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Imprimis, On Line -- April 1992
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Imprimis, meaning "in the first place," is a free monthly
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publication of Hillsdale College (circulation 360,000
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worldwide). Hillsdale College is a liberal arts institution
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known for its defense of free market principles and Western
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culture and its nearly 150-year refusal to accept federal
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funds. Imprimis publishes lectures by such well-known
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figures as Ronald Reagan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Tom Wolfe,
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Charlton Heston, and many more. Permission to reprint is
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hereby granted, provided credit is given to Hillsdale
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College. Copyright 1992. For more information on free print
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subscriptions or back issues, call 1-800-437-2268, or 1-517-
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439-1524, ext. 2319.
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--------------------------------------------------
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"Slouching Toward Catastrophe: 1914-1939"
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by George H. Nash, Author, Presidential Biographer
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--------------------------------------------------
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Volume 21, Number 4
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Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242
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April 1992
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---------------
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Preview: The year 1992 marks the 50th anniversary of
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America's entry into World War II, the most titanic struggle
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in human history. Nearly every nation and every people were
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involved. When it was over, more than 50 million soldiers
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and civilians were dead, as were whole nations whose borders
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would be redrawn in the succeeding era. It came, ironically
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enough, on the heels of another war, the one that was to be
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"the war to end all wars." In reality, however, World War I
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was only a dress rehearsal for a far more cataclysmic event.
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Here, historian George Nash explains why. His remarks were
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delivered during the Center for Constructive Alternatives
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seminar, "America's Entry into World War II," in November
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1991.
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---------------
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Seventy-three years ago, the First World War ended in
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Europe. The armistice took effect at eleven o'clock in the
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morning -- the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the
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eleventh month: a symbolic acknowledgement that European
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civilization had come close to irreversible ruin.
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The Great War, as men and women then called it, had been
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a conflict like none other in history. It had begun in the
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summer of 1914, when 20,000,000 European men had put on
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their uniforms, boarded trains, and headed off to
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preassigned battle stations. At the time, the British
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foreign secretary had remarked, "The lamps are going out all
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over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our
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lifetime." The men who marched believed, as the German
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Kaiser and others promised, that they would be home "before
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the leaves fell." Instead, they fell, in dark, unimaginable
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encounters like the battle of Verdun, which lasted for ten
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months and took 850,000 French and German lives. They fell
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in battles like that of the Somme, on whose very first day
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(July 1, 1916) the British army suffered 60,000 casualties,
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including 20,000 dead. By the time "the war to end wars"
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ceased, 10,000,000 people had died. In its final months a
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great pandemic of Spanish influenza swept over much of an
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exhausted globe. By the time the scourge subsided,
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20,000,000 more people had died, including half a million in
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the United States.
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Less than a quarter of a century later, the Great War
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had its name changed. Now a numeral -- number I -- was
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affixed, as nations embarked upon a second and even more
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titanic struggle, rightly described as "the largest single
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event in human history." Fifty million people died before it
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ended; nearly half of them were civilians. In the United
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States alone, more than 12,000,000 men and women wore
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uniforms.
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In duration, scale of combat, the expanse of theaters of
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operations, the number of casualties, and physical damage,
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the Second World War clearly dwarfed the First. But the
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psychic wounds of the earlier war, it seems to me, went
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deeper, and it is this dimension that I wish to explore this
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afternoon. It is not my purpose today to chronicle the
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diplomatic maneuvering that culminated in the German assault
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on Poland in 1939 or the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two
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years later. Still less is it my purpose systematically to
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analyze the immediate origins, both great and small, of
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those events. I propose instead to examine some of the ways
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in which the experience of the First World War affected the
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coming of the Second. You may ask why I do so. Because, in
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the words of the British historian A.J.P. Taylor: "The first
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war explains the second and, in fact, caused it, in so far
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as one event causes another." We cannot fully understand the
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horrific conflagration of 1939-1945 unless we fathom some of
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the psychological and intellectual impulses that the earlier
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war released and that then shaped the consciousness of
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Europe and America for twenty years.
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The Trench
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Every war produces its distinctive engravings on our
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collective memory. Consider the recent Persian Gulf war, for
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example: Who among us will ever forget the television
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pictures of Patriot missiles intercepting SCUDs, or the clip
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of General Schwartzkopf scorning Saddam Hussein's
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pretensions to military greatness? Look back now to the
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Second World War; what images arise? Hitler shrieking before
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a Nazi Party rally; Churchill defiant against the enemy;
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bombs falling over London during the Blitz; the rubble of
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Stalingrad; the beaches of Normandy; Pearl Harbor;
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Hiroshima; Auschwitz. When we search for mental pictures of
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the First World War, however, I suspect that most of us will
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think of only one: a trench. This remains the dominant
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symbol of the Great War -- a fact that tells much about that
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war and about what came after it.
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From the autumn of 1914 until the autumn of 1918, the
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armies of the Allies and of Germany faced each other in a
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labyrinth of trenches stretching in parallel for more than
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four hundred miles from the English Channel, across Belgium
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and France, to the Swiss frontier. On each side the trenches
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were of three kinds: frontline trenches, theoretically six
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to eight feet deep (or more) and four to five feet wide, and
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sometimes only forty yards from the enemy; support trenches
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a few hundred yards back; and reserve trenches farther back
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still. Connecting these three rows were communication
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trenches that ran at right angles to them. In all, the
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belligerents constructed approximately 25,000 miles of
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trenches -- enough, if laid end to end, to encircle the
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globe. In these dismal, often wet, rat-infested, lice-packed
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tunnels, several million men spent the war. Between them lay
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a desolate shell-marked quagmire filled with barbed wire and
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known as No Man's Land.
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For nearly four years the competing armies tried to
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break out of the ghastly stalemate -- by going "over the
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top" and attempting to rout the enemy. Nothing worked.
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Millions died or were wounded without militarily significant
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results. The combatants tried shelling each other in order
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to destroy the barbed wire and force the evacuation of the
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opposing trenches. At the battle of the Somme the British
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fired 1,700,000 artillery shells before the charge began.
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The principal effect was to make it impossible for their
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infantry to advance quickly through the churned-up mud.
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Almost always it was the attackers who lost more men. Secure
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in his own redoubts, the enemy had only to wait until the
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opposing soldiers abandoned their shelters and tried to slog
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across No Man's Land. If the enemy's return bombardment did
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not mow them down, his machine guns did. The machine gun was
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the great defensive weapon of World War I.
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Herbert Hoover, at the time an American engineer who
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directed an unprecedented international relief program in
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German-occupied Belgium during the war, witnessed one of
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these battles from a vantage point behind German lines. He
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never forgot what he saw:
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"We motored for several hours to a point near a hilltop
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observation post in the forest, a distance back from the
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forward trenches and a mile or two away from the main roads.
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During the last few miles an occasional shell cracked nearby
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but the ingenious camouflage of the road -- to the extent of
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a false parallel -- seemed to give protection to our route.
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At the post the constant rumble of artillery seemed to
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pulverize the air. Seen through powerful glasses, in the
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distant view lay the unending blur of trenches, of volcanic
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explosions of dust which filled the air where over a length
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of sixty miles a million and a half men were fighting and
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dying. Once in a while, like ants, the lines of men seemed
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to show through the clouds of dust. Here under the thunder
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and belching volcanoes of 10,000 guns, over the months of
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this battle, the lives of Germans and Englishmen were thrown
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away. On the nearby road unending lines of Germans plodded
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along the right side to the front, not with drums and bands,
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but in the silence of sodden resignation. Down the left side
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came the unending lines of wounded men, the 'walking cases'
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staggering among cavalcades of ambulances. A quarter of a
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million men died and it was but one battle in that war.
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"The horror of it all did not in the least affect the
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German officers in the post. To them it was pure mechanics.
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Not one of the Germans showed the slightest anxiety. They
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said that the British were losing two to one -- butting
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their heads against a stone wall. And that was true. It was
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all a horrible, devastating reality, no romance, no glory."
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Hoover's reaction was representative. The experience of
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the trenches became for many the dominant memory of the war
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-- the abiding symbol of unutterable horror and waste. In
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the 1920s, after the euphoria of Armistice Day had long
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since passed away, a mood of disillusionment with the war
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took hold in many sectors of European and American life. It
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spread from the "lost generation" of European soldiers,
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unable to readjust to civilian occupations, on to poets,
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painters and novelists. It was reflected in artistic
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phenomena like the nihilistic Dada movement and surrealism
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(the very word surrealism was invented by a French poet and
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soldier in 1917). It was evident in the cultural despair
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that eventuated, among other things, in the French
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existentialism of the late 1930s. We can detect it, too, in
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the frenetic hedonism that Americans associate with the
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Roaring Twenties; in the early novels of Fitzgerald,
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Faulkner and Hemingway; in the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon
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and the early T. S. Eliot (whose poem The Wasteland became
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another symbol of the age); and in the febrile decadence of
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late Weimar Germany, so effectively conveyed in the movie
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Cabaret.
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Nowhere, perhaps, was the perceived futility of the war
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more shockingly depicted than in the novel All Quiet on
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the Western Front, written by a German veteran, Erich Maria
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Remarque, and published in 1929. There is no glory or
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grandeur in this tale. It is a story of endless death
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without meaning. Visiting a hospital full of wounded
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soldiers, the narrator is driven to suggest that Western
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civilization has no worth:
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"How senseless is everything that can ever be written,
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done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be
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all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand
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years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured
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out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands.
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A hospital alone shows what war is."
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Remarque's novel was intended to be the cri de coeur of
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the "lost generation." Critics hailed it as "the truth about
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the war." In just fifteen months it sold 3,500,000 copies in
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several languages -- a record without precedent in several
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centuries of book publishing.
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Disillusionment Among the Victors
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All Quiet on the Western Front undoubtedly abetted a
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wave of pacifistic revulsion that peaked in the early 1930s
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in the principal countries that won the war. This sentiment
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had some curious manifestations. In the Kellogg-Briand Pact
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of 1928, for instance, sixty-two nations, including the
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United States, the Soviet Union, and Germany, solemnly
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renounced war "as an instrument of national policy in their
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relations with one another," and pledged instead to settle
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all their disputes only by "pacific means." To some
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enthusiasts it appeared that the signatories had "outlawed
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war." The treaty contained no provision for enforcement; it
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was hoped that public opinion would deter violations. In
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1933 the Oxford Union -- a prestigious undergraduate
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debating society comprising the future political leaders of
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Great Britain -- resolved "That this House refuses in any
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circumstances to fight for King and Country." The vote
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precipitated a national uproar and may have encouraged Adolf
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Hitler to believe that the British would not resist his
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expansionism. In the United States in 1934, a sensational
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investigation led by Senator Gerald Nye purported to
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discover that leading American bankers and arms dealers --
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the so-called "merchants of death" -- had maneuvered Woodrow
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Wilson into entering World War I in order to save their ill-
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gotten profits and loans to the Allied governments. The Nye
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Committee hearings helped to persuade many Americans that
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they should never have fought in the Great War at all and
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that they should now withdraw from entanglements with an
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incorrigible Europe. One result was Congressional passage of
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neutrality laws designed to keep America out of the Old
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World's quarrels.
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By portraying the war as a pointless exercise in
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brutality, All Quiet on the Western Front also may have
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strengthened the growing appeal of historical revisionists,
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who argued that Germany was not solely responsible for the
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terrible conflict. But if this were true -- if the war in
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fact had no decisive moral content -- then were not all the
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combatant nations morally equivalent? And if that were so,
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how could the winners object to Germany's campaign in the
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1930s to subvert and ultimately repudiate the Treaty of
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Versailles? The pacifist mood in the Allied nations helped
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to shift the burden of guilt (or at least of doubt) from the
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vanquished to the victors, thereby inhibiting willingness to
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rearm.
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Revenge Among the Defeated
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And now we come to a sobering complication: not everyone
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who witnessed the carnage of World War I regarded it as the
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ultimate evil. If the war experience and its aftermath at
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Versailles induced disillusionment in the victorious Allies,
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the specific terms of the settlement evoked in the defeated
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Germans a profound resentment and thirst for revenge. Not
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only did the hated treaty oblige Germany to acknowledge her
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guilt for starting the war -- an admission that, however
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true, seemed manifestly unfair -- it also deprived Germany
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of all her colonies, nearly half of her iron production, 13
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percent of her prewar territory, and 12 percent of her
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population. It also reduced her army to a mere 100,000 men,
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forbade it to possess tanks or airplanes, and required the
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Germans to pay immense reparations to the Allies. And it
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divided the German state of Prussia by permitting the new
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country of Poland a so-called "corridor" to the Baltic Sea.
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Historians still debate whether the Treaty of Versailles
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was too harsh. What strikes this historian is the tremendous
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gap that ordinary Germans perceived between their
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circumstances on the battlefield at the time of the
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Armistice and the final provisions of the Treaty eight
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months later. In November 1918, when the fighting ceased,
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Germany was not a conquered nation. In fact, she had just
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won the war in the East and had compelled her enemy, Russia,
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to cede vast territories at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. On
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the western front, at the Armistice, the German army was in
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retreat, but it had not been destroyed as a fighting force.
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In fact, at the ceasefire on November 11 it still stood on
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foreign soil. The Kaiser's army had definitely lost the war
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in the West (hence the German request for an armistice). But
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except for certain generals and high government officials,
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the German people did not know that they had been beaten.
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Thus the ultimate terms of the Versailles treaty, when they
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were promulgated several months later, appeared to most
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Germans to be unbelievably punitive and incommensurate with
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the result of the contest of arms. This perception was
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false, but it permitted Adolf Hitler and many others,
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including German army leaders who knew better, to foment the
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insidious legend of "the stab in the back": that is, the
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claim that Germany had not been defeated on the battlefield
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but had instead been betrayed from within. By whom? By the
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"November criminals" who had demanded an armistice and then
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acquiesced in the draconian treaty. By the socialists, the
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Communists, the Jews, and all who supported the Weimar
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republic created out of the ashes of defeat. "Down with the
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perpetrators of the November crime," Hitler said in one of
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his early speeches. "We must not forget that between us and
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those betrayers of the people [the Weimar
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government]...there are two million dead." For Hitler and
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countless other Germans, the war itself had not been
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meaningless. Rather, an unjust and humiliating peace had
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deprived them of their land, freedom, property, and their
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place in the sun.
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So Hitler clamored untiringly for vengeance, for
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repudiation of Versailles and the noxious European order
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built upon it. Germany must rise again. He was not alone in
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his hate. The general sentiment was shared by most of his
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countrymen. In 1929 the German government declared June 28 -
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- the tenth anniversary of the treaty -- to be a day of
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national mourning.
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Thus were set in motion two conflicting streams of
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consciousness -- and a deep, almost fatal dissonance between
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Allied guilt and German revanchism. For many in the Allied
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nations, the peace that followed the First World War was not
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good enough to justify the sacrifices in the trenches. For
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all too many Germans, the peace seemed worse than the war.
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In 1933, only months after the "best and the brightest"
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Oxford students were pledging never to fight for king or
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country, the new Nazi government seized and destroyed copies
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of All Quiet on the Western Front. At the University of
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Berlin, it was tossed into a bonfire. As a Nazi student did
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so, he said, "Down with the literary betrayal of the
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soldiers of the world war! In the name of educating our
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people in the spirit of valor, I commit the writings of
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Erich Maria Remarque to the flames."
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The Great War did more than generate disillusionment,
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cultural pessimism, and pacifism among the victors, and
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kindle a desire for retaliation among the defeated Germans.
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It also encouraged military planners to devise new modes of
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warfare so that when the next war came there would be no
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wanton squandering of lives in a maze of impenetrable
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trenches. During the First World War, the British had
|
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actually invented such a weapon -- the tank -- but had used
|
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it hesitantly and ineffectively. In the next war, tanks
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would be infinitely more prominent. During the Twenties and
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Thirties military men, especially in Germany, developed air
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power -- another alternative to the trench -- to a point
|
|
that many predicted the incineration of entire cities in the
|
|
first hours of any new conflict. In this area, as in other
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realms of technology, the Nazis pioneered. Trench warfare,
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Hitler declared, was "degenerate"; air warfare, he said, was
|
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a Germanic way to fight.
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Thanks in part, then, to technological developments, and
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|
in part to rancid memories of the First World War, the
|
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second global conflict was to be much more mobile and
|
|
mechanized. The word blitzkrieg would enter the vocabulary.
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|
In the second war, the search for what one historian has
|
|
called "revolutionary weapons" would accelerate,
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culminating, of course, in the atomic bomb.
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|
Here I call your attention to a curious fact. In certain
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respects the last great battle of World War II -- the battle
|
|
of Okinawa -- most resembled the grim encounters on the
|
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Western front in World War I. On this Pacific Ocean island,
|
|
almost eighty miles long, invading American soldiers had to
|
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go "over the top" -- that is, from the exposed sandy beaches
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|
where they went ashore up into the rugged hills and
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|
mountains, where desperate Japanese had entrenched
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themselves in tunnels, caves and other well-guarded
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|
fortifications. The American army and marines had to advance
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upon ridge after ridge, defended by Japanese fighting with
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manic ferocity. In the end, 35 percent of the American army
|
|
troops and marines who fought at Okinawa were killed or
|
|
wounded. One hundred ten thousand Japanese soldiers died --
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|
many by suicide -- rather than suffer the humiliation of
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|
surrender. This enormous loss of life and the fanatical
|
|
character of the Japanese resistance convinced American
|
|
military leaders that the impending invasion of the Japanese
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home islands would cost the American army a million
|
|
casualties. This was a principal reason for the decision to
|
|
drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. For American soldiers
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|
there would be no repetition of the slaughter, twenty-seven
|
|
years before, in northern France.
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Clash of Ideologies
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Let me return to the experience of 1914-1918 and certain
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other of its consequences. The First World War began as a
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clash of empires. It ended amidst a clash of ideologies. One
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of these was liberal, democratic internationalism,
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propounded by its prophet, Woodrow Wilson. "The world must
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be made safe for democracy," he proclaimed in his address
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asking Congress to declare war. For many Americans the
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struggle became a transcendent contest, not between
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governments, but between principles: between democracy and
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autocracy, democracy and Prussianism, the principle of self-
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determination and the notion that "might makes right." "What
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we demand in this war," said Wilson in January 1918,
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"...is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the
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world be made fit and safe to live in; and particularly that
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it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like
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our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own
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institutions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by the
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other peoples of the world as against force and selfish
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aggression."
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After listing fourteen components of a just settlement
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(his soon-to-be famous "Fourteen Points"), the President
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concluded that a single transcendent principle undergirded
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them: "It is the principle of justice to all peoples and
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nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of
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liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong
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or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no
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part of the structure of international justice can stand."
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The current war, he declared, was "the culminating and final
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war for human liberty." Americans, he said, were ready to
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give everything to vindicate the principle for which they
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fought.
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In the words of Woodrow Wilson's preeminent biographer,
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the Fourteen Points address was "the single great manifesto
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of World War I." Here was a vision that seemed to redeem the
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frightful slaughter and beckon mankind to a truly better
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world. Not everyone was carried away by Wilson's eloquence,
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however. The crusty old French premier Clemenceau -- of whom
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it was said that he had one illusion (France) and one
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disillusion (mankind) -- was one. Of the Fourteen Points, he
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remarked, "The good Lord had only ten." Clemenceau and other
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Allied statesmen had their own, less lofty conceptions of
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what the postwar international order should become.
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Nevertheless, for a brief moment in late 1918 and 1919,
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Wilson was ac-claimed in much of Europe as a veritable
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secular savior of the world.
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Of course, we all know what happened next: Wilson failed
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to implement his vision. His compromises at the Versailles
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peace conference disillusioned much of the American Left.
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His abstract professorial universalism disturbed the
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American Right. Nevertheless, Wilson's fundamental principle
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of the self-determination of peoples remained potent. It
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became one of the enduring revolutionary legacies of World
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War I -- indeed, one of the catalytic doctrines of the
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twentieth century. (Just a few months ago it provided part
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of the rationale for the American liberation of Kuwait.)
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Unfortunately, not all the ideologies that emerged from
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the cauldron of the Great War were so altruistic in their
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intentions. Two of them, alas, were demonic. They were, in
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fact, ideologies not of peacemaking but of struggle.
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The first of these -- revolutionary Marx-ism -- was not
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new; it had been around for more than half a century. But in
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the hands of V.I. Lenin it now became more than a coffee
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house theory. Lenin had never been in the trenches. He had
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spent much of the war in exile in Switzerland plotting -- at
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the time it seemed futilely -- against the Czar. While he
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condemned the Great War as an imperialistic adventure and
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exploited weariness with it to the hilt, he had no aversion
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to violence per se. He merely sought a different kind of
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violence -- an international working class uprising against
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the bourgeoisie. Then, he believed, global harmony would
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come. Woodrow Wilson wanted the First World War to end war;
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Lenin wanted an even greater war first.
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Once he seized power, the Bolshevik leader implemented
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his conception of politics-as-war with all-encompassing
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ruthlessness. Long before he became master of Russia, he had
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said: "In principle we have never renounced terror and
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cannot renounce it." For Lenin only one question mattered:
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"We'll ask the man, where do you stand on the question of
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the revolution? Are you for it or against it? If he's
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against it, we'll stand him up against a wall." Let no one
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ever tell you that the Gulag Archipelago originated with
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Josef Stalin. Within months of the Bolshevik coup in
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November 1917, Lenin himself and his willing cohorts had
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created a secret police, had established embryonic
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concentration camps, and had instituted an unending wave of
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political executions. In January 1918 he personally ordered
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the departments of his government to "purge the Russian land
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of all kinds of harmful insects." This was not hyperbole; he
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meant it. By the time of his death in 1924, Lenin had
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willfully and remorselessly created an unparalleled system
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of internal warfare against his own people. And thus, out of
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the maw of the "the war to end wars," there arose a hideous
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new form of warfare: perpetual institutionalized terror
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against one's own citizens, even to the point of
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exterminating them. We now call it totalitarianism.
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In this connection, I will never forget a conversation
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that I had in graduate school with some fellow students, one
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of them a Marxist who resolutely defended the Soviet Union.
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Finally, an exasperated friend of mine asked: what about
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Stalin's liquidation of the kulaks, the enterprising
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peasants who were killed by the millions in the early 1930s?
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The Marxist replied simply: "They never should have existed
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as a class."
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Leninism was a beneficiary, though not a direct product,
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of the war in the trenches. To a significant degree, the
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other ideological demon unleashed by the war was. I refer,
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of course, to the phenomenon of Nazism. If for the Allies
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and the United States the ultimate lesson of the trench
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experience was "No more war," and if for Lenin and the
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Bolsheviks the lesson was "One more war," for Adolf Hitler
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the fundamental meaning of 1914-1918 was different. Unlike
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Lenin, Hitler had been a denizen of the trenches. For about
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four years he fought on the Western front and found the
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experience to be the most gratifying of his life. What was
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not satisfying to him was its ending.
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Historians have noted many similarities between
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Bolshevism and Nazism, and between their respective founding
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fathers. Like Lenin, Hitler was a revolutionary and a self-
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proclaimed socialist, although his variant was called
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"national socialism" rather than international. Like Lenin,
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Hitler was anti-Christian and totally without moral
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scruples. Like Lenin, he conceived of politics in military
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terms and instituted an apparatus of state violence never
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before seen on earth. But whereas for Leninists the meaning
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of existence was class struggle, for Nazis the engine of
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history was racial struggle. In short, and, again, as other
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historians have observed, Hitler's world view was a form of
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Social Darwinism -- the notion, put crudely, of "the
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survival of the fittest." For Hitler and his followers, the
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essence of social evolution was not economic but ethnic.
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We need not linger over the odious contents of Nazi
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ideology: the idea that Germans or "Aryans" were the "master
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race" who should dominate the world; that Slavs were
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inferior and must become slaves; that the German Volk needed
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lebensraum in the East, all the way to Iran; that the Jews
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(in Hitler's word) were "vermin" who must be destroyed. Nor
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need we do more than take note of the fact that for millions
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of German war veterans and others, Nazi symbolism -- the
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uniforms, the parades, the salutes, the flags, the
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regimented rallies at night -- recreated what was called
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"the community of the trenches." In a sense, Hitler wanted
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to renew World War I. But what deceived many in the West was
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the belief that all he wanted was to reverse the inequities
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of Versailles and to restore the German nation to prominence
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in Europe. Transfixed by the trench experience, many could
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not imagine that Hitler desired all that -- and much more.
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I do not wish to imply that the racism inherent in
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Hitler's brand of socialism was somehow peculiar to central
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Europe in the two decades between the world wars. Racial
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stereotyping was not new, nor was it confined to the Old
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World. Many Americans, for example, despised and
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discriminated against Japanese immigrants. Many Japanese
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boasted of their racial "purity," asserted their "divine
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mission" to rule over Asia, referred to the Chinese as
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"chinks," and yearned for the day when, as one of their
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admirals put it, they "could return Admiral Perry's visit."
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No, ethnic chauvinism was neither new nor localized. What
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was different after 1918 was that in a number of so-called
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"have-not" countries, attitudes of racial superiority become
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transmogrified into "armed doctrines" -- rationales for
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genocide and war without pity.
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The First World War, then, gave birth to the Ideological
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Age. Perhaps this outcome was inevitable in the aftermath of
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perceived civilizational collapse. Most political
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ideologies, after all, aim in some way to remake the world.
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What else but a "purified" world could erase the memory of
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the bloodletting of the Great War?
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In the movie Cabaret there is a chilling scene in which
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a fair-haired German youth sings to a crowd at an outdoor
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restaurant in the waning days of Weimar. As the camera
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turns, we see that he is wearing a Nazi uniform and swastika
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on his armband. He is cheerful. He is confident. His song
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ends with the words: "Tomorrow belongs to me." This, too,
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was part of the allure of the two evil ideologies that laid
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siege to Europe's soul after the Armistice. Yesterday, the
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war; today, corruption and shame; but "tomorrow belongs to
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me." This is the false promise of all totalitarians: that
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the future will atone for the crimes committed in its name.
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Conclusion
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This has been, of necessity, a somber lecture, and it
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has not been possible to consider all the intellectual and
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spiritual consequences of World War I. Other important
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phenomena of the period come to mind, such as the influence
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of wartime collectivism on the response of the United States
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and other countries to the Great Depression. Instead, my
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focus has been on the direct antecedents of World War II --
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specifically, the great currents of thought and sentiment
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that arose, at least in part, in reaction to the sense of
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futility and loss symbolized by trench warfare and the
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Versailles treaty: disillusionment, cultural despair, and
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pacifism among the war's winners; a "lost generation" and
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dreams of reprisal among the losers; a quest by military
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minds for alternatives to battlefield paralysis. And, in
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addition, three competing ideologies that attempted to
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interpret and transcend the war experience: liberal,
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democratic internationalism; Communism; and Nazism.
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In the Second World War these three would clash, and the
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guardians of two of them would join to defeat the third. But
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that is a story for others to tell. For now, let me close
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with a line from William Butler Yeats. In his poem, "The
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Second Coming," published just a few years after the
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Armistice, he asked:
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"And what rough beast, its hour come round at
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last/Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
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The First World War produced more than its share of
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"rough beasts." It has taken the rest of this century to
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subdue them.
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------------------------
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Historian George Nash's study of conservatism prior to the
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Reagan years, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in
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America Since 1945 (Basic Books, 1976, reissued in paperback
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by Harper & Row, 1979), has since become a standard
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reference for students, scholars and policymakers. While a
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research fellow at Harvard in 1973-74, he was co-editor of
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Province in Rebellion, a four-volume history of the coming
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of the American Revolution in Massachusetts, and in 1975 he
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was commissioned by the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library
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Association to prepare a definitive, multivolume biography
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of the former president. The Life of Herbert Hoover: The
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Engineer, 1874-1914 (W. W. Norton & Co.) was published in
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1983, and The Life of Herbert Hoover: The Humanitarian,
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1914-1917 (W. W. Norton & Co.) appeared in 1988. He is
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currently at work on a third volume. Dr. Nash's articles and
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reviews have appeared in such publications as the Wall
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Street Journal, National Review, the Journal of American
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History, Modern Age, the American Spectator, Continuity, the
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Catholic Historical Review, and Policy Review.
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###
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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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End of this issue of Imprimis, On Line; Information
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about the electronic publisher, Applied Foresight,
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Inc., is in the file, IMPR_BY.TXT
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