The First British Man to be Shot for Desertion in World War 1: Private Thomas James Highgate

On November 8, 2006, 88 years after the end of World War I, a long campaign was over. 306 men from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, who had lost their lives not by enemy hands but on the orders of their own countrymen, had finally been exonerated. Their posthumous pardons granted by royal assent removed the stain of desertion and cowardice from their records. Ilana Barnett explains.

Private Thomas James Highgate, available here.

Faced with the nightmare of trench warfare; watching their friends die, the stench of battlefields strewn with rotting corpses, lice infested uniforms, sleep deprivation, appalling weather, disease, and the constant fear of death and mustard gas attacks, it is hardly surprising that so many came out of the war forever changed, a damaged shell of the men they had been. The majority managed to hold it together, but for some, it all was too much and they ran while others collapsed, unable to go on. 

Nowadays we recognize the signs of shell shock, more commonly referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but, in the past, it was a whole different story. These men were seen as weak and weakness could not be tolerated. The military commanders needed to make an example out of them, their men were holding on by a thread, they could not risk mass mutiny. Fear had to be instilled to keep them inline and the dread of being seen as cowards and the shame they would bring to their families was an effective deterrent.

Only a few weeks into the war, the military elite was faced with a terrible decision, they did not hesitate and on September 8, 1914, Thomas James Highgate, aged 19, became the first British soldier to be executed for desertion. Tragically he was not the last.

A Difficult Childhood

Thomas James Highgate was born on May 13, 1895, in Shoreham in Kent, the fourth of five children of John James Highgate, a farm laborer and Alice Highgate (née Nutley). His family’s poverty meant that his childhood was not the easiest. At some point the family must have moved from Shoreham to south London as Thomas is recorded as having attended Hither Green School in Lewisham. How good of an education Thomas received is difficult to gauge as from the age of seven, he was in and out of the Lewisham workhouse as his parents struggled to make ends meet. Coming from this type of background may explain why he decided on May 18, 1907, at the age of 12, to join the Royal Navy. At the time the Royal Navy were in urgent need of more manpower to crew the newly introduced dreadnoughts.

Life at Sea

To our modern perspective the thought of a 12-year-old joining the Royal Navy is horrific but to a child born in the Victorian period without money, connections, education or prospects, it would have been viewed as a golden opportunity. Life in the Navy was hard but it did at least guarantee food, a regular wage, and a roof over your head. These young boys were expected to learn the important seamanship skills necessary to become a good sailor.

Assigned to the training ship, Exmouth in Grays on May 18, 1907, Highgate remained there for three years before transferring to the SS Oriana as a deck boy (attested by the 1911 Liverpool census). His life in the Navy was eventful.  Two of the ships he was on were shipwrecked and while on the west coast of Africa he was taken ill with yellow fever. It appears that after these traumas, his memory was permanently impaired and his medical records note that he also on occasion suffered from amnesia. 

From Sailor to Soldier

For some reason, Highgate made the decision to leave the Navy and sign up for an Army Special Reserve battalion. He spent six months with the reserve battalion, studying for his Third-Class certificate. At the age of 17 and eight months, Highgate took the final leap and enlisted in the regular army, joining the 1st Battalion, (Queen’s Own) Royal West Kent Regiment on February 4, 1913. Highgate’s Attestation Papers, the first papers a soldier signed on entering the army, describe him as 5 feet 4.5 inches, just over nine stone,  brown hair, hazel eyes, and with naval tattoos on his arms. If he thought he was getting a reprieve from his traumatic experience in the Navy, then he was in for a shock.

The Road to France and Mons

Highgate appears to have found army life difficult. He was upbraided on a couple of occasions for being late for Tattoo, reprimanded for carrying a rusty rifle, and even received 48 days detention for desertion at the beginning of 1914. It is unclear what prompted Highgate to desert but the fact that he tried to fraudulently re-enlist does indicate some form of mental instability. Why re-enlist if you wanted to desert? The medical officer, Captain Tate examining him at Dublin’s Richmond Barracks where he was stationed recorded that although his memory appears fine at the moment, “His manner is stated to be peculiar at times”. Despite all of this, the general consensus was that he was a good worker when he was actually in attendance.

Highgate knew that at the some point he would have to fight and maybe even die for his country. He even wrote a message in his payment that in the event of his death any money owed to him should be sent to his Irish girlfriend, Mary MacNulty. Still nothing in his wildest imagination could have prepared him for the horrors of World War I. Just two weeks into the war his Battalion received their orders and on August 15, 1914, he left Ireland for France. Eight days later he took part in his first engagement, the Battle of Mons also known as the First Great Battle of World War I. The fighting lasted for nine hours until the British Expeditionary Force, outnumbered by the German Army, was forced to fall back. There was no clear winner. Although from a tactical point of view, the Germans had the upper hand, in terms of casualty numbers, the British suffered fewer losses. Just over 1,600 British soldiers were killed compared to about 5,000 Germans.

It was the retreat rather than the battle that was an unmitigated disaster. The army was in disarray. The privates thought the war was over and that they had lost. The two-week retreat from the battlefield of Mons is often described as “organized chaos”. The men trudged the 250 miles (400 kilometers) towards what was later known as the First Battle of the Marne, covering about 20 miles a day. They were demoralized, physically exhausted, starving, hobbling along on blistered, bleeding feet and suffering from heatstroke; it is hardly surprising that so many got left behind, became disorientated or ran away. 

His Final Days

September 6, 1914

Either late on September 5, or in the early hours of September 6, just as his battalion was preparing to face the Germans once more, Highgate told his friends that he was going to relieve himself. He never returned. He was found at 8:15am, a short distance away in a barn by a gamekeeper searching for his bicycle, on the estate of Baron de Rothschild at Tournan-en-Brie.

Highgate was dressed in civilian clothing (it is unclear where he found the clothes but one suggestion is that he took them from a scarecrow) and without his rifle. He appeared confused and was unable to remember how he had got there, telling the gamekeeper “I have lost my army, and I mean to get out of it”.

The gamekeeper, an ex-soldier, was unsympathetic. Highgate led him to a woodshed where he had left his uniform. His rifle and cartridges were missing. The gamekeeper handed him over to the French police who in turn gave him into the custody of the British military. Captain Milward, who escorted Highgate into military custody, stated that Highgate told him that he remembered nothing except leaving his bivouac that morning.

September 7, 1914

A hasty military tribunal was convened. Highgate had no defense and no witnesses were called. He said little except to contradict what he had earlier told the gamekeeper and state that he had got lost and had meant to return to his battalion. Not at any point was Highgate’s medical history of memory loss raised to support the theory that he could have genuinely got confused and wandered off. Maybe his previous record worked against him, maybe they did not look into his background or more likely his own confused words to the gamekeeper condemned him.

It was Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig who had the final say when it came to authorizing military executions. If he had decided to, he could have issued a stay of execution. He didn’t. Haig would have been well aware that by August 30, it was being reported that there were no fewer than 12,923 stragglers. Talk of desertion was sweeping through the battalions like wildfire and the military was desperate to stamp it out. An example had to be made and sadly Highgate was the sacrifice. Senior officials insisted that the execution should be performed at once and as publicly as possible.

September 8, 1914

At 6:22am on the September 8, Highgate was informed of his fate. 

An officer arranged for a burial party and a firing squad to prepare.

While waiting to be taken to face the execution squad, Highgate wrote a sad letter to Mary. How much did he tell her of what was happening? Probably what he was allowed to write was limited. The Army would have been very careful about what information could be passed on to the world outside the army.

At 7:07am in the presence of a Church of England clergyman and witnessed by men of the 1st Dorset Regiment and 1stCheshire Regiment, Private Thomas James Highgate was tied to a stake. Often those condemned by a military court were drugged with either alcohol or morphine to calm them down before they faced the execution squad and a square of white cloth pinned to their uniform. It is not known if this was done to Highgate, it may have been a procedure implemented later on in the war, but it was said that when facing the firing squad, he cried and called for his mother. He was nineteen.

The Aftermath

Thomas’ parents suffered greatly during the war. They lost two more sons. Robert, a Lance Corporal with the East Lancashire Regiment, died on January 30, 1915 and Joseph a rifleman, with the East Kent Regiment, died of his wounds on June 6, 1916. Luckily, they were spared one son, Benjamin, who survived and died in 1940.

How much his parents understood about their son’s fate is difficult to tell. Alice submitted all three of her sons’ names to be included in the Sidcup War Memorial but other sources claim that they were shamed into leaving her home which according to records would have been Catford. Did she find out afterwards or did she know but still want her son commemorated? 

Final Thoughts

Although most people are of the view that those men executed for cowardice and desertion were just as much victims of the war as anyone else who died, there are others that do not believe that the past should be viewed with modern eyes and sensibilities. Maybe that is why Thomas’ name has never been added to the Shoreham War Memorial despite having a place left for it. Strangely his name can be found on a British war memorial to the missing at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, a commune located near the River Marne in north-central France.

Thomas’ case was tragic. It is more than likely that his memory problems were due to either to a head trauma sustained while in the Navy or to side-effects from his bout of yellow fever. When combined with the horrors of the Battle of Mons, exhaustion and possible heatstroke, it is not surprising that he broke down. The tragedy is that he was found and an example made of him. If only for a missing bicycle he may have survived.

Sadly, Thomas was the first of many. The last two men were executed only four days before the Armistice was declared.

Now that they are pardoned, let’s hope that Thomas, along with those 305 other men, will finally be at peace.

Let us know what you think about the article below.

Now, you can read Ilana’s article on the Bethnal Green tube disaster during World War II here.

Ilana Barnett writes at https://hauntedpalaceblog.wordpress.com/

Feminine National Personifications: Part 1 - Britannia (the UK) and Bharat Mata (India)

Feminine personifications of nations are common around the world. Some popular examples include Britannia, Bharat Mata, and Marianne. Usually represented as goddesses, mothers, or queens, these entities embody their countries’ unity, liberty, strength, reason, and spiritual essences. As national icons, they impart to their people a strong sense of identity and belonging associated with their lands. In this two-part mini-series, Apeksha Srivastava highlights some changes in their portrayal with time, along with some similarities and differences among them.

In the first part of this mini-series, she looks at changes in the portrayal of Britannia and Bharat Mata with time.

The East offering its riches to Britannia, Roma Spiridone, 1778. Source: British Library, available here.

Britannia

The Submissive

In his article Britannia and John Bull[1], RT Matthews mentioned how the Greeks and Romans associated anthropomorphic deities with their newly conquered lands. Several coins depicting this were made during Roman Emperor Hadrian’s journey through imperial provinces[2]. As the female personification of the recently subjugated island, Britannia can be seen on one of them. She is depicted sitting with her head slightly bowed. Her pose is submissive, with her shield at rest, and her armor cast off.

The Rising Queen

This submissive Britannia disappeared when Rome’s power declined around 400 CE. She reappeared to personify Britain during the reign of Elizabeth I, making her place in maps and emblem books. In 1603, writer Henry Peacham featured Britannia on one of the first English emblem books (Minerva Britannia). She is seen striding confidently towards a ship, which symbolizes Britain’s newly acquired maritime power. The word “Minerva” is a Roman reference to the Greek goddess of war and reason, Athena. English chronicler Michael Drayton, in 1612, portrayed Britannia on his Poly-Olbion. She is seated under a Roman arch decorated with male figures (Aeneas - the founder of Rome, Julius Caesar - the first Roman conqueror of Britain, a medieval king representing the Tudor line, and a 17th-century explorer). She is the image of Britain’s sovereign powers and flourishing economy and has the horn of plenty in her left arm and a scepter in her right hand. A wreath on her head is being placed by two cherubs. Ships in the sea visible in the background are a reference to Britain’s maritime prosperity. In 1660, King Charles II issued a medal and halfpenny-coin with Britannia on the reverse.

The Colonizer

Eventually, Britannia started marking her presence on statues, paintings, monuments, stamps, and printed works, often commissioned by the government authorities. One such painting, The East Offering Its Riches To Britannia, was made by Roma Spiridione in 1778 on the British East India Company headquarters ceiling in London. Britannia is shown sitting on a rock with a lion near her as a guardian. She is humbly receiving a tribute of pearls/jewels from a dark figure (India). A kneeling woman (China) is offering her a porcelain vase, and a tea chest is lying close by. The camel and elephant on the right side of the painting symbolize the East, especially India. This work presents Britannia at a much higher stature. An interesting point to note here is that the East actually never offered anything to Britain; the latter plundered it. This painting is an interesting example of whitewashing and turning history to one’s advantage[3]. Another example of self-glorification is the painting Retribution by Edward Armitage. It depicted the soldier-massacre in Cawnpore during the Indian Rebellion in 1857. After the rebellion, a British woman and her child are shown on the ground as casualties. Britannia is furious to see her children in this condition. As revenge, she is about to kill the Bengal Tiger, the symbol of the Sepoys, with her sword[4]. It, again, portrays only one side of the story.

Made by Walter Crane, the Imperial Federation Map, published in 1886 for a London weekly newspaper, showed Britannia as the “rising world-power”. She is seated on a globe upheld by Atlas and is gazing down at the people of her empire (denoting parts of the world under British control marked in pink). Another map published in the same year shows her in the middle, with different scenes from the Empire being illustrated[5].

The Celebrity

Britannia also survived the changes in society with time. By the mid-18th-century, people started enjoying written parodies about her. Apart from entertainment, these satires emerged as ways to influence public opinion. Furthermore, caricature-illustrators elevated her to higher moral planes.

In humor magazines (like Punch), Britannia was depicted as the defender of the British Empire, who crusaded for noble causes. She also personified the virtues of the English middle-class like women should be at home for happiness in marriage. Some other cartoons emphasized her vulnerability. In another work, she is seen making preparations for the Great Party[6], holding a candle in her hand, her shield and trident put aside. We can also observe the dishes/spoons on the floor. 

The patriotic song Rule Britannia demonstrated Britannia’s true establishment as a national icon[7]. She became the symbol of Great Britain’s political presence, evolving with time. During the 1990s, the term Cool Britannia (a humorous version), was used to describe contemporary Britain, showing approval of pop groups, artists, and fashion[8].

Bharat Mata

The Goddess

India has worshipped the earth in a female form (Dharti-Mata/Bhu-Devi) since ancient times. According to some scholars, the origins of Bharat Mata (Mother India) can be traced back to this idea. She, as the national personification, was created out of the desire to be free from the British dominion[9]. After gaining popularity from KC Bandyopadhyay's play Bharat Mata (1873), she emerged as a goddess in Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s poem Vande Mataram in 1875. She was visually evoked in 1905 through Abanindranath Tagore’s painting[10].

The Symbol of Independence & Nationalism

Sumathi Ramaswamy’s book, The Goddess and The Nation[11], traced Bharat Mata’s origins to Bengal in 1904 (Mother-Bengal/Bangamata). Over the next few decades, artists added new features to her depiction such as the tricolor flag, lions (guardians/vahana), the territory-map she represented, and her weapons (like trident or spinning wheel signifying the Swadeshi Movement to boycott British-made products). In one of her articles, Ramaswamy also mentioned how Aurobindo Ghosh advised his student to become patriotic, “... It is not a map, but the portrait of Bharat Mata ... worship her with the nine-fold bhakti [devotion].” Some works depict Bharat Mata blessing freedom fighters for their sacrifice. In an election hoarding, she is seen as the nation-map, crying, and carrying Indira Gandhi’s lifeless body[12].

Associated with fury and rage, Kali is said to have emerged from goddess Durga. She apparently struck fear in some British people. Ramaswamy argued that Bharat Mata emerged as an intermediate: having fury for the oppressors and maternal love for her children. She rose as the glorious mother/goddess associated with the map of India to effectively elicit strong feelings of nationalism in people.

Shobha Singh’s painting (1947) showed Bharat Mata clad in the Indian tricolor. She has a trident in her hand and a halo around her head. The roaring lion by her side is kicking the British crown into the abyss. K.K. Rajaram’s painting (1962) depicted the Indo-China War setting. Bharat Mata is near the Ashoka Pillar. Carrying the Indian flag and a sword, she is leading four roaring lions and soldiers against the Chinese-dragon on the Himalayan borders[13].

The Unifier of Diversity

After independence, Bharat Mata was sometimes utilized for political ends. In 2011, Anna Hazare highlighted her in his campaign India Against Corruption, emphasizing that she belongs to all India and not just a particular religion. Sri Aurobindo, in 1920, had already written that “if we hope to have a vision of the mother by ... establishing Hindu nationalism ... we would be deprived of the full expression of our nationhood”[14]. In this context, Ramaswamy described an image of Bharat Mata riding through the street with houses of religious worship in the background (church, mosque, and perhaps, Gurdwara), promoting the idea of religious harmony (inclusive-Hinduism).

The Progressive

Bharat Mata survived the evolutions in popular taste. She has been represented in posters, calendars, and films. In one of his sketches, cartoonist Shankar showed Nehru as a cherub, drawing a cover (“Planning”) over the nude female form of the nation. A second cartoon depicted a “new version of Bharat Mata” who is protecting the poor from the corrupt politicians and resembles Lady Justice[15]. Another sketch portrayed her horrified at the incident of the tricolor flag being carried to support a rape accused. Such works underline the social changes in India with time in the form of different physical and emotional states of Bharat Mata.

The first Bharat Mata temple in Varanasi (1936) houses a giant marble relief map of India with its rivers, mountains, and sacred places. Another temple in Haridwar (1983) dedicated its ground floor to Mother India, represented as a map and a marble image. The map contains a network of lights indicating pilgrim places that link the entire nation[16]. Such examples beautifully depict the associations of Bharat Mata with the sacred geography of India.

Read on: In the second part here, Apeksha discusses Marianne of France and some similarities and differences among these national personifications.

Apeksha Srivastava completed her Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India. She is currently an aspiring writer and a second-year Ph.D. candidate at this institute. This article is based on an assignment she submitted for the course, Perspectives on Indian Civilization. 

References

1. Britannia and John Bull: From Birth to Maturity. Roy T. Matthews. The Historian. Vol. 62, No. 4 (SUMMER 2000), pp. 799-820 (22 pages). Published By: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

2. Britannia and Melita: Pseudomorphic Sisters. Derk Kinnane-Roelofsma. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. Vol. 59 (1996), pp. 130-147 (18 pages). Published by: The Warburg Institute.

3. The Hidden Wound. Nick Robins. The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational, 1-18. London: Pluto Press, 2012.

4. Britannia as the embodiment of Great Britain. Aline Gay, Fanny Guilbaud, and Damien Lenoir, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne, France. Essay written for Professor Béatrice Laurent’s seminar, 'Myths and Icons'.

5. Walter Crane and the Imperial Federation Map Showing the Extent of the British Empire (1886). Pippa Biltcliffe. Imago Mundi. Vol. 57, No. 1 (2005), pp. 63-69 (9 pages). Published by: Imago Mundi, Ltd.

6. Britannia's Great Party. 1851. Wood engraving. Punch (7 June 1856): 81. [http://www.victorianweb.org/periodicals/punch/95.html]

7. Britons will never be slaves! Britannia and liberty as a construct of British national identity in James Thomson and Thomas Arne’s song Rule Britannia and Thomas Rowlandson’s engraving, The Contrast, 1792, British Liberty, French Liberty, Which is best? Peter Johnston. The University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education. Date created: Tuesday, April 18, 2017.

8. https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/cool-britannia

9. Mother India: The Role of the Maternal Figure in Establishing Legal Subjectivity. Kanika Sharma. 2017. Law and Critique, 29(1), 1–29.

10. https://scroll.in/article/805990/far-from-being-eternal-bharat-mata-is-only-a-little-more-than-100-years-old

11. The Goddess and the Nation: Mapping Mother India. By Sumathi Ramaswamy. Duke University Press, 2010. 379pp.

12. Maps, Mother/Goddesses, and Martyrdom in Modern India. Sumathi Ramaswamy. 2008. The Journal of Asian Studies, 67(03).

13. Icon-ising national identity: France and India in comparative perspective. Subrata K. Mitra and Lion König. National Identities, 15(4), 357–377.

14. The Life and Times of Bharat Mata: Nationalism as Invented Religion. Sadan Jha. 2006. Manushi.

15. https://timescontent.com/syndication-photos/reprint/just-like-that/454566/buy.jsp

16. India: A Sacred Geography. Diana L. Eck. 2011. Harmony Books.

A Shooting in Sarajevo: First World War Historiography Today – Part 2

With the centenary of the First World War’s outbreak in 2014, historians are revisiting and reanalyzing the events of the July Crisis in greater depth and breadth than ever before. In Part 2, we explore the current historiographical landscape, and identify key battlegrounds for the historians of today. Avan Fata explains.

If you missed it part 1 here introduces the debates on World War 1 historiography.

Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany in Tangier, Morocco. Part of the First Moroccan Crisis (1905-06).

In the previous article, we delved into the development of the historiography on the origins of the First World War. From the immediate postwar revisionist-orthodox debates to the ‘comfortable consensus’ of an inadvertent “slide” into war in the 1930s, to the revival of the debate over war guilt with Fritz Fischer in the 1960s. All of these debates were marked by one inescapable theme: that historians writing about 1914 were also reflecting their contemporary political situations. Many of them had fought in the war; more had lived through the turbulent 20th century which had stemmed in some way from the postwar settlement at Versailles. Yet now, in the 21st century, the First World War has faded into a distant memory – with the last veterans having passed away, it is no longer an event etched into the personal histories of our modern society. 

Even so, the events of July 1914 continue to fascinate historians and the larger public as a whole. Commemorative events to mark the centenary of the war’s outbreak were also accompanied by the publication of dozens of works on the origins of the war. Rather than finally settling the question of who started the conflict, these works represent the continuation and diversification of the debate on the beginning of World War I. This part of the article deals with that broadening of the debate, identifying the key “battlegrounds” and historiographical approaches which recent historiography has popularized.

Focuses

What made 1914 different from other crises?

This is the specific question which we might ask in order to understand a key focus of monographs and writings on the origins of World War I. Following the debate on Fischer’s thesis in the 1960s, historians have begun looking beyond the events of June - August 1914 in order to understand why the assassination of an archduke was the ‘spark’ which lit the powder keg of the continent.

1914 was not a “critical year” where tensions were at their highest in the century. Plenty of other crises had occurred beforehand, namely the two Moroccan crises of 1905-06 and 1911, the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09, and two Balkan Wars in 1912-13. Why did Europe not go to war as a result of any of these crises? What made the events of 1914 unique, both in the conditions present across the continent, and within the governments themselves, that ultimately led to the outbreak of war?

Even within popular history narratives, these events have slowly but surely been integrated into the larger picture of the lead up to 1914. Even a cursory analysis of these crises reveals several interesting notes:

• The Entente Powers, not the Triple Alliance, were the ones who tended to first utilize military diplomacy/deterrence, and often to a greater degree.

• Mediation by other ‘concerned powers’ was, more often than not, a viable and indeed desirable outcome which those nations directly involved in the crises accepted without delay.

• The strength of the alliance systems with mutual defense clauses, namely the Triple Alliance and the Franco-Russian Alliance, were shaky at best during these crises. France discounted Russian support against Germany in both Moroccan crises for example, and Germany constantly urged restraint to Vienna in its Balkan policy (particularly towards Serbia).

Even beyond the diplomatic history of these crises, historians have also analyzed the impact of other aspects in the years preceding 1914. William Mulligan, for example, argues that the economic conditions in those years generated heightened tensions as the great powers competed for dwindling markets and industries.[1] Plenty of recent journal articles have outlined the growth of nationalist fervor and irredentist movements in the Balkans, and public opinion has begun to re-occupy a place in such investigations - though not, we must stress, with quite the same weight that it once carried in the historiography.[2]

Yet perhaps the most often-written about aspect of the years prior to 1914 links directly with another key focus in the current historiography: militarization.

Militarization

As touched on in the first article, this aspect of the historiography is essentially the idea that Europe was ‘dragged’ into a war by the great powers’ heightened state of militarization, and that the interlocking series of mobilization plans which, once initiated, could not be stopped. In the 1990s, scholars began to re-examine these claims, which had sat so comfortably and dominantly in the interwar consensus of the 1930s and remained a key implicit assumption of Cold War historiography as well.[3]

These historians argued that despite the militarization of the great powers and the mobilization plans, the civilian statesmen remained firmly in control of policy, and that the decision to go to war was a conscious one that they made, fully aware of the consequences of such a choice.[4] The generals were not, as Barbara Tuchmann exaggeratedly wrote, “pounding the table for the signal to move”.[5] Indeed, in Vienna the generals were doing quite the opposite: early in the July Crisis Chief of the General Staff Conrad von Hotzendorf remarked to Foreign Minister Berchtold that the army would only be able to commence operations against Serbia on August 12, and that they would not even be able to mobilize until after the harvest leave finished on July 25.

However, the recent historiographical shift has re-emphasized investigating how militarization influenced the diplomacy of the great powers during the July Crisis.[6] Recent studies have studied in depth how the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-09 and the two Balkan Wars of 1912-13 demonstrated to Vienna and St. Petersburg that military force was a helpful tool when it came to achieving their respective diplomatic aims.[7] Yet the extent to which this thinking influenced the minds of the statesmen of 1914 remains a key area under debate, with particular focus on the ‘calculated risk’ argument – the idea that all the governments understood the consequences of their mobilizations, and chose to undertake them anyways. 

These rebuttals of the “inadvertent war” thesis have proven to be better substantiated and more persuasive, thus the current norm in historiography has shifted to look further within the halls of power in 1914. That is, the analyses have shifted to look beyond the generals, mobilization plans, and military staff; and instead towards the diplomats, ministers, and decision-makers who made those fateful choices during the July Crisis.

Decision Makers

Who occupied the halls of power both during the lead up to 1914 and whilst the crisis was unfolding? What decisions did they make and what impact did those actions have on the larger geopolitical/diplomatic situation of their nation?

Although Europe was very much a continent of monarchs in 1900, those monarchs did not hold supreme power over their respective apparatus of state. Even the most autocratic of the great powers at the time, Russia, possessed a council of ministers which convened at critical moments during the July Crisis to decide on their country’s response to Austro-Hungarian aggression. Contrast that to the most ‘democratic’ country of the great powers, France (in that the Third Republic did not have a monarch), and the confusing enigma that was the foreign ministry - occupying the Quai D’Orsay - and it becomes clear that understanding what motivated and influenced the men (and they were all men) who held/shared the reigns of policy is tantamount to better understanding how events progressed the way they did in 1914.

A good example of just how many dramatis personae have become involved in the current historiography can be found in Margaret Macmillan’s chatty pop-history work, The War that Ended Peace (2014). Her characterizations and side-tracks about such figures as Lord Salisbury, Friedrich von Holstein, and Theophile Delcasse are not out of step with contemporary academic monographs. Entire narratives and investigations have been published about the role of an individual in the lead up to the events of the July Crisis, Mombauer’s Helmuth von Moltke and the Origins of the First World War (2001) or T.G Otte’s Statesman of Europe: A Life of Sir Edward Grey (2020) stand out in this regard.

Not only has the cast become more civilian and larger in the past few decades, but it has also come to recognize the plurality of decision-making during 1914. Historians now stress that disagreements within governments (alongside those between them) are equally important to understand the many voices of European decision-making before as well as during 1914. Naturally, this focus reaches its climax in the days of the July Crisis, where narratives now emphasize in minutiae just how divided the halls of power were.

Alongside these changes in focus with the people who contributed to (or warned against) the decision to go to war, recent narratives have begun to highlight the voices of those who represented their governments abroad; the ambassadors. Likewise, newer historiographical works have re-focused their lenses on diplomatic history prior to the war. Within this field, one particular process and area of investigation stands out: the polarization of Europe.

Polarization

Prior to the developments within First World War historiography from the 1990s onwards, it was not uncommon for historians and politicians - at least in the interwar period - to propagate theses which pinned the war’s origins on factors of “mass demand”: nationalism, militarism, and social Darwinism among them. These biases not only impacted their interpretations of the events building up to 1914, as well as the July Crisis itself, but also imposed an overarching thread; an omnipresent motivator which guided (and at times “forced”) the decision-makers to commit to courses of action which moved the continent one step closer to war.

These overarching theories have since been refuted by historians, and the current historiographical approach emphasizes case-specific analyses of each nation’s circumstances, decisions, and impact in both crises and diplomacy. Whilst these investigations have certainly yielded key patterns and preferences within the diplomatic maneuvers of each nation, they sensibly stop short of suggesting that these modus operandi were inflexible to different scenarios, or that they even persisted as the decision-makers came and went. The questions now revolve around why and how the diplomacy of the powers shifted in the years prior to 1914, and how the division of Europe into “two armed camps” 

What all of these new focuses imply - indeed what they necessitate - is that historians utilize a transnational approach when attempting to explain the origins of the war. Alan Kramer goes so far as to term it the sine qua non (essential condition) in the current historiography; a claim that many historians would be inclined to agree with.[8] Of course, that is not to suggest that a good work must not give more focus to one (or a group) of nations over the others, but works which focus on a single nation’s path to war are rarer than they were prior to this recent shift in focus. 

Thus, there we have a general overview of how the focuses of historiography on the First World War have shifted in the past 30 years, and it would perhaps not be too far-fetched to suggest that these focuses may very well change in and of themselves within the next 30 years too. The next and final part shall deal with how, within these focuses, there are various stances which historians have argued and adopted in their approach to explaining the origins of the First World War.

Personalities vs. Precedents

To suggest that the First World War was the fault of a group of decision-makers is leaning dangerously close to reducing the role that those officials played in the lead up to the conflict - not to mention to dismiss outright those practices and precedents which characterized their country’s policy preferences prior to 1914. There was, as hinted at previously, no dictator at the helm of any of the powers; the plurality of cabinets, imperial ministries, and advisory bodies meant that the personalities of those decision-makers must be analyzed in light of their influence on the larger national, and transnational state of affairs. 

To then suggest that the “larger forces” of mass demand served as invisible guides on these men is to dismiss the complex and unique set of considerations, fears, and desires which descended upon Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg, London, Vienna, and Belgrade in July of 1914. Though these forces may have constituted some of those fears and considerations, they were by no means the powerful structural factors which plagued all the countries during the July Crisis. Holger Herwig sums up this stance well: 

“The ‘big causes,’ by themselves, did not cause the war. To be sure, the system of secret alliances, militarism, nationalism, imperialism, social Darwinism, and the domestic strains… had all contributed toward forming the mentalite, the assumptions (both spoken and unspoken) of the ‘men of 1914.’[But] it does injustice to the ‘men of 1914’ to suggest that they were all merely agents - willing or unwilling - of some grand, impersonal design… No dark, overpowering, informal, yet irresistible forces brought on what George F. Kennan called ‘the great seminal tragedy of this century.’ It was, in each case, the work of human beings.”

I have therefore termed this battleground one of “personalities” against “precedents”, because although historians are now quick to dismiss the work of larger forces as crucial in explaining the origins of the war, they are still inclined to analyze the extent to which these forces influenced each body of decision-makers in 1914 (as well as previous crises). Within each nation, indeed within each of the government officials, there were precedents which changed and remained from previous diplomatic crises. Understanding why they changed (or hadn’t), as well as determining how they factored into the decision-making processes, is to move several steps closer to fully grasping the complex developments of July 1914. 

Intention vs. Prevention

Tied directly to the debate over the personalities and their own motivations for acting the way they did is the debate over intention and prevention. To identify the key figures who pressed for war and those who attempted to push for peace is perhaps tantamount to assigning blame in some capacity. Yet historians once again have become more aware of the plurality of decision-making. Moltke and Bethmann-Hollweg may have been pushing for a war with Russia sooner rather than later, but the Kaiser and foreign secretary Jagow preferred a localized war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. Likewise, Edward Grey may have desired to uphold Britain’s honor by coming to France’s aid, but until the security of Belgium became a serious concern a vast majority of the House of Commons preferred neutrality or mediation to intervention. 

This links back to the focus mentioned earlier about how these decision-makers came to make the decisions they did during the July Crisis. What finally swayed those who had held out for peace to authorize war? Historians now have discarded the notion that the generals and military “took control” of the process at critical stages, so now we must further investigate the shifts in thinking and circumstances which impacted the policy preferences of the “men of 1914”. Perhaps the best summary of this battleground and the need to understand how these decision-makers came to make the fateful choices they did is best summarized by Margaret Macmillan: 

"There are so many questions and as many answers again. Perhaps the most we can hope for is to understand as best we can those individuals, who had to make the choices between war and peace, and their strengths and weaknesses, their loves, hatreds, and biases. To do that we must also understand their world, with its assumptions. We must remember, as the decision-makers did, what had happened before that last crisis of 1914 and what they had learned from the Moroccan crises, the Bosnian one, or the events of the First Balkan Wars. Europe’s very success in surviving those earlier crises paradoxically led to a dangerous complacency in the summer of 1914 that, yet again, solutions would be found at the last moment and the peace would be maintained."

Contingency vs. Certainty

“No sovereign or leading statesmen in any of the belligerent countries sought or desired war - certainly not a European war.” 

The above remark by David Lloyd George in 1936 reflects a dangerous theme that has been thoroughly discredited in recent historiography: the so-called “slide” thesis. That is, the belief that the war was not a deliberate choice by any of the statesmen of Europe, and that the continent as a whole simply - to use another oft-quoted phrase from Lloyd George - “slithered over the brink into the boiling cauldron of war”. The statesmen of Europe were well aware of the consequences of their choices, and explicitly voiced their awareness of the possibility of war at multiple stages of the July Crisis. 

At the same time, to suggest that there was a collective responsibility for the war - a stance which remained dominant in the immediate postwar writings until the 1960s - is to also neutralize the need to reexamine the choices taken during the July Crisis. If everyone had a part to play, then what difference would it make if Berlin or London or St. Petersburg was the one that first moved towards armed conflict? This argument once again brings up the point of inadvertence as opposed to intention. Despite Christopher Clark’s admirable attempt to suggest that the statesmen were “blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world”, the evidence put forward en masse by other historians suggest quite the opposite. Herwig remarks once again that this inadvertent “slide” into war was far from the case with the statesmen of 1914: 

“In each of the countries…, a coterie of no more than about a dozen civilian and military rulers weighed their options, calculated their chances, and then made the decision for war…. Many decision makers knew the risk, knew that wider involvement was probable, yet proceeded to take the next steps. Put differently, fully aware of the likely consequences, they initiated policies that they knew were likely to bring on the catastrophe.”  

So the debate now lies with ascertaining at what point during the July Crisis the “window” for a peaceful resolution to the crisis finally closed, and when war (localized or continental) was all but certain. A.J.P Taylor remarked rather aptly that “no war is inevitable until it breaks out”, and determining when exactly the path to peace was rejected by each of the belligerent powers is crucial to that most notorious of tasks when it comes to explaining the causes of World War I: placing blame. 

Responsibility

“After the war, it became apparent in Western Europe generally, and in America as well, that the Germans would never accept a peace settlement based on the notion that they had been responsible for the conflict. If a true peace of reconciliation were to take shape, it required a new theory of the origins of the war, and the easiest thing was to assume that no one had really been responsible for it. The conflict could readily be blamed on great impersonal forces - on the alliance system, on the arms race and on the military system that had evolved before 1914. On their uncomplaining shoulders the burden of guilt could be safely placed.”

The idea of collective responsibility for the First World War, as described by Marc Trachtenberg above, still carries some weight in the historiography today. Yet it is no longer, as noted previously, the dominant idea amongst historians. Nor, for that matter, is the other ‘extreme’ which Fischer began suggesting in the 1960s: that the burden of guilt, the label of responsibility, and thus the blame, could be placed (or indeed forced) upon the shoulders of a single nation or group of individuals.

The interlocking, multilateral, and dynamic diplomatic relations between the European powers prior to 1914 means that to place the blame on one is to propose that their policies, both in response to and independent of those which the other powers followed, were deliberately and entirely bellicose. The pursuit of these policies, both in the long-term and short-term, then created conditions which during the July Crisis culminated in the fatal decision to declare war. To adopt such a stance in one’s writing is to dangerously assume several considerations that recent historiography has brought to the fore and rightly warned against possessing: 

• That the decision-making in each of the capitals was an autocratic process, in which opposition was either insignificant to the key decision-maker or entirely absent,

• That a ‘greater’ force motivated the decision-makers in a particular country, and that the other nations were powerless to influence or ignore the effect of this ‘guiding hand’,

• That any anti-war sentiments or conciliatory diplomatic gestures prior to 1914 (as well as during the July Crisis) were abnormalities; case-specific aberrations from the ‘general’ pro-war pattern,

To conclude, when it comes to the current historiography on the origins of the First World War, the ‘blame game’ which is heavily associated with the literature on the topic has reached at least something resembling a consensus: this was not a war enacted by one nation above all others, nor a war which all the European powers consciously or unconsciously found themselves obliged to join. Contingency, the mindset of decision-makers, and the rapidly changing diplomatic conditions are now the landscapes which academics are analyzing more thoroughly than ever, refusing to paint broad strokes (the “big” forces) and instead attempting to specify, highlight, and differentiate the processes, persons, and prejudices which, in the end, deliberately caused the war to break out.

What do you think of World War One historiography? Let us know below.

[1] William Mulligan, The Origins of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 

[2] A good overview of the recent historiography with regards to these aspects is Geppert, Dominik, William Mulligan, and Andreas Rose, eds. The Wars before the Great War: Conflict and International Politics before the Outbreak of the First World War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015). 

[3] Annika Mombauer, The Origins of the First World War: Controversies and Consensus (New York: Routledge, 2003).

[4] A critical article which progressed this shift is Marc Trachtenberg, “The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914.” International Security 15, no. 3 (1990): 120-150. 

[5] Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August, 1962.

[6] A good overview of the historiographical developments in this regard is William Mulligan, “The Trial Continues: New Directions in the Study of the Origins of the First World War.” The English Historical Review 129, no. 538 (June 2014): 639-666. 

[7] See for example, David Stevenson, “Militarization and Diplomacy in Europe before 1914.” International Security 22, no. 1 (1997): 125-161; David Stevenson, “War by Timetable? The Railway Race before 1914.” Past & Present 162 (1999): 163-194. 

[8] Alan Kramer, “Recent Historiography of the First World War (Part I),” Journal of Modern European History / Zeitschrift Für Moderne Europäische Geschichte / Revue D'histoire Européenne Contemporaine 12, no. 2 (2014): 160-161

The Korean War: What can Today’s America Learn from it?

The 1950-53 Korean War involved a US-backed South Korea against a communist-backed North Korea. But what lessons can the US learn from the war today? Here, Michael Cho considers this question in the context of the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars of the 21st century.

Members of a M24 tank crew besides the Naktong River front during the Korean War on August 17, 1950.

The Korean War was a war fought between South Korea, formally known as the Republic of Korea, and North Korea, also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. On June 25, 1950, seventy-five thousand North Korean soldiers crossed the 38th parallel, the line dividing South and North Korea, to spread communist ideals to South Korea. In launching this attack, North Korean troops found South Korea completely unaware and, in many ways, powerless to fight back. Initially, South Korean troops had been driven far south by the North Koreans until the United States assisted them by providing necessary men and supplies through a United Nations sanctioned policing mission.

The Korean War was one of the proxy wars in the Cold War and was fought in an attempt to stop the growth of communism, but when examining the overall cost of the Cold War, while the United States bore a heavy material cost, proxy states like South Korea disproportionately paid the human cost. At the intersection of ideology, commerce and conflict, sits the Korean War and its lessons about the application of power in foreign policy and the costs and consequences of America’s role in the world.

Proxy wars

In many ways, the Korean War became a microcosm of the larger Cold War dynamics that dominated the twentieth century. By engaging in proxy wars across the globe, the United States was able to break down trade barriers and open up different regions of the world to American investment and influence. Ideologically, the United States prevented a possible Soviet global takeover by spreading fear of a communist global takeover; geopolitically, the US implemented their anti-communist strategy through the Truman Doctrine in 1947. The Domino theory, a theory growing out of the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan, stated that if the United States allowed any country to fall to communism, other adjacent countries would soon follow, resulting in a world ruled by communism. The Domino theory thus became a primary justification for United States foreign policy interventions because it predicted a global communist takeover if the United States took no action. Consequently, the United States was active globally “saving” many countries from falling to communism by fighting communism in South Korea. The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan provided the strategy and the tactics to implement the American Cold War mindset globally. In the Domino theory, the United States found a reason to defend democracy in Korea and demonstrate to itself and other democratic allied countries that the United States would not allow communism to threaten their societies; in so doing, proxy wars served to strengthen international commitment to American-led institutions of global governance.

Military aid

The material cost of waging this proxy was significant and represented a strategic shift by the United States to enlarge the scope of its Cold War response under the umbrella of “humanitarian aid.” Prior to the Korean War, the Marshall Plan applied only to economic aid and support; the Marshall Plan did not cover military aid until the commitment to the Korean War was made. By supplying South Korea, who had few supplies and a scarce supply of troops, with imperative supplies and troops to win, the United States helped South Korea hold back communism. South Korea stopped North Korea’s advance in the war and reclaimed lost territory up to, and briefly beyond, the 38th parallel where the initial invasion had started. The United States heavily supplied, manned, and funded the South Koreans. It spent thirty billion dollars during the Korean War and supplied the South Koreans with vehicles such as M4 Sherman tanks, 1,000,000 personnel (consisting of mostly United States soldiers) to the mere South Korean military who had 100,000 personnel and were facing an army of 1,200,000 Chinese and North Korean soldiers.  Now heavily supplied, South Korea’s ability to win the war improved dramatically and contrasted sharply with the previous South Korea who had a limited amount of supplies and troops. As the Korean War progressed, the war turned more into a war of attrition, and South Korea was successful because it was the better supplied belligerent.

A trade-off

The Korean War represents a unique glimpse into answers to the question of how much evil is it acceptable to engage in when attempting to do good. The first is that when confronting challenges in foreign policy, nation-states often have only a series of bad options when conducting foreign policy. By fighting for South Korea, the United States successfully stopped the growth of communism in South Korea, but the war ended with around five million Korean casualties and approximately 33,000 American casualties, which highlights the significant human cost that is borne by the peoples living in the geographic region in which the proxy war occurs. Many at the time debated the proper course and conduct of the Korean War, most famously Douglas MacArthur and President Truman; regardless, the decision came down to an abandonment of core humanitarian ideals or a massive cost of human life. As recent events in Afghanistan have shown that dynamic still exists, but with the Cold War context to unify American public opinion, it is unclear to what extent, if any, the United States will make those same choices in the 21st century.

When the United States and South Korea made the choice that the material and human cost was worth the price, it used morality and the language of a humanitarian effort to explain that cost. The United States’ involvement in the Korean War proved a military necessity because US funding was the force driving South Korea forward in the war. In this situation, the United States’ aid was essential because South Korea would have lost the war after the first invasion without support from the United States. However, it was the development of a thriving economy in South Korea (often through very undemocratic means under a series of dictators in the 50s, 60s, and 70s) that created the South Korea of the 21st century. This highlights that the key component that made the American mission to defend the world from the threat of communism successful might have been the investments made in the host-proxy’s economy via the Marshall Plan. The lack of any kind of Marshall Plan-style investment into Afghanistan or Iraq following the invasions of 2001 and 2003, respectively, indicates a lack of willingness to make the same kind of commitment in the 21st century. 

In the context of today

The United States’ mission in the world has never been less certain. President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy began deconstructing elements of the WWII alliances the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan were built upon. Additionally, at a time when Congress is deadlocked surrounding physical and human infrastructure investment in the domestic United States, the willingness of the United States to make the investments overseas that are truly vital to implementing its foreign policy vision is debatable at best. However, while the outcome might be uncertain and the loss of life could be great, the fate of the two Koreas offers interesting and informative lessons for the United States in the 21st century. South Korea represents a positive example of what can happen when the choice is made to uphold human rights and core democratic ideals despite the human and material cost being high and the outcome uncertain. Based upon the thriving democratic capitalist society now present in South Korea and the stark contrast with the poverty and oppression in North Korea, perhaps the true cost of leadership and the price of freedom becomes apparent. Korea serves as a useful case study for the necessary costs, successful tactics and strategies and consequences of proxy wars in defense of democratic principles. 

What do you think are the key lessons for the US from the Korean War? Let us know below.

The Algerian War of Independence’s Legacy on the Israel-Palestine Conflict

The 1954-62 Algerian War of Independence led to the end of French colonial rule in Algeria and the departure of many European settlers. On the other hand the Israel-Palestine conflict has been ongoing in one form or another since the declaration of the state of Israel in 1948. Here, Daniel Boustead looks at how the Algerian conflict influenced – and continues to influence – the Palestinian movement.

Algerian fighters in the mountains during the war. Source: Fayeqalnatour, available here.

The 1954-62 Algerian War of Independence left a lasting mark on many Anti-Colonialist Resistance movements. Its greatest and longest lasting influence is on the Palestinian resistance movements. This relationship started before Algeria gained independence from France in 1962. Even after independence, Algeria continued to give important moral, financial, and ideological support to the Palestinian cause. This continues to this day. Palestinian anti- Israel groups borrowed tactics and lessons from the Algerian War of Independence. However, there are some important historical differences as to why Algerians succeeded in their cause and why the Palestinians have not had success in their struggle for freedom against Israel. The legacy of the Algerian War of Independence served as an important political inspiration to the Palestinian Resistance whose impact cannot be overstated or overlooked.

In December 1947 the French Gendarmerie found a leaflet in Ain-Beida in Eastern Algeria entitled “Against any partition of Palestine, for an Arab, free and independent Palestine(1). This document was reproduced in the Algerian nationalist newspaper El Maghrib Al Arabi on December 13, 1947. In the Algerian city of Ain Beida Algerian pro-independence leader Mohammad Zinai was suspected of organizing meetings in cafes to call young Algerian Muslims to enlist in the Arab Legion of Palestine to fight against Israel. On January 6, 1948 Algerian Muslim Mostefa Stambouli left his western Algerian hometown of Mascara along with (20 followers) to go Palestine to fight the Jews. Stambouli made a stop in Tunis, Tunisia where he planned to continue his journey to Palestine through Egypt. While he was in Tunis, he met with Algerian nationalists students Abdelhamid Merhi and M’Hamed Ferhat who hosted Stambouli at Zitounda University. After passing through the Tripolitania region of Libya, the British police arrested Stambouli. In February, 1948 Mustafa Stambouli was tried before the Sfax Court. For not holding a passport Stambouli was given a suspended sentence of 15 days imprisonment and fined 1,000 Francs. Stambouli then returned to Mascara Algeria. Stambouli’s comrade M’Hamed Ferhat tried to form a group of men to fight in Palestine but ultimately failed when he was also arrested by British police in the Tripolitania region of Libya. M’Hamed Ferhat was then sent back to Mascara, Algeria where he tried to recruit young men to fight in Palestine. On June 2, 1948 the Algerian Assistance Committee for Palestine was launched. This group failed when the main political party (the Movement for the Triumph of Democratic Liberties) left the organization because its pro Arab-Muslim political agenda destroyed the chance for other political organizations to join the group in the name of the Palestinian cause.

Palestinian-Algerian Links

During the Algerian War of Independence the Palestinians displayed their solidarity to the Algerian Revolution by supporting them through fundraising (2). The reciprocal support that the Algerians and Palestinians gave to each other during this early period of time to each other’s respective resistance movements allowed for a bond that flourishes right to this present day.

The Algerian War of Independence would come to have a profound impact on the Palestinian militant groups. This was shown by Algeria’s moral, political, financial, and ideological support for the Palestinian cause. In turn the Palestinians preserved the memory of the Algerian War of Independence into their own struggle. The Algerians also viewed the Palestinian struggle as their own struggle via the legacy of the Algerian War of Independence. The future leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Yasir Arafat, was present when Algerian liberation forces entered the Algerian capital of Algiers on July 3, 1962, after successfully ending French colonial rule (3). Algeria’s future first President Ahmad Ben Bella said he was prepared to send 100,000 soldiers “to liberate Palestine” and in October 1962 stated that Israel would remain Algeria’s permanent enemy (5).  The National Liberation Front’s (FLN’s) use of terrorist attacks on the European settler population of Algeria forced not only France but also the European settler population of Algeria to give up and leave Algeria at the end of the conflict (4).

The events of the Algerian War of Independence helped give inspiration and a solution to Palestinian revolutionary Yasir Arafat on how to end Israel’s existence as a state (4). Palestine Liberation Organization member Abu Iyad said of the Algerian War of Independence and Revolution: “They symbolized the success we dreamed of”(4). Algeria’s new rulers opened material aid to future Palestinian Liberation Organization faction Fatah which was led by Yasir Arafat. Future Palestine Liberation Organization member and Fatah member Abu Jihad moved with his family to Algeria in 1963 to set up a Palestinian office for Fatah. The Algerians also helped Yasir Arafat establish contacts with the Syrian Baathist Regime which took power in Syria in 1963. Algeria was using the legacy of their colonial struggle against France to now become a host nation and a host base for Third World Anti-Colonialist revolutionary organizations. In 1988, when Palestine declared its independence, Algeria was the first country in the world to recognize its statehood (6). The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas considers the legacy of Algerian War of Independence important (7). It is Hamas’ strategy to achieve the decisive outcome of the expulsion of what they see as the Zionist occupier (7). On August 13, 2020 in the aftermath of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, North Sudan, and Morocco announcing they would formalize diplomatic relations with Israel, Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune stated “There is a mad rush among (some) Arabs to normalize ties. We will not participate in it. We will not accept it. We will not bless it. [The] Palestine cause is sacred, and we will not give it up”(6). On July 25, 2021 Algeria denounced the African Union in granting Israel observer status (8).

Battle of Algiers

The Palestinian militant groups received important inspiration from a film about the Algerian War of Independence and from actual events that happened during the conflict. In 1966, Gillo Pontecorvo’s film, Battle of Algiers, was released and it instantly became a training manual and guidebook for third world revolutionary militant movements fighting against colonialism (9). The film’s historical accuracy has been questioned by some historians. The film’s depiction of France’s brutal colonial occupation complete with checkpoints, house demolitions and separation barriers, seems relevant to the current conditions the Palestinian resistance groups are fighting in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza Strip. The film’s depiction of the FLN’s use of targeting civilians and urban warfare tactics helped provide a blueprint for Palestinian militant groups with how to fight against an occupying force. The film was so controversial that it was banned from public screening in Israel and did not legally become available in Israel until 1975. It was during the Second Intifada (which occurred between 2000 to 2005) when the film gained the most relevance in the Gaza Strip and West Bank among Palestinian resistance groups. The film’s portrayal of the FLN’s use of letting off bombs in public places in order to bring the war to the enemy’s doorstep directly mirrored that of Palestinian resistance groups such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Furthermore, justifications for Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s actions are directly mirrored in the film. The character Larbi Ben M’hidi had a famous retort to his French interrogators by saying “Give us your bombers sir and you can have our baskets”. In the film, basket bombs were used as weapon by the FLN women who dropped them off at places to target civilians (10). This ultimately led to dividing French society and ending support for its colonial project in Algeria (10).

In both the film and real life, the FLN did use women to place bombs against civilian targets.  On September 30, 1956 FLN operative Zohra Drif successfully placed a beach bag  bomb at the Milk Bar on the corner of Place Bugeaud across from General Salan’s 10th headquarters, while her fellow FLN colleague Samia Lakhdari successfully placed a bomb at the Cafeteria on smart Rue Michelet in Algiers (11). Samia and Zohra were successful in their deception because of their appearance and their western style dress, which made them look European. This enabled them to pass French check points, while their male counterparts could not. Samia and Zohra’s bombs were also concealed inside beach bags under various feminine miscellany of bikinis, towels, and sun-oil. Samia and Zohra’s attack killed 3 people and injured 50.

Comparisons

Palestinian groups have perfected the art of terror. With the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in August, 2005 the Palestinian resistance stepped up attacks against Israel (7). In Algeria, terrorism and urban warfare tactics successfully forced the French out of the country. Likewise, the Palestinian militant groups felt that their terror attacks and urban warfare tactics were paying dividends for them by making the Israelis retreat.

There are key important differences between the Algerian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the Israeli-Palestinian conflict both sides claim a religious tie to the land. This did not exist in the Algerian conflict. At the end of French colonial rule in 1962, much of the European settler population left Algeria (12). In contrast, the Jews of Israel have few other places to go. Partly due to that, Palestinians have not been as successful as the Algerians were in their fight against Israel.

Algerians and Palestinians were supportive of each other’s causes early on. Algeria continued to give important ideological and political motivation to the Palestinian cause after independence. This was done via Algeria’s legacy of their fight for independence and both sides appropriating their struggle as their own political cause to support. The Algerian War of Independence’s legacy provided Palestinian groups with lessons and tactics on how to fight the Israelis. The influence of the Algerian War of Independence on Palestinian resistance movements cannot be denied.

What do you think of the connection between the Algerian War of Independence and the Israel-Palestine conflict? Let us know below.

Now, you can read World War II history from Daniel: “Did World War Two Japanese Kamikaze Attacks have more Impact than Nazi V-2 Rockets?” here, “Japanese attacks on the USA in World War II” here, and “Was the Italian Military in World War 2 Really that Bad?” here.

1 Moussa, Nedjib Sidi. “A Contingent Nationhood: the Jewish Question and the Palestinian Cause within the Algerian Independence Movement”. Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies No. 4 Miscellaneous-Open Edition Journals. (2018).  6 to 7.  Accessed on September 7th, 2021. http://journals-openedition.org. translate.goog/hamsa/580?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_tr_hl=en&_x_tr_pto=ajax,sc,elem.  

2 Takriti, Abdel Razzaq. Interview with Sheikh Abdullah Saleh Kamel. Algeria and Palestine-Revolutionary Fraternity in the World of Independence Movements: Five Minutes with Abdel Razzaq Takriti. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs February 5th, 2017. Accessed on August 31st, 2021. https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/online-edition....orld-of-indepdence-movements-five-minutes-with-abdel-razzaq-takriti

3 Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca: New York. Cornell University Press. 2006. 1. 

5 Laskier, Michael M. “Israel and the Maghreb at the Height of the Arab-Israeli Conflict; 1950s-1970s”. Middle East Review of International Affairs Vol.4 No.2 (June, 2000). 7, accessed on September, 2nd, 2021, https://ciaotest.cc.columbia/edu/olj/meria/meria00_lam01.html#note*

4  Rubin, Barry and Rubin, Judith Colp. Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography. Oxford: United Kingdom. Oxford University Press. 2003. 30.  

6 Cafiero, Giorgio. “Algeria is unapologetically pro-Palestinian, and it won’t change”. Last Modified or Updated January 27th, 2021. TRT World.  Accessed on September 1st, 2021. https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/algeria-is-unapologetically-pro-palestinian-and-it-won-t-change-43634

7 Gur, Haviv Rettig. “Analysis:  The tragic self-delusion behind the Hamas war”. Last Modified or Updated July 17th, 2014. Times of Israel. Accessed on August 30th, 2021. https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-tragic-self-delusion-behind-the -hamas-war/ . 

8 “Algeria Denounces African Union granting Israel observer status”. Last Modified or Updated July 26th, 2021. Times of Israel. Accessed on September 2nd, 2021. https://www.timesofisrael.com/algeria-denounces-african-union-granting-israel-observer-status/

9 Norris, Jacob. “The Battle of Algiers transposed into a Palestinian key”. Modified or Updated February 11th, 2013. Open Democracy.net. Accessed on August 31st, 2021. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/battle-of-algiers-transposed-into-palestinian-key/

10 Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on PALESTINE: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. New York: New York. Metropolitan Books and Henry Holt Company. 2020. 180. 

11 Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962:  With a New Preface. New York: New York. New York Review Books. 2006. 185 to 186. 

12 Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge: Massachusetts. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. 1991. 269 and 372. 

Bibliography

“Algeria Denounces African Union granting Israel observer status”. Last Modified or Updated July 26th, 2021. Times of Israel . Accessed on September 2nd, 2021. https://www.timesofisrael.com/algeria-denounces-african-union-granting-israel-observer-status/

Cafiero, Giorgio. “Algeria is unapologetically pro-Palestinian, and it won’t change”. Last Modified or Updated January 27th,2021. TRT World. Accessed on September 1st, 2021. https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/algeria-is-unapologetically-pro-palestinian-and-it-won-t-change-43634 .

Gur, Haviv Rettig. “Analysis: The tragic self-delusion behind the Hamas war”. Last Modified on Updated July 17th, 2014. Times of Israel. Accessed on August 30th, 2021. https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-tragic-self-delusion-behind-the-hamas-war/

Horne, Alistair. A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962: With a New Preface. New York: New York. New York Review Books. 2006.

Hourani, Albert. A History of the Arab Peoples. Cambridge: Massachusetts. The Belknap Press of Harvard University. 1991.

Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on PALESTINE: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017. New York: New York. Metropolitan Books and Henry Holt Company 2020.

Laskier, Michael M. “Israel and the Maghreb at the Height of the Arab-Israeli Conflict; 1950s-1970s”. Middle East Review of International Affairs  Vol. 4 No.2 (June, 2000). 7. Accessed on September 2nd, 2021. https://ciaotest.cc.columbia/edu/olj/meria/meria00_lam01.html#note*

Moussa, Nedjib Sidi. “A Contingent Nationhood: the Jewish Question and the Palestinian Cause within the Algerian Independence Movement”. Hamsa: Journal of Judaic and Islamic Studies No.4 Miscellaneous-Open Edition Journals. (2018). 6 to 7. Accessed on September 7th, 2021. https://jounrals-openedition.org/trans.goog/hamsa/580?_x_tr_sl=fr&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_pto=ajax,sc,elem.

Norris, Jacob. “The Battle of Algiers transposed into a Palestinian key”. Modified or Updated on February 11th, 2013. Open Democracy.net. Accessed on August 31st, 2021. https://www.opendeomcracy.net/en/battle-of-algiers-transposed-into-palestinian-key/

Rubin, Barry and Rubin, Judith Colp. Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography. Oxford: United Kingdom. Oxford University Press. 2003.

Shepard, Todd. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca: New York. Cornell University Press. 2006.

Takriti, Abdel Razzaq. Interview with Sheikh Abdullah Saleh Kamel. Algeria and Palestine-Revolutionary Fraternity in the World of Independence Movements: Five Minutes with Abdel Razzaq Takriti. Georgetown Journal of International Affairs February 5th, 2017. Accessed on August 31st, 2021. https://www.georgetownjournalofinternationalaffairs.org/online-editon....orld-of-independence-movements-five-minutes-with-abdel-razzaq-takriti.

Britzkrieg: British Bankers’ Secret Plan To Win World War I

Libraries of books have been written about the causes and effects of the two worst financial collapses since 1900: The Great Depression of the 1930s and The Great Recession of 2008. Yet it is much harder to find a book about the Financial Crisis of 1914, one in which British bankers tried to suspend capital flows in order to rapidly win World War I. Daniel McEwan explains.

A 1922 US gold certificate. The ‘gold standard’ system was key to the international economy at the outbreak of World War I.

The crisis ranks as “an extraordinary and unique moment in global economic history” that saw over 50 nations experience bank runs and asset crashes. For six nail-biting weeks during August and early September, as Europe’s great powers made their march of folly into war, stock exchanges world-wide were closed until further notice, including the exchange in London - closed for the first time ever! Just down the street, the Bank of England was coping with a run on gold sovereigns. And then, as suddenly as it had started, it was over. Overshadowed by news of the war’s first bloody battles, the crisis made few headlines. “Every political, social, cultural, and economic dimension of life was in crisis in summer 1914: there was nothing especially notable about the financial sector being in trouble.” The cause of the crisis remained a banking industry whodunit for nearly a century.

The story of how a roomful of the best and brightest bankers in The City, as London’s cloistered financial district is called, gambled on their own country’s future by purposely crashing the world economic system... “is simply absent not only from general texts but also from most of the specialist literature,” laments Richard Roberts, a Professor of Contemporary History at King’s College London. That these financiers triggered; “one of the top five all-time worst international banking crises makes the silence surrounding this episode all the more mystifying.”

Stopping capital flows

In 2013, Roberts attempted to unravel the mystery of the events of those six weeks in his book Saving The City: The Great Financial Crisis of 1914. The book reveals; “...there was no downfall of a major financial institution [in Britain]. The reason was massive and unprecedented state intervention that looked like wartime controls rather than financial crisis resolution.” In other words, a government bailout. 

Nicholas Lambert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia picked through the entrails of the crisis and divined a more sinister interpretation of its events. Like Roberts, he claims the true story of the 1914 crisis has been “airbrushed out of the official history.” In his book, Planning Armageddon, Lambert exposes a conspiracy of such breathtakingly scope that critics would later denounce it as “an act of madness” and “economic suicide”. Call it “Britzkrieg”.

In 1914, The City was the beating heart of the global economy. British financiers controlled sixty to eighty per cent of every war-critical sector of the global economy, giving it “an ability to manipulate the economic system to a degree unparalleled even today,” says Lambert. Beguiled by this power, the bankers decided to break Germany’s economic ability to prosecute the war militarily, hopefully before the shooting even started!

There is no question that everyone around the table clearly understood what they were planning would cause catastrophic collateral damage to their own domestic economy! Even worse, it would hurt the economies of neutral countries; countries Britain would need as allies in the event of war -especially America. Yet still they did it, based solely on their collective assumption that as the world’s leading export nation, Germany would break first and in just a few months! All Britain had to do was endure the pain until then and presto, the war would be won! So confident were these moneymen of their plan’s success, they single-handedly touted the “home-by-Christmas” myth that would lure throngs of their fellow citizens into army recruiting stations, many never to be home by any Christmas.

Admiralty

Perhaps the bankers’ confidence was bolstered by their accomplice in this secret endeavor, the British admiralty. Theirs was the largest and most powerful blue water fleet in the world and it had practically invented the naval blockade. During its conflict with France from 1754-63, British warships had sealed off their major ports, slowly strangling the French economy. They had done it again with equal effect against Napoleon’s own attempts to blockade Britain with his Continental System. Inspired by this track record, the admirals were only too keen to do their bit to hasten Germany’s downfall, which explains why the Royal Navy moved so quickly once the shooting did start, blockading Germany and seizing/sinking a quarter of its merchant shipping in just three months!

At first, the bankers’ ruthless plan worked brilliantly. By stopping the flow of capital, they effectively locked down the world economic system. Factories and mines closed. Shipping lanes emptied but Germany did not break. It had its own plan and the Kaiser’s legions rolled across over Belgium into France, only narrowly halted just eighty miles from Paris. The war the bankers’ thought they were preventing was on. By then, their plan had made them new and powerful enemies at home and abroad. The political blowback was thunderous. Exactly as they had anticipated, the first and loudest complaints were lodged by English industrialists being hammered by the crisis just as much as Germany. And they made their displeasure known to their friends in high places who were equally appalled by what the bankers were doing.

End of the scheme

“It turned out that while the Admiralty was perfectly willing to countenance ending the economic world as they knew it, other parts of the British government were far less enthusiastic about that prospect,” observes Mark Stout, Senior Editor at War on the Rocks.

They weren’t alone. American manufacturers quickly joined the chorus of protests. Their factories were producing over a quarter of the consumer goods purchased by Europeans and the lockdown was crimping their style – and profits. After some dark warnings from the White House, the British government demanded the financiers abandon their ruinous program, no questions asked.

The war consumed the crisis but it remains an example of economic brinkmanship no nation has ever been foolish enough to repeat.

What do you think of the scheme? Let us know below.

Now read Daniel’s article on Russia’s 4 great resets here.

The Death of Violinist Igor Oistrakh - A Great Loss to Classical Music

The Ukrainian violinist Igor Davidovich Oistrakh, who died in August 2021, was one of the greatest violinists of the 20th century. Born in Odessa in 1931 to the pianist Tamara Rotaryova and violinist David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (Eustrach), he belonged to a family of violinists regarded as some of the finest in the history of the instrument. His father is also regarded as one of the top two or three masters of the instrument of all time. Eugenia Russell explains.

Image above: Igor Oistrakh (right) in 1957. He is with his father David (left) and conductor Franz Konwitschny. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-45930-0004 / Zimontkowski / CC-BY-SA 3.0, available here.

David Oistrakh, was the son of a Jewish merchant and amateur violinist. The Oistrakhs were merchants of the second guild, the middle guild in Russia whose scope was limited to domestic trade. As well as restrictions on movement, Jews had to pay an additional tax and a fee appropriate to their guild. Music was one of the few other professions open to Jews in Soviet Russia and David’s father had given him a tiny violin as a small child to get him started. David’s burgeoning talent meant he was able to support his family for several years as an itinerant violinist before he started gaining recognition. During his later career he established close friendships with other musicians of Jewish descent such as Isaac Stern and Nathan Milstein, as well as the poet Iosif Brodsky and Victor Hochhauser, who became the impresario for David and Igor, introducing them to western audiences.

Father and son shared the same teacher, Pyotr Stolyarsky, founder of the Odessa School of violin playing, who fostered a deep love of music in them. In addition to his formal training at the Central Music School in Moscow, after which he made his first public performance in 1948, and at the Moscow Conservatory (1949-55) Igor received invaluable tuition from his father whenever he found the time. In 1952, Igor won the International Wieniawski competition in Poland, and this opened up opportunities for giving concerts outside of the Soviet bloc. In 1953, he gave his first concert in the West in London, delighting his audience with the performances of concertos by Beethoven and Khachaturian that would establish him as a soloist in his own right. The Oistrakhs were not limited to the violin, they were also gifted viola players and conductors, and often Igor performed under the baton of his father. David and Igor championed several works by composers who wrote idiomatically for the violin and naturally, many Russian composers. The family collaborations in different combinations spanned three generations with the inclusion of Igor’s son Valery (Valerio). For example, Igor played violin and David the viola in Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante and amongst their collaborations on two violins were Henryk Wieniawski’s Études-caprices, Pablo de Sarasate’s Navarra, Eugène Ysaÿ’s Poème, and Prokofiev’s Sonata for Two Violins.

King David and Prince Igor

When playing together, David and Igor complemented each other, each bringing their musicianship to the fore. Igor, known as Garik to his friends, was noted for his cool, modernist approach to performance: always controlled and never over-emotional. His playing is characterized by precision and clarity. By contrast, his father David, noted for the richness of his tone, has been described as ‘seraphic’. Though Igor had a different approach from his father on the concert platform the pair had to forge a common path in Stalin’s Soviet Union in order to navigate the world stage. They achieved that goal together, becoming known to music lovers as ‘King David and Prince Igor’.

Igor particularly shone in the Bach Double Violin Concerto, which he had begun playing with his father in 1947, performed by the pair in London and Manchester in 1961. They recorded the work several times, most notably in 1959 in Moscow (Moscow Chamber Orchestra/Rudolf Barshai) and for Deutsche Grammophon the same year along with the Vivaldi double violin concerto. Igor repeated the feat with Valery at the Barbican Centre to mark the 50th anniversary of his London debut. Igor and Valery have performed Bach’s triple violin concerto with Yehudi Menuhin, and Igor further collaborated with Menuhin on Bartok’s Duo for two violins. On three occasions Igor attended the music festival founded by the great Catalan cellist Pablo Casals in Prades in the French Pyrenees – and in 1950 appearing alongside him. One of his greatest accomplishments was the recording of the complete Mozart and Beethoven Sonatas for violin and piano accompanied by his wife, Natalia Zertsalova.

Igor pursued a vocation as a teacher alongside his career as a concert artist, beginning as his father’s assistant at the Moscow Conservatoire where he eventually became a professor. After the fall of the USSR he moved to Brussels where he became professor at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in 1996.

Soviet era challenges

The Oistrakh family’s Jewish roots were to influence the delicate artistic balance they had to strike living under Communist rule. During the tense atmosphere of the Cold War, while pursuing their musical ambitions - playing some cutting edge music and becoming famous in the west – they had to appease the Union of Soviet Composers and its General Secretary, Tikhon Khrennikov, favored by Stalin. Khrennikov was a known opponent of ‘rootless cosmopolitans’, and especially intellectual Jews. Notwithstanding the many challenges, the Oistrakhs remained loyal to their country and did not defect to the West like many other Soviet-era musicians. In 1994, Igor collaborated with several other musicians including Yehudi Menuhin, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gennady Rozhdestvensky and Gidon Kremer on a documentary about his father’s life that reveals much of the ‘unspoken private suffering’ of their life and times.

What do you think of the death of Igor Oistrakh? Let us know below.

Wernher von Braun – Dangerous Nazi or Hero of the Space Race? Part 4 – Was he a War Criminal?

Wernher von Braun came to America from Germany after World War II as part of Operation Paperclip. He went on to play a major role in the Cold War’s Space Race with his expertise of rockets. However, views of von Braun are being reassessed as the terrible role he played in Nazi Germany has come to the fore in recent years. Victor Gamma looks at whether von Braun was a war criminal, whether he was an Anti-Semite, and then concludes the series.

Read part 1 on von Braun’s life here, part 2 on the evidence here, and part 3 on von Braun’s beliefs here.

Above image: Von Braun with Jon F. Kennedy at Redstone Arsenal (Alabama) in 1963.

Does von Braun indeed fit the definition of a war criminal? The Nuremberg tribunal formulated three types of crimes that were punishable under law. The only one von Braun could possibly be accused of is the use of prisoners for labor contrary to international conventions and abusive conditions endured by the laborers, including slave labor; Article 6 (b) “Violations of the laws and customs of war, involving murder, ill-treatment and deportation to slave labor of the civilian population of or in occupied countries.” Count 3 of War Crimes “mistreatment of prisoners of war or civilian populations” and Count 4, Crimes Against Humanity, murder, extermination, enslavement of civilian populations; persecution on the basis of racial, religious or political grounds.” 

A conviction on any above count, though, needs documentary or eyewitness testimony. Simply working at the location where atrocities took place is not enough. For example, at the Nuremberg Trials, Hitler’s Chief of Operations, Alfred Jodl, was convicted due to, among other things, his actual signature on documents such as the infamous “Commissar Order.” This order directed German troops to summarily execute anyone identified as a Soviet Commissar. The closest thing to a von Braun “smoking gun” is a letter from November 1944 in which he advised the use of SS prisoners to replace civilians working on production in order to keep up the pace of the work. This letter clearly implicates him as working with the system in some administrative capacity and he could have been charged at least with complicity. He was not ordering atrocities, but when von Braun wrote this request, he knew full well that atrocities existed, and the horrific conditions of which he observed. He was officially encouraging the employment of slave labor.

Survivors

Long after the engineer’s death, some prisoners who had labored at Mittelwerk-Dora, came forward to finger the creator of the V-2. Some claimed that he engaged in brutality towards prisoners or at least approved of it. In 1995 a French resistance fighter named Guy Morand testified that von Braun ordered a prisoner flogged after an alleged sabotage attempt. Another French prisoner named Robert Cazabonne claimed that von Braun stood by and watched as prisoners were tortured by suspending them by chains. Another survivor, Adam Cabala, accused von Braun of visiting Buchenwald in order to select slave laborers. Some have attempted to contradict the engineer’s claims never to have witnessed a dead body. Survivors have stated that dead bodies were piled up daily near the ambulance shed at Mittelwerk. Von Braun had to pass this area during visits and so “must have” seen these bodies. Tom Gehrels, former Dutch resistance fighter, interviewed several Dora survivors who claimed to have witnessed von Braun involved in numerous atrocities. In such cases, the accusations did not come forth until over half a century since their occurrence. Von Braun was a world celebrity by 1960 and yet these survivors said nothing for decades. It is unclear why the Dora victims waited so long. The Staatliches Gymnasium Friedberg had borne the name of von Braun for over 30 years before certain individuals, including at least one Dora survivor, decided it was inappropriate. Some survivors assert that the memories were too painful to give them utterance. In addition to the amount of time passed, some are second-hand and are uncorroborated. Moreover some may be a case of mistaken identity. In other words, the witnesses were not sure. In order to bring a conviction the evidence must be beyond doubt. “Must have” does not meet the criteria. The prosecution always has the burden of proof. By these standards, von Braun would probably not have been convicted of contributing to the atrocities himself. But the space-obsessed leader of Germany’s rocket program could have been convicted of using slave labor: “a crime against humanity.”

Anti-Semite?

Was von Braun an anti-Semite? The records show no sign of it. He had very amicable relations with anyone he worked with in the defense and space programs beginning immediately after the end of the war, including those of Jewish extraction such as Abraham Silverstein and Fred Singer. It is an interesting fact that American’s victory in the Space Race was largely a collaboration of a number of Jewish and ex-Nazi scientists. In an unlikely collaboration illustrative of the great American melting pot, von Braun, the former Nazi, worked with the Jewish engineer Abraham Silverstein to make critical decisions for the Mercury and Apollo Projects. At one point the two men disagreed over certain technical aspects of the rocket design. Ultimately Silverstein’s vision won out and was used for the Saturn rockets that took astronauts to the moon. Rather than display animosity, von Braun gave full credit to Silverstein for the program’s success and even sent him a congratulatory message when Silverstein’s hydrogen-fuel approach proved successful.

Repentance?

But what about von Braun’s apparent lack of repentance? A chief complaint against the rocket scientist is what some have called a “cavalier” attitude about his Nazi past. It is true that he never officially or publicly denounced the Third Reich. Von Braun himself clearly saw his war service as a patriotic duty, not war crimes. In his words, “I have very deep and sincere regret for the victims of the V-2 rockets, but there were victims on both sides - A war is a war, and when my country is at war, my duty is to help win that war.” In 1966, he related to Paris Match “I felt ashamed that things like this were possible in Germany, even under a war situation where national survival was at stake.” But this apology was only issued after protests by Dora camp survivors, who were incensed by the laudatory treatment the space pioneer was receiving at the time. As to the use of rockets against civilian targets, von Braun defensively asserted, “We wouldn’t have treated your atomic scientists as war criminals and I didn’t expect to be treated as one.”

Conclusion

The question then remains, should Wernher von Braun be honored as a hero or erased from every public acknowledgment? As we have seen, the harsh condemnation of him as an atrocity-committing monster smiling with joy over each deadly impact of his V-2 is quite inaccurate. This has often been based on lack of knowledge and is unfair. On the other hand, the kid-glove treatment he long received, despite his awareness of atrocities and his complicity in the system must be taken into account in our discussion of the man.

From a practical standpoint, our treatment of the man’s legacy will depend much on society’s value system at that moment in time. In the post-war years it was more important to win the Space Race and keep ahead of the Soviets than to punish or condemn von Braun and his team for past misdeeds. Most people do not share Tom Lehrer's view that the moon landing was relatively unimportant. If it were, then perhaps we should focus more on von Braun’s lamentable human rights record. But if we view his post-war role as critical to our national survival and the fate of the free world, then we may overlook his earlier failings and view his contributions as a godsend. The Space Race was an undeniable turning point in global history. The entire world watched to see the results. Heroics in space, especially manned spaceflight, captured the attention of the world, including those newly independent nations the Soviet Union was courting for communism. The beaming Soviet cosmonauts were the best advertisement for the socialist utopia, which had dramatically demonstrated its superiority over the “decadent” West. Those nations sitting on the fence might have been persuaded to join the Soviet Bloc if the hammer and sickle had waved proudly on the lunar surface rather than the stars and stripes. The results could have had serious geo-political consequences. Basically, whoever won the Space Race would be considered the superior nation with the best technology and by implication, the best scientific, economic, and political system. Taken this way, von Braun’s role appears much more necessary. When the Russians exploded the H-bomb, he was one of the few who made the connection between nuclear weapons and rockets. With his knowledge of the Soviet use of German rocket scientists, he knew they were making a serious effort to overtake the West in nuclear and ballistic technology.

But to others his treatment of the slave laborers and links to the horrors of the Third Reich far outweigh any of his positive contributions. Can we celebrate the achievements of Wernher von Braun and his vital service to our nation, while at the same time acknowledging his moral lapses and not, in Neufeld’s words, engage in “profound denial?” That might be a more challenging and valuable endeavor for future generations, and the public in general, than to simply condemn the man and make him “disappear?” But that is society’s choice.

What do you think about Wernher von Braun? Let us know below.

Now, read Victor’s series on whether it was right to topple William McKinley’s statue in Arcata, California here.

References

“Chasing the Moon,” PBS Television Series

David, Heather, M., Wernher Von Braun, G.P. Putnam’s Sons: New York, 1967.

“Father of Modern Space Flight - Faith in Creator,” American Minute with Bill Federer. 

F.B.I. Affidavits on Wernher Von Braun

Wernher Von Braun, “Space Man: The Story of My Life,” American Weekly, 1958.

“Was Wernher Von Braun really a Nazi?” By Christopher Harress Al.com

Neufeld, Michael J. Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War, Random House, New York, 2007.

Michael Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun and the Nazis.” American Experience

Neufeld, Michael J. “Wernher Von Braun, the SS, and Concentration Camp Labor; Questions of Moral, Political, and Criminal Responsibility.” German Studies Review, Vol. 25 No. 1.

Michael Neufeld, “Wernher von Braun and the Nazi Rocket Program: An Interview with , PhD, of the National Air and Space Museum.”

Peeples, David, The Mystery of Life:What’s It All About?” 2018 by David Peeples. 

Alejandro De La Garza, “How Historians Are Reckoning With the Former Nazi Who Launched American’s Space Program” July 18, 2019 Time Magazine 

Wernher Von Braun, “My Faith,” American Weekly, February 10, 1963.

Tom Lehrer - “Wernher Von Braun”, 1965, from the Album That Was the Year That Was.

Tom Lehrer Interview in 2003

“Missile Expert Wernher Von Braun Appears On Forum Series Tonight” in The Parthenon, Marshall College Student Newspaper, Huntington W. Virginia, Sept. 25, 1959.

“Who got America to the moon? An unlikely collaboration of Jewish and former Nazi scientists and engineers” LA Times, March 1, 2020.

Mayer, Jürgen NS-Raketenproduktion der V1 und V2 in Mittelbau-Dora: Die Mittelwerk GmbH,  2019 German Edition. 

Wallace, Mike, television biography of Wernher von Braun

Arts & Entertainment, Biography (1959–1961 Television series).

“The Slave Labor Program, The Illegal Use of Prisoners of War, and The Special Responsibility of Defendants Sauckel and Speer,” Trial brief of the case against Fritz Sauckel and Albert Speer for Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes from the Nuremberg Trial documents, Harriet Zetterberg; Thomas L. Karsten; Lt., USNR; James H. Mathias, Captain, JAGD; Bernard D. Meltzer, Lt. (jg) USNR.

"Tut alles, damit dieser Name verschwindet" by Stefan Mayr, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 23 March 2012.

The Uyghur Genocide: A Modern Cultural Genocide

The Uyghur Genocide is widely used to describe the human rights abuses the Chinese government has committed against the Uyghur people and other groups in Xinjiang, China since 2014. Here, Roy Williams looks at the history and the current status of the cultural genocide.

In the past I have focused my attention on studying and advocating for the recognition of genocides that have been carried out in the last century. As a historian and a genocide scholar I would not be worth the words I have written if I did not speak of genocide of the present day. The communist government of China under the leadership of Xi Jinping is currently engaged in a cultural genocide against the Uyghur Muslims of the province of Xinjiang. Nearly one million Uyghur Muslims are currently detained in concentration camps throughout the province in an effort by the communist Chinese government to destroy their cultural and religious identity in hopes of creating a monoculture based around Han Chinese ideology and racial identity. Due to the Han supremacist bent of the Chinese government and the Uyghur desire for autonomy, the government has implemented multiple human rights abuses in the name of cleansing resistance and promoting the Chinese Han monoculture of their modern empire.

When studying genocide, the reader is always faced with emotions of disbelief in wondering how humanity could allow such grievous human rights abuses to occur. The Uyghur genocide provides a poignant example in understanding how a genocide can occur with very little active resistance from the international community. While humans rights advocates and journalists may proclaim the cry of genocide in hopes of drawing action against the crimes of an authoritarian regime, the politics of inaction and self interest halt any meaningful actions by the international community in condemning and halting a genocide. If the reader takes anything from this article, I plead that they hear the plight of the Uyghur people persecuted by their government and demand action from the international community.

Background

The story of the Uyghur genocide began with expansion westward under the Manchu led Qing dynasty of China during the 1700s. The Uyghur people of Xinjiang regained independence during the Dungan revolt from 1862 to 1877. During the Republican era of China, the Uyghur people largely retained autonomy. After communism became the prevailing government ideology of China, the Chinese government began sponsoring mass migration of Han Chinese to Xinjiang to dilute the population of ethnic Uyghurs. The communist Chinese government also began to introduce programs to suppress the religious and ethnic identity of Uyghur Muslims in opposition to the ideology of the Soviet Union. 

The 1980s saw a change in government policy under Deng Xiaoping, attempting a looser society allowing for the acceptance of ethnic minorities and multiple cultures under the Chinese banner. This policy, while lauded by ethnic minorities, was ultimately deemed a failure by government officials of the politburo. Government policy of the province of Xinjiang ultimately directed its efforts against accepting cultural minorities in favor of a Han Chinese monoculture that sought to limit and suppress Uyghur Muslim cultural identity. Following a protest by Uyghurs rejecting mass Chinese Han migration to Xinjiang in the Barin township in 1990, the Chinese People’s liberation Army put down Uyghur protests with excessive cruelty resulting in the deaths of 15 Uyghurs. Uyghur sources claim that the protest originated from mandated forced Chinese abortions of 200 Uyghur women, attempting to limit Uyghur birth rates. The varying accounts relaying the cause of the protest largely exist from the Chinese government’s commitment to spreading false pro-government propaganda in defending their heinous persecution of the Uyghur Muslims. 

2014 campaign

In an effort to capitalize on the international war on terror, the Chinese government in 2014 sponsored the Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism as an excuse to persecute Uyghur Muslims in hopes of assimilating their culture into the larger dominant monoculture of the Han Chinese. Currently under this program over 1 million Uyghurs reside in concentration camps dedicated to stamping out Uyghur culture and religious practices. The Chinese government denied the existence of such camps until recently and now claims that they exist for vocational training and eliminating extremist and separatist political motivations in Xinjiang. Under the leadership of Xi Jinping, Jinping has directed government officials to show “Absolutely no mercy”, in dealing with Uyghur resistance. Accounts from Uyghurs detained in camps tell a different story describing rampant physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Uyghur survivor Ziawudun recounts her traumatic experiences within a Chinese concentration camp: “They wore suits”, she said, “not police uniforms.”

Sometime after midnight, they came to the cells to select the women they wanted and took them down the corridor to a "black room", where there were no surveillance cameras.

Several nights, Ziawudun said, they took her.

"Perhaps this is the most unforgettable scar on me forever," she said.

"I don't even want these words to spill from my mouth."

 "The woman took me to the room next to where the other girl had been taken in. They had an electric stick, I didn't know what it was, and it was pushed inside my genital tract, torturing me with an electric shock." 

The culture of torture and sexual abuse are used to dehumanize and destroy the Uyghur people and culture. Survivors of the reeducation camps have described how those who attempted to pray were beaten mercilessly. Women have been forced to have abortions or been sterilized to reduce the Uyghur population in favor of Han Chinese migration. Nearly one sixth of all mosques in China have been destroyed by the Chinese government with the aim to stamp out Islamic cultural identity, with estimates of the destruction hovering at over 16,000 mosques. One of the most grievous crimes against ethnic and religious minorities is China’s recent destruction of the tomb of Imam Asim, which for Uyghurs existed as a substitute for the pilgrimage to Mecca. Education efforts by the Chinese government aim to separate Uyghur children from their families, brainwash them to revere the communist authoritarian leadership of China, learn Han Chinese to forget their Uyghur language, and reject their religious heritage of Islam for state atheism. Religious clothing is also strictly discouraged as well as giving children Islamic names. Names currently banned in the province of Xinjiang by the Chinese government include Mohammed, Quran, Mecca, Imam, Saddam, Hajj, and Medina. Uyghurs also face surveillance by a dystopian police state. Genetic material is collected to track and control the Uyghur population. Millions of cameras watch the people of Xinjiang criminalizing Uyghur cultural practices. Uyghur families are also forced to allow Chinese party officials constant access to their homes where they are actively monitored for extremist or separatist tendencies. "Their goal is to destroy everyone," proclaims Uyghur survivor Ziawudun.

Current status

While the United States and 38 other countries have condemned the Chinese governments for its crimes against humanity in perpetrating cultural genocide against the Uyghur people, the genocide persists. With the prospect of a dominant China in the 21st century, it is important for the international community to stand firm in its condemnation of China. Only through increased cooperation and retaliatory measures against the Chinese government can the Uyghur genocide be ended. Tech monopolies such as Facebook and Amazon stand squarely in the way of stopping China’s human rights abuses as they do not want to lose Chinese business in condemning their actions. Amazon’s heavy reliance on Chinese cotton, which is largely produced in the province of Xinjiang, stands as a massive economic barrier to stopping the Uyghur genocide. Facebook has allowed the Chinese government to buy ad space spewing government propaganda that denies the existence of the Uyghur genocide.  "It's time our platform takes action to fight misinformation on the Uighur genocide," wrote one Facebook employee regarding the Chinese government’s use of Facebook ads in promoting denialist propaganda.   Disney has also had an active role in supporting and denying the Uyghur genocide. During the filming of the recent Disney film, Mulan, multiple scenes were shot in the province of Xinjiang, sometimes in front of Uyghur concentration camps. In the final credits of Disney’s Mulan, multiple government agencies associated with the Uyghur genocide are thanked such as the publicity department of Xinjiang. China’s government is currently producing a propaganda film entitled the Wings of Song, which denies the existence of the Uyghur genocide in favor of nationalist pro-government falsehoods. With so many large companies enriching themselves at the expense of Uyghur suffering, the road to ending genocide appears to be long. Only through increased awareness and active condemnation by the international community can the Uyghur genocide and those who support it be stopped.

What do you think of the Uyghur cultural genocide? Let us know below.

Now, read Roy’s article on the Armenian Genocide here and the 1980s Guatemalan genocide here.

Bibliography

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-54064654

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071

https://www.hrw.org/report/2021/04/19/break-their-lineage-break-their-roots/chinas-crimes-against-humanity-targeting

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2020/02/china-uyghurs-abroad-living-in-fear/

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/16/world/asia/china-xinjiang-documents.html

https://www.uyghurcongress.org/en/genocide-and-genocide-denial/

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-internal-tension-china-xinjiang-ads-adverts-uyghurs-2021-4

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/03/china-launches-musical-in-bid-to-counter-uyghur-abuse-allegations

The Bethnal Green Tube Disaster: A World War II Tragedy

There were of many tragedies in World War II, and this is the often forgotten story of one such tragedy. In 1943, 173 people were killed at Bethnal Green station in London. Ilana Barnett explains.

The 'Stairway to Heaven' memorial to those who died in the disaster in Bethnal Green, London. Unveiled on December 16, 2017. Source: GrindtXX, available here.

A Campaign of Terror

The term ‘the Blitz’ was given by the British Press to Hitler’s bombing campaign between September 7, 1940, and May 10, 1941, which was aimed at demoralizing the people of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. Although it actually refers to the wide spread bombing of the UK, in areas such as Glasgow, Belfast, Portsmouth, Swansea, Hull, Bristol, Sheffield and Liverpool, all of which suffered horrendous damage and loss of life, it is images of London, and in particular the devastation to the East End which has become synonymous with the Blitz. In total 43,000 civilians were killed during this period, over half of those who lost their lives lived in London.

A Place of Safety

Despite tube stations (the stations servicing the underground London railway – nicknamed ‘the tube’), having played an important role during World War I, inter-war policy makers ruled out their use in future conflicts. Some of the reasons behind this decision were put forward by the politician and Member of Parliament, Sir John Anderson in his 1939 report. Anderson argued that tube shelters were a public safety hazard i.e. the real possibility of people being injured or killed from falling onto the lines as well as the increased risk pertaining to the spread of diseases due to lack of amenities such as toilet facilities. One of his most bizarre arguments was that people would develop a ‘deep shelter mentality’ and feel so safe they would never want to leave!

At first the Government’s position was tenable as the light bombings during the summer of 1940, meant that the public shelters were not heavily used but as the bombing intensified general opinion began to turn. Ignoring growing public unrest, Anderson (now promoted to Minister of Home Security) dug his heels in and issued a joint report with the Ministry of Transport on the September 17, 1940, to warn people not to use the tubes as shelters except in emergencies. Despite all the policies, warnings and reports, people used their own judgment and ignored them. Over the night of September 19/20, determined Londoners took matters into their own hands and from 4pm onwards hundreds of people in an act of mass disobedience grabbed their bedding and food and flocked down into the tube stations. Faced with a civilian rebellion on such a massive scale, the Government finally caved in and formulated a ‘deep shelter extension policy’. The policy included converting 79 stations including Bethnal Green Tube Station into suitable accommodation with bunks fitted to accommodate about 22,000 people, first aid facilities, chemical toilets, 124 canteens and the recruitment of Shelter Marshals as well as reinforcing the underground flood walls.

8:27 pm - March 3, 1943

Although the Blitz was officially considered over by the beginning of May 1941, London still suffered from intermittent raids. 

On the evening of March 3, 1943, Londoners calmly got ready to spend another night in the shelters. Many had the procedure down to a fine art, sending a member of the family down to a ‘bundle shop’ (a left luggage store) to collect bedding to be taken down to the shelter while other family members grabbed food, and gathered up the children.

The shelter at Bethnal Green Tube Station had been fitted out in the same style as the other stations and was always busy. To enter the station, you would first go down 19 steps to a landing, and then another seven to the ticket hall. From there you would take one of the escalators 80 feet down to the platform. There was room for about 7,000 people with bunks for 5,000, and the remainder having to find a space where they could. In addition, the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green responsible for the running of the shelter had even built a hospital, and a library.

The siren went off at 8:17 pm, and people made their way through the inky darkness to the station, walking calmly down the steps to the landing taking care as it had been raining, and the steps were slippery. Ten minutes later everyone was startled by a loud noise, which was unlike anything, they had ever heard before. People surged forward causing a woman with a small child at the bottom of the steps to slip. An elderly man behind her lost his balance, and fell on top of her. This started a horrifying, and unstoppable domino effect with people piling on top of each other. Those entering the station were unable to see what had happened at the bottom, and continued to push forward making a bad situation even worse as people were lifted off their feet, and carried down the steps by the force of the crowd behind. The whole episode lasted only 15 seconds, at the end of which all anyone could see was a huge pile of bodies, ten deep, arms, and legs entangled with those at the bottom crushed to death. One shocked witness compared the sight to that of a charnel house, a building or vault in which corpses or bones are piled. The people already settled in the shelter were completely unaware of the tragedy which was unfolding above them.

A Terrible Sight

A policeman, PC Thomas Penn, who was bringing his wife to the shelter, luckily arrived too late to be caught up in it, but tried to assess the damage. He clambered down over the bodies finding 200 people at the bottom trapped in a small space. He then crawled back out to send a message for help, and then returned to try to help those trapped. He fainted twice.

People arriving at the scene joined in the rescue attempt. The injured were taken to a nearby hospital while the bodies were laid out on the pavement. The dead were later taken to the local mortuary at Whitechapel hospital, and when that become overcrowded were brought over the road to St John’s Church. The police surgeon told the coroner that he had been amazed that of the 300 people involved not one was found with fractured ribs.

It took a while for the scale of what had happened to sink in. 62 people had been injured, and 173 had been killed, 27 men, 84 women, and 62 children (one casualty died later in hospital from injuries sustained during the crush). The woman who had been at the front of the group survived but her child did not. The youngest to be killed was Carol Geary, she was only five months old. The loss of life was horrendous, and not a single bomb had been dropped.

The disaster affected everyone involved; those who had been trapped, the rescuers, and of course the families who lost their loved ones. For many what they had gone through, seen or heard haunted them, and left scars that never healed. One survivor’s daughter recounted how her mother once told her that every night as she laid down to sleep, she heard their dying cries, and screams.

A Government Whitewash

The news about the disaster at Bethnal Green began to circulate but fearful of the outcome of any investigation, and worried how it would affect public morale, government officials decided that the best course of action would be pretty much to hush it up. The press was censored, and not allowed to report on the incident for two days, and even when they were finally free to print their articles, they were forbidden to reveal the actual location of the disaster. Despite trying to brush it under the carpet, somehow the Nazis heard about Bethnal Green, and decided to use it for their own propaganda purposes claiming that it had been their bombs which had been responsible for the deaths.

Initially the idea of an investigation was dismissed as being unnecessary with officials agreeing with Sir Laurence Rivers Dunne that it would blow the incident out of proportion, and give encouragement to the enemy. Eventually a short statement was read out in the House of Commons which simply stated that precautions would be taken in the future to prevent anything like it happening again.

Falling on Death Ears

In his book, Mr Morrison’s Conjuring Trick: The People of Bethnal Green (deceased) v The Crown, Rick Fountain presents damning evidence against the Government, and their policy towards Bethnal Green Tube Station. He discovered letters from Bethnal Green Council to the Local Civil Defence sector of the Government sent shortly before the disaster. These letters shed new light of what was happening behind the scenes. In one letter the council asked the Government to approve plans to alter the entrance to the tube station to make it safer to avoid a bottleneck. The request was refused. Two more letters were written by the Borough Engineer to the Government asking them to agree to changes to the station’s entrance, and also the staircase, including the erection of a crash barrier to slow down the movement of the crowds. Both times the Government said no, and that a crash barrier was a waste of money.

The day after the disaster, all the changes were implemented.

The letters were hidden under the Official Secrets Act.

The Government placed all the blame on the Council.

An Avoidable Tragedy

So, what about the strange noise that had startled everyone in the shelter? Most agree now that the sound was the firing of 60 rockets from an anti-aircraft battery gun by the Royal Artillery in Victoria Park. It was a new defense weapon which had never been heard before, and should never have been tested in a built-up area.

A Sort of Justice

It was only at the end of the war that the Government, faced with mounting public pressure, finally agreed to answer questions about what actually happened that night. The Minister of Home Security, Herbert Morrison quoted from a secret report – so an investigation had been carried out. Maybe the Government was worried that one day they would be held accountable. The report cited inadequate lighting (the stairway was only lit by one 25-watt bulb), shortage of supervisors, and lack of handrails as being contributory factors but stated that it was the crowd’s irrational behavior which was most to blame. He admitted that the report was originally suppressed as they had been worried that no one would believe the findings.

Not everyone agreed with the report’s conclusions. The Shoreditch Coroner, Mr. W.R.H. Heddy, along with other officials stated that testimonies given from witnesses confirm that whilst people were hurrying, and anxious, they were not panicking. There was also nothing to suggest a stampede having taken place. The decision to hold the inquiry in secret was also condemned. 

A number of lawsuits were filed, looking for compensation including the well-documented ‘Baker v Bethnal Green Corporation’ brought by a bereaved widow. The decision was made in her favor. A number of similar cases followed. By the beginning of 1950s over £60,000 had been paid out.

Finally, a Fitting Tribute

A small memorial plaque to those that died, easily missed, was placed at the southeast entrance to the tube station, above the point where the first woman fell. Many felt this was inadequate, and a long campaign was launched to create a more fitting memorial. On December 17, 2017, the Bethnal Green Stairway to Heaven Memorial was unveiled. The memorial includes a plaque listing the names of those that died as well as 173 points of light, one for each of the victims. 

What do you think of the Bethnal Green tube disaster? Let us know below.

Now read Ilana’s article on four of the most eccentric Scottish Dukes of Hamilton here.