Subject: RE: BS: Christmas Truce (1914)
From:
Jim Carroll
Date: 04 Jan 14 - 04:47 AM
The complexity and range of the subject under discussion
I'm afraid it is rather large, which will, I know, cause difficulties for you, but....
Read as book - one of these discussed here maybe!!
Jim Carroll
Jay Winter, Antoine Prost. The Great War in History: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. viii + 250 pp. $28.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-61633-1.
Reviewed by Kevin Mason (Department of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
Published on H-German (April, 2006)
Different Generations' Perspectives of World War I
Jay Winter and Antoine Prost analyze a multitude of books on World War I written by French, British and German scholars in order to show patterns of themes and methods over time. The authors set themselves a daunting task, as their comparative study considers not only the work of historians, but also encompasses literary works, television shows, films and museums. The book's cover page has a picture of a cemetery with books as tombstones, portraying the countless numbers of books already written on the Great War. Even though most of the writings on the First World War focus on military, political and diplomatic history, the authors add social, cultural and economic history. The work presents a multi-disciplinary, multi-national and multi-methodological approach. Prost and Winter argue that books and films on World War I can be grouped into three different generations (pp. 1-5). The book, originally published in French, examines how seven major themes (diplomatic and economic histories and the histories of generals, soldiers, workers, civilians and memory) have been treated within this three-generation framework. Although the authors leave out some works, do not fully state the arguments of each historian, and force the history of memory and that of workers into a slightly uncomfortable framework, they offer an outstanding historiographical study.
Prost and Winter argue that three different generations interpreted the war within "three historiographical configurations" (p. 31). The first, which they have called the "Generation of 1935," understood events in a nineteenth-century context. These scholars emphasized the nation and wrote history from the top down. The second generation, which witnessed World War II, described the Great War as a "tragedy played out by powerful collective actors: soldiers, workers, civilians" (pp. 200, 203). Finally, the third generation has turned toward cultural history and micro-historical analysis. According to Winter and Prost, regardless of which generation historians belong to, three questions reoccur again and again: "Why and how did the war break out? How was it conducted; how was it won and lost? What were its consequences?" (p. 199).
As first-generation witnesses who wrote immediately after World War I until the 1930s, generals, diplomats and historians wrote the history of the war as a political and diplomatic problem. The key issue was "war guilt"--that is, who started the war. Key sources were diplomatic documents published by the belligerent powers immediately after the war. Winter and Prost maintain that the first generation wrote history from above, focusing on generals, politicians and diplomats but ignoring common soldiers. For example, the highly acclaimed French historian Pierre Renouvin, who wrote a thorough account of the Great War during the interwar period and who was himself wounded in combat, stated, "the evidence of soldiers, the consultation of which is important for the understanding of the atmosphere of battle, can rarely give information on the conduct of operations, since their field of vision was too narrow" (p. 14). This approach was also typical of scholars in Great Britain and Germany.
According to Prost and Winter, the second generation (whose members wrote during the latter half of the twentieth century) contributed to a dramatic increase in the number of books and historical reviews published. In particular, three French war veterans in the 1960s--Andre Ducasse, Jacques Meyer and Gabriel Perreux--reintegrated history from above with the experience of common soldiers and history from below. The second generation emphasized social issues and class conflict, as post-World War II events in Vietnam and Algerian influenced writing about World War I. Marxist historians in particular focused on the laboring classes, miners, workers and peasants. Television became a new medium that reached millions of people. In 1964, the BBC produced the first series on World War I in which viewers saw graphic images; a joint production from France and Germany soon followed. In Britain, A. J. P. Taylor's The First World War: An Illustrated History (1964) likewise used images to portray the war as a reckless waste.
The second generation from the 1960s to the early 1980s shifted its focus from the question of war guilt to war origins and war aims. Arno Mayer contended that after World War I governments replaced the old diplomacy of secret treaties and imperialism with a program of "new diplomacy" that included open diplomacy, freedom of trade, popular self-determination, armaments reduction and an international body that could mediate disputes. Critical to the discussion of war aims was the German historian Fritz Fischer, who in the 1960s asserted that Germany wanted and planned for World War I so that it could dominate Europe. James Joll blamed alliances and imperialism. French Marxists blamed imperialism and capitalism.
Prost and Winter argue that the shift from the second to the third generation involved a smooth switch in emphasis from social to cultural history. Winter and Prost use the term "Generation of 1992" to describe the third generation because in that year, the Historial de la grande guerre opened in Peronne. A French museum inaugurated during a conference on war and culture, it contains objects from France, Germany and Britain (pp. 28, 200, 203). The focus of the third generation was also more micro-historical than global; identity and memory became highly important. The transition is exemplified by the 1996 BBC series The Great War and the Shaping of the Twentieth Century, which focused on cultural themes, such as the ideas, behavior, memories and aspirations of soldiers. Scholars of the third generation include Paul Fussell, who wrote The Great War and Modern Memory (1975) and John Keegan, author of The Face of Battle (1976). Instead of considering origins of the war, writers of the third generation focused on problems with the peace settlement that caused another war. They asked, therefore, if the treaty with Germany was too harsh, too lenient or just not enforced. The British economist John Maynard Keynes was an early critic of the treaty, and he had maintained that Germany could never pay the high reparations that the Allies imposed. However, historians of the third generation--such as Gerald Feldman and Niall Ferguson--questioned Keynes's conclusions by arguing that Germany could indeed have paid. In addition, David Stevenson argued that because the Allies could not agree on the treaty enforcement, they severely weakened it. Margaret Macmillan and later Gerd Krumeich have criticized the peacemakers for not giving self-determination to non-whites, which led to unrest in Asia.
The authors also assert that military history fits into the three generations scheme. The central question military historians ask of the war is "who commanded and how?" Prost and Winter distinguish between three periods of military history: a "heroic" phase, a critical history of command and fragmented national histories (p. 59). The "heroic" period (the interwar era), mainly told the story of great men, such as Paul Painleve's book on Philippe Petain (1923), and great battles, like Gabriel Hanotaux's treatment of the Somme (1920). National identity heavily biased many of the writings of the first period. During the second period (1960s-70s), the focus shifted to the history of command. Historians critically analyzed the role of the commanders (Petain, Helmuth von Moltke, Erich Ludendorff) and the political leaders (Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, Lloyd George, Woodrow Wilson, Raymond Poincaré). Television series on World War I likewise shifted to a more realistic portrayal of the war. The result was a depiction of anger, frustration and stalemate. The Vietnam and Algerian wars led to a highly fragmented third phase of military history during the 1980s and 1990s and "new" military historians emerged. Some contended that command witnessed a "learning curve," but others asserted that leaders stubbornly repeated the same mistakes (pp. 79-80).
Regarding the military history of the "soldiers," the authors also contend that this particular aspect of military history has changed greatly over time and can be categorized into three main periods. First-generation historians of the Great War, like Renouvin, left out the soldiers and took a top-down approach. Petain had written about the French mutiny without focusing on the mutineers. After the 1960s, works of the second period emphasized the role of the soldiers and relied on soldiers' memoirs and accounts. Gabriel Perreux examined civilian life and Guy Pedroncini studied the soldiers involved in the French mutiny. Keegan's Face of Battle (1976) discussed the battlefield in terms of bombardments, plans and soldiers' behavior. Jean-Jacques Becker analyzed the mobilization of troops. More recent historians, of the third generation--such as John Fuller, John Horne and Alan Kramer, Jean-Yves Le Naour, Anne Lipp and Annette Becker--have examined cultural topics, such as leisure activities in the trenches; the social class of the soldiers; violence during war; the language of the soldiers' letters; sexual practices of the troops; wartime morale; and war culture.
According to Winter and Prost, the economic history of the Great War falls likewise falls into three historiographical generations. In the first period, scholars analyzed the leadership's economic policies. Keynes asserted that Germany could not pay the reparations. Besides reparations, another issue that concerned first generation historians was the legality of the Allied blockade. In the 1920s and 1930s the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace commissioned a series of books that argued that the war had ended the free market and replaced it with state price controls. Carnegie Endowment historians concluded that the blockade was vital in defeating Germany. In the 1960s and 1970s, the second generation emphasized the partnership between big industry, economic interest groups and the military. C. Wright Mills focused on "power elites"-- civilians in positions of power. In the 1960s, historians blamed Germany's defeat on its economic failures, namely its inability to supply its troops and civilians. The Allies won because they had much more efficient methods of distribution. Winter and Prost argue that the first generation of economic history was "public history," while in the 1960s economic history became "structural history" (pp. 115-116). Fischer is characteristic of the new trend in the 1960s in showing how the industry, military and navy collaborated in seeking war aims and influencing Germany's economic and war policies.
Third-generation scholars pursued a research agenda that combines the interests of the first two generations and examined the wartime economy as a complex system for distributing goods to the frontline and home front. In the 1980s and 1990s, the third generation emphasized "economic war aims and their international consequences" (p. 119). Kathleen Burk has examined how American and British global finances were used to fund the Allied war effort. Other third-generation historians have focused on the scientists and scientific advancements that occurred during the war, such as poison gas, Novocain and other new drugs. The French historian Olivier Lepick examined the chemist Fritz Haber and the British author Donald Richter also studied the role of chemists. In regard to the question of who actually won the economic war, historians of the third generation, like Gerald Feldman, maintained that inflation and economic misery occurred throughout Europe and was not restricted to the losers (pp. 119-123).
Unsurprisingly, then, the authors argue that the history of civilian population falls into three distinct generations. First, in the 1920s and 1930s civilians were seen simply as "masses" or pawns "mobilized, protected, or coerced" (p. 152). During the second generation, historians first became interested in the home front, with an emphasis on social unrest and revolution at the end of the war. Jürgen Kocka's Klassengesellschaft im Krieg (1973), on the social origins of German revolution, is one example. During the third phase, focus fell on the cultural history of the civilian population. Third-generation scholars turned to issues such as memory, "war cultures" and gender studies. One of the more fascinating works from the last group is Vejas Liulevicius's War Land on the Eastern Front (2000), which examines the German occupation of Poland and the Baltic during World War I. Liulevicius argues that already during this time a culture war was underway in which "superior" western views were forced onto "inferior eastern" peoples.
The history of memory and the history of workers during World War I have not gone through three fully developed phases and are exceptions to the authors' main thesis. Regarding workers and revolution, the authors state that the shift from the first to the second generation came later and that the third generation "exists only in a sketchy form" (p. 126). During the first generation from 1919-1965, the emphasis was on a political history of labor. In the 1920s, British historian Arthur Bowley wrote on prices, wages and mining. The first generation also examined the history of the Social Democrats in France, Germany, Great Britain and Russia. Marxist views heavily influenced authors writing in the 1960s, who often saw the Social Democrats as traitors to the revolution. Communism was a main focus of the first generation. The second generation (1965-2000) shifted from the politics of the labor movement to social history. Authors focused on new themes, including strike activity, trade unions and women in the workforce. There has been a modest drive toward more cultural history of labor, focusing on such things as mentalities of the workers, workers' pacifism and reformist aspirations.
Furthermore, the history of memory only fits into two historiographic periods rather than three. During the first period from 1918 to 1970, memory was dominated by the veterans of the war. The memory of combatants was a mostly male sphere. Great leaders, like Winston Churchill and Ludendorff, published most of the memoirs. During the second period (1970-2000), most of the survivors of World War I had died and memory work shifted to commemoration. Recent themes of the second period have included the mentality of the troops, shell shock and psychological disorders.
Winter and Prost offer a breathtaking and extensive study of World War I that includes books and films. Even though (as they themselves admit) the authors cannot possibly cover every single book ever written on the Great War, they cover the most important ones. There are some omissions. The authors acknowledge Samuel R. Williamson's argument that no one had predicted the collapse of Austria-Hungary before World War I and that Austrian domestic and foreign policies were closely related, but they do not restate his claim that Austria-Hungary was most responsible for beginning the war because of its preventive war against Serbia.[1] Nor do they discuss Paul Kennedy's argument that economic factors motivated the Anglo-German antagonism.[2] Overall, however, the book is a very well written, well researched, and interesting study--a must read for advanced history students who are interested in a comparative analysis of World War I or preparing for comprehensive exams. This book should serve as a model for a similar study of World War I books and films in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
Notes
[1]. Samuel R. Williamson, Jr., Austria-Hungary and the Origins of the First World War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991).
[2]. Paul Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860-1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980; 2nd ed., 1996).
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