Essay topics

So, guys, what's up?  Terrible music or Talleyrand?

"Communism was one manifestation of a growing desire amongst the European people for stability and security."

HELLA NOT, BRO

According to Charlie, the people of Russia (and, more generally, some other Europeans) willingly sacrificed personal liberty so that they would have stability and security.  False false false!  Neither the Germans nor the Italians nor the Russians sat down together and voted to erase personal liberty in favor of some idea of personal and national security and safety.  Hitler achieved power legitimately, then consolidated it under his control, never once consulting the dudes.  Mussolini marched to Rome, was given the government, and took over from there, only to be bloodily murdered in a riot (hardly a dignified exit from office).  The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 came about because of a minority's violence, not the greater expression of the will of the people.  When Stalin came to power in the thirties, it was not immediately clear that he planned to cleanse the government of anybody remotely ethical or competent.  The dudes never decided!

Appeasement

Why is everyone so hard on appeasement?  It was totally a good idea, if you realize that nobody had any ideas about Hitler's real intentions of taking over the known world.  The imperative, the absolute necessity of preventing another war like the Great one was, in the thirties, vastly more important than, say, the long-term military defenses of Czechoslovakia.  Germany had (deservedly) already gotten a pretty raw deal with respect to the Treaty of Versailles, and Chamberlain probably felt, just as Hitler did, that Germany was taking back what was rightfully hers.  The idea that appeasement was spineless corresponds exactly to the puerile notion that a powerful, masculine approach to foreign policy is one that involves the deaths of millions.  It wasn't like there never was a war; when things got out of hand, England responded.  I don't fault them for waiting.

Repentant Nazis and the other kind

While the banal, platitude-spewing evil of Höss is worthy of disgust, Liz's response to Leigh's post reminded me of a New York Times article that I had seen recently about the Neo-Nazi problem in Passau that mentions the other kind of evil:  the unrepentant evil.  (Hitler apparently spent some amount of time in Passau, and, while this isn't exactly stressed on the government tourism website, this visit has made Passau a kind of Neo-Nazi Mecca.)  The article is about an outspoken opponent to the radical NPD, a far-right political party of sorts, who was recently stabbed in connection to his insistence that a recently-dead former Nazi be exhumed so that the swastika-flag illegally buried with him could be removed.  It first blows my mind that a former Nazi (who died within the last couple of years) is still motivated by whatever disgusting forces drove him to Nazism over fifty years ago, and it second blows my mind that there is even a percentage of crime in Bavaria that can be attributed to far-right groups; it seems like this is actually a problem.

Why World War I and World War II are really the same thing

We can agree that two wars are different only when they are fought by different countries over different things, and I posit that World War II, which was fought by substantially the same countries as World War I, was also fought over the same thing:  whether or not German nationalism could take over the world.

Apparently some people disagree with me (this guy mentioned something to that effect), i.e. those who put it that World War II was a referendum on fascism.  To this I say:  Fascism is first and foremost nationalistic, so we're not entirely in disagreement.  All of fascism's tenets--the individual's personal subjection in the face of the state, the all-powerful centralized government, the cult of the mass spectacle and the strong man, and even the comfortable things like free education--are nationalist in nature.  So, just as I posit that World War I came about almost entirely because of German nationalism, I posit that World War II broke loose under the strain of German (but also Italian) nationalism.

Some thoughts on the debate and fascism

For some reason there is a widespread misconception (here, for example) that there is some sort of trade-off between fascism and liberal democracy--that fascism offers stability, security, a sense of well-being, and economic, industrial, and political efficiency at some small cost to personal liberty, whereas liberal democracy offers the protection of individual liberties at the cost of all the rest.  This is a falsehood bred by a convenient simplification of either scheme of government!  Fascism is less stable in the long-term (but, granted, typically more stable in the short-term due to conscientious police-work) because it is not necessarily sanctioned by the people; fascism is less secure from outside pressure and war in the long-term because of its militant, nationalistic, and confrontational nature; fascism fails to give a long-term sense of well-being to its victims because parades really aren't everything; and finally, the economic, industrial, and political efficiency attributed to fascism is a fantasy.  Many democracies have mechanisms for quick, top-down (autocratic, almost) reform; usually it comes about that what is most needed is swept through the legislature by popular mandate.

On flexible allegiance

Liz, you said that the Spanish Civil War reminds you of the Greek war for independence in its proxy nature, and that makes me think (not to leap into the future or anything) of the Cold War. Someone remarked that in the Cold War we allied with the fascists to defeat the communists, just as we had previously allied (in World War II) with the communists to defeat the fascists.  Likewise, in the Spanish Civil War, all sorts of pinkos from the West rallied to the anti-fascist cause.  But how can Europe countenance such a flexible allegiance?

This is not such a polar swap of ideals for Europeans, though.  Just as the United States was preserving its interests by first allying with the communists and then the fascists, Europe was paralyzed by mutually exclusive national interests.  Italy, always the great hangers-on, had no problem leaning Socialist and then fascist and then allying with Hitler (but the tide turned again in the riots where Mussolini was killed).  Since 1871, the German national interest had been at odds with the rest of Europe, and Great Britain remained the enforcer of the antiquated Congress of Vienna.

More on fascism

To the democracy girls:

There aren't a lot of things upon which Mussolini and I agree, but I really don't see how periodically consulting the people makes a government more or less evil than one that doesn't.  Mussolini's dictatorship was ugly, but was it by virtue of it being fascist that it was ugly?  Andra leveled the charge of brainwashing, but that's just unfair.  Hitler, for example, was elected by popular vote; isn't that democratic?  In what way was anyone brainwashed?

On fascism and "Major Tom"

This opens me up to a lot of criticism, but I think I can define fascism as ultra-nationalist, authoritarian, anti-socialism.  Fascism is about individual subjugation, mob-driven furor, and, above all, the veneration of the state.  Fascism had an easy hold on already-nationalist Germany.  But, for all its abridged personal liberties, fascism is not about taking away individual happiness and stuff, as this man would have you believe.

I'm not sure why we're talking about points, but the point of any government is to last, bringing stability and security to its people, because these are essential to any chance of personal happiness.  To say that the goal of fascism is to "make the state as strong as possible," is unfair; more correct is to say that the goal of fascism is to create the foundation of a lasting happiness by instituting widespread reform that is only possible through having a strong government.  Italians weren't all like, "Man, I'm going to sacrifice some personal liberties for the sake of our national strength;" it wasn't a choice.  Italians wanted to finally move past sharing the dubious honor of "sick man of Europe" with Spain, and fascism seemed like the smooth move.  Fascists actually showed an inordinate amount of interest in the individual, what with the eight-hour work day and stuff.

D-Es-C-H

Liz:  butting in on your conversation with Leigh, I wish to add one unfortunately complicating dude:  Dmitri Shostakovich.  Although intellectuals were mostly survivors if they were openly pro-Stalin, Shostakovich managed to survive the entire ordeal (he lived from 1906-1975) while being openly anti-Stalin (to a degree).  Though sometimes lauded by the Soviet government (he received the Order of Lenin three times; he assisted in propaganda campaigns; and he went through periods of great praise, notably during WWII), he was and continues to be a symbol of the oppressed composer for musicians throughout the west.

Things were not all rosy for him in Russia; he was denounced twice publicly, once in a damning article in Pravda famously titled, "Muddle Instead of Music."  Unlike the other notable Soviet composer Prokofiev, who emigrated to France in the middle of his life, Shostakovich spent his entire life in Russia, and, unlike many of his close friends and colleagues, Shostakovich was never imprisoned or disappeared.

I have no idea what this says about Russian intellectuals.

Dear Cas,

In class you mentioned the whole "Was Stalin at all in any possible way even the smallest justified in his killing of millions?" thing.  When we all loudly voiced our disgust at the slightest possibility of Stalin being justified, you brought up two things:  1.  We all adopted somewhat Stalinish methods of advancing Russia into the twentieth century in our little groups, and 2.  Russia became industrialized under Stalin.

In response to the first, nowhere did we check the box, "Kill millions... because."  I know there are better sources for this but Solomon Volkov's Testimony indicates in a very personal (and somewhat suspect) way that Stalin's purges were motivated more by paranoia than political necessity.  So fearsome was the person of Stalin that his death in 1953 was undiscovered for days because his guards did not wish to disturb the great man.

In response to the second, Stalin did more to keep Russia in the feudal era than to advance it.  Although Russia was transformed into a country with factories and modern infrastructure, Russia was handicapped by the economic poison of socialization.  Also, Stalin did little to advance his country into the future by killing the workers and intellectuals that could bring real improvement to the country.

The great "Plan XVII" vs. the much-lauded Schlieffen one

A terrible plan!  Even though I just wrote a post giving Germany more crap for starting World War I and ruining the twentieth century for Europe, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal if the Schlieffen Plan (all in all, not a terrible plan) had succeeded.

It's a stretch to say that the Schlieffen Plan failed because it was altered at the last minute.  But it certainly didn't help.  Since the Schlieffen Plan relied entirely on the mobility and unstoppable might of a large force sweeping through northeastern France and encircling Paris, it was paranoia to fillet it, thereby severely hindering the chance of success on the Western front, in favor of defending from the Russians.  Not to get into the hypothetical game here, had Germany maintained diplomatic relations with Russia, the war could have been just another Franco-German conflict.  As it was, though, the Germans invaded Belgium, turned Britain against them, etc.

But why do I seem so certain of the success of the hypothetical Schlieffen Plan?  As it turns out, it was up against France's Plan XVII (described some here), which dictated, in what appears to be a horrible realization that France had no single technical advantage over Germany, that France's single best plan to repel the mighty force of the German assault was to run carelessly into the German lines, bayonets stained with Teutonic blood.  The Plan, predicated on the belief that all French soldiers were imbued with some sort of mysterious "élan vital" that made each Frenchman worth countless Germans, sounds laughable!  But maybe this élan vital really does exist, because it seems to have worked in repelling the Schlieffen-planned assault.

Leigh:

I know this is like going into the fossil record, but I'm a little behind, as you can see.  Getting on, with regards to your post concerning Moose-olini, I am all in agreement... mostly!  Your second paragraph seems to suggest that Mussolini was something of an opportunist, stepping in at the right time with what the people wanted.  I say, "This is not how things went."  (Or:  "Here follows a slight clarification of how things went.")

The thing that Mussolini lacked (though Hitler did not) was popular support.  The fascist movement was not a majority movement in Italy before it came to power; it was just the most violent.  Representing middle-class interests, the fascists had support from the relative minority of landowners, because at heart, though fanatically nationalist, I think the fascists can most easily be described as anti-Socialist.  Like the Bolsheviks, who, while once a majority, became an increasingly radical minority, the fascists succeeded in achieving power by virtue of the political limbo game, effortlessly going lower than everyone else.

Germany, what the hell?

Do you know who's responsible for World War I?  Germany!  Seriously, what the hell, Germany?

The book had this thesis it kept advancing about the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the "centrifugal" forces of nationalism that tore it apart.  Maybe so and maybe no, but it was the forces of German nationalism that tore Europe apart.  It's a peculiar fantasy to talk about the inevitability of the war, but it is clear in retrospect that Germany launched itself on a collision course with the world when it came into being at the beginning of 1871.  Initially upsetting the balance of power by the mere fact of its existence, Germany launched into a series of military campaigns that set the foundation for the entangling alliances that eventually pushed Europe to war.

And then the whole navy thing:  Was there a need?  We saw Wilhelm II's declaration of the nationalistic imperative to empire, but I believe I side with Bismarck when I say that Germany, being squarely in the middle of the continent, should maintain continental, rather than colonial, interests.  Also, the forces that shaped early twentieth-century Europe (i.e. the second industrial revolution) were not colonial by any means:  the explosion was in the direction of steel, chemicals, and electricity.  From the navy it all went downhill, with submarines and the alliance with Austria-Hungary and the whole invasion of Denmark.  Even the spark for the whole thing (the assassination of Franz Ferdinand) was nationalistically motivated.

Nationalism--German nationalism in particular--is  totally a problem:  it was this war that tore Europe apart, changing European ideas of humanity as well as thrusting Europe into the global background.  So, Germany, what the hell?

What I don't dig about Freud: I think he's kind of hokey (855-862)

Freud sounds like he was a pretty cool dude, what with all his challenges to man's conception of himself and stuff.  He was careful, original, and tried to explain previously mysterious phenomena (cases of hysteria and insanity in particular) by unifying his clinical observations in a sort of unified theory, a characteristic ambition of the nineteenth century.

On the other hand, Freud's hypotheses were not supported by a large amount of actual evidence; Freud had no actual insight into the human brain (or even the mechanism by which dreams are produced) when he declared dreams to be valuable glimpses of the unconscious.  (By contrast, in the book Phantoms in the Brain, the author, V.S. Ramachandran, a neuroscientist, notes that his study of phantom limbs has led him to the hypothesis that the surprisingly widespread foot fetish is linked to the structure of the brain, whereas Freud attributed sexual feelings about feet to their alleged phallic shape.)

A recent article in the Science Tuesday section of the New York Times, about the business of analyzing dreams, mentioned that dreaming subjects of the study tended to attach "more significance to a negative dream if it was about someone they disliked, and they gave correspondingly more weight to a positive dream if it was about a friend."  But these aren't pros! the astute reader might object.  One Dr. Morewedge (apparently a prominent psychologist) suggests that such a "motivated approach" is equally applicable to researchers as well as subjects, citing "Freud's tendency to find what he was looking for--sex--in his 'Interpretation of Dreams.'"