahouse. The houses were used by the military, for offices and officers’ quarters . . . and the prisoners lived in the horseboxes and stable lofts . . . The lofts were very low, with very small windows, extremely poor lighting, and bad ventilation. I found practically every inch of floor space covered with sacks of straw or with loose straw, on which men were sleeping.1
This is how one former inmate remembered his arrival at the Ruhleben internment camp in Spandau near Berlin in November 1914. Altogether some 4,000 British civilians were kept imprisoned here by the German military authorities, most of them for the full duration of the First World War (1914–1918). They came from all walks of life, including businessmen (24%), students and academics (18%), workers (16.5%), sportsmen (6%), and one or two unfortunate tourists trapped by the outbreak of war. By far the largest group, however, was made up of merchant seamen (34.5%) who had originally been interned on ships in Hamburg and were taken from there to Berlin.2 Except in a few cases, none of the internees had ever met previously, and the only thing they had in common was their British nationality and their subsequent designation as ‘enemy aliens’. From this rather inauspicious beginning there developed a sophisticated society, a collective way of life, which was to sustain the prisoners through the hardship of four years’ imprisonment. Although British civilians in Germany had been subject to various forms of police surveillance since the outbreak of war, general * I would like to thank the British Academy for providing me with an Overseas Conference Grant which enabled me to present an earlier version of this paper to the conference at Lyon in September 2001. 1 Stibbe (1919), pp. 13–14. 2 Ketchum (1965), p. 23.
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internment did not take place until 6 November 1914. On that day virtually all British men in Germany aged between 17 and 55 were arrested and transported to Ruhleben under armed escort. In January and February 1915 the internment order was also extended to embrace all male subjects of the British empire, including Australians, Canadians and South Africans. Women, children and men over 55 were exempt from internment but were obliged to carry passports and report regularly to their local police station. If they chose to remain in Germany rather than be repatriated, then they were forbidden to move house or leave the police district where they lived without the express permission of the military authorities. Children of internees were also expelled from German schools. In recent literature on the civilian experience of the First World War, little has been said of the inmates of Ruhleben or indeed of their families.3 Certainly the imprisonment of 4,000 British men of military age in Germany (and of 32,000 Germans of military age in Britain) had no demonstrable effect on the outcome of the war. Civilian internment was a costly exercise which reflected badly on both sides and served no real purpose other than satisfying the seemingly endless public demand for reprisals against citizens of enemy states. In many respects the treatment of Britons in Germany was no worse than the treatment of Germans in Britain, who were also subject to mass internment and/or compulsory repatriation, often under crude and distressing conditions.4 Nonetheless, the history of the Ruhleben camp is significant, I believe, in a number of respects. Firstly, the prisoners of Ruhleben provide an excellent example of an (all-male) community at war, and their collective experience of internment allows us to examine the kinds of solidarities and prejudices that can emerge within closed communities under conditions of modern warfare. The majority of the prisoners came to identify with Britain and the British war effort, even though some had initially sympathised with Germany, and this sudden awareness of being British was reflected in the codes of behaviour, patriotic gestures and forms of association which made up the cultural life of the camp. The impressive range of activities and entertainments organised by the prisoners, from team sports to educational classes and theatrical
3 4
A significant exception is Jahr (1999). Panayi (1991).
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productions, is also indicative of the voluntary spirit which Jay Winter has identified as the driving force behind popular support for the war effort in Britain itself.5 Secondly, the history of civilian internment in Germany during the First World War also sheds new light on the role of the German military in domestic politics. Under the Prussian state of siege law, which came into effect on 31 July 1914, the local corps commanders from the 21 separate army corps districts of the German interior were given absolute control over the POW camps in their areas, as well as new powers to restrict and monitor the movement of civilians. Attempts made by the Prisoner of War Department of the Prussian Ministry of War to standardise the treatment of POW’s came to nothing, as the corps commanders jealously guarded their independence vis-à-vis the authorities in Berlin, and indeed were answerable to nobody except the Kaiser. As if to add to the confusion, the mass internment of British civilians in November 1914 was described in official government correspondence as a ‘military measure’ which was being paid for by the Reich rather than the individual German states. In spite of this, the US ambassador James Gerard, who had taken on the task of looking after the interests of British POW’s for the duration of the war, found that nobody at Reich level was willing to take responsibility for conditions in Ruhleben, with even officials at the Foreign Office refusing to answer his requests for information. Eventually he was forced to break with diplomatic protocol by writing directly to General von Kessel, commander of the Mark of Brandenburg, within whose army corps district the camp lay. Needless to say von Kessel professed to be ‘deeply insulted’ by this breach of protocol from a ‘mere civilian’, and it was not until March 1915 that Gerard was finally given formal permission to visit the camp in person.6 There are parallels here too with the situation in Britain, where several internment camps were in existence from the start of the war, some set up by the War Office and some by the Home Office. The War Office, for instance, was responsible for several camps for civilians between 1914 and 1915, including one at Newbury in Berkshire which, like Ruhleben, was placed on the site of a former
5 6
Winter (1999). Gerard (1917), pp. 105–37.
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racecourse. Nonetheless, when mass internment was announced in Britain in May 1915, independent judicial bodies were automatically set up to hear appeals from those Germans and Austrians who sought exemption from internment on health or other grounds.7 By contrast, in Germany all applications for release or transfer had to be made directly to the local corps commander, who was free to act as he wished. Members of the German officer corps like General von Kessel were quite literally above the law and were limited in their actions only by the force of international public opinion and the constant pressure of individuals like Gerard. Finally, the issue of civilian internment and the conditions in internment camps also became a significant factor in the propaganda war between Britain and Germany. Both sides, for instance, were keen to highlight the abuse and ill-treatment of internees by ‘the enemy’ while claiming to treat their own prisoners with the utmost humanity and generosity. Thus the British government published all of its correspondence with the US embassy in Berlin regarding conditions at Ruhleben, and used this for propaganda purposes, much to the annoyance of the German authorities. Questions about the physical and mental health of internees were also raised in both Houses of Parliament and in the Reichstag at various stages in the war, giving rise to the usual claims and counter-claims. Even in the last weeks of the war Ruhleben still featured in propaganda articles commissioned by the German military for consumption on the home front, including a special feature article published in the mass circulation Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung on 13 October 1918.8 The following paper will touch upon various facets of the issues raised above. In the first section the emphasis will be on the experience and mentality of the British internees themselves. How did they cope with the uncertainties and psychological strains of internment? To what extent did they see themselves as ‘victims’ of the war and to what extent did they identify themselves as being part of the war effort against Germany? And finally, following on from this, how far did the associational life and voluntary activities in the
7 In Britain, a total of 16,000 applications for exemption from internment were made, of which 7,150 were granted, as well as 16,456 applications for exemption from compulsory repatriation, of which 14,939 were successful. See Panayi (1991), p. 81. 8 Copy of article in: Landesarchiv Berlin, Zs 649/1918.
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camp reflect a collective sense of Britishness or of being British with all the complex cultural codes and assumptions that this implied? Subsequent sections will then go on to look at internal conflicts in the camp and at the deteriorating physical and mental health of the prisoners in the last two years of the war. Finally, in the concluding section, some of the long term effects of internment will be discussed. * The Ruhleben camp, as we have seen, was situated on a ten acre site four miles to the west of Berlin which had been a popular venue for horse racing before the war. It was initially hired out by the Prussian Ministry of War in September 1914 to house Russian POW’s and seasonal workers, and had to be rapidly cleared to accommodate the hundreds of Britons who arrived there each day between 6 and 30 November. By the end of 1914, in addition to the 4,000 British internees, the camp population included about 1,000 Germans who, for various reasons had been registered as British at birth and had never been naturalised as German citizens, and a number of Russian Jews whose nationality and status were unclear to the German authorities.9 Not surprisingly, conditions inside the Ruhleben compound were at first very poor. Overcrowding, lack of electric lighting and hot water, and primitive forms of sanitation were the main problems in the winter of 1914/15. By March 1915 persistent rain had also caused a small knee-deep pond to appear between two of the horse stables or ‘barracks’, as they were now known. When an inspection of the camp was about to take place, the prisoners put up two notices on the outside of the barracks stating: “Mixed bathing forbidden”, and “Good fishing here”. The head of the German inspection team was heard to say: “Die Engländer haben Humor!”.10 Humour was indeed one of the methods used by the inmates to keep their spirits up. The first camp news sheet, for instance, advertised rubber stamps for signing release petitions, a boat club for prisoners in the compound and a set of war maps to be sold to the highest bidder.11 Later camp publications continued in the same vein. In order to remind themselves of home, the inmates also named the 9 10 11
Cohen (1917), pp. 41–2. Ibid., pp. 85–6. Ketchum (1965), p. 72.
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alley ways and squares of the camp after famous sites of London topography: ‘Bond Street’, ‘Marble Arch’ and ‘Trafalgar Square’. The latrines at the western and eastern end of the camp, on the other hand, were known as ‘Spandau’ and ‘Charlottenburg’, in honour of the German towns which stood in both directions.12 On a more serious level, the prisoners, led by their newly elected Camp Captain Joseph Powell, also began to set up an effective internal administration for the camp. One of the first things to be organised was a lending library, followed by the establishment of a whole host of other clubs, societies and cultural associations designed to meet the educational and social needs of the camp inmates. Thus in the spring of 1915 a Camp Theatre was formed, as was a ‘Sports Control Committee’, which organised a football and cricket league, and a number of societies with specific territorial affiliations—including the Lancastrian association and its Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Yorkshire, Australian and Canadian equivalents. There was also a ‘Ruhleben Debating Society’, a ‘Ruhleben Dramatic Society’ and even a ‘Société Dramatique Française du Ruhleben’.13 Musical concerts were performed regularly on a stage under one of the grand stands, often in the presence of the Camp Commandant and his wife. In April 1916, for instance, the ‘Entertainments Committee’ organised a tercentenary Shakespeare festival, including performances of Twelfth Night and Othello and a programme of lectures and Shakespearean music.14 Likewise the American ambassador Gerard remembered seeing a performance of the pantomime Cinderella on New Year’s Day 1916, and of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado in January 1917, a few weeks before his final departure from Berlin.15 Apart from music and theatre, sport, and especially football, was the dominant interest among the prisoners. During the early months of the camp football matches were improvised on a daily basis in ‘Trafalgar Square’, attracting crowds of excited spectators and often being banned by the German authorities. Later on, the prisoners were allowed to use a part of the racecourse itself for games every week, following an agreement negotiated by the American embassy. Julius Tillyard, a spectator rather than a player, later wrote: 12
Jahr (1999), p. 304. Useful material on all of these societies can be found in the Landesarchiv Berlin, Rep. 129, Acc. 1884, B6c. 14 Flysheet poster in ibid. 15 Gerard (1917), p. 124. 13
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The effect on the spirit of the camp was magical. Every barrack soon had its football team, whose performances were watched and discussed as eagerly as those of the most famous clubs of the homeland.16
Football also had another important function, for it helped to reinforce the prisoners’ sense of being British and of being civilians, of being free and not being prisoners, of ‘making the best of a bad job’ and never giving in to the temptation to become down-hearted. As Jay Winter has shown, football in wartime Britain came to symbolise ‘a certain lightheartedness, a defiance of circumstances, as well as adhesion to a collective code of sportsmanlike behaviour’.17 The diaries and letters of the internees in Ruhleben bear this judgement out remarkably. Football was played from the first day until the last, and during some seasons no less than eight league games a day were scheduled.18 Sporting activities also contributed to the creation of a steady environment, for they provided a much needed diversion from the worries and uncertainties of life and united the camp across the division of class and education. Sometimes, indeed, football took on a life of its own, as in May 1915 when one rather pessimistic barrack booked itself on the playing field for October 1, the first day of the next season, in spite of rumours of imminent release.19 While sport was enjoyed by virtually all the prisoners, money making activities also took up a great deal of time for some of the more enterprising inmates. One or two, for example, offered to act as ‘stewards’ for the wealthier prisoners, fetching their meals or running errands for them.20 Others tried to continue their former occupations as electricians, plumbers, interpreters, translators, bookbinders and so forth. By 1915 several shops and businesses had appeared on ‘Bond Street’ in the middle of the camp—including a tailor, a barber, a pedicurist, a shoeshine man, a cobbler and a dentist. The camp kitchen was also run by the prisoners, as was the laundry and the internal mail system. Other internees began to produce various souvenirs of life in Ruhleben to sell, such as badges, watches, combs, pens and so on, all engraved with the motto: ‘Ruhleben 1915’. One Ruhlebenite even went as far as to describe his fellow inmates as
16 17 18 19 20
Julius Tillyard, typescript recollections, in: Liddle Collection, RUH 54. Winter (1999), p. 340. Ketchum (1965), p. 193. Ibid., p. 224. Gerard (1917), p. 125.
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“more like a bank holiday crowd than prisoners”, and indeed the bank holiday atmosphere lasted for much of the summer of 1915, linked, as it was, to a mood of defiance against the Germans.21 Education, meanwhile, was in the hands of the Ruhleben Camp School and the Arts and Science Union, which between them boasted 247 teachers, 1,500 students and 297 courses.22 Among the subjects on offer were languages, science, technical subjects such as woollen and dyeing trades, navigation for seamen, and commercial subjects in various languages. The camp school also had a handicrafts department where book-binding and printing, leatherwork and silverwork were taught. As one former prisoner remembered: At first classes were held in the open grandstand of the trotting course with the teachers and pupils all muffled up against the cold, which showed how enthusiastic they must have been. Later on one of the barracks was condemned as living quarters and was made over to the school where very soon almost any subject could be taught, from reading and writing upwards.23
By 1916 some of the courses were being taught to degree-level standard and were validated by the University of London, so that the inmates received recognised qualifications while still in Ruhleben. Indeed, matriculation examinations were still taking place in the camp in the first week of November 1918, just days before the outbreak of revolution in Berlin.24 The work of the camp school, the efforts of its teachers, administrators and students, were, it goes without saying, all entirely voluntary. As with the other social and cultural activities organised by the prisoners, the establishment of a camp school was not ordained by the German military authorities, nor was it officially paid for out of British government funds. However, it was seen as being in line with the ‘British’ spirit of the camp, the collective effort to preserve good humour and optimism about the future, and the refusal to become downhearted. In this sense patriotism and self-interest went hand-in-hand. * Many of the people who visited Ruhleben, such as the American ambassador James Gerard, were impressed by the community spirit 21 22 23 24
Ketchum (1965), p. 72. Ibid., p. 230. V.V. Cusden, typescript recollections, in: Liddle Collection, RUH 14. Ketchum (1965), p. 346.
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and mood of optimism among the prisoners. The experience of the Ruhlebenites indeed contrasted favourably with the atmosphere inside some of the internment camps in Britain, where poor conditions and lack of adequate facilities were exacerbated by social divisions within the German and Austrian immigrant community.25 Even the commandant of Ruhleben, Count Schwerin, seems to have developed a geniune respect for the Britishers under his control. In 1916 he told a representative from the American embassy: You mustn’t suppose that the camp was always like this. When the men were first brought here the place wasn’t fit to keep pigs in. All that you have admired in the camp they have created themselves.26
In spite of the image of solidarity put on for the German authorities, however, there were also tensions between the British prisoners, some of which developed into overt manifestations of prejudice and bigotry. One source of conflict was an on-going dispute between members of the Arts and Science Union, mainly upper middle class university graduates, and the less intellectually-minded barrack captains, who were responsible for managing the camp finances. Camp Captain Joseph Powell was himself subject to a fair degree of hostility from the more well-to-do prisoners, who looked down on him because he was a self-made businessmen rather than a man of education or independent wealth. Frequent criticism was made of his ‘brusqueness of manner’ and ‘lightning method’ of addressing fellow prisoners, and at times he was even accused of being unpatriotic or pro-German.27 Professor M.S. Pritchard, a leading figure in the Arts and Sciences Union who was released in January 1918, wrote in a report for the Foreign Office that Powell was: . . . a noisy, bouncing, agitated, shifty man, unable to express himself accurately by speaking or in writing . . . He was an arrogant, rude, even violent, unscrupulous, untruthful, uncompromising, jealous, intolerant, distrustful opportunist. He was a bully and a tyrant. In a word, his valuations were German.28
In the end, Powell was able to shake off most of this criticism, partly because he had a thick skin, and partly because he enjoyed the continuing confidence not only of the German military authorities, but 25 26 27 28
See e.g. the evidence presented in Cohen-Portheim (1931) and Panayi (1991). Powell (1919), p. v. Cohen (1917), p. 54. Jahr (1999), p. 311.
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of the majority of the camp inmates too. However, some of the other prisoners were subject to more systematic forms of abuse and discrimination which were less easy to deal with. This was the case, for instance, for the internees of Jewish origin, who made up about 10% of the camp population. During the first months of internment the Jews were segregated from the other prisoners and housed in separate barrack at the far end of the camp, allegedly so that they could be supplied with kosher food from a local Berlin restaurant. The soldiers who were sent to guard them used anti-Semitic language, insulting them with phrases such as ‘Verdammter Judenpack!’ and ‘Saujuden!’. Israel Cohen, who experienced this treatment first hand, later recalled: We were conducted to Stable 6, henceforth known as Barrack 6, which was the oldest and dirtiest stable in the compound. Despite the cleaning operations of the last few days there was plenty of dirt and dust on the wooden walls and the concrete floor; there were cobwebs in the corner and there was a pervading smell of horses and dung throughout the place . . . It was not until six weeks later that we received bedsteads.29
Anti-Semitic prejudice was not just restricted to the German guards, however. To quote Cohen again, “Barrack 6 . . . was a sort of byword in the camp, inevitably uttered with a tone of contempt”.30 Many of the British prisoners suspected their Jewish compatriots of harbouring secret pro-German tendencies, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary. One internee even designed a ‘Facade for Barrack Six’ with the motto ‘Ich dien—if released’, implying that the Jewish prisoners were hoping to buy their freedom by volunteering for the German army. Eventually, in June 1915, Barrack 6 was closed down and its inmates redispersed among the other ‘barracks’, but not before the practice of segregation had caused needless misery and humiliation to the Jews of Ruhleben. A second group to be singled out were the approximately one hundred black prisoners, mostly merchant seamen from West Africa and the West Indies, who lived in Barrack 13 (the so-called Negerbaracke) and were generally excluded from the educational and social activities of the camp. One former inmate, the Canadian psychologist John Davidson Ketchum, wrote in a somewhat patronising vein in 1965: 29 30
Cohen (1917), p. 46. Ibid., p. 206.
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The primitive games that were played outside the barrack, the wild music that emanated from it . . . all this added a pleasingly exotic touch to the Ruhleben scene. There was nothing to arouse hostility.31
Likewise, Israel Cohen depicted the ‘Negroes’ as a pleasant group of ‘children’ who “hummed the whole day long with their boyish chatter and their banjo-strumming”. He also recalled an apparently light-hearted incident when a hose pipe for the fire drill was directed, “for practice’s sake”, onto the roof of barrack 13, which “aroused the childish delight of the occupants”.32 On the other hand, there is also evidence that hostility towards the black inmates did exist and was expressed openly. Another internee, G.A. Packe, recorded in his diary on 16 November 1915: Very nearly had a scrap with a party of niggers, on behalf of Lambert, with whom one of their crowd had had trouble in [the] convalescent barrack. Another item to a/c, for mixing blacks with us Europeans here. To make matters worse the Authorities have deliberately spoilt them, out of spite to us, and there will probably be a row before the end.33
Packe’s remarks are also a striking illustration of how important the belief in the solidarity of the white race still was, even at a time when one half of the white race was at war with the other half. Indeed, few of the white prisoners ever got to know anything about the inner life of Barrack 13 and its inhabitants, which may well explain the condescending portraits which they later drew. A third group of inmates who were isolated from the rest were the so-called ‘Deutsch-Engländer’, those who considered themselves to be German in everything but birth, had lived in Germany for most or all of their lives and had sided with Germany since the outbreak of the war. One patriotic British prisoner, for instance, complained in December 1914 that as many as 1,500 of the internees were “Britons with German names . . . many of whom cannot even speak a word of English”.34 Matters came to a head on 18 April 1915 when Baron von Taube called a meeting of the entire camp and ordered all the men with German sympathies to step forward. About 700–800 did so, with Barrack 13, the Negro barrack, proving to be 31 32 33 34
Ketchum (1965), p. 118. Cohen (1917), pp. 64 and 83. Jahr (1999), p. 308. Ibid., p. 309.
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the only one with no ‘Pro-Germans’ in it. The ‘Pro-Germans’ were then rehoused in separate quarters, known by the prisoners as the ‘P.G. barrack’. One or two of them later chose to be naturalised and were released after volunteering for the German army. Some 600 ‘Pro-Germans’, however, still considered that they were better off in Ruhleben than behind the barbed wire on the western front. As another former internee put it: ‘they were anti-British, and yet they were no good whatever to Germany’.35 A final group of inmates who were kept more or less apart from the rest of the camp were the rougher elements among the sailors who were housed in Barrack 9. Fights were a regular feature of life in this barrack during the early part of internment, mainly due to alcohol smuggled in by the guards. Norman Robson, a twenty-year old shipping clerk who had been working in Lübeck before the war, came close to being stabbed on one occasion by a drunken sailor.36 Also vulnerable were the deck boys, under 18 year olds, who were interned along with the ships’ crew rather than being sent home and were often treated very badly by the older men. Robson, for instance, told Peter Liddle in 1977: After 12 months we had only [ships’] officers [in our barrack] but they used to bribe the guards to bring them Schnapps and they used to get themselves roaring drunk and there were a few deck boys about and we had to deal with the awkward thing about homosexuality.37
Homosexuality was rarely talked about openly, but it was clearly a feature of life inside the camp. William Eric Swale, a civil engineer who worked in Aachen and Mannheim before the war, remembered only one case during his time at Ruhleben, “but it made no impact on us . . . In fact . . . [we] were so innocent we hardly knew it existed. We didn’t know what it meant, actually”.38 Sir John Balfour—nephew of the Conservative statesman Arthur James Balfour—was more open on this issue, revealing that occasionally the younger men who took the female parts in theatre productions could find themselves the
35
Stibbe (1919), p. 18. Liddle Collection, RUH 46, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, April 1977. 37 Ibid. 38 Liddle Collection, RUH 52, Box 1, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, April 1977. 36
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objects of wanted or unwanted attention. “Homosexuality was in the camp”, he recalled, “but most of it of a very transitory kind”.39 Certainly it did not, in his view, lead to any serious problems with discipline or morale. Rather, such issues were simply never discussed—a typically British response to the problem of sexual needs and how to satisfy them. * Nearly all the ‘Pro-Germans’, and a good many of the other internees as well, had wives and families struggling to cope on their own in Germany. As was to be expected, the dependants of internees received no help or support from the German government. In February 1915 a British Emergency Relief Fund was eventually set up to provide financial support to the internees and their dependants via monies sent to the US embassy in Berlin.40 A series of diplomatic negotiations conducted by the Americans and the Dutch also led to the early release of some of the internees, including all the ‘over 45s’ who were sent home in one batch in January 1918, and a smaller group of prisoners who were repatriated in the summer of 1918. By the end of the war, however, there were still 2,300 men left in the camp.41 One of the most notable features of the final years of the camp was a gradual worsening of the physical and mental health of the prisoners. In July 1917, for instance, there was a serious outbreak of dysentery which effected some 300 prisoners, and in July 1918 a strain of ‘Spanish ‘flu’ ravaged the camp, with 1,565 reported cases.42 By the beginning of 1917 there was also evidence of serious mental health problems among some of the inmates, with several suffering complete nervous breakdowns and being confined to the psychiatric institution at Neu Ruppin near Berlin. Other prisoners suffered less serious forms of psychological strain due to isolation from friends and family, or an inability to integrate themselves into the social life of the camp. Edward Morris Falk, one of those unfortunate tourists trapped in Germany at the beginning of the war—and one 39 Liddle Collection, RUH 02, transcript of interview with Peter Liddle, March 1976. 40 Ketchum (1965), p. 19. Even so, the British Government made great efforts to avoid paying relief to the German wives of British internees. 41 Jahr (1999), p. 318. 42 Ketchum (1965), p. 165.
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of the few successful escapees from Ruhleben—wrote in his post-war memoirs: To be cut off from one’s relatives and friends, to be deprived of freedom of speech and pen, to know that chances in life which will never return are being missed, that one’s finances are being ruined and that when the day of release comes at last one will be bankrupt or a pauper; to know that wives and children are doomed to destitution, these are the real hardships of a civilian prisoner-of-war, compared to which his more physical hardships are nothing.43
Significantly, the released prisoner Cyrus Harry Brookes also chose to emphasise the mental cruelties of internment in a newspaper article published in January 1918, doubtless in order to draw attention to the plight of the remaining prisoners: It is a feminine part that we have been called on to play—more conventionally feminine than that of our mothers and sisters in England. They see their dear ones march away to war, and they are left to wait and watch at home; but their waiting and watching is not a dumb, inexpressive thing—there is work into which they can throw themselves, work as necessary as that of the fighting men, and which can still their yearnings in the consciousness that they are giving their energies truly and directly to their country. We watch from afar the danger of our brothers but we may not share it, we watch the toil of our sisters and the shame of inactivity falls upon us.44
Finally, after many more months of waiting, news began to filter through to the camp regarding the impending German defeat. On 8 November 1918 the guards formed a soldiers’ council and hoisted the Red Flag in the middle of ‘Trafalgar Square’. They also issued a proclamation declaring that Germans and Englishmen were brothers and that war was unnecessary and brutal. Over the next few days the prisoners were allowed to make trips into Berlin, where a republic had been proclaimed after the abdication of the Kaiser. Some of the men even took pliers in order to draw nails from the famous Hindenburg statue in the Tiergarten, which they kept as souvenirs.45 On 22 November the final 1,500 prisoners who wished to return to
43
Edward Morris Falk, typescript recollections, in: Liddle Collection, RUH 22. Cyrus Harry Brookes, ‘Inside the Wire’, article in unidentifiable newspaper, 18 January 1918. Copy in: Liddle Collection, RUH 52, Box 1. 45 Stibbe (1919), p. 31. One of the nails has amazingly survived and can be found in the Liddle Collection, RUH 13 (papers of internee A.R. Cusden). 44
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England boarded a train for Sassnitz, from where they took a boat first to Copenhagen and then to Hull. They arrived home a week later, and were met by a large crowd of cheering supporters. * After the war, the Ruhleben camp returned to its peacetime function as a racecourse and the site was finally demolished in 1958 to make way for a new sewage processing plant.46 The story of its former inhabitants does not end here, however. Rather, many of the Ruhlebenites felt that their time in German custody had had a significant impact on their lives, and several of them wrote lengthy accounts of their experiences, sometimes for publication and sometimes for private use. The ‘voluntary spirit’ still shines through in many of these writings, as does a sense of ‘British’ resilience in the face of the enemy. However, this was not the only response. Some of the released prisoners, particularly those without the advantages of education and wealth, found it very difficult to adjust to normal life after 1918.47 Claims for compensation from the British and German governments went on for many years and were never satisfactorily resolved.48 And Jewish internees like Israel Cohen were also deeply troubled by the anti-Semitic prejudices they experienced in the camp.49 For historians, too, the story of the Ruhleben camp has broader implications stretching beyond the year 1918. To be sure, the experience of the internees hardly compares with that of the millions of soldiers who fought and died in truly unimaginable conditions on the western front. Ironically, internment saved many of the men discussed above from such horrors. Nonetheless Ruhleben serves as an important case study of the treatment of POW’s in the Great War. Overall there were between 50 and 60 deaths, mostly due to chronic ill-health and old age, and several cases of insanity, including three suicides and three attempted suicides.50 In general, however, the civilian prisoners were well looked after, and there were virtually no 46
Ketchum (1965), p. 13. See e.g. the rather bitter typescript recollections of internee C.F.G. Esders, in: Liddle Collection, RUH 21. 48 Material relating to compensation claims can be found in Liddle Collection, RUH 11 (papers of internee Herbert Cooper). 49 Cohen (1917), pp. 208–9. 50 Ketchum (1965), p. 168. 47
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cases of physical brutality towards them. The real misery for the men involved was the misery of inaction, the misery of not being able to take part and therefore of not being recognised. Interestingly, Paul Cohen-Portheim, a German internee in England between 1914 and 1918, also drew similar conclusions from his experiences. ‘Compared to life at the front’, he wrote in 1931 ‘life in a[n internment] camp was undramatic; there was no danger, there was no heroism, voluntary or forced. It was monotonous, it was drab, it was futile, and in that very futility lay its tragedy’.51
B Cohen I. (1917) The Ruhleben Prison Camp. A Record of Nineteen Months’ Internment (London: 1917). Cohen-Portheim P. (1931) Time Stood Still. My Internment in England, 1914–1918 (London: 1931). Gerard J.W. (1917) My Four Years in Germany (London: 1917). Jahr C. (1999) “Zivilisten als Kriegsgefangene. Die Internierung von ‘FeindstaatenAusländern’ in Deutschland während des Ersten Weltkrieges”, in In der Hand des Feindes. Kriegsgefangenschaft von der Antike bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. R. Overmans (Cologne: 1999) 297–321. Ketchum J. Davidson (1965) Ruhleben. A Prison Camp Society (Toronto: 1965). Panayi P. (1991) The Enemy in Our Midst. Germans in Britain during the First World War (Oxford: 1991). Powell J. (1919) The History of Ruhleben. A Record of British Organisation in a Prison Camp in Germany (London: 1919). Stibbe E. (1919) Reminiscences of a Civilian Prisoner in Germany, 1914–1918 (Leicester: 1919). Winter J. (1999) “Popular culture in wartime Britain”, in European Culture in the Great War. The Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914 –1918, eds. A. Roshwald and R. Stites (Cambridge: 1999), 330–48. In addition to the above, I have also used a variety of unpublished material on Ruhleben held at the Liddle Collection in the Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, and at the Landesarchiv Berlin.
51
Cohen-Portheim (1931), p. 2.
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BEYOND AND BELOW THE NATIONS: TOWARDS A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF LOCAL COMMUNITIES AT WAR Pierre Purseigle
France, Great Britain, and Imperial Germany presented at the onset of the twentieth century a series of social and political features that invite comparison. Alongside this, Charle stresses the specific type of domination both territorial and cultural, that these powers then displayed and enjoyed. His emphasis on their national ideals and cultural imperialism leads him to coin the category of ‘imperial society’ in his essay in comparative social history. Underlining the internal and external forces that determined their interactions, he ultimately explores the crisis that these societies faced between 1900 and 1940 in which the First World War played a critical part. Indeed, the conflict that ushered in the ‘Age of catastrophe’1 also ‘ruined the very foundations of the social and symbolic edifice that had made possible’2 the complete investment of these three societies in the war effort. This chapter suggests a shift in the scale of analysis of the ‘imperial societies’, at once beyond and below the national boundaries. I hope to demonstrate the profit one can derive from a comparative study of two medium-sized towns in England (Northampton) and France (Béziers) during the First World War, in so far as such an approach supplements a historiography which has mainly confined itself to the study of individual nation-states at war. My framework of analysis lies at the crossroad between two historiographical perspectives which respectively scrutinize the process of national mobilization in Europe and the experience of the capital cities at war.3 Their convergence thus uncovers the material and mental foundations of the belligerent societies’ adaptation to the war experience.
1 2 3
Hobsbawm (1994). Charle (2001), p. 249. Horne (1997), Winter and Robert (1997).
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Since this study aims at understanding the logic and configuration of social responses to the war, it has been carried out according to comparative strategies that examine the matrix of the belligerents’ ‘war culture’ and highlight the importance of the pre-existing social fabric of the communities under scrutiny. A focus was therefore sought that could reveal the characteristic ‘totalizing logic’4 of the Great War and its social implications. Hence, the war experience has been investigated through the activities of the local elites. Yet, rather than a history of the local elite during the conflict, this research is an inquiry into the war experience through a cross-section of the local societies, an intermediary level of that experience. Indeed, the local elite was the critical group whose study enables the historian to deal comprehensively with both the local commitment to the national mobilization and the mental imagery which allowed the transcendence of the war experience. In fact, the local elite reflected and shaped the mediation of the war experience in such a way that they provide ample evidence for the ‘social history of representations’ approach propounded by Prost.5 This perspective undeniably enriches social and cultural history alike, since according to that perspective, not only do symbolic products establish communication and community between individuals but they also stand out to the historian’s eyes as mediations between the individual’s and the social experience. As Prost put it, ‘culture is what enables us to think about experience, to tell ourselves about it through telling others’.6 Therefore, I firstly examine the relationship between the war culture and local cultural codes before putting under scrutiny local configurations of the process of national mobilization. Then, I will proceed to assess the moral dimensions of the war effort that largely shaped the wartime involvement of local communities. Ultimately, this work suggests a reconsideration of the geography of social mobilization during the First World War and leads to a reassertion of both the difficulties and significance of this comparative study.
4 5 6
Horne, (1997), p. 3. Prost, (1997). Idem, p. 144.
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The 1914–18 ‘War Culture’ and Local Cultural Codes In accordance with Horne’s definition of WWI mobilization, this paper emphasizes the political and cultural dimensions of this process.7 The cultural management of social mobilization rested primarily on a complex association of propaganda and censorship. This prompts an analysis of the elaboration of the discourses and symbolic products that structured the representations of the war in Northampton and Béziers. Propaganda and national war culture in local communities Whilst the local press came to the fore, each society’s involvement in the conflict also increased the number of agents whose resources made possible the elaboration and sustaining of the cultural structure of social mobilization. Unsurprisingly, civic authorities had recourse to local newspapers and public placards to give notice of their decisions and to communicate with their citizens.8 The local cultural elites entered the fray too, proclaiming through their reviews and poems, the conscription of Art.9 More significantly though, the development of associational activities brought about a profusion of speeches and symbolic products that, through numerous leaflets, pamphlets, badges or trivial objects, addressed the local communities at large, especially on the occasion of patriotic or charity days organized throughout the war.10 The mobilization of consent rested on the control of information, and on the monitoring and influencing of public opinion, but as Winter has pointed out, propaganda should not be seen as unilaterally ‘state-directed’ but rather ‘state-led’. Indeed, a study of local communities bears out that its efficiency relied upon ‘its synergistic relationship with opinion formed below’ and necessitates a reappraisal 7 ‘The mobilization explored here is that of the engagement of the different belligerent nations in their war efforts both, imaginatively, through collective representations and the belief and value system giving rise to these, and organizationally, through the state and civil society’, Horne (1997) p. 1. 8 Archives Municipales de Béziers (AMB), ID 103 & 104; Northampton corporation copies of minutes; Le Petit Méridional, L’Eclair, The Northampton Independent, the Socialist Pioneer, etc. 9 Archives Départementales de l’Hérault (ADH) Par 846, Tout Béziers y passera, November 1915. 10 ADH 2R, 8R, 10R; NRO Lady Exeter Papers (X4374–X4376–YZ9619).
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of the role played by civil society in this process.11 The relative but actual autonomy of the local elite towards the state in the Great War consequently must be stressed for they were not mere carriers of state-produced propaganda. As a matter of fact, the local elites were especially concerned and aware of the constraints that hampered their public expression. In many cases, they demonstrated civil society’s willingness to assert a distance from distortions of information, whether originating in the societies themselves or in agencies of the state.12 Still, despite their autonomy, the local elite implemented national schemes of figuration, which, once re-appropriated and redirected, took part in a global system of representations. Indeed, the local elites acted as the local transmitters of national bodies or organizations that had rallied to the war effort. Conspicuous examples were provided by the local branches of political parties, churches, or nationwide charities. For instance, as in the rest of the country, the Church of England forwarded to its Northampton parishes, forms of prayer that spread its official vision of the war to every locality.13 The vision of the war propounded by the local elite fell into line with the national mobilization whose ‘totalizing logic’ enlisted the cultural, moral, and ideological commitment of each nation to fight an uncivilized enemy to its total destruction, lest its victory should lead to the end of one’s culture, identity, and way of life. Represented in absolute terms, industrialized warfare was thus construed as a lifeand-death struggle and in some cases as a crusade.14 Indeed, in Béziers as well as in Northampton, the dominant discourses on the war presented the conflict as a defensive one imposed on France and Britain by German aggression. Beyond the conservative and nationalist groups of both towns, Béziers radicals and Northampton liberals concurred with the majority of local socialists in presenting the Entente as the last bulwark against the German autocracy and militarism that was threatening Democracy.15
11
Winter (1998) pp. 217–8. Northampton Independent, 8–22 August 1914; AMB II D1, by-law no 332 3 August 1914. 13 Northamptonshire Record Office (NRO), ZA 5065, ‘Form of prayer 1915 for intercession on behalf of the Nation and the Empire’. 14 Audoin-Rouzeau and Becker (2000). 15 AMB ID 103 15 November 1914. 12
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Besides this ideological vindication of the conflict, the war culture focused from August 1914 onwards on the person of the enemy, the ‘Boche’, the ‘Hun’, illustrating as Jeismann put it, a process of “ethnicisation of the historical and political consciousness”.16 Bred by the evocation of the Central Powers’ ‘atrocities’, the hatred of the enemy soon lay at the heart of a war culture strengthened by the recourse to sacred images and words.17 There again, the local elites fully partook of the national schemas of representation as their reactions to the fate of Belgium and the prisoners of war illustrated.18 The local acculturation to the war Yet, the comparative study of local communities demonstrates that, to a large extent, the wartime system of representations rested on a process of acculturation, on the appropriation of the national narrative through local cultural codes. The local dimensions of the martial involvement of the population first appeared in the representation of the threat posed to the local identities. Since the war was ultimately waged to preserve everyday values, the local elite resorted to some specific figures to underline the mobilization of local communities. Amongst a vast array of discourses and symbolic products I choose to illustrate this point with some pictures. The first one was published in Northampton both by the Daily Echo and the Mercury in August and September 1914.19 In reference to the billeting of about 17,000 soldiers of the Welsh Territorial Division, these papers depicted a cobbler whose handshake with a soldier symbolized the effort that the town was contributing in service of those who would be defending it on the frontline. Such local cultural codes, derived from the importance of the shoe industry in Northampton,20 were also used in the debasement of the enemy and underpinned the local vision of an intrinsically inferior German. The bad shoes of the Hun came to represent, in contrast to the great quality of the locally-made
16
Jeismann (1997) p. 301. Horne and Kramer (2001), Winter (1998) p. 218. 18 Northampton Mercury, 14 August 1914; Northampton Independent, 1st July 1916; AMB ID 103 15 November 1914. 19 Daily Echo, 29 August 1914; Mercury, 4 September 1914 See fig. 1. 20 Brown (1990). 17
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Fig. 1. Northampton Daily Echo 29 Aug. 1914
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boots, the inherent weakness of the Central Powers.21 A strikingly similar mechanism was at work in Béziers, which dominated a region entirely dedicated to winegrowing and was a major centre in the European wine market. As in Northampton, the organizers of the Journée de l’Hérault thus turned to the main symbols of local identity, namely vine and wine, to stress that Victory would belong to the local community as well as to the Nation.22 In a somewhat traditional depiction of the rapacious and barbaric ‘Boche’, the enemy is defeated by Bacchus and a jolly ‘Poilu’ both sitting astride (defending?) a wine barrel. Here the opposition is made blatant between the wine-drinking southern Frenchman and the beer-drinking German who treads on a bunch of grapes. Moreover, Bacchus nicknames the German, ‘phylloxera’ after the vine’s pest that at the end of the nineteenth century destroyed a large part of the southern vineyard and brought about one of the worst economic and social crises that the region experienced in that period. The utilization of specific local schemas of representation ensured a perfect understanding and reception of wartime propaganda. Its efficiency thus depended as much on the taking of local identities into consideration and on the participation of local civil society, as on the potency of the state apparatus.
Intermediary Communities in the Process of Social Mobilization Arising out of a questioning of the cultural and political features of WWI mobilizations, a focus on local communities points up the part played in this process by a host of intermediary communities whose bonds originated in various kinds of sociability. Their solidarities, although preceding the conflagration, were of critical importance when these societies grappled with the war experience. Moreover, beside the cultural dimensions of social mobilization, investigation of the social practices elicited by the war effort reveals how the belligerent societies took up the challenges it issued, and in so doing
21 Northampton Independent 12 & 19 December 1914, 25 March 1916. After the war, a history of 1914–18 Northampton made extensive use of this image (Holloway, W.H. Northamptonshire and the Great War, Northampton, the Northampton Independent, c. 1920, pp. 216–219). 22 ADH 2 R 783: Journée de l’Hérault (15 October 1916) au profit exclusif des œuvres de guerre du département, organisée par le préfet et les municipalités. Fig. 2.
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Fig. 2. Arch. Dept. Herault 2R 783
relied on and thus transformed the multi-layered fabric that tied individuals to the imagined national community. ‘Union Sacrée’ and discriminatory processes: the nature of collective action This perspective must distance itself from the claim that social mobilization was the natural extension of the 1914 political truce. Indeed, the use and abuse of a phrase such as the French ‘Union Sacrée’ can be doubly misleading in emphasizing the unitary dimensions of wartime collective action. In fact, its praise or denunciation derived
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from contradictory political agendas pursued by both contemporaries and subsequent commentators.23 However significant in the writing of a political history of the Great War, the ‘Union Sacrée’ and its British equivalent provide a deceptive narrative of social mobilization and is better understood as a mobilization device that was part of a ‘rhetoric of unity’.24 Furthermore, this narrative tends to conceal the nature of the process of mobilization that rested on a set of discriminatory processes that structured their commitment to the national defence, and hinged on infra-national solidarities that ultimately reinforced national resilience. During the war local communities established an order of priorities that stressed for instance the necessity of propping up the local economy and of supporting the towns’ traders at the expense of their national or regional rivals. Witness the Independent at the beginning of 1915.25 A more significant example was the organization of assistance to war victims, which was not only organized at the local level but was also primarily directed at the members of the local communities. A single principle presided over the war victims’ relief, which the Independent summed up in a blunt way: ‘Our own prisoners first’.26 But these discriminatory processes were not a crude expression of local selfishness that, after all, might have been vindicated by the scarcity of available resources. The very success of the patriotic days that explicitly pandered to civic pride nonetheless underlined the potency of local identities in the involvement of the populations. When in February 1918, the Northampton elite weighed in with the organization of ‘Tank Week’ dedicated to war loans, the chairman of the organizing committee spelled out the call to civic pride, and conjured up a national competition with the other towns holding a ‘Tank Week’ at the same time.27 Likewise, the Journée de l’Hérault applied a similar recipe in a patriotic day in favour of local charities. In that case, the local authorities dealt out pieces of paste jewellery representing ‘the victorious grape’ and therefore symbolic of the department.28 23 24 25 26 27 28
Becker (1980). Verhey (2001). Independent, 2 January 1915 and ADH, 1M 1154. Independent, 20 July 1918. Independent, 16, 23 February and 9 March 1918, see also fig. 3. ADH 2 R 283–286.
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Fig. 3. Northampton Independent 23 Feb. 1918
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Social agency and the history of local communities at war In spite of the role played by local identities in the process of mobilization, it would be deceptive to take for granted the exclusive existence of two levels of mobilization: the nation and the town. Indeed, the study of social mobilization should encompass each sociability affected by the war. All intermediary groups were of great importance in this process, and ‘the most durable communities of experience on the home front were those that were best organized’.29 The war ordeal severely taxed the ‘experienced communities’ that constituted the fabric of the belligerent societies. Hence, analysis of WWI social mobilization unravels the interwoven threads, solidarities and interdependencies that contributed to the resilience of the French and British populations. More significantly though, the conflict gave rise to new communities defined most conspicuously by a stay at the frontline30 and brought about the transformation of pre-existent groups which bore the burden of war suffering. That the local communities witnessed such transformations is revealed by a focus on mourning and remembrance. Towns commemorated in their own way, through ceremonies and the erection of monuments, the memory of the soldiers of the ‘Little Fatherland’ (Petite Patrie) who had given their lives at the front.31 Yet, collective remembrance went beyond these well-known initiatives insofar as mourning created a sense of community,32 and rearranged prewar social identities. The case of the Northampton bookbinding firm, Birdsall & Son, provides an interesting illustration here.33 The firm edited commemorative cards and a ‘Roll of Honour’ so as to pay tribute to the ‘comrades-in-arms’ and to highlight the contribution to the war effort of its workforce.34 All these artefacts displayed alongside the names of the ‘heroes’, national (Britannia, the British lion) and local symbols (the Northampton arms and motto) as well as renowned verses by Shakespeare, Walter Scott, and Rupert Brooke. When peace had come, the firm set up its own memorial at the
29 30 31 32 33 34
Chickering (1998) p. 132. Prost (1977). AMB ID 103 15 November 1914. Winter (1995). NRO ZB 479. Fig. 4, fig. 5, fig. 6.
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Fig. 4. Northamptonshire Record Office 2B 4797
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Fig. 5. Northamptonshire Record Office 2B 4795
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Fig. 6. Northamptonshire Record Office 2B 4796
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heart of the workplace, in the form of a commemorative board topped by the laurels of Victory.35 Such ‘small-scale, locally rooted’ forms of remembrance vindicate the ‘social agency approach’ that Winter and Sivan have propounded.36 Their emphasis on civil society and on the work of ‘secondary elites’ further legitimates a history of local communities in 1914–1918 that encompasses representations and social practices in that the experience of war and its memory committed and translated social identities and groupings. The breaking down of the traditional national focus enables the appraisal of the true scope of the mechanisms at work within the belligerent societies, and departs from a mere study of public opinion to address the inner logic and configuration of social mobilization. Ultimately, the former consisted in the social activities that converted the wartime system of representations into the actual war effort.
The Ethics of Mobilization The moral dimensions of national mobilizations Whichever outlook one adopts to analyze the war experience, there is no way to avoid the gigantic consequences entailed by the mass slaughter caused by the Great War. Although there is no room here to present the chronology and distribution of casualties in Northampton (1,700) and Béziers (1,272), one ought to keep in mind the structuring impact of these casualties on the towns’ involvement. Indeed, the first implication of industrialized warfare was the instilling of death at the heart of the local communities’ lives, and this made the distribution of losses and casualties the paramount issue. As Gregory put it, “no decision is as important as the one which determines who will live and who die violently.”37 The weight of military losses framed the social responses to the war. Hence, the social history of the conflict is first and foremost a history of the ‘social relations of
35 36 37
Fig. 7. Winter and Sivan (1999). Gregory (1997) p. 57.
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Fig. 7. Northamptonshire Record Office 2B 4798
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sacrifice’ which determines the ‘adaptation and well-being’ of communities.38 Although he developed the idea in reference to eighteenth century England, E.P. Thompson’s concept of ‘moral economy’39 points up the legitimisation of attitudes and behaviours deemed to fit in with the sacrifices entailed by the conflagration. Despite all its value, the specific and very different context of WWI Europe curtails the usefulness of this concept. The ‘language of sacrifice’40 of the Great War indeed amounted to a particular ‘language of social morality (what is felt to be ‘fair’ or ‘unjust’, acceptable or unacceptable)’ which regulated ‘relations between social actors’.41 Benefiting from these perspectives on war and morality, I choose to explore the moral dimensions of mobilization that I loosely subsume under the ‘ethic of mobilization’. This ethic of mobilization is understood as the matrix of thought and behaviour that shaped both the identity and the involvement of local communities in the war effort. Its potency derived from the pervasiveness of the war experience that seeped into the intimate42 and held sway over large swathes of community life. Social practices as well as language and symbolic products were thus moulded by a wartime morality that undeniably relied on traditional social codes and visions of social order.43 Within this the frontline soldier stood out as the main character and role model of a wartime narrative that designed the ideal civilian comportment from the beginning of the conflict as the daily life translation of duty, sacrifice and solidarity.44 Intermediary and local communities rallied to the war effort under such auspices. The Association of Primary Teachers of Hérault, for instance, exhorted its members to fund war charities arguing that while some colleagues were giving their blood, they must be giving their money.45 In a similar fashion, the municipal authorities of Béziers justified their budgetary policy and explained the success of
38
Winter and Robert (1997) p. 10. Thompson (1977). 40 Stryker (1992). 41 Horne (1993) p. 119. 42 Le Naour (2002). 43 Rosenschaft (1995). 44 Horne (1995). 45 ADH, PAR 2267, Bulletin mensuel de l’association amicale des instituteurs et institutrices de l’Hérault, January 1915. 39
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war loans in the town.46 This moral interdependence and the interdependence of morale of both soldiers and civilians, figured prominently in soldiers’ correspondence.47 Nonetheless, a fair appraisal of the social relations of sacrifice must also take into account the position of the communities under scrutiny with regard to the war economy. Historians of WWI Germany have largely documented and underscored the consequences of economic disruptions and food shortages on the German home front and ultimately on the outcome of the conflict. The cases of Northampton and Béziers stress the critical importance of the material conditions of social mobilization and in this they form a sharp contrast with the common German experience. Indeed, the proximity of the dominant local activities to the war economy, respectively boot and shoe manufacturing and winegrowing had a significant impact on local well-being, and subsequently on the communities’ involvement. After the first weeks of the war and some instances of panic buying and shortages, Northampton and Béziers harvested the crops of the armies’ commands and billeting.48 Of course, the complacency arising from the boom in the army trade and expressed in the jaunty tone of the press was to fade away in the face of the returning casualties and the awareness of the sheer scale of losses entailed by the conflict. Yet, the prosperity of the local economies undeniably structured the social response to the war. Thus, understanding the responses to the war requires a renewed attention to local situations that, within a broader pattern of mobilization, may substantially correct national narratives of the social experience of the Great War. Complexity rules in this realm and one ought to consider the variable and manifold dynamic of the war effort. Victimization vs. participation Indeed, I would suggest that social mobilization was further structured by the home-front ambivalence towards the participation in
46
AMB ID 104, primitive budget 1916. NRO X9489 undated letter from Walter Peppercorn and Gunner Bates. 48 Northampton Independent, 26 September 1914; Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre 16 N 1538 Rapport du préfet de l’Hérault au Ministre de l’Intérieur, 18 June 1917. 47
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the war effort. Barred from the ‘Myth of the War Experience’49 civilians were fully aware of being ancillaries to the conduct of a war, embodied in the figure of the Tommy and the Poilu, and vindicated by the fate of Belgium and German militarism. However, as the war dragged on due to the military stalemate, the home front came to formulate its part in the national script in a different way. Whilst the soldier still remained its prominent character, the civilian populations entered a process of victimization caused by restrictions and hardships and above all, by soaring casualties and the subsequent grief. Rooted in the social fabric of the belligerent societies, this ambivalence relates the logic of social mobilization to the inner tensions of imperial societies. The reception of Belgian and French refugees in communities as remote from the frontline as were Northampton and Béziers offers an interesting case study here. In the latter town, up to the beginning of 1915, refugees symbolized the war culture and their fate represented the barbaric German warfare. Thronging to the rear, they were at this time considered as heroic victims of German militarism and were treated as such. Indeed, the authorities even became anxious about the generosity of Béziers and its inhabitants in case it threatened the financial balance of the town.50 Yet, as early as 1915 tensions surfaced and strongly organized and mobilized intermediary communities such as the primary teachers’ association noticed a drop in donations and the commitment to the refugees.51 Reinforced by marks of otherness and a set of prejudices, the refugees were no longer granted any discriminating quality in the wartime Weltanschauung. When every family was now facing grief and mourning, refugees found themselves accused of enjoying a safe and idle stay as well as of grim opportunism. Local populations no longer ascribed to them any dignifying quality and increasingly demanded from them a total participation in the war effort.52 At this point, chronology proves particularly meaningful since the attitude towards refugees did not change after the morale dip of 1917 and the military success of 1918. Eventually, this specific chronology echoes what has already
49 50 51 52
Mosse (1990). ADH 2R729 and 3R28. ADH Par 2267. ADH 3 R 2*.
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pointed out in the German context: that “despite their complex dependencies, experiences on the home front and fighting front were geared to different phases of the war”.53 Tensions even remained despite the bouts of enthusiasm recorded by the military censors.54 The study of the refugees’ reception is all the more revealing that it allows us to assess the changes in attitudes not only through dubious discourses but also through the practices that made up the core of social mobilization. I would suggest that the latter drew its inner logic from a dialectic of victimization versus participation that was at work within the communities and constituted the matrix of thought and behaviour determining the level and form of social mobilization. Lastly, the refugees’ reception reflected the inner strains of imperial societies insofar as the prominent position bestowed upon the first victims of the invasion by the war culture did not prove sufficiently resilient to overcome regional tensions and linguistic otherness within the imagined national community. The refugees from Alsace-Lorraine and the northern regions actually suffered slanders from people of Béziers who mistook them for German-speaking persons and hurled at them the infamous abuse: ‘Boche’ (‘Hun’). Evidence garnered from postal control bore out the recurrence of these feuds, asserting that the “gap between the North and the South (Midi) seemed to grow wider”.55 In fact, social mobilizations rested on discriminatory processes that may have turned out to be successively inclusive and exclusive and were at any rate, strongly correlated to the pre-war national unification of France and Britain.
Local Communities in Imperial Societies at War A geography of social mobilization Ultimately, the shift in the scale of analysis adopted here reveals the complex set of concomitant senses of belonging that affected and 53
Chickering (1998) p. 102. Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre 16N 1536. 55 Service Historique de l’Armée de Terre 16N1536 ‘L’état de l’opinion du 15 juin au 15 juillet’ and 7N868. 54
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hallmarked the commitment to the war. I will therefore now go on to analyze the dimensions of a mobilization that went beyond national boundaries and extend the investigation from medium-sized towns to “two different but integrated levels of social reality [. . .] corresponding in concrete terms, to the London sociability and imagination: the local and the imperial levels.”56 Firstly, the imperial settlers of local descent were claimed as Northampton war heroes57 and the press regularly devoted space to the story of local regiments that had been sent to the distant parts of the British Empire.58 More significantly though, people who originated from Northampton but were living overseas not only shared a common anxiety with the borough, but also took part in local collective action. For instance, a collection of hunting trophies from India was put up for auction for the benefit of the Northampton Prisoners of War fund.59 Across the political spectrum, the Northampton local elite used a familial metaphor to represent the imperial contribution to the local war effort.60 And the same theme was also redirected towards the local community so as to bolster its mobilization through charity and donations from the other ‘sons of the Empire’.61 This example underlines that the Nation did not provide the ultimate and exclusive territory of mobilization. This process actually ran across and along the boundaries of multiple social and cultural belongings and thus encourages the scrutiny of an ‘imaginative geography’ of mobilization.62 Furthermore, the war and its destruction also brought about a host of initiatives which revealed distinctive solidarities and the ‘particular historical horizon’63 that characterized the imperial societies. In the post-war era, the local elites of the formerly occupied zones in northern France called on their ‘colonial friends’, their ‘brothers’64
56
Winter (1999) p. 42. Northampton Independent, 3 juillet 1915, ‘Tribute from Australia to the late Major Swannell’. 58 Northampton Independent, 26 January 1918, ‘Northampton men in India’; 20 July 1918 ‘Northampton boot repairers in Mesopotamia’. 59 Northampton Independent, 6 November 1915. 60 The Socialist Pioneer, No 25, September 1915. 61 Northampton Independent, 3 July 1915, ‘A true son of Empire’. 62 Said (1978). 63 Charle (2001) p. 24. 64 Les Annales Coloniales, 20 may 1921 “Pour réparer les ruines. Appel au colonies françaises.” 57
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across the country and the French empire for their help in reconstructing the ruined regions. In a significant gesture, Guadeloupe adopted Neuvilly (Meuse). As a consequence, the mayor and the municipal council decided that once the church had been rebuilt, a marble slab should proclaim: ‘We owe the recovery of our town to the good French island’.65 Similar schemes of towns’ adoption spread once the hostilities had ceased, and the arrondissement and town of Béziers adopted Noyon (Oise) in March 1920. Beside its financial aid towards the recovery of the town, the ‘ville-marraine’66 pledged to foster the link between the two towns by organizing charity fêtes and civic rituals, thereby echoing the initial features of the Union Sacrée.67 To a certain extent, such schemes restated the war culture in its initial stages of 1914–15, the later scheme being reinvigorated by a potent character, the martyred town which loomed large in propaganda literature. Indeed, the fate of these towns enabled a reiteration that still revolved around the barbaric German militarism, such a narrative was substantiated by the destroyed churches and monuments that continued to populate the landscape. Interestingly enough, it also seems possible to expand the geographical scope of this history of the martyred town inasmuch as these ‘marrainages’ also developed at a steady pace after the armistice in the allied countries and especially in Great Britain. Whilst remaining connected to the reconstruction, the adoptions and marrainages by British towns added another dimension to this expression of solidarity, for it too was part of a larger process of mourning and remembrance. Indeed, as the Lord Mayor of Liverpool put it: “You keep vigil over our dead, we will help your survivor”.68 The British system of recruiting and military mobilization reinforced the identification of British localities with a precise part of the western front since local regiments had generally fought and suffered considerable losses in one battlefield that came to symbolize their participation in the war. Scores of towns and localities throughout the allied coun65
Les Annales Coloniales, 9 November 1921. This label was apparently chosen in a reminiscence of the ‘marraines’ who supported the soldiers through their regular correspondence. 67 AMB, H43. 68 Archives Départementales du Pas-de-Calais, B.C. 1970, La reconstruction des régions libérées du Pas-de-Calais, suivie de la guerre sur les champs de bataille de l’Artois. Situation au premier janvier 1927, Septembre 1927. 66
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tries likewise took part in this post-war era mobilization. Understood as a complement to the comparative study of local communities at war, such a cross-national history of these localities may unearth an underestimated circulation of representations, people and funds between the Allied societies and sets forth a case study of cultural demobilization. Out of the war experience may have emerged new points of contact, and original international networks of local communities whose fate may be worth studying up until the Second World War. Interests and limits of such an approach Despite the common reference to its oft-cited article, the program of comparative history that Bloch propounded is only slowly emerging in French historiography.69 Beyond the particularism of French historical scholarship,70 one has to acknowledge the problems entailed by the comparative method and take heed of the warning voiced by theorists and practitioners alike. First and foremost, the necessity of gaining proficiency in a foreign language, a different culture and two massive historiographies such as those of 1914–18 Britain and France should suffice to impose humility on every young comparativist. Moreover, differences in record-keeping methods on both sides of the Channel might dampen initial optimism, and reasserts the benefit one can derive from a genuine and invaluable collaboration with local archivists. Yet, the research presented so far encounters another problem since, as Cohen has rightly pointed out, ‘in its focus on the national unit, and especially on the state, comparative history has tended to obscure the distinctive histories of regions, to homogenize differences under the rubric of the nation’.71 The issues raised by the choice of entity of comparison also call into question my comparative understanding of WWI social mobilization which is based on the investigation of local communities. Indeed, while arising out of British social life, the word ‘community’ scarcely appears in the French primary sources. Such an absence may be located within a broader French tradition of abstract universalism. This intellectual framework has constrained and hampered
69 70 71
Bloch (1928). Haupt (1995), Atsma and Burguière (1990). Cohen (2001) p. 26.
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social sciences and history through its refusal to consider cultural belonging and communities that do not fit in with the vision and the language of politics inherited from the French Revolution and the Third Republic. Furthermore, the importance of the concept of community in the sociological interpretations of the revolutions and upheavals of the nineteenth century,72 prompts me to walk carefully on such a well-trodden path. Beside language and social theory, a real difficulty lies in setting the local community in the historical context of the Great War. Much influenced by the studies of nationbuilding and nationalism, I have adopted a constructivist approach to locality, which takes into account the historical construction of local identities and its importance in the shaping of social experience.73 The point tentatively made here is that locality does not only provide a ‘terrain’ within which a national problématique could be put to the test, but also and more significantly, accounts for cultural and social specificities of the wartime mobilization of infra-national communities. However important and valuable, local studies of the social experience of the war which confine themselves to the confirmation or invalidation of national narratives and interpretations are most likely to gloss over a part of the story.74 Hence, while rejecting a micro-historical approach that would not take into consideration collective entities that reached out beyond face-to-face relations, I have chosen a significant unit of comparison that makes possible a scrutiny of the interactions and solidarities that made up the core of social mobilization. The relationships between social agents and their interdependences in wartime vindicates a socio-history75 of WWI mobilization which mainly took root in prewar social configurations and which acknowledges that, ‘social reality is made up of overlapping, intersecting and crosscutting networks of social interactions that do not (necessarily) form a totality and whose sociospatial dimensions are not (necessarily) territorially fixed through nation-state boundaries.’76 These overlaps and discrepancies between political or administrative limits and social identities were conspicuous in Béziers. One has
72 73 74 75 76
Nisbet, (1966). Bourdieu (1980). McKibben (1992), Tobin (1985), Weitz (1985), Richard (1998). Noiriel (1989, 2001). Axtmann (1993) 53.
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to consider the concomitant presence and successive conjuring up of different social belonging and images of ‘locality’. The latter may have encompassed visions of the town, of the district thus including Béziers’ outskirts, of the whole Hérault Département, or as during the 15th Army Corp polemic,77 the larger ‘Midi’ which virtually enclosed the southern half of France. Insofar as local identities are concerned, ‘areas’ of self-representations were not only overlapping but also loosely contained within blurring boundaries. Furthermore, a socio-history emphasis in a study of the interpersonal dimensions of power offers a theoretical framework to pursue a political history of local communities at war.78 Indeed, local politics in 1914–18 is quite an elusive object since the disruptions brought about by the war substantially modified the local polity. The suspension of the electoral process as well as the censorship and curtailment of the public sphere by censorship, propaganda or material hardships were obvious demonstrations of wartime changes. But the conscription and recruitment of political activists also had strong implications for both local political life and the historians’ work. The Béziers branch of the Socialist Party offers an interesting illustration. Apart from a letter sent to the local authorities on 5 August 1914 proclaiming the Socialist commitment to the Union Sacrée,79 no other piece has yet been found to document the activity of the Béziers socialist section. Indeed, the departure to the front of their activists and local leaders explains the socialist stillness and the scarcity of sources regarding their party. But local politics in WWI should not be reduced to the echo of national political debates published in the local press. The functions of social regulation performed by local elites in wartime enable the
77 This polemic broke out in the Autumn of 1914 when, after a series of defeats, southern regiments fighting within the French 15th Army Corp were accused of having fallen back under the enemy’s fire. In many instances, national newspapers and some commentators or politicians invoked the ‘indolence’ of the southerners which would have accounted for this retreat. This polemic reactivated traditional stereotypes and opposition between the South (Midi) and the North that were translated through publications and private correspondences alike. See private papers of Sergent Crassous (private collection) and LeNaour (2000). 78 See Noiriel (2001) pp. 13–14. Noiriel relies heavily on the sociology of domination (from Weber to Bourdieu) as well as on Durkheim’s work on inter-individual solidarities. He also focuses his critics on René Rémond and the ‘dominant’ school of political history in France. See Rémond (1988). 79 AMB, H42.
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historian to investigate the political dimensions of social mobilization that lay beyond party politics. During the social conflicts that revealed the tensions provoked by the economic disruptions, local elites were called upon by workers on strike. This was notably the case in Béziers in 1915 and 1917 when the seamstresses went on strike over their working conditions and cost of living. They asked the mayor to forward their demands to their main customer, the military.80 The fact that such a political mediation was performed by local elites is not very surprising for it reveals the extent to which the French structure of authority based on the concept of popular sovereignty had been internalized since the onset of the Third Republic. Smith demonstrated that even in the paroxysmal conditions of the frontline, French soldiers remained committed to the official ideology of the regime.81 What is more interesting in the case of the seamstresses’ strikes is that their gender had excluded them from formal participation in the electoral process and from the mainstream of political life. Social conflicts raise numerous questions because they translated the new kinds of political problems entailed by the war. The social relations of sacrifice took on political dimensions because the issues of recruiting and conscription, of the organization of labour, of the supply and shortages of food or coal undermined the legitimacy of authority on national and local levels alike. This was indeed the case in the three imperial societies for the 1916 dear food campaign in Northampton,82 and the 1917–18 strikes in Béziers83 and Düsseldorf 84 issued mutatis mutandis comparable political challenges. Contrary to traditional interpretations, the wartime growth of the state’s apparatus and intervention did not strip the local civil societies of their mediating role. Indeed, a closer look at local associations discloses the extent to which the war altered the social location of power and therefore shifted political conflicts into the realm of voluntary organizations that partially made up for the curtailment of the public sphere.85 For instance, the increased collaboration of the labour movement with the local authorities and its association 80 AMB VII F; Subsequent strikes over similar problems are documented by the collections of the ADH 10M 244–245. 81 Smith (1994). 82 NRO, Northampton Trades Council NTC 4–5. 83 ADH, 10 M 244–245. 84 Tobin (1985). 85 Purseigle (2003).
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with the main phases of the war effort lent a new legitimacy to a local institution which had, up to the war, been carefully shackled. The nomination as Justice of Peace in December 1916 of the secretary of the Northampton Trades’ Council was indeed celebrated and acclaimed by the labour movement as recognition of the increased socialist presence in the local polity.86 In the prologue of his Imperial Germany and the Great War, Chickering states that his study of a mid-sized German city during the conflict was set out ‘in deference to the principle that total war requires total history’.87 In accordance with this legitimate ambition, the work-inprogress presented above should be understood as a contribution to the necessary collaborative and collective endeavour that might fulfil it. The local perspective here chosen has obviously incurred a massive debt to the historiographical renewal in First World War studies that hinged on an emphasis on the war culture since it induced a fresh look at the interplay between nation-states at war and the diverse social, political, and religious cultures of their populations. Then, the comparative history of local communities in the Great War could beneficially supplement the history of nation-states at war. Its emphasis on small-scale patterns of collective action reveals the strength of locally rooted modes of figuration and organization and underscores the role played by the belligerent civil societies despite the indisputable expansion of state agency. Ultimately, the shortcomings and success of social mobilization betrayed both the strength and persistent internal strains of Britain and France. Thus, such a perspective enables us to set the Great War in the larger context of the social history of imperial societies.
B Atsma, H., and Burguiere, A., eds. (1990) Marc Bloch aujourd’hui: histoire comparée et sciences sociales (Paris: 1990). Audoin-Rouzeau, S., and Becker, A. (2000) 14–18: Retrouver la guerre (Paris: 2000). Axtmann, R. (1993) ‘Society, globalization and the comparative method’, History of the Human Sciences, 6 (2), 53–74. 86 87
NRO, NTC 4, The Socialist Pioneer, ZB 19/3. Chickering (1998).
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Bloch, M. (1928) ‘Pour une histoire comparée des sociétés européennes’, Revue de Synthèse Historique, XLVI, 15–50. Bourdieu, P. (1980) ‘L’identité et la représentation. Eléments pour une réflexion critique sur l’idée de région’, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 62–72. Brown, C. (1990) Northampton 1835–1985. Shoe Town, New Town (Chichester: 1990). Charle, C. (2001) La crise des sociétés impériales. Allemagne, France, Grande-Bretagne (1900–1940). Essai d’histoire sociale comparée (Paris: 2001). Chickering, R. (1998) Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 1998). Coetzee, F. and Shevin-Coetzee, M. eds. (1995) Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War (Providence – Oxford: 1995). Cohen, D. (2001) ‘Comparative history: buyer beware’, German Historical Institute Bulletin, 29, 23–33. Haupt, H.-G. (1995) ‘La lente émergence d’une histoire comparée’ in J. Boutier and D. Julia, eds. Passés recomposés. Champs et chantiers de l’histoire (Paris: 1995), 196–203. Hobsbawm, E. (1995) Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London: 1995). Horne, J. and Kramer, A. (2001) German Atrocities, 1914. A History of Denial (New Haven – London: 2001). —— (1993) ‘Social identity in war: France, 1914–1918’ in T.G. Fraser and K. Jeffery, eds., Men, Women and War. Historical Studies XVIII, (Dublin: 1993), 119–135. —— ed. (1997) State, Society, and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War. (Cambridge: 1997). Jeismann, M. (1997) La patrie de l’ennemi. La notion d’ennemi national et la représentation de la nation en Allemagne et en France de 1792 à 1918 (Paris: 1997). Krumeich, G. (1996) ‘Histoire locale et régionale de la Grande Guerre: état de la recherche allemande’, Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporains, 183, 151–158. LeNaour, J.-Y. (2002) Misères et tourments de la chair durant la Grande Guerre. Les mœurs sexuelles des Français, 1914–1918 (Paris: 2002). —— (2000) ‘La faute aux ‘Midis’: la légende de la lâcheté des méridionaux au feu’, Annales du Midi, 112 (232), 499–515. McKibben, D. (1992) ‘Who were the German Independent Socialists? The Leipzig City council election of 6 December 1917’, Central European History, 25 (4), 425–443. Mosse, G.L. (1990) Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: 1990). Noiriel, G. (1989) ‘Pour une approche subjectiviste du social’, Annales E.S.C., 6, 1435–1459. —— (2001) Etat, nation et immigration. Vers une histoire du pouvoir (Paris: 2001). Prost, A. (1977) Les anciens combattants et la société française (1914–1939) (Paris: 1977). —— (1997) ‘Sociale et culturelle indissociablement’ in J.-P. Rioux and J.-F. Sirinelli, eds. Pour une histoire culturelle (Paris: 1997) 131–146. Purseigle, P. (2003) ‘Les associations locales face à la Grande Guerre: Société civile et Etat de guerre. Etude comparée Angleterre – France’ in B. Benoit and M. Frangi, Guerres et Associations (Forthcoming). Rémond, R., ed. (1988) Pour une histoire politique (Paris: 1988). Richard, R., (1998) ‘Réfugiés, prisonniers et sentiment national en milieu rural en 1914–1918. Vers une nouvelle approche de l’Union Sacrée’, Annales de Bretagne et des pays de l’ouest, 4, 111–128. Said, E.W. (1978) Orientalism (London: 1978). Smith, L.V. (1994) Between Mutiny and Obedience. The Case of the French Fifth Division during World War I (Princeton, N.J.: 1994). Stryker, L. (1992) “Language of sacrifice and suffering in England in First World War”. (PhD University of Cambridge: 1992).
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Thompson, E.P. (1977) ‘The moral economy of the English crowd in the Eighteenth century’ Past & Present, 50, 77–136. Tobin, E.H. (1985) ‘War and the working class: the case of Düsseldorf 1914–1918’ Central European History, 18 (3–4), 257–98. Verhey, J. (2000) The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: 2000). Weitz, E.D. (1985) ‘Social continuity and political radicalisation: Essen in the WWI era’, Social Science History, 9 (1), 49–69. Winter, J.M. and Robert, J.-L., eds. (1997) Capital Cities at War: London, Paris, Berlin, 1914–1919 (Cambridge: 1997). Winter, J.M. and Sivan, E., eds. (1999) War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: 1999). Winter, J.M. (1995) Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning. The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: 1995). —— (1998) ‘Propaganda and the mobilization of consent’ in H. Strachan, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War (Oxford – New York: 1998), 216–226 —— (1999) ‘Les peuples de Londres’ Sociétés et Représentations, 8, 41–49.
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STEREOTYPICAL BEDFELLOWS: THE COMBINATION OF ANTI-SEMITISM WITH GERMANOPHOBIA IN GREAT BRITAIN, 1914–1918 Susanne Terwey
In December 1916, the London weekly The Jewish World ( JW) reported and commented upon the following episode: A Coreligionist has sauntered carelessly along, when an urchin let fall some remarks about ‘German!’. ‘Garn!’ quoth his companion. ‘Yo’re wrong. ‘E aint a German, e’s a Jew!’—In the early days of the war, and for many years before, the two were all one to the ordinary ‘man in the street’. When we find the boy in the street distinguishing between them, it looks as if we are at the beginning of the end of a long-lived and mischievous delusion.1
During the First World War the Anglo-Jewish minority faced a plethora of anti-Semitic stereotypes that construed Jews in Britain as being politically close to Germany, the national enemy. The accusations ranged from vague allegations of pro-German sympathies, and a particular negative portrayal of German Jews as ‘the bad Jews’, to the simple equating of Jews with Germans, as mentioned above in the words of the second largest Anglo-Jewish weekly. Historians of Anglo-Jewry and of British anti-Semitism have come across this phenomenon, but it has not been studied systematically to date. Indeed, Niall Ferguson states laconically in a footnote of his The Pity of War, ‘The idea that Jews were pro-German, somewhat surprising to modern eyes, was a nostrum of the pre-1914 Right in England.’2 While Rudolf Muhs wrote in 1991 that ‘before 1918 anti-Semitism on the British Right went along with Germanophobia.’3 It is this ‘nostrum’ that will be discussed in the following pages, not before, but during the Great War, when this perception of Jews came to a climax with respect to the frequency and fierceness of its public expression. 1 2 3
The Jewish World, Dec. 6, 1916, p. 14. Ferguson (1999), p. 467, fn. 17. Muhs (1991), p. 192.
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Whereas Muhs appears to picture anti-Semitism and Germanophobia going hand in hand as equal partners, it needs to be stressed that anti-Semitism combined with Germanophobia. That is, anti-Semitism made use of a prevalent national phobia, and all utterances shared one common strand: they aimed at lowering Jews by connecting them with Germany, the enemy. Contrary to what Ferguson and Muhs state, these stereotypes were not restricted to the Right, but were harboured and disseminated on both sides of the political divide. As will be seen, in the years 1914–1918 they were more often employed by those who identified themselves politically with the Conservative party and those who adhered to right-wing ideas, but this is rather to be explained by the function anti-Semitism took in the course of the relevant argument: it was mostly employed to discredit Government policy—and the Government was until mid-war a Liberal one. And even when a Grand Coalition ruled the country, the Prime Minister was a Liberal and Liberals held the key ministries. After a brief outline of Jewish demographics in Britain at the onset of the First World War, some of these anti-Semitic texts and their authors will be introduced and discussed. The JW took on the public and journalistic fight against anti-Semitism in general and alleged Jewish pro-Germanism or identity with Germans in particular. Thus it testifies to the worries of members of the Anglo-Jewish leadership about the potential consequences for individual Jews—literally—in the street in the course of anti-German riots. During the First World War the British notion of the nation changed from a jus soli (citizenship defined by place of birth) toward a jus sanguinis (citizenship defined by that of one’s parents). The extent to which the discourse on naturalised British Subjects of German-Jewish background had an impact on and reflected these changes will be examined.
A Textbook Immigrant Population: Jews in Britain in the 1900s By 1914 some 250,000 Jews and Jewesses were living in Great Britain, more than two thirds of whom had immigrated from Tsarist Russia since the 1880s or were descendants of these immigrants. The leadership and representatives of Anglo-Jewry were recruited out of the anglicised minority that could look back on several generations of residence in the British Isles—many of whom could trace their roots to German lands from where their ancestors had immigrated in the
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last 120 years. With the beginning of the war and as a consequence of the military alliances, the Jewish minority was split up into three groups with respect to their legal status: first, British subjects—including the descendants of East European immigrants who were born in Britain; second, the Russian subjects were categorized as ‘friendly aliens’; and third, German nationals and East Europeans who had immigrated from Austria-Hungary, were deemed ‘enemy aliens’ and were subjected to the same restrictions and control procedures as every other ‘enemy national’. This latter group is hard to quantify but was certainly very small, numbering no more than a few hundred. The decades between 1870 and 1914 have been termed the ‘Golden Age’ of the Jews in Great Britain, since a handful of men, either Jewish or of Jewish descent, made successful careers in politics and the public sphere. Amongst them were the first two professing Jews who achieved cabinet rank: Herbert Samuel, the Postmaster-General and later Home Secretary, and Rufus Isaacs, who became Lord Chief Justice, Lord Reading, in 1913. In addition, the personal friendship of Kind Edward VII with prominent Jews appears to have been equally important for the social acceptance of Jews as these political careers, because it allowed these men entry into London Society. Ernest Cassel, the financier of German-Jewish descent was the closest friend of the king. All those who made a successful career in politics, finance and society belonged to the Anglo-Jewish community from before 1880 or, like Cassel, to the some 5,000 German Jews who had come to Britain in the second half of the 19th century.4 The life of these well-to-do Jews, but also of the Jewish middle-class was contrasted with that of the vast majority of Jews in Britain, who had little or no contact with the Gentile society in whose midst they were living. As soon as the war had begun, the leaders of Anglo-Jewry went out of their way to demonstrate Jewish loyalty to the national cause. They found themselves in a dilemma rooted in the different socialisation of Jews in the country: whereas the young generation of anglicised and assimilated British Jews volunteered for the army while their parents demonstrated their patriotism with special prayers in synagogues, the majority of Jews in the country, the East Europeans, were very reluctant to join the colours. Anglo-Jewish historians agree, that it was this reluctance that triggered
4
Rubinstein (1972), p. 73 passim, Allfrey (1991).
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violent anti-Jewish riots, with several thousand rioters in the streets for several days in summer and autumn 1917 in Leeds and London.5 Jews had fallen victim to violence before, for example in May 1915 in the course of the Lusitania riots, which had been mainly directed against Germans and German property.6 In 1917 the violence took place in the districts, both of London and Leeds, that were overwhelmingly inhabited by recent Jewish immigrants and their families, the East European Jews. However, these incidents can be misleading as to the focus of British anti-Semitism: before and during the First World War, the enemies of the Jewish minority did not direct their attacks against recent immigrants from Eastern Europe, but against the assimilated British Jews, who thanks to their success in the industry, finance, and politics were visible in Parliament, the City, and London society.
Leo Maxse and his Elaborations on the ‘International Jew’: Attacks on the Liberal Party and the Government Those who wished to be enlightened about the alleged ‘pro-German machinations of the International Jew’ found abundant material in the conservative monthly The National Review (NR) and the contributions of its editor Leo Maxse. Maxse publicised his opinion on the ‘international Jew’ continually throughout the war years, and thus makes it possible to follow his thinking and trace eventual changes in it from the years before the outbreak of the Great War until the time of the peace negotiations in Paris. Although Leo Maxse stressed that he was writing ‘for the man in the street’, the readership of the NR was to be found in the upper middle-class villas of the suburbs, and the journal was subscribed to by conservative politicians and journalists.7 His biographer stresses, that Maxse was no original thinker, but he sought inspiration for his topics and themes from the mainstream conservative press, mainly The Times. Maxse then formulated strong opinions on political and social issues and published
5 Cesarani (1990), Levene (1999), Rubinstein (1996), pp. 199–200, Holmes (1979), p. 130 passim. 6 Panayi (1991), p. 223 passim. 7 Hutcheson (1989), pp. 37–38.
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them in sharp wording.8 In December 1911 Leo Maxse informed his readers for the first time about the existence of a large and powerful international syndicate . . . working chiefly through corrupt or cosmopolitan papers, inspired or controlled by that hateful figure of the international Jew. . . . These internationalists, alias proGermans, demand that ‘in the interest of peace’ Europe shall pass unresistingly under the German yoke.9
By August 1914 Leo Maxse had developed the core of his accusations. According to him, the ‘International Jew’ was wire pulling the press, in the interests of Germany and against the interests of England. Assisted by England’s ‘over-hospitability’ the ‘International Jew’ had been able to establish himself in the press, in the City, as well as in Parliament and had bought his entry into London society—all this, of course, to the detriment of England. In Maxse’s world there existed two types of Jews: the ‘international Jew’ and the ‘national Jew’. Hence in principle, Jews had the potential to be good patriots and loyal citizens. Still, who was and what made a ‘national Jew’ depended entirely on criteria set by the commentator, in this case by Maxse. Moreover, just as the ‘international Jew’ had the potential to become a ‘national Jew’, the metamorphosis could also go the other way round, and a ‘good Jew’ could be turned into a ‘bad Jew’. This was the fate suffered by the conservative politician Lord Rothschild at the hands of Leo Maxse: two years before the war, Rothschild had been praised in the NR as a prime example of a ‘good’ ‘national Jew’.10 Seven years later, after the war and after Leo Maxse’s antiSemitism had become even more radical, he dubbed Lord Rothschild—referring to the same time in his active life in politics for which he was praised earlier—‘the international Jew, who had been manipulating British policy in the interest of Germany at the time of the Conservative Government’.11 It has also to be kept in mind, that these two categories were exclusively invented for and applied to Jews. Even though it granted Jews and Jewesses the potential of being a ‘good Englishman/woman’, patriotic, and loyal, this dual image of ‘the Jew’ was volatile and unstable: the labels ‘good’ and 8
Hutcheson (1989), p. 464 passim. ‘The Syndicate’ The National Review 58 (Dec. 1911), pp. 498–499. 10 ‘Advertising Ambassadors’ The National Review 59 ( July 1912), p. 751. 11 Leo Maxse, ‘The Second Treaty of Versailles. I. Introduction, with a Digression’ The National Review 73 (August 1919), p. 818. 9
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‘bad’ depended on the observer and could be exchanged any time, hence the ‘dual concept’ had a permanent negative, threatening connotation. Thus, its inclusion in a discourse about Jews does not testify to the impartiality of an author or the weakness of a prejudice. With the beginning of the war, comments on the ‘international Jew’ became more frequent and there is hardly any war-issue of the NR without revelations of ‘Jewish pro-German intrigues’. For the nine months up to May 1915, Leo Maxse shifted his attacks from the ‘international Jew’ to the ‘German Jew’ who was accused of the same intrigues as the figure of the ‘international Jew’. Maxse let his readers know that: the Cabinet as well as the London Society [was] becoming more alien year by year [and that] the enemies of England had their power bases in ‘German-Jewish news agencies, German Jewish journals and German Jews houses’ as ‘the victory of Germany [was] for some mysterious reason a desideratum of almost the entire Jewish race.’12
In the article from which these quotations are taken, Maxse deviated from his otherwise indiscriminate, generalising accusations and gave the first names of those, who were allegedly intriguing for German interests. This list helps to understand, whom he actually subsumed under the term ‘German Jews’: Sir Edgar (Speyer), Sir Ernest (Cassel), Sir Alfred (Rothschild), and Alfred (Mond). Without going into biographical details, the crucial point is, that none of these gentlemen held German citizenship. Two of them (Speyer and Cassel) had immigrated to England from Germany decades before and both were naturalised British subjects. The other two were born in Britain and had a German-Jewish background. Nonetheless, Maxse classified all of them as ‘German Jews’. Their naturalisation and long-standing residence, not to say that of their families in the cases of Mond and Rothschild, were obviously irrelevant for Maxse’s concept. By summer 1915, the ‘international Jew’ had made a return to the pages of the NR. From then, until early 1916, Maxse pointed out several times that the ‘international Jew’ was in close contact with Downing Street.13 Now he included in his attacks cabinet ministers who were allegedly passing on secret information to the ‘inter-
12 Leo Maxse, “The Fight against pan-Germanism. I. Is the Postdam Party killed or scotched?” The National Review 64 (September 1914), pp. 41–50. 13 ‘The International Jew’, The National Review 66 ( January 1916), pp. 652–653.
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national Jew,’ who in turn ‘kept Berlin well informed on British policy and military secrets’.14 During the course of the war, especially with the military events of the year 1916, including the battle of Jutland and the death of Lord Kitchener in summer 1916, in parallel with the gloomy mood after two years of war and the fear of defeat in the country, Leo Maxse’s anti-Semitism and his criticism of the political elite became harsher: what had been explained by naiveté before, was increasingly interpreted as the consequence of ill-will and a lack of responsibility towards Britain in the second half of the war.15 When, in 1919, Leo Maxse commented on the peace negotiations in Paris, he criticised the Prime Minister David Lloyd George for what he judged a far too lenient position towards Germany, which demonstrated once again that Lloyd George ‘was being directed by the international Jew’.16 The anti-Semitic concept of ‘the Jew, who was intriguing for German interest’ was combined with criticism of the political opponent and the (Liberal) government. According to the NR, it was they, who had watched impassively or at times even supported the undermining of the press, society and parliament. The alleged connection between Downing Street and the ‘international Jew’ was employed by Maxse as an argument to discredit the policy of the Government. Since the allegation that in Paris the Prime Minister only put forward proposals that had been initiated by the ‘international Jew’ implied that the Prime Minister was by no means acting independently. Leo Maxse used the picture of ‘Jewish influence’ in order to portray government-policy as harmful to and destructive for the nation. This is only possible if an author has a deeply anti-Semitic disposition, if he is convinced that ‘Jews’ and ‘Jewish presence’ hold the potential to have a negative impact on the public interest and the nation—irrespective of what individual Jews did or didn’t do. Allegations of ‘pro-German Jewish intrigues’ could be read elsewhere in the British Press. To name but a few, in March 1915 the Walsall Pioneer claimed, that numerous German Jews had settled in England prior to the war, in order to influence British politics with their money in the interests of the Kaiser.17 Just as the Investors’ Review 14 15 16 17
‘Gossip in War’, The National Review 70 (September 1917), p. 823. ‘A Spy’, The National Review 69 (April 1917), pp. 137–138. ‘The I.J.’, The National Review 73 (May 1919), pp. 300–301. ‘Taking sides in English Politics’, The Walsall Pioneer (March 26, 1915), p. 4.
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detected behind Germany the ‘suggesting, prompting, plotting, and devising cosmopolitan financial Jews’ who were pushing the Entente Powers toward an early peace in December 1916.18 In one of its leaders on the Paris Peace Conference, The Times made allusions that ‘some international financiers’ were said to play too great a role in the surroundings of the Conference—a formula, that was at the least open to misunderstandings and misinterpretations.19
Jewish Responses to Prejudice Jews in Britain with a German background and a surname that pointed to the immigration of their ancestors from the continent reacted to the general Germanophobia by anglicising their family names, and thus strove to avoid an immediate identification with Germany.20 But Jews, and particularly the Jewish press, also went on the offensive to combat and counter the identification of Jews with Germans and a particular negative portrayal of German Jews. The JW was the second largest Anglo-Jewish weekly. Its owner and editor Leopold Greenberg also edited the Jewish Chronicle ( JC). After years of competition between the two papers, he had managed to buy the JW in spring 1913. From then on, the two weeklies shared the same editorial offices at Finsbury Square and were most likely made by the same staff. Greenberg fashioned the JC as the official voice of Anglo-Jewry published on Fridays, while he kept the JW as a separate paper published on Wednesdays, until 1934.21 During the First World War, Leopold Greenberg used the fact that he was in possession of two journalistic voices that would speak for and defend Jews in Britain. The JC ‘did its bit’ as David Cesarani put it:22 in this rather official Jewish newspaper, there could be hardly any references found to anti-Semitism in Great Britain, but frequent reports on German and Russian anti-Semitism. Moreover, the JC stressed the loyalty and patriotism of British Jews by printing lists of 18
‘By-the-Way War Notes’, The Investors’ Review (Dec. 30, 1916), pp. 763–764. ‘The Conference hesitates’, The Times (April 3, 1919), p. 13. 20 Endelman (2002), p. 184. 21 Cesarani (1994), p. 104 passim. While David Cesarani recounts the history of the acquisition of the JW by Greenberg, he makes no mention of the way in which it was used to publicise and counter anti-Semitism during the First World War. 22 Cesarani (1994), p. 114. 19
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volunteers, and later, the names of those who fell on the battlefield. In contrast, the JW was highly critical of the situation of Jews at the Home Front and here, there were frequent references to the stereotypes that closely identified Jews in Britain with Germany. The quotation at the opening of this paper is paradigmatic since the popular equating of Jews with Germans was a cause of particular concern to the JW all through the war years. From early on in the war, in September and October 1914, the JW reported a number of incidents which it deemed symptomatic of the atmosphere in which Jews had had to live in since the beginning of the war, and how many difficulties they faced in addition to the hardships caused by the war; difficulties that originated in the widespread perception that Jews were indeed Germans. The tea firm Lipton’s had spread the word that its main competitors, J. Lyons & Co. were a German firm, although it was known that the founder and most of the directorate were Jewish. The JW judged this a very cheap way of trying to attract customers from Lyons & Co. One that was only stopped by a successful action of libel: Lyons obtained an injunction against Lipton’s forbidding them to continue the false statement. The JW considered the incident: another instance of the way in which the Jew is presented as an alien and enemy of the country by those whose book it fits to trade on prejudice.23
The October of 1914 saw disturbances in South Wales that had been sparked off by the refusal of some workers to work alongside their Jewish colleagues. The situation for the local Jews was considered to be very serious by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It held a special meeting to discuss the issue—and for the first time, an incident of such a kind was not only commented upon and publicised by the JW, but two days later, also taken up by the JC. Both weeklies warned the British press against playing on the alleged identity of Jews with Germans, since this was bound to lead to serious consequences for the Jewish minority.24 When in May 1915 Jews did fall victims of mob-violence in the course of the Lusitania riots, the JW was convinced, that this had been the case, because the Jews
23
The Jewish World (16 September 1914), p. 12. The Jewish World (21 October 1914), p. 3; The Jewish Chronicle (23 October 1914), p. 7. 24
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‘had been supposed to be Germans’, since ‘Jew’ and ‘German’ were being used by many in Britain as ‘synonymous terms’.25 It is certainly impossible to establish, whether the JW was entirely correct in attributing the victimization of Jews to their identification with Germans, or whether Jews were unlucky enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and fell victims to anti-alien sentiments. But still, the JW as a contemporary observer of the situation of Jews in Britain deemed the prejudices to be strong and widespread enough to lead to violence and a conscious inclusion of Jews into the attacks by a mob set to target Germans. The very crude identification of Jews with Germans obviously derived from the discourse on ‘Jewish pro-Germanism’, but the potential threat to be targeted as ‘Germans’ was particularly high for those Jews in the country that could be identified as ‘Jews’, and these were chiefly the East Europeans.
Belonging Questioned: What Makes a True-Born Briton? When Leo Maxse wrote about the alleged activities of ‘German Jews’ he did not have German nationals in mind, who were in fact by then interned as enemy aliens or about to be interned. What he did was to subsume under this label all Jews with a German background—irrespective of their birth in Great Britain or long-standing residence and naturalisation as British subjects. Unsurprisingly, given Maxse’s lack of ingenuity, he was not the only author who considered the naturalisation of a foreign national null and void. The naturalisation of aliens to British subjects as well as the status of naturalised British subjects—that is, which public posts they should and could fill—was vehemently discussed during the First World War. London dailies like The Times, the Morning Post and the Daily Mail published leaders propagating ‘The Rights of the true-born Briton’ as well as ‘the Principle of Blood’ and advocated the abolition of the Jus Soli and the introduction of the Jus Sanguinis instead. As for the anti-Semitic discourse on ‘Jewish pro-Germanism’, loyalty to Britain, or in the case of Jews rather alleged disloyalty, a recurring theme was the question of naturalisation. Moreover, many contemporaries depicted naturalisation as a common way to avoid
25
The Jewish World (28 July 1915), p. 11.
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controls in force for aliens and as a cover for espionage.26 Hence the anonymous and sweeping attacks on British nationals with GermanJewish backgrounds, which constituted one section of the ‘Jews-cumGermany’ stereotypes, need to be read in the context of the wider debate about the naturalisation laws in force. Indeed, particularly strong criticism of the current legal practice was levelled in the course of controversies that involved naturalised British subjects holding prestigious and/or high posts in the government, who were either Jewish or had a Jewish background, even though the Jewishness of individuals, whose loyalty and ‘Britishness’ was in question, was not mentioned by The Times, the Morning Post or the Daily Mail. One such controversy was the campaign against Sir Francis Oppenheimer in summer 1916. During the War, Oppenheimer, an eminent expert on German trade and commerce, was based in the Netherlands where he was in charge of the continental arm of the blockade.27 In autumn 1914, he had successfully brokered the NOT (Dutch Overseas Trust), a complex system of treaties, designed to ensure that all goods that were imported into the Netherlands would be used there and not exported to Germany. As was to be expected, there were instances of leakages and of smuggling over the DutchGerman border. In addition, the Netherlands as a neutral country continued to export the surplus of her own agricultural production to Germany.28 In summer 1916 Francis Oppenheimer came under massive attack by the British press. He—and he alone—was made responsible for what was misrepresented as grave failures in the procedures of trade control. The German family background of the British official was introduced as an argument to discredit his achievements and question his loyalty. This episode also brought into the limelight, the view that it did not suffice to be born in Britain in order to be considered ‘a true-born Briton’. The father of Francis Oppenheimer had immigrated to England from Frankfort at the age of 18 and had successfully applied for naturalisation in 1864. Francis himself was born in Britain. The family was forced to return to Germany in the 1870s because his father needed medical treatment there. As a consequence, Francis attended school in Germany for 26 For the connection between espionage and naturalisation see ‘A Necessary Piece of Legislation’ The Times (21 October 1914), p. 9. 27 McDermott (1981); Oppenheimer (1960). 28 Frey (1998), p. 112 passim; Oppenheimer (1960), p. 268 passim.
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some years, but returned to England before taking a German degree. He then continued his education at Oxford University. Still in Oxford, in his late 20s, Francis converted to Catholicism. In 1907 Francis Oppenheimer took over the post of British Consul General for the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. He soon gained the reputation of an expert on German finance, trade, and politics and his reports were widely acknowledged in the Foreign Office. In summer 1914, after a brief return to London, he was sent to The Hague, because his expertise was needed there.29 In summer 1916 a press campaign was launched against Oppenheimer with the Daily Mail and the Morning Post at the forefront. The central argument was that these kinds of sensitive and responsible posts should be filled by men, who were ‘wholly British born’, or ‘true born Briton’—men with British parents.30 Although on the one hand, it was argued, that there were no doubts about Oppenheimer’s loyalty to the British cause, he was suspected of sympathizing with the Germans, since he had German relations, and hence no interests in seeing Germany shut off from food imports. The Morning Post accused the Foreign Office of being ignorant of ‘blood’ and ‘such forces as racial instinct’—otherwise, so the argument went, they would have never sent somebody with Oppenheimer’s background to the Netherlands, and strongly advised the British Government to review its recruitment policies.31 Sir Francis Oppenheimer repeatedly offered his resignation, an offer that was not accepted by the Foreign Office. In order to demonstrate official backing for Oppenheimer, the British minister to the Netherlands, Sir Alan Johnstone, suggested placing his name on the New Year’s Honour List of 1916/17.32 The Foreign Office rejected the proposal, but decided to send an official to investigate the charges. This investigation confirmed that Oppenheimer had done and was doing very successful work. Nonetheless, in summer 1916, the Foreign Office announced a change in its recruitment guidelines: descendants of naturalised British subjects should no longer fill consular and diplomatic posts.33 Sir Francis Oppenheimer, whose 29
Oppenheimer (1960), p. 60 passim; McDermott (1981), p. 199 passim. ‘Our Consular Service’ Morning Post (21 August 1916), p. 4; ‘The Oppenheimer Blockade and its Results’, Daily Mail (25 August 1916), p. 4. 31 ‘A Word more about Holland’, Morning Post (25 August 1916), p. 4; ‘Our Consular Service’ Morning Post (21 August 1916), p. 4. 32 Oppenheimer (1960), p. 276 passim. 33 ‘Oppenheimer Next’, Daily Mail (26 August 1916), p. 4. 30
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offers to resign from his post were never accepted, was called back from The Hague in 1917, at a time, when the blockade and the NOT had taken a grip and were working smoothly as never before. This step was internally described by the Foreign Office as ‘a case of general policy rather than of individual merits.’34 The Morning Post continued its campaign throughout the war, and in summer 1918 the paper demanded in a leader headed ‘The Birthright of the British born’ that—in analogy to the Foreign Office guidelines—only descendants of British parents should be accepted for the civil service.35 The widespread and indiscriminate distrust towards British Nationals with a German background fed as much upon general Germanophobia, as the cultural duality of German immigrants of the first, and second generation. For their neighbours and colleagues these men and women certainly were more ‘German’ than they would have presumably defined themselves. It was this intimate knowledge of both societies, their language skills, and bi-national culture, that enabled men like Francis Oppenheimer to serve Britain as they did. But this cultural link to Germany was reinterpreted into an alleged political loyalty to Germany and Berlin during the war. The conspiracytheories current at the time surely reinforced this reinterpretation. It is interesting to review the rules and regulations for naturalisation and naturalised British subjects that were in force before and after the First World War. Any changes would indicate tangible consequences of the debate about who belonged to the nation, who should be permitted to represent Britain and who should not. The naturalisation of aliens was regulated by the Act of Settlement, which was amended several times in the 19th century. The Naturalization Act of 1870 constituted the last and most significant of these amendments. From then on, naturalised British subjects could take seats in both Houses of Parliament and the Privy Council. The minimum residence in Britain prior to naturalisation was five years. This meant that, from 1870 naturalised British Subjects enjoyed the same rights and privileges as ‘natural born British Subjects’.36 In spring 1914 another amendment, the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act, was passed by both houses of Parliament, but only came into force 34
McDermott (1981), p. 207. ‘The Birthright of the British born’ Morning Post (12 July 1918), p. 4. 36 Fahrmeir (2000), p. 54 passim. ‘Naturalisation’ Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th ed. 1910–11 Vol. 19, pp. 275–276. 35
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in January 1915. The Act was designed to regulate details that had been left open in 1870 and did not belong to the war regulations for aliens. With the Act of 1914 those parts of the British nationality laws that were based upon the Jus Sanguinis were downgraded, since the option for British Subjects to pass on their own British Nationality to their children born abroad was severely restricted.37 Thus in the years running up to the First World War, there was a combination of the Jus Soli and the Jus Sanguinis in force, with the Jus Sanguinis being gradually reduced by the legislator. In the course of the First World War, however, Britain took a Uturn towards a Jus Sanguinis. As mentioned above, at the height of the campaign against Sir Francis Oppenheimer, the Foreign Office undertook a major revision in its recruitment guidelines: henceforth naturalised British subjects and even descendants of naturalised British subjects were excluded from filling diplomatic and consular posts. Immediately after the end of the war, it was announced that those nationals who would have been enemy aliens during the war (that is, mainly Germans and Austrians), would be excluded from naturalisation for the next ten years. This regulation was eventually in force until 1931.38 According to the 1919 Aliens Restriction Act naturalised British subjects were barred from sitting in juries and from holding government posts.39 Moreover, two years later, the Jus Sanguinis was strengthened: from then on, British nationals could pass on their nationality to their offspring born abroad without any restrictions, that is, down to as many generations as they wished.40 The latter amendment was significantly more far reaching than the 19th century rules for expatriate British subjects, whereby British nationality could be passed on abroad over no more than two generations. Read in conjunction with the limitations enacted for naturalisation and naturalised British subjects, these legal changes testify to an inroad into British nationality laws by the concept of the Jus Sanguinis in the wake of the Great War. Overall, they reflected the debate about naturalised British Subjects and the ‘principle of blood’ of the preceding years. The notion of the nation, the definition of who was British and, above all, who was to represent the nation 37 38 39 40
Fahrmeir (2000), p. 62. Yarrow (1990), p. 110. Cesarani (1991), p. 62. Fahrmeir (2000), p. 62.
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became noticeably narrower in the course of the First World War. It is almost impossible to gauge the significance of anti-Semitism in these changes, but it certainly worked as a catalyst. In the course of the debate about Francis Oppenheimer the Morning Post and the Daily Mail never mentioned his Jewish background, but at the same time, his surname spoke for itself and his contemporaries must have been fully aware of his German-Jewish origin. Oppenheimer himself was convinced that his Jewish name was a crucial factor in the attacks.41 An insight into the general perception of Francis Oppenheimer’s identity is offered by the well-meaning intervention on the part of The Investors’ Review that came to his defence at the height of the campaign in 1916, describing the Foreign Office official as “a distinguished, able and upright Frankfort Jew”.42 In summary it is worth remembering William D. Rubinstein’s description of the last decades of the 19th century as the ‘Golden Age’ for Anglo-Jewry—the years between 1870 and 1918 were indeed a very successful time for Jews in Britain: never before and never again, did so many Jews or men with a Jewish background, at one and the same time, make successful careers in the City, London Society and Parliament. Yet, although it did not impede their advancement, the visibility of Jews brought strong anti-Semitism, mostly combined with Germanophobia, to the surface during the Great War. Anglo-Jewish historians agree that English Jews demonstrated a strong desire to show publicly their loyalty to Britain and the national cause during the First World War—and this is interpreted as an indication of a heightened sense of insecurity at a time of intense nationalism. Yet the effect of the war years on Jews in Britain and the reasons for their sense of insecurity are a matter of learned dispute. David Cesarani went as far as to conclude that the war years ‘savagely eroded’ the status of Jews in Britain, a wording that has been recently criticised by Todd Endelman as an overstatement.43 At the heart of this argument lies the question of the relative strength or weakness of anti-Semitism and of problems Jews and Jewesses had to face as a consequence of their cultural, religious and political identities as Jews. Yet with respect to its treatment of the period of the First World War, this dispute fails to acknowledge that Jews 41 42 43
Oppenheimer (1960), p. 275. The Investors’ Review (26 August 1916), p. 252. Endelman (2002), p. 301, fn. 4.
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were not only a cultural and religious minority, but also an immigrant population—and it ignores the way in which immigration was discussed between 1914–1918.44 In the light of the research that has been presented here, it appears, that the Great War, as a time of intense re-negotiations of the relation of the nation to the immigrant and immigration, constituted a watershed for Jews in Britain. Yet it was not only as Jews, but also as an immigrant population, that they had to face a widespread questioning and partial revision of the basis of their self-definition: namely, that it was possible to become an Englishman and Englishwoman, looked upon and treated as equal, loyal and patriotic within little more than one generation. From a Jewish perspective, it certainly did not ease the impact of these changes that in most cases, the arguments about alleged disloyalty, reliability, and ‘the naturalisation conspiracy’ were sparked off from controversies over citizens, who were either Jewish or, as in the case of Francis Oppenheimer, with a Jewish background.
B Allfrey A. (1991) Edward VII and his Jewish Court (London: 1991). Cesarani D. (1994) The Jewish Chronicle and Anglo-Jewry, 1841–1991 (Cambridge, 1994). —— (1990) “An embattled minority: the Jews in Britain during the First World War” in The Politics of Marginality, ed. by T. Kushner, K. Lunn (London: 1990). —— (1991) “The changing character of citizenship and nationality in Britain” in Citizenship, Nationality, and Migration in Europe, ed. by D. Cesarani, M. Fulbrook (London, New York: 1991), 57–73. Endelman T. (2002) The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000 (Berkeley: 2002). Fahrmeir A. (2000) Citizens and Aliens: Foreigners and the Law in Britain and the German States, 1789–1870 (New York, Oxford: 2000). Ferguson N. (1999) The Pity of War (New York: 1999). Frey M. (1998) Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Niederlande. Ein neutrales Land im politischen und wirtschaftlichen Kalkül der Kriegsgegner (Berlin: 1998). Holmes C. (1979) Anti-Semitism in British Society 1876–1939 (New York: 1979). Hutcheson J. (1989) Leopold Maxse and the National Review, 1893–1914. Right-wing Politics and Journalism in the Edwardian Era (New York, London: 1989).
44 The questioning of the value of naturalization as well as the discrimination and criminalization of naturalized British Subjects has been mentioned by previous research on Germans in Britain during the First World War. Although the author reads these utterances and deeds exclusively as expressions of Germanophobia, the fact, that immigration and immigrants were a matter of public dispute also clearly arises. See Panayi (1991).
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Levene M. (1999) “Going against the grain: two Jewish memoirs of war and antiwar, 1914–1918” Jewish Culture and History 2 (1999) 66–95. McDermott J. (1981) “Sir Francis Oppenheimer: ‘Stranger Within’ the Foreign Office” History 66 (1981) 199–207. Muhs R. (1991) “Jews of German background in British politics” in Second Chance. Two Centuries of German-speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, eds. W.E. Mosse, J. Carlebach, G. Hirschfeld, A. Newman, A. Pauker, P. Pulzer (Tübingen, 1991) 177–194. Oppenheimer F. (1960) Stranger within. Autobiographical Pages (London: 1960). Panayi P. (1991) The Enemy in our Midst. Germans in Britain during the First World War (New York, Oxford: 1991). Rubinstein W.D. (1972) “Jews among the top British wealth holders, 1857–1969: Decline of the Golden Age” Jewish Social Studies XXXIV 73–84. —— (1996) A History of Jews in the English-speaking World: Great Britain (Basingstoke: 1996). Terwey S. (2001) “‘Juden sind keine Deutschen!’ Über antisemitische Stereotype um Juden und Deutschland in Großbritannien vor und während des Ersten Weltkrieges und die jüdische Abwehr” Sachor 11 (2001) 41–62. Yarrow S. (1990) “The impact of hostility on Germans in Britain, 1914–1918” in The Politics of Marginality ed. by T. Kushner, K. Lunn (London: 1990) 97–112.
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LEAVE AND SCHIZOPHRENIA: PERMISSIONNAIRES IN PARIS DURING THE FIRST WORLD WAR Emmanuelle Cronier
In studying combatants on leave in Paris during the Great War it has become apparent that the psychological and even the psychiatric dimension is essential to understanding their behaviour. This is one aspect of my research, which focuses on the urban social and cultural history of the First World War. I have tried, by studying the history of soldiers on leave, to deepen our knowledge of combatants as a group and as individuals, and to explore their links with wider society during the War. When men return home, they resolve their absence spatially, but this return also raised a number of psychological issues I intend to address in my research. It is difficult to capture this phenomenon accurately. I often had the feeling that my subject was shying away; there was something like a presence-absence of the combatants on leave at home, both in terms of practices and representations. This tension could be subsumed under the metaphor of ‘schizophrenia’. This is a good way to encapsulate all the problems linked to combatants on leave, and to combatants on the front line more generally. This ‘schizophrenia’ also solves the current debate in France that opposes the ‘constraint’ school and the ‘consent’ school, an opposition whose artificial character has recently been pointed out by Antoine Prost.1 The Frenchmen mobilized during the Great War got an eight day leave three times a year from July 1915 onwards, this was cut to six days in August 1915, then increased to seven days in October 1916, and ten days in October 1917. In Germany and Great Britain, combatants were allowed to go on leave in 1915 as well. This chronology is linked to the development of stalemate and the loss of the belief that the men would soon be back home. Although many soldiers dreamt of going to Paris and the Seine department for their leave, it was only Parisians, the pre-war inhabitants of the invaded areas, and allied soldiers who were allowed to. 1
Prost (2002).
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This restriction was not only the pragmatic consequence of the limited capacity of the Parisian train stations to absorb a flood of combatants on leave, but also of the fear that the presence of soldiers in Paris would constitute a revolutionary threat. Nonetheless, Paris is an interesting observatory for permissionnaires because of their visibility in the capital. From July 1915 to November 1918, their number varied between 3,000 and 43,000 present at any one time in Paris and the Seine department. Leave is at the heart of the so-called conflictual relations between the home front and the front line. Since the war, it has been a common place to talk about a gap ( fossé in French) between soldiers and civilians, especially in the case of Paris, which embodied the home front for these soldiers. This is illustrated in battlefield newspapers.2 Rather than conflict, we might talk of tension between front and home front to characterize the links between the two spaces, because the combatants were not cut off from their own people. The millions of letters exchanged each week, which broke the isolation of the trenches, are ample proof of this. The combatant on leave can be seen as an allegory of this tension, and we can try to see what happens to this tension when he physically withdraws from the front and his ‘primary group’ to return to his family. Space does not permit an examination here of non-Parisian permissionnaires, such as allied soldiers or French soldiers living in the invaded areas before the war, who did not join their families in Paris. Thus although some of the following may also apply to their cases, the main focus will be on those combatants who lived in Paris and the Seine department before the War.
Les Permissions: The Great Misunderstanding There are two terms, in French, which refer to leave: les congés and les permissions. The main difference is that congés refers to exceptional 2 Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau talks of ‘a deep feeling of rupture between home front and front line, and this break is so painfully felt by combatants that it could have threatened the cohesion of French society facing during four years the ordeal of war’. He nonetheless draws a distinction between the gap created by representations and the actual links especially with families. (Audoin-Rouzeau, 1986 & transl. 1992) See also Rousseau (1999), pp. 261–262: ‘le fossé qui, au fil des mois, tend à séparer les poilus du reste de la population. Ainsi, deux mondes se voient, se côtoient,
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leave, given for a specific reason such as for a breadwinner or for convalescence, and permissions refers to a regular leave, granted as a reward for good conduct.3 The idea of permissions as part of the contract between the conscript and the State took a long time to become imperative. The specific decree that detailed permissions dated from 1890, after the Freycinet Law had imposed compulsory national service on all male citizens. The rules were not even-handed. When the period of service was 3 years, troops were granted 30 days’ leave and officers 15 days. After the 1905 reform, which cut the service to two years, they retained their 30 days’ leave, this then increased to 120 days in 1913 when service was lengthened to 3 years once more. The question of permissions does not seem to have featured prominently in the debate about conscription in the political or military sphere, but it is possible to find traces of the meaning of permission for the Military in the evolution of leave practices during the nineteenth century. For example, the congés de semestre, which existed from 1821 until 1868, began 1 October and ended 1 April, and allowed conscripts to go back home after the troops inspection, during the off season.4 During the First World War, combatants were allowed to go on permissions in July 1915, after the front had settled down. These permissions could be limited or cancelled when an offensive was going on. In the case of the 70th Infantry Division, its permissions were cancelled in 1918 from 26 March to 25 April, from 29 May to 21 June, and from 10 to 23 August.5 Despite the sharply different contexts, a similarity can be seen here in the way in which the permissions were moulded to military needs. Another similarity may be observed regarding the phenomenon of homesickness known in eighteenth century Europe as nostalgia, or maladie du pays in French. It refers to a pathology first noticed among
mais ce sont deux mondes que leurs émotions éloignent l’un de l’autre, et qui ne parlent plus le même langage; deux mondes qui ne se comprennent plus’. Ferro (1990) mentions ‘le divorce’ avec ‘ceux de l’arrière’ (p. 156) and ‘l’antagonisme entre le front et l’arrière’ (p. 255). 3 Saussine (1867–1868). 4 Circulaire ministérielle du July 18th 1821, in Saussine (1867–1868), “Congés et permissions d’absence”, pp. 725–748. 5 SHAT, 16N37, dossier 7, September 21st 18. Permissions de la 70° DI depuis le January 2nd 1918. Compte-rendu du Colonel Viennot commandant provisoirement la 70° DI au gal commandant le 18° Corps d’Armée.
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Spanish soldiers sent to Flanders during the Thirty Years’ War. Their despair was so profound that they were considered useless and sent back to their families.6 In 1793, when desertion was a growing problem in the French revolutionary Northern Army, as a consequence of an inegalitarian levée en masse and a prolonged war, the decision was taken to cancel the soldiers’ leave, but an exception made for those showing this nostalgia.7 This fear of nostalgia may have been also present when Joffre, the author of the circular on leave, dated 30 June 1915, wrote: In this way, a kind of rotation will be established, so that almost all the men who haven’t seen their families since the beginning of the campaign will be able to go home for a few days.8
Although the High Command never elaborated on the necessity of leave for morale before 1917 such fears were certainly part of the Command’s military culture. They therefore did not resist MPs’ calls in favour of leave which reflected a widespread current of opinion during spring 1915. In May 1915, the Senate Army Commission, returning from the front line placed “how to prepare public opinion for the winter campaign” at the top of its agenda.9 On 17 June 1915, General Pedoya, president of the Army Commission of the Assemblée Nationale, announced to the full Assemblée that the war would be long. It was the first time in France that such a statement had been made in public, and MPs suggested at the same moment that leave should be given to combatants.10 These developments reflected a broader concern for civilian and combatant morale. Thus permissions indicate a great tension between military and civilian needs. From the High Command’s point of view, leave did not entail the combatant’s return to his civilian status, as we can see in the insistence on having permissionnaires clean themselves before going to the rear, so that they will make a good impression on civilians, seen as Paris public opinion:
6
Rafizadeh (1991), 2nd part “From Sumer to Kuweit: insanity and War”. Rafizadeh (1991). 8 SHAT, 7N149, Joffre’s circular no 12619, June 30th 1915. 9 Archives Nationales, Série C, commissions parlementaires de la Chambre, C7494, minutes of the January–December 1915’s session, session May 26th 1915. 10 Archives Nationales, Série C, commissions parlementaires de la Chambre, C7494, minutes of the January–December 1915’s session, session June 18th 1915. 7
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The Command doesn’t seem to care enough about the conditions in which permissionnaires leave and go back: for lack of shelter where he could wash himself and clean his clothes, the man sent on leave lands in the Interior area in the same dirty state as when he was leaving the trench. The wearing of filthy and threadbare clothes doesn’t encourage him to revert to the military attitude that has been lost in the trenches, and that would impress pleasantly in his favour.11
This is very typical of the moulting process the High Command was expecting from the permissionnaires. They were supposed to personify in the Rear a military type that the High Command knew they were not, and it is clear here that for the Command, permissionnaires were deemed to illustrate the morale of their fellow combatant in the trenches. Yet, the Command’s assumption was ill-founded. If permissionnaires did display good morale in the Rear, it was precisely because they were not currently at the Front. The psychological conditions of the permissionnaires thus would not reflect the state of mind of frontline soldiers. This point of view nonetheless explains the very close supervision of the combatants on leave. The High Command viewed permissions as an opportunity for rest and comforting talks with civilians. Combatants’ desire remained a taboo only alluded to in speeches promoting rising birth rates using phrases like “préparer la classe 1935”. But above all the High Command was concerned with discipline. During permissionaires’ train journey home, everything was done to prevent contact with the civilian population. In the regulating stations, camps were built to prevent combatants from escaping to go to Paris by their own means. A July 1917 sketch outlined the ideal organisation of a transit camp.12 It should be enclosed and access to the railtrack was to be beyond control lines. Particular cooperatives were to sell wine and food, and meals were to be provided in a canteen. Permissionnaires’ recreation, it was suggested, should take benign forms such as playing games, reading, or writing letters. The trains designated for the permissionaires proved less rapid, comfortable, and well-lit than the regular ones. Unsurprisingly, they did all they could to take the regular trains.
11 SHAT, 16N644, dossier 4, QG des Armées du Centre, Note pour les Armées du Général Pétain commandant les Armées du Centre, June 12nd 1916. 12 SHAT, 16N2402, Instruction sur l’installation des gares de permissionnaires dans la zone des Armées, July 8th 1917.
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Once they were in Paris, the military pressure was still present: they had to check-in at the Place de Paris, and show their leave document upon request by police officers seeking deserters. The permissionnaires were angered by this constant control, and they often rejected the policemen’s authority, considering them to be shirkers or embusqués. This attitude is apparent in the mains courantes, the daily reports of the 80 Parisian police stations. One such gives the case of Henri F., a 30-year old artilleryman, arrested in February 1917 during his 7 days’ leave for breaking a bar window. He told the policemen they were ‘embusqués’, had ‘no courage’ and that their ‘place was at the front’. He was understood to be referring to all policemen at the station. Interestingly, Henri F. admitted having called them ‘embusqués’ but denied that this was ‘an outrage’.13 This constant denial of combatants’ primary needs such as freedom helps explain the widespread feeling of being misunderstood among combatants as well as permissionnaires. Permissions had always been a moment of release for emotions and primary needs. What the combatants wanted and did was to sleep, drink, eat, and have sex. This portrait seems far away from the state of grace of the permissionnaires in the Rear desired by the High Command, which can be summarised as temperance and confidence in victory. Nonetheless, permissions worked as a moment to recover individuality amidst war’s totalization. Although the High Command tried to maintain the permissionnaires’ military spirit, their plan did not succeed completely. Their attempts to control railway travel, detailed above, illustrate this failure. Permissionnaires developed a culture of deceit to achieve their goals: they sought to reach Paris sooner by taking regular trains, or left the railway stations without a date stamp to get a longer leave. Moreover, many permissionnaires excluded from Paris managed to go there by dint of control failures upstream. During summer 1917, 5% of the permissionnaires arriving at Gare de l’Est should not have been there, while more than 60,000 combatants were arriving each week at the station at the end of May.14 A confidential letter from the commander of the 24th infantry division, in July 1917, criticized their attitude during leave as ‘bad habits’: 13 Archives de la Préfecture de police, Mains courantes, quartier 7, affaire 79, February 13rd 17. 14 SHAT, 16N2851, June 9th 1916, Ministère de la Guerre, EMA, Note pour la Direction de l’Arrière; et 16N2404, Visite des gares du Nord et de l’Est, 1917, presumably June–July.
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He (the permissionnaire) thinks that more or less he should not be bothered and that he does not owe anything to anybody. By the way, it’s the opinion he found in some newspapers.15
Leave, a Moment of Psychological Vulnerability Representations in the rear show combatants happy to go on leave and usually happy to go back to the front, but at worst caught by le cafard, a fit of depression. In the front line representations, for example in the trench newspapers, leave is a promised happiness that proves to be disappointing. Witness this parody of a letter from October 1916, in Sans Tabac: Mon cher Esté, Je rentre de perme pour la troisième fois. Tu me demandes mon impression sur Paris, eh ! bien, la voilà. . . . Dès l’arrivée, j’ai été frappé par ce qu’on peut appeler la furia parisienne. Les gares sont prises d’assaut par les gens qui rentrent de la campagne. Le métro est inabordable tellement il regorge de monde. Les théâtres et les concerts sont bondés. De toute cette foule où les civils sont presque aussi nombreux qu’avant la guerre émergent les costumes les plus disparates qu’il soit possible d’imaginer. La 5° arme surtout fait prime avec nos alliés Anglais. Chaque demimondaine a son as ou son Tommy, chaque revue, et tous les établissements ont la leur, célèbre les hauts faits de ces messieurs. On semble ignorer qu’il est encore des poilus modestes héros, vivant dans la tranchée et méritant mieux que les sourires humiliants, jetés à la vue de leur pauvre capote râpée et passée. C’est que le poilu, lui, n’a pas de faux cols, ni manchettes, ni ceinturon jaune, ni fausses bottes de la même couleur. Il n’a point de vareuse ouverte avec col rabattu, lui permettant le port de la cravate de fantaisie de toutes couleurs. Sa garde robe qu’il doit transporter sur son dos ne lui permet pas le costume de rechange. . . . Mais qu’importe ! Du moment qu’il fait son devoir, cela suffit au poilu. Il le fait obscurément, sans réclame et quand la terrible faucheuse le moissonne, c’est souvent une belle âme, un grand coeur qui disparaît. Seule, au milieu des champs dévastés, une petite croix de bois le signale.
15 SHAT 16N298, Faits relatifs à la discipline, July 30th 1917, EMA Général Mordacq commandant la 24° division d’infanterie au Général commandant le 12° Corps d’Armée. Confidentiel.
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J’ai quitté Paris, triste . . . n’y regrettant que cette vie de famille si douce dans laquelle je venais de me retremper . . .16 My Dear Esté, I am just back from my third leave. You asked for my impression about Paris, so, here you go . . . On arrival, I was struck by what one can call the Parisian frenzy. Railway stations are assailed by folks coming back from the countryside. The underground is inaccessible due to overcrowding. Theatres and concerts are packed. Out of this crowd, where civilians are almost as numerous as in pre-war times, emerge the most varied dresses one can imagine. The 5th branch of the armed services above all comes top with our English allies. Each loose woman has her own ace or her own Tommy, each revue—and all venues have their own—celebrates the heroic deeds of these gentlemen. People don’t seem to know that there still are some poilus, humble heroes, living in the trench and deserving better than the humiliating smiles, hurled at the sight of their wretched, dated and worn cape. The poilu has indeed no detachable collar, no cuff, no yellow belt, and no similarly-coloured boot. He doesn’t have an open tunic with a turned-down collar, enabling him to wear a fancy tie of many colours. His wardrobe, which he has to carry on his back, doesn’t allow him a spare costume . . . But anyway! As long he does his bit, that’s enough for the poilu. He does it obscurely, without any claim, and when the terrible reaper cuts him down, it often is a beautiful soul, a great heart that disappears. Alone, in the middle of the devastated fields, a small wooden cross signposts him.
This resentment against the rear is typical of such crisis literature.17 How did the combatants adapt to the intolerable dimension of leave that required passage from a world of death to a world of life, and back again? This journey posed a different challenge from their first departure from home for the unknown. When they went back to the front in 1915 and after, they knew what they would find. Leave was a way of beating death. They were physically evading the war’s violence. But was a similar mental evasion possible? It is very fruitful here to use the vast medical studies18 about combat stress and behaviours in operational situations that were conducted mainly by Americans and Israelis after the Second World
16 17 18
Sans tabac, No 26, 8 octobre 1916, p. 1, letter dated September 27th 1916. Cronier (1999). Back to civil life (1944), Assaf (1992), Solomon and Shalev (1989).
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War and which remain without equivalent with respect to the Great War. If we admit that the First World War was a modern and therefore a comparable conflict, these later studies pointing out some constants can be used to deepen our understanding of the minds and behaviours of combatants on leave.19 They suggest the importance of leave as a release valve, the studies of two American psychiatrists, for example, showed in 1948 that after 35 days of continuous fighting, 98% of the soldiers showed psychiatric symptoms.20 Samuel Stouffer’s vast study on American soldiers after 1945,21 also provides general descriptions of the evolution of the soldiers’ morale in operational situations. He shows that leave provides an opportunity for the expression of neurotic pathologies. Far away from the urgency of combat, this is a moment of increased vulnerability. When combatants are at the front, a psychological mechanism of regulation focuses all their energy on preserving their own survival. Leave upsets the balance. French Army psychiatrist Sylvie Minvielle has written about the après-coup of demobilization. She asserts that this moment, when the soldier is reunited with his family, is rich in emotions, but ‘not always in a positive way’.22 The frequent comments by soldiers about a feeling of being misunderstood by civilians once they were back home refers to this psychological stress and became a common feature in representations of the Great War. Similarly, in the 1950s, a greater psychological vulnerability was noted amongst combatants in the Korean War who were shortly to go on leave: their minds had already left the battlefield. This syndrome may have been limited among French permissionnaires. The granting of leave was dependant on military operations, and was restricted or cancelled while an offensive was going on, as for example in spring 1918. Combatants frequently had no warning of forthcoming leave until they were actually handed their leave document, just a few hours before departure from the front. And any promised leave could be cancelled by order at short notice, hence the profound feelings of joy when they finally did go on leave. After 1917’s crisis and Pétain’s reforms, the moment of departure became more easy to foresee, because lists of the next turn were posted in quarters. 19 20 21 22
Briole, Lebigot, Lafont (1998). Rafizadeh (1991) pp. 169, 80. Stouffer (1949). Minvielle (1998).
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Jean-François Durand, an orientalist painter born in 1894 and mobilized at the 107° RI, wrote a story called ‘The First Leave’ in 1917, it began: Un après-midi de février balayé de vent glacial et de pluie, un aprèsmidi de ciel gris et de détresse, j’appris au fond de mon noir abri des tranchées de la Somme que j’étais sur la liste des permissionnaires partants.(. . .) Après dix-huit mois de front, cette nouvelle désespérément attendue arriva si brusquement que je n’eus même pas de temps pour avertir les miens.(. . .)23 In a February afternoon, swept by icy wind and rain, an afternoon of grey skies and distress, I heard at the bottom of my darkened dugout at the Somme that I was on the list of the departing permissionnaires (. . .) After eighteenth months at the front, this piece of news, desperately awaited, came so suddenly that I didn’t even have time to let my relatives know (. . .)
Many letters provide evidence of this failure to foresee leave, and as an echo, it became an essential part of the plot in wartime Parisian comedies. The poilu is always the one who arrives without warning. In Madame et son filleul, in 1917, a demi-mondaine is waiting for her adoptive son Armand to come back on leave. But the one who arrives is Lebidard; he explains that Armand did not get any leave, and proceeds to seduce the maid.24 The recurrence of these situations at the beginnings of comedies can be explained by the reality they exploit: the poilu never knew when he might leave the front and return to his family.
An Ambiguous Identity Soldiers on leave in Paris mainly entered the city by the train stations of Gare du Nord and Gare de l’Est. Getting off the train, and walking through the station to reach the street, a combatant on leave became a Parisian permissionnaire only once he had cleared the control line. The station can be imagined as a canal lock for the flow of the soldiers, turning each of them into a kind of monster, a hybrid, a combatant among civilians, a migrant in his own city. 23 SHAT, 1KT295, Archives de Jean-François Durand, livret dactylographié 1917–1967, La première permission, p. 2. 24 Madame et son filleul, Concert de la Gaîté Montparnasse, November 6th 1917.
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In the strict control of combatants’ admission to Paris—they were issued with documentation (coloured pink from July 1917) requiring a date stamp—we can see a revitalization of the old function of the city’s gates that reflects Paris’s militarization during the War. From August 1914, railways and railway stations were a military zone within civilian life. All Parisian stations were controlled by a military chief administrator (Commissaire militaire) who was responsible to the Ministry of War, rather than the Ministry of the Interior, or the Paris prefect of police. Although the railway trip was long enough for some emotional adjustment (it sometimes took several days to reach Paris from the front), it was not comparable to the debriefing currently provided to soldiers on their way back from operations. Nor was there anything like the Civil Resettlement units that were set up in the United States after the Second World War for the combatants’ emotional reeducation.25 Instead of such opportunities for self-expression, the permissionaires’ conversations tended to take a ritualized form. Many sources report recurrent topics: they talk about their fighting, their superiors, and about what they’ll be doing in Paris, about the civilians in general. Excessive drinking also tended to impair the necessary introspective reflection. In January 1918, the High Command took note of the failure to limit the sale of alcohol to combatants: The different means used to limit the sale of alcohol to soldiers to the individual quantity fixed by the High Command did not lead to a general improvement in the situation. (. . .) Among all the methods used, the one which gives the best results is to stamp the title of leave indelibly.26
The lengthy trip and alcohol abuse therefore meant that soldiers were often upset and overexcited by the time they arrived in Paris for their leave. In addition, they were exhausted. Despite their complaints, the coaches’ dirtiness, and the hardness of the seats, the soldiers were usually so ready to drop that they fell asleep during the trip. Jean-François Durand recalls this wave of sleep:
25
Piéron (1959) p. 1762. SHAT 16N2402, Note du GQG no 2409/DA, January 13rd 1918. It meant that any soldier who wanted to get wine at the canteen had to show his leave document. If the document was stamped in the ‘alcohol’ space, he could not get any wine. 26
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Enfin, le sommeil les prend les uns après les autres, ils se rattrapent de leurs longues veilles et dorment comme dorment tous les soldats, n’importe comment, n’importe où. (. . .) Je suis heureux, au milieu de tous ces hommes qui, comme moi, connaissent la terrible joie de l’attente. Je referme les yeux, et, au rythme martelé des roues, sourd, espacé, j’anticipe sur le bonheur qui m’attend. La tête entre les mains, les yeux fermés, je me remets sous ma capote, et isolé, j’évoque le retour à ce foyer, où tant de fois mes pensées, mes angoisses avaient cherché asile.27 At last, sleep overcomes them one after the other, they catch up on their long watches and sleep as all soldiers sleep, anyhow, anywhere (. . .) I am happy in the midst of all those men who, like me, know the terrible joy of waiting. I close my eyes again, and, to the pounding, muffled, thumping, rhythm of the wheels, I anticipate the awaiting happiness. Head in hands, closed eyes, I put my great-coat back on, and in isolation, I conjure up a return to this home, where my thoughts, my anxieties had so many times sought refuge.
Both situations, exhaustion and abuse of alcohol, proved to be very common, and explain why many descriptions of combatants arriving in Paris show them in a sort of trance. Paul Vaillant-Couturier was a sub-lieutenant before being wounded in 1915. In 1917 he funded, along with Henri Barbusse, the veterans’ association ARAC. Vaillant-Couturier experienced the front for a year, and in 1919 published a novel, Une permission de détente, which vividly describes combatants’ feelings. Referring to permissionnaires on their way to the rear, he wrote: c’est l’avant encore engourdi de stupeur et glacé de boue qui remonte vers l’arrière.28 It is the frontline still dumb with stupor and mud-frozen who goes back to the rear.
He notes the frenzy that seized them upon arrival in Paris as they looked for their family at the train station: Je regarde de tous les côtés . . . je cours vers un groupe, vers un autre, croyant saisir une ressemblance . . . Peut-être ne les ai-je pas reconnus (les figures changent); peut-être ne m’ont-ils pas découvert sous ma saleté, mes hardes et mon casque . . .29 27 28 29
SHAT 1KT295, Jean-François Durand, La première permission, op. cit. p. 12. Vaillant-Couturier (1919), p. 21. Vaillant-Couturier (1919), p. 31.
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I am looking all over the place . . . I am running to a group, to another one, believing I have caught a resemblance . . . Maybe I did not recognize them (faces change); Maybe they didn’t discover me under my dirt, my rags and my helmet . . .
This was a feeling shared by many permissionnaires, it refers to the long-term soldiers’ and sailors’ fear of not being recognized. The Homeric Ulysses’s Odyssey is the story of a soldier-sailor who comes back home after years of fighting without his wife suspecting his true identity. The combatants so feared their lover’s betrayal that some of them used the failure to foresee the permission to catch her in the act. The historian’s question, to what extent did war change people, is an echo of this fear. This feeling of a world drifting away explains why large linguistic categories such as ‘the Rear’ or ‘the Civilians’ resounded so strongly. War required a new definition for things, and the permissionnaires arriving in Paris attest to this phenomenon. They expected to find the same things and people they left in 1914, they tried to read the City as a sign that peace would come back, and they looked for what they remembered. But the City had changed, and the permissionnaires could not recover key architectural or social markers, as in this story in a trench newspaper: Ma joie eût été parfaite si j’avais retrouvé mon Panam tel que je l’avais quitté. Mais hélas ! les Boches et l’Administration se sont mis d’accord pour nous le changer. Paris, qui avait déjà dû sacrifier sa réputation de Ville Lumière, devient de plus en plus noir, ou plutôt de plus en plus bleu. Tout est passé au bleu: les vitrages, les becs de gaz, les ampoules du métro. Reste la lune; mais l’administration a promis de confier à des spécialistes le soin de la camoufler. Pourvu qu’ils n’y fassent pas trop de trous. Vous savez, en outre, combien Paris retirait pour nous de charme du fait qu’on y oubliait la guerre. Maintenant Paris brigue l’honneur de faire partie du front. Où qu’on aille, ce ne sont que blockhaus, murs de sacs à terre, maison blindée, etc. L’Opéra est un important centre de résistance (déjà infesté par les rats). L’Arc de triomphe est aménagé en abri de mitrailleuses; le Palais Bourbon en Q.G., le Sénat en hôpital d’évacuation et la Tour Effeil en périscope.30 My joy would have been perfect had I found my Panam31 as I had left her. But alas! The Boches (Hun) and the Administration concurred to change her. 30 31
La Fusée, n° 23, April 25th 1918, p. 4. Parisian slang for the city.
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Paris, who had already had to sacrifice her reputation as the City of Light, is getting darker and darker, or rather bluer and bluer. Everything went blue: the windows, the street-lamps, the Metro lights. There still is the moon; but the administration has promised to appoint experts to camouflage it. Let’s hope they will not make too many holes. You know, besides, how much charm Paris derived from the fact that one would forget the war there. Now Paris craves the honour of being part of the front. Wherever you go, there are only blockhouses, walls made out of sandbags, armoured houses, etc. The Opera House is an important resistance centre (already rat-infested). The Arc de Triomphe has been converted into a machine-gun shelter; the Palais Bourbon into headquarters; the Senate into a clearing hospital and the Eiffel Tower into a periscope.
The need to define themselves in a changing world is apparent in many convergent sources such as memoirs, novels or police reports about morale in Paris. The Canard enchaîné, quoted by a trench newspaper in December 1917, illustrates the anger engendered by the feeling of being an alien in one’s own city: A la gare d’arrivée, il faut qu’il fasse timbrer son papelard, ce qui ne lui prend qu’une heure ou deux. Dehors, il se trouve immédiatement en contact avec le ‘civ’lo’, anthropoïde plantigrade et omnivore, reconnaissable à ce qu’il porte un chapeau quand il est mâle et une jupe écossaise quand il est au féminin.32 At the arrival station, he has to get his paper stamped, which only takes him an hour or two. Outside, he comes immediately into contact with the bloody civilian, plantigrade and omnivorous anthropoid, recognizable by its wearing of a hat when it is male and a tartan skirt when its is a female.
One of the pioneers of behavioural psychology in France, Henri Piéron, was interested in combatants’ psychology, and described in the 1950s how a man in combat was in a ‘conflictual situation between social and personal tendencies’. Henri Piéron contrasted the desire to be admitted, appreciated and admired in his ‘primary group’, and the need for security which urged him to retreat into his selfhood for sake of safety.33 For many men, these two opposing requirements posed a choice between abdication and participation. For others, the psyche was separated in two contradictory pieces caus-
32 33
La Gazette du Dauphin, no 5, December 1917, p. 3. Piéron (1959) pp. 1745–1762.
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ing neurotic behaviour patterns. The problem that followed was therefore to identify which group they belonged to when they were on leave in Paris, in a civilian, even if strongly militarized, environment. It seems that permissionnaires solved this conflict by ritualized speeches and behaviour, which were a way to prevent themselves from going insane. There are many traces of rituals, such as singing the famous pre-war song le chef de gare est cocu during the trip, or looking for and challenging the embusqués like the policemen, the latter being a means to retain a masculine, knightly, positive identity. It is possible that such ritualisation accounts for the paucity of information which can be gathered from diaries and memoirs, or more likely, it was linked to boredom, feared by the High Command as a source of the permissionnaires’ psychological vulnerability. Many accounts testify to great boredom explained in part by their womenfolk’s absence at work during the day. In conclusion, it can be said that a combination of signs, specific practices, and even ‘symptoms’, defined a distinctive identity for the permissionnaires in Paris, influenced by social pressure in the rear and their own psychological evolution as combatants confronted by death. They showed a great sensitivity to the negation of their individual identity, and tried to escape from rules they found unjustified. Their sense of being entitled to leave combined with their claims to be recognized as citizen-soldiers. The very widespread comments of the combatants concerning the gap of incomprehension between them and the civilians refers in the first place to the necessity for the combatants’ community to define themselves against another community.
B Assaf J. (1992) ‘Les névroses de la guerre du Liban’ in revue, Psychologie médicale 24, 5 (1992) 471–474. Audoin-Rouzeau Stéphane, 14–18 Les combattants des tranchées (Armand Colin, 1986). —— transl. Helen McPhail (1992) Men at War 1914–1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War (Berg, 1992). Back to Civil Life (Ministry of pensions and national health, Canada: 1944). Briole Guy, Lebigot F., Lafont B., Psychiatrie militaire en situation opérationnelle (Addim, 1998).
34 SHAT, 1KT20, commandant Courtès’s memoirs, 704p typed. 11th company’s major in the 46th infantry’s regiment.
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Cronier Emmanuelle (1999) “La presse du front en 1918, une littérature de crise”, Itinéraires et contacts de culture 28 (L’Harmattan et Université de Paris 13, 1999) 23–31. Englander David (1987) ‘The French soldier, 1914–1918’, French History 1, 1 (March 1987) 49–67. Ferro Marc (1990) La Grande Guerre 1914–1918 (Paris: 1990; 1st edition 1966). Fuller J.G. (1990) Troop Morale and Popular Culture in the British and Dominion Armies, 1914–1918 (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990). Leed Eric J. (1979) No Man’s Land: Combat and Identity in World War I (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979). Minvielle Sylvie (1998) ‘L’après-coup’ in Psychiatrie militaire en situation opérationnelle, ed. Guy Briole, F. Lebigot, B. Lafont (Addim, 1998) 253–259. Nye Robert A. (1993) Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (University of California Press, 1993). Prost Antoine (2002) “La guerre de 1914 n’est pas perdue”, Le Mouvement social 199 ( juin–avril 2002) pp. 95–102. Piéron Henri (1959) Traité de psychologie appliquée, Livre VII Les grands domaines d’application (PUF, 1959). Rafizadeh Jean-David (1991) Héroïsme et troubles psychiques de guerre (Medicine PhD, University of Lyon I, 1991). Rousseau Frédédric (1999) La guerre censurée. une histoire des combattants européens de 14–18 (Paris: 1999). Roynette Odile (2000) ‘Bons pour le service’.L’expérience de la caserne en France à la fin du XIX o siècle (Paris, 2000) Saussine V. (1867–1868) Dictionnaire de legislation et d’administration militaire. Recueil des lois, décrets, décisions et règlements qui régissent l’armée de terre (Paris, Berger-Levrault, 1867–1868, 3 tomes). Solomon Z. and A. Shalev (1989) ‘Les conséquences physiques et mentales du stress de combat. Une étude des soldats israéliens après la guerre de 1982 au Liban’ Psychologie médicale 21, 14 (1989) 2085–2091. Stouffer Samuel (1949) The American Soldier: vol. I: Adjustment During Army Life, vol. II: Combat and its Aftermath (Princeton University Press, 1949). Vaillant-Couturier Paul (1919) Une permission de détente (Paris, Flammarion, 1919).
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FORGING THE INDUSTRIAL HOME FRONT: IRON-NAIL MEMORIALS IN THE RUHR1 Stefan Goebel
The First World War gave birth to a number of powerful political myths in Germany which constructed a dichotomy between civilians and soldiers, between home and front. The ‘myth of the war experience’ reconfigured, according to George L. Mosse, front-line combat as a unique and meaningful event beyond the grasp of the civilian frame of mind.2 Sustained by the spirit of camaraderie, life in the trenches seemed the ultimate test of manliness, far removed from the perceived decadence of the bourgeois way of life. However, while the German soldier fought shoulder to shoulder with his comrades, he was allegedly ‘stabbed in the back’ by members of the civilian population which had lost its nerve and carried out a revolution in November 1918. Thus goes the Dolchstoß-Legende, or ‘stab-in-the-back legend’, that, by putting the blame for the military débâcle on ‘treacherous’ forces on the home front (notably socialists, slackers, pacifists, and Jews) poisoned the political culture of Weimar Germany.3 As a political liability for the new republic, the ‘stab-in-the-back legend’ and other war myths have attracted considerable attention from historians, but also blinded scholars to the existence of alternative narratives: narratives which asserted the unity and interdependence of the home and fighting fronts rather than the widening split between the military and civil society. This article discusses the cultural construction of the ‘home front’ in wartime Germany. Given the mass-industrialised nature of modern warfare, I concentrate on representations of the home front in Germany’s industrial heartland, the Ruhr region. It is a well-known fact that the legendary ‘storm of steel’ at the military front originated in the output of the coal
1 The author wishes to thank Richard McMillan for his suggestions. Thanks are also due to Richard Evans, Hubertus Jahn, and Jay Winter for their comments on earlier versions of this article. 2 Mosse (1990). 3 Hiller von Gaertringen (1963); Krumeich (2001); Verhey (2000), pp. 219–23.
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mines and steelworks of the home front. This essay examines the cultural history rather than the economic history of the relationship between total war and economic mobilisation; it analyses how the contemporaries imagined the nexus between the war and war industry, between battle front and home front in an urban and industrial context.
Iron-Nail Memorials Iron-nail war landmarks (Kriegswahrzeichen zum Benageln) became the foremost foci of the rituals, rhetoric, and ceremonies of the home front.4 Throughout the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, local communities erected wooden objects in 1915 and 1916. In the course of month-long celebrations, these wooden statues or plaques were described or outlined by a series of iron nails (also available in silver or gold) and small metal plaques. The meteoric career of ironnail objects started in Vienna in March 1915. Although the very first war landmark had been launched in Villingen in Baden earlier in the same year, Vienna’s ‘Defender in Iron’ (featuring a medieval knight in a suit of armour) became paradigmatic.5 The nailing ritual was a practical recourse to myths surrounding the Stock im Eisen, a time-honoured tree stump studded with nails and enclosed by a metal ring, situated in the historic part of Vienna. Legend had it that for centuries passing craftsmen had followed the superstitious custom of hitting nails into the stump in order to exorcise the devil. The Viennese practice provided a model for war landmarks everywhere. The mania for war landmarks also swept the Ruhr valley. Bochum, Essen, and Hagen put up figures of ‘Iron Blacksmiths’ (figs. 3–4); Recklinghausen commissioned a ‘Miner’s Column’ (fig. 1); Gelsenkirchen, Schwerte, and Wetter created ‘Iron Swords’; Mülheim had a ‘Young-Siegfried in Iron’; Dortmund and Hamm opted for wooden effigies of its patron saint or founder respectively, namely the ‘Iron Reinoldus’ (fig. 2) and the ‘Iron Count von der Mark’; Bottrop drove nails into an ‘Iron Eagle’; Unna clad a wooden bomb sponsored by the Krupp company with nails; the people of Duisburg, 4 Schneider (1996) and (1999); see also Reimann (2000), pp. 48–68; Winter (1995), pp. 82–5; Brandt (2000), pp. 94–5. 5 Schneider (1999), pp. 36–7.
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Hattingen, Oberhausen, and Witten initiated a number of smaller schemes. Only one community, Dorsten, stood aloof from this fashion.6 In general, the decision on an appropriate motif rested with the local civic leaders. In Essen and Recklinghausen, wealthy citizens donated iron-nail figures, while in Hagen and Schwerte, the matter was put in the hands of committees comprising local notabilities. Civic elites played a vital role as the instigators of war landmarks, but the actual nailing ritual consisted of negotiations between a multiplicity of individuals and groups. Initiated and organised by local worthies, the success of the signifying practice ultimately depended on widespread participation. By means of collective action, the wooden objects were—or, sometimes, were manifestly not—turned into steel figures symbolising the community’s iron will to wage war. The citizens voted with their feet, and, on the whole, there was a high turn-out in the cities in the Ruhr. War landmarks which remained incomplete, by contrast, undermined the very meaning of the collective enterprise and backfired on the organisers. Much to the embarrassment of Berlin officials, the twelve-metres tall ‘Iron Hindenburg’ erected opposite the Triumphal Column (Siegessäule) in the heart of the capital was never wholly clad with iron nails—it was simply too grand a figure even for the capital city.7 The local populace had a creative part in the nailing ceremonial for every iron nail represented a particular motto—often couched in the coarse language of the local vernacular—chosen by the participant. The people took part as individuals (primarily residents, but occasionally also wounded soldiers from local hospitals and soldiers on home leave) and/or as members of social groups (military societies, fire brigades, workers’ associations, school classes, businesses, and neighbourhoods).8 It was customary for representatives of social groups to nail metal plaques engraved with a motto into war landmarks. Every participant received a ‘nailing certificate’ (Nagelkarte) featuring the war landmark as a token of his contribution (fig. 1). In addition, picture postcards (fig. 3) and an array of wartime kitsch were often on sale. Cheap memorabilia—that is, secondary representations—allowed individuals to replicate domestically what the collective 6
Goebel (2001). The Times 41054 (4 Jan. 1916) 7; Fritzsche (1998), p. 50. 8 Westfälisches Tageblatt 279 (29 Nov. 1915); Recklinghäuser Zeitung 198 (28 Aug. 1916). 7
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did in public. The merchandising of the ‘Iron Blacksmith’ of Hagen included inter alia a brooch, fob chain, medal, pendant, souvenir volume, and a miniature statue.9 The participants had to pay for the privilege by contributing to charities to aid populations especially hit by the war, above all the surviving dependants of wounded and fallen soldiers. In Schwerte, for example, nails available in various sizes and materials cost between 50 Pfennig (for a small iron nail) and 50 Marks (for a cross-shaped plaque with inscription) each.10 War landmarks expressed the gratitude of the Heimat to the Frontkämpfer, the ‘front-line fighters’, and their families by means of symbolic gesture and real gifts of money. The civilians’ pecuniary sacrifice was meant to emulate the soldiers’ blood sacrifice, thus forging an iron bond of solidarity between home and front. Iron-nail objects fulfilled a dual function: they mobilised and commemorated the non-combatant population at the same time. The ‘Iron Sword’ of Schwerte was raised as a memorial to the local war enthusiasm. The citizens regarded it as a ‘war memorial’ (Kriegsmal ) and as ‘a memorial of our readiness to make sacrifices’ (‘ein Denkmal unserer Opferwilligkeit’).11 The amount of money collected and the number of donors were considered critical indicators of the community’s spirit of sacrifice. The symbolic force of a war landmark, it seemed, could thus be quantified. That said, most organisers skilfully juggled the figures. Wetter was one among many cities which declared itself Germany’s most successful fund-raiser. The local newspaper reported that the charity drive had generated a tidy sum (77,000 Marks) within a period of only nine months. In absolute terms, Wetter’s ‘Iron Cross’ could not match the revenues of ‘Iron Blacksmith’ of Hagen (270,000 Marks), but, as the journalists were anxious to stress, per capita their town outshone its neighbour (8.000 Marks compared with 3.053 Marks).12 The making of iron-nail memorials shows that the most powerful propaganda was not choreographed by the state but emerged from within civil society.13 Ordinary people were agents rather than vic-
9 10 11 12 13
Stadtarchiv [hereafter StdA] Hagen, 456, p. 96. StdA Schwerte, B 6854. Schwerter Zeitung 19 (24 Jan. 1916). Thier (1994), p. 224. Horne (1997); Roshwald and Stites (1999).
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tims of propaganda, especially in the first half of the war. Jay Winter has remarked that ‘It is much more terrifying to contemplate the possibility that the Great War went on because millions of people believed that it had to do so.’14 In 1916, however, at the height of the war of attrition at Verdun and the Somme, the new custom of nailing war landmarks came by and large to an end. The real slaughter dealt a hammer blow to the rhetoric of sacrifice. In an attempt to avoid monumental embarrassments, the Prussian Ministry of the Interior directed local communities to discontinue the practice in December 1916.15 To be sure, by then many war landmarks had been successfully completed. Moreover, the order was not enforced in the Ruhr. Witten only got into full swing in January 1917 when a new iron-nail memorial was officially unveiled. Essen’s war landmark closed as late as October 1918; and in Hagen, iron nails were sold until 1918 and the charity appeal continued in the 1920s.16
The Industrial Home Front All over Germany, war landmarks sprung up visualising the unity of home and front; the nailing ritual acknowledged the soldiers’ iron endurance and created an opportunity for the civilian population to do its bit—at least symbolically. However, the industrial cities in the Ruhr went beyond the symbolic closing of ranks. In the Ruhr, ironnail objects evolved into loci of self-congratulation. Although the people of Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Hagen, and Recklinghausen duly paid tribute to the soldiers’ achievements, this did not prevent them from taking open pride in their own specific contribution to the Materialschlacht, the battle of matériel (on the Western Front). Since it was industrial production which gave crucial momentum to the war machine, they rejected any distinction between home and front and asserted their claim to represent the ‘home front’. The iron-nail landmarks of the region celebrated the war worker as a new type of warrior bearing witness to total, mass-industrialised warfare. He supplied the battle of matériel with his labour; his work served as a fuel-injection into the war machine. The war worker 14 15 16
Winter and Baggett (1996), p. 210. Schneider (1999), pp. 42–3. Essener Volks-Zeitung 290 (19 Oct. 1918); StdA Hagen, 809/0 and 4102.
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epitomised the duality of unbounded production (at home) and destruction (at the front) which became the salient signature of the First World War.17 In nailing ceremonies, the industrial worker metamorphosed into the soldier of the home front. Work became the stuff of myth, and the worker a hero. In this article, I distinguish between two variants of the heroic worker: firstly, the pitman representing coal mining, and, secondly, the blacksmith embodying the iron and metal-processing industries. The coal miner Coal mines dominated the cityscape of Recklinghausen. The figure of a coal miner was therefore the natural choice for a figurative representation of the industrial city at war. Unveiled in August 1916, the iron-nail monument of Recklinghausen featured a muscular collier who shouldered his pickaxe like a weapon (fig. 1). The Reich Sword adorned the back of the column bearing the inscription “Good Luck! You German Sword” (“Glück auf ! Du deutsches Schwert”)— a variation on the traditional miner’s salute Glückauf.18 The iconography of the statue conjured up the image of Roland, the legendary paladin of Charlemagne and guardian of municipal sovereignty.19 Rediscovered in the nineteenth century (most visibly in the memorial to Bismarck, the ‘Iron Chancellor’, in Hamburg), the Roland motif had gained currency during the Great War.20 Friedrich Bagdons, the sculptor of the Recklinghausen monument, had himself previously experimented with images of Roland. For nearby Dortmund, Bagdons had designed the ‘Iron Reinoldus’ (fig. 2), an iron-nail monument after the fashion of medieval Roland columns.21 In Recklinghausen, the nailing ceremonies of 1916 enhanced the martial aura surrounding the sculpture of the pitman. The organisers christened him the ‘warrior son of the industry’ (‘Reckensohn der Industrie’).22 In keeping with the iconography and rhetoric of
17 Hüppauf (1991), p. 113; Spilker and Ulrich (1998); on ‘total war’, see Chickering and Förster (2000). 18 Recklinghäuser Zeitung 198 (28 Aug. 1916). 19 Lasius (1936), p. 136. 20 Rudolph (1996), p. 271; Reimann (2000), pp. 48–61; Russell (2000). 21 Tremonia 268 (27 Sept. 1915). 22 StdA Recklinghausen, Fotoarchiv 404305/4.
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Fig. 1. ‘Miner’s Column’ (Bergmannssäule) depicted on a ‘nailing certificate’, Figure designed by Friedrich Bagdons, Recklinghausen, 1916 (StdA Recklinghausen, Fotoarchiv 404305/4).
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Fig. 2. ‘Iron Reinoldus’ (Eiserner Reinoldus) captured in a photograph taken in the 1930s, Figure designed by Friedrich Bagdons, 1915 (StdA Dortmund, 502).
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martial work, the official speaker at the inauguration rejoiced at “the coal, the mother of victory” (“die Kohle, die Mutter des Sieges”).23 It is worth citing from his unveiling speech at some length: When our armies rush from the west to the east and from the east to the west at an enormous pace in order to break the enemy onslaught, when our fleet competes boldly with the Briton and his laurel wreath of invincibility is flaking off [. . .]: We owe it to the coal. Where do the guns, where do the projectiles come from, if not from the steel, and where does the steel come from, if not from the coal. [. . .] Thus, through the coal, the vestische Land [i.e. the Recklinghausen region] has not the smallest share in the victories of our people in this war. Therefore, the collier as the symbol of German victories and representative of all the people, shall stand here in the capital of the Vest, because he taps the treasures of the coal for us. Wenn unsere Heere von West nach Ost, von Ost nach West in unerhörter Geschwindigkeit eilen, um den Ansturm des Feindes zu brechen, wenn unsere Flotte sich kühn mit dem Briten mißt und ihm den Lorbeerkranz der Unbesiegbarkeit verblättert [. . .]: Wir verdanken es der Kohle. Woher Geschütze, woher Geschosse, wenn nicht Stahl, und woher der Stahl, wenn nicht Kohle? [. . .] So nimmt durch die Kohle das vestische Land nicht den geringsten Anteil an den Erfolgen unseres Volkes in diesem Kriege. Darum stehe hier in der Hauptstadt des Vestes in dem Wahrzeichen deutscher Erfolge als Vertreter des gesamten Volkes der Bergmann, weil er uns die Schätze der Kohle erschließt.24
Significantly, the neighbouring cities employed identical icons and metaphors. Gelsenkirchen, then the largest coal-mining conurbation in continental Europe, staged the unveiling of its war landmark, entitled ‘Sword of Gelsenkirchen’, in August 1915. The handle of this gigantic monument in the shape of a sword denoted the mining symbols hammer and iron (Schlägel und Eisen).25 The mayor of Gelsenkirchen made no secret of the great pride he took in the achievements of the local industry in supporting the Reich’s war machine. He stressed that industrial output and military campaigns interlocked to secure a German victory in the ongoing conflict: In the east, new victories have now been won, marvellous victories of great battles [. . .]. These wonderful achievements of our brave armies
23
Recklinghäuser Zeitung 6 (10 Jan. 1916); Recklinghäuser Volks-Zeitung 199 (28 Aug. 1916). Recklinghäuser Zeitung 198 (28 Aug. 1916). 25 Gelsenkirchener Allgemeine Zeitung 184 (9 Aug. 1915); Gelsenkirchener Zeitung 181 (9 Aug. 1915). 24
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imbue us with deep gratitude, and impose a duty on us [. . .]: the duty to do our bit, even though we cannot stand up to the enemy at the front line. The work behind the front is work for the front. And we want to work hard. Im Osten sind inzwischen neue Siege errungen, herrliche Siege großer Schlachten [. . .]. Diese wunderbaren Erfolge unserer tapferen Truppen lösen heißen Dank bei uns aus, und erlegen uns eine Pflicht auf [. . .]: die Pflicht an unserem Teile mitzuwirken, ob wir gleich nicht in vorderster Front unsere Stirn dem Feinde bieten können. Die Arbeit hinter der Front ist Arbeit für die Front. Und wir wollen Arbeit leisten.26
The blacksmith The war landmarks of Recklinghausen and Gelsenkirchen exalted the coal miner as a pillar of the national war effort. Their counterpart in Essen, in contrast, lionised the metalworker (fig. 3)—Essen was, after all, known as the “main armoury of the German Reich” (“Hauptwaffenschmiede des Deutschen Reiches”),27 and the home of the Dicke Berta gun produced at the Krupp steelworks. In fact, the Krupp family sponsored Essen’s war landmark generously. In addition, Krupp employees took a prominent role in the nailing ritual. White-collar workers, for instance, hammered a metal plaque showing a howitzer reminiscent of the Dicke Berta into the monument.28 Such small-scale action ‘from below’ was of vital importance to rehearse and hammer home the central message of an iron-nail figure established ‘from above’. Communal elites could prepare the ground for the memorial rite, but could not endow it with meaning and purpose. A situation of give-and-take or mutual conditioning existed between the organisers and participants of iron-nail events. The war landmark of Essen, named the ‘Blacksmith of Essen’, actually featured a stylised warrior armed with a sword and shield rather than a working-man.29 The local newspaper tried to clarify this ambiguity, explaining that the monument figured Wieland the Smith—Wieland, the defiant hammersmith of Germanic saga revived
26 Gelsenkirchener Allgemeine Zeitung 195 (21 Aug. 1915); StdA Gelsenkirchen, GE/ XVIII/14/15. 27 Essener Volks-Zeitung 160 (11 June 1915). 28 StdA Essen, Rep. 102, Abt. I, Nr. 1012. 29 Lasius (1916), p. 135.
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Fig. 3. ‘Blacksmith of Essen’ (Schmeid von Essen) depicted on a souvenir postcard, Figure designed by Edmund Körner, Essen, 1915 (StdA Essen, Bildsammlung D 3/8; Photography: Stadtbildstelle Essen).
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Fig. 4. ‘Iron Blacksmith’ (Eiserner Schmied ) captured in a photograph taken prior to the unveiling. Figure designed by Friedrich Bagdons, Hagen, 1915 (StdA Hagen, FH 80).
in the previous century.30 Nineteenth-century identity politics had furnished a repertoire of cultural forms which could be drawn on during the war.31 Allusions to Germanic mythology were the com30 31
Rheinisch-Westfälischer Anzeiger 160 (11 June 1915); see Adams (1984). Goebel (2002).
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mon currency of war landmarks in the Ruhr industrial basin. The ‘Blacksmith of Bochum’, too, invoked the legend of Wieland the Smith, while the iron-nail memorial of Mülheim figured ‘Young Siegfried in Iron’—Siegfried the archetypal warrior-cum-worker who famously forged his own sword. The ‘Blacksmith of Essen’ followed in the footsteps of Wieland the Smith, the artisan turned avenger. Like his legendary predecessor, the ‘Blacksmith of Essen’ transformed from a peace-loving worker into a tough fighter revenging himself on his enemies. The transformation of the smith’s character has been captured in a poem specially composed for the launch of the Essen war landmark. The contrast between the first (peaceful) and the last (aggressive) stanza illustrates this point: We salute you, Blacksmith of Essen. In your mantle with sword and shield! Defiantly fearless, yet not bold, Rises your robust oak statue. In the time of peace and glory You worked at the hot hearth. Without a let-up you have forged The Reich’s cutting sword.
Sei gegrüßt, du Schmied von Essen. In dem Schurz mit Schwert und Schild! Trotzig kühn, doch nicht vermessen, Ragt dein kernig Eichenbild. In den Zeiten ruhumfriedet Schafftest Du am heißen Herd. Hast ohn’ Unterlaß geschmiedt An des Reiches scharfem Schwert.
[. . .]
[. . .]
Be steadfast, Blacksmith of Essen, In your heavy iron armour! Blows, plentiful and heavy, Rained down on the enemy army; Blows shall rain down furthermore, Until the enemy is flattened— Until the bells jubilantly resound— And the good law has triumphed.—
Stehe fest, du Schmied von Essen, In der Rüstung eisenschwer! Schläge, stark und reich bemessen, Fielen auf der Feinde Heer; Schläge sollen weiter fallen, Bis der Feind am Boden liegt— Bis die Glocken jubelned hallen— Und das gute Recht gesiegt.—32
Established as early as July 1915, the ‘Blacksmith of Essen’, designed by Edmund Körner, was the first large-scale war landmark in the Ruhr. It set a trend. Other cities in the region followed suit. In November 1915, the city of Hagen saw the unveiling of the ‘Iron Blacksmith’ (fig. 4). Although a naturalistic statue of a blacksmith holding a hammer and leaning casually on his anvil, the inauguration
32
Rheinisch-Westfälischer Anzeiger 205 (26 July 1915).
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ceremony resonated with martial overtones. The mayor of Hagen shaped the image of the Janus-faced blacksmith, who—similar to the ‘Blacksmith of Essen’—is a busy worker in peacetime but shows his aggressive face in wartime: calm and conscious of its strength like this blacksmith of Hagen stood the entire German people, united in its wish to swing the hammer for the sake of diligent work, for peaceful work for all mankind. But when the storm broke which should have shattered Germany, when the people of all continents, all colours, all races were set after us, the smith swung his mighty hammer and let it whiz down on the enemies. ruhig und seiner Kraft bewußt wie dieser Schmied von Hagen stand das ganze deutsche Volk, in dem Wunsch, den Hammer zu emsiger Arbeit zu schwingen, zur Friedensarbeit für die gesamte Menschheit. Aber als der Sturm losbrach, der Deutschland zerschmettern sollte, als die Völkerschaften aller Erdteile, aller Farben, aller Rassen gegen uns losgelassen wurden, da schwang der Schmied seinen mächtigen Hammer und ließ ihn auf die Feinde niedersausen.33
Taking his cue from the mayor’s address, another speaker interpreted the war landmark as a warning “that, in future, we must not be the anvil but must be the hammer whose enormous blow secures peace in the world” (“daß wir in Zukunft nicht mehr Amboß sein dürfen, sondern Hammer sein müssen, dessen gewaltiger Schlag der Welt Frieden sichert”).34 Several participants reiterated this sentiment. Under the motto “Hit ‘im hard, blacksmith” (“Schloa dropp, Schmied”), a Sunday school drove nails into the war landmark. And when the lawyers of Hagen did their bit to complete the monument, they coined the phrase “May Germany be the hammer, and the enemy be the anvil” (“Hammer sei Deutschland, Amboß der Feind’).35 Hagen’s industrial workers, ennobled as the ‘descendants of the former hammer smiths” (“Nachfahren der ehemaligen Hammerschmiede”), enjoyed the special privilege of leaving their iron mark on the smith’s weapon, his hammer.36 Intended as a unifying force and as a symbol of the local community in a time of national crisis, the ‘Iron Blacksmith’ became a bone of contention. A bitter dispute over the prize-winning design 33 34 35 36
StdA Ibid., Ibid., StdA
Hagen, 456, p. 22. p. 18. p. 56; Lorenz (1994), p. 203. Hagen, 456, pp. 66–7.
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by Friedrich Bagdons arose between the conservative city fathers and Hagen’s most prominent citizen, Karl Ernst Osthaus. In the eyes of Osthaus, founder of the Folkwang Museum in Hagen (now in Essen) and a long-standing promoter of the European avant-garde, Bagdons’s figure violated all aesthetic standards. Osthaus denounced the artwork as a “naturalistic Zeus disguised as a blacksmith” (“naturalistische, als Schmied verkleidete Zeus”) and as a “showy muscular demigod” (“mit Muskeln prunkender Halbgott”).37 A patron of modern art, Osthaus endorsed an alternative design he himself had commissioned by his friend and protégé, the Brücke-artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner.38 Eager to carve a niche for himself in the profitable business of propaganda, Kirchner produced three versions of a blacksmith. Osthaus was thrilled. He put Kirchner’s primitive-looking, roughlyhewn models on a par with one of Germany’s finest pieces of medieval sculpture, the Roland column of Bremen.39 In order to drive his point home, Osthaus enlisted the support of Botho Graef, professor of archaeology and art history at the University of Jena. Graef characterised medieval art as the prime expression of the Nordic-German spirit. The expert certified that the intense artistic quality of medieval German sculpture also pervaded Kirchner’s work. Furthermore, Graef echoed Osthaus’s disparagement of antiquity. He concluded that Greek gods were alien to German culture: “We are not Greeks, we do not wish to be and also cannot be Greeks” (“Wir sind keine Griechen, wir wollen und können auch keine Griechen sein”).40 Osthaus’s campaign created a great deal of noise but came to nought. In the event, Bagdons’s figure was inaugurated with pomp and circumstance whereas Kirchner’s designs ended up in the Folkwang Museum. Osthaus was no stranger to controversy. Only a few months prior to the outbreak of war, he and his modernist disciples had clashed with the traditionalist majority over another sculpture of a blacksmith. Commissioned for a bridge in Hagen, the stylised figure of the pensive ‘Blacksmith’ by Milly Steger had failed to please the local dignitaries who had a penchant for things naturalistic and
37
Osthaus (1915a) and (1915b). Hesse-Frielinghaus (1974), pp. 21–4; Diers (1993), pp. 26–30; Soika (2001), pp. 111–36. 39 Osthaus (1915a); see Diers (1993). 40 Graef (1915). 38
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heroic.41 Undeterred by this set-back, Steger took part again in the 1915 competition for the iron-nail memorial. To be sure, her second attempt was doomed from the outset. Designing a war landmark was considered a man’s business. Osthaus had tried to capitalise on this prejudice by selling Kirchner as soldier and volunteer. War landmarks shaped a gendered image of the industrial home front. The presence of women in factories notwithstanding, war landmarks in the Ruhr celebrated the male war worker (analogous to the soldier) as the epitome of manliness and war work (analogous to war) as a trial of masculinity.
Archaic Modernity In conclusion, iron-nail war landmarks in the Ruhr cultivated the image of the war worker as a heroic warrior on a par with the frontline soldier of the First World War. War landmarks conveyed the idea that the German fortune of war was inextricably intertwined with the war effort of heavy industry in the Ruhr industrial basin. ‘Coal and Sword’, the title of a war landmark in Dortmund, thus formed an imagined symbiosis which sustained the battle of matériel.42 The nailing ritual in general mobilised and integrated people from all social strata; it was devised to iron out the gulf between home and front. What distinguished the Ruhr region from the rest of Germany was that here the signifying practice helped to crystallise local pride into a coherent vision of the home front as a genuine second front. The claim of the Ruhr region to embody the home front derived from the modernity of the machine war. The great battle of matériel was contingent on industrial supply. Paradoxically, the industrial home front represented itself—and hence the very modernity of the war—in archaic imagery. Evocations of legendary heroes such as Roland or mythical warrior-cum-worker figures like Wieland and Siegfried harked back to pre-existing frames of reference which had been revived or reinvented during the nineteenth century. Recourse to notations which had proved a powerful mobilising force in the
41 42
Schmieder (1998), pp. 53–4; generally, see Mommsen (1994). StdA Dortmund, 204/02–120; see Lurz (1985), pp. 127–8.
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age of nationalism, was an act of pragmatism rather than an expression of ‘anti-modernism’: tried and tested, archaic symbolism was embedded in the ‘collective memory’ of the nation and thus available for instant recall at a time of crisis. Archaic modernity was the issue of a wedding between industrialised warfare and traditional forms of language, perception and signifying practice. This anachronistic amalgam is illustrative of the dialectic relationship between the old and the new, between the traditional and the modern in twentiethcentury cultural history.43
Coda It is an irony of history that archaic imagery, instrumental in forging the image of the industrial home front during the Great War, was also tailor-made for right-wing agitation after 1918. The DolchstoßLegende was in essence a fragment taken from the Nibelungen story: like the brave Siegfried, the victorious German army had been betrayed and killed from behind.44 Industrial strikes and the November Revolution had allegedly robbed the army of a Siegfrieden, literally ‘victory-peace’. Despite the emergence of the ‘stab-in-the-back legend’, the heroic worker ‘of the greatest armoury of our fatherland’ (‘der größten Waffenschmiede unseres Vaterlandes’) made a reappearance in war remembrance.45 A Bochum ironworks erected a war memorial to workers killed in the war in Stahlhausen featuring a monumental, twelve-metres high sword. The sculpture was flanked by two reliefs showing the sword’s production (a muscular, nude blacksmith) and use (Siegfried slaying the dragon). The ceremonial unveiling took place in autumn 1934, and the local newspaper highlighted ‘the happy concurrence of the completion of the memorial with the birth of the Third Reich’ (‘das glückhafte Zusammentreffen der Bauausführung mit der Geburt des 3. Reiches’).46 When the Nazis came into power, they re-mobilised Siegfried to forge anew the Reich’s sword. In 1936, the Krupp plant in Rheinhausen saw the unveiling of a nine-metres tall statue of a mighty 43 44 45 46
Winter (1995), pp. 1–11; see also Leed (1979), pp. 115, 139–44. Münkler and Storch (1988); Schivelbusch (2001), pp. 245–5. Müller-Loebnitz (1931), p. 1. Westfälische Volks-Zeitung 195 (25 Aug. 1934); see Lurz (1986), p. 218.
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Siegfried holding his huge sword aloft in a gesture of defiance. The figure was intended to be ‘a memorial to the 547 fallen workers of the Friedrich Alfred Works in Rheinhausen, and a symbol of the new youthful strength of our defensive Volk to the living workers’ (‘den 547 Gefallenen der Friedrich-Alfred-Hütte in Rheinhausen ein ehrendes Mal, den lebenden Werkleuten aber ein Symbol der neuen jugendlichen Kraft unseres wehrhaften Volkes’).47 In Hagen, Bagdons’s ‘Iron Blacksmith’ was restored to favour and exhibited in front of the town hall on the occasion of the unveiling of a bust of the new Reichsschmied, Adolf Hitler, in 1934. Kirchner’s figures, too, were dusted off and prominently displayed—in the exhibition of so-called ‘Degenerate Art’ in Munich in 1937.48
B Archival Sources Stadtarchiv Dortmund 204/02–120, Kriegswahrzeichen ‘Kohle und Schwert’, 1917. Stadtarchiv Düsseldorf XXIV 1179, Denkmäler, 1932–7. Stadtarchiv Essen Bildsammlung D3/6–10, Photos and Postcards, 1915. Rep. 102, Abt. I, Nr. 1012, Der ‘Schmied von Essen’, 1915. Stadtarchiv Gelsenkirchen GE/XVIII/14/15, Errichtung ‘Das Schwert von Gelsenkirchen’, 1915. Stadtarchiv Hagen 456, Der Eiserne Schmied von Hagen: Das Erste Jahr seiner Geschichte (Hagen: 1916). 809/0, Der ‘Eiserne Schmied’, 1915–9. 4102, Sammlung ‘Eiserner Schmied’, 1920–3. Stadtarchiv Recklinghausen Fotoarchiv 404305/1–27, ‘Eiserner Bergmann’, 1916. Stadtarchiv Schwerte B 6854, Nagelung im neuen Rathaus, 1916–20.
Printed Sources Adams M. (1984) ‘Metaphern der affirmativen Weltkriegslyrik’, in Ansichten vom Krieg: Vergleichende Studien zum Ersten Weltkrieg in Literatur und Gesellschaft, ed. B. Hüppauf (Königstein: 1984) 221–8.
47
Düsseldorfer Nachrichten 125 (9 March 1936); StdA Düsseldorf, XXIV 1179, fol. 32. Heldenbuchkommission (1936), pp. 434–8; see Diers (1993), p. 30; Lorenz (1994), p. 207. 48
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Reulecke J. (1974) ‘Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Arbeiterbewegung im rheinischwestfälischen Industriegebiet’, in Arbeiterbewegung an Rhein und Ruhr: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Arbeiterbewegung in Rheinland-Westfalen, ed. J. Reulecke (Wuppertal: 1974) 205–39. Roshwald A. and R. Stites, eds. (1999) European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: 1999). Rudolph H. (1996) ‘Männerikonographie: Dimensionen von Männlichkeit in der Wirtschaftswerbung während des Ersten Weltkrieges in Deutschland und England’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte 36 (1996) 257–78. Russell M.A. (2000) ‘The building of Hamburg’s Bismarck Memorial, 1898–1906’, Historical Journal 46 (2000) 133–56. Schivelbusch W. (2001) Die Kultur der Niederlage: Der amerikanische Süden 1865, Frankreich 1871, Deutschland 1918 (Berlin: 2001). Schmieder P. (1998) ‘“Allerlei Verschönerungen”: Der Schmied von Milly Steger in den Mühlen der städtischen Verwaltung’, in Die Grenzen des Frauseins aufheben: Die Bildhauerin Milly Steger 1881–1948, eds. B. Schulte and E. Ranfft (Hagen: 1998) 44–59. Schneider G. (1996) ‘Über hannoversche Nagelfiguren im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Hannoversche Geschichtsblätter 50 (1996) 207–58. —— (1999) ‘Zur Mobilisierung der “Heimatfront”: Das Nageln sogenannter Kriegswahrzeichen im Ersten Weltkrieg’, Zeitschrift für Volkskunde 95 (1999) 32–62. Soika A.R. (2001) ‘The public face of German expressionism: a study of the Brücke artists’ interior designs’, Ph.D. thesis (Cambridge: 2001). Spilker R. and B. Ulrich, eds. (1998) Der Tod als Maschinist: Der industrialisierte Krieg 1914–1918 (Bramsche: 1998). Thier D. (1994) ‘Das Kriegswahrzeichen von Wetter (Ruhr): die Nagelspende, das Eiserne Schwert’, in Projekte: Landeskundliche Studien im Bereich des mittleren Ruhrtals, eds. H.-F. Kniehase and D. Thier (Wetter: 1994) 212–27. Verhey J. (2000) The Spirit of 1914: Militarism, Myth, and Mobilization in Germany (Cambridge: 2000). Winter J. (1995) Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: 1995). —— and B. Baggett (1996) The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (New York: 1996). —— and J.-L. Robert (1997) Capital Cities at War: Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919 (Cambridge: 1997).
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THE GREAT WAR BETWEEN DEGENERATION AND REGENERATION Jean-Yves Le Naour
On 16 August 1914 the highly conservative Cardinal Baudrillart expressed his delight at the declaration of war: “These events are highly satisfactory . . . they have been my hope for forty years . . . France is being reborn, and in my view she could not be reborn otherwise than through a purifying war”.1 Seen as a salutary and semi-miraculous halt to the gangrene that had been poisoning France ever since 1871, war was imagined by nationalists as the regeneration of an ancient nation in decline, rediscovering its force and its soul in the purifying blood bath. This theme, based on individual and national revitalisation—both physical and moral—lies at the heart of those first months of the Great War. It accompanied a drive towards higher moral standards, through a constructive period of challenge enabling a finer France to arise, stripped of the ugly features of pre-war days. And yet the hope of a better world being borne in by means of the baptismal font of the trenches was a slow process. This dream of regeneration, which imagined the front lines running through the Nation and dwelt on the enemy within, diminished slowly from 1915 onwards and vanished entirely in 1917 and 1918. Henceforward the idea of war as a purifying experience was presented as destructive and demoralising, and those same people who had praised it at the time of mobilisation came to fear a breakdown and overturning of norms, permanently compromising the ideal City dreamed of in 1914.2 Understanding the theme of regeneration requires a longer-term perspective than a narrow focus on the war years allows. The hope of purification through blood bath was a response to the period 1871–1914, years that were presented as a time of degeneration and retrogression. Later on, this unsatisfied dream of a rejuvenated France
1 2
Quoted by Becker (1980), p. 10. For this moral reading of the war, Le Naour (2002).
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lived on throughout the inter-war years, ending with a brief revival in the National Revolution of the Vichy regime and its Etat Français. Although the myth of regeneration had currency between 1871 and 1944, the First World War appears as a critical period, which should therefore be viewed in wider context. This paper therefore hopes to contribute to a change of perspective that will perhaps lead to a more effective interpretation of the ‘war culture’, thus located in a broader time span.
Regenerative War Right-wing nationalists have passed severe judgement on the years 1871–1914: at best these were years of immobility, more accurately they were years of decline and abdication, and a time of regrettable triumphs: of the republic and of democracy, of atheism, bourgeois home comforts and assorted forms of leisure. Such were the many elements of decay leading an ancient nation inescapably towards its death through the termination of its ancestral qualities, blood and tradition. Like a plant that had exhausted the richness of its soil, the French nation, once dominant, came to be seen as fading inexorably towards its final disappearance. The morals of the French, in this view, were seen as so profoundly poisoned through pornography, the pursuit of pleasure, materialism, the nation’s blood so corrupted by syphilis, alcohol and debauchery, that there could be scarcely any means of escape. France was advancing towards its own suicide. The explanation of these reactionary Cassandras for the steady and inevitable decline of France, of which low demographic growth was merely one of the most vivid features, invoked the theory of degeneration. Originally a medical term, the expression ‘degeneration’ was invented in the eighteenth century to designate an organ that was no longer useful. After the publication in 1857 of Dr Benedict-Augustin Morel’s Traité des dégénérescences physiques et morales de l’espèce humaine the term was used to indicate ‘a sickly deviation from the normal human type,’3 identifying a change that was not only moral and physical but also morbid and above all hereditary. This concept was subsequently extended to the whole species, and
3
Coffin (1993), p. 82.
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reinforced by social Darwinism, finally entered the political vocabulary to be applied to the French race and nation as a whole.4 The scientific origins of the definition of degeneration only served to enhance its significance since it reinforced the sense of its inevitability, just as the theories based on biological determinism, widespread at the end of the century, undermined the idea of free choice and of individual autonomy. Degeneration was thus an essentially reactionary theme, which served to stigmatise the republican régime and the moral, political and material evolution of society. This was an evolution that was perceived to be destructive of the traditional checks and balances that were supposedly essential to national identity. To this way of thinking, war heralded an opportunity for rebirth. Regeneration, its counterpart, is more complex: it belonged to the same political tradition, in that it presented the possibility of reversing the mechanism of degeneration through a return to lost virtues and qualities, but it was none the less a consequence of the French Revolution and of a political voluntarism which is atypical in the value-system of the Right. The concept of regeneration in fact arose on ‘the Left’, invented by French revolutionaries to characterise the break with the Ancien regime, which they saw as a period of corruption and ultra-conservatism. It spoke highly of the forward march of a new man in a new society.5 Revolutionary socialism and syndicalism retained part of this heritage, depicting a bourgeois world at the end of its trajectory and on the point of collapse, it had fulfilled its role in history and was breaking up under the blows of an imminently victorious proletariat. And it was no doubt as a function of this socialist messianism, of the society of the future in which men will be more equal, better educated, better cared for—in other words, happier— that no genuine counter-argument against regeneration existed in 1914. Simply because on the Right as on the Left, there was faith in the theory of Good coming out of evil, faith in a world rid once and for all of future wars, faith in the victory of right, justice, moral good over power and immorality, faith in a better society in the post-war era that would be created out of the ruins of evil Germany
4 5
For a rigorous analysis of this concept, see Carol (1995). On this revolutionary project, see Ozouf (1989); de Baecque (1988).
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(for the nationalist) or the destruction of German militarism (for the socialist). The revival of old forms of reference to the troops of the revolutionary Year II by the Left, of France as the champion of freedoms struggling against tyranny, thus culminated in support of the rallying-cry for war—it would be undoubtedly painful, but it was presented as a defence and not as a betrayal. The theme of regeneration, so politically marked, was thus to be promoted at the heart of speeches in the opening period of the war. Alongside this, the inevitable references from the Right took root: the sacralisation of the army, hatred for ‘the other’ raised to the rank of a system, the unity of all members of the French national family against a common enemy in a fight to the death. In this respect Charles Maurras, leader of Action française, could congratulate himself and say that he had seen clearly, that his struggles against the anti-France was one of right, that he had done well in “mounting guard to protect the sinews of France”.6 The myth of the ‘Sacred Union’, the union sacrée, according to which the entire French nation overcame its social and political divisions in unity, also confirmed the nationalists’ point of view. For them, there was only a single and united family facing the challenge: It seems that there are no longer rich or poor, middle class or working class; on public transport people greet each other, talk together, like a single great family stirred by the same feelings, facing the fearful drama being played out along the frontier.7
This meant that divisions were merely apparent and superficial; Maurice Barrès saw here the confirmation of his theory of ‘the land and the dead’, the significance of heredity, the law of blood and race far above political and rational determination. Even Ferdinand Buisson, a man of the Left and chairman of the League for the Rights of Man, was won over by the enthusiasm for the Union sacrée and claimed that: that which divides us is entirely on the surface, and that which brings us together is at the heart of ourselves and at the heart of France.8
6 7 8
Maurras (1916), see dedication. Michaux (1916) p. 23. Buisson (1918) pp. 287–288.
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Were not differences of attitude—spiritual, social, political—unimportant when it came to “life or death for France”?9 In reality, this consensual discourse deluded itself on the true meaning of the union sacrée, revealed by Jean-Jacques Becker to have been above all an inter-party truce and not a merger.10 Yet it is none the less true that it did not form part of the mythology of the socialist and republican Left, and Michel Winock is right to see here a revenge of the anti-Dreyfusards celebrating a “nationalism of reconciliation”.11 Whatever the truth may be, faced with a situation that had an element of inevitability, the war was seen as a sort of miracle disturbing the apathy of a race that had been said to be condemned to death through history and biology. In echo of some intellectuals for whom, as for the Italian Futurists in the years leading up to 1914, war represented the cleansing of the world, the conflict was linked to a kind of ‘therapeutic process’.12 It was an almost unhopedfor awakening and the victory of the Marne a ‘miracle’ which showed the world that France was capable of a leap forward, that she could overcome her recent weaknesses. Her blood may have become corrupted and enfeebled, but the nation had spoken with a sublime conclusive strength: the French had won back their integrity in the purifying bloodbath. Life in the trenches, it was thought, contributed powerfully to this regeneration. A superb lesson in hygiene, it demonstrated to the soldiers the virtues of a healthy and natural way of life of which they had been ignorant until that moment, smothered as they had been in civilian life through modern comforts and the lack of physical exercise. As a consequence, in December 1914 the academician Boutroux was able to assert that the war was a beneficial physical discipline, for it led the mobilised men to adopt healthy ways: sobriety, endurance, versatility, a capacity for extraordinary effort, stubborn resistance to weariness and to sufferings of all kinds. [. . .] It makes us think about the physical qualities that everyone needs at all times [. . .] It gives us the vivid feeling of the intrinsic and absolute value of a fine, energetic and healthy body, the full and freely flourishing work of nature.13
9 10 11 12 13
Journal des Praticiens, 1915, p. cvii, ‘Le relèvement’. Becker (1977), (1988). Winock (1999) pp. 162–174. Prochasson, Rasmussen (1996). Boutroux (1916) pp. 20–21.
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To those who might doubt the benefits of life in the trenches, early in 1915 a naive doctor asserted in the columns of La Lanterne that not only was the body hardened but the mind was calmer, given that ‘the exhausting and wearisome minor problems of ordinary life’ have disappeared.14 As Gustave Le Bon concluded, ‘Long live the trench’—‘many a soldier will miss it.’15 This myth of the purifying bloodbath was also based as much on a religious understanding of the war, which saw it as a redemptive challenge, as on a revolutionary view in which, to echo La Marseillaise, ‘the unclean enemy blood will soak into the furrows of a more beautiful France’. In its turn morality was forced into the heart of the conflict: faced with German brutality, ‘moral right will overcome’,16 (as the anti-pornography campaigner Albert Nast asserted) with war being seen as an immense ordeal in which victory can only belong to the forces of virtue and purity. In these circumstances it is easier to understand the accusations of immorality weighing on Germany that were based on a range of hate-filled arguments: from the easy virtue of German women compared to the French, to the unrestrained plunge into sexual activity and satisfaction of desires, covering rape and sexual brutality as well as ‘anti-natural’ habits said to be the habitual practice of Germans, including the Kaiser’s immediate entourage.17 In this manichean conflict the moralisation of French society was thus essential in order for Good to triumph over Evil; it was, moreover, an accompanying feature of the mobilisation. All stage premises closed their doors—theatres, dance halls, music halls and even brothels vanished as tenants were mobilised and clients vanished. Absinthe was one of the first victims of the war: it was banned in Paris in August 1914 and then, in March 1915, throughout the whole of France. Literature and the press depicted the indi-
14
La Lanterne, 18 February 1915, ‘La santé de nos soldats’. Le Bon (1916) p. 239. For an analysis of this book and also of the thinking of Gustave Le Bon, one of the masters of the revolutionary Right, see Rouvier (1986). 16 Nast (1916). 17 It is interesting to note that Germany, for its part, manifested the same undertaking as France. Already in 1870 the German historian Theodore Mommsen had deliberately discredited the morals of the French, a nation ‘which dreams of placing the world in subservience to the demi-monde’ and where literature ‘is as foul as the waters of the Seine in Paris’. It was then a matter of convincing the Italians of Germany’s just war and of persuading them not to form an alliance with the immoral French nation, Hartog (1988) p. 50. 15
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vidual transformation of the French people: homosexuals, a category illustrating the decadence of pre-war France (in the capacity of a counter-model to a strong and virile nation), repented of their past wrongs, prostitutes recognised the immorality of their activity and gave it up, warring couples were reconciled. But the immanent grace which followed mobilisation was only brief, and for high moral standards to be assured—in other words, for victory to be possible—it was important to undertake a campaign of moral purification, a supervision of everyone by everyone, and each individual by each individual.
War within War It was thus a veritable war-within-war that developed, with a proliferation of fronts against the enemy within. This interior enemy was even worse than Germany, for if the latter alone was defeated, the purification of France would have failed and she would be condemned to enervation and bastardisation. Clearly identified, these enemies represented every danger aimed at both the French nation and its soul, corrupting agents of the body and the mind, which include syphilis, prostitution, pornography and neo-malthusianism. The works of Alain Corbin have shown that syphilis was the great scientific fear of the turn of the century, with contemporaries fearing the gradual rotting of generations through accumulated morbid heredity.18 It was therefore not surprising, in this Great War, that for the first time the State undertook a vast planned campaign against venereal disease both in the army and at the rear, with the clearly stated aim of keeping troops fit for the moment of need, and to improve their number and quality for the future. Uncontrolled syphilis in effect was seen as a guarantee of failure through the reduced number of soldiers available to oppose the enemy, and also the greater defeat represented by the loss of those qualities proper to French blood. This is why victory, according to Dr Azoulay, would belong to “the nation which, in this respect, as in the wider respect of hygiene and social laws, will have led the field”.19 Soldiers suffering
18 19
Corbin (1977), (1981), (1998). La Vague (7 November 1918).
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from venereal disease were thus particularly harshly judged, for they were contributing to the degradation of France. Enclosed within hospitals in the military zone, they had no right to go out, were subject to calls to Stand To by day or night and dietary restriction, and deprived of leave while convalescent. Further, they were suspected of being bad Frenchmen, of having deliberately become infected in order to get away from the front line. Patriotic censure was highly prominent in anti-venereal disease speeches by specialist doctors attending soldiers at the front or the rear. “What will it benefit you to have saved France,” enquired Professor Gougerot, “if you then let our nation succumb to the onslaught of illness”.20 And the same propagandist addressed working women in the following terms: “Do not forget that you are French women [. . .] By preserving yourself from venereal illness, you will at the same time be preserving France”.21 In this way, enormous stakes rested on the shoulders of each individual, women at the rear and soldiers at the front who bore the double weight of protecting the nation, through fire-power against the German enemy and through chastity against disease. Once more, individual purity is expected to match purity of combat in the Great War. How otherwise could victory be expected? The struggle against prostitution with the promotion of hyper-regimentation within the army, going so far as the establishment of military brothels reserved for the troops and the administrative internment of prostitutes in the army zones, was associated with anti-venereal disease measures to ‘save the race’. In effect, prostitutes were seen as the principal vector for syphilis and thus the medical community was able to dream that “the fact of suppressing it would at the same time suppress the danger of venereal disease”.22 Prostitutes were more than a secondary danger, they took soldiers away from their duty, according to the traditional formula accompanying the official statement leading to their expulsion from the military zone, and threatened the stereotype of the chaste soldier who scorned the flesh and who directed all his strength to a high and noble purpose. Prostitutes were compared to ‘anthrax-bearing flies that buzz round large gatherings of men,’23 and were suspected of espionage in a sustained fan20 21 22 23
Gougerot (1919a). Gougerot (1919b) p. 35. Bouin (1920), foreword. ‘Aux abords des gares’, Le Siècle (20 September 1916).
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tasy that blended immorality with anti-patriotism. On 17 August 1914 the Sureté générale invited Prefects and sub-Prefects to order police raids on all houses of prostitution which, in this view, were suddenly seen as ‘focuses of espionage and places of refuge for suspect foreigners’. In Paris the prefecture of police also ordered repeated raids on the world of prostitution, but the fear was unjustified: not a single German spy was arrested. And yet the fantasies persisted. If the prostitute was not in direct enemy pay, she was none the less objectively linked to the enemy because she was the source of venereal contamination and contributed to ruining the blood of French men and reducing the numbers of the nation’s defenders. In addition, venereal infection might be part of a cynical plan, skilfully prepared by the Germans. L’Intransigeant denounced it: “It is all too easy, through a girl of easy virtue, to create a contact between the sons of whom we are so proud and enemy corruption”.24 As for pornography, it soiled the sources of life and, according to Georges Valois, exercised “the most pernicious influence on the future of the race”.25 In effect, by wearying its supporters, pornography led the French to sterility and threatened the model of self-struggle and self-mastery which contributed to the virtues of the virile man, according to George Mosse, and thus the virtues of the good soldier.26 Obscenity was therefore punished very strictly during the war and Pastor Louis Comte, director of the Relèvement social and member of the league for the improvement of public morality, wanted nothing less than the court-martialling of pornographers: “If they were shot, would you complain? I would not”.27 His assistant, Emile Pourésy, demonstrated that all immoral printed material available in France before 1914 was in fact produced in Germany, and was part of a plan for moral corruption that would triumph without the saving conflict.28 Would a French citizen be capable of operating against the interests of his race in this way? He declared: In order to win more easily and more surely over France, Germany has been undermining and sapping it since 1871 [. . .] Among the most odious and infamous means, we must note pornographic propaganda.
24 25 26 27 28
‘Boulevardiers suspects’, L’Intransigeant (9 January 1918). Valois (1918) p. 275. Mosse (1997). Le Relèvement social (February 1916). Pourésy (1916) pp. 2–7.
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- In this excremental domain, virtuous Germany acted with diabolical astuteness and cynicism.29
Neo-Malthusianism, finally, in a country marked by a low birth-rate and a natural increase of barely 20,000 compared to the 800,000 recorded in Germany each year, looked like a form of suicide and an anti-national phenomenon. Quite naturally the condom was also presented as a German product, very widely distributed in France to reduce her vitality and population. Already in 1913, L’oeuvre had stressed that ‘a well placed kilo of rubber matched the best of artillery units’.30 Emile Pourésy developed the idea: “With ten kilos of rubber Wilhelm II won a victory which eliminated thousands of future soldiers every year”.31 Strongly challenged before the war, neo-Malthusian publications were therefore censored in 14–18 and their propaganda became illegal after 1920. The few leading agents of immorality mentioned here are represented as significant examples; in fact all forms of behaviour that lay outside the traditional norm of sexual roles were potential threats to the moralisation of the nation and thus its victory. The soldier must be chaste, strong, brave and not fearful of death, and the woman at the rear must wait patiently for the heroes to return and beget more French children who would all be future soldiers. Anyone falling outside this norm, such as the adulterous woman, the venereal disease sufferer or the prostitute, was relentlessly excluded and rejected by the suffering community which accepted no deviation: the fallingaway of a single individual was capable of losing the group. Thus the process of moralisation which is above all an enterprise of normalisation led to exclusion, and we may apply Bossuet’s maxim to the war of 14–18: “The essential property of the unit is to exclude”. In this war of immense stakes, one could only belong to a single camp. Neutrality was not an option.
A Pointless War? The theme of regeneration, which was particularly strong and persistent in the first weeks of the war and through the first half of 29 30 31
Ibid., p. 2. ‘La guerre sans fusils’, L’œuvre (13 February 1913). Pourésy (1916) pp. 2–7.
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1915, faded noticeably thereafter and only resurfaced after the victory. Its form by then was much milder and very different from its 1914 style, and it died away altogether in 1919. The myth of regeneration suffered from various countervailing facts: the realities of modern warfare were a far cry from the dreams of the moralists. The trench as cleansing restorative for the fragile constitution, the beauty of sacrifice, the pure and noble soldier of picture postcards; all enraged the ordinary soldier who heard such phrases. Public speakers who came to their military camps to remind them of the benefits of chastity similarly encountered the liveliest hostility.32 Battles which should have delivered higher moral standards and ensured the renewal of France came to an end in setbacks: contemporaries had the impression of an atmosphere of a cloud of venereal infections—the fruit of fantasy rather than reality—of a proliferation of prostitutes, particularly close to stations, ready to meet the pressing demands of soldiers returning from the front line, and of the hitherto unparalleled expansion at the rear of festivity and the search for pleasure. Indeed, by the end of 1914 places of entertainment were open again, although with restricted hours and under the requirement to pay a luxury tax of 10 per cent of receipts. The movement expanded in 1915, justifying itself through the need to provide distraction for soldiers on leave even though the majority of spectators were civilians getting away from the burdens of war; and in 1917–1918 Paris won back its reputation as a modern Babylon, the capital city of pleasure.33 The historian and war veteran Gabriel Perreux referred to this as a “continual jazz dance which prefigured the Roaring Twenties,”34 a memory cut short in our view by the bitterness of soldiers who rejected the right of civilians to enjoy themselves when they, the soldiers, were under duress. And yet they did not deprive themselves when they had a chance to enjoy themselves, and theatrical performances for the troops were a success. This presented the moralisers with their greatest difficulty: the soldiers who were described as chaste, strong, enduring, and stripped
32 Emile Pourésy, general secretary for the Ligue pour le Relèvement de la moralité publique (League for the Improvement of public morals) had the greatest difficulty in making himself heard during his moral speeches at the front, where he suffered jibes, general laughter and personal hostility, Pourésy (1928). 33 Le Naour (2001). 34 Perreux (1966).
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of the base concerns of civilian life, revealed themselves as loving drink and women, coarse and vulgar in their speech and thought. Paul Bureau’s Catholic and pro-natality review, Pour la Vie, found this difficult to accept: Heroes in the front line but all too often louts at the rear, our compatriots who died so nobly do not know how to live well. At the Marne and the Yser, at Verdun, they have earned the admiration of the world but afterwards, at the rear, with their obsession with drink and street girls, they are going the right way to attract scorn.35
Behaviour at the rear was no better than soldiers’ behaviour, in truth, moralists observed the triumph of egotism, of the independence of women whose factory work took them away from motherhood and closer to prostitution, adultery, free living and the passion for living for the delight of the present moment. Disorientated, turning back sadly from the dream of regeneration, they henceforward considered the war as responsible for every evil. ‘The war is the end of everything,’ wrote the soldier Emile Poiteau: I have seen [. . .] nothing but loose morals, broken households, a lamentable letting go in homes where life and free love were eagerly welcomed. Everywhere I have found nothing but a permanent concern for one’s own well-being and oneself, a savage egotism which justifies the pessimism of the moralist, for more than ever in this war, human forces are poured out in its interests like rivers into the sea . . . And so I have come to the conclusion of the disgusted soldiers: the war is the end of everything!36
In contrast to the earlier dreams of regeneration, Louis Fiaux spoke in 1917 of a ‘regressive revolution’,37 but all were agreed thereafter, at the end of the war, on the impossible match between moral standards and the armed forces. What could be done? Not one of the dangers and risks that threatened France in 1914 had been eliminated. Indeed, they had become more terrifying with the overturning of points of reference and the transgression of norms hardened beyond belief by the war. The task of moralising the country was proving still greater and more pressing because decadence had increased considerably in strength. The same arguments as in the
35 36 37
‘Terrible bilan’, Pour la vie (April 1919). Poiteau (1926) p. 13. Fiaux (1917) p. vi.
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pre-war period thus persisted in the post-war days, but the moralists who defended regeneration had lost the support that was naturally theirs in 1914–1918. And so ‘We lost the war’ became, post-victory, the anthem of a persistent discourse in a morally weakened France, won over by pacifism, and where a considerable number of veterans felt that they had been tricked and manipulated, that even their sexual identity had been undermined by female emancipation, the result of the absence of men for four years. Something was broken: everything happened as if, in a remarkable paradox, moralisation pushed to the extreme had produced demoralisation and had undermined social structures. In contrast with the forms of fascism that were to take on the dream of regeneration and exalt force as a way of revitalising the race and constructing a new mankind, French moralists, right across to the extreme Right, henceforward disregarded war as a means of regeneration. “Since the war was the greatest form of immorality, it is incapable of creating any moral standards other than the worst of moral standards,” wrote the anti-pornographer Emile Pourésy in his memoirs in 1928—he who had believed so strongly, in 1914, in the moralisation of France through trial. The hope of a physical and moral revitalisation might persist in nationalist ranks but the myth of the purifying war was dead. Thus the declaration of war in 1939 did not provoke the same dreams and illusions as in 1914. It was only with the defeat of 1940 and the coming to power of the reactionary and revolutionary Right that one can identify a third age of regeneration. The first was revolutionary, seeking to accompany the radical transformation of society with a radical transformation of Frenchmen into citizens. The second, that in the 19th century, took on the weight of a scientific definition in accord with social Darwinism, and saw itself as above all a reactionary undertaking. For Gustave Le Bon, the First World War could be compared to the French Revolution, to that vast upheaval which shook body and soul. In 1916 he wrote: ‘We have perhaps reached one of those periods in history when, as at the time of the French Revolution, men changed their ideals, their principles and their élites’38 But that was merely a reference to form and not to fundamentals, for the model proposed for regeneration in 1914
38
Le Bon (1916).
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was one of a return to religion, to the qualities of blood and race corrupted by foreign elements. Similarly, the ideal of the good French man and woman in fact refers back towards traditionalism, towards the reaction to an evolution of morals seen as dangerous and destructive of national identity. The third dream of regeneration, promoted by Charles Maurras as this ‘divine surprise,’ was the result of defeat as thoroughly as its predecessor was supposed to be promulgated by victory. It included an element of reaction that brought it close to that of 1914, but also of revolution in the sense of a purification and a total mobilisation of individuals only partly achieved by the First World War in which the ‘new man’ was specifically more old than new. In 1944, in the advance of victory over Nazism, in the enthusiasm for the Liberation and a world to be rebuilt, the myth of regeneration finally vanished with the theme of decadence-degeneration that sustained it. With it, society’s mourning for the Great War came to an end, and if the myth of purification through spilled blood died in Germany, as George Mosse has shown,39 it had already been dead for more than two decades in the case of the French, buried with other illusions in the trenches of Argonne, Champagne or of Verdun.
B Baecque (de) A (1988) ‘L’homme nouveau est arrivé. La régénération du Français en 1789’ in Dix-huitième siècle 20 (1988) 193–208. Becker J.-J. (1977) Comment les Français sont entrés en guerre (Paris: 1977). —— (1980) Les Français dans la Grande Guerre (Paris: 1980). —— (1988) La France en guerre. La grande mutation (Paris: 1988). Bouin G. (1920) La lutte contre le péril vénérien et l’expérience de la IXe région, (Paris: 1920). Boutroux E. (1916) La guerre et la vie de demain (Paris: 1916). Buisson F. (1918) ‘L’union sacrée après la guerre’ in L’Union morale (April-July 1918) 287–288. Carol A. (1995) Histoire de l’eugénisme en France (Paris: 1995). Coffin J.-C. (1993) Le corps social en accusation: le thème de la dégénerescence en France et en Italie (1850–1900), Doctoral thesis (Paris: 1993). Corbin A. (1977) ‘Le péril vénérien au début du siècle: prophylaxie sanitaire et prophylaxie morale’, Recherches (1977) 245–283 —— (1981) ‘L’hérédosyphilis ou l’impossible Rédemption’, Romantisme 32 (1981) —— (1998) Le temps, de désir et l’horreur (Paris: 1998). Fiaux L. (1917) L’armée et la police des mœurs, biologie sexuelle du soldat, essai moral et statistique (Paris: 1917).
39
Mosse (1999).
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Gougerot (1919a) Conférence antivénérienne faite à des officiers et à des soldats (Melun: 1919). —— (1919b) Conférence antivénérienne faite à des ouvrières (Melun: 1919). Hartog F. (1988) Le XIX e siècle et l’histoire. Le cas Fustel de Coulanges (Paris: 1988). Le Bon G. (1916) Enseignements psychologiques de la guerre moderne (Paris: 1916). Le Naour J.-Y. (2001) ‘Laughter and tears in the Great War: the need for laughter, the guilt of humour’, Journal of European Studies XXXI (2001) 265–275. —— (2002) Misères et tourments de la chair durant la Grande Guerre (Paris: 2002). Maurras C. (1916) Les conditions de la victoire (Paris: 1916). Michaux J. (1916) En marge du drame, journal d’une Parisienne (Paris: 1916). Mosse G.L. (1997) L’image de l’homme. L’invention de la virilité moderne (Paris: 1997). —— (1999) De la Grande Guerre au totalitarisme. La brutalisation des sociétés européennes (Paris: 1999). Nast A. (1916) La vie morale et la guerre (Paris: 1916). Ozouf M. (1989) L’Homme régénéré (Paris: 1989). Perreux G. (1966) La vie quotidienne des civils en France pendant la Grande Guerre (Paris: 1966). Poiteau E. (1926) Les coulisses de l’épopée (Paris: 1926). Pourésy E. (1916) Masques arrachés (Bordeaux: 1916). —— (1928) Souvenirs de vingt-cinq années de lutte contre l’immoralité publique (Bordeaux: 1928). Prochasson C., A. Rasmussen (1996) Au nom de la patrie. Les intellectuels et la Première Guerre mondiale (Paris: 1996). Rouvier C. (1986) Les idées politiques de Gustave Le Bon (Paris: 1986). Valois G. (1918) Le cheval de Troie (Paris: 1918). Winock M. (1999) Le siècle des intellectuels (Paris: 1999).
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‘GLADDER TO BE GOING OUT THAN AFRAID’: SHELLSHOCK AND HEROIC MASCULINITY IN BRITAIN, 1914–1919 Jessica Meyer
In The Image of Man, George Mosse claims that modern masculinity emerged as ‘part of a general quest for symbols in order to make the abstract concrete within the bewildering changes of modernity.’1 Mosse argues that, in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain and Germany, an unchanging stereotype of masculinity emerged that was used by the State to reinforce its legitimacy. This stereotype was defined by a number of elements, including physical fitness, male beauty, courage, self-control and duty. This paper examines how two elements associated with ideals of masculinity, self-control and duty, were, for British doctors and soldiers, challenged during the First World War by the psychological condition know as ‘shellshock’. In exploring how doctors specializing in the treatment of shellshock, and ordinary soldiers who both suffered from and observed the condition, described and discussed shellshock, this paper will show how the relative importance of self-control and duty to definitions of heroic masculinity was altered by the experience of total war. I will argue that self-control was undermined as an ideal by the condition. Duty, by comparison, was strengthened as an ideal through a shift in definition that emphasized the idea of comradeship. This idea was used, in its turn, by soldiers to classify those who suffered from shellshock as a group distinct from those who were deemed to be cowards. In his definition of the masculine stereotype, Mosse argues that the image of the ideal man was unchanging from the eighteenth century onwards. Most other writers on British masculinity, however, have viewed ideals of masculinity as changing over time. Many have focused specifically on the ideals that arose during the nineteenth century, particularly those associated with the emergence of the idea of the imperial male hero. Such studies include John MacKenzie’s
1
Mosse (1996), p. 5.
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essays on missionaries and big game hunters.2 Another important symbolic figure of the imperial male that has received attention from historians is that of the soldier hero. Graham Dawson, for instance, has argued that: during the growth of popular imperialism in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, heroic masculinity became fused in an especially potent configuration with representations of British imperial identity. This linked together the new imperialist patriotism, the virtues of manhood, and war as its ultimate test and opportunity. A ‘real man’ would henceforth be defined and recognized as one who was prepared to fight (and, if necessary, to sacrifice his life) for Queen, Country and Empire.3
This figure of the imperial soldier-hero received the most direct challenge from the experiences of total war. Among these challenges was the condition of shellshock. Three main concepts have been identified by historians as being important to Victorian and Edwardian ideas of heroic masculinity. The first of these is physical health, which Mosse argues became a symbol of masculine morality in Britain and Germany. Health expressed “in an obvious manner . . . the linkage of body and soul, of morality and bodily structure. . . . Lavater was explicit about the kind of morality that makes men physically beautiful: love of work, moderation, and cleanliness were conducive to bodily health and clean-cut limbs.”4 Conversely, a “person’s disordered appearance signaled a mind that lacked control over the passions, where male honor had become cowardice, honesty was unknown, and lustfulness had taken the place of purity.”5 In Mosse’s argument, doctors became leading arbiters of masculinity and morality through their definitions of health and illness and their causes. A second value associated with heroic masculinity that Mosse identifies is that of self-control. In particular, he discusses control of sexuality as an aspect of both respectability and civil control. Michael Adams also makes this point in his discussion of ideals of masculinity in relation to war enthusiasm prior to the First World War. Both men, however, also identify a more general idea of emotional selfcontrol as equally important to masculine ideals. As Adams points 2 3 4 5
MacKenzie (1990) and MacKenzie (1987). Dawson (1994), p. 1. Mosse (1996), pp. 25–7. Ibid., p. 59.
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out, “To be masculine was to be unemotional, in control of one’s passions”,6 whether such passions were sexual or emotional in nature. Stefan Collini also identifies self-restraint as a core quality of the ideal of ‘character’ as defined by Victorian intellectuals. He points out, however, that such qualities were “depend[ant] on a prior notion of duty.”7 Such duty could be, as Mosse and Dawson have argued, owed above all to the State. This was particularly true in the imaginings of the ideal soldier hero. Yet, as Jeffrey Richards has noted, the duties associated with male friendships in nineteenth-century Britain “involved notions of service and sacrifice, frequently death on behalf of the beloved.”8 Both national and individual forms of duty were, therefore, idealized as aspects of heroic masculinity in the years leading up to the First World War. The way in which these ideals were perceived during and after the First World War have been studied to some extent, notably by Joanna Bourke in Dismembering the Male. Bourke shows how, even in the face of the challenges presented by mutilation, doctors strove to maintain their authority over the definitions of masculinity. She also discusses the ways in which ideas of duty were challenged by the war. She argues that concepts of national duty were reinforced through the concept of malingering while ideals of individual duty as embodied by comradeship failed to survive the war. She finds evidence for this in the relative unpopularity of ex-servicemen’s associations in the years after the war.9 Although Bourke discusses shellshock, particularly in relation to physical treatment and its relationship to the idea of malingering, her focus on the physical challenges to masculinity posed by the war means that she never fully analyses how shellshock affected psychological aspects of definitions of masculinity. This paper will explore how shellshock challenged pre-war notions of self-control and duty. I will argue that doctors, in their diagnoses and treatment of the condition, used the ideal of self-control in their attempts to retain control over the definition of ideal masculinity. Soldiers who suffered from the disease, or witnessed it in others, on the other hand, emphasized the ideal of comradeship as a form of duty in an attempt to 6 7 8 9
Adams (1990), p. 13. Collini (1991), p. 100. Richards (1987), p. 93. Bourke (1996), chapters 2 and 3.
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form a definition of courage that was not directly undermined by shellshock.
Doctors’ Narratives From the beginning of the First World War, the condition that came to be known to the wider public as ‘shellshock’ posed serious difficulties for the medical profession, particularly with regards to definition. In 1915, Dr C.S. Myers classified various nervous symptoms being exhibited by soldiers that had no obvious physical cause under the term ‘shellshock’. The term was intended to describe the effect of highpowered explosive on the nervous system, whether through direct burial or through ‘air concussion’ where the blast of high explosive was thought to cause invisible damage to the nerves through the pressure produced by the displacement of air. Such a definition was a physical explanations for the psychological symptoms that were appearing with increasing frequency among British troops on all fronts. By 1917, however, Myers admitted that physical shock was the cause of only a tiny number of the thousands of cases of psychological damage that were being diagnosed as shellshock. Throughout the war, doctors used numerous other terms such as ‘hysteria’, ‘neurasthenia’, ‘Soldier’s Heart’ and ‘Not Yet Diagnosed, Nervous’ to describe a variety of symptoms, ranging from paralysis to uncontrollable shivering, mutism to nightmares, that they could not attribute to any known physical cause. It has been argued by Elaine Showalter that the use of terms such as ‘hysteria’ associated sufferers with a powerless femininity that was forced to act out psychological repressions through uncontrolled physical actions. Such a definition, she argues, served to stigmatize male shellshock sufferers as feminine hysterics.10 Yet hysteria was used as a diagnostic term comparatively infrequently, and then only to describe purely physical symptoms such as blindness or anaesthesia. Neurasthenia, with its gender neutral implications, was by far the most common term of diagnosis, while the use of a term such as ‘Soldier’s Heart’ implied a disability more closely associated with the masculine pursuit of soldiering. The situation was complicated by the fact that doctors tended
10
Showalter (1987), pp. 172–175.
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to apply diagnostic terms in highly individual and often mutually contradictory ways. For example, a man who felt the pain of a sprained back gradually spreading down his legs and a man with no memory of threatening his comrades with bayonet were both diagnosed by different doctors as ‘neurasthenic’. Dr G. Micklethwaite of York labelled many patients as neurasthenic whose symptoms were described solely as ‘fits’.11 Despite the confusion evident in diagnosis, most doctors seem to have agreed upon one thing. Whatever name was used and whatever symptoms were covered, war neuroses were the result of a loss of self-control. By 1919, Myers could write, “There is a general agreement that the war neuroses are to be regarded as the result of functional dissociation arising from the loss of the highest controlling mental functions.”12 Dr W.H.R. Rivers, in his study Instinct and the Unconscious, argued that what he termed ‘emotional shock’ could be divided into two types: substitution neurosis, also called hysteria, and anxiety or repression neurosis also called neurasthenia. Substitution neuroses, according to Rivers, covered symptoms such as paralyses, muscular contractions and anaesthesias, all symptoms involving loss of control of the body. Anxiety neuroses, on the other hand, were indicated by symptoms involving loss of control of the mind. The main symptom was “a state of general mental discomfort which may range from mere malaise to definite repression.”13 He listed other symptoms characteristic of anxiety neuroses as nightmares, hallucinations and insomnia, all situations in which the mind cannot be controlled. At a time when most British doctors dismissed Freud as vulgar for placing too much emphasis on sex, Rivers, although not an avowed Freudian, was of a psychoanalytic school of thought and owed a theoretical debt to Freud. He acknowledged this in his use of the term ‘anxiety neurosis,’ an idea originally brought forward by Freud. Many doctors dismissed his work, however, being unconvinced that Freudian theories could or should be applied, even when separated from the sexual element. Even if they dismissed River’s particular arguments, however, many of his contemporaries agreed with him in distinguishing between physical and mental control in 11 12 13
Medical Case Sheets, n.d., MH/106/2101, Public Record Office (PRO), London. Myers (1919), p. 51. Rivers (1922), p. 123 and passim.
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diagnosing the war neuroses. G. Elliot Smith and T.H. Pears, for instance, distinguished between the ‘subjective’, or mental, symptoms of neurasthenia and the gross physical symptoms associated with hysteria. ‘Subjective’ symptoms included: loss of memory, insomnia, terrifying dreams, pains, emotional instability, diminution of self-confidence and self-control, attacks of unconsciousness or of changed consciousness sometimes accompanied by convulsive movements resembling those characteristic of epileptic fits, incapacity to understand but the simplest matter, obsessive thoughts, usually of the most gloomy and painful kind, even in some cases hallucinations and incipient delusions.14
With the exception of the changed levels of consciousness and convulsive movements, all these symptoms are associated with the mind and indicate the sufferers’ inability to control his. Nor were Smith and Pears dismissive of subjective symptoms. They realised that, as much as the physical symptoms that indicated lack of control over the body, ‘subjective’ symptoms ‘make life for some of their victims a veritable hell.’ The use of the active verb is significant. It is the symptoms that are in control, not the sufferer. What can be seen, therefore, is that there was fairly general agreement among doctors that loss of control was an identifying characteristic of war neuroses. This control could be either physical or mental, depending on the symptoms that were evident. Disagreement arose, however, as to the cause of loss of control. Some viewed it as ‘inherited neuropathy’. Sir John Collie for one believed that shell shock sufferers were “a hypochondriacal class whose self-control has always been subnormal and unfits them by temperament to be soldiers”:15 the conditions of war and training for war brought out the inherent neuropathy in the victim’s temperament. This meant that such a recruit had never been suited to conditions that a soldier had to survive. This explanation could not, however, account for the number of men who showed great bravery at moments of stress but later collapsed. In their cases, Dr Frederick Mott argued that the strains of war had weakened their self-control to breaking point. ‘To live in trenches,’ he suggested:
14 15
Smith and Pear (1917), pp. 12–13. Neurasthenia in Soldiers: Report of a Lecture by Sir John Collie (1917), p. 962.
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or underground for days or weeks, exposed continually to wet, cold and often, owning to the shelling of the communication trenches to hunger, combined with fearful tension and apprehension, may so lower the vital resistance to the strongest nervous system that a shell bursting near, and without causing any visible injury, is sufficient to lead to a sudden loss of consciousness.16
This argument agreed with one put forward by Rivers in Instinct and the Unconscious: “Both in peace and war the immediate factor in the production of neurosis is the weakening of control by shock, strain, or fatigue. The chief cause of the frequency of the neurosis in the war has been the excessive nature of the strain to which modern warfare exposes the soldier.”17 As in Collie’s argument, the conditions of warfare were seen as the cause of breakdown but Mott and Rivers acknowledge, as Collie does not, that the conditions that soldiers encountered during the First World War were extreme both in their intensity and duration, thus leading to breakdown in those who were not necessarily predisposed by their heritage towards mental breakdown. Shellshock, and its frequency of occurrence in particular, could be read, therefore, as evidence of the extremes of the conditions suffered by soldiers during the First World War in particular, rather than as evidence of the ability, or lack thereof, of sufferers to fulfil ideals of heroic masculinity such as self-control. The debates that characterized the discourse of the doctors who diagnosed and treated shellshock during the war were not merely concerned with abstruse medical classifications. By focusing debates over definition and causation on the ideals of will-power and selfcontrol, both mental and physical, doctors were able to make statements about the qualities they believed necessary in the healthy, functional man. Most believed that self-control was an absolute necessity since lack of self-control of either mind or body led to symptoms that did not allow men to fulfil their function as soldiers, a function demanded of them by duty to their country. Debates about causation allowed doctors to define the quality of self-control, some arguing that it was inherent and inheritable, others that it was malleable, making all men susceptible to its erosion or loss. Through these debates, doctors reaffirmed the primacy of self-control in their definitions of the healthy heroic man, even as they questioned men’s 16 17
Mott (1916), p. 331. Rivers (1922), p. 120.
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ability to retain their self-control under the very conditions in which such a quality might be deemed most necessary.
Soldiers’ Narratives It was not only doctors, however, who viewed shellshock as an illness affecting the sufferer’s self-control. Soldiers also saw the condition this way. The language they used to discuss the condition, however, was different. While doctors talked of self-control and will, soldiers used words like ‘nerves’ and ‘fear’. H. Clegg, for instance, wrote of a night when “I completely lost my nerve; . . . I could not get past a certain point where shells were dropping every two minutes; I tried several times in half an hour, but something had failed.”18 H.L. Adams also used the language of ‘nerve’ to describe his experience of shell shock: “Owing to the recent strain my nerves had become somewhat hamstrung and I commenced running towards the enemy lines.”19 By contrast, L. Gameson spoke of his experience in terms of fear: Quite suddenly and desperately privately, I was seized by a state of anxiety which came near to the pathological. . . . Its essence was crude, irrational physical fear . . . when I infer that it dominated me, I mean in my private thoughts and not in behavior; but, regarding behavior, the margin was small. . . . I began to put taboos on some [ordinary actions], for fear of hurtful and demonstrably unrelated consequences— as in the matter of using the entrances to H.Q’s dugout. There were two entrances from the trench above: one at the north end and one at the southern. Wholly irrationally, I forbad myself the use of the southern. Inevitably, I was compelled to enter by that way, or to disclose my morbid secret. . . . I was able, still desperately in private, to shrug it off and thus to lift the ban from the dubious doorway, along with equally vain taboos. But the ghastly tension continued to hold me.20
Clegg, Adams and Gameson are all describing moments when they lost either their physical or emotional control which, had any of them been diagnosed, would have undoubtedly been termed instances of shellshock or war neurosis. The words they chose to depict their
18 19 20
Clegg (n.d.), p. 50. Adams (n.d.), pp. 8–9. Gameson (n.d.), p. 334.
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experiences, however, are far more direct in their acknowledgement of what soldiers were feeling than those used by the doctors. Soldiers experienced fear and it was this, in the memories of the men who experienced total war, which caused them to lose control and thus exhibit the symptoms that became associated with shellshock. The experience of fear or ‘nerves’ did not, however, lead automatically to a loss of self-control. As one officer told the War Office Commission on ‘Shell-Shock’, “I think every man, no matter how brave out at the front, has experienced fear.”21 Fear was ubiquitous, a fact emphasized by the references to feelings of fear in soldier’s diaries. Even those who were never diagnosed with shellshock wrote of the fear they felt. H.T. Clements, for instance, wrote in his diary how, one night, “Fritz began to send coal-boxes over, as each one explodes the ground shook & trembled. I felt rather windy! After hanging about we returned & found that the communication trench we had gone by had been blown in, they were shelling the part we had just left. It was altogether one of the worst experiences I have ever had.”22 T.P. Marks recalled feeling similar emotions in his memoir, written in 1936, of his experience as a private, although his language is rather more forceful than Clements: “Life at the Front destroys our nerves. There is danger about us, and below us, and above us. It is always present, and never at any time very far away from us. We know that we are not as steady as we used to be.”23 R.G. Dixon also acknowledged the ubiquity of fear in his memoir when he wrote, “Did things like that [a bombardment] scare us? Frankly, they scared me. I fancy most fellows were scared out of their wits a lot of the time. I was, I know! The thing was, to try
21 Evidence of Lt.-Colonel J.S.Y. Rogers, Report of the War Office Committee of Enquiry into ‘Shell-Shock’ (1922), p. 62. The War Office Committee of Enquiry in to ‘ShellShock’ was established in 1920 under the chairmanship of Lord Southborough. Its remit was: ‘To consider the different types of hysterical and traumatic neurosis commonly called ‘shell-shock’, to collate the expert knowledge derived by the Service Medical Authorities and the medical profession from the experience of the war with a view to recording for future use the ascertained facts as to its origin, nature and remedial treatment, and to advise whether, by military training or education, some scientific method of guarding against its occurrence cannot be devised.’ (Press Release, War Office Publicity Department, 1st September, 1920, WO 32/4747, PRO, London.) For a close analysis of the Committee and its eventual conclusions, see Bogacz (1989). 22 Clements (1915), 4th November. 23 Marks (1977), p. 18.
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not to show it, especially to one’s men.”24 After the war, the commonness of the experience of fear among soldiers was publicized in works such as R.C. Sherriff ’s West End play, Journey’s End (1929), in which an officer, idolized as a hero by one of his subordinates, is shown turning to drink in order to hide his fear. This depiction clearly struck a chord with the viewing public which included many ex-servicemen as it became “the most successful war play ever produced in Britain.”25 Even though most men admitted to themselves that they felt fear, as Dixon’s comment shows they remained, throughout the war, under enormous pressure not to show fear. “I was really scared, I could not show it, and I had to act as if it was an everyday job to go into no man’s land and cut a bit of wire,”26 J.W. Rowarth recalled. Men who did lose control due to fear attempted, like Gameson, to keep it private, or else went to extreme lengths to prove their selfcontrol to both themselves and others. A patient of Dr William McDougal, for instance, when “he began to suffer from shakiness under bombardment, . . . made great efforts to control himself, and would go and stand outside the dugout to prove that he was not afraid.”27 This need to prove self-control can also be seen in I.L. Meo’s defensive comment in his diary after he was diagnosed as shellshocked: “I did my duty fully. . . . I personally visited 3 listening posts between 2 & 6 AM.”28 It is also evident in the desire of many men diagnosed with shellshock to return to the front, thus proving themselves healthy and in control of their fear. Examples range from Wilfred Owen, who wrote to Siegfried Sassoon on his return to the front that he was ‘glad. That is I am much gladder to be going out than afraid’29 to the comment on an anonymous medical case sheet that reads ‘Feels alright now. Would like to return to fight.’30 Other than the desire to prove their control over their emotions, those who suffered from war neuroses desired to return to the front
24
Dixon (c. 1970), p. 72. Bracco (1993), p. 145. For a detailed examination of the play’s popularity, see Bracco (1993). 26 Roworth (n.d.), p. 19. 27 McDougall (1920–1921), p. 145. 28 Meo (1916), September 30. 29 Owen (1963), p. 174. 30 Medical Case Sheets, n.d., MH/106/2101, PRO, London. 25
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because they felt they were failing in their duty to their comrades. Such emotions can be seen in the memories of men who were forced to leave their unit because of physical wounds. John McCauley, for instance, recalled that: as I lay wounded on the battlefield, no further use for fighting in my condition, and free to make my escape from the hell we were enduring, I felt genuine regret at the thought of parting from my chums. Fine, loyal comrades they had been. Tested and proved steadfast and true to one another. I began to appreciate what the splendid spirit of comradeship, born out of the horrors and hardships we had faced together meant to me. . . . I had a feeling that I was imposing on these splendid fellows; leaving them just when my help was most needed. Two dead and one wounded in our little group meant that extra burdens would be thrown on my pals, and I thought that I would like to stay with them, wounded though I was, to prove that I was as loyal as they had been to me.31
S.H. Raggett also felt this when he wrote that “even after I knew war, shorn of its glamour, knew it as it was, I wanted to be there, even when in England in safety. When I thought later of what the men in the trenches were doing and going through, when I realised that the men who were men were in the line fighting for their lives, when I saw those who were home, fit, . . . shirking, I wanted to go back and be with those who were doing so much.”32 R.G. Dixon similarly felt that, when he was wounded, he was ‘letting the side down’, of being safe while one’s friends out there were sticking it out and one was not with them, sharing their life and toil, their hardships and dangers. One hated it, but wanted to be back in it, because it was shirking to be elsewhere. One was so much the less a man if one were not at the front; for us it was the one reality, and the old notorious names were a kind of home to us . . . the very sound of their names to me now is like faint but clear echoes of a vanished world whose permanent inhabitants were terror and pain and violent death, but where tremendous qualities such as courage and comradeship and selflessness shone like stars. I know for myself I have known no such comradeship as those old years gave us who fought on the old Western Front.33
The extent and lyricism of such memories would seem to argue against Bourke’s assertion that male bonding failed in the years after 31 32 33
McCauley (n.d.), p. 45. Raggett (1920), p. 7. Dixon (c. 1970), p. 88.
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the war. Rather, by choosing to remember the importance of comradeship to such an extent, memoirists indicate how important the memories of such bonding were to ex-servicemen’s definitions of themselves as men both during and after the war. These, of course, are the recollections of men who suffered physical, and therefore visible, wounds. For those whose wounds were psychological and exhibited more elliptically through lack of control over their minds or bodies, the anguish of admitting that one could not fulfil one’s duty to one’s comrades must surely have been far worse. Whatever the sufferers may have felt themselves, however, there was clearly considerable sympathy for shellshock sufferers on the part of other British soldiers. The very ubiquity of fear meant that these soldiers had often also experienced the emotions that caused loss of control, even if they had never themselves lost control. This sympathetic view is best expressed by Max Plowman who wrote of his friend Hardy, “There is no calmness about Hardy; he can be easily scared out of his wits, . . . but where I admire him unfeignedly . . . is in the fact that being scared makes no difference to him. He is just as ready and full of pluck the next time.” He continues, “I find one grows to love and hate men here according as one feels that in crucial moments they will be on the spot or absent. Whatever happens I know that Hardy will be there, and this last quality of comradeship is worshipful: it seems to be the very basic test of manhood.”34 It was not that lack of control was admired or even condoned. As G. Fisher pointed out, “at the time you either did your job or you didn’t. There was no halfway house.”35 What was admired, however, was an obvious attempt to control fear for the sake of the duty owed to one’s fellow soldiers, even if such an attempt ultimately failed. The fact that such sympathy existed at all, however, shows how soldiers made an important distinction between the victim of shellshock and what Frederic Manning described as a “degradation of a man who was now only an abject outcast,” namely the coward. In his autobiographical novel of the war, Her Privates We, Manning describes this distinction: The interval between the actual cowardice of Miller, and the suppressed fear which even brave men felt before a battle, seemed rather
34 35
Mark VII (1927), pp. 100–101. G. Fisher in Macdonald (1993), p. 476.
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a short one, at first sight; but after all, the others went into action; if they broke down under the test, at least they had tried, and one might have some sympathy for them; others broke momentarily and recovered again, like the two men whom Sergeant-Major Glasspool had brought to their senses. . . . All these cases were in a different class, and might be considered with sympathy.36
The distinction that Manning makes is extremely important. In his depiction of Miller, cowardice implies a conscious decision to betray comradeship. Courage, the polar opposite of cowardice and a heroic quality, by this standard became, in the words of Plowman, “a social quality . . . [that] means caring for your pals more than yourself . . . [and that] has no meaning apart from some degree of friendship.”37 The social quality of comradeship, therefore, became vital to how men defined themselves as soldiers. Indeed, it can be argued that comradeship became for many British soldiers more important to the definition of heroic masculinity than self-control. The loss of selfcontrol through fear, or at least the threat of such an occurrence, was too common to make it a useful signifier of courage. In addition, the threat of such a loss could be struggled against and the loss itself overcome. The willingness to do so, particularly for the sake of one’s comrades, became, therefore, an increasingly important element in the definition of courage for many British soldiers who fought in the First World War. By this definition, shellshock was defined by soldiers as lying somewhere between courage and cowardice in that it was a condition where consciousness had little relation to action. Instead it signified a failure to overcome a loss of self-control. The lines, however, remained blurry. Lack of self-control might lead to behaviour that unconsciously betrayed comradeship but, in the shellshock victim, such a betrayal was unconscious. While soldiers who lost control of themselves betrayed an element of their masculinity, the ubiquity of fear made loss of self-control understandable to every soldier who came under shellfire. Shellshock, the condition defined by loss of self-control could, therefore, be viewed with sympathy by soldiers, whereas the conscious, controlled decision to abandon one’s comrades in arms and suffering could not.
36 37
Manning (1986), p. 82. Mark VII (1927), p. 101.
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Conclusion
What can be seen in the language used by doctors and soldiers to discuss shell shock is a change in the emphasis on which qualities were needed to make the ideal heroic man. This was less true of doctors treating shellshock who practiced behind the lines, primarily in Britain. Most did not know the conditions under which men fought which could strain self-control to breaking point. Their comments on shellshock as a condition characterized by lack of self-control tended to simply brand the sufferer as inadequate soldiers at a time when soldiering was seen as an important test of manhood. Soldiers serving in the front line, however, were forced to be more sympathetic to the condition. The ubiquity of fear meant that most were put in positions where their own self-control was in doubt, even if they never allowed others to see this. For soldiers to brand all those who lost self-control as unmanly would have been to condemn the vast majority of fighting men, often themselves included. Their definition of masculinity, therefore, emphasized comradeship as the most important element and one that could be vital to the definition of more abstract virtues, such as courage. One could be a man if one remained loyal to one’s comrades, even in face of the subconscious betrayal of body or mind. In the years following the war, the language of self-control reasserted itself as central to the definition of shellshock. In the hospitals and training programmes of the Ministry of Pensions, shellshock victims were taught to regain control over their bodies and emotions. Yet for the men who had endured war, a definition of masculinity that did not depend so heavily on self-control had been presented by the experience of war. It was this definition, which privileged comradeship as the key ingredient of masculinity, which many veterans clung to. In this way, men who had known fear under the conditions of total warfare were able to define their military service not as an experience of emasculation, but rather as an episode that had made them men.
B Unpublished Sources Adams H.L. (n.d.) Life in the Army. Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London. Clegg H. (n.d.) Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London.
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Clements H.T. (1915) Ms. Diary. Imperial War Museum, London. Dixon R.G. (c. 1970) The Wheels of Darkness. Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London. Gameson L. (n.d.) Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London. McCauley J. (n.d.) A Manx Soldier’s War Diary. Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London. Meo I.L. (1916) Ms. Diaries. Imperial War Museum, London. Raggett S.H. (1920) Reminiscences of War (1914–1918). Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London. Rowarth, J.W. (n.d.) The Misfit Soldier: A War Story, 1914–1918. Ts. memoir. Imperial War Museum, London.
Published Sources Adams M. (1990) The Great Adventure: Male Desire and the Coming of World War I (Bloomington: 1990). Bogacz T. (1989) “War neurosis and cultural change in England, 1914–1922: the work of the War office Committee of Enquiry on Shell-shock”, The Journal of Contemporary History, 24, no. 2 (April 1989) 227–256. Bourke J. (1996) Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (London: 1996). Bracco R.M. (1993) Merchants of Hope: British Middle Brow Writers and the First World War, 1919–1939 (Providence: 1993). Collini S. (1991) Public Moralists: Thought and Intellectual Life in Britain 1850 –1930 (Oxford: 1991). Dawson G. (1994) Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (London: 1994). Macdonald L. (1993) 1915: Death of Innocence (London: 1993). MacKenzie J. (1987) “The Imperial pioneer and hunter and the British masculine stereotype in late Victorian and Edwardian times” in Manliness and Morality: MiddleClass Masculinity in Britain and America 1800–1940, ed. J.A. Mangan and James Walvin, (Manchester: 1987) 276–198. —— (1990) “David Livingstone: the construction of the myth” in Sermons and Battle Hymns: Protestant Popular Culture in Modern Scotland, ed. Graham Walker and Tom Gallagher (Edinburgh: 1990) 24–43. Manning F. (1986) Her Privates We (London: 1986; original edition, London: 1929). Marks T.P. (1977) The Laughter Goes from Life: In the Trenches of the First World War (London: 1977). Mark VII. [Max Plowman] (1927) A Subaltern on the Somme in 1916 (London: 1927) McDougall W. (1920–1921) “Four cases of ‘regression’ in soldiers”, Journal of Abnormal Psychology 15: 136–156. Mosse G. (1996) The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: 1996). Mott F.W. (1916) “The lettsomian lectures on the effects of high explosives upon the central nervous system”, The Lancet (February 12) 331–8. Myers C.S. (1919) “A final contribution to the study of shellshock”, The Lancet ( January 11) 51–4. “Neurasthenia in soldiers: report of a lecture by Sir John Collie” (1917), The Lancet ( June 23) 962–3. Owen W. (1963) “Letter to Siegfried Sassoon [?]” in The Collected Poems of Wilfred Owen, ed. C. Day Lewis (London: 1963). Report of the War Office Commmittee of Enquiry into ‘Shell-Shock’ (1922). By Lord Southborough, chairman. London: His Majesty’s Stationary Office. Richards J. (1987) “‘Passing the love of women’: manly love and Victorian society” in Manliness and Morality: Middle-Class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800–1940, ed. J.A. Mangan and James Walvin (Manchester: 1987) 92–122.
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Rivers W.H.R. (1922) Instinct and the Unconscious: A Contribution to the Biological Theory of the Psycho-Neuroses (2nd ed. Cambridge: 1922). Sherriff R.C. (1983) Journey’s End (Harmondsworth: 1983. Original edition, 1929). Showalter E. (1987) The Female Malady: Women, Madness and English Culture, 1830–1980 (London: 1987). Smith G.E. and T.H. Pear (1917) Shell Shock and Its Lessons (Manchester: 1917).
Note by author Every attempt has been made to obtain copyright permission for unpublished works quoted in this essay and the author would like to thank Anthony Richards of the Imperial War Museum for his assistance with this. She would also like to thank the holders of the copyright of the papers of S.H. Raggett, L. Gameson, H.T. Clements, R.W. Roworth, I.L. Meo and J. McCauley for kindly granting permission to use excerpts from their papers.
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TEARS IN THE TRENCHES: A HISTORY OF EMOTIONS AND THE EXPERIENCE OF WAR André Loez
This paper investigates the multiple meanings of tears during World War I. A familiar subject for medievalists, tears have seldom been studied by contemporary cultural historians. They may yet provide unexpected answers to an essential question of the war’s history: how did men suffer? And a better understanding of how the war’s grief and suffering was faced by soldiers and officers provides in turn a clearer comprehension of their capacity to withstand its seemingly unbearable length and violence. The presence or absence of tears in soldiers’ narratives of the war, their depictions of wounded men crying or holding back their sobs, the complex rituals of mourning they describe can reveal much about the social relations in the trenches, while greatly improving our understanding of bereavement. However, for the history of emotions and tears to be fruitful, its methods and limits must be made clear. First, it does not rely on any kind of psychology. The individual’s reactions, and intimate attitudes towards death and suffering, are not primarily at stake here. What tears can reveal is the social structure of emotions. Because, far from being spontaneous or natural, as David Le Breton phrases it, “the feeling and expression of emotions derive from a social score”.1 Hence, the social codes of conduct among combatants can be studied: in this military and masculine society, the shedding of tears will be interpreted as a sign of weakness, except where a patriotic ritual turns them into a sign of sacred emotion. Here lies another important point: tears are polysemic. Where an ingenuous reader might link them automatically to grief, Roland Barthes clearly warns us that “tears are signs, not expressions”.2 And individuals, soldiers, officers, well aware of this, move cautiously under one another’s glance, careful not to cry at an awkward moment,
1 2
Le Breton (1998), p. 112. Barthes (1995), pp. 627–628.
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conscious of the alternately positive and negative symbolic power of tears. Finally, as the evidence for tears during the war will be found above all in autobiographical narratives, there is a clear risk of being misled by texts and their loquacious or silent authors.3 However, by their absence or presence, tears serve a purpose in these texts. Hence, it is less their actual existence which matters than the role they play, as they are used to stress the cowardice of a foe, the sacred emotion of a hero or the distress of bereaved combatants. Eventually, despite the shortcomings of sources and the difficulty of reconstructing patterns of emotions from the past, a case study of tears in the French army during the First World War shows how deeply intimate behaviours were mobilised, and how strongly emotions were structured in order to withstand the conflict’s astonishing violence.
Shedding Tears During The War Rather unexpectedly, tears are to be found in numerous soldiers’ letters or diaries.4 Initially, they lend access to the apparent simplicity of emotion and grief, as in this text: I was hidden behind a small bush, from where I shot on the Boches who weren’t far, and a shell exploded between my comrade and I, I felt such a shock that I thought my hip was broken, and I saw my comrade drop dead, bleeding (. . .). And it made me cry to see this good family man killed.5
The sadness and distress of these first moments of bereavement are expressed openly. Nevertheless, tears are not always linked to death: they can also express the ordinary difficulties of life in the trenches. As troops are relieved in mud and darkness, tears are shed: “We sometime had to climb ridges made slippery by the rain. We would make three backward steps for every two in advance. We fell, got
3 Often subject to such misapprehensions is the nevertheless interesting book of Vincent-Buffault (1986). 4 All the following quotations have been translated from the original French sources. 5 Fénix (1994), p. 72.
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up—some cried with rage.”6 And tears can also be conjured by an unbearable sight, as in this narrative by a peasant from the Auvergne, describing his company’s flight from a devastated shelter where dead bodies lay: “We were all ‘emotioned’, one did not look where one set one’s foot, some would stumble and cry . . . (. . .) The chief of my section commanded: ‘Forward march!’, and the whole section moved forth in the greatest silence, no one spoke, all had a moved heart and tears to their eyes. I myself cried before this sad sight”.7 Here, the immediate pain of bereavement is linked to the appalling nature of the spectacle as tears are, very naturally, shed. At some points, the violent sobbing of men or officers enables us to perceive the deep unbalance of emotional codes. Thresholds of sufferings are surpassed, and the sternest military attitudes cannot prevent tears. The reaction of a hitherto soldierly young lieutenant, discovering death in September 1918, expresses well this disarray: Facing these three bodies, I was shattered. I had lost all sense of a military attitude. I was perhaps the last living man with whom they had spoken. In the bleak morning light, I did not know how to part from these comrades. Should I make a military salute? Should I remove my helmet? Finally, I fell on my knees, pulled my handkerchief, my face was streaming with tears.8
The uncertainty of the bereaved’s gesture should be noted. Similar disarray is expressed in a passage from Maurice Genevoix’s narrative. A man has just been shot, and his friends rush up to see him: Massicard is trembling. Ravaud leans over; he gently draws back on the body one of the hands which lay in the mud. And on getting up, he turns his back on us so that we will not see him cry. (. . .) And then he makes an ample, discouraged gesture. He’s not even turning his back anymore. With abandoned arms, a bare face, he cries.9
These overwhelmed men are literally unable to stand their emotions, and this might be the closest the historian can get to the pain inflicted by the war. Their uncertain stance and irrepressible sobbing should not, however, be taken for the epitome of how emotions were expressed during the war. They are, by far, an exception. For the
6 7 8 9
Icher (1983), p. 20. Barge (1984), p. 23. Cardot (1987), pp. 194–195. Genevoix (1949), p. 551.
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prevailing rules of conduct among combatants led to the hiding and control of tears.
Hidden and Repressed Tears: The Control of Emotions This hiding of tears operates initially in words. Chosen words in soldiers’ accounts of the war tend to minimise the importance of tears. First, the word ‘emotion’, is a frequent substitute to that of ‘tears’, and soldiers are not seen ‘crying’, but ‘moved’ or ‘emotioned’,10 as in Michel Daniel’s narrative: “both of them, very ‘emotioned’, gave me sad news: three men of my squad had died”.11 Marc Bloch, a sergeant in the war, employs the same words when he describes a funeral: “The captain was to speak, at the cemetery. He was so deeply moved that he had to stop after a few words”.12 Tears are suggested and disguised in a clearer way as an officer describes his colonel ‘violently moved’ when he sentences three soldiers to death.13 Another witness describes the reactions of his men as some have been killed: “Really, in this moment, I am moved, and the sternest of my soldiers cannot hide the feelings that overwhelm them”.14 Moved, feelings: at no point are tears clearly evoked, and the actual distress caused by the conflict is thus diminished. However, the struggle against tears is not solely found in words. Astonishingly, men strain their eyes and invent bodily strategies in order to prevent their shedding of tears. Thus, far from being ‘natural’, the expression of emotions derives from deeply internalised collective and individual codes of conduct. In order to control tears, men will first control their voices, as even a faint trembling might announce unwanted tears. A captain who is to break the news of a man’s death to his comrades thus employs “a rugged tone to hide the emotion that crept over him”.15 Then, the whole body is mobilised to prevent crying, as with this lieutenant who just learned of his colonel’s death: “Here is the great 10 ‘Emotioned’ is used to render the incorrect French form often employed: ‘émotioné’. 11 Daniel (1983), p. 167. 12 Bloch (1997), p. 144. 13 Callies (1999), p. 100. 14 Germain (1918), p. 89. 15 Dide (1916), p. 112.
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trial I had been waiting for . . . I feel my nerves extremely strained and it seems something in me is about to break. Am I going to fall apart and sob like a child? With all my strength, I strain myself ”.16 The same lieutenant, two years later, upon hearing of a soldier’s death, still controls his tears: “It makes one want to cry . . . I grit my teeth and turn away”.17 The best example of these bodily strategies is found in André Pézard’s narrative, as he describes the reaction of an overwhelmed officer: “‘my two sections have been buried.’ He said these words without waiting for a reply, but he curved his eyebrows and lifted them to keep the tears far from the pupils”.18 One is baffled by the sophistication of the techniques used by combatants to hide or disguise their emotions. This is no light matter. In doing so, they obey powerful rules which must be analysed. Before we do so, it should be noted that combatants do not only refrain from crying, they also hide when tears turn out to be irrepressible. This is particularly true of officers, as their often paternalistic authority would suffer from ‘childlike’ tears. They therefore hide their tears at all costs, as does this captain that Henry MorelJournel encountered: They said we’d be relieved yesterday, but nothing came! . . . You see, there are moments when I cry, like a child, in this dark hole where my men cannot see me . . . (. . .) Forgive me, I can’t take it anymore.19
The officer’s fear of being seen by ‘his men’ is remarkable and recurrent. It is also interesting to note that tears should be ‘forgiven’. This is not an isolated case, and another officer shows the same fear of being seen after completing a dreadful attack: “In the afternoon, kneeling on the ground of our miserable dugout, I had a fit of crying, and I am not sure whether I managed to hide it from my aide de camp”.20 The young doctor Lucien Laby feels the same need to hide when he eventually weeps as he performs surgery on his best friend: “Feeling his blood so red and so warm flowing through my hands, it hurts me. I choke myself so as not to cry, and as soon as it’s over, I go and hide behind the small wall and cannot hold
16 17 18 19 20
Tézenas du Montcel (1960), p. 74. Ibid., p. 257. Pézard (1918), pp. 277–278. Morel-Journel (1922), p. 250. Tézenas du Montcel (1960), p. 114.
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back my tears anymore”.21 The case of Lieutenant Maurice Genevoix can also be cited, as he literally runs away to avoid being seen crying: “I felt my chest swelling with a sob that choked my throat. I managed to flee almost in time and I ran in the night”.22 Clearly, for these men, tears are almost impossible to express. But we must go further. They are also impossible to witness. The control of emotions is so powerful during the war that the crying of peers becomes unacceptable. A revealing example of this refusal occurs in one of the short articles published during the war by Paul Tuffrau. The context is that of a heroic action: a man has volunteered to go between the lines, and has managed to retrieve a young wounded officer. Then tears intervene: “Fromond has come back. He has brought back the lieutenant. The poor kid is severely hit. He was crying as we laid him down. And Fromond said: ‘My lieutenant, if you keep crying like this I will bring you back to the Boches’.”23 This violent address to the man he has just saved can be explained by the contrast between the soldier’s courage and what is seen as the officer’s weakness. Furthermore, the dominant rules of emotional control allow an ordinary soldier to criticise harshly his commanding officer. The emotional discipline prevails over the military one. This particular example illustrates a common fact: wounded men are often called to silence when they cry. This refusal of other men’s tears is symmetrical to their voluntary suppression: how can one justify the efforts made to hide and control tears if others are allowed to weep? Hence, combatants clearly disapprove of crying men, as does André Pézard when a comrade of his is hit: “Won’t you shut up! It’s revolting! I’ve never seen such a chicken!”24 Elsewhere, his words are less direct, but quite revealing as he writes down the unease and anger unleashed by overheard tears: “The wounded man is crying again. (. . .) We end up getting involuntarily angry at the poor fellow whom we can’t see and whose sobbing voice fills our ears”.25 An officer goes so far as to hit a crying man: “a wounded
21 22 23 24 25
Laby (2001), 24 mai 1916. Genevoix (1949), p. 700. Tuffrau (1917), p. 147. Pézard (1918), p. 62. Pézard (1918), p. 54.
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soldier is lying at the foot of the cross. Pellegrin is brutal to him, as he moans and laments. He has a bullet in the foot”.26 It is not simply the physical pain inflicted by the wound that these men do not want to see. These efforts, in words or deeds, to suppress tears, are addressed to their symbolic value. Tears create a breach in the general display of courage. They remind men of the enormous amount of grief and suffering generated by the war, and of the constant effort to hide and control these emotions. They therefore question the very legitimacy of the conflict. Hence, before the efforts of officers haunted at the thought they might be seen crying, the strained bodies and swallowed tears of bereaved combatants, the wounded and weeping soldiers hit or sneered at, we see that the expression of emotions is deeply structured during the war.
‘The Strength not to Cry’ The control of tears, improvised as it may be in the trenches, when officers hide and sobs are swallowed, has a very clear basis. The expression of emotions is governed by complementary sets of values that all forbid the shedding of tears and give combatants ‘the strength not to cry’:27 patriotism, heroism and masculinity. The first justification for the suppression of tears is linked to patriotism and to the notion of war effort. Hence, and especially in the first two years of the conflict, tears are conceived as a waste of time, a groundless sign of doubt, and a futile and unnecessary diversion when the nation is in danger. Some go so far as to deny the family of a fallen soldier the right to cry, in a letter: “Soothe yourself, you have no right to cry such a beautiful death, facing the enemy, among his poilus he loved so much and who loved him”.28 And in the first years of the war, patriotic texts by the dozen stress the importance of action and irrelevance of tears, as in this highly unrealistic narrative: The dead are still within the ranks, but their presence does not terrify men, does not even cool them off. Not that they are insensitive!
26 27 28
Callies (1999), p. 138. Pézard (1918), p. 348. Tézenas du Montcel (1928), p. 193.
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Their words show me that they grieve their comrades, but they are swept by the great thought of France’s defence. They are all action.29
This rhetoric, childish though it may seem, was so dominant in the early stages of the war that it had actual effects on the way in which emotions were, or rather, were not expressed. This is striking in a 1916 text by Raymond Jubert, who recalls a friend fallen in 1915, for whom he had no tears: Sitting by this great fire, I might let myself go to sadness, but the greatest melancholy brought on by the war could be the impossibility to linger on sadness. One might think that our eyes are dry, when we lack the time to cry.30
The general mobilization of minds and bodies leaves no time for mourning. This appears in an even clearer way in other texts where bereaved soldiers continue to fight notwithstanding their pain: “the brother of the wounded man was close to me, and he fired his gun with calm and poise, all the while crying”.31 Here, tears are acceptable as they do not disrupt or delay the war effort. Supplementary to the sense of urgency and mobilization that inhibits tears is the combatants’ ethos of forced cheerfulness designed to prevent any sign of sadness. Improvised throughout the front by soldiers who, like Gaston Pastre, claim that “what saves us is our cheerfulness, my friends take things with philosophy and I follow them, we will laugh for anything; when a sight is too horrible we turn our heads and try to forget it”,32 this is theorised by doctors and psychiatrists worried by the war’s negative effects on both the psyche and ‘morale’. Typical of this tendency is the psychiatrist Maurice Dide. Both in his war memoirs and his scientific work, he stresses the value of laughter or cheerfulness as a deterrent to tears, and therefore to actual sadness. Meditating on his possible death, he asserts: “If I should die (. . .) I refuse these ceremonies which soften and weaken the ‘moral’. We will have all our lives to mourn those who pass away; here, we need cheerfulness.”33 This feeling, shared by many combatants, is further specified in the theoretical opus Les émotions et
29 30 31 32 33
Dubrulle (1917), p. 17. Jubert (1989), p. 91. Dubarle (1918), p. 41. Pastre (1990), p. 118. Dide (1916), p. 237.
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la guerre, where he explains that the ‘optimistic tendencies within the troops’ should be encouraged.34 In doing so, he merely illustrates a common belief in the medical community: inhibiting the symptom (tears) will cause the feeling to disappear. The medical approach to tears is also linked to the prevalent heroic ethos in the officer corps.35 According to it, ill-adapted men and unfit soldiers will show tears as a symptom,36 whereas heroic officers have a natural tendency to self-control. As Dide phrases it, “the inhibition of grief is usually the prerogative of officers, of men with high moral standards, in whom emotions triggers instincts already related with superior tendencies”.37 One witness even describes an officer as “Colonel Moisson, with hardened eyes, made rich by the emotion he controls”.38 This is the clearest example of an aristocratic ideal of self control, which only reveals the supplementary burden officers have to bear in this struggle with tears, thus explaining the reactions we have examined. The patriotic and even medical basis for the suppression of tears is clear. But in the end, if combatants of all ranks and origins share these ideals of emotional control, it is because what underlies them is a masculine rule. Robert A. Nye’s work on the construction of male codes of honour in France during the nineteenth century enables us to understand this phenomenon. He shows that the bourgeois attitudes towards the control of emotions prefigures that of the trenches as, for instance, timid men are dishonoured for their inability to prevent from blushing. As the war looms, male honour is defined essentially through the conjunction of the twin values of heroism and courage, seen as moral compensations for what is felt as Germany’s military superiority. The war only makes the “relationship between potency and masculine courage” clearer.39 However, such a construction is intrinsically fragile and Nye shows the latent anguish
34
Dide (1918), p. 207. See Gerbod (1982) In order to understand how deeply military values permeated mentalities before 1914, see the work of Roynette (2000). 36 In their pamphlet Le Courage (Paris: 1918), the doctors Louis Huot and Paul Voivenel explain that ‘tears are not only a sign of weakness’, but also a symptom of ‘nervous discharge’ as ‘unadapted soldiers have fits of crying in battle’ (pp. 335 & 344). 37 Dide (1918), p. 240. 38 Jubert (1989), p. 123. 39 Nye (1993), p. 227. 35
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caused by “honor codes, with their exacting and often brutal exigencies”,40 among which the impossibility of crying. The confrontation between these honour codes and the violence of the war proves of keen interest to our topic, as “when the war finally arrived, this burden of courage proved more than many men were able to bear”.41 Consequently, individuals must hide or repress their emotions so as not to show flaws in their maleness, and men will exchange vows of masculinity in order to find some reassurance. Therefore, tears will be condemned by a group of soldiers in the name of manliness, and a weeping, wounded man will be called a ‘femmelette’ by his comrades.42 And the masculine pride of soldiers who can fight, drink, and, revealingly, refrain from crying, is read by Genevoix on a sign at the entrance of a dugout: War is not such a bad thing, Tears are never heard among us, But we like to have a good drink, And we will beat all these dirty Boches43
This male ideal of suppressed tears links soldiers and officers even more surely than patriotism or the heroic ethos which faded somewhat as the war went on. If some intellectuals found theoretical justifications for the refusal of tears, values deeply rooted in masculine culture established the emotional rules to which French combatants felt they must conform.
Neutralised and Sacred Tears However, the repression of tears could not adequately address the need for a proper way to express grief as the warfare of attrition caused ever more death and bereavement. Rituals of mourning were therefore set up, in which tears found a place as a component in a patriotic ceremony: the visible sign of a sacred emotion. Here, the polysemy of tears appears in full. Framed within a well-organised ritual, tears lose their negative aspect. Leaving no space for violent 40
Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 226. 42 Barthas (1997), p. 149. ‘Femmelette’ is the diminutive and derogatory term for an effeminate man. 43 Genevoix (1949), p. 87. 41
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sobs, these ceremonies, masses and burials, tolerate tears insofar as they prove a symbolic close to patriotic speeches and staging which deprive them of their unsettling power. A detailed description of such a ceremony is found in the narrative of Fernand Tailhades, the witness of a burial: “The captain ordered the remainder of the company to present arms. At the same moment, on his order, we bare our heads and strike up the refrain of the Marseillaise. All, officers and soldiers, had tears to their eyes for, in this wood, amidst the clatter of falling shells, it made a very deep impression”.44 The constitutive elements of the ritual, as defined by Claude Lévi-Strauss, are clearly present: ‘words uttered’, ‘gestures performed’ and ‘objects handled’.45 They provide an appropriate patriotic frame for tears which then unite officers and soldiers in a national emotion. The central element in such ceremonies is the notion of sacrifice, which John Horne has shown to be of crucial importance to the French war culture. Heroism could not survive the reality of trench warfare, except in the form of sacrifice, the only solution to the discrepancy between an imagined war (gallant and heroic) and actual combat.46 These ceremonies and rituals are therefore designed to give a meaning to death in the war, through the rhetoric of sacrifice and rituals in which tears are welcome. They are no longer a sign of weakness but a patriotic tribute. A similar ceremony is described by André Kahn, appreciative of the scene’s emotional power: “Our brigade general came to the burial of the dead of the 37th [regiment]. He was to deliver a short speech by the grave, but couldn’t. Tears were rolling on the old soldier’s wrinkled cheeks. A sublime funeral oration!”47 Here is another facet in the polysemy of tears: whereas tears on the face of an officer would be a disgrace in or near combat, in this context, the rank and prestige of the crying man give tears a supplementary legitimacy and patriotic power. The witness is clearly moved by the contrast between a hardened soldier and the softness of patriotic tears. The commander personifies the grief of the nation: not an intimate,
44
Tailhades (1980), p. 27. Lévi-Strauss (1971), p. 600. For a broad overview of such mourning rituals, see Lutz (1999). 46 Horne (1995). 47 Kahn (1978), p. 31. 45
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desperate and disorderly mourning but a dignified, sublime and sacrificial emotion. This staging of patriotic emotion is evidently linked to religion. Many more or less improvised masses near the front line reproduce the ritual outline of the burials, and provoke sacred tears. As a priest refers to those fallen in ‘a sublime mission’, a witness remarks that “when the old priest had finished, we were all deeply moved and some tears rolled here and there”.48 Again, these tears can be accepted because the proper setting neutralises them. Yet these tears are still expressions of grief. The mobilization of minds and cultural attitudes during the First World War is so deep, however, that, at some points, even tears will be mobilised to show the hatred of the enemy.
The Mobilization of Tears The fact that tears were used and mobilised, to express the redemption of a patriot or the weakness of a German and the joy of killing, is a revealing sign of the powerful logic of total war. The most intimate behaviours eventually participate in the war effort. First, as medieval historians have shown, tears are used to underline a character’s holiness.49 In many narratives, most of them unrealistic but none the less telling, some hitherto unsoldierly combatants show tears as the visible signs of their patriotic and military redemption. An edifying tale describes a tough criminal, whose nickname is ‘Charlot l’Apache’, as he experiences a form of spiritual redemption after being hit by a shell. His comrades accompany his last living moments with these words: “don’t worry, old fellow, you will arrive in Heaven purified by your tears and by your blood”.50 An extreme example of such a staging of patriotic tears is reached in a priest’s story, as a wounded Jew is struck with an urge to convert before dying. His patriotic redemption brings tears to his eyes: “Ah! how happy was poor Youp! He kissed me on both cheeks and I
48
Pellan (1982), pp. 66–67. See Nagy (2000). 50 L’Etoile noëliste, 10 mai 1917. Quoted by Audoin Rouzeau (1993), p. 78. ‘Apache’ was the familiar nickname for young criminals in Paris at the turn of the century, and came to designate any person of questionable morality and behaviour. 49
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believe he was crying”.51 Tears are indeed used to show the holiness of patriotism. Even more revealing are the tears directly linked to the war’s violence. When tears come to express hatred or frustration at the impossibility of killing, the full scope of the total war’s logic becomes clear. An episode in André Richard’s Carnets shows an officer crying with rage as he is unable to bombard enemies: The artillery commander is on a ridge, a little behind. I quickly reach it and explain the situation. As I speak, the strong face of the officer contorts with an intimate pain. He brutally leads me to the ammunition stock. Look, says he. What do you want me to do? Indeed, the cases are empty . . . There are no more shells. I am no longer amazed at the tears in the commander’s eyes. We have to let this convoy go safely, because we are all out of ammunition! What a terrible day.52
Tears in an officer’s eyes would be ‘amazing’ to this witness in any other circumstance, however, here, they are proofs of stern patriotism. The impossibility of acting on a desire to kill leads to ‘intimate pain’, a clear sign of the conflict’s hold over these men’s minds. This constitutes a stereotype in the history of the war: a frustrated desire to kill provokes tears. The doctor Lucien Laby, when he has to retreat, is “so sad that I cannot refrain from crying”,53 as does a tubercular patient discharged for unfitness.54 Another witness describes soldiers ‘crying with rage’ as mud stops them from leaving the trenches for an attack.55 The clearest link between the war’s violence and bodily emotion is found in the reaction of two commanding officers who have watched an offensive ideally consistent with the canons of French heroism: “Your assault was admirable. The colonel and the general have seen it and wept”.56 The violence of the war goes so far as to provoke tears, tears of frustration when it is delayed, tears of joy when its expression is perfect. The mobilization of tears has a last facet: they are used to discredit the enemy and show his weakness. As we have seen, the fact 51 Grandmaison (1917), p. 61. ‘Youp’ is a derogatory designation of a Jewish person. 52 Richard (1987), p. 35. 53 Laby (2001), 2 septembre 1914. 54 Sauliol (1923), p. 99. 55 De Brinon (1915), p. 67. 56 Jubert (1989), p. 81.
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of refraining from crying is a sign of heroism. It is thus easy to stigmatize foes for treacherous or cowardly tears. A mediocre poet even composed the five-stanza ‘the Kaiser has wept’, which enumerates his shameful deeds and asserts that “it is of fear, mostly, that, vanquished by shame, the Kaiser has wept!”57 It is more interesting to see how combatants themselves express these ideas. Some soldiers explicitly underline an imagined contrast in character: André Maginot praises the “French character, in full opposition with the laments of Germans, who weep and moan”. But, surprisingly, even with such authors as Barthas and Genevoix, apparently void of hatred towards the Germans, the only tears to be found are that of enemy prisoners or wounded. Throughout Louis Barthas’ Carnets, the only character who cries clearly is a German prisoner whose cap has been stolen, “crying with hot tears of anger, shame and regret for the loss of his hat”.58 The terms ‘shame’ and ‘regret’ are worth noting, as they discredit this character. Genevoix’s text shows many wounded or crying men, however, his depiction of enemies is striking: “the youngest [prisoner] throws himself at my feet and slobbers over my hands with saliva and tears”.59 Elsewhere, his depiction of a wounded man is even more derogatory: “his voice breaks in a crying child’s tremulousness, then his teeth grate atrociously, then he lets out in the night a long and beastly whine, very like a dog’s desperate bark at the moon”.60 These authors, who explicitly refuse nationalism, unconsciously use tears in their writings to show the weakness of their adversary. Tears prove to be sacred or degrading, according to their function in wartime representations, where even intimate behaviours cannot escape the hold of the war and the processes of cultural mobilization.
Conclusion This investigation of French soldiers’ tears is revealing in many ways. We have seen the extent to which men’s bodies must obey the rules 57 58 59 60
‘Le Kaiser a pleuré’, Martel (1926), p. 142. Barthas (1997), p. 25. Genevoix (1949), p. 53. Ibid., p. 94.
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of wartime mobilization, refraining from sobbing or shedding tears of brutality. In doing so, they respect pre-existing rules of emotional control and masculine courage which the conflict has reinforced. However the war also shows how fragile these rules are. For the interdiction of tears leads to the denial of pain, forced cheerfulness and ritualised mourning. Grievance is either hidden or patriotic, which accounts for the truly never-ending bereavement after the war.61 And the history of tears shows a glimpse of another sort of suffering: that of men both forbidden to cry and unable to remain as stolid and strong as pre-war values would expect them to be. Here, too, between expectations of the conflict and the reality of war the discrepancy is painful. If the matter of tears is of such importance, it is also because the front lines make up a public space where tears are seldom unnoticed. On the contrary, faces and eyes are under constant scrutiny as men seek reassurance or spy for weaknesses. The manner in which emotions are expressed thus constitutes a powerful constraint as unwarranted tears will endanger a soldier’s social and sexual identity. However, tears remain polysemic: a proper staging and framing will neutralise them and turn them into a homage to patriotic sacrifices, thus becoming an instrument in the making of military cohesiveness. Ritual ceremonies, far from generating a distressing emotion, were destined to render death and bereavement acceptable and significant. The code of expression of tears and emotions thus explains to what little extent the war’s nevertheless immense sorrow and grief undermined the combatants’ resolution to fight. B Primary Sources Barge F. (1984) Avoir vingt ans dans les tranchées (St-Pourçains-sur-Sioule: 1984). Barthas L. (1997) Les carnets de guerre de Louis Barthas, tonnelier, 1914–1918 (Paris: 1997). Bloch M. (1997) ‘Souvenirs de guerre 1914–1915’, Ecrits de guerre (Paris: 1997). Callies A. (1999) Carnets de Guerre d’Alexis Callies retranscrits et commentés par Eric Labayle (Château-Thierry: 1999). Cardot J.-A. (1987) Artilleurs de campagne 1918 (Paris: 1987).
61
Audoin-Rouzeau, (1999).
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Daniel M. (1983) 1er régiment de marche de zouaves: un caporal et son escouade: tous les jours du 20 mars 1915 au 14 juillet 1918 (Vannes: 1983). De Brinon F. (1915) En guerre. Impressions d’un témoin (Paris: 1915). Dide M. (1916) Ceux qui combattent et ceux qui meurent (Paris: 1916). —— (1918) Les émotions et la guerre (Paris: 1918). Dubarle R. (1918) Lettres de guerre de Robert Dubarle (Paris: 1918). Dubrulle P. (1917) Mon régiment (Paris: 1917). Fénix J.-L. (1994) Histoire passionnante de la vie d’un petit ramoneur savoyard, écrite par luimême (Lyon: 1994). Genevoix M. (1949) Ceux de 14 (Paris: 1996 [1949]). Germain J. (1918) Notre Guerre (Paris: 1918). Grandmaison L. de (1917) Impressions de guerre de prêtres soldats, recueillies par Léonce de Grandmaison, vol. II (Paris: 1917). Huot L., P. Voivenel (1918) Le Courage (Paris: 1918). Icher J. (1983) Quelques souvenirs de 1914–1918 (Limoux: 1983). Jubert R. (1989) Verdun. Mars, avril, mai 1916 (Nancy: 1989). Kahn A. (1978) Journal de guerre d’un juif patriote 1914–1918 (Paris: 1978). Laby L. (2001) Les carnets de l’aspirant Laby: médecin dans les tranchées: 28 juillet 1914 – 14 juillet 1919 (Paris: 2001). Martel J. (1926) Les Larmes rouges. Strophes sanglantes et glorieuses (Saint-Mandé: 1926). Morel-Journel H. (1922) Journal d’un officier de la 74e division d’Infanterie et de l’Armée française d’Italie (1914–1918) (Montbrison: 1922). Pastre G. (1990) Trois ans de front. Belgique—Aisne et Champagne—Verdun—Argonne— Lorraine. Notes et impressions d’un artilleur (Nancy: 1990). Pellan F. (1982) Lettres de guerre (Paris: 1982). Pézard A. (1918) Nous autres, à Vauquois (1915–1916) (Paris: 1930 [1918]). Richard A. (1987) Carnets 1914–1917 (Banne: 1987). Sauliol R. (1923) Silhouettes de guerre 1914–1916 (Paris/Nancy: 1923). Tailhades F. (1980) Ils m’appelaient tout le temps ‘camarade’ (Carcassonne: 1980). Tézenas du Montcel H. (1928) Lettres de guerre (Paris: 1928). Tézenas du Montcel J.-M. (1960) L’Heure H. Etapes d’infanterie (Paris: 1960). Tuffrau P. (1917) Lieutenant E.R. (Capitaine Tuffrau), Carnet d’un combattant (Paris: 1917).
Secondary Sources Audoin Rouzeau S. (1993) La guerre des enfants 1914 –1918, essai d’histoire culturelle (Paris: 1993). —— (1999) ‘La Grande Guerre, le deuil interminable’, Le Débat 104 (1999) 117–130. Barthes R. (1977) Fragments d’un discours amoureux (Paris: 1977) in Oeuvres complètes, tome III: 1974–1980, (Paris: 1995). Gerbod P. (1982) ‘L’éthique héroïque en France (1870–1914)’, Revue Historique 544 (1982) 409–429. Horne J. (1995) ‘Soldiers, civilians and the warfare of attrition. Representation of combat in France, 1914–1918’ in Authority, Identity and the Social History of the Great War, eds., Frans Coetzee, Marilyn Shevin-Coetzee (Oxford: 1995) 223–249. Le Breton D. (1998) Les passions ordinaires. Anthropologie des émotions (Paris: 1998). Lévi-Strauss C. (1971) L’Homme nu (Mythologiques 4) (Paris: 1971). Lutz T. (1999) Crying: a natural and cultural history of tears (New York: 1999). Nagy P. (2000) Le don des larmes au Moyen Âge, un instrument spirituel en quête d’institution (Paris: 2000). Nye R.A. (1993) Masculinity and Male Codes of Honor in Modern France (New York/Oxford: 1993). Roynette O. (2000) ‘Bons pour le service’, L’expérience de la caserne en France à la fin du XIX e siècle (Paris: 2000). Vincent-Buffault A. (1986) Histoire des larmes, XVIII e–XIX e s. (Marseille: 1986).
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LA DAME BLANCHE: GENDER AND ESPIONAGE IN OCCUPIED BELGIUM Tammy M. Proctor
Karl Marx astutely noted in an oft-quoted phrase: “A nation and a woman are not forgiven the unguarded hour in which the first adventurer that came along could violate them.”1 Belgium’s unguarded hour came in 1914 as the German war machine subdued the Belgian forces and occupied all but a small corner of the country. When scholars of the First World War raise the issue of Belgium, they usually do so in the context of these early months of the war, when German armies came crashing through the country en route to Paris. Called ‘poor little Belgium,’ the nation is depicted as a brave victim of Teutonic aggression and European power politics.2 As occupied territory with its king and army in exile on the other side of the front lines, Belgium was a nation without its sovereignty, imprisoned inside its own borders.3 Most readers are familiar with the stories of German atrocities against civilians, the two million refugees, and the trench-filled landscape near Ypres. What is less familiar to students and scholars of history is the active role that many Belgians played in resisting German occupation and in aiding the Allied armies. The forced labour of Belgian civilians, deportations, and the massive relief effort by the Committee for Relief in Belgium, which shipped five million tons of food into the country, has received scant attention.4 Perhaps most invisible, however, is the role of the Belgian resistance. Between 1914 and 1918, Belgians resisted occupation and gathered information for allied armies in a variety of ways, yet little of this activity has been studied or analyzed in major histories of the war. Why has Belgian civilian activity been so invisible? The fact of an active Belgian resistance sits uneasily with images of ‘poor little Belgium,’ depicted in war propaganda as a woman 1
Marx (1978) p. 599. A recent examination of this imagery and its implications for the history of Belgium during the war is de Schaepdrijver (2000). 3 Pirenne (1928) p. 1. 4 De Schaepdrijver (1999) p. 270. 2
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Fig. 4.1. Extent of La Dame Blanche Network, July 1918
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raped by invading armies. News accounts, political cartoons, postcards and ‘official’ reports described the ‘rape of Belgium’ in lurid detail, portraying Belgium itself as a woman violated. Historians John Horne and Alan Kramer have noted that both the British and French published cartoons of ‘a brutal German soldier, presiding over the burning ruins of a Belgian village and astride the corpses of those most symbolic victims, a woman and a child.’5 Belgian artists also depicted their country as a bound female victim. One such 1915 cartoon, entitled ‘Fettered Belgium,’ shows a grotesque German soldier pointing a gun at his young female victim and exclaiming, ‘She’ll end up loving me!’6 German occupation was a penetration of Belgium’s body politic, now gendered female. This vision of the Belgian war experience left little room for heroism once Louvain had burned and the fortresses at Liège and Dinant had succumbed to German forces. The gendered representation of Belgium as woman, as occupied territory, places the nation in the category of non-combatant in the narrative of war. Soldiers, gendered male, fight to protect the noncombatants and the passive victims of war, especially women and children. If, as Allied propaganda loudly shouted during the war, Belgium was a victim, a damsel in need of rescuing, then how could it have an active and defiant resistance movement within the occupied zone? Perhaps that is why the actions of thousands of ordinary Belgian citizens in occupied territory have received little attention from historians.7 Belgian men and women, from different class backgrounds and age cohorts, put their lives at risk to defy the occupying army by gathering intelligence, carrying messages, smuggling Allied soldiers to safety, disseminating pro-Allied propaganda, and refusing complicity. These activities, which went virtually unrewarded and unrecognized by the postwar Belgian government, also were shadowed by accusations of collaboration with the German occupying force. What is most perplexing about the Belgian resistance is the lack of scholarly literature focusing on the topic and the near invisibility of the subject in general histories of the war.
5
Horne and Kramer (2001) pp. 178–80. De Schaepdrijver (1999) p. 276. 7 De Schaepdrijver (1999) pp. 292–3 suggests that the ‘brave Belgium’ propaganda became increasingly hollow and in fact contributed to the anti-Belgian resentment that emerged after the war, especially at the Peace Conference. 6
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I would like to suggest that historians’ explicit gendering of the war experience and their assumption of home front versus battlefront helps explain why the Belgian resistance has been ignored in many histories of 1914–18. As Susan Grayzel has noted in her recent book,8 the neat division between home and battlefronts is a convenient device for authors and historians, but it does not precisely capture the experience of the war. This is especially true in Belgium where the blurring of the line between combatant and civilian occurred, and the experience of occupation undermined gendered expectations about non-combatants’ role in warfare. A study of the Belgian resistance in the First World War not only provides interesting insight into networks that fought almost five years of foreign occupation, but such a study also illuminates the assumptions that scholars have made about the nature of war, its participants, and its terms of debate. One place to begin understanding the role of civilians in occupied territory during the war is by examining just one of the many intelligence services run by Allied governments in occupied Belgium. La Dame Blanche, named after a legendary spectre that was supposed to herald the destruction of the Hohenzollern dynasty, was such a service, funded and managed by the British War Office through representatives in Holland, but staffed by more than a thousand Belgian and French civilians.9 La Dame Blanche was an intricate network of information gathering, focused in the predominantly French-speaking eastern and southern part of Belgium as well as the occupied north of France, and staffed by men and women patriots. Founded by three men in Liège in 1916, the network tried to find a governmental sponsor among a dizzying array of national intelligence organizations operating out of neutral Belgium, northern France and Holland. After first approaching the French, Belgian, and British Army intelligence services, La Dame Blanche became a military organization attached to the British War Office in 1917, partly because
8
Grayzel (1999) pp. 11–13. Work on La Dame Blanche has been sparse, even among historians of intelligence networks. The most detailed study is a thesis: Decock (1981). Other works that include information on La Dame Blanche and its wartime work are: Andrew (1985), Bernard (1971), and Occleshaw (1989). The other useful source is a book banned in Britain but published in the United States, by the British officer assigned to manage La Dame Blanche from 1917–1919: Landau (1935). 9
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this group had money to pay agents.10 La Dame Blanche recruited couriers, territorial observers, train-watchers and other personnel to aid the Allied war effort with much-needed information on German morale, troop movements, and technology. La Dame Blanche is a fascinating case study for historians of the Great War. Not only do a wealth of records document background, war service and members’ motives, but both men and women, individually and in families, were militarized. Regardless of age, social class or sex, Belgians could enroll as soldiers by taking an oath of loyalty and thus participate actively in resisting German occupation. Soldier status was a crucial recruiting tool since it helped legitimize the covert intelligence work that both men and women were doing and promised recognition after the war. For men, this was particularly important because of the societal expectation that they serve in a military capacity, if possible. In contrast, La Dame Blanche permitted women to function in roles formerly perceived to be masculine. The gendered army of intelligence workers created in the service was unprecedented in British history—a military force of foreign soldiers, among whom were minors, old-age pensioners, and nuns. Yet the composition of the service was no accident, since the leaders of La Dame Blanche recognized that wartime occupation had made all Belgians a part of the war. Before allying themselves formally with the British War Office, the La Dame Blanche executive council insisted upon formal militarization for all members of this network. In other words, the agents of La Dame Blanche saw themselves not as ‘vulgar spies’ but as soldiers in the Corps d’Observation Anglais au Front de l’Ouest, who took an oath and registered. In fact, the directors of the network forbade members from using the terms ‘espionage’ or ‘spy.’ Instead, La Dame Blanche members used the labels ‘agent’ or ‘soldier’ when referring to their responsibilities and military intelligence gathering.11 One La Dame Blanche agent called her colleagues ‘soldiers without uniform,’ again emphasizing that they had embraced danger and fought fear just as their comrades in the trenches of Flanders had.12 10 Archives Générale du Royaume, Belgium [AGR]-212, Historical Notices. The French offer was declined, the Belgian affiliation broke down almost immediately, and the British Army GHQ service was abandoned when sloppiness led to the arrest of some members of the network. 11 Decock (1981) p. 129. 12 Qtd. in Decock (1981) p. 141.
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The agents’ concern that they might be mistaken for spies motivated by greed, rather than as soldiers with patriotic intentions was echoed in British official correspondence and postwar histories. As one official noted in a memo: “In view of the popular conception and misuse of the word ‘spy,’ I am sure it is not generally recognized that the persons in invaded country who have in the past, and who are at present giving us information concerning the Germans are amongst the finest type of patriots.”13 Winston Churchill, in an introduction to the memoirs of a Belgian female spy, also felt the need to reassure readers that “the heroine of this account, fulfilled in every respect the conditions which make the terrible profession of a spy dignified and honourable . . . [she] is not actuated by any sordid motive, but inspired by patriotism . . .”14 To help reinforce the respectable service credentials of these mostly anonymous fighters, the British government formally recognized and reimbursed La Dame Blanche after the war as an auxiliary army to the Expeditionary Force, and the whole network received British War Medals and Order of the British Empire decorations.15 When La Dame Blanche leaders demanded militarization from the British government in 1917, what they wanted was to be an auxiliary branch of the British Army, complete with ranks, battalions, discipline and enlistment. Despite getting a lukewarm reception from the British, La Dame Blanche did organize itself along military lines into three battalions, eight companies, and a number of platoons and squadrons, with most of the divisions based on geographical location. In addition to the larger military structure of battalions, each town with a rail line was given a number. Those numbered locations formed the basis of platoons, so, for example, Battalion III, which was centered in Brussels (#100), had four companies organized by location, each with a series of platoons. Initially, those who pledged the oath of service were assigned a rank—corporal, lieutenant, soldier, etc.—but the British authorities during and after the war refused to accept this specific ranking system, opting for the general designation ‘soldat’ for all members.
13 Public Record Office, London [PRO] WO 106/45 E.A. Wallinger to R.J. Drake 1 June 1918. 14 Churchill in McKenna (1932) p. 5. 15 PRO WO 106/6192 Names of French and Belgian Secret Service Agents— Awards.
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Rather than being excluded or consigned to auxiliary functions, women and older children were employed at all levels of the organization. La Dame Blanche’s three male leaders, fearing capture and/or deportation, wanted a service that could run entirely on womanpower, if necessary. They developed a shadow executive body comprised entirely of women who had the skills and knowledge to assume control of the service. This ‘feminine reserve’ functioned in leadership roles throughout the organization, but was also designed to take over should a disaster occur.16 To examine the organization and its workings more closely, I want to focus on one battalion within the larger intelligence network. Battalion III was the smallest of the three battalions, with about 190 documented agents and auxiliary civilians in its official records, but it was important because of its surveillance of several important rail lines linking Brussels, Malines, Mons, and Charleroi. The battalion was headed by a single woman in her forties, Laure Tandel, who along with Louise, her sister and La Dame Blanche assistant, ran a school in Brussels. Like many members of the network, Laure Tandel had had a reputation for defying the German authorities early in the war with other forms of resistance to occupation. In 1916, she had spent a year in the German prison of Siegburg for her work on the underground postal service le Mot du Soldat.17 Belgian civilians risked their lives to set up a reliable means of communication with soldiers serving with the Belgian army outside the occupied zone, and Tandel had been imprisoned while engaging in this dangerous work. Other members of the battalion had also served time for distributing the radical underground paper, La Libre Belgique, or for hiding Allied soldiers. The demographics of Battalion III are interesting in uncovering the workings of the intelligence organization. In addition to the Tandel sisters, who commanded the battalion, women held many of the major executive positions in the service. Of the 190 members of Battalion III, 59 were women, or about 31%, which makes this battalion a useful microcosm of the larger organization.18 In La Dame
16 Decock (1981) p. 86. For a longer, detailed study of women’s role in La Dame Blanche and intelligence, see Proctor (2003). 17 AGR-224, Battalion III service records. Despite many arrests, le Mot du Soldat survived to the end of the war. Pirenne (1928) p. 81. 18 AGR-224, Battalion III service records.
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Blanche as a whole, the number of women made up around 30% of the total.19 Further specific information about the composition of La Dame Blanche can be drawn from the service records that document the age, occupation, location, and war service of all members. For women, marital status is also included in the record, providing a snapshot of those women drawn to this intelligence work. In a survey of ages of agents, it is striking that such a broad range of people became involved; in Battalion III alone, the ages range from 16 to 81. The bulk of members of Battalion III seem to have been between the ages of 20 and 42, although there were also a considerable number of men in their forties and fifties. Of the women involved in Battalion III, about 63% of them were single or widowed (7%). The occupational backgrounds of La Dame Blanche members are also quite diverse. For example, near Liège, there was one group composed almost entirely of aristocratic rentiers, while in Battalion III’s small 7th Company centered near Ghent, most members were male engineers or civil servants. Battalion III had a particularly large number of railway employees, engineers, and educators involved in this particular branch of La Dame Blanche. Many people recruited friends or workplace acquaintances, leading to a clustering of members around certain industries and areas. What do all these statistics say about the makeup of La Dame Blanche’s Third Battalion? First, the battalion drew heavily from unemployed women, but also from single women working in educational institutions, probably because the female battalion leaders were themselves educators. In terms of men’s occupations, the majority of recruits were drawn from trade, manufacturing, transport, and utilities industries, with a significant number of skilled craftsmen, engineers, and civil service officials. Some occupations lent themselves to certain kinds of activity, so, for example, railway employees were asked to report on troop movements by train, and landladies would often be asked to feed and clothe fugitives. Second, almost all of the men and some of the women who joined La Dame Blanche had jobs, so their intelligence work often was completed in addition to other responsibilities. The reasons that members gave for becoming part of a British intelligence network were as diverse as their occupational and age 19
Decock (1981) p. 49.
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backgrounds. One group had involved itself from the beginning of the war in anti-German resistance, either through feeding, hiding and smuggling out Allied soldiers or through publication and dissemination of illegal propaganda, such as foreign newspapers or the underground paper, La Libre Belgique. For many of these men and women, working for British intelligence was just another way of helping Belgium rid itself of the occupying army and ending the war. Another group of young men joined La Dame Blanche because after the Germans sealed Belgian frontiers with barbed wire and highvoltage fencing, it was extremely difficult for men of military age to leave the country to join the Belgian Army. Also, some of the youngest in the network were too young to become regular army soldiers, even if they had managed to find their way to Holland. Some men and women also joined La Dame Blanche for familial or personal reasons. The need to fight either to forget the pain of a loved one’s death or perhaps to avenge that death, motivated some members to risk their lives. One such family of women became instrumental in Battalion III as couriers, transcribers, and letterboxes (people who received and passed on messages). Anna Kesseler, a widow in her mid-fifties, lost her only son in battle near Anvers in 1914, spurring her to help British intelligence. As Battalion Commander Laure Tandel noted in her postwar report, Kesseler was “a patriotic and courageous mother who had already lost her only son,” but who “did not hesitate to authorize her four daughters to take an active part in the La Dame Blanche service . . .”20 Indeed, Germaine and Maria Kesseler, both in their early twenties, served as regular couriers between Brussels and Liège as well as running the battalion’s secretariat in Brussels.21 Family connections were an important part of the network, with many members of a platoon being related through blood or marriage. This was especially true of the railway observation posts, which needed constant 24-hour surveillance of the rail lines. Often it was easiest for a family or a couple working in shifts to maintain this sort of schedule from a residence situated near the rail lines. One family, the Arnolds, worked such an observation post in Gouvy from July 1917 to November 1918. Paid 10–15 francs per day, the Arnolds—father, mother, son & daughter—kept up a shift of watches 20 21
AGR-224, Battalion III service records. AGR-222, Reports on the Organization of Battalion III.
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on the rail line, noting troops and equipment as it passed. The parents took turns watching, and the father, Charles, carried the information to a letterbox. Gerardine, the thirteen-year-old daughter of the house, explained her role in her post-war report: When friends or strangers were at the house and my parents were hindered from fulfilling their mission, my brother [aged 15] and I replaced them. At other times, one could not determine exactly that which was on the railcars or the kind of troops, then we would play on the bridge or along the tracks and we would come report what we had seen.22
Such family surveillance units made the work particularly dangerous since all the members of a family could face arrest, imprisonment or death. In one of the most tragic cases of La Dame Blanche’s history, two young brothers were captured, imprisoned and executed at Liège after being caught with intelligence reports in their possession.23 Their father and two of their sisters were also involved in intelligence activities, and one of the daughters enrolled in La Dame Blanche after her brothers’ imprisonment. Sadly for the family, she also died in 1919 from an illness she contracted late in the war. All five members of the family spent some time in prison.24 Beyond the familial webs that helped cement relationships in La Dame Blanche, militarization was the most powerful motivating force for members. In order to become a formal soldier of the service, men and women had to take oaths of loyalty, either as soldiers (for the majority) or as attached civilians. The oath was a simple one: I declare and enlist in the capacity of soldier in the Allied military observation service until the end of the war. I swear before God • to respect this engagement, • to accomplish conscientiously the offices entrusted to me, • to comply with the instructions given to me by the representatives of the Direction, • not to reveal to anyone (without formal authorization) anything concerning the organization of the service, even if this stance should entail for me or mine the penalty of death, 22
AGR-223, Reports on the COA. Landau (1935) pp. 142–45. 24 Imperial War Museum, London [IWM]-La Dame Blanche Box 1, Folder 4 (a/b). 23
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• not to take part in any other activity or role that might expose me to prosecution by the occupying authority.25 This oath gave structure and purpose to the organization, but it also insured that members would give up other resistance work, such as employment by other intelligence organizations, circulating propaganda, and running escape networks. By controlling members’ outside activities, La Dame Blanche tightened security and ensured that members arrested for some other illegal activity would not be able to give evidence on the LDB service. The oath was a point of pride for the men and women who took it, and it lent credence to their patriotic service, reassuring those who still saw intelligence work as less than honourable. Members, although not uniformed by necessity, were encouraged to carry themselves as soldiers and to act appropriately. In addition to the oath they took, members were formally registered, given small lead identity badges, which carried the seal of the Corps, and assigned false names for their work.26 For example, one of the network chiefs, Walthère Déwe, was known as van den Bosch, Gauthier and Muraille to agents, which helped maintain security if members were arrested.27 The directors distributed to new La Dame Blanche soldiers copies of rules, including general operating procedures and instructions regarding what to do if arrested or interrogated. Finally, members were given important information on German uniforms, weapons, and regiments, plus a code list for encrypting the information they gathered.28 This militarized structure of the organization lowered the chances that the whole network would be caught, since each cell of the organization functioned independently and reported only to a few people. If one company or battalion were captured, those individuals would not have the information needed to betray other units, even if they broke their military oaths.29 Militarization was a key part of the success of La Dame Blanche because it helped enforce loyalty and promised a post-war court martial for any who betrayed the organization. Military status also reassured those who enlisted that their work would be officially recognized. 25 26 27 28 29
AGR-212, Historical Notices. AGR-212, Historical Notices. Landau (1935) pp. 61–2. AGR-212, Circulaire No. 3. AGR-207, SOA to SA, 11 August 1918.
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Again, gendered analysis of the correspondence and reports suggests that for men especially, soldier status gave them the hope of legitimacy after the war, or as one member put it, “We are to be militarized, we are to be soldiers, soldiers for good, like the others . . .”30 The fear that they would be perceived as cowardly or unpatriotic if they remained passive haunted many of the Belgian males who joined intelligence and resistance organizations. They longed to prove their patriotism and to have activities to make them feel useful. This chance to function as real soldiers was hard to ignore, despite its dangers. Herman Chauvin, one of the network chiefs, noted the importance of militarization in helping recruit new members for La Dame Blanche. He wrote after the war: Receiving the oath of a soldier was for the newly enlisted certain proof of the usefulness of the work that we were demanding; it represented, for after the war, the recognition of services rendered, official protection in case of accident, the prospect of being acknowledged as brothers in arms by the valiant soldiers at the front . . .31
Being ‘brothers in arms’ was a powerful inducement for men who felt paralyzed and feminized by the German occupation. Militarization was also crucial precisely because it conferred legitimacy on the organization both during and after the war. La Dame Blanche agents saw themselves not as spies or resisters per se, but as soldiers in service to the cause, risking their lives just as front-line soldiers did. Although the men and women of La Dame Blanche were officially non-combatants, and they were still silent soldiers who had made their homes and businesses battle zones. After the war, the network chiefs were ‘flooded with demands’ from agents asking for proof that they had been soldiers in the observation corps.32 This process was complicated, however, especially by the presence of large numbers of women in the service. The British government, despite its recent creation of women’s auxiliary corps, did not favour creating women soldiers in Belgium. Only vigorous lobbying by British intelligence officials and the repeated requests of La Dame Blanche chiefs led to the eventual official acceptance of militarization for the women. After the war, the chiefs threatened not to accept militariza-
30 31 32
L’Abbe Philippot as qtd. in Decock (1981) p. 103. Herman Chauvin as qtd. in Decock (1981) pp. 103–4. AGR-207, Correspondence of COA (Belg.) and SA (War Office) in Holland.
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tion for themselves if the women, who had served under the assumption that they were soldiers, were not recognized as such. In a contentious letter to London written in February 1919, British Intelligence Officer Henry Landau pleaded the case for the women, saying that they “ran exactly the same risks as the men.” He also suggested that the women’s militarization was really important to them, “having so had the military spirit drilled into them, that they are much keener on it . . .”33 Likewise, in his report on the role of women in his company, Commandant Leopold Blanjean wrote that when it came to a sense of duty and moral force, women were more likely to accept the challenge of joining the service. He claimed that “the man is nothing, the woman is all,” suggesting that women often determined whether a couple or a whole family would join the cause.34 Where men gained legitimacy from their enlistment, many women clearly were excited at the prospect of active service. Here was a chance to join men on an equal footing in wartime service. Irene Bastin, later Sister Thérese de l’Enfant Jesus, explained her feelings as she took the military oath. Both she and her friend Marie-Thérèse Collard were enlisted in May 1918, aged only 17 and 18 respectively. Irene described the scene thus: We had the honour of becoming soldiers . . . [but] Marie-Thérèse dared not believe in this good fortune. That night she could not sleep, and she said to me many times: ‘At last that which I have so desired is realized, I am going to work for our nation and as a soldier.’35
The notion that war was an exciting and liberating experience for many women is of course not a new concept. Historians such as Sandra Gilbert have demonstrated that the First World War created a societal fissure that allowed women a brief interlude of increased freedom before the realities of the post-war world led to a backlash.36 Women in La Dame Blanche felt that sense of mission and intoxicating liberation. Agent Jeanne Delwaide’s comments on the corps sum up the exhilarating experience of vicarious soldiering that
33 IWM La Dame Blanche Box 2, Folder 12a/b; Henry Landau to Capt. Vigors, Sect 4a MI1c, 24 February 1919. 34 AGR-222, Report on 8th Company; L.L. Blanjean 1919 report. 35 IWM La Dame Blanche Box 1, Folder 4(a/b). 36 Gilbert in Higonnet (1987) pp. 197–226. Many scholars have begun to examine the gender anxieties created by the war and its aftermath. See, for example, works by Beddoe (1998), Bourke (1996), Kent (1993), and Roberts (1994).
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La Dame Blanche provided for women and for many men as well. She wrote: Soldiers without uniforms, we have not known the intoxication of combat where we advanced elbow to elbow to the seductive clarion call, nor the nights of battle triumphant. But we have known violent struggle . . . we have seen the voids created in our ranks, the fear of arrest, tracked by the German police, we have wandered in our cities . . .37
Like Delwaide, Thérèse de Radiguès, leader of another La Dame Blanche unit, described her sense of purpose and mission as a soldier. ‘The feeling of danger hanging over our heads night and day did not dishearten us, far from it, it seemed that the greater the danger became the more enchanting was our work.’38 Women saw their service in La Dame Blanche as proof of their patriotism and their suitability for militarization. Delwaide summarized the feelings of men and women soldiers of La Dame Blanche in her public acceptance speech of her British Empire medal after the war: ‘We have done our duty—as good British soldiers—and we have done it with joy, with no other hope but that the assurance that our modest services would not be unnecessary to the great common cause.’39 La Dame Blanche successfully survived the war, providing information to British authorities until after the Armistice. The network by 1918 covered much of the occupied territory [Figure 1] and provided useful information on the location of German troops and munitions, especially during the 1918 German offensive. One British officer went so far as to claim that the service had obtained up to seventyfive percent of the intelligence that Britain received from occupied territory in the latter part of the war.40 Altogether more than six thousand agents are documented as being formal British agents (in all its networks), but scores more worked without formal affiliation. About three thousand British War Medals were dispensed to foreign nationals and more than £50,000 was paid to settle postwar claims of agents for prison pay, expenses, and hardship.41
37
Qtd. in Decock (1981) p. 141. IWM La Dame Blanche box 1, folder 8, T. de Radigues 1919 report. 39 IWM La Dame Blanche box 2, folder 13, clipping from Moniteur, 31 janvier 1919. 40 AGR-212, Historical Notices. 41 IWM 79/50/1, Sir Ivone Kirkpatrick papers. 38
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In a larger sense, wartime intelligence networks such as La Dame Blanche helped define the twentieth century development of concepts of espionage, resistance, and clandestine activities. As an example, the definition of military intelligence in the 1930s Encyclopedia Britannica neatly described networks such as La Dame Blanche and tried to legitimize such war service: An espionage system in war involves the employment of many thousands of men, women and even children of all grades of society and of all professions; post-boxes, smugglers, guides, train-watchers, pigeon men, couriers, runners, etc. All have their part to play, and that part, far from being ignoble, may be, if actuated by patriotism, as noble, as dangerous and as heroic as any played in the armies in the field.42
Yet, the question remains: why have the experiences of men and women intelligence agents, resisters, and political prisoners disappeared so thoroughly from our vision of the Great War? Clearly scores of ordinary folk opened their homes and risked their lives to assist Allied soldiers and governments, yet their experiences have been largely forgotten by scholars.43 The memorials to these patriots exist in cities and towns across Belgium, yet local residents often have no conception of what service these men and women performed. The records of La Dame Blanche certainly suggest that a closer examination of the gendered experiences of civilians living in occupied territory during the Great War might help illustrate the slippery nature of the terms ‘home front,’ ‘nation,’ and ‘soldier’. Records of the patriotic activities of Belgians behind enemy lines show that active resistance sometimes was necessary to prove non-complicity and to allay suspicions about collaboration. For both the men and women of La Dame Blanche, soldiering for Britain in the Allied cause helped alleviate their fears that in an unguarded moment they had been not only occupied by the Germans, but conquered.
42
Encyclopedia qtd. in Millard (1937) p. 13. Margaret Darrow has questioned why World War II produced heroes and heroines of the resistance but not World War I. Darrow (2000) p. 4. 43
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Andrew Christopher (1985) Secret Service: The Making of the British Intelligence Community. (London: 1985). Beddoe Deirdre (1998) Back to Home and Duty: Women Between the Wars, 1918–1939 (New York: 1998). Bernard Henri (1971) Un géant de la résistance: Walthère Déwe (Belgium: 1971). Bourke Joanna (1996) Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (Chicago: 1996). Churchill Winston (1932) ‘Foreword’ in Marthe McKenna, I Was a Spy! (London: 1932). Darrow Margaret (2000) French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front (Oxford and New York: 2000). Decock P. (1981) La Dame Blanche: un réseau de renseignements de la grande guerre 1916–1918. (Thesis (PhD). Histoire Contemporaire, Université Libre de Bruxelles). Gilbert Sandra (1987) ‘Soldier’s Heart: Literary Men, Literary Women, and the Great War’ in Behind the Lines: Gender and the Two World Wars, eds. Margaret Higonnet et al. (New Haven: 1987). Grayzel Susan R. (1999) Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill/London: 1999). Horne John, and Alan Kramer (2001) German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven and London: 2001). Kent Susan (1993) Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Interwar Britain (Princeton: 1993). Landau Henry (1935) Secrets of the White Lady (New York: 1935). Marx Karl (1978) ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’ in Robert C. Tucker, ed. The Marx-Engels Reader (2nd ed. New York/London: 1978). Millard Oscar E. (1937) Uncensored: The True Story of the Clandestine Newspaper ‘La Libre Belgique’ published in Brussels during the German Occupation (London: 1937). Occleshaw Michael (1989) Armour Against Fate: British Military Intelligence in the First World War (London: 1989). Pirenne Henri (1928) La Belgique et la Guerre Mondiale (New Haven: 1928). Proctor Tammy (2003) Female Intelligence: Women and Espionage in the First World War (New York: 2003). Roberts Mary Louise (1994) Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917–1927 (Chicago: 1994). de Schaepdrijver Sophie (1999) ‘Occupation, propaganda, and the idea of Belgium’ in European Culture in the Great War: The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, 1914–1918, ed. Aviel Roshwald and Richard Stites (Cambridge: 1999). —— (2000) ‘Deux Patries: La Belgique entre exaltation et rejet, 1914–1918’, Cahiers d’Histoire du Temps Présent 7, 17–49.
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WAR NEUROSIS AND VIENNESE PSYCHIATRY IN WORLD WAR ONE Hans-Georg Hofer
In the more recent literature on the medical and cultural history of the Great War, the phenomenon of the epidemic mental breakdowns of soldiers has been given a prominent place. ‘Shellshock’ and ‘war neurosis’ are now key words and frequent metaphors for the shattering effects of an industrialized war. In a sense these psychiatric labels symbolically represent the destructive impact of mechanized weapons on body and soul, the loss of narrative structures and the traumatic after-effects of modern warfare.1 This paper starts out with a brief description of different perceptions of war neurosis in Viennese wartime society, examining the dramatic contrasts in the Austrian medical management of this phenomenon. I then comment on certain aspects of research carried out on this topic. Although one of the first studies on shellshock focused on the Austrian situation, albeit from a mere psychoanalytical point of view, further research has never been carried out. How can Viennese-centred Austrian psychiatry in the First World War be characterized? With regard to new studies on the history of trauma, war and psychiatry I intend to emphasize two interpretations. Firstly, as in German and other European psychiatric war communities, models of rationalisation and modernisation are of significance when focusing on this topic. Secondly, the specific political and cultural context of the AustroHungarian situation is of utmost importance as well. In particular, Viennese psychiatry was affected by the multinational diversity of the Austro-Hungarian army. As war continued, ethnic conflicts and language problems arose, strongly influencing the therapeutic response to war neurosis. Beyond the treatment of a new mental mass phenomenon, which seemed to occur particularly in non-German-Austrian
1 See Winter (2000) and, above all, Lerner and Micale (2001) for an excellent overview on trauma, psychiatry, and history.
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groups, psychiatrists were intent on keeping the centrifugal tendencies in the army under control.2
I. Confrontations: Psychiatrists, Politics and Psychic Trauma In the autumn of 1917, the German psychiatrist, Konrad Alt, published an article in the leading Viennese medical journal. In this article Alt expressed great concern for the ‘enormous group of trembling, shaking and staggering soldiers one can frequently find walking around or sitting in wheelchairs on the streets of major cities, who are stared at everywhere, questioned, pitied and often given presents’.3 The disturbing impression the psychiatrist had obtained on his walk through the streets of Vienna contrasted strongly with the outcome of a conference he had himself chaired as the keynote speaker. The meeting of the so-called physician’s division of the German, Hungarian and Austrian brotherhood in arms was one of a few big military events during the war in which the common interests of the Central Power forces were upheld. It was held in October 1917 in Baden, a health resort near Vienna that was famous for its spas and a preferred playground of the Austrian aristocracy. During the First World War Baden gained further in importance when in 1917 it was made the residence of the Austro-Hungarian army headquarters at Emperor Karl’s personal request. However, the joint Supreme Army Command had already been passed on to the German emperor and his general staff the year before. Therefore, it was a German psychiatrist who chaired the discussion forum on war neurosis.4 For the Austro-Hungarian psychiatric community, which was dominated for the most part by German-Austrians, this meeting was of
2 This paper is based on research I pursued for my PhD thesis (2000), KarlFranzens-University of Graz. A slightly different version of the paper was presented at the conference ‘Frontlines: Gender, Identity and War’, School of Historical Studies, Monash University, Melbourne, 12th–13th July 2002. Some aspects of this paper are discussed in greater detail in my forthcoming book Neurasthenie, Moderne und der Schock des Ersten Weltkriegs. Kulturkritik und Krisenbewältigung in der österreichischen Psychiatrie 1880–1920 (Vienna: 2003). I wish to thank Lutz Sauerteig for his comments, and Margaret Andergassen and Eva Hofer for their help with my English. 3 K. Alt, “Über die Kur- und Bäderfürsorge für nervenkranke Krieger mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der sogenannten Kriegsneurotiker”, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 68 (1918), p. 784. 4 Rauchensteiner (1994) p. 368.
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utmost significance. A large war conference of their German colleagues had taken place in Munich a year earlier. That meeting was decisive in setting the stage for the diagnosis and treatment of mental trauma. From the beginning of the war, the debate on traumatic neurosis had festered in the German psychiatric community, dividing it into two groups. On the one hand, to outline this controversy roughly, a minority group around Berlin neurologist Hermann Oppenheim had taken, indeed renewed, the view that the impact of a strong traumatic experience, such as a railway accident or an exploded shell, could be found in almost imperceptible, microscopic changes in the brain or central nervous system. On the other hand, a growing group of psychiatrists and neurologists, led by Hamburg psychiatrist Max Nonne, stressed a more psychological position, supporting the view that many cases could be explained on the basis of a psychogenic etiology. As these psychiatrists had shown in many cases, there was no direct relationship between traumatic war experience and the outbreak of dramatic symptoms. Soldiers who had never been in the combat zone, could suffer from this disease, meanwhile thousands of those who had fought at the front for a long time, seemed to resist the destructive power of machine war. As a consequence, this meant that the reason for the war neurosis phenomenon could be multifarious. It could be seen, above all, in pathogenic predisposition, in a lack of will power, in ‘pension neurosis’ or in the soldier’s overwhelming wish to get away from the front lines. But these diverse explanations held in common that strong forces of the psyche were responsible for the disorders. The clash of the two approaches in Munich ended in favour of the proponents of the psychogenic position who had claimed to have the better therapeutic competence. In fact, the well-organised and successful treatment demonstrations of Max Nonne and Fritz Kaufmann were ultimately decisive for the debate. Both of them could profoundly impress their audiences by using the techniques of electrotherapy, hypnosis and suggestion.5 In Munich, the Austrian participants of the conference seemed unable to make themselves heard, both in discussions and in decisionmaking. In Baden, however, a year later, the leading figures of 5 For a detailed discussion of the German debate on ‘traumatic neurosis’ before and during the war see Lerner (2001). For the Austrian discussion, see Hofer (2000a) pp. 61–67.
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Austro-Hungarian psychiatry reported sensational accomplishments in healing as well.6 The purported success rates had been presented before in order to gain effective publicity. Prior to this conference, Wilhelm Neutra, a senior consultant of the neurosis section at the military hospital of Baden had held a public lecture where he presented film documents showing the rapid cure of ‘war neurotics’. The psychiatrist was able to make a profound impression upon his audience, most of them officers from the army’s Supreme Command. His presentation as a miracle doctor worked out very well and his show met with an enthusiastic response.7 However, behind the scenes and away from the orchestrated euphoria of the psychiatrists, the picture was completely different. Karl Kraus, the famous Viennese journalist, cynically ridiculed the grandiose medical assembly calling it a ‘monstrous union of mere phrases’.8 This revealing interjection was explicit: at the very time of the conference, military authorities had already been confronted with the fact that they lacked any efficient treatment regimen to make soldiers fit for war again. It was conceded, even in the Viennese War Office, that only an insignificant number of war neurotics, namely two out of 100, could be reinstated at the front.9 Furthermore, at the time, resistance against the commonly used electrotherapy was mounting and doctors met with outright revolts from their patients. Social democratic representatives enquired at the re-opened ‘Reichsrat’ about the patients’ treatment at war hospitals and announced personal inspections.10 The War Office received reports replete with harsh accusations against several doctors and consequently prohibited treatment with harmful electric currents. Significantly, this decree 6 See Verhandlungen der Tagung der ärztlichen Abteilung der Waffenbrüderlichen Vereinigungen Deutschlands, Ungarns und Österreichs (Vienna: 1918) pp. 177–182. 7 W. Neutra, “Über Kriegsnervosität”, Badener Zeitung No 29 (April 11, 1917), p. 2. For similar therapeutic demonstrations in Germany and the image of the psychiatrist as a ‘magical healer’, see Lerner (1998). 8 Kraus (1994) p. 268. 9 K.u.k. Ministry of War, “Additions to psychiatric wards and treatment of war neurotics”, Österreichisches Staatsarchiv, Kriegsarchiv (thereafter ÖStA, KA), KM 1918 14. Abt., pp. 43–51. 10 See, above all, the key speech of social democracy representative Max Winter, Stenographisches Protokoll über die Sitzungen des Hauses der Abgeordneten des österreichischen Reichsrates im Jahre 1918, 56. Sitzung der XXII. Session, 30. Januar 1918 (Vienna: 1918) pp. 2960–2964. For a psychiatric perspective on the public effects of war neurosis, see A. Schüller, “Die Kriegsneurosen und das Publikum”, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 68 (1918) pp. 1085–93.
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to all army commandos was passed only a few days before the conference and had robbed doctors of their main treatment strategy. Since the military authorities were worried about a possible escalation of the situation, they also prohibited documentary film propaganda.11 In Viennese cinemas, therefore, people didn’t get to see the scenes that showed doctors rapidly curing trembling soldiers. Hence, although the figure of the war neurotic, representing the most disturbing character of wartime society, was not shown on screen, it could be seen every day along the streets. As I will discuss below, the military authorities had centralized the treatment of mental trauma in Vienna in 1916. Thus, Vienna became the city where this mass phenomenon was especially present in everyday life. By the end of the war an estimated 120,000 soldiers were being treated for war neurosis in Vienna alone. The special attention paid to soldiers suffering from mental trauma was due to the bizarre appearance of the invalid. Psychiatrists, passers-by and intellectuals were fascinated by these strange, grotesque, distorted representations of the human body. One of the most impressive descriptions of a confrontation with the disturbing strangeness of men suffering from mental trauma was made by Joseph Roth, who was a journalist in Vienna at the time. “What is it? A mythical creature? Insect? Reptile from a legendary past? The trunk parallel to the ground, the arms turned outwards from the side, a stick in each hand, the face parallel to the road surface [. . .]. It’s human!”12 The soldiers’ appearance made it perfectly clear that, in this war, fighting at the front had taken on a new meaning. Even far away from the trenches, war seemed to maintain absolute power over these men. It was as if war had implanted an enormous destructive impulse within the soldiers’ bodies, thus destroying any individual expression of will or coordinated movement. Confrontation with these men also signified a drastic difference in perceiving concepts about body and gender. Unlike the term ‘shellshock’, a neologism that stood for explicitly masculine behavioural
11 K.u.k. Ministry of War, “Pre-edited films regarding treatment of war neurosis”, ÖStA, KA, KM 1918 14. Abt., pp. 53–27. For film and trauma in post-war Germany and Austria, see Kaes (2000). 12 J. Roth, ‘Der Zeitgenosse’ (1919), in J. Roth, Werke 1, Das journalistische Werk (1915–1923) ed. K. Westermann (Cologne, 1989), p. 21. Roth deals with the great visual impact of shell-shocked soldiers in his novel Die Rebellion (1924).
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abnormalities in the British Army, the concept of ‘war neurosis’ as formulated by the Viennese medical community was veiled in obscurity and always subject to dramatic modifications with regard to gender. At the beginning of the war, the term ‘war neurosis’ was merely associated with an effeminate disposition.13 It referred to the emotions that flared up in the summer of 1914 and the rapidly ensuing worries and anxieties of women for their departing men. For ‘nervous men’, however, who marched out to the battlefields, the front was described as a kind of ‘therapeutic experience’. At the front one could overcome one’s nervousness in a patriotic act and initiate the re-conquest of one’s masculinity. As the Viennese neurologist and psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Stekel, put it: “The soldier headed out to war is in the best position. He can unleash his aggressions on his enemy and thus serve his fatherland.”14 Like many medical professionals in Austria-Hungary, psychiatrists had reacted to the war with nearly unanimous support. Stekel’s position is a characteristic one: patriotic habits went hand in hand with high psychiatric expectations of the powerful mental effects of war. Based on discourses on neurasthenia or nervousness, a disease that was identified as a central, yet unwanted feature of modern manliness, war could be seen as an instance of ‘nerve-corrections’.15 These hopes were badly disappointed. From the Austrian perspective, the front against Italy was of particular significance: from 1915 a type of trench warfare had developed at the Isonzo (this river soon contributed its name to the front) that was in many respects similar to that of the Western Front. Most of the soldiers who were admitted to the military hospitals with shock symptoms came from this segment of the front, and it was here that the Austrian psychiatrists focused their attention.16 The figure of the traumatised soldier began to turn up in vast numbers, especially in Vienna, as a controversial
13 H. Hug-Hellmuth, “Die Kriegsneurose der Frau”, Geschlecht und Gesellschaft 9 (1915) pp. 505–513. 14 W. Stekel, Unser Seelenleben im Kriege. Psychologische Betrachtungen eines Nervenarztes (Berlin: 1916) p. 4. 15 On the psychiatric idea of war as a “nerve tonic” for nervous men, see Hofer (2000b) and Radkau (1998). 16 See, amongst others, H. Herschmann, “Über Geistesstörungen nach Granatschock”, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 66 (1916) 1395–1400. The Italian psychiatric debate on the nature and treatment of war neurosis concentrated on the Isonzo-frontlines as well. See Bianchi (2001).
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patient and figure in crisis and not, as the utopian vision would like it, as a new masculinity emerged from war. The doctors’ concept changed. From 1915, war neurosis became a typical male disorder.
II. Psychiatry and Modern War The first section has shown some ambivalent aspects of attitudes to ‘war neurosis’ in the Viennese medical community. In a second step I wish to review some of the research that has been conducted on this topic, while maintaining that focusing on the role of Austrian psychiatrists as ‘perpetrators’ is too short-sighted. For the most part, ethical assessments predominated in the early German and Austrian research literature on the history of war neurosis. Emphasis was placed on the fact that psychiatrists acted in favour of the military and drove its victims back to the trenches by exercising brute force. Machine-guns behind the lines, Freud’s impressive yet problematic description of psychiatrists in World War One,17 drew the medical historians’ attention to the use of vicious compulsive acts, interpreting this as being some sort of modernisation of torture. The psychiatrists of the First World War have since come to be imbued with a perpetrator image that has led to biased evaluations and rash theses on continuity in Nazi medicine.18 With regard to the Austrian perspective, the psychoanalytical war research of the 1970s initiated essential, yet limited, and target-oriented thematic approaches which met professional and political needs. These investigations had been set off while searching for Freud’s report, ‘Memorandum on the Electrical Treatment of War Neurotics’ (Gutachten über die elektrische Behandlung der Kriegsneurotiker), which he had written in 1920. Freud showed more and more interest in ‘war neurotics’ who became subject matters in his theoretical reflections as well as in his politically oriented research. In turn, Freud was of utmost interest to Kurt Robert Eissler, a psychoanalyst and director of the Freud archives at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., who published his studies entitled Freud und Wagner-Jauregg vor 17 Freud had borrowed this idea from Viennese psychoanalyst Alfred Adler (1919) p. 5. Here, Adler had spoken of Viennese psychiatrists who ‘positioned themselves like machine-guns’ behind the soldiers. 18 See, for example, Riedesser and Verderber (1996).
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der Kommission zur Erhebung militärischer Pflichtverletzungen in 1979.19 In his investigations, Eissler’s major concern was a discussion between two prominent physicians that took place under difficult circumstances. After the war, the ‘commission of enquiry about military breaches of duty’ had been formed under the pressure of the unions of the home-comers and the Social Democratic Party, which was, among other things, in charge of investigating the accusations against Viennese psychiatrists and primarily against Julius Wagner-Jauregg, the head of the psychiatric hospital. In the course of pre-investigations, the commission obtained Freud’s expert report that basically invalidated the respective accusations. Freud also acted as a scientific expert at the hearing against Wagner-Jauregg in autumn 1920. As Eissler rightly puts it, the discussion was not just a footnote in Viennese psychoanalytical and psychiatric history but rather a significant episode in medical and scientific respects, which can be understood as the culmination of a long-term ideological discussion. Eissler expressed his scientific claim on the basis of this perspective. What he considered historically important and interesting in the discussion was that “it offers persuasive means to decide which of the two viewpoints is right”.20 From a historical point of view this reveals a flaw in Eissler’s approach. Being a psychoanalyst, he used the process of the hearing as an example to show the very arguments that Freud employed to assert himself not only against his scientific opponent, Wagner-Jauregg, but also against Viennese university psychiatry. Eissler’s interpretation of the 1920 discussion produced a master narrative, supporting the moral and scientific superiority of psychoanalysis. However, in doing so, Eissler successfully concealed the complex and contradictory developments in Austrian and especially in Viennese war psychiatry. This hearing not only served the interests of the Viennese psychiatrists who had gathered themselves around the accused Wagner-Jauregg, but also of the psychoanalysts, who recognised in Freud and his role as an expert an opportunity to promote their own image. Eissler underestimated the fact that the psychiatrists who felt distressed by public agitation were interested in presenting their occupation to their best advantage, which indeed 19 The English translation was entitled: Freud as an Expert Witness: The Discussion of War Neuroses Between Freud and Wagner-Jauregg (Madison: 1986). For the most part Malleier (1996) follows Eissler’s argumentation. 20 Eissler (1979) p. 125.
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they did in front of the commission. Likewise, Freud successfully managed to create a mise en scène for himself. After the Budapest congress in 1918, Freud and his colleagues faced a fast upward trend. Therefore, the testimonies of the doctors and psychiatrists at the hearing are to be questioned and should not be considered as being representative.21 In order to define the close, yet not entirely frictionless relationship between psychiatry and war in historical terms, the ideologically oriented retrospective of 1920 needs to be put aside and alternative ways of interpretation should be found. The historian Paul Lerner, in his innovative work on German psychiatry, has pointed out the responsibility of doctors in the domain of pension funds as well as social and disability insurance. He discussed the German psychiatric practice of war in terms of medicalisation and rationalisation.22 Psychiatric discourse and practice in modern war are characterised by healing as well as disciplining. The thin grey line delineating the latter two depends on the focus and the specific context one is looking for. Psychiatrists, by being affiliated with the emerging welfare state, had a dual responsibility, namely toward their patients, on the one hand, and the state, on the other hand. This constellation of factors engendered a dilemma for doctors wedged in between the humanitarian aims of medical practice and their commitments in terms of national demands. As war continued, psychiatrists felt more and more responsible for the national collective, combining the ideas of eugenics with an increased awareness of the military and economic crisis of the state. Facing the destructive modernity of the war, the industrial production of weapons, the mechanisation of warfare and the high losses in human life, psychiatrists were confronted with the mounting pressure to establish effective treatment systems. Against this background, the principles and priorities of industrial modernity, such as economisation, efficiency and standardisation, formed drastic guidelines in war medicine and psychiatry.23 21 The convergence of Austro-Hungarian war bureaucracy and psychoanalysis is discussed in greater detail by Büttner (1975) and Reichmayr (1983). 22 See Lerner (1997) and, above all, his forthcoming study, Hysterical Men: War, Psychiatry and the Politics of Trauma in Germany, 1890–1930. Schmiedebach (2001) goes along with Lerner’s argumentation and discusses the impact of the rationalisation principles on psychiatrists’ treatment strategies. For further aspects on the history of ‘war neurosis’ in the German context, see Kaufmann (1999). 23 For a detailed discussion on rationalisation as a key-concept in modern war medicine, see Harrison (1996) and Cooter and Sturdy (1998). See also H.-G. Hofer,
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To return to the Austro-Hungarian perspective, initially the connection between modern warfare and psychiatric (re)action could be well explained in terms of rationalisation. In the course of the second and the third year of war, the military crisis of the Central Forces, the ‘Long-War Reality’, became more and more evident.24 Seen from the Austro-Hungarian perspective, the situation was appalling. The balance of army supplies was even more dramatic. By the end of 1915 about 400,000 soldiers had been killed at the front or had died in hospitals, and about 2 million soldiers had been registered as being wounded or disabled. In the course of the second year of the war, the average number of invalids had risen from 250,000 to 400,000 men. At the same time the percentage of soldiers who were restored to active service decreased from 84 to 65 per cent. Accordingly, the number of soldiers in need of hospital treatment in the AustroHungarian army was almost twice as high as in the German army and more than three times as many as in the French army.25 The army leadership spared no effort to reduce the number of disabled and wounded people since the wave of new recruits joining since the war’s outbreak had already been used as reinforcements, and further recruitment drives, even with the new cohort of 18 year olds, could not make up for the losses. A range of innovations to organise medical treatment was introduced to help reduce absences. Small hospitals were closed down, treatment of the disabled and wounded was being centralized, special clinics with medical specialists were established, disabled and wounded soldiers who were supposed to be cured within 6 to 8 weeks were not transferred to hospitals, and all military sanatoriums were thoroughly inspected. In 1915 the Viennese War Office established a special institution called the ‘ambulatory commission’ (Ambulante Kommission). Its primary function was to inspect hospitals in order to expedite the reinstatement of as many soldiers as possible to military service.26 The Austrian
“Effizienzsteigerung und Affektdisziplin. Zum Verhältnis von Kriegspsychiatrie, Medizin und Moderne”, in: Aggression und Katharsis. Der Erste Weltkrieg im Diskurs der Moderne, eds. P. Ernst, S. Haring and W. Suppanz (Vienna: 2003, in print). 24 Herwig (1997) p. 228. See also Rauchensteiner (1994) pp. 373–375 and Galántai (1989) pp. 180–204. 25 Kaup (1938) p. 1318. 26 H. Teisinger, “Letter to K.u.k. Ministry of War”, 9 June, 1916, ÖStA, KA, KM 1916 Präs., 15–05/155. On the work of the ‘ambulatory commission’ and its controversial president, Heinrich Teisinger, see Doppelbauer (1988) pp. 178–197.
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physician and eugenicist, Ignaz Kaup, a medical officer in the Supreme Command at that time, characterized these new radical measures in military medicine in terms of rationalisation: “Economizing manpower resources was the leading point.”27 Here, Kaup went back to the ideas of the Viennese sociologist and social hygienist Rudolf Goldscheid. Arguing that industrial progress has to go hand in hand with better handling (and indeed improvement) of manpower resources, Goldscheid had discussed biological, demographic and economic objectives together.28 From a historical point of view, Goldscheid’s thesis should be interpreted as a severe criticism of the adverse effects of industrial modernity. Affected by the impact of industrial mass production and the spread of the racial hygiene movement, he tried to find answers to the various social and demographic changes in Austria at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. War transformed the idea of the ‘manpower economy’ (Menschenökonomie). In connection with the efforts made for a mobilisation of all resources, rationalisation became the guiding idea of war medicine. Confronted with these military requirements and expectations, psychiatrists developed a marked awareness for the pivotal role being assigned to medicine in this war. Military and health interests were regarded as being complementary to each other and were defined as important resources for war. In 1915, Fritz Hartmann, an Austrian neurologist and head of the psychiatric clinic in Graz, commented: ‘In this war, the first nation to recover is the one to win.’29 Yet the relationship between the military, war, and psychiatry cannot be characterized from just one vantage point. It would be too shortsighted to portray war psychiatry merely as a science spearheaded by military obedience. In World War One, psychiatry soared to one of the most important of the specialized medical disciplines, since it had to respond to a phenomenon, the nature and extent of which seemed to go hand in hand with the conditions of warfare. By striving to make wounded soldiers fit for duty again within as short a time as possible, psychiatry acted in keeping with the sweeping mobilisations of military medicine that were instrumental in making World 27
Kaup (1938) p. 1319. On Goldscheid’s ideas and the growing importance of racial and social hygiene in Viennese medicine around 1900 see Fleischhacker (2002) pp. 207–229 and Byer (1988) pp. 86–101. 29 F. Hartmann, Die Fürsorge für nervenkranke Militärpersonen in der Kriegszeit (Graz: 1915) p. 2. 28
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War One, among other things, a ‘modern war’. Psychiatrists played a key role in this setting by examining and selecting the recruits who were to become combatants, caring for them when they were wounded, and by seeing to it that they were quickly returned to their military function.30
III. The ‘Foreign’ Patient and the Multi-Ethnicity of the Army Apart from the models of rationalisation and modernisation used to explain medical and psychiatric actions during the war, further aspects need to be considered. Regarding Vienna, the multinational context of Austria-Hungary is of great significance.31 The strangeness and uneasiness that ordinary passers-by, intellectuals, and doctors felt at the sight of ‘war neurotics’ could not solely be attributed to this peculiar debility. Soldiers of vastly different origins could be found in Vienna because of the ethnic diversity of the army. In 1915 the Austro-Hungarian army consisted of the following national groups of soldiers: among 1,000 ordinary soldiers, 248 were German Austrians, 233 Magyars, 126 Czechs, 92 Croatians and Serbs, 79 Poles, 78 Ruthenians, 70 Romanians, 36 Slovaks, 25 Slovenes and 13 Italians.32 This diversity had a dramatic impact on war medicine. ‘The hodgepodge of languages in the Austrian hospitals was terrible’, wrote Käthe Frankenthal, one of the few German female medical doctors who had been sent in her capacity as a military doctor to the Austrian Eastern Front.33
30
Regarding the idea of mobilising psychiatry for the war, see the programmatic study of Prague psychiatrist A. Pick, Der Krieg und die Reservekräfte des Nervensystems (Halle: 1916). With regard to Vienna see H. Obersteiner and J. Wagner-Jauregg, Letter to K.u.k. Ministry of War, “Treatment of nervous military men”, 14 June 1916, ÖStA, KA, KM 1916 14. Abt., 43–81; B. Drastich, “Organisatorisches über Kriegsneurosen und -psychosen”, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 68 (1918), pp. 2053–2064 and A. Fraenkel, “Der Krieg und die Aerzte. Zur Jahreswende 1915/16”, Wiener klinische Wochenschrift 29 (1916), 1. 31 Multi-ethnicity as a key-concept for a better historical understanding of AustroHungarian politics and culture in the First World War discusses Beller (1999) and, more generally, Csáky (1996). 32 Plaschka et al. (1974) p. 35. Further up the hierarchy, on the other hand, German-Austrians were prevalent. Within the monarchy they made up nearly a quarter (24 percent) of the overall population yet provided three-quarters (76 percent) of all officers at the outset of the war. See Rauchensteiner (1994) p. 45. 33 Frankenthal (1981) p. 60.
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Since the medical documents of the wounded soldiers were often lost along the way and the doctors had no information about their patients’ medical history whatsoever, they had to conduct new medical check-ups and interviews each time. Communication difficulties and misunderstandings abounded. Even special language guidebooks could hardly bring the situation under control.34 In many cases, doctors had to resort to sign language. The multilingual nature of the army posed a major problem for the military doctors. The personnel policy of the army clearly supported the multinational diversity of its combat units. This was because the military leadership feared disobedience, a lack of motivation, or even mass desertion if there were an ethnically homogeneous combat group of non-GermanAustrian origin. A policy furthering the systematic admixture of national groups was also conducted in the military draft boards. Deciding whether a soldier was fit for duty was in the hands of officers and military doctors who spoke foreign languages.35 This multinational structure was supposed to counteract the centrifugal tendencies of the multiethnic empire and preserve the army’s fighting strength. Yet this crucial factor hastened the crises within the nation. Units in which predominantly German Austrians fought had the special confidence of the military leadership and were sent to dangerous sections of the front. Accordingly, the losses in these units were greatest. The rumour spread that foreign-speaking units were being given special treatment. Suspicion and prejudices concerning a purported lack of fighting qualities and unmanly comportment of other ethnic groups were rampant.36 Even psychiatry was influenced by such stereotypes and contributed toward reinforcing these national stereotypes. An essential impetus toward radicalisation in the treatment of war neurosis was the fact that broad segments of the German-Austrian medical community believed that foreign-speaking soldiers were merely simulating their symptoms, following their own national interests. Without a doubt, some soldiers from all military ranks, regardless of their social or ethnic origin, 34 See Sprachführer für den Verkehr des Arztes mit dem Kranken und dem Wärter in deutscher, böhmischer, italienischer, kroatischer (serbischer), polnischer, rumänischer, ruthenischer und ungarischer Sprache, ed. K.u.k. Militärärzten (Vienna: 1905). 35 Adler (1919) p. 6. 36 Indeed, as Cornwall (1997) has shown, the reality was that German-Austrians, Hungarians and Slovenes, who were regarded as patriotic ‘Austrians’, deserted in great quantities as well.
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imitated the symptoms of war neurosis so that they could evade the horrors in the trenches. Protected by the power of a doctor’s medical opinion, a refusal to actively serve in the military became legitimate. However, as doctors’ records show, malingering was very rare. Only one in fifty of the more than seventy thousand patients who had been examined or treated in the psychiatric ward of one of the biggest military hospitals in Vienna was accused of malingering.37 A second explanation with which German-Austrian psychiatrists reacted in response to the influx of ‘foreign’ soldiers was ‘racial psychiatry’ (Rassenpsychiatrie), one of the new psychiatric research activities, in which Viennese psychiatrists like Alexander Pilcz or Erwin Stransky were leading figures.38 Increasingly, the ethnic groups were regarded as suffering from nervous disorders because of their origin. Above all, soldiers of Slavic, Romanian or Jewish origin, it was argued, had signs of a ‘psychopathological constitution’.39 On the other hand, German-Austrians were regarded as the ‘healthy’—and therefore superior national group of the monarchy. This position was also based upon the cultural and political discourse about the ‘German’ influence within the monarchy. In October 1915, the national liberal politician Friedrich Naumann had published a paper called ‘Mitteleuropa’, which was very well received by the public because he had put forth a variety of arguments that could be used for patriotic purposes.40 This paper was a national political construct of the German-Austrian section of the population that was attempting to strengthen its dominant position within the monarchy. It also served as a response to the military stalemate that arose between the Central Forces and the Entente in 1915. Naumann’s study was based on the 37 Alexander Pilcz, Chief physician of the psychiatric ward of Viennese garrison hospital No 1, found only 56 (1.72 percent) cases of blatant malingering among 3248 patients who had been proven to have been at the front. Of the enlisted men who came to his ward from the hinterlands, this figure was only slightly higher (2.42 percent). A. Pilcz, “Einige Ergebnisse eines Vergleiches zwischen einem psychiatrischen Material der Friedens- und Kriegsverhältnisse”, Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie 52 (1919) p. 233. 38 On “racial psychiatry” in Vienna see A. Pilcz, “Beitrag zur vergleichenden Rassenpsychiatrie”, Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift 23/24 (1919/20) pp. 157–182. 39 See, for example, J. Wagner-Jauregg, Erfahrungen über Kriegsneurosen (Vienna: 1917). 40 F. Naumann, Mitteleuropa (Berlin: 1915). For Naumann´s concept of Mitteleuropa see, amongst others, Müller (2001). For political and cultural efforts creating a ‘German-Austrian’ patriotism and regarding the problem of “Austrian” identity, see Beller (1999) pp. 127–161.
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assumption that the war could not be won by either side because of the modern technological advances in arms. Military standoffs would gradually push the military conflicts into the background, gradually to be replaced by economic and cultural struggles. The defensive situation, marked by a permanent readiness to go to war, would require a so-called ‘trench policy’ that could be ensured by the merging of the German segment of the population. The hegemonial energy of ‘German culture’ would thereby not only brave threats from the outside but also suppress national movements within the monarchy. Such a hypothesis met with high approval, especially among the German-Austrian psychiatrists, as it reaffirmed their view that people’s most important criteria should be the conservation of ‘strong nerves’ in order to keep the ‘healthy core’ of Central Europe.41 Both of these argumentation patterns show that German-Austrian psychiatrists strove to attribute the war neuroses to the ‘others’. Consequently, this had repercussions on therapy. The impossibility of communication was one of the reasons why ‘speechless’ forms of therapy, such as electrotherapy, were the preferred choice in Viennese psychiatric circles.42 Furthermore, electrical treatment was used to discipline ‘unreliable’ and ‘suspect’ soldiers who were suspected of undermining the army’s strength. Eventually, electric treatment was seen as an important instrument for exposing malingerers. Until the end of the war, this method, combined with disciplinary measures (isolation, diet, confinement) remained the widely used treatment in Austrian psychiatric wards.
Summary In this paper, I first focused on the official medico-political management of war neurosis. A closer look at the Baden war congress of German and Austro-Hungarian psychiatrists in 1917 showed, on
41
E. Stransky, Krieg und Geistesstörung. Feststellungen und Erwägungen zu diesem Thema vom Standpunkte der angewandten Psychiatrie (Wiesbaden: 1918) p. 7. 42 See A. Schüller, “Zur Behandlung der Kriegsneurosen”, Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift 69 (1919) pp. 973–979. Of course, there had been different points of view. The preferential treatment of war neurosis in the psychiatric clinic in Graz, which chiefly took soldiers from the Italian front, for example, was work therapy. F. Hartmann, “Die k. k. Nervenklinik Graz im Dienste des Krieges”, Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten 59 (1918) pp. 1162–1258.
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the one hand, well-organized efforts in the treatment of mental trauma. On the other hand, these therapeutic concepts turned out to be mere escapism to illusory worlds. I then described how soldiers suffering from shellshock were perceived by the Viennese public. In wartime society, the figure of the ‘war neurotic’ had become the dominant symbol of the effects of modern warfare and, in the words of Karl Kraus, the ‘harbinger of world decline’.43 The appearance of these men shattered all hopes that the war would give rise to a new type of masculinity and reduced faith in victory. In this context, war psychiatry in Vienna encountered specific constellations and crises resulting from the multinational diversity of the Austro-Hungarian army. A historical analysis of Austrian society during the war has to consider this special situation. Viennese psychiatrists were neither particularly brutal nor especially tolerant in the way they dealt with the situation. Instead, as in other European countries in the Great War, they acted in keeping with military requirements and standards. For a better understanding of how medical science coped with mental breakdown, the case of Vienna might broaden our view. Shellshock was a phenomenon that affected all nations, but reactions differed according to different national traditions and different medical ways of understanding, representing and acting. In a comparative cultural history of World War One, AustriaHungary is a model of a shattered society, paralysed by ethnic conflicts and cultural differences. In this context, the therapeutic response to war neurosis was affected by language confusion, national stereotypes and malingering. The German-Austrian psychiatrists not only emerged as a group of experts who had taken responsibility for the efficient treatment of war neurosis, but also as a pressure group that intended to keep centrifugal forces of the multinational empire under control.
B Adler A. (1919) Die andere Seite. Eine massenpsychologische Studie über die Schuld des Volkes. (Vienna: 1919). Beller S. (1999) “The tragic carnival: Austrian culture in the First World War”, in: European Culture in the Great War. The Arts, Entertainment, and Propaganda, eds. A. Roshwald and R. Stites (Cambridge: 1999), 127–161.
43
Kraus (1994) p. 242.
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Bianchi B. (2001) “Psychiatrists, soldiers, and officers in Italy during the Great War”, in: Traumatic Pasts. History, Psychiatry, and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1870–1930, eds. M. Micale and P. Lerner (Cambridge: 2001) 222–252. Büttner P. (1975) Freud und der Erste Weltkrieg. Eine Untersuchung über die Beziehung von medizinischer Theorie und gesellschaftlicher Praxis. Thesis (PhD) University of Heidelberg. Byer D. (1988) Rassenhygiene und Wohlfahrtspflege. Zur Entstehung eines sozialdemokratischen Machtdispositivs in Österreich bis 1934 (Frankfurt/M: 1988). Cooter R. and Sturdy S. (1998) “War, medicine and modernity: introduction”, in: War, Medicine and Modernity, eds. R. Cooter, M. Harrison and S. Sturdy (Phoenix Mill: 1998) Cornwall M. (1997) “Morale and patriotism in the Austro-Hungarian army, 1914–1918”, in: State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War ed. J. Horne (Cambridge: 1997) 173–191. Csáky M. (1996) “Die Vielfalt der Habsburgermonarchie und die nationale Frage”, in: Nation, Ethnizität und Staat in Mitteleuropa, ed. U. Altermatt (Vienna: 1996) 44–64. Eissler K.R. (1979) Freud und Wagner-Jauregg vor der Kommission zur Erhebung militärischer Pflichtverletzungen (Vienna: 1979). Fleischhacker J. (2002) “Menschen- und Güterökonomie. Anmerkungen zu Rudolf Goldscheids demoökonomischem Gesellschaftsentwurf ”, in: Wissenschaft, Politik und Öffentlichkeit. Von der Wiener Moderne bis zur Gegenwart, eds. M. Ash, C.H. Stifter (Vienna: 2002) 207–229. Frankenthal K. (1981) Der dreifache Fluch: Jüdin, Intellektuelle, Sozialistin. Lebenserinnerung einer Ärztin in Deutschland und im Exil (Frankfurt/M: 1981). Galántai J. (1989) Hungary in the First World War (Budapest: 1989). Harrison M. (1996) “Medicine and the management of modern warfare”, History of Science 34 (1996) 379–410. Herwig H.H. (1997) The First World War. Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918 (London: 1997). Hofer H.-G. (2000a) “Nervöse Zitterer”. Psychiatrie und Krieg, in: Krieg, Medizin und Politik. Der Erste Weltkrieg und die österreichische Moderne, ed. H. Konrad (Vienna: 2000) 15–134. —— (2000b) “Nerven-Korrekturen. Ärzte, Soldaten und die “Kriegsneurosen” im Ersten Weltkrieg”, Zeitgeschichte 27 (2000) 249–268. Kaes T. (2000) “War—Film—Trauma”, in: Modernität und Trauma. Beiträge zum Zeitenbruch des Ersten Weltkriegs, ed. I. Mülder-Bach (Vienna: 2000) 121–130. Kaufmann D. (1999) “Science as cultural practice: psychiatry in the First World War and Weimar Germany”, Journal of Contemporary History 34 (1999) 125–144. Kaup I. (1938) “Kriegsseuchen im Ersten Weltkriege. Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der österreichisch-ungarischen Armee”, Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift 85 (1938), 1177–80, 1227–31, 1275–78, 1316–19. Kraus, K. (1994) Die Katastrophe der Phrasen. Glossen 1910–1918 (Frankfurt/M: 1994). Lerner P. (1997) “Rationalizing the therapeutic arsenal: German neuropsychiatry in the First World War”, in Medicine and Modernity: Public Health and Medical Care in 19th- and 20th-Century Germany, eds. G. Cocks, M. Berg (New York: 1997) 121–48. —— (1998) “Hysterical cures: hypnosis, gender and performance in World War I and Weimar Germany”, History Workshop Journal 45 (1998) 79–101. —— (2001): “From traumatic neurosis to male hysteria: The Decline and Fall of Hermann Oppenheim”, in: Traumatic Pasts, 140–171. Lerner, P. and Micale M.S. (2001) “Trauma, psychiatry, and history: A conceptual and historiographical introduction”, in: Traumatic Pasts. History, Psychiatry and Trauma in the Modern Age, 1860–1930, eds. M.S. Micale and P. Lerner (New York: 2001) 1–27. Malleier E. (1996) “Formen männlicher Hysterie. Die Kriegsneurosen im Ersten Weltkrieg”, in: Körper—Geschlecht—Geschichte. Historische und aktuelle Debatten in der Medizin, eds E. Mixa et al. (Innsbruck: 1996) 147–63.
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Müller A. (2001) Zwischen Annäherung und Abgrenzung. Österreich-Ungarn und die Diskussion um Mitteleuropa im Ersten Weltkrieg. Marburg 2001. Plaschka, R.G. et al. (1974) Innere Front. Militärassistenz, Widerstand und Umsturz in der Donaumonarchie 1918, 2 Vol (Vienna: 1974). Radkau J. (1998) Das Zeitalter der Nervosität. Deutschland zwischen Bismarck und Hitler (München: 1998). Reichmayr J. (1983) “Psychoanalyse im Krieg. Zur Geschichte einer Illusion”, in: Krieg und Frieden aus psychoanalytischer Sicht, eds. P. Passett, E. Modena (Basel: 1983) 36–58. Riedesser P., Verderber A. (1996) “Maschinengewehre hinter der Front.” Zur Geschichte der deutschen Militärpsychiatrie (Frankfurt/M: 1996). Rauchensteiner M. (1994) Der Tod des Doppeladlers. Österreich-Ungarn und der Erste Weltkrieg (Graz: 1994). Schmiedebach H.-P. (2001) “Medizinethik und „Rationalisierung“ im Umfeld des Ersten Weltkriegs”, in: Medizingeschichte und Medizinethik. Kontroversen und Begründungsansätze 1900–1950, eds. A. Frewer, J.N. Neumann (Frankfurt/M: 2001) 57–84. Shephard B. (2001) A War of Nerves. Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass. 2001). Winter J. (2000) “Shell shock and the cultural history of the Great War”, Journal of Contemporary History, “Shell Shock”, special issue, 35 (2000) 7–11.
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HOW A PRO-GERMAN MINORITY INFLUENCED DUTCH INTELLECTUAL DEBATE DURING THE GREAT WAR Ismee M. Tames
Whilst the Great War raged over Europe, leaving devastated great and small powers alike, the Netherlands stayed neutral and remained unaffected. Until recently, the dominant interpretation of the meaning of the First World War for the Netherlands was that this small country on the edge of Europe kept low for four years and thus missed the starting-point of the 20th century. It became a conservative country in democratic disguise, mistrustful of what happened in neighbouring countries.1 It was not until the Second World War that the Netherlands finally reentered European and world history. This interpretation of Dutch history of the beginning of the 20th century went unchallenged for many years. However, recently this has started to change: inspired by the revival of First World War studies in neighbouring countries in the 1990s, Dutch historians have begun to look beyond the never ending historical questions of the Second World War. In 1997 the Dutch historian Maarten Brands acknowledged that the First World War was a ‘blind spot’ for the Dutch.2 This remark prompted more research, resulting in a few specialized studies and the first more general history of the Netherlands during 1914–18 since the early seventies.3 These studies are characterised by a descriptive approach and have given us more insight into the facts and details of what happened in the Netherlands during the war years. However, until now the effects that the Great War has had on Dutch cultural and intellectual affairs have been overlooked. Many important questions in the field of cultural history remain to be solved: Was the war a cultural shock in the Netherlands as it was 1
Von der Dunk (1990). Brands (1997). 3 De Roodt (2000), Moeyes (2001), Lith (2001), Tuyll van Serooskerken (2001), Binneveld et al. (2001), Frey (1998). 2
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in the rest of Europe? How did the war affect the ideas of Dutch intellectuals? Did it change the way in which they defined the national identity of their country and its position in Europe? These questions will be addressed in my thesis on Dutch intellectual debate in the First World War. In this paper I would like to present some of the first results of my research. I will focus on a small pro-German association of intellectuals organized around the weekly magazine De Toekomst (The Future) in order to explore the way in which they regarded the war and its possible consequences and the reaction of Dutch intellectuals to their points of view. Answers to these questions will provide us with a first hint of the effects of the First World War on Dutch intellectual discourse. It is not my aim to divide Dutch intellectuals in a proand anti-German group but rather to show the positions taken in the debate during the Great War in the Netherlands and to try to reveal the ideas and reasons that lie behind and led to these standpoints. To examine this topic I will start with some background information on the political position of the Netherlands when war broke out and on the initial intellectual responses. Then the proGerman weekly De Toekomst will be discussed: what were the editors’ main objectives, how did they try to get a hold on Dutch debate and how did other Dutch intellectuals respond to their arguments? I will conclude by pointing out how both pro- and anti-German intellectuals tried to integrate their ideas of Germany into the definition of Dutch national identity.
First Reactions to the War Government-policy There may not have been an outspoken pessimism shaping the cultural and political atmosphere in the Netherlands during the fin de siècle, but in the low countries people searched fervently for solutions to the problems of modernity, just as they did in other parts of Europe: the country had started to industrialise, mass-democracy developed, and the socialist, Calvinist and Catholic conviction confronted the traditional liberal elite.4 Despite all the social and cul4 On fin the siècle in the Netherlands see Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 106 (1991), Kemperink (2001).
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tural dynamics and uncertainties, optimism prevailed: the hope of finding a solution to the new questions and of being able to resolve differences was strong. When the archduke of Austria-Hungary, Franz Ferdinand, was shot in Sarajevo in June 1914, most people in the Netherlands expected the tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia to be solved by diplomacy as usual. When German troops invaded Belgium in August 1914 and the Balkan incident proved to be the initiation of a European war, many were therefore shocked and feared that this might be the end of civilisation.5 Although not officially declared neutral by the Great Powers, the defence and foreign policy of the Dutch monarchy was nonetheless governed by the principles of strict neutrality, and necessarily so since the Dutch did not have any military allies and had not been involved in any European conflict since Napoleon. The extra-parliamentary liberal cabinet, Cort van der Linden, proclaimed neutrality on 30 July 1914 and from London and Berlin it received the assurance that Dutch neutrality would be respected. The Dutch government then turned more to domestic affairs: in parliament, emergency-laws were presented and approved of unanimously. Even the socialist leader P.J. Troelstra spoke out in favour of mobilisation and stressed the importance of all political parties working together to maintain Dutch neutrality and independence. All political parties wanted to show their unity and determination both to the Dutch and the Great Powers. The panicking Dutch people were asked to have confidence in the government measures and to remain calm. The press were urged to restrain themselves in covering the war and to make sure nothing was published that might damage relations with any of the warring parties. Intellectual Reaction in 1914 However, the Dutch public wanted to know everything about the war and its origins and possible consequences. They were served by the Dutch intellectuals who started to write extensively on the causes of the war to try to give an objective analysis of recent history.6 5 Nuys (1914) pp. 472–485, Chantepie de la Saussaye (1914) pp. 161–176, Verwey (1914) pp. 1–8, Baarbé (1914) pp. 1241–1256, Van Ravesteyn (1914) pp. 612–624, [Anonymous] (1914) pp. 631–642. 6 Simons (1914) pp. 103–110, Nuys (1914) pp. 685–694, Kernkamp (1914) pp. 1–31, Colenbrander (1914) pp. 568–583, Van Ravesteyn (1914) p. 621.
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From the articles of this period it also becomes clear that they had to deal with the cultural shock of modern war: laws and treaties had turned out to be incapable of defending peace and even of making war a little more humane. What happened to their neighbours in Belgium could have just as easily been happening to the Dutch. The intellectuals felt that they had to formulate a national narrative that could guide the Dutch. The national role was considered to be the promotion of peace, justice and neutrality. Neutral countries were regarded as being able to give an objective analysis of the war and its causes. The Netherlands, with its historical commitment to international law was regarded as well suited to the role of working towards lasting peace—only a few years earlier the first and second Peace Conferences had taken place in the Hague, where the Peace Palace had been built. This did not mean, however, that everyone was convinced that the Dutch could play a leading role in re-establishing peace in Europe now. Some influential intellectuals warned against too much optimism: without the will of the Great Powers nothing could be accomplished.7 Others even stated that this war should not be looked upon in a purely negative way, as they saw purifying elements in the struggle.8 Yet despite the war, the violation of Belgian neutrality and these warning words, most Dutch intellectuals fiercely tried to keep the spirit of international law alive. A national mission was thus defined, but the vulnerability of the Netherlands was keenly felt by many who therefore tried to legitimise the continued independence of the Dutch state and people. Among her neighbours, Germany was the most threatening in the sense of military power and cultural aspirations so Dutch national and cultural identity was often defined as being the opposite of German culture. The Germans were said to be militaristic and disciplined and unafraid to use their power, in contrast, the Dutch were proud to be libertarian and defenders of international law. When the German intellectuals started their war-propaganda Dutch intellectuals strongly opposed the outright nationalism displayed by wellknown scientists and writers. German nationalism was defined as pompous, hollow and aggressive, whereas a typical Dutch ‘sense of community’ was seen to be based on true feelings of national together7
Kernkamp (1914) pp. 1–31, De Beaufort (1914) pp. 4–22. As can be seen in De Nieuwe Gids and in a different way in the discussion in orthodox-protestant circles. 8
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ness and of higher moral standards.9 Dutch intellectuals felt that they represented an old culture. The Germans were often regarded as parvenus and therefore disqualified from questioning the right of other nations to exist. This did not mean, however, that German culture was entirely rejected or that all Dutch intellectuals took the side of the Entente. The important Dutch poet Albert Verwey, a friend of Stefan George, stressed that many of the characteristics that were assigned to German culture, were actually better described as Prussian rather than German. Militarism and arrogance were Prussian, music and literature were German.10 On the other hand, the Western powers were not regarded as completely justified in their cause. Britain’s statement that they fought this war for the independence of small states was mocked by many: they remembered the Boer war, widely seen in the Netherlands as an imperialist war against this freedom loving people so closely connected to the Dutch. At the same time many Dutch intellectuals were aware of the fact that they needed Britain to preserve the status quo. France was regarded as a weakened power so it was not seen as a serious political threat, yet some argued that the cultural influences of France could infect Dutch morality. French culture was highly admired by many Dutch intellectuals, but at the same time it was often seen as decadent. Thus it was frequently stressed in the Netherlands that a small country should not trust any of the Great Powers and must cling to a position in the centre. The Dutch regarded their culture as incorporating the best of French, English and German culture. Thus the Dutch contributed to the integration of European culture and as an independent nation, formed a European cultural synthesis. The balance of power in Europe was also guaranteed politically by the existence of the independent Dutch state, since the Dutch believed that none of the Great Powers would accept it if any of the others tried to expand their influence to include the Netherlands. Although the invasion of Belgium proved this last argument to be incapable of preventing war, it was still widely held as an important reason for the continued neutrality of the Netherlands. On the whole, intellectuals who mistrusted Germany more than the other belligerent countries were a vast majority. When we look
9 10
Colenbrander (1914) pp. 180–183, 183, Verhagen (1914) pp. 698–705, 705. Verwey (1914) pp. 1–8, 3.
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at the small group of explicitly pro-German intellectuals it becomes clear where these groups differed or agreed and what this meant for their chances of influencing Dutch public debate in a pro-German direction.
A Pro-German Weekly Magazine In April 1915 the first issue of a pro-German weekly magazine appeared, called De Toekomst (The Future).11 The editors wanted to help the government to maintain neutrality: although the press had turned increasingly anti-German. They felt that the government should not interpret this as a sign that all Dutch were in favour of a victory by the Entente and that Dutch politics should be adjusted accordingly in favour of the Western powers. De Toekomst did not say it hoped for a German victory, but only stated a wish to retain good relations with all of the Great Powers. It was important, it was argued, for the maintenance of neutrality that the Germans knew that the Dutch were not secret enemies. Any suggestion that they should fight on the German side was strictly avoided. The editors merely wanted to show that there did still exist a group of Dutch people who wanted to stress ‘the industriousness, the drive, the conscientious devotion to duty, the self-sacrificing patriotism of the related German people.’12 The organisational strengths of the Germans and their commitment to law and order were also main topics of emphasis. Without giving the impression of copying German war-propaganda, the editors tried to present the justice of the German struggle to survive. Furthermore, in their opinion Germany had taken over the leading role on the continent from France, both culturally and economically. Trade with Germany was a vital element for a flourishing Dutch economy and next to French and English culture, German culture was of great importance to the Dutch. They admired German Kultur, which was more than music, poetry and science: it was a complete way of life. Germany was the land of the future. Convincing the Dutch of this was a formidable task for the editors of De Toekomst when the main features of their national identity were defined as
11 12
Voorblad, De Toekomst 3 April (1915). Ibidem.
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the opposite of German culture. It meant they had to incorporate concepts like freedom, democracy and international law and justice in their narrative. German Freedom and Democracy In the first issue of De Toekomst Professor J.H. Valckenier Kips, who was then the most important man in the editorial board, wrote a leading article. Before he became a law professor, he was editor in chief of the Utrechts Nieuwsblad, which was known for its virulent nationalism and German sympathies. During the second South African war, Valckenier Kips had even proposed a Dutch-German union.13 In De Toekomst Valckenier Kips explained the war as a clash of cultures: the German and the Western ways to organize society struggled for hegemony. He posed the ideal of an organic state, a historically grown construction of different higher and lower social groups, in which the individual submitted himself to the whole out of duty and loyalty.14 In contrast with the organic state, Valckenier Kips described a society ruled by a powerful centralist political body against which the individual had to defend himself as much as possible. Freedom was a product of non-commitment. Valckenier Kips saw France and England as this latter type of society, the centralist organ being parliament. He advised the pursuit of an organic society where rather than free individual choice, a shared and inherited culture determined belonging. The people, language, history, religion and territory were dominant in defining identity. He juxtaposed the Volksgemeinschaft to a society of free individuals. True freedom was found in an organic state; Valckenier Kips called this Germanic freedom. He implied that the Dutch, as part of the Germanic race were therefore bound to find the theoretical framework of their future organisation in the theory of the organic state as it had developed in Germany. Although the editors of De Toekomst had tried to define the important concept of freedom, they had severe difficulties in finding a connection with mainstream Dutch intellectual discourse. Many Dutch intellectuals regarded the Dutch people as democratic, peace and 13 After the First World War, and especially after the Second World War, Valckenier Kips was regarded a ‘prefascist’. 14 Valckenier Kips (1915) pp. 3–5, 4.
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liberty loving and to them the German organic state carried connotations of bureaucracy, military discipline and mysticism. Furthermore, Germanic freedom was associated with German annexation, and therefore regarded with suspicion. And how could the features that many saw as Dutch trademarks, democracy and international law, be viewed in such a framework? The slogan of the Entente, fighting for democracy and justice, was not without critical objections, but was held more appropriate than a German claim to fight for freedom. De Toekomst therefore tried to denounce Germany’s enemies as more undemocratic than Germany. The fact that tsarist Russia fought side by side with France and Britain was often stressed. England and France were also revealed as merely fake-democracies: France due to political affairs, England because of the role of the aristocracy and the problems with Ireland.15 When the United States entered the war another professor writing for De Toekomst, the sociologist and ethnologist S.R. Steinmetz defined the sort of democracy the United States stood for as a system of anarchy and plutocracy.16 According to Steinmetz, Great Britain, France and the United States were fully justified in clinging to their political system, but he refused to accept that they had a right to force Germany to adopt the Western way of organisation.17 Steinmetz emphasized that all nations should be allowed to develop in their own manner: if this was true for the Netherlands it was equally true for Germany. Steinmetz like other authors of De Toekomst did not dismiss democracy per se. When in 1917 universal suffrage for men was accepted by parliament, De Toekomst criticized the social-democratic party for presenting this achievement as their private victory.18 De Toekomst described democracy as “the close cooperation between all who belong to one community” with the objective of safeguarding their common interests.19 The community and its specific interests were underlined, nothing was said about how these interests were to be made apparent. Sovereignty should not be placed in the hands of the people or the representatives in parliament, despite their approval of universal male suffrage. Professor J.G. Sleeswijk, a colleague of Valckenier
15 16 17 18 19
Versluys (1915) pp. 675–678, also Steinmetz (1917) pp. 290–291. Steinmetz (1917). Ibidem. [Anonymous] (1917) pp. 1007–1008. [Anonymous] (1918) p. 1030.
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Kips in Delft, wrote that state-rule should be directed by the ‘will of the people’, but that political parties were mere obstacles in this and made parliamentary democracy a fake-democracy.20 By stressing the importance of community the editors returned to the idealised German political system. Democracy in Germany was not—and should not in the Netherlands—be a dogma but a means by which economic and cultural gains could be achieved. Achieving certain economic and cultural gains was in the interest of the people, so if one admitted that in imperial Germany these gains were realized better than in other European countries one should be open to an experiment with the German style of democracy.21 How these economic and cultural objectives were to be recognised and selected remained a difficult matter. It is at this point that the editors of De Toekomst relied on a mystical faith that the true interests of the nation would manifest themselves. Their belief in the inherited characteristics of a nation was defining in this respect. In this rather vague way, ideas concerning the German organic state were integrated in the democracy concept that was presented by De Toekomst. Thus the editors of De Toekomst did not try to dismiss democracy, but rather to redefine this unavoidable element of Dutch debate in such a way that it matched their own ideas about the organisation of society. Law and Justice In a similar way to ideas about democracy, the supposed task of the Netherlands in promoting international law played an important role in Dutch intellectual debate, and so the editors of De Toekomst had to integrate law and justice in their discourse in order to reach the Dutch public. The major stumbling block here was the German invasion of Belgium. When it was stated in De Toekomst that Germany was forced to fight this war by the provocation of France and England, that invading Belgium was an act of defence and that the imperialist Entente countries had no right to criticise the supposed lack of freedom in other countries, it caused fierce irritation in the Dutch press. Toekomst-editor Steinmetz provoked a series of letters when he stated that the Germans were fighting a just war and that the Dutch
20 21
M. (1918) p. 330. Honders (1918) pp. 1029–1030.
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were morally prevented from being anti-German because the Germans had never done them any harm. The responses to his article expressed a different view of the facts: a writer called Maks presented himself as a defender of law and humanity. If France had been committing atrocities and violating international law, he would have objected as well, he said, for as a true neutral, he defended a higher moral purpose of justice and humanity instead of the particular interests of a specific country.22 Steinmetz responded saying that humanity and justice may be all very beautiful, but not necessarily in agreement with Dutch interests. The Entente might claim to defend justice, however, history told the Dutch people not to trust these Great Powers. The French and British empires would crush a small state like the Netherlands as soon as it was in their interest. Steinmetz claimed, that only a sufficiently powerful Germany could counterbalance Entente hegemony and form a European league of states where law, civilisation, freedom, humanity and independence were secured.23 In his opinion, this justified a war. In a pamphlet an irritated Maks responded accusing Steinmetz of being blind to reality and forgetting that there is something called ‘Moral Justice’, a deep feeling which made all true neutrals sympathise with the Belgians and French’.24 Steinmetz was one of few Dutch intellectuals who did not hesitate to confirm that war as such was necessary. He had raised the subject of war in 1907 when he published Die Philosophie des Krieges in which he claimed war to be necessary for progress, moral levitation and selection. In justifying war Steinmetz took a Darwinist approach to the world that was too extreme a standpoint to be convincing in Dutch public debate.25 The tradition of sympathy for international law and the realisation that justifying war was not in the interest of a small country, were too strong. In De Toekomst other authors, like mathematics teacher P. Molenbroek also suffered from this problem. In a pamphlet against the famous professor A.A.H. Struycken who was an expert in international law, Molenbroek stated that the German invasion of Belgium was justifiable because the circumstances 22 23 24 25
Maks (1916a) pp. 923–924. Steinmetz (1916) pp. 925–928. Maks (1916b). Polak (1915).
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under which the Belgian neutrality treaty had been signed had changed so much that German action was allowed.26 Molenbroek’s pamphlet and his articles in De Toekomst clearly show how close his reasoning was to official German propaganda. These similarities also struck his contemporaries. In the course of 1915 it became clear to the well known law professor J.A. van Hamel, who was the leading editor of the weekly De Amsterdammer, that the Netherlands were threatened by secret infiltration of the belligerent countries, especially by secret German propagandists. Under his supervision De Amsterdammer tried to detect every German attempt to influence Dutch public debate and in November 1915 De Amsterdammer started a vehement campaign against De Toekomst. Van Hamel wrote that De Toekomst had been founded by a German, called Reichmann, who had come from Belgium in August 1914 and had an official connection to the German embassy in The Hague.27 He founded a propaganda magazine in the early days of the war to counterbalance anti-German sentiments.28 This weekly had been called De Toestand and had consisted of German expansionist articles and war news. One of the anonymous authors was Valckenier Kips.29 The Dutch public proved unreceptive to such a magazine and in January 1915 distribution was cancelled by the German embassy. Although the German embassy stopped financing his initiatives, Reichmann set up a network of German-friendly Dutch intellectuals, journalists and politicians. Valckenier Kips played a central role in this and in spring 1915 the first issue of De Toekomst appeared.30 Van Hamel knew that Reichmann was closely associated with the establishment of De Toekomst but he also accused him of arranging German financial support for this officially Dutch weekly. Indeed the German consulate in Amsterdam bought a hundred copies of De Toekomst each week, but unlike De Toestand, De Toekomst lacked direct financial support from official German institutions.31 Van Hamel could not entirely prove his point, but in the winter of 1915–1916 he laid hands on a number of letters written by Sleeswijk that showed
26 27 28 29 30 31
Molenbroek (1916) p. 41. Van Hamel (1915b). Also Frey (1998). Van Hamel (1916b, 1916c). Kühlmann to Bethmann Holweg, The Hague, April 6, 1915 PA AA R8317. Auswärtiges Amt to Müller, Berlin, January 2, 1915 PA AA R8313.
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that he had been in close contact with Gerstenhauer, head of the Politische Abteilung des General Gouvernements in Brussels, concerning the publication and distribution of two brochures on the German cause in Belgium. The German authorities in Belgium were interested in paying for a large share of the edition and helping with its distribution in Belgium and Germany. Gerstenhauer was also asked to help found an agency of De Toekomst in Brussels.32 As further proof of De Toekomst’s German propagandist activities, Van Hamel published another letter by Sleeswijk written to Berlin asking for addresses of people living in the Dutch East Indies who might be interested in De Toekomst. Although Sleeswijk tried to explain that this person in Berlin was just a personal friend, Van Hamel neatly pointed out that the address on the letter was the office of the Presseabteilung zur Beeinflüssung der Neutralen and the addressed person was known as the head of the department serving the Netherlands.33 According to Van Hamel this was enough evidence that De Toekomst was an instrument of German propaganda activities in the Netherlands. Nevertheless De Toekomst was never officially prosecuted for endangering neutrality and kept appearing until the end of the war. However, the polarisation between De Toekomst and De Amsterdammer became more extreme.
Radicalisation Whereas De Toekomst had initially stated that it would defend neutrality and secure the Dutch position between the three important European cultures, it increasingly promoted the vision that English and French culture were things of the past and that the Dutch people should focus primarily on Germany. At the end of 1916 Sleeswijk concluded that the initial purpose of De Toekomst, to counterbalance anti-German propaganda in order to safeguard neutrality had been a success. His opinion now became more radical, claiming that a weakening of the ‘Germanic spirit’ would not only be detrimental to the German state but also to the Netherlands, and that now the German spirit was spreading all over Europe everyone who would resist it would be crushed.34 32 33 34
Van Hamel (1916a). Van Hamel (1916d). Sleeswijk (1916) pp. 857–859, 858.
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Rationalist arguments like the economic importance of Germany decreased in significance in De Toekomst. And neutrality was given a new meaning: it was now restricted to not actually fighting in a war and it had lost its connotations of safeguarding the Netherlands from all consequences of the war. Sleeswijk asked the Dutch people to actively participate in the preparation of a new era and a cultural rebirth. In 1917 and 1918 this message was repeated in all kinds of ways, with special attention to the ethnic relationship between the Dutch and German peoples. When Germany finally lost the war and fell victim to revolution, Sleeswijk wrote that their sympathies for the German people did not end now the Kaiser was gone, because they were “based on a deeper, permanent foundation and on the immanent characteristics of the German people.”35 It was not a conservative worldview that was the most important feature of the German sympathies of De Toekomst, but their belief in the rise and descent of cultures and their strong conviction that Germany would finally restore the unity of the Germanic race and that the true characteristics of the Dutch people could only be rediscovered by following the German example and by actively working towards a genuine national community. Confronted with the knowledge of German infiltration, Van Hamel realised that the war made it necessary for the Dutch to rethink politics. In 1915 he expressed his feelings concerning public opinion: it was too superficial and the intellectual elite were ignorant about national politics.36 Van Hamel urged the intellectual elite to form their opinion with regard to a national policy. His own starting point was a position in the middle of the Netherlands, both geographically and culturally.37 Initially Van Hamel thus stayed close to the mainstream opinions regarding the position of the Netherlands in Europe as described earlier, however his opinions developed in the course of 1915. In the early days of 1916 he was one of the leading initiators of a new board called De Vaderlandsche Club (The Fatherland Club), which had the official objective of promoting a powerful Dutch national consciousness and a policy aiming to guarantee an independent Dutch nation.38 In a brochure, published by De Vaderlandsche 35 36 37 38
Sleeswijk (1918) p. 2025. Van Hamel (1915a). Ibidem. “Statuut van de Vaderlandsche Club” (1916).
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Club, Van Hamel explained what the foundation of a national policy should be.39 According to Van Hamel the Dutch should be very careful with respect to their international focus: although the Netherlands needed to be open to all both economically and culturally, this should not lead to a negligence of their national interests. Peace, safety and an open sea were not to be aimed at because of moral values, but because of their contribution to Dutch economic and cultural welfare.40 Van Hamel thus shifted towards the primacy of Dutch national interests, and denounced the ‘dreaming’ of internationalism. However Van Hamel was unable to translate this general opinion into a clear and practical political programme. He pleaded for a revival of true Dutch culture, which had to be found within the people and their national character. Van Hamel was unable to make his ideas more explicit. He could only repeat that the elite should activate the powers existing in the Dutch people, that democracy was important in including the people and that in the end one could do nothing more than have faith in the national ideals. At this point the editors of De Toekomst would have said that these national ideals were to be defined in terms of ethnical relationship. Thus the editors of De Toekomst were able to legitimise their ideas based on this trust in shared intrinsic characteristics of a nation and a race. Although De Toekomst did not succeed in annexing liberal values of democracy and justice into their narrative, Van Hamel could not convincingly annex concepts like intrinsic national ideals connected to the worldview of De Toekomst. Van Hamel, De Amsterdammer or De Vaderlandsche Club although, objectively speaking, possessing the best arguments to confront the strongly influenced De Toekomst, could not defeat them because of their own shift towards a belief in the intrinsic characteristics of nations. The war had made the cherished Dutch values of humanity, internationalism and rationalism quiver.
Conclusion When the First World War broke out Dutch intellectuals were immediately very much engaged in determining what this war was about
39 40
Van Hamel (1916e). Ibidem, p. 17.
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and how it challenged Dutch national interests. In 1914 freedom, democracy, international law and justice were generally seen as elements closely connected to the Dutch nation, whilst Germany loomed large as a strongly contrastive reference, representing opposing cultural values and aspirations. It was these elements that the editors of the pro-German weekly De Toekomst had to integrate into their narrative concerning the importance of German culture for the Dutch. Yet neither a Germanic freedom, nor the specific freedom coming from the organic state stood a chance of convincing many Dutch readers. The editors of De Toekomst never really tried to object to democracy per se, but instead attempted to redefine this unavoidable element in a way that was more suited to their ideas on how to organise society. Democracy was defined in terms of community and national interest, but nothing was said about how these interests were to be identified.41 They referred to the intrinsic character of the Dutch people that had so much in common with the nature of their German relatives. Whilst democracy and freedom were difficult to integrate in the message De Toekomst wanted to spread, international law and justice were at least as complicated to address. Based on Darwinist arguments Steinmetz openly justified war as necessary for progress. His opponents stressed the importance of a higher moral and human rationality to control human nature. Pre-war optimism regarding the coming of an era of peace and justice still survived. As the example of Van Hamel shows this faith in human rationality and the possibilities of international organisation was eroded. Van Hamel and many others became more and more afraid of foreign, especially German infiltration. Just like the editors of De Toekomst, Van Hamel accepted the idea that certain intrinsic qualities bound a people together and for the sake of its history and characteristics a nation had to resist being influenced by threatening alien elements. Van Hamel was unable to make his ideas more explicit. The editors of De Toekomst defined these national ideals in terms of ethnical affiliation and thus legitimised their ideas. Although De Toekomst did not succeed in annexing liberal values of democracy and justice into their narrative, Van Hamel also could not convincingly annex concepts connected to the worldview of De Toekomst.
41
[Anonymous] (1918) p. 1030.
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Dutch debate on national identity in war torn Europe shows how Dutch intellectuals tried to make up their minds concerning the important changes that were to come regarding the Dutch position in Europe and the organisation of Dutch society. A minority group of pro-German intellectuals tried hard to integrate characteristic elements of Dutch national identity into their worldview. They were never very successful in public debate, but they forced others to make their opinions more clear. Internationalism and the strong belief in law and progress started to erode in the Netherlands during the war years. In order to maintain peace and independency many Dutch intellectuals now felt they depended on the mystical powers living within the people.
B [Anonymous] (1917) “Roode aanmatiging”, De Toekomst 22 December (1917) 1007–1008. —— (1918) “Opbouw of ontbinding”, De Toekomst 28 December (1918) 1030. —— “De Groote Europeesche Krijg van het jaar 1914”, De Militaire Spectator 83 (1914) 631–642. [Voorblad] De Toekomst 3 April (1915). Baarbé H.L. (1914) “Buitenlandsche kroniek”, Stemmen des tijds 4 (1914–1915) 1241–1256. Beaufort W.H. de (1914) “De oorlog en het volkenrecht”, De Gids 78 (1914) 4–22. Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 106 (1991). Brands M.C. (1997) “‘The Great War’ die aan ons voorbijging. De blinde vlek in het historisch bewustzijn van Nederland”, in: Het belang van de Tweede Wereldoorlog: de bijdragen voor het symposium op 22 september 1997 ter gelegenheid van de opening van de nieuwe behuizing van het Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie, ed. M. Berman en J.C.H. Blom (Den Haag: 1997) 9–20. Chantepie de la Saussaye P.D. (1914) “Oorlog en beschaving”, Onze Eeuw 14 (1914) 161–176. Colenbrander H.T. (1914) “Buitenlandsch Overzicht”, De Gids 78 (1914) 180–183. —— (1914) “Buitenlandsch Overzicht”, De Gids 78 (1914) 568–583. Dunk H. von der (1990) “Conservatisme in vooroorlogs Nederland”, in idem Cultuur en geschiedenis: negen opstellen (Den Haag: 1990) 83–102. Frey M. (1998) Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Niederlande: ein neutrales Land im politischen und wirtschaftlichen Kalkuel der Kriegsgegner (Berlin: 1998). Hamel J.A. van (1915a) “Neerland’s staatskundig belang”, De Amsterdammer 14 March (1915). —— (1915b) “Haring of kuit”, De Amsterdammer 21 November (1915). —— (1916a) “Een woord van waarschuwing tegen Duitsche machinaties en antiNederlandsche “Nederlanders” in Nederland”, De Amsterdammer 6 May (1916). —— (1916b) “Inzake De Toekomst”, De Amsterdammer 13 May (1916). —— (1916c) “Inzake De Toekomst”, De Amsterdammer 20 May (1916). —— (1916d) “Inzake De Toekomst”, De Amsterdammer 27 May (1916). —— (1916e) Grondslagen van nationale politiek (Amsterdam: 1916).
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Honders J.J. (1918) “De ex-keizer”, De Toekomst 28 December (1918) 1029–30. Kemperink M. (2001) Het verloren paradijs: de Nederlandse literatuur en cultuur van het fin de siècle (Amsterdam: 2001). Kernkamp G.W. (1914) “De Europeesche Oorlog”, Vragen des tijds (1914) 1–31. Leven naast de catastrofe: Nederland tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog, ed. H. Binneveld et al. (Hilversum: 2001). Lith H. van (2001) Plotseling een vreselijke knal: bommen en mijnen treffen neutraal Nederland, 1914–1918 (Zaltbommel: 2001). M. (1918) “De volkswil”, De Toekomst 20 April (1918) 330. Maks A.C.F. (1916a) “Hoe vele Nederlanders denken en ons antwoord daarop’, De Toekomst 22 January (1916) 923–924. —— (1916b) Ad hominem: antwoord aan Prof. Mr. S.R. Steinmetz en “De toekomst” (Zaandam: 1916). Moeyes P. (2001) Buiten schot: Nederland tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog: 1914 –1918 (Amsterdam 2001). Molenbroek P. (1916) De oorlog in Belgiè: naar aanleiding van Prof. Mr. Struyken’s Verspreide Opstellen (Den Haag: 1916). Nuys C. (1914) “Buitenlandsch staatkundige kroniek”, De Nieuwe Gids 29 (1914) 472–485. —— (1914) “Buitenlandsch staatkundige kroniek”, De Nieuwe Gids 29 (1914) 685–694. Pater J.C. de (n.d.) De Nederlandsch-Duitsche Vereeniging en de Deutsch-Niederländische Gesellschaft, [unpublished]. Polak L. (1915) Oorlogsfilosofie (Amsterdam: 1915). Roodt E. de (2000) Oorlogsgasten: vluchtelingen en krijgsgevangenen in Nederland tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog (Zaltbommel: 2000). Simons L. (1914) “Wanhoop aan de menschheid”, De Ploeg 7 (1914) 103–110. Sleeswijk J.G. (1916) “Oud en nieuw”, De Toekomst 31 December (1916) 857–859. —— (1918) “Afscheid”, De Toekomst 28 December (1918) 2025. Statuut van de Vaderlandsche Club (1916) in: Grondslagen van nationale politiek, J.A. van Hamel (Amsterdam: 1916). Steinmetz S.R. (1907) Die Philosophie des Krieges (Leipzig: 1907). —— (1916) “Antwoord op de bovenstaande brieven van den heer A.C.F. Maks”, De Toekomst 22 January (1916) 925–928. —— (1917) “Duitschland en het conservatisme”, De Toekomst 14 April (1917) 290–291. Tuyll van Serooskerken H.P. van (2001) The Netherlands and World War I: espionage, diplomacy and survival (Leiden: 2001). Valckenier Kips J.H. (1915) “Tusschen twee werelden”, De Toekomst 3 April (1915) 3–5. Van Ravesteyn W. (1914) “Wereldoorlog”, De Nieuwe Tijd 19 (1914) 612–624. Verhagen B. (1914) “Oorlogskansen en militaire lasten. Naar aanleiding van een artikel van Yves Guyot”, Vragen des Tijds (1914) 698–705. Versluys J. (1915) “De denkbeelden der Nederlanders over de oorlogvoerenden”, De Toekomst 6 November (1915) 675–678. Verwey A. (1914) “Begrippen van nu”, De Beweging 10 (1914) 1–8.
A Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (PA AA) Die Niederländische Presse R8312–R8318
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1914–18: THE DEATH THROES OF CIVILIZATION THE ELITES OF LATIN-AMERICA FACE THE GREAT WAR Olivier Compagnon
The historiography of twentieth-century Latin America has neglected the years 1914–1918. Most of those who seek to define the century in terms of identifiable periods choose to concentrate less on the two world wars than on two turning points that mark a true break in continuity in the sub-continent’s contemporary history: one consists of the social and political effects of the economic crisis that began in the United States in October 1929, the other is Fidel Castro’s assumption of power in Havana in January 1959.1 The natural conclusion of this approach is that the Great War did not have the same formative role in Latin America that it is held to play in Europe. Yet this proposition does not mean that the First World War in Latin America remains a completely neglected topic. For example, within the framework of a traditional diplomatic history it is possible to analyse why certain nations sustained a prudent neutrality until November 1918, or why other states finally rallied to the Allied cause; it has also been possible to measure the impact of the war on the economy of certain countries, such as Argentina, Chile or Brazil, which profited from reduced agricultural production in Europe by seizing new markets and fundamentally modernising their structures.2 Yet the chronology of 1914–1918 has undoubtedly been very little studied to date, rather as if the absence of any collective memory of the Great War in Latin America condemned the period to complete oblivion. Having established these factors, this paper does not claim to introduce a historiographical revolution and present the First World War as a major break in the specific chronology of Latin America. More
1
Skidmore and Smith (1999); Halperin Donghi (1996); Manigat (1991). Albert and Henderson (1988); Dean (1969); Fritsch (1992); Coyoumdjian (1986); Weinmann (1994). 2
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modestly, it seeks to suggest some ways in which the impact of the years 1914–1918 across the Atlantic can be re-evaluated as part of a cultural and intellectual history. For although the Latin American nations did not experience warfare within their own territory, nor live through the suffering of war, they were the privileged spectators and ultimate new participating entrants in the cultural confrontation that engulfed the chief belligerent nations—led by France and Germany. This was intensified by Latin America’s nineteenth century, mostly lived with eyes fixed on European civilisation—in all its many forms—and with their identity as newly emancipated states constructed from it, frequently in mimetic style.3 Perceived as the death-agony of Belle Epoque Europe (as it was possible to imagine and dream of it across the Atlantic), the Great War helped to destroy images, to transform the imagination of the Latin American élites and to strengthen a questioning of identity that was already emerging in the earliest years of the century. Without being a true mould of the Latin American twentieth century, the war thus appears to have influenced some fundamental tendencies and to have acted to some extent as an accelerator.
The War as a Stake of Civilisation A brief retrospective glance at the pre-war period is necessary in order to understand the scale of the cataclysm which struck the Latin American élites in the second decade of the century. Following the series of independences in the early nineteenth century, a majority of intellectuals and political operators violently rejected the Spanish model of civilisation, turning instead towards the ‘enlightened’ civilisation that they felt they could perceive in north-west Europe. Among these new European points of reference, France held a well-recognised and privileged place, in terms of both intellectual influence and cultural presence.4 The impact of French culture was initially linked to the influence of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, then of 1789 on the Independences. This was noted in 1851 by the Argentinian Juan Bautista Alberdi (1810–1884), recalling the American revolutionaries’ debt to French ideas: 3 4
Badie (1992). Lempérière (1998); Rolland (2000).
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We owe our inspirations of liberty and independence to French science. Through its language, sister to our own, through the clarity and abundance of her books, as in our shared faith, France will always have an immense influence on this part of America.5
And even beyond the substantialist approach to the history of ideas, the new forms of socialisation and political practices that appeared with the French Revolution achieved widespread recognition throughout Latin America. For the whole of the nineteenth century the considerable success of the works of Comte or Renan, for example, not to mention the correspondence in French between Victor Hugo and Stendhal, or between Mallarmé and Zola, or again the various schools of painting, corresponds to the importance accorded to the French language in the various national teaching programmes, which naturally directed the upper levels of Latin American societies towards French culture. More precisely, from 1870 the sons of good families and the scions of the intelligentsia were brought up in the Comte cult of positivism and scientism, whose most fully developed embodiment seemed to them to be the Belle Epoque and the Paris of the Universal Exhibition. All travelled to France regularly, convinced that there they would find the heart of civilisation and the place where the future of humanity was being formed. One of the important figures of contemporary Argentinian literature, Victoria Ocampo (1890–1979), effectively summed up the elective affinities uniting the generality of Latin American élites with France when she affirmed that “There is not a single American, lover of art or literature, or simply of civilisation, who does not build bridges between France and ourselves. I cannot imagine life without the interchanges that they make possible”.6 This wide-spread Francophilia explains why a large proportion of the Latin American intelligentsia took the side of France and her allies from the first declaration of war. We must none the less be wary of automatic assumptions, and look carefully at studies of what is in fact a little understood body of opinion. The absence of close studies means that it is impossible to understand precisely how local populations responded to the policy of neutrality and then the involvement of some Latin American nations in the Great War from 1917
5 6
Gaillard (1918), p. 301. Bonnefous (1953), p. 64.
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onwards.7 By superimposing a study of migratory movements from Europe to Latin America on to systematic opinion surveys it would no doubt be possible to establish a geographical pattern of Germanophilia and pro-Allied feeling; but in the current state of research we must be satisfied with scraps of information and theories which may be restricted to common knowledge. For example, we may read sometimes that a cultural dividing line existed among the Latin American élites between the legal professions, shaped by the influence of German law, and the literary professions, more sensitive to the Parisian intellectual life; that Catholic circles showed evidence of a clear sympathy for the Central powers, insofar as Germany ultimately showed greater respect for Roman Catholicism than did republican and anti-clerical France, Anglican Great Britain or Orthodox Russia; or that the military caste turned unanimously towards Germany, recognising the technical and financial aid given by Germany to certain Latin American governments to help them modernise their forces. But there are equally numerous counter-examples that make any generalisation impossible. We do know that the Italian community in Buenos Aires demonstrated enthusiastically in 1915 to celebrate the mother country’s entry into the war, that a large number of demonstrations took place in Montevideo which brought together intellectuals and the ordinary population and during which the Marseillaise was sung beneath the French tricolour; and that the French diplomatic archives are overflowing with messages of friendship from well-known public personalities or unknown individuals. But the feeling that most people in Latin America were sympathetic towards the Allies during the Great War, often formed by reading the press of the day, should be reconsidered in the light of the monopoly held by a few large news agencies such as Havas or Reuter in the transmission of news. Whatever the basis of truth in these shades of opinion, it is certain that for many intellectuals the war could initially be summed up as a confrontation between German barbarity embodied in a mil-
7 It should be recalled that all Latin American countries remained neutral until the United States entered the war. Panama, Cuba and Brazil declared war on Germany in 1917, followed the next year by Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti and Honduras. Six other nations broke off diplomatic relations with Germany without actually declaring war: Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Uruguay, El Salvador and Ecuador.
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itarism to the death on the one hand, and the eternal French civilisation on the other. Many personal records held by consuls or ambassadors en poste in Latin America confirm this tide of opinion in favour of the Entente, and more specifically of France. At the end of March 1915, for example, a group of Brazilian intellectuals—almost all of them writers—lay behind the creation of a ‘Brazilian League for the Allies’ whose purpose was to coordinate pro-French sympathies already expressed from the outbreak of the war. Chairman of the League José Pereira da Graca Aranha (1868–1931), a sophisticated connoisseur of Europe from his long periods there on diplomatic missions, expressed his views in his inaugural speech: “From the outbreak of the conflict we have come to France, moved by the very same instinct that in this war has showed us the renewal of the struggle between barbarity and civilisation”.8 In 1916 a message from Paraguayan intellectuals to France evoked in its turn ‘the epic of the Marne’ as a ‘regenerative dawn of modern civilisation’ and asserted that Paraguay could not help but sustain France in her struggle, and sustain: the French people whom we love so much, whose melodies of egalitarian harmony are the cradle language of our embryonic democracies, a land which nurtures talents in philosophy and the arts, genial explorer into the transcendence of science, always seeking to know the highest aspirations of the spirit.9
Still in Paraguay, the Chairman of the Centre Victor Hugo, meeting place in Asunción for intellectuals to study French culture, declared in the presence of the French Minister on 18 April 1917 that ‘the student youth has always regarded with affection the nation which proclaimed the Rights of Man and which, today, defends civilisation’.10 A few months later this solidarity with France spread out from the intellectual field and took to the streets in Montevideo, in Uruguay, where July 14 had been the national feast day from 1915: a large demonstration of solidarity with the Allies turned into a fullscale expression of Francophile feeling in which ‘students [marched] at the head of the demonstration, bearing an enormous French flag’.11 8
Gaillard (1918), p. 41. Ministry for Foreign affairs—Diplomatic Archives of Nantes (MAE-ADN) Assomption A 16. 10 MAE-ADN, Assomption A 16. 11 MAE-ADN, Montevideo 233. See also Le Courrier de La Plata, 22 September 1917. 9
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A good indicator of this generalised francophilia is also apparent in studying volunteers for the French army. Requests poured in to the French consulates, mostly from student, journalist, artistic or legal circles, etc.12 All brought with them a personal manifesto declaring the need to defend French civilisation and the values of liberty that she represented. A young Paraguayan student, for example, addressed the following lines to Jean Loiseleur de Longchamp, French ambassador to Asunción, on 19 September 1918: “I have the great honour to address Your Excellency to express my wish to join the French front line in order to give an outsider’s support as a volunteer to all those who are fighting for the triumph of civilisation and justice over militarism and Prussian barbarity”.13 Despite the Revolution of 1910 which had forced Porfirio Diaz—who was convinced that modernisation of the nation would come from France or would not come at all—to relinquish power, this passion for the defence of France was equally prevalent in Mexico, where the chargé d’affaires who was en poste at the outbreak of the war wrote to Théophile Delcassé on 8 November 1914 that: the marks of sympathy that I have received from Mexicans since the beginning of the war have been very numerous, and I put at around 500 the number of young men [. . .] who have come to the French legation seeking information on how to undertake an engagement in our army for the duration of the war.14
It is only right to balance the argument by also pointing out evidence of solidarity with the Central Powers, notably in the countries of the southern part of the sub-continent and some southern states of Brazil where immigration of Germanic origin had been substantial since the middle of the nineteenth century, and organised active propaganda that was sufficiently effective to disturb the local French representatives.15 Pro-German opinion appears to have been strongest in Chile, for various reasons which range from the intense military 12 See for example the list drawn up by the French embassy in Paraguay for the year 1918 (MAE-ADN, Assomption A 16). 13 MAE-ADN, Assomption A 16. We should note in passing that the problem then faced by French representatives in Latin America was the cost of transport for volunteers to Europe. Despite the need for men, most of the requests in 1917 and 1918 finally met with a refusal. 14 Documents diplomatiques français, Paris, Imprimerie Nationale, vol. 1914 (3 August–31 December), 1999, p. 486. 15 Luebke (1987).
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collaboration between the two nations to bad memories left by the law of separation between the Church and the State in 1905— Santiago was a popular destination for French religious emigration— via the black lists established in England from 1916, heavily penalising commercial activities out of the port of Valparaiso. Further, the German army also welcomed into its ranks volunteers who set up a cult of science or German philosophy against the zealots favouring eternal France.16 That said, it was genuinely the notion that the civilisation that gave birth to human rights and to modernism must be saved which predominated in the largely Francophile attitude of Latin American élites during the first part of the war. The War as the Death of Civilisation The chief object of this paper is however to describe not this francophilia among the élites of Latin America but the development of behaviour and commitments observable as the war became bogged down. The concept that the war represented a struggle between barbarity and civilisation was gradually replaced by a belief that it marked the end of a world, the death of the values that had developed since the second half of the nineteenth century, the death of a culture that grew out of rationalism and materialism. This observation has nothing original about it at first sight, in that it recalled the belief that Paul Valéry—one of many—was able to propose, for example in La Crise de l’Esprit in 1919, an observation that even appeared to perpetuate the mimesis of Latin American intellectuals in relation to their traditional European points of reference and to reflect shared anxieties, but of which the consequences are worthy of more advanced analysis as soon as they are set against a longer time-scale. We should first of all remember some revealing examples of this change of direction, of which the first signs appeared in 1916–17, at the moment when Verdun and then the Chemin des Dames were making a strong impression on the minds of Latin America. In 1916, in the specific context of the Mexican Revolution, the anthropologist Manuel Gamio (1883–1960) published his work Forjando Patrio in which he exhorted his compatriots to take the path of a
16
Nogales Mendez (1999).
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true psychological decolonisation from the dying Europe, creating a synonym for national resurgence. As a constant backdrop to his thinking, the Great War was evoked in several instances with a bitter irony, notably in its aspect of cultural confrontation: “Let us therefore beg the Foreign Cultural God to [. . .] give us his last word in Europe on the war of domination between ‘Kultur’ and ‘culture’”.17 In a comparable attitude, in a report published in December 1919 in the Revista do Brasil, the Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato (1882–1948) also stigmatised the arguments which in his country had brought into opposition the partisans of ‘Civilisation’ and those of ‘Kultur’, who ultimately plunged into the same atrocities between 1914 and 1918.18 By committing suicide in the mud of the trenches, Europe—so determinedly hegemonic throughout the nineteenth century—thus lost all credit, whether Latin or Germanic. The case of the Argentinian Leopoldo Lugones (1874–1938) is equally instructive. Publishing articles that he sent from Europe to the leading daily paper in Argentina, La Nación, from 1914, this intellectual who had gravitated towards socialist circles at the beginning of the century, before turning to a liberalism inspired by the Enlightenment, initially saw the war as a clear confrontation between German barbarity and French civilisation. Recalling on many occasions that the whole of Latin America is the inheritor of European culture, he did not restrain his criticisms of German militarism which was in the process of destroying this civilisation, and even wrote several poems in honour of eternal France. But in 1917, when he wrote the preface to the published collection of his articles dating from the first years of the war, the tone changed and the war was no longer exactly imagined as the confrontation between barbarous Germany and France the redeemer of humanity, but more radically as the collapse of the entire European civilisation: “For me, the current cataclysm represents the end of a civilisation”.19 France, as the heart of Europe, did not escape the disaster and dragged into the mud of the trenches the values that she had hitherto been expected to represent. Was it still worth fighting for her? Nothing can be less certain, concluded Lugones at the time when Argentina was facing pressure from a United States anxious to see her commit herself to 17 18 19
Gamio (1916), p. 190. Monteiro Lobato (1965), p. 225. Lugones (1917), p. 10.
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the Allied camp: Latin America, the island of purity partially spared by the cataclysm, should henceforward work towards gaining an independent identity. Finally, the Brazilian author Alceu Amoroso Lima (1893–1983) offers an evocative echo of the writings of Lugones. Nurtured on European references in his childhood, with perfect mastery of the French language, with several periods spent in Paris and in Italy in his adolescence, this multi-skilled writer—literary critic, lawyer, sociologist and philosopher—grew up in an atmosphere of militant secularism that came straight from France, and of the positivism which then ruled over the world of ideas in Brazil. Retrospectively, Lima was to describe itself as being particularly representative, on the eve of the First World War, of those despiritualised Brazilian élites who were profoundly influenced by the works of Cousin, Renan and above all Auguste Comte, whose extraordinary diffusion in Brazil in the second half of the nineteenth century is well known. Evoking the impact of the Great War on his intellectual travels, Lima set down a valuable work of witness on the cruel revisions required of this generation as it confronted the lost paradise of modernity: In Paris, the centre of Europe, I saw that a world was coming to its end. It was the end of euphoria [. . .] No more dilettante life, no more idle hours. Now for a difficult life, the need to choose between two extremes, sin and dogma . . . Out of this decade from 1920 to 1930 came an inversion of alliances, a reversal over Anatole France, Machado de Assis and Silvio Romero. The trouble was that they had inculcated in our minds a scepticism and a dilettanteism which was leading us towards a clash in the face of the catastrophe that was the war. We had all been inclined, particularly after 1918, to revise our ideas and everything which for us represented the Belle Epoque.20
On many points, this disenchantment resulting from the war relates to what French historiography has recently named as ‘the spirit of the 1920s’: combined with the Bolshevik revolution, the effects of the world war open up the possibility that pre-1914 styles of thinking are no longer capable of meeting the problems of the highly contemporary.21 With the small difference that the majority of the Latin American élites are not going to turn their gaze towards Moscow to find a new world coming to take the place of that pre-war world, 20 21
Lima (1973). Trebitsch (1997).
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but towards their Hispanic past, hidden since the beginning of the nineteenth century—we should note that Brazil forms the exception here—and the indigenous elements of the nation who should no longer be thought of as simply peripheral to the European centre.
Between Iberian Past and Indigenism: Latin-American Identity put to the Test of the Great War Rupture is fundamental in the imagination of these élites in that it distanced them from the mimetic reflexes that were hitherto current, forcing them to fresh reflection on identity in relation to late nineteenth-century views: the main consequence of the Great War is that the suicide of Europe led Latin America to break away from the specific importational patterns of thinking that had characterised it since the end of the eighteenth century. Yet this supposition should undoubtedly be adjusted if we consider that this identificatory reflection first appeared by the end of the nineteenth century. Apart from the anti-materialist—and indirectly anti-European—reaction reflected in the works of José E. Rodo in Uruguay, Antonio Caso and José Vasconcelos in Mexico, of Francisco Garcia Calderón in Peru and Farias Brito in Brazil, we know for example that the celebration of the centenary of Argentinian independence, in May 1910, took place in an atmosphere of long-established intellectual unease over the future of the Nation: was not the non-integration of certain sectors of society the product of the blind transfer of a European-style liberalism which would deprive the country of essential resources? Can one really see an Argentinian identity being born at the very same time as efforts are being made to create a servile reproduction of the few European countries that were the source of the vast majority of the population?22 Is the opposition between Civilisation (European) and Barbarity (indigenous), inherited from the Facundo of Domingo F. Sarmiento published in 1845 and thenceforward a structural creator of the national image, the best way to achieve modernity? Or, in order that Latin America should not reduce itself further to a ‘Far East’, should one not henceforward concentrate on approaches such as that of José Martí, herald of the values described as bar-
22
Quattrochi-Woisson (1992), pp. 26–27.
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barian in his quest for a specifically Latin-American identity? The premises of a nationalist step sideways are also visible in early twentieth-century Chile, with the publication of many works denouncing the submission of the country to foreign interests and culture, including La conquista del Chile en el siglo XX by Tancredo Pinochet Le Brun in 1909.23 And it was also at the turning point of the two centuries that questions were raised again in Andean nations such as Bolivia, over the pertinence of this positivism born out of social Darwinism which pushed out the Indian—degenerate and seen as responsible for the country’s backwardness—to the margins of the Nation in order to favour Europeanisation and the whitening of population and culture.24 The Great War cannot therefore be considered as the factor that unleashed the reflections on the future of Latin America which flourished in the 1920s and 1930s, but it had a full part in the brutal reactivation of the problem of identity, particularly because published reflections on the fate of Europe, such as those of Spengler, were very widely available.25 Although it was accepted that Old Europe died in the trenches, some still expected to revive it on the American continent. One such was Romulo S. Naón (1875–1941), ambassador of the Argentinian Republic to Washington and, from 1917, in favour of Buenos Aires joining the United States in the Allied camp. In the final months of the war he declared: The consequences of this war will affect every nation in the world for a long period of time. Our continent has assembled the foundations of its own civilisation from nations which are exhausting themselves in this war [. . .] It will be said that all the material and moral energies of these peoples have come together to create this wonderful social transformation which is known as the American civilisation [. . .] It is up to us to reincarnate the European civilisation.26
But the stringency which commanded the attention of most activists in the post-war world is rather that of a radical cut-off from the pre-war world and the redefinition of a specifically Latin American identity. This, for example, is the opinion of a Bolivian intellectual,
23 24 25 26
Gazmuri (1980). Parrenin et Lavaud (1980). Romero (1995). Gaillard (1918), p. 223.
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Daniel Sánchez Bustamente (1871–1933), who at the end of the war wrote in El Tiempo, La Paz: We have lived dependent on the fashions, problems, methods and ideas of Europe, ignorant or pretending to be ignorant that there must also be South American [. . .] problems. Fascinated by the dazzle of the Old World, we have allowed a heavy shadow to extend across our own virtues.27
Objective signs bear witness to the reality of the changed representation of Europe, like the sociological mutations that affected Latin American travel. While the élites as a whole—intellectual, political, economic—had made the initiatory stay in Paris a veritable ritual before 1914, the Paris visit tended to become an élite artistic monopoly in the 1920s.28 For if the French capital had lost none of its essential attraction, it now had to compete with two new poles of attraction that appeared to offer better assurance of a successful initiation: New York and the United States, of course, but also Madrid, Barcelona or Seville. For beyond the detailed factual accounts, the rediscovery of the ‘special virtues’ of Latin America was presented from the 1920s onwards as part of a rehabilitation of its Iberian past, which had been disregarded since the Independences, and favoured by the fact that Spain had remained neutral during the First World War. The time had come to rediscover the old Spanish mother-country to the detriment of the French civilisation which had inspired so many intellectuals since the nineteenth century, the civilising role of the Catholic Kings to the detriment of the ‘supposed Enlightenment’, the virtues of Catholicism after a barbarous war which had proved that it was impossible to do without God. The development of a nationalism that places the notion of race at the heart of its concerns was the first element of this rediscovered Hispanicism. In most of the countries formerly subject to Madrid, Spain and her glorious past tended to take the place of the French model which was no longer the precise symbol of modernity and progress. By 1917, when public debate was fully engaged with the hypothesis of joining the war on the same side as the United States, the Argentinian president Hipólito Yrigoyen chose to make 12 October—the date of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America—a
27 28
Gaillard (1918), p. 277. Rolland (2000), p. 140.
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public holiday, with the Chilean government following its example early in the 1920s. In line with works by Manuel Gálvez, author in 1916 of El solar de la raza, the 1920s witnessed the development of a vast undertaking of historical revisionism that aimed to reconstruct the broken affiliation between Spain and Argentina.29 The focal points of this neo-nationalism multiplied throughout the inter-war years, particularly in the form of reviews such as La Nueva República, founded in 1927 by young intellectuals fascinated by General Primo de Rivera and keen to bring this model of authoritarian government to the banks of the River Plate. And although the doctrinal body of such publications retained French references, it must be acknowledged that Maurras and Action Française took the place of the secular and republican model.30 Around a decade later it was entirely logical that the Popular Front should be held up to public obloquy and that Franco should be venerated, seen as the continuing assurance of Spain the eternal threatened by subversion.31 The second symptom of this return to Hispanicism lies in the great wave of conversions to Catholicism recorded between the two world wars, seen by some to be more in line with America’s colonial past that the militant secularism of Combes that was celebrated before 1914. The absence of syncretic works on this topic should not conceal the extent of a phenomenon that was identifiable across the whole of Spanish-speaking America; but it also affected Brazil, as can be seen, for example, in the well-documented examples of Alceu Amoroso Lima and Gustavo Corção (1896–1978). As noted above, Lima was brought up in the cult of European materialism but was profoundly affected by the disaster of the Great War. In 1918 he embarked on a process of thought which led to his conversion ten years later;32 Corção, an astronomer and chemist trained in European science, converted on the eve of the Second World War after a period of reflection on his epoch which led him to reject ‘the vast dustbin of the rationalist century’.33 Apart from these individual cases, the intellectuals returning to the bosom of the Church in the inter-war years could be counted in their hundreds, in contrast
29 30 31 32 33
Quattrochi-Woisson (1992). Lafage (1991), pp. 19–24. Quijada (1991). Lima (1973). Corção (1987), p. 118.
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with the end of the previous century when the ‘despiritualisation’ of the élites had been very considerable. If this wave of conversions continued under the influence of spiritual guides such as Jacques Maritain (French) or G.K. Chesterton (English), it also shows evidence of a break in the intellectual history of contemporary Latin America. More generally, it was in fact part of a general revival in Catholicism immediately after the First World War, which can also be identified at an institutional level through the length of the subcontinent (the establishment of Cursos de Cultura Católica in Buenos Aires and of Centro Dom Vital in Rio in 1922, the Centro fides in Lima in 1930, movements of Catholic action in almost all the countries at the turn of the 1920s–30s, etc). Allied to the construction of a form of nationalism hostile to the modern pattern that arose out of 1789, this rediscovery of Catholicism permanently changed the thinking of a section of the élites. With the rediscovery of the Iberian past, the affirmation of the indigenous element constitutes the second panel of this re-evaluation of identity. Presented in the form of an ideological reflection before 1914, the question of the native population became a genuine political and social stake in the inter-war years. As quoted above, the example of Manuel Gamio shows that the will to bring the Indians into the Nation and the social body is derived directly from the questioning of models of thought acquired from Europe, and is thus derived indirectly from the Great War. Beyond the rejection of intellectual colonisation by Europe, which has no further reason for existence after the great massacre of the war, the Mexican anthropologist makes the Indian one of the central subjects of Forjando patria.34 Referring to the education dispensed in the schools, he observes for example that: preferential consideration is given to the past history of social classes of civilisation derived from the European civilisation, as if that of the indigenous class, which is the basis of the population, was not of capital importance.35
Gamio, inspired by the specific context of the revolution that began in 1910, was not alone in bringing indigenism into his patterns of thinking inspired by the collapse of European civilisation; Bolivia is 34 35
Guidicelli (1996). Gamio (1916), p. 113.
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another example of this rupture—pre-1914 reflections on the integration of Indianness were visible, for example, in an active education policy in favour of Indians which culminated in a statute on native education published on 21 February 1919.36 The gradual integration of Indians through education naturally continued to be implemented according to the yardstick of European criteria,37 for in the aftermath of the Great War multiculturalism was still not in fashion—the movement for the emancipation of the natives by natives was not to get under way seriously until the 1960s; but the period of exclusion in favour of Europeanisation of the race seems to have genuinely come to an end at the end of the war. In Brazil, finally, the Modernist movement launched at Sao Paulo in 1922 also rested on extolling non-western or anti-western traits in Brazilian culture: for example, the poet Mário de Andrade or the musician Heitor Villa Lobos plunging into the interior of the vast Brazilian landscape and bringing out elements of folkore to be included in their sophisticated works, while they burned Anatole France. As always when it is a matter of cultural and intellectual history, it could not finally be a question of identifying a sharp and open break. The questioning of European references in their prevailing form throughout the nineteenth century began before the First World War, and the war did not mark their definitive abandonment. Witness for example the fact that in a domain as symbolic as higher education, nations such as Brazil or Argentina very largely turned to European university teachers to whom they consistently allocated prestigious posts throughout the 1920s and 1930s. None the less, the emergence of a nationalism founded on the Iberian past, the return of some élites to Catholicism, the discovery of Indianness and its gradual integration into the Nation, were all changes which, bore the mark of the shadows of the First World War and had a profound influence on the contemporary history of Latin America. In the thinking of the Latin-American élites, the years 1914–1918 accelerated a shift of balance from which it is easier to understand the perception of a certain number of later episodes: for example the Spanish Civil War, experienced as a trauma of identity in the whole of Spanish-speaking America from the very fact of the overturning of representations which accompanied the First World War. 36 37
Perrenin and Lavaud (1980) Bonilla, Martinez, Sinardet (1999).
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Albert B. and P. Henderson (1988) South America and the First World War. The Impact of the War on Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Chile (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 1988). Badie B. (1992) L’État importé. L’occidentalisation de l’ordre politique (Paris: 1992). Bonnefous E. (1953) ‘Les liens intellectuels entre la France et l’Amérique latine’, Revue des Deux Mondes (1 September 1953) 63–86. Bonilla M., F. Martinez, E. Sinardet (eds.) (1999), ‘Transformar o reflejar las realidades andinas: la éducación en el siglo XX’, Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Études Andines, 28, 3. Corção G. (1987), La découverte de l’autre, Caromb, Éditions Sainte-Madeleine (A descoberta do outro, Rio, Livraria Agir Editora, 1944). Couyoumdjian J.R. (1986) Chile y Gran Bretaña durante la Primera Guerra mundial y la postguerra, 1914 –1921 (Santiago, Editorial Andres Bello-Ediciones Universidad Catolica de Chile). Dean W. (1969), The Industrialization of São Paulo, 1880–1945 (Austin, University of Texas Press, Institute of Latin American Studies). Fritsch W. (1992), ‘O impacto da Grande Guerra’, in A ordem do progresso. Cem anos de politica economica republicana, 1889–1989, ed., Marcelo de Paiva Abreu (Rio de Janeiro, Ed. Campus) 41–45. Gaillard G. (1918) Amérique latine et Europe occidentale. L’Amérique face à la guerre (Paris, Berger-Levrault). Gamio M. (1916), Forjando Patria. Pro nacionalismo (Mexico, Libreria de Porrua Hermanios). Gazmuri R.C. (1980) Testimonios de una crisis. Chile, 1900–1925 (Santiago, Editorial Universitaria). Guidicelli C. (1996) ‘Manuel Gamio, Forjando Patria’, Histoire et Sociétés de l’Amérique latine, 4, pp. 167–190. Halperin Donghi T. (1996) Historia Contemporánea de América Latina (Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 13th edition). Lafage F. (1991) L’Argentine des dictatures, 1930–1983 (Paris, L’Harmattan). Lempérière A., et al. (1998) L’Amérique latine et les modèles européens (Paris, L’Harmattan). Lima A.A. (1973) Memorias improvisados. Dialogos con Medeiros Lima (Petropolis, Vozes). Luebke F.C. (1987) Germans in Brazil: A Comparative History of Cultural Conflict during World War I (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press). Lugones L. (1917) Mi beligerancia (Buenos Aires, Otero y Garcia). Manig L. (1991) L’Amérique latine au XX e siècle (Paris, Seuil, coll. Points Histoire). Monteiro Lobato J.B. (1965) Criticas e outras notas. Obras completas (Sao Paulo, Editora Brasiliense). Nogales Mendez R. de (1991) Cuatro años ajo la media luna (Caracas, Comisión Editora de la Biblioteca de Autores y Temas Tachirenses). Parrenin G. and J.-P.L. Lavaud (1980) Pour une approche de l’indigénisme en Bolivie (Paris, CNRS/Credal, working document no. 14). Prochasson C. and A. Rasmussen (1996) Au nom de la patrie. Les intellectuels et la Première Guerre mondiale (1910–1919), (Paris, La Découverte). Quattrochi-Woisson D. (1992) Un nationalisme de déracinés. L’Argentine, pays malade de sa mémoire (Paris, Éditions du CNRS). Quijada M. (1991), Aires de República, aires de cruzada: la guerra civil española en Argentina (Barcelona, Sendai). Rimoldi M.J. (1994) “Argentina-Brasil: dinámica de relación en la coyuntura 1914– 1918” in Temás de Historia Argentina 11, Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Faculdad de Humanidades y Ciencia de la Educación, Estudios/Investigaciones series, no. 16.
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Rolland D. (2000) La crise du modèle français. Marianne et l’Amérique latine (Presses Universitaires de Rennes/Institut Universitaire de France). Romero V. (1995) Le latino-américanisme à la lumière du Déclin de l’Occident, 1919–1939 (doctoral thesis, Paris, University of Paris VII). Skidmore, T.E. and P.H. Smith (1999) Historia contemporánea de América Latina (Barcelona, Crítica, 2nd edition). Trebitsch M. (1997) “Un esprit des années 20”, in Intellectuels chrétiens et esprit des années 20, ed. Pierre Colin (Paris, Cerf: 1997). Tulchin J.S. (1971) The Aftermath of War: World War I and U.S. Policy toward Latin America (New York, New York University Press). Weinmann R. (1994) Argentina en la Primera Guerra mundial: neutralidad, transición política y continuismo económico (Buenos Aires, Biblos-Fundación Simón Rodríguez).
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INDEX
academic research growing interest in First World War 6–7 Act of Settlement 137 Adams, H.L. 202 Adams, Michael 196 aerial bombardment 15 Alberdi, Juan Bautista 280 Aliens Restriction Act (1919) 128 Alt, Konrad 244 American Civil War 74 Amoroso Lima, Alceu 287, 291 Anglo-Jewry 125, 127 Angress, W. 34 anti-Semitism 25, 26, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 88, 93, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 132, 139 Arnold family 235–6 Arras, battle of 46 askari 26, 28, 37, 38, 39, 40 Asquith, H.H. 64, 66, 75 atrocities 99 Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane 5, 21 Azoulay, Dr 185 Bagdons, Friedrich 164, 166, 170, 173, 176 Baker, Newton 68, 74, 75 Balfour, Sir John 90 Balkans, war in (1990s) 18 Barbusse, Henri 154 Barker, Pat 6 Barres, Maurice 182 Barthas, Louis 224 Barthes, Roland 211 Bastin, Irene 239 Baudrillart, Cardinal 179 Bebel, August 31 Becker, Annette 5 Becker, Jean-Jacques 183 Berlin 161 billeting 99, 112 birth rate concerns 147, 188 Bland, Douglas 69 Blanjean, Commandant Leopold 239 Bloch, Marc 11, 117, 214 Board of Deputies of British Jews 133
Bochum 160, 171, 175 Boer War 62, 265 Bottrop 160 Boulanger Affair 63, 72 Bourke, Joanna 16, 197, 205 Boutroux, E. 183 Brands, Maarten 261 Briand, Aristide 70 British Empire 115 British Legion 5 British nationality 126, 138 British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 137 Brooke, Rupert 105 Brookes, Cyrus Harry 92 Bryan, William Jennings 68 Buisson, Ferdinand 182 Bureau, Paul 190 Burgfrieden 33 Cannadine, David 7 Cassel, Ernest 127, 130 censorship 97–99, 119 Cesarani, David 132, 139 charity 95–123, 162 Charle, Christophe 95 Chauvin, Herman 238 Chemin des Dames, battles of 49, 66, 285 Chesterton, G.K. 292 Chickering, Roger 121 chronology of the conflict 17 Churchill, Winston 76 civil society 11, 98, 101, 109, 120, 121 civil-military relations 62, 65, 68–70, 75–6 Britain 61, 62, 63–5, 66–8, 71, 73 France 62–3, 65–6, 70–1, 72–3 United States 62, 68–9, 71–2, 73–5 Clegg, H. 202 Clemenceau, Georges 61, 64, 66, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76 Clements, H.T. 203 Coester, Marine-Oberkriegsgerichtrat 57 Cohen, Deborah 117 Cohen, Israel 88, 89, 93
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Cohen-Portheim, Paul 94 collapse of Communism 19 Collie, Sir John 200, 201 Collini, Stefan 197 commemoration (see also memorials) 3 Committee for Relief in Belgium 227 Commonwealth War Graves Commission 5 comparative history 1, 10, 95–123 difficulty of 12, 117–118 importance of 11, 17, 20, 121 Comte, Auguste 281 Comte, Pastor Louis 187 consent 50, 97, 143 Corbin, Alain 185 Corção, Gustavo 291 Corps d’Observation Anglais au Front de l’Ouest 231 cowardice 35, 47, 51, 52, 212, 224 Crocq, Professor Louis 47 cultural history 10, 17 relationship with military history 14–16, 19–20 Curragh Incident 61, 63, 64, 67, 73 Daniels, Josephus 74 Davidson Ketchum, John 88 Dawson, Graham 196, 197 de Andrade, Mário 293 de Radiguès, Thérèse 240 De Vaderlandsche Club 273, 274 decadence 159, 180, 265 Degenerate Art 176 degeneration 180–1 Delcassé, Théophile 284 Delwaide, Jeanne 239–240 Desch, Michael 69, 70 Déwe, Walthère 237 Dide, Maurice 218, 219 Dietz, Heinrich 44 Dixon, R.G. 203, 204, 205 Dorsten 160 Dortmund 160, 164 Douaumont 47 Duisburg 160 Durand, Jean-François 152, 153–4 Edward VII 66, 127 Einem, General Karl von 32 Eissler, Kurt Robert 249 Eksteins, Modris 17 embusqués (shirkers) 148, 157 Endelman, Todd 139
Espagne, Michel 11–12 espionage 187, 231, 232 Essen 160, 161, 163, 168, 171 Falk, Edward Morris 91 Faulks, Sebastian 6 Ferguson, Niall 13, 19, 125, 126 Fiaux, Louis 190 film 6 Fisher, G. 206 Foch, Marshal Ferdinand 61, 63 food shortages 112 Foreign Office 136, 137 France, Anatole 293 Francophilia 281, 283 Frankenthal, Käthe 254 French Army 15th Army Corps 119 French Empire 116 French Revolution 181–2, 191 French, Sir John 64, 69 Freud, Sigmund 199, 249–251 Fussell, Paul 17, 18 Fyfe, Christopher 60 Gallipoli 71 importance in Australia 3–4 Gálvez, Manuel 291 Gambetta, Léon 72 Gameson, L. 202, 204 Gamio, Manuel 285, 292 Gelsenkirchen 160, 167 gender history 15 generations of scholars 13, 18–19, 21 Genevoix, Maurice 213, 216, 220, 224 George V 66, 67 George, Stefan 265 Gerard, James W. 81, 82, 84, 86 German East Africa 5, 28, 31, 36–38 German Spring Offensive, 1918 67 Germanophobia 125, 126, 132, 137, 139 Geyer, Michael 39–40 Gilbert, Sandra 239 Goldscheid, Rudolf 253 Gougerot, Professor 186 Gough, General Sir Hubert 64 Graef, Botho 173 Grayzel, Susan 14, 15, 230 Greenberg, Leopold 132 Gregory, Adrian 109
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Hagen 160, 161, 162, 163, 171–172, 173, 176 Haig, Field Marshal Sir Douglas 61, 64, 66, 67, 68, 71, 73 Hamm 160 Hartmann, Fritz 253 Hattingen 160 Herero 31 heroism, heroic ethos 15, 174, 195–196, 201, 204, 207, 208, 212, 219, 220, 223, 224 Hindenburg, Field Marshal Paul von 75 statue in Berlin 92, 161 Historial de la Grande Guerre 11, 12–13, 18 Hitler, Adolf 176 Hohenborn, W. von 34 Holmes, Richard 73 home front 14, 113, 114, 144, 159–177, 230 homosexuals, homosexuality 90, 185 Horne, John 97, 221, 229 Hugo, Victor 281 Hynes, Samuel 17 imperial societies 95, 113, 114, 115, 120, 121 intelligence 229–231, 233–237, 240–241 Ireland prospect of Home Rule in 61, 63–4, 71 Isaac, Rufus (Lord Reading) 127 Jahr, Christoph 58 Japrisot, Sébastien 6 Jaurés, Jean 63, 72 Jeismann, M. 99 Jews 6, 9, 32, 33, 34, 35, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 132, 133, 139 Jochmann, W. 34 Joffre, General Joseph 65–6, 69, 70, 72, 75, 146 Johnstone, Sir Alan 136 Judenzaehlung 25, 34 Jünger, Ernst 35 Kahn, André 221 Kaufmann, Fritz 245 Kaup, Ignaz 253 Kessel, General Gustav von 81, 82 Kesseler family 235 King, Jere Clemens 66, 71, 76
299
Kirchner, Ernst Ludwig 173, 174, 176 Kitchener, Field Marshal Lord 64, 75 Kolonie und Heimat 40–41 Koponen, Juhani 36 Korean War 151 Körner, Edmund 169, 171 Kramer, Alan 229 Kraus, Karl 246, 258 Krupp 160, 168, 175 Kultur 266, 286 La Dame Blanche 230–241 Laby, Lucien 215, 223 Landau, Henry 239 language of sacrifice 111 Lansing, Robert 68 Le Bon, Gustave 184, 191 Le Breton, David 211 League of Nations 68 learning curve 19 leave 53, 143–158 periods allocated 143, 145 Lerner, Paul 16, 251 Lettow-Vorbeck, General Paul von 36, 41 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 221 linguistic turn 18 Lloyd George, David 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 71, 75, 131 local communities 95–123, 159–178 local identity 101, 103, 105 Loiseleur de Longchamp, Jean 284 Ludendorff, General Erich 75 Lugones, Leopoldo 286 MacKenzie, John 195–6 Maginot, André 224 Mallarmé, Stéphane 281 Manning, Frederic 206–7 Maritain, Jacques 292 Marks, T.P. 203 Martí, José 288 martial races 37–8 martyred town 116 masculinity 174, 195, 196, 197, 198, 207, 208, 219, 220, 225, 248, 249 Maurice, Major General Sir Frederick 67, 73 Maurras, Charles 182, 192 Maxse, Leo 128, 129, 130, 131, 134 McCauley, John 205 McDougal, Dr. William 204
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memorial 105, 160–163, 241 to Bismarck 164 Meo, I.L. 204 Messimy, Adolphe 63, 72 Meyer, Dr. Georg 35 Micklethwaite, Dr. G. 199 military discipline 43–60, 147 affected by physical conditions 46 and cowardice 47 and evolving judicial norms 55–58 and judicial clemency 50–52 shot at dawn debate 4, 5 military history 15–16 military justice 43, 44 Millerand, Alexandre 66 Minvielle, Sylvie 151 mobilisation cultural demobilisation 117 national 95, 96, 109 social 15, 97, 101, 102, 105, 109, 112, 114, 117, 118, 120, 121 Molenbroek, P. 270–1 Mond, Alfred 130 Morel, Benedict-Augustin 180 Morris, William 71 Mosse, George 16, 29, 30, 35, 113, 159, 187, 192, 195, 196, 197 Mott, Dr Frederick 200–1 mourning 14, 105, 113, 116, 211, 218, 220 Muhs, Rudolf 125, 126 Müllheim 160, 171 multi-ethnicity 254–7 Myers, Dr. C.S. 198 mythology, mythic figures 170 Roland 164, 173, 174 Siegfried 160, 171, 174, 175, 176 Ulysses 155 Wieland the Smith 168, 171, 174 Naón, Romulo S. 289 Nast, Albert 184 nationalism 118 naturalisation 130, 134, 135, 137, 138 Naturalisation Act, 1870 137 Naturalised British Subjects 126, 130, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138 Naumann, Friedrich 256–7 Neutra, Wilhelm 246 new cultural history of the war 2, 10 Newbury internment camp (Berkshire, England) 81
newspaper Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung 82 Daily Mail 134, 135, 136, 139 De Amsterdammer 271, 272, 274 De Toekomst 262, 266–276 Investors’ Review 131, 139 La Libre Belgique 233, 235 Le Mot du Soldat 233 Morning Post 134, 135, 136, 137, 139 The Jewish Chronicle 132, 133 The Jewish World 125, 126, 132, 133 The National Review 128, 129, 130, 131 The Times 128, 132, 134, 135 Utrechts Nieuwsblad 267 Walsall Pioneer 131 newspapers 97–99 Nivelle, General Robert 66 Noiriel, Gérard 1, 2, 21, 118–119 Nonne, Max 245 Nora, Pierre 18 Northcliffe, Alfred Harmsworth, Lord 68 NOT (Dutch Overseas Trust) 135, 137 Nye, Robert A. 219 Oberhausen 160 Ocampo, Victoria 281 Officer Corps German 25, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39, 40, 41 officer-man relations 28–29, 36–39, 43, 215–216 Oppenheim, Hermann 245 Oppenheimer, Sir Francis 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140 Osthaus, Karl Ernst 173, 174 Owen, Wilfred 204 Packe, G.A. 89 Painlevé, Paul 72 Pan-Germans 29 Paris 144, 148, 152, 153, 154, 156, 189 Paris Peace Conference 76, 128, 131, 132 Passchendaele 67, 73 Pears, T.H. 200 Pedoya, General 146 Pereira da Graca Aranha, José 283
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Pershing, John 74, 75 Pétain, General Philippe 76 Pézard, André 215, 216 Piéron, Henri 156 Pilcz, Alexander 256 Pinochet Le Brun, Tancredo 289 Plowman, Max 206, 207 Poincaré, Raymond 66 Poiteau, Emile 190 pornography 187 Pourésy, Emile 187, 188, 191 Powell, Joseph 84, 87 prisoners 103 Pritchard, Professor M.S. 87 pro-Germans 89–90, 91, 130, 261–277 propaganda 20, 82, 97–99, 119, 162–3, 173, 227, 229–231, 271–272 Prost, Antoine 143 social history of representations 96 prostitution 150, 186–7, 188 psychiatrists 151, 218–9, 243–260 and military discipline 53–54 public opinion 109 racism 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 36, 37, 41, 88–9 Raggett, S.H. 205 Recklinghausen 160, 161, 164 reconstruction 116 recruitment draft law, reform in France 62–3 conscription 119–120 refugees 113, 114 regeneration 181, 188–9, 191, 192, 283 remembrance 105, 116 Renan, Ernest 281 Rheinhausen 175, 176 Richards, Jeffrey 197 riots anti-German 126, 128 anti-Jewish 128 Lusitania 128, 133 Rivers, Dr. W.H.R. 199, 201 Robertson, William 73 Robson, Norman 90 Roosevelt, Franklin 75 Roosevelt, Theodore 68, 74 Roth, Joseph 247 Rothschild, Lord 129 Rothschild, Sir Alfred 130 Rouaud, Jean 7
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Rowarth, J.W. 204 Ruanda-Urundi 38 Rubin, Miri 10 Rubinstein, William D. 139 Ruhleben internment camp (Berlin, Germany) 79–94 Samuel, Herbert 127 Sánchez Bustamente, Daniel 290 Sarmiento, Domingo F. 288 Sarrail, Maurice 63, 70, 71, 72 Sassoon, Siegfried 204 Sassoon, Sir Phillip 67 Schutztruppe 25, 27, 28, 36, 37, 38, 40 Schwerte 160, 161, 162 Second World War 76, 151, 153, 191–2 Seeley, J.E.B. 64 shellshock 14, 195, 196, 243 defined by doctors 198–202, 244–249 and malingering 197, 257 defined by soldiers 198, 202–7 Sherriff, R.C. 204 Showalter, Dennis 19 Showalter, Elaine 198 Sleeswijk, Professor J.G. 268–9, 271, 272 Smith, G. Elliot 200 Smith, Helmut Walser 30–31 Smith, Leonard V. 120 Smuts, General Jan 71 social history 16, 18 Soissons offensive 70, 72 Somme, battle of 51 Speyer, Sir Edgar 130 stab-in-the-back legend, Dochstoß-Legende 73, 175 state apparatus 20, 101, 120 Steger, Milly 173–4 Steinmetz, S.R. 268, 269–270, 275 Stekel, Wilhelm 248 Stendhal 281 Stouffer, Samuel 151 Strachan, Hew 64 Stransky, Erwin 256 strikes 120 Struycken, A.A.H. 270 Swale, William Eric 90 Tailhades, Fernand 221 Tandel, Laure 235
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Tardi 6 Taube, Baron von 89 television 6 Thiaumont 51 Third Reich 175 Thirty Years’ War 146 Thompson, E.P. moral economy 111 Tillyard, Julius 84 totalizing logic 14, 15, 50, 98, 148, 223 trench journal Sans tabac 149–150 Troelstra, P.J. 263 Tuffrau, Paul 216 union sacrée 69, 70, 75, 182, 183, 102–3, 116, 119 Unna 160 Vaillant-Couturier, Paul 154–5 Valckenier Kips, Professor J.H. 267, 271 Valéry, Paul 285 van Hamel, J.A. 271, 272, 273, 274, 275 venereal disease 180, 185–6, 188 Verdun 52, 285 Versailles, Treaty of 68 Verwey, Albert 265
Vichy regime 180 victimisation 15, 112–114 Vienna 160 Vietnam War 18 Villa Lobos, Heitor 293 Villain, Raoul 63 Villingen 160 Wagner-Jauregg, Julius 250 war culture 10, 48, 96, 97, 99, 113, 114, 116, 121, 180, 221 war economy 112 war industry 160 war loan 112 war worker 163, 174 Warren, Francis E. 74, 75 wartime kitsch 161 Wetter 160, 162 Wilhelm II 188 Wilson, Woodrow 68, 69, 73–4, 75 Winock, Michel 183 Winter, Jay 10, 17, 81, 85, 163 Winter, Jay and Emmanuel Sivan social agency approach 109 Witten 160, 163 Wood, Leonard 68, 74, 75 Yrigoyen, Hipólito Zola, Emile
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HISTORY OF WARFARE History of Warfare presents the latest research on all aspects of military history. Publications in the series will examine technology, strategy, logistics, and economic and social developments related to warfare in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East from ancient times until the early nineteenth century. The series will accept monographs, collections of essays, conference proceedings, and translation of military texts.
1. HOEVEN, M. VAN DER (ed.). Exercise of Arms. Warfare in the Netherlands, 1568-1648. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10727 4 2. RAUDZENS, G. (ed.). Technology, Disease and Colonial Conquests, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries. Essays Reappraising the Guns and Germs Theories. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11745 8 3. LENIHAN P. (ed.). Conquest and Resistance. War in Seventeenth-Century Ireland. 2001. ISBN 90 04 11743 1 4. NICHOLSON, H. Love, War and the Grail. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12014 9 5. BIRKENMEIER, J.W. The Development of the Komnenian Army: 1081-1180. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11710 5 6. MURDOCH, S. (ed.). Scotland and the Thirty Years’ War, 1618-1648. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12086 6 7. TUYLL VAN SEROOSKERKEN, H.P. VAN. The Netherlands and World War I. Espionage, Diplomacy and Survival. 2001. ISBN 90 04 12243 5 8. DEVRIES, K. A Cumulative Bibliography of Medieval Military History and Technology. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12227 3 9. CUNEO, P. (ed.). Artful Armies, Beautiful Battles. Art and Warfare in Early Modern Europe. 2002. ISBN 90 04 11588 9 10. KUNZLE, D. From Criminal to Courtier. The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 15501672. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12369 5 11. TRIM, D.J.B. (ed.). The Chivalric Ethos and the Development of Military Professionalism. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12095 5 12. WILLIAMS, A. The Knight and the Blast Furnace. A History of the Metallurgy of Armour in the Middle Ages & the Early Modern Period. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12498 5 13. KAGAY, D.J., VILLALON, L.J.A. (eds.). Crusaders, Condottieri, and Cannon. Medieval Warfare in Societies Around the Mediterranean. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12553 1 14. LOHR, E., POE, M. (eds.). The Military and Society in Russia: 1450-1917. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12273 7 15. MURDOCH, S. & A. MACKILLOP (eds.). Fighting for Identity. Scottish Military Experience c. 1550-1900. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12823 9 16. HACKER, B.C. World Military History Bibliography. Premodern and Nonwestern Military Institutions and Warfare. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12997 9 17. MACKILLOP, A. & S. MURDOCH (eds.). Military Governors and Imperial Frontiers c. 1600-1800. A Study of Scotland and Empires. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12970 7 ISSN 1385–7827
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18. SATTERFIELD, G. Princes, Posts and Partisans. The Army of Louis XVI and Partisan Warfare in the Netherlands (1673-1678). 2003. ISBN 90 04 13176 0 20. MACLEOD, J. & P. PURSEIGLE (eds.). Uncovered Fields. Perspectives in First World War Studies. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13264 3 21. WORTHINGTON, D. Scots in the Habsburg Service, 1618-1648. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13575 8 22. GRIFFIN, M. Regulating Religion and Morality in the King’s Armies, 1639-1646. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13170 1
