New Books In History

I was a little kid during the Vietnam War. It was on the news all the time, and besides my uncle was fighting there. I followed it closely, or as closely as a little kid can. I never thought for a moment that “we” could lose. “We” were a great country run by good people; “they” were a little country run by bad people. I spent my time building models of American tanks, planes, and ships. I read a lot of “Sergeant Rock” and watched re-runs of “Combat.” My friends and I played “war” everyday after school. Given all this, you’ll understand that I was bewildered when “we” pulled out of Vietnam. How could “we” lose the war when “we” were bigger, better, and righter? It made no sense. All this came to mind as I read Andrew Donson terrific book Youth in the Fatherless Land: War Pedagogy, Nationalism, and Authority in Germany, 1914-1918 (Harvard UP, 2010). As Andrew points out, German children were taught that their nation was great, their cause was just, and their victory inevitable. Their heads were full of heroic tales of soldiers sacrificing themselves for the good of Germany, and they longed to fight for the Vaterland themselves. So when things began to come apart in 1917, Germany’s young people were deeply disappointed. They would not “get their chance.” Rather, they would suffer hunger, humiliation, and defeat. They had hard questions for their mothers, fathers, and the authorities. How could it happen? Who is at fault? And, most importantly, what should we do? As we know, they answered this final question in different and, as it turned out, radical ways.

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Tags: 20th Century, Censorship, Children, Culture, Education, Fiction, Germany, Ideology, Imperialism, Literature, Militarism, National Identity, Nationalism, Nazis, Pedagogy, Propaganda, Prussia, Publishing, Schools, Teachers, War, World War I, Youth Movements by Marshall Poe
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Most people know what “appeasement” is. You know, the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi Anschluss with Austria, the Sudeten Crisis, Neville Chamberlain, “Peace in Our Time.” The Western democracies went (as Margaret Thatcher might have said) all “wobbly” on Fascism, with tragic results. But not everyone was fooled by the Fascists. Socialist and Communist parties all over the world recognized it as a dire threat as early as the 1920s, and they never wavered in this conviction (until the Molotov-Ribbontrop Pact, of course). So as much as we might want to blame the radical left for the many woes of the twentieth century, we should remember to give credit where credit is due. Joel Lewis does in his illuminating new book Youth Against Fascism: Young Communists in Britain and the United States, 1919-1939 (VDM, 2007). In the book, Joel tells the story of the communist youth movement in the UK and US. It’s a fascinating topic, and one that is little understood. Of particular interest is Joel’s excellent treatment of the transition from the Leninist generation of communists (1917-1933) to the Popular Front generation (1934-1941). The switch from the one to the other has too often been seen as entirely directed by Moscow. Joel tells a slightly different tale, one in which pressure from below among young communists played an important role in creating the Popular Front. It’s too bad this pressure wasn’t strong enough to convince the right and center parties to take Hitler more seriously than they did. If they had, World War II might have been avoided. (By the way, the Young Communist League is still around if you want to fight Fascism. And who doesn’t?)

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Tags: 20th Century, Anti-Fascism, Bolsheviks, Capitalism, Communism, Fascism, Foriegn Policy, Historiography, Hitler, Ideology, Intellectuals, Lenin, Nationalism, Nazis, Popular Front, Radicalism, Russia, Socialism, Stalin, Trotsky, War, World War I, World War II, Youth Movements by Marshall Poe
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