Download A Culture of Death: The Last Year of the War

HSB-54/H1890E
Sept. 19, 2006
COURSE INTRODUCTION: HOW SHOULD WE THINK ABOUT THE SECOND WORLD WAR?
THE WAR AS VIOLENCE:
Some stats.: U.S. losses in Iraq: <3,000 to date; 58,000 in Vietnam, 110,000 in WW I,
>300,000 in WW II. Russia’s losses, perhaps >20,000,000; Germany’s perhaps 4,000,000.
WW I: 9-10m dead of which 80% or more were combat deaths. WW II: perhaps 4050m dead, of which about 50 percent non-combat deaths. Genocide, famine, aerial bombing
take huge roll.
If violent death in the 20th century = approximately 180m, 25% of those died in World
War II. See Matthew White’s website: <http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm>
THE WAR IN SPACE: WAR AND EMPIRE:
WWI: the culmination of a particular state form: “Empire” (generally authoritarian rule
over different “nations” or ethnically aware groups.) Newer overseas empires (Britain, France,
US) vs. old landed empires (Russia, Austria-Hungary), Ottoman Empire (Turkey and midEast). Breakdown of these latter and rivalry of the former interact (Germany both new and
old). Alliance system and crisis mismanagement lead to War.
We think of WWI and Versailles settlement as destroying the old empires (Ottomans,
Russians, Habsburgs or Austrian-Hungarian – along with 1911 end of Qing empire) and
establishing principle of nationality. But in fact, WWII also an imperial conflict – Britain and
Dutch in Pacific vs. Japanese and French, British, vs. Germans; and two new superpowers
ready to assume empire-like scale (U.S. and USSR).
THE WAR IN TIME: ONE WAR IN TWO? FOUR WARS IN ONE?
One War in Two? Relation of World War II (1937/39-45) to World War I (1914-1918): A
Thirty-Year War of the Twentieth Century?? German problem in both wars: Japanese ambition
and challenge throughout both wars; rise of the United States and Soviet Union to world power
through both wars – both speaking for anti-imperial ideologies.
But: scope and violence of WW I vs. WW II. Extent of fighting and theaters. A war of
offensives (WWII) vs. a “defensive” war (WW I); sea power and air power in WW II.
A sense of fatality vs. sense of choice (WWI vs. WW II). Issues of inevitability.
Four Wars in One? WW II best seen in terms of four overlapping wars:
(1) WWI resumed: Germany vs. Britain and France for continental hegemony
(September. 1939-June 1940);
(2) Ideological Total War (Germany vs. Soviet Union, June 22, 1941-May 9, 1945); the
US. vs. Germany (Dec. 11, 1941-May 8, 1945). Far huger in manpower and resources;
Holocaust takes place within this war. Democracy and Communism vs. Nazism/Fascism;
(3) The Pacific War: Japanese-Chinese war, 1931/37-45 and Anglo-American-Japanese
War. Who controls China? Who inherits European imperial possessions in Far East?
(4) The War for the German or Japanese Succession, 1943-45: Civil war between the
Resistance and Collaborators; or between Communist and Non-Communist Resistance and
Collaborators. Outcome crucial for control of Europe and Asia.
HSB-54/H1890E; 9/21/06
Prof. Charles Maier
War and Empires: Old, Aspiring, Reluctant
Return to the turn of the twentieth century and the “state system.”
What was taken for granted? Darwinist premises: states competitive; peoples/races varied in
their capacity for statehood and governance; “nation-states” had a claim on their young males
– conscription on the continent; alliances had become necessary – From the balance of power
with Britain as “swing” to balance of two opposing blocs: end of Britain’s “splendid isolation”
and the Central Powers (1879 on) vs. the Entente Cordiale (1904) and Triple Entente (1907).
Changes in the late l9th century: Unification of Germany (was it “satiated” or not?); multinational empires vulnerable to disintegrative pressures (Ottomans and Austria-Hungary in
particular).
Two forms of empire: “Old,” agglutinative – Russia, Austria-Hungary, Ottomans, China.
Governed continguous territories and relatively authoritarian (bureaucratic and military).
“New” overseas empires – could be democratic (strong parliaments) at home though not
abroad. “New” overseas empire – French in North Africa and Indochina, Dutch in Indonesia,
British as largest, emerging Japanese and Americans, in uncontested Caribbean. Germany as
both “new” and “old”: African territories, and influence in Ottoman empire.
Industrial might changing the calculus of power: Germany overtaking Britain; US overtaking
all others; Russia and Japan emerging. Technological changes – railroad nets being completed;
instantaneous communication; iron and steel ships with improved gunnery; the airplane;
machine gun.
Contending Strategic Ideas: Admiral Alfred Mahan (“Influence of Sea Power on History”) and
new navalism. Dominance of seas crucial – major impact on Britain and US. But what sort of
ships? from cruisers to battleships (and after WWI to aircraft carriers). New role of submarines.
Naval rivalries – German decision to build “capital ships” 1898 on. Geopolitics: focus on
domination of continental land masses (“the great Eurasian landmass” and control of “the
heartland” through armies and industrial development): Halford Mackinder, Friedrich Ratsel,
later Albrecht Haushofer. Army increases: Germany 1893, 1913; French 3-year service, 191213. German two-front dilemma amswered by so-called “Schlieffen Plan” but fear of Russian
railroads. Both sides feel time against them.
Sites of crises: Where new, ambitious empires contend (Morocco, 1905, 1911), and coastal
China (Sino-Japanese War 1895; European enclaves 1842 on, 1897 in Shandong),
Korea/Manchuria (leading to Russo-Japanese War, 1904). Where old empires subject to
disintegrative pressures (Ottomans in Balkans, 1875-78, Austria-Hungary and emerging
nationalisms: problem of ambitious Serbia; Bosnian crisis 1908-9; Balkan wars, 1912-13).
Failure to manage the fourth Balkan crisis (and “third” Balkan war) in l9l4. From
assassination in Sarajevo, 6/28/14 to declarations of war 6/ World War I as result of
intersecting rivalries between old empires and newer empires – mutually connected through
alliance systems .
Issue of responsibility or “war guilt.” Serbia because of state-sponsored terrorism? Germany
because of strong support for A-H? Austria because of ultimatum 7/25 and then declaration of
war on Serbia 7/28? Russia because first power to mobilize, 7/29-30? Germany for declaration
of war on Russia 8/1? And on France 8/3? And invasion of Belgium 8/4 which gives Britain
excuse to enter war on side of France? France because of failure to restrain Russia? Britain for
not clarifying it would enter war and perhaps not deterring Germany in time????
Toward “total war” (Gen. Ludendorff’s phrase) and ideological war.
Failure of short-war expectations: trench warfare on the western front. Why repeated
bloody offensives? Logic of two-front warfare. Failure of “end runs” in Greece and
Dardanelles and Mesopotamia.
Growth of territorial ambitions: German plans for annexations and their supporters;
British-French plans to partition Ottoman empire and to recover Alsace-Lorraine.
Entry of Italy (1915), Russian revolutions (March & November l9l7), United States
(April 1917) and transformation into an ideological war. Wilson’s role and Lenin’s. War
weariness, and the sudden German collapse – why??
A great victory? German republic; dissolution of Austria-Hungary; … Or a failure to resolve
underlying problems?
(Next: Versailles, Riga, Washington Lausanne, Locarno – the postwar treaties and their
weakness…)
HSB-54/H1890E, 9/26/06
Prof. Charles Maier
The Shadow of World War I:
Postwar Settlements and their Vulnerability
FROM LAST LECTURE:
Nineteenth-century developments -- the nation-state system; emergence of bipolar alliance
system; mass conscription, railroads and industrialization; social Darwinist premises,
imperialism. Navalism and geopolitics; Anglo-British naval rivalry; German-Franco/Russian
army buildups. The crises of l905-1914 (Morocco 1905, 1911, the Balkans, 1908-09, 1912,
1913), and their danger.
Sarajevo and the Balkans: A mismanaged crisis: from the” third” Balkan war to World War I.
Issue of responsibility (See notes from last time).
Toward “total war.” Battle of the Marne (Sept. 1914); trench stalemate (Somme and Verdun
1916); Russian collapse and Bolshevik Revolution; entry of the United States (1917).
Exhaustion of home fronts. German war effort unravels – revolutions in Germany and AustriaHungary; armistice.
“LESSONS” TO BE DRAWN FOR THE PEACE SETTLEMENT
Wilson’s Lessons: the “old diplomacy” (balance of power) had failed to keep the peace.
Democracies were peaceful; autocracies were militarist. Collective Security (the League of
Nations would assure the peace. Therefore reintegrate Germany as a democratic state. But
Wilson’s influence a diminishing asset in Europe and disavowed at home.
Clemenceau’s Lessons: Germany was an ambitious state no matter what her regime. She must
be unilaterally disarmamed and diminished as a security threat. Would the new German
Republic be aggressive? Still preponderant in size. But if the Allies were too tough would
communist revolution move west from Russia (Hungary, Bavaria)? Clemenceau not strong
enough to hold Rhineland forever; wins temporary occupation and supposed U.S. alliance,
which is never ratified.
Lloyd George’s lesson: Make peace quickly and conveniently. Don’t let Britain become
committed to enforcing Clemenceau’s treaty. Protect British interests in the Middle East and
avoid entanglement in Eastern Europe.
THE TREATY “ORDER” OF THE 1920S AND ITS VULNERABILITY
NEGOTIATING THE VERSAILLES TREATY: (spring/summer 1919):
(i) disarmament (100,000 army; limited navy; prohibition on air force; demilitarized
Rhineland and occupation on west bank of Rhine), supposed commitment to general
disarmament;
(ii) territorial cessions (Danzig and Polish corridor, implicit in commitment to reestablishing Poland) and plebiscites (esp. Upper Silesia, 1921);
(iii) reparations & Art.231, "war guilt clause." The “Diktat” or imposed peace.
Reaction on right: feelings of betrayal, stab in the back. Rise of paramilitary politics
and fascism (Hungary, Italy, Germany).
Dilemmas of Treaty: Germany neither reconciled, nor decisively weakened;
remains the most massive power; Bolshevik Russia as powerful “rogue state”; Treaty
thus requires continuing Anglo-French unity on enforcement or rapid revision.
RIGA (1921): Ends the Russo-Polish war of l920-21 and defines boundaries of new
Soviet Union excluding much of western Ukraine and White Russia (Belarus); Bolsheviks
remain in power, and “white” armies withdrawn.
SEVRES (1920) with Ottoman Sultanate reducing it to non-European Turkish territory
and Constantinople; British-Greek protectorate in western Anatolia; nationalist reaction under
Kemal Ataturk  Treaty of LAUSANNE, 1923 (Greco-Turkish population exchange). Still,
Ottoman and German possessions remained partitioned between France and Britain.
WASHINGTON TREATIES 1921-22 (East Asian settlement)
DAWES PLAN (1924) diminishes reparations after crises of l921-23 including French
occupation of Ruhr territory and German hyperinflation, and opens way for U.S. private
investment in Central Europe;
LOCARNO TREATIES (1925)—British and Italians guarantee German-French-Belgian
borders. French, in effect, renounce unilateral intervention across Rhine. But what if Germans
“remilitarize” Rhineland?? And what about German-Polish border??
HOPES AND DANGERS:
Franco-German reconciliation 1925-30 under Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann;
Germany accepted into League of Nations; growth of pacifist feelings; prosperity of late l920s;
reparations issues seems solvable.
Revived colonial systems (as Mandates under League of Nations) play implicit role in
stabilizing Europe – what happens if colonial possessions become restive??
But…System hostage to prosperity continued democratic order in Germany. Italy
already fascist. Advent of world economic crisis (Stock market crash 1929; growing mass
unemployment) and political radicalism. Divergent British and French responses. Death of
Stresemann fall 1929 and new nationalist tone in Germany even before Hitler. German
authoritarian cabinets l930-32; Nazi electoral successes; Hitler named as Chancellor, Jan.
1933. Does Hitler mean war?
HSB-54/H1890E, 9/26/06
Prof. Charles Maier
The Shadow of World War I:
Postwar Settlements and their Vulnerability
FROM LAST LECTURE:
Nineteenth-century developments -- the nation-state system; emergence of bipolar alliance
system; mass conscription, railroads and industrialization; social Darwinist premises,
imperialism. Navalism and geopolitics; Anglo-British naval rivalry; German-Franco/Russian
army buildups. The crises of l905-1914 (Morocco 1905, 1911, the Balkans, 1908-09, 1912,
1913), and their danger.
Sarajevo and the Balkans: A mismanaged crisis: from the” third” Balkan war to World War I.
Issue of responsibility (See notes from last time).
Toward “total war.” Battle of the Marne (Sept. 1914); trench stalemate (Somme and Verdun
1916); Russian collapse and Bolshevik Revolution; entry of the United States (1917).
Exhaustion of home fronts. German war effort unravels – revolutions in Germany and AustriaHungary; armistice.
“LESSONS” TO BE DRAWN FOR THE PEACE SETTLEMENT
Wilson’s Lessons: the “old diplomacy” (balance of power) had failed to keep the peace.
Democracies were peaceful; autocracies were militarist. Collective Security (the League of
Nations would assure the peace. Therefore reintegrate Germany as a democratic state. But
Wilson’s influence a diminishing asset in Europe and disavowed at home.
Clemenceau’s Lessons: Germany was an ambitious state no matter what her regime. She must
be unilaterally disarmamed and diminished as a security threat. Would the new German
Republic be aggressive? Still preponderant in size. But if the Allies were too tough would
communist revolution move west from Russia (Hungary, Bavaria)? Clemenceau not strong
enough to hold Rhineland forever; wins temporary occupation and supposed U.S. alliance,
which is never ratified.
Lloyd George’s lesson: Make peace quickly and conveniently. Don’t let Britain become
committed to enforcing Clemenceau’s treaty. Protect British interests in the Middle East and
avoid entanglement in Eastern Europe.
THE TREATY “ORDER” OF THE 1920S AND ITS VULNERABILITY
NEGOTIATING THE VERSAILLES TREATY: (spring/summer 1919):
(i) disarmament (100,000 army; limited navy; prohibition on air force; demilitarized
Rhineland and occupation on west bank of Rhine), supposed commitment to general
disarmament;
(ii) territorial cessions (Danzig and Polish corridor, implicit in commitment to reestablishing Poland) and plebiscites (esp. Upper Silesia, 1921);
(iii) reparations & Art.231, "war guilt clause." The “Diktat” or imposed peace.
Reaction on right: feelings of betrayal, stab in the back. Rise of paramilitary politics
and fascism (Hungary, Italy, Germany).
Dilemmas of Treaty: Germany neither reconciled, nor decisively weakened;
remains the most massive power; Bolshevik Russia as powerful “rogue state”; Treaty
thus requires continuing Anglo-French unity on enforcement or rapid revision.
RIGA (1921): Ends the Russo-Polish war of l920-21 and defines boundaries of new
Soviet Union excluding much of western Ukraine and White Russia (Belarus); Bolsheviks
remain in power, and “white” armies withdrawn.
SEVRES (1920) with Ottoman Sultanate reducing it to non-European Turkish territory
and Constantinople; British-Greek protectorate in western Anatolia; nationalist reaction under
Kemal Ataturk  Treaty of LAUSANNE, 1923 (Greco-Turkish population exchange). Still,
Ottoman and German possessions remained partitioned between France and Britain.
WASHINGTON TREATIES 1921-22 (East Asian settlement)
DAWES PLAN (1924) diminishes reparations after crises of l921-23 including French
occupation of Ruhr territory and German hyperinflation, and opens way for U.S. private
investment in Central Europe;
LOCARNO TREATIES (1925)—British and Italians guarantee German-French-Belgian
borders. French, in effect, renounce unilateral intervention across Rhine. But what if Germans
“remilitarize” Rhineland?? And what about German-Polish border??
HOPES AND DANGERS:
Franco-German reconciliation 1925-30 under Aristide Briand and Gustav Stresemann;
Germany accepted into League of Nations; growth of pacifist feelings; prosperity of late l920s;
reparations issues seems solvable.
Revived colonial systems (as Mandates under League of Nations) play implicit role in
stabilizing Europe – what happens if colonial possessions become restive??
But…System hostage to prosperity continued democratic order in Germany. Italy
already fascist. Advent of world economic crisis (Stock market crash 1929; growing mass
unemployment) and political radicalism. Divergent British and French responses. Death of
Stresemann fall 1929 and new nationalist tone in Germany even before Hitler. German
authoritarian cabinets l930-32; Nazi electoral successes; Hitler named as Chancellor, Jan.
1933. Does Hitler mean war?
HSB-54/H1890E 10/03/06
Prof. Charles Maier
Adversaries, Phase I: Hitler’s Strategy
I. FROM LAST LECTURE
(1) INTERPRETING HITLER’S EARLY FOREIGN POLICY: end of disarmament talks; Nonaggression pact with Poland. (A.J. P. Taylor’s arguments of 1960). Anglo-German Naval
Agreement 1935 (Germany accepts 40% UK naval tonnage).
(2) ALLIED CONFUSIONS: Manchuria, 1931. French commitment to defensive military
strategy – Maginot Line. Domestic politics as a determinant of security policy. Left and Right
exchange foreign policies – the Left calls for rearmament and collective security; the Right
afraid of the Soviet Union and domestic communism. Politics of the Third Republic: French
turmoil in depression, scandals and the Paris demonstrations of Feb. 6, 1934. The Spanish
Republic: victory of conservatives 1934 and revolt of l934. Fear of Fascism. Crackdown on
left and formation of Left coalitions, now supported by Communists. VIIth Congress of
Communist International: the Soviet Union will support rearmament and the encouragement of
“Popular Fronts” (electoral coalitions of 1935-36). Franco-Soviet Pact by Feb.1936; but no
real defence planning but undercuts demilitarized status of Rhineland, into which Germans
march on 3/7/36. Popular Front coalitions in Spain and France, the growing climate of
violence. The French Right calls for appeasement and encouragement of Italian alliance while
Italy prepares to invade independent kingdom of Ethiopia (Abyssinia). British Tories under
Stanley Baldwin shy from arms expenditures.. Generals’ uprising in Spain July 1936. Léon
Blum and the French Popular Front yield to British passivity – “Non-Intervention
Agreement.” Abandonment of Spanish Republic. Italian aspirations; German calculations
(Hossbach Memorandum 1937 and multiple contingencies: war by 1943/45).
(3) BRINGING GERMANS “HOME TO THE REICH”: The Destruction of Austrian independence:
Dolfuss and the Nazi coup attempt of July 1934; Mussolini from l934 via 1935 “Stresa Front”
(meeting with French and British after announcement of German conscription) to the RomeBerlin Axis via Ethiopia; Schussnigg and the effort to appease Hitler; isolation; plebiscite and
Anschluss (annexation) March l938.
(4) HITLER AND CZECHOSLOVAKIA. From Baldwin to Neville Chamberlain (Anthony Eden
out in early l938). Benes agrees not to invoke French alliance. Munich agreement fall 1938:
“Peace in our Time.” Arguments for and against Munich, Czecho-Slovakia. Crisis of March
15, 1939: Incorporation of Bohemia and Moravia (the Czecho- half) into the “Great German
Reich.” Slovakia as vassalized republic. British extend guarantee to Romania and to Poland.
Meanwhile changes in Eastern Europe: British-French influence ebbs after Rhineland.
Dictatorships in Baltic republics, Hungary moves toward Germany; Greek dictatorship under
Metaxis; Romania under king and then Marshall Antonescu (vs. Iron Guard).
(5) Poland and the Danzig crisis: What did Hitler want? How did he plan to get it?
Polish “Colonels” (Sanjaca). Col. Beck – the Soviet Union as long-term adversary.
Announcement of Non-Aggression Pact; last minute negotiations. “Die for Danzig?”
The
II. HITLER’S STRATEGY:
CONCEPT OF STRATEGY – Strategy vs. Tactics; strategy as enabling concept; strategy as
maximization given constraints.
(1) What were constraints on Germany. (a) Relative weakness as of l936, l938. French
military superiority on land; relative aircraft balance; relative armor situation. Weaknesses of
German armor, but better “doctrine” for use. Britain hard to subjugate, but Britain not decisive
on continent and hoarded air power. (b) Sources of opposition at home – Generals as source of
resistance?? But Hitler’s growing control over army 1934 (when he becomes “Führer and
demobilizes Storm Troopers) to l938 when he installs pliable generals and becomes his own
commander-in-chief. Would generals have removed Hitler? (c) Ultimate strategy – selfconfidence, knowledge of opponents’ weakness.
(2) Long-term economic balance potentially against Germany -- if US supports France and UK.
But American isolationist legislation and Soviet neutrality (and access to Soviet raw material).
Economic considerations secondary – moral issues first in his mind.
III. THE WAGER OF 1940:
(1) “Phoney War,” 1939-40. French and British Right seem as concerned by Finnish
plight against Soviet Union (Finns lose Karelia in Russo-Finnish War). “Bombs for Baku?”
Daladier and the effort to govern from the right.
(2) The Scandinavian calculus: Norwegian shipping and Swedish steel. Germans preempt British on April 10. Fall of Chamberlain government by May 10. Need for a national
coalition with Labour and advent of Churchill.
(3) Invasion in West. Low countries, May 10. French and German battle plans. Did
France have to lose?? Theories: (a) “Pertinax” – grave diggers of France. Inner rot leads to
surrender. Evidence from after the fact: i.e. formation of Vichy. Or (b) Military catastrophe:
French still have more men and tanks available. Weygand’s errors. Military/Intelligence
failure. German change of tactics to “Sickle Cut.” (third version of Plan Yellow: tank and air
deployments south east of British and French through hilly Ardennes, due West.. As in 1914
French guess wrong and set off in wrong direction – but in 1914 they regrouped for a decisive
battle on the Marne. German intentions not understood in time. Compartmentalization of
intelligence (cf. reports about 9/11).
(4) Other options in late June: a government of national defense in Bordeaux and
Algeria? Instead: Pétain as savior and toward the New Order, summer-fall l940. The impact
of Mers-el-Kebir; the left, the Jews, perfidious Brits had pressed a war onto France.
HSB-54/Hist.1890E
Oct. 5, 2006
Adversaries, Phase I: Churchill’s Strategies
I. CHURCHILL’S OPTIONS:
(1) Resources and dangers:
1) organization of economy (aircraft production up: 315 fighters by May l940,
446 in June, c.485 each in July and August -- exceeded pilot supply: 1450 in l939 + 50/week.)
(Germans had l0,000 pilots but producing only 230 fighters/mo.)
2) Geographical advantages/disadvantages. 50 percent of food imported.
Shipping crunch to come in l94l and early l942. (Losses = 222 ships or 755,000T in l939, 1059
ships and 4mT in l940, l300 ships and 4.33mT in l941.)
3)Contributions of dominions: NZ, Australia, Canada, S. Africa, India.
4) Hitler's ambivalence toward British Empire; peace offers; partial decision for
invasion: "Sealion." Recognizes that invasion requires air supremacy -- elimination of British
bombers (which would hit German naval forces) and therefore of fighters too.
(2) Alternatives: 1) compromise peace – what were arguments (October 38).for
accepting it?? 2) indefinite standoff. For survival U.S. economic help required. Destroyer deal
(for convoying) and Lend Lease. 3) Victory? Could there be victory without U.S. or Russia?
Could Russia survive if attacked? Could FDR bring in the US? Compromise bluff: "Give us
the tools and we will finish the job." Difference from Chamberlain in acceptance of American
role. Cultivation of Roosevelt.
(3) Long-term objectives and alternatives: preserving "Empire." Japanese threat in East
-- but had to be tackled second. Centrality of Mediterranean conception (Egypt-Suez).
Concern with Greece and Crete. Counterattacks against Italy from Egypt to Libya (l940), but
reversed by Rommel, spring l941. Help with defense of Greece vs. Italy, but lost to Germans
April l941; reinforcement of Crete, but surrender of island to Germans in late May. Continuous
preoccupation with Mediterranean (N. Africa, Sicily and Italy, Greece) throughout war even at
cost of delay in second front.
II. BATTLE OF BRITAIN: "Battle" proper vs. subsequent "blitz." Rough fighter parity: 600
available Hurricanes and Spitfires each day vs. 800 Messerschmidt 109s (limited fuel for escort
and combat). Germans had up to 1300 two engine bombers. Radar (developed l935-39 with 50
Chain Home stations installed) and "ultra," vs. Knickbein.
Germans go from anti-RAF to city-bombing strategy: (1)Channel Battle from July l0;
(2)full engagements from "Eagle Day" 8/13-23; (3)attack on airfields and factories 8/24-9/6 -the most successful offensive in toll of planes and pilots; (4)attack on London 9/6-30
(continuous daylight raids in effort to smoke out British fighters but with major German defeat
on 9/15); night raids to "end" of battle on 10/30. Night blitz thereafter through spring l941
(Coventry). Sealion postponed on Oct. 12 until at least spring l941.
Historical Studies B-54
10, 2006
JAPANESE STRATEGY AND CONQUESTS
Oct.
I. Background:
1. Catching up with West: Meiji "Restoration" l867-8. Modernization and national
independence as goals; govt. sponsored industrialization; limited role for parliament and
parties; army and naval chiefs as ministers.
2. Imperialist aspirations: Sino-Japanese War, l894-95, gains Formosa; Anglo-Japanese
alliance, l902; rivalry with Russians over Korea and Russo-Japanese War, l904-5. Annexation
of Korea l9l0. WWI as opportunity: the "21 demands" of l9l5" vs. China; Japan backs down
but retains Tsingtao at Versailles.
3. From "liberalism" and cooperation in the l920's to growing nationalism and
authoritarianism in the l930's. Washington Conference l921-22: naval limitation treaty (5-5-3
tonnage ratio). But: role of depression on army; concern with Chiang's reunification of China in
late l920's. Young officers' unrest and occupation of Manchuria: made into puppet state of
Manchukuo. Kwangtung Army; murder of prime minister 5-15-32. Japan quits League l933;
Tokyo army mutiny, Feb. 36; denounces naval limits l936; military consolidate control in late
l930's.
II. The Chinese War
(1) Marco Polo Bridge, 7/7/37. Bombing of Shanghai; "rape" of Nanking (Nanjing);
Chiang Kai-shek to Chunking. 1.5m men in China by l938. Anti-Comintern pact, Dec. 1938
(Japan joins "Axis"). Clashes with USSR in Mongolia 1938-9; Japanese defeat at Nomonhan.
Army ponders "northern way" vs. Russia -- but Russo-German pact (8/23/39) forces caution.
(2) Opportunities of European war: Fall of France leads to Japanese occupation of
southern Indochina, July l940. U.S. opposition and demand for withdrawal from Indochina and
China: embargo on steel. Prince Konoye installed as pliable PM in July l940: negotiates
neutrality pact with Soviets. Tripartite Pact, Sept. l940 (Earlier pacts: “Axis” fall 1936; AntiComintern Pact, Dec. ’38; Pact of Steel, 1939) -- envisaged as deterring US. "Co-Prosperity
Sphere."
(3) American oil embargo 7/25: US and UK envisage military deterrence in South
Pacific.
III. The “Rationality” of War with the U.S.
(1) After fall of France,Japan demands bases in southern Indochina; potential
springboard for attack on Burma, Singapore, Indies. Navy urges "southern way," take-over of
Dutch East Indies for oil supplies. Fears American Two-Ocean Naval Expansion Act, l940;
window of opportunity to close by l943. German invasion of Russia 6/22/41: Siberia or Indies
as goal? But American embargo on oil July 25, l941; cuts off 90% of supply. Two years fuel
reserves; navy sees crisis by mid-1944.
(2) Options: Either (i) withdrawal from Indochina, China and humiliation of military
regime; or (ii) take-out blow against Britain, Dutch, US requiring simultaneous moves vs.
Philippines, Singapore, Hawaii. Konoye wants negotiations; replaced by Tojo govt. Oct. 26.
Japanese Liaison conference envisages war unless US concession. Hull-Nomura talks in
Nov. and Kurusu mission 11/25 but decision for war on November 26: Japanese present Plan A
(comprehensive settlement with residual presence in China), then B (withdrawal from S.
Indochina and pledge vs. further attacks in return for oil.) Hull ready to respond with "Modus
Vivendi" (90 day stand-still, Japanese-Chinese talks; withdrawal from S. Indochina; end to
embargo) -- but drops it 11/26 for insistence on withdrawal from China and all Indochina.
Why? (ABCD talks; China demoralization?) Tokyo confirms war decision 12/1.
(3) Balance Sheet: high-quality surface cruisers and battleships, good training;
underestimation by enemy. Advanced torpedos and optics, "Zero" superior in theatre. But no
radar, submarines weak, merchant marine, oil tankers for forward supply, shipyard capacity,
steel for replacement all insufficient.
IV. Period of Japanese Success: Dec. 41-Spring l942:
A. Simultaneous Japanese attacks with a total of ll divisions (51 in army total). To East:
destruction of US battleships but not carriers at Pearl Harbor; capture of Guam and Wake. To
South: destruction of U.S. airforce at Luzon on Dec. 8; American resistance on Luzon (Bataan
and Corregidor) until April/May l942. British Borneo, Celebes, Bali, Sumatra taken by midFebruary, Java by mid-March. To Southwest: Siam (neutral) and Malaya (British) attacked
overland from Indochina and from sea. 50k Japanese defeat 90k British in Malaya, take
Singapore by 2/15/42. Prince of Wales and Repulse sunk from air. Northern New Guinea
occupied. Rangoon and Burma taken in March-April. British and Chinese retreat to India.
Shattering of myth of white supremacy.
B. For Japan: strategic brilliance -- but what relation to political concept? Was Japan
credible as leader of anti-imperialist coalition? Treatment of populations racist in its own turn.
Uncertainty about next steps: Continue offense (which way?: toward Midway or attacks on
Ceylon and India?) or hunker down behind perimeter.
Oil estimates by Japanese Planning Agency (Millions of barrels)
12/41-12/42
12/42-12/43
12/43-12/44
Dec. l944
`
Reserve
Production.(incl.Indies) Consumption
52.9m Bbl. 5.35m (Japan alone)
32.7m
25.5m
16.4m (incl.conquest)
31.5m
10.4m
33.4m
29.9m
13.8 (i.e. more oil to be produced than consumed)
Oil estimates by Navy, as of August 1941
9/41-942
59.2
5.3
34.0
9/42/-9/43
30.2
21.0
34,0
9/43-9/44
10.4
42.0
34.0
9/44
25.2
Note: Navy projects greater consumption but also enhanced production.
Unaddressed problem: interdiction of transporting Indies oil to home
islands.
Actual oil production and consumption:
12/41-12/42
52.9m
12.5m
51.9m (30m for
navy)
12/42-12/43
12/43-12/44
Dec.44
13.5m
-8.1
-27.9
20.1m.
9.6
HSB-54/H1890E
41.7m
29.5
October 12, 2006
Roosevelt’s Objectives and Strategies
I. Objectives and Constraints:
1. What were FDR’s foreign-policy goals? What were limits on action? Problem of
his evasiveness (1940 campaign: pledge to keep U.S. out of foreign wars).
2. Was U.S. participation in the war necessary? Desirable? Could we have intervened
earlier? U.S. action with relation to the Holocaust.
II. Contending U.S. Attitudes:
1. “Internationalists”: FDR as a Wilsonian, ties to Europe. Domestic sources of support
in East and South. vs. American isolation in the l920s and l930s. German-American
constituencies; Progressive party of 1920s (Norris, LaFollette); GOP. Nye Committee and
“merchants of death.”
2. Slow changes: Neutrality Act, Aug. 1935 provides compulsory arms embargo.
Renewed in winter l936 until 5/1/37 (Compare with Wilson’s policies in 1914-17). “Cash and
Carry” bill May 1937 for non-military supplies. Quarantine the Enemy speech of 10/5/37.
Neutrality Act of Nov. 1939 allows cash and carry for military equipment.
Charlottesville address, June l940. Defense appropriations up from $2b to $5b in summer l940.
Embargo on scrap steel and aviation gasoline, summer/Sept. 1940.
Dec. 1940: Lend Lease proposal: US to be “arsenal of democracy.” Passed 3/11/41. Extended
to USSR in fall l941.
III. Creeping Military Involvement:
1. British-American staff talks winter l941: ABC-1 (3/27/41) and commitment to defeat
Germany first. Convoying to mid-Atlantic; occupation of Greenland inApril; marines on
Iceland and convoying to Iceland by July 1. Arcadia Conference at Argentia Bay: Atlantic
Charter (No territorial changes w/o consent and self-determination.) Endorsed by Soviets and
other governments. –
2. Greer “attack” Sept. 5, leads to “shoot on sight” policy. “Kearny” and Ruben James”
attack. Congress authorizes arming of merchant ships and use in war zone, Nov. 7. Hitler’s
restraint vs. Adm. Raeder’s demand to unleash German subs.
3. Failure of Nomura-Hull talks.
Problems:
1) Can we justify Roosevelt’s evasiveness on involvement in European struggle?
2) Did FDR willfully expose the Pacific fleet? Problem of intelligence.
3) Why did Hitler declare war on Dec. 11? If he had not, what would US have done?
HSB-54/H1890E
October 17, 2006
BARBAROSSA: STALIN AND THE RUSSO-GERMAN WAR
INTRODUCTION: STRENGTHS AND BURDENS OF WAR LEADERSHIP:
Churchill’s gifts – archaic resistance;
FDR: the sense of democratic consensual leadership – social dimension in the “Four
Freedoms.” But evasiveness in 1940-41. Could he have been more forthright? Should
we have stayed out of war?
Stalin: near collapse in 1941, but the personification of Soviet resistance (in part due to
“cult of personality”).
I. STALIN'S DIPLOMACY:
1. From collective security to Hitler-Stalin (Ribbentrop-Molotov) Pact. Buying time?
Relocation of industry; annexation of Eastern Poland. Delivery of oil and materiel. What did
Stalin believe about German intentions? What did Hitler believe about Stalin?
2. Grounds for a preemptive German attack?? Russian moves in East Europe. Defense
treaties with Baltic states Sept.-Oct.39. Russo-Finnish War 11/30/39-3/12/40. Annexation of
Baltic states 7/20/40.
3. Rumanian events as catalyst of German-Soviet rivalry/distrust:
(a) Soviet annexation of Bessarabia, then Northern Bukovina (today's Moldova), 6/2328/40 ; Rumania asks German support and installs pro-German govt. 7/1-3/40; Hungarians
given 2/3 Transylvania 8/30 in Second Vienna Award). (Bulgarians take S. Dobruja)
(b) Antonescu dictatorship 9/6/40, King Carol flees. (Tripartite Pact 9/27. Germans
arrive to train military and control oil wells (Oct. 11); Russians threaten borders; Molotov to
Berlin 11/12/. Hungary endorses Axis and Tripartite Pact. (11/20/40), then Rumania joins Axis
11/23/40. Suppression of Iron Guard.
Problems over trade; Molotov to Berlin Nov. 40; refuses to endorse anti-British war.
Russia continues exports to Germany; Stalin dismisses intelligence reports, moves troops back.
(Had Stalin planned a preemptive strike? The Icebreaker charges.)
II. “BARBAROSSA”: THE GERMAN ATTACK.
1. Planned for 5/15; but delays for Balkans. Italians invade Greece from Albania
10/28/40 but reversed and stalemated. Yugoslavia joins Axis 3/25/41 but anti-German coup in
Yugoslavia 3/27/41 annnounces neutrality; brings German invasion into Yug.& Greece 4/6/41.
Brits defeated in Crete in May.
2. Invasion of USSR 6/22/41: 3.3m German trooops, 2000 airplanes in 3-pronged
attack. Soviets had 4000 planes but many destroyed on ground. Initial German success, but
problem of distances, winter weather, later swampy terrain. Siege of Leningrad and
provisioning across Lake Ladoga. Resistance at Moscow; front threatened; Hitler demands
standing firm. German-Rumanian advance on Odessa (annexed by Rumania as Transnistria
10/8).
3. Savagery of War. Commissar decree (shooting of CP members, Jews);
Einsatzgruppen active in fall (Riga, Babi Yar, Odessa).
III. CONSEQUENCES OF SOVIET PARTICIPATION
1. Would Russia hold out? Lend-Lease extended; change of Western opinion. Western
communists now free to enter resistance. Anglo-Soviet pact accepts Soviet annexations in
Eastern Europe.
2. Significant land conflict. Stalin seeks “second front.”
Historical Studies B-54
October 19,
2006
“The End of the Beginning”: Standoffs and Turning Points, 1941-1942*
Introduction: Parameters of Global War, late l941:
Territorial: Goebbels’ Christmas message: German and Japanese control. Vast spaces vs.
combat zones (Burma, New Guinea, N. Africa, Russia, N. Atlantic, the air). Buffer zones and
neutrals (Iran, Turkey, Iberia), etc.
Manpower: Bureaucracies, military, economic.
I. The Soviet Theater:
(1) Three-pronged invasion of 1941 leads to siege of Leningrad, halt before Moscow on
Dec. 6, and expulsion from Rostov on the Don, after its capture on Nov. 21. Offensive
resumed toward Caucusus and oil, spring l942. Battle of Stalingrad, July 1942-beginning of
Feb. 1943. Zhukov counter-offensive in rear traps German troops, at least 150,000 killed,
90,000 surrender.
(2) Issue of Second Front: FDR & Gen. Marshall vs.Churchill’s caution. What was
promised?
II. Africa and the Mediterranean:
(1) Italian offensive in Libya, Sept. 1940, Wavell’s counter-offensive,Dec.40-Feb.41
(British then divert to Greece in April ’41). Rommel reinforces Italians and moves East (AprilJune); British lose at Tobruk and in Crete. but then recover and move West (Nov-Dec.).
Rommel invades Egypt Jan-Oct. 1942; Montgomery attacks at El Alamein,Oct.-Nov.1942.
Simultaneous Anglo-American landings in Western Mediterranean: “Torch”. Axis surrenders
300,000 men in Tunisia by April 1943. Churchill’s “End of the Beginning.”
(2) Question of Logistics in N. Africa: no railroads; role of trucks, therefore oil.
Rommel needs to capture Egypt to get supplies.
III. Pacific Theater:
Japanese conquests through May 1942: Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Indonesia,
Philippines (Bataan and Corregidor), Aleutians. Then which way? Indian Ocean scenario –
Ceylon and Madagascar; taking Southern New Guinea; or American islands (Midway, Guam,
Aleutians). Limited number of carriers imposes choice. Americans bomb Tokyo, April 18,
1942 (Doolittle raid). Americans help Australians/British reinforce Port Darwin. Japanese turn
South: Battle of Coral Sea, May 1942; Midway, June1942, Japanese lose 3 carriers and 300
planes. Americans take Guadalcanal, August l942-Feb. 1943 – prepared to contest western
Pacific. Island hopping: search for air bases to interdict ocean areas.
IV. Some basic issues:
(1) the tyranny of logistics for Germany (Russia and Africa); the carrier constraint for
Japan. Submarines and convoys; radar and Ultra.
(2) Running the War: (a) The relationships of civilian power to generals. Hitler as war
leader: brilliant in intuition at first, then convinced he could tactically run the war far from the
front. Stalin, in contrast, increasingly defers to generals. Types of generals: Brilliant egotists
with sycophants (Montgomery, MacArthur); brilliant tacticians (Rommel, Patton, Slim);
political organizers (Eisenhower, Marshall, Zhukov). How does the Commander in Chief
relate to his generals? (b) The role of committees (Anglo-American model; German)
(3) Role of inter-service rivalries in choice of mission.
(4) The violence of war: “new” history of combat: John Keegan’s “Face of Battle.”
Did soldiers like to kill: problems of the new historiography of combat (Joanna Burke, An
Intimate History of Killing). The fate of POWs. Role of military discipline and punishment,
training, ideology.
(*This lecture supersedes the announced topic.)
HSB-54/Hist.1890E
October 24, 2006
The Search for Decision: U-Boats, Ultra, Bombing
Recap: The War from early to late 1942,
I. U-BOATS VS. BRITAIN (THE BATTLE FOR THE ATLANTIC):
A. The balance of shipping: UK started war with 21mT of merchant shipping. Needed
yearly imports of 43mT after rationing. (Every ton of shipping sunk = 2T of goods/yr. lost.)
1939
1940
1941
1942
Jan-May 43 Jun-Dec.
Ship Tonnages Sunk:
755kT
4mT
4.33mT
6.7mT
1.6m
700k
Tons of merchant shipping built in US and UK
320kT
1.2mT
1.8mT
7mT
14.4M (Jan-Dec.43)
B. Tactical balance: (1) German:U-Boats gained French Atlantic bases; "Wolfpack"
tactics until forced to disperse in l943. Snorkels developed in l944. (2) Allied: New antisub
weapons: destroyers, frigates, corvettes; (asdic/sonar limited), radar limited; intelligence
allowed rerouting. Allies gained escort carriers and long-range patrol planes (Liberators).
C. Relative Losses: Germans start with 57 subs. By end l941 strength up to about 300
(allowing for 50 destroyed). (In l941 200 launched, 28 sunk, but 15/15month by l943. Allies
lost 2452 merchant ships in Atlantic, c.13mT. and l75 warships. Germans lost 696/830 UBoats, 26,000/41,000 crewmen killed -- costliest service in war.
II. INTELLIGENCE
A.Weaknesses: 1. Intention hard to judge; 2. Problem of chaff or static (Pearl Harbor);
3. Problems of disregarding bad news (Stalin and Barbarossa; British and Norway); 4.
Problems of gathering and interpreting (decentralized and rival agencies; belated central
processing).
B. Achievements: "Sigint" and decrypting (Bletchley Park). The Enigma machine and
"Ultra." "Magic" and Midway. But signals ambiguous and plans change: the Coventry raid,
Nov. 16, 1940. Was intelligence decisive?
III. STRATEGIC BOMBING
A. "Doctrine":
1. Douhet, Trenchard. l920's debate over bombing of a military target with "collateral risk."
Calculations in late l930's: "The bomber will always get through." 700 T.of bombs and 35,000
casualties per day envisaged. British discussions: doctrine of “collateral damage.”
2. Cost of precision bombing by day -- fighters not neutralized until l944 -- leads to area
bombing by night; championed by Arthur Harris, vs. Portal, who advocates attack on oil.
USAF tries to maintain daylight bombing. Until l944 selective precision bombing not decisive
(lessons of Schweinfurth raid)
B. Increase in destruction:
Madrid, 11/16-19/36: waves of 10-12 two-engined planes, perhaps l000 killed.
Coventry: l00 Acres, 554 dead, 865 seriously wounded; London, 5/10/41, heaviest air raid,
1,436 killed. Total British bomb dead: 51,000.
First l000-plane raid on Cologne, l942. Early 2-engine planes carried up to 2T. of explosive
("Mosquitos" in first raids over Berlin, 8/40). By l943-44, B-17, B-24, Lancaster carried 710T/plane. Hamburg July 24, 1943: 791 planes, 1500 dead; but July 27, 29, Aug. 2: 750-plane
raids: 43-60,000 killed. (Fire storm and asphyxiation). Dresden, Feb. 13-14/45: 35,000 killed;
Tokyo, March 10, 1945: up to 125,000 killed. Questioning of purpose after Dresden: Was
Churchill fair? Total German dead in raids = 600,000. Hiroshima = 20kT equivalent; 75,000
killed?
C. Effectiveness? Strategic Bombing Survey and subsequent critiques. Economic
effects limited until spring l944, then cumulative difficulties. Evaluating morale (of those
bombed) and morals (those bombing) Ethical issues. Recent German literature on their own
suffering: Joerg Friedrichs, “The Fire.”
HSB-54/H1890E
October 26, 2006
RECAP FROM LAST TIME: ISSUES WITH RESPECT TO THE AIR WAR:
(1) Bombing as strategy: Daylight, so-called precision bombing, as advocated initially by
Brits, then by US – targeting RRs, shipyards, oil, dams, ballbearing factories – but with
high cost to attackers and not really precise; vs. nighttime “area” bombing, designed for
general destruction and demoralization.
(2) Bombing as a morally debatable strategy (Was “collateral damage” an equivocation.
Was area bombing “justified”?
(3) Disputed efficacy of bombing? Did morale crack? Did populations get weary or
resentful? What was the economic impact?
WARTIME ECONOMICS
I. CONCEPTUAL ISSUES: HOW MUCH DID WW II COST? HOW DOES A SOCIETY PAY FOR A
WAR?
1. The real cost of a war = (1) current product and investment allocated for war (but
some of this capital can be used later -- Germany/Austria, Japan augmented capital during war
despite bombing until 1944); + (2) deferred costs: non-renewed capital, payback of foreign
loans, interrupted trading patterns, invalids, demographic losses.
2. Real cost versus financing of war. Financial problem = transfer of purchasing power
to state from public or non-nationals. Non-inflationary vs. inflationary transfers of purchasing
power.
2a. What war costs can be deferred to a future generation by borrowing? Distinguish
(1) between external vs. internal debt; (2) between debt held by public (individuals,
corporations, private banks) vs. debt held by central bank; (3) between costs to society as a
whole vs. different segments (burden shifting from old to young, taxpayers to bondholders).
3. What mechanisms of finance available? (1) Borrowing or booty from abroad.
(2) Taxes. (3) Internal borrowing. Soaks up corporate or household purchasing power to avoid
inflation (4) Inflation and money creation -- inflation as tax on current real income and on
bank balances. Lessons of WWI learned for more effective price control, and less inflationary
finance. American prices during WW II rose 20%; wages + 60%; pre-tax profits + 350%; after
tax profits: + 120%
4. Patterns of taxation: UK financed c.25% of WWI by taxation and by 1943 was
financing 53% by taxation; Germany extracted almost 20% of German GNP from occupied
countries; USSR switched to personal taxes from taxes on industry (disposable income down to
40% of l940); in U.S. taxes (income, excess profits, etc.) covered 26% of budgeted costs in
l942, 2/3 in 1944, 4/5 in 1945.
II. COMPARATIVE OUTPUT AND SACRIFICES:
Overall patterns: (1) early German lead, then slackening in late 1941-42; reacceleration during
later l942-mid 44. Validity of "Blitzkrieg" thesis?
(2) US industrial preponderance
(3) Continuing high Soviet effort
(4) relative Japanese weakness even though military expenditure reaches 50% GNP.
1938 populations and GDP in 1990 prices:
UK: 48m and $284bn; France: 42m & $186bn; UK colonies /dominions: 454m & $285bn;
US, 130m & 800bn.; USSR 167m & 360bn.
Germany+Austria: 75m & $375bn; Italy 43m & $141bn; Japan, 72m & 169bn; Japanese
colonies 60m & 63bn.
Axis total in 1942 after gain of France & occupied territory. 635m & $1552bn.
Allied total in l942 after gains of US and Russia, but loss of France, occupied Russia, etc.:
784m & $1,749bn. Allied/Axis GDP ratio = 1.3
Combat Munition production, 1935-44 in $billion/yr. in US l944 prices
and (Volume of Production per Man in $1,000 US dollars/man, 1944 prices)
1935-39
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
US
0.3b/yr 1.5 ($2.8)
4.5 (2.8) 20 (5.4)
38 (4.2) 42 (3.7)
UK
0.5
3.5 ($1.5) 6.5 (1.9) 9.0 (2.2) 11 (2.3)
11 (2.2)
USSR 1.6
5.0 ($1.2) 8.5 ( ? ) 11.5 (1.1) 14 (1.3)
16 (1.2)
Germany 2.4
6.0 ($1.1) 6.0 (0.8 ) 8.5 0.9) 13.5 (1.2)
17 (1.4)
Japan
0.4
1
2
3 4.5 6 (US arms production per man approximately 5x Japan's)
Plane production 1940
1941
UK (excl.trainers) 15,000 20,100
Germany
10,000+ 11,800
US
1942
23,700
15,600
1943
26,300
25,500
1944
26,500
39,800
Total
120,000
110,000
300,000
Comparative military spending and output as %NNP (I=produced domestically; II= from
all sources, i.e., + imports for UK and USSR; - Lend Lease exports for US; + occupied areas
for Germany). UK imports financed by Lend Lease and assets abroad. III = National income
(index=100: for US & Germany= 1939 GNP; UK & USSR: 1938/37 NNP).
_____US_____
____UK____
___USSR__
____GER____
I II III
I II III
I
II III
I II
III
1939 2% 1% 100
8% 16% 103
? ? 107
24% 25% 100
1940 3 1 108
31 48 120
20 20 117
36 44 100
1941 14 13 125
41 55 127
? ?
94
44 56 102
1942 40 36 137
43 54 128
66 75 66
52 69 105
1943 53 47 149
47 57 131
68 76 77
60 76 116
1944 54 47 152
47 56 124
52 69 93
?
?
?
By about 1943 German and USSR importing 16-18% of their NNP from abroad; UK down
from l940's 17% to l0%; US exporting 4-6% (=3x Marshall Plan). France contributing about
28% of l938 French GNP to Germany by l943 plus output of about lm workers inside
Germany. (Total foreign workers in l944 Third Reich = 7m + (of which 1.9m POWs) = almost
20% of labor force.
Historical Studies B-54
October 31, 2006
MOBILIZING SOCIETIES: WAR AND SOCIAL CHANGE
The Experiences of Wartime: (1) Family losses; evacuation of children; rationing of basic
commodities; postponement of purchases. Differentiation of zones: WWI (front vs. home), vs.
WWII (urban and rural differences). The discovery of the underclass. War budgets: the
discovery of full employment.
Social change in war vs. enduring transformations. What serves as an index of Social Change?
War as transformer, as catalyst, or as blip? (Does the war change a trend? Does it accelerate a
trend underway on a permanent basis? Does it divert it or accelerate it only temporarily?) Is
there an effort to overcome losses? Memory and meaning vs. social change.
A. Demographic/Attitudinal Indices:
Births per 1000 inhabitants per year:
1900-14
1914-18
1930
Germany
36 to 27
14
17.6
France
21 to 18
11
18
Engl./Wales 28 avg.
-19.6
17
Marriage per 1000 per year:
Germany
-France
15.5
Engl/Wales
16
--
9
7.5
13.3
17.5
16.4
14
1941-45
20-16
13 to 16
20
15.5
8.6-11
18
1946-49 avg.
16.5
21
20
20
Percentage of the U.S. population who were never married:
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970
37% 38% 32% 32% 31% 23% 21% 25%
The images of the wartime woman vs. the statistics of postwar family formation -- were they
compatible? Connection of the emphasis on the nuclear family of the l950's to the war
experience.
Beer Consumption (100 million liters = 125 million quarts)
1913
1918
1938
1943 1947
Germany 69.2
24.8
48.1
43.3
12
UK
58.9
21.3
40.1 49
48.8
(1913 = over 100 liters per inhabitant per year!)
Infant Mortality (deaths up to 1 yr. old/1000)
1900 1914 1916 1918 1929
France
160 111 117 146
100
Germany
229 164 140 158
97
Engl/W.
154
130 166 196
74
Sweden
99
73 78
88
59
1939 1942 1944 1946 1949
68 77
82
78
60
72 --97
60
51 51
45 43
32
40 29
31 27
23
Gender: What happened to Rosie the Riveter after the War? U.S. Female Labor Force
Participation Rates
1900 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970
Total
20.6 23.7 24.8
25.8 29.5 35.1
41.6
Married
5.6 9.0 11.7 13.8
21.6 30.6 39.5
Single*
43.5 46.4 50.5
45.5
50.6 47.5 51.0
White M.
3.2 6.5 9.8
12.5
20.7 29.8 38.5
Nonwhite M
26.0 32.5 33.2 27.3
31.8 40.5 50.0
*Single women have averaged 6 years in the labor force.
1980
51.1
50.1
61.5
49.3
59.0
Cohort Analysis: Increase in Female Employment by Age of Employee:
Ages:
14-19 20-24 25-44 45-64
July 1944/1940
2.30
1.14 1.28 1.65
1950/1940
1.05
0.95 1.27 1.76
Source: Claudia Goldin, Understanding the Gender Gap (NY:OUP,1990), 17,153.
II. Which War caused More Change? Political radicalism greater after WWI than WWII in
Europe; but post WW II radicalism more marked outside Europe. On the other hand, European
powers weaker in colonial areas after WWII. Suffrage extended in US and UK after WWI, in
France after WWII. Erosion of liberal values as reaction to WWI, reinforcement in wake of
WW II. The 1960's as rupture?
HSB54/Hist1890-E
Nov. 7, 2006
AMERICA'S WAR
COLLECTIVE EXPERIENCES: Air Raids, rationing, war bonds, deaths; "Gold Star" Mothers
(blue vs. gold stars on flags in windows). Use war bonds to sell the war -- Morgenthau. WW
II vs. WW I: Less preoccupation about threat at home; no anti-German hysteria. But
internment of Japanese on coasts. The sense of seriousness: from Depression on. America
buckling down. Self-regimentation: Office of War Information.
Legends: Colin Kelly crashing his plane down the smoke stack of a Japanese Cruiser; the Three
Chaplains. Film: "The Fighting Sullivans," five brothers killed when ship sunk.
Prejudice: vs. Jews, Italians, homosexuals, blacks, Jehovan Witnesses. Race: FEPC, Detroit
Race Riot 25 blacks, 9 whites killed, July 43. Caricatures and clarity: Bugs Bunny nips the
Nips Superman, Wonderwoman, Captain Marvel, Terry and the Pirates. The Movies.
Humphrey Bogart: Across the Pacific; Casablanca; Lifeboat, Mrs. Miniver. Clarity: Bill
Mauldin's Willy and Joe in Stars & Stripes; Ernie Pyle.
ECONOMY: Rehabilitation of Wall Street and large corporations after rhetoric of New Deal.
Dollar a Year Men; suspension of antitrust fervor. (a) Office of Production Management, Jan.
41 (Sidney Hillman, William Knudsen of GM); (b) Jan. 42: War Production Board under
Donald Nelson and issue of procurement. Cost-plus pricing; Controlled Materials Plan
(Ferdinand Eberstadt) to mediate with War and Navy Dept. (Forrestal as Asst. Secr. of Navy).
Who controls? Nelson or War and Navy? James F. Byrnes, Office of War Mobilization.
Budget for War and Navy Depts. from 1.8b (1940) to 6.2 (1941), 23b (43), 76b (44),
80.5 (45). Fear of relapse into depression, but accumulated demand; then Marshall Plan and
Korean War.
SOCIETY:
(1) Movement: 16,354,000 in armed forces by end of war; 15m civilians had moved to
different counties. 25m/140m Americans moved and did not return home after the war; farm to
city, east to west. Plains States and South lose. Numbers large; but also resumption of natural
migratory patterns after bottling up in Great Depression.
(2) Family Formation: Was the war fought for the nuclear family? Better Homes
&Gardens, Oct. 1944: "Are children necessary? Yes, happiness lies in conforming to the rules
of life, and the first of these rules is that we shall lose our lives in the lives of our children.
Perhaps there is not much more needed in a recipe for happiness."
Marriage rate per 1000 unmarried women over 15: 73.0 in 1939 to 93.0 in 1942, then decline to
83 or so. Birth rate (women 15-44) from 77.6 to 94.3 in l943m {first time since 1921 that births
exceeded 3m} to 85.9 (45). Thus peak in marriages and conceptions in l942.
(3) Trends toward Liberalization as well as toward repression:
(i) Change in child-rearing: Dr. Spock's training coming on stream; from discipline to
permissiveness. (ii) Progressive education; Educational Policy Commission with Pres.
Conant: nurture the whole child; social responsibility and cooperative schools; adjustment for
real life. NEA: Children's Morality Code: loyalty to family, school, town, country, humanity.
(4) Farewells: The Death of Roosevelt; the train to Hyde Park. Eisenhower's parade;
McArthur back in l950-51: his farewell address.
POSTWAR: working with war criminals to beat the Russians; Arno Mayer and Werner von
Braun; "The Best Years of our Lives." From the War to the Cold War and McCarthyism.
McCarthyism as a reaction to the Depression and the War: to the breakdown of prewar
provincialism and isolation, to the straining of gender lines; or just a displacement of the war
effort? The war as dissolution of American certainties; an uprooting from the farm and from
localism. The postwar as an effort to reaffirm an America that had come apart in the l920s and
l930s, with role of government, new sophistication, need for the government role, new
conflicts. The discipline reached high point in the l950s. Being a child in the l940s-50's vs. the
l960s-70s. Literary dissent: Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead; Joseph Heller, Catch
22; war poetry in WWII vs. WWI.
HSB-54/Hist1890E
November 14, 2006
OCCUPATION AND COLLABORATION
I. OCCUPATION REGIMES:
1. Outright Annexation to Germany: Austria (Ostmark); Danzig; Wartegau (West
Pomerania). 1a) Annexation to Grossdeutsches Reich: Bohemia-Moravia (the Protectorate),
Alsace-Lorraine. 2. Direct rule without intermediaries: General-Gouvernement (Hans Franck)
3. Direct rule with intermediaries: Norway, Netherlands (Arthur Seyss-Inquart), Belgium. 4.
Puppet regimes carved out of former countries: Slovakia and Croatia. 5. Nominally
independent occupation regimes: Vichy France -- occupied and unoccupied zones; the Italian
Social Republic, Sept.1943-April 1945. 6. Controlled allies: Hungary (occupied after
10/25/44), Romania. 7. Military zones: Soviet Union.
Basic conditions: shortages, inflation, black market, breakdown of urban-rural exchange
as war goes on. Violence up after end l942. Special situation of the Jews, gypsies.
II. AIMS OF OCCUPATION: Economic exploitation (plunder vs. collaboration); strategic benefits
(French empire in N. Africa); racial agenda (SS vs. Reichskommissar in Netherlands, SS vs.
Rosenberg in East); exploitation of manpower. Did the “New Order” have any reality?
III. WHY COLLABORATION? OPPORTUNISM-DESPAIR-CONVICTION.
1. From conviction: prewar fascists with frustrated ambitions. Jacques Doriot's PPF,
Vidkun Quisling, Adrien Mussert, Szalasi and Arrow Cross. Collaboration as part of
European civil war. The collaboration of the intellectuals – the New Order as an anti-bolshevik
“moral” rehabilitation. A needed purge of a decadent and tired European liberal capitalism,
dominated by Jewish materialism. The lure of European integration. Spiritual values triumph;
crass capitalism superseded. (The case of Robert Brasillach.) Germans seemed “vital.”
Paths to prewar fascism: The break with Communism (Doriot); "neo-socialism"
(Hendrik De Man) and the temptations of fascism; the commitment to appeasement (Marcel
Deat, L'Oeuvre). Rivalry among collaborators: Doriot vs. Deat, Quisling and Lie. Germans
wary of these men.
2. Sense of lesser evil and inevitability.
3. Belief that Germany must prevail; liberalism weak and finished.
4. Collaboration of the upper crust: Otto Abetz in Paris woos intellectuals and artists.
5. Collaboration of the inexperienced: SS recruitment.
6. Economic collaboration: France and Belgium.
7. Forced compliance: the Jewish Councils.
Collaboration as a slippery slope; where and how does one stop? (The Milice after 1942.)
IV. COLLABORATIONIST REGIMES IN EUROPE:
A. Vichy France: Full powers to General Petain after Armistice; suspension of
legislature and effective end of III Republic. Belief in Petain: punishment for Popular Front.
Need to recover conservative values. National Revolution (Catholic conservative ideology:
Maurras and Action Francaise), ruralism, corporatism, anti-semitism. The officials at Vichy
and the collaborators at Paris.
Phases: (1) Laval premier, fall l940; ousted by Petain. Montoire. (2) Flandin and
technocrats and admirals: Belin, Bichelonne; Charter of Labor. Organizing committees. Jewish
roundups summer l942 (Vel d'Hiver; Drancy); (3) Fall l942: Rélève and STO; return of Laval.
Milice formed. German occupation of the South; civil war 1943-44; Sigmaringen.
B. Italian Social Republic. Mussolini deposed July 25, 1943; Sept. 8: Badoglio
armistice; Germans invade, set up Mussolini in North at Salo'. Verona trials (Ciano shot);
"socialization" decree. Civil war summer and fall l944.
V. COLLABORATIONIST REGIMES IN ASIA:
The Japanese appeal: “Asia for the Asians.” The Japanese New Order: Japan blends
Asian civilization with western science and capacity for ousting Europeans. Greater East Asia
Conference in Tokyo, Nov. 1943 – reps from Thailand, Burma, Philipines, Manchuria and
Wang Chingwei of China. Japan promises independence: Burma declared “independent” on
8/1/43 under Ba Maw and the Thakin Party and Burma National Army. Philippines declared
independent on 10/14/43 under Pres. Laurel; Suba Chandra Bose establishes provisional Indian
govt., “Azad Hind” in Singapore in October, INA declares war on Britain and US.
Independence planned for Indonesia under Sukarno. …The “fourth” war within the war.
HSB-54/H1890E
November 21, 2006
A Culture of Death: The Last Year of the War
THE WAR IN 1944-45: The deadliest year: unrelenting bombing of Germany and Japan,
Northern Italy and France; starvation (Bengal 1943; Southeast Asia; China; the Netherlands);
extermination of Greek and Hungarian Jews until camps abandoned late l944. The toll of civil
wars; desperation of collaborationist militias in Italian Social Republic (Salò Republic), in
France (the Milice), Hungary (Arrow Cross).
Progressive failure of German economy summer l944 on; oil problem. The German
Resistance: 20th of July plot: General Beck, Kreisau Circle, von Stauffenberg. Limits and
difficulties of Resistance. Suppression. Perhaps 1500 “conspirators” killed; but thousands of
ordinary soldiers executed by German military justice. Contrast with World War I.
STRATEGIC CHOICES AND COALITION WARFARE:
Casablanca, Jan. 43 and Unconditional Surrender. British American discussion of
where to attack after North Africa: Progress of Sicilian and Italian campaign (Salerno (Sept.
43), Anzio (Han. 44), Monte Cassino (Feb.-May), Rome (June), Tuscany (July), Gothic Line
(Pisa-Rimii), August, toward Bologna.
Russian question: Would Russia remain in the war? Harriman as ambassador. Katyn
Forest massacre dispute. Teheran Conference Dec. 43 (Mutual commitment; change in Polish
frontiers).
Soviets to Danube August 20-24, 1944. Bulgaria defects; Germans abandon Greece,
then Yugoslavia, Hungary signs armistice mid-October, 1944; suspends Jewish deportation.
Hitler installs Arrow Cross government. Battle for Budapest, Oct. 29-February.
OVERLORD (D-DAY, JUNE 6, 1944) INTO GERMANY: Eisenhower as Supreme
Commander; importance of position.. Relatively easy landings except for Omaha) but
slowdown between Saint-Lo Cotentin. Battle of Falaise Gap, in August. Landings in southern
France. Resistance fight for Paris August 20-25. General LeClerc enters city for Free French.
Antwerp taken mid-Sept., but Scheldt mouth held by Germans into November. Aachen taken,
but parachute drop in Arnhem (Sept. 17-24) fails (“A bridge too far”) and Netherlands remains
occupied through winter of l944-45: approaches starvation. Germans counter attack in the
Ardennes (the Bulge), Dec. 6-Jan. 16: “Nuts.” Remagen crossed, March 9. Focus on Ruhr and
concern about Alpine Redoubt.
Vistula to the Oder: Operation Bagratian, June 44; Warsaw uprising, July-Sept. 44.
East Prussian advance, end l944, then withdrawal. Warsaw captured Jan. 17; regrouping for
battle for Berlin, Feb. on. Mass flights of German population (10-12m) from East. Soviets
take Vienna April 2. The issue of rape.
Final days:
Bologna to Trieste, Milan, Turin, April 1945. Italian surrender conflict with Ruissians.
Battle for Berlin April 16-May 2. Two million Russians in attack. Hitler and Goebbels
commit suicide 4/30; Doenitz as successor. Surrenders May 7-8-9.
WHY DID THE GERMANS FIGHT SO LONG?
(1) The leaders’ situation: Hitler’s ‘contempt’ for Germans? His belief in a miracle?
No alternative for leadership. Was unconditional surrender a mistake?
(2) Repression of alternatives. Trials of conspirators, massive courts martial.
(3) Resilience of population and army; organization of army. Ideology/patriotism.
THE PACIFIC THEATRE:
Japanese Resistance; refusals to surrender; Kamikaze. The Air War after November 1944.
Tokyo raid. What cities left for the atomic bomb? Chaos in China.
THE END OF CLAUSEWITZIAN WAR? Means-End calculations abandoned. All means had to
be used once they became available. The end of civilian immunity.
Historical Studies B-54
Nov. 21, 2006
WAR DEATHS
Deaths/Missing (These are approximate figures and subject to wide discrepancies. I have either
provided ranges or plausible estimates.)
Combat
Civilian
Total
est..Proportion
killed, 1944-45
United States
290-320,000
--290-320,000
2/3
United Kingdom
264-400,000
60-65,000
325-450,000
1/2
Canada
37,000
--37,000
Austr.-NZ-S.Afr.
39,000
--39,000
India
24,000
1.5-3m (Bengal famine) c.1.5m+
France
200,000
200-300,000 (incl.
c.500,000
75-90,000 Jews)
Netherlands
10,000
200,000
210,000
1/2?
Italy
175-300,000
80-175,000
330-410,000
1/2
Greece
c.80,000
c.160,000
c. 240,000
1/2
Yugoslavia
400,000
c.1m (incl..partisans) c. 1.5-2m
1/2
Poland
300,000
5-6m (incl. 3m Jews) c. 6m
1/4
USSR
6-7m (incl.3m POWs) 7-13m (incl. 2m Jews) c.13-20m <1/4
China
0.5-1.5m
1-10m
3-10m
1/2
Germany/Aust.
4m (incl. 1m POWs) 3m (incl. 0.6 in air
6-7m
1/2
raids & 2m in expulsions)
Japan
1.2-2m.
300-500,000
1.5-2.5m
1/2
Hungary
400,000
500,000-1m
1-1.5m
2/3
Rumania
300,000
300,000+(incl. gypsies) 600,000-1m 1/3
Totals
14m-17m
19m-34.5m
37m-50m?
Perhaps 6m Jews and 250,000 gypsies included in above. Famine victims included many
Chinese civilians, Bengalis, Dutch in winter of 44-45. The proportions killed in l944-45 are
rough estimates and in the cases of large Jewish losses, Poland, Holland, reflect the earlier
completion of exterminations.
Personnel mobilized: US: 16.4m; USSR: 20m; UK 6.2m; Germany 12.5; Japan 7.5m. Total all
armies: c. 100 million.
HSB-54/H1890E
November 28-30, 2006
ANOTHER WAR WITHIN THE WAR: MURDERING THE JEWS OF EUROPE
RELATIONSHIP OF MURDER OF THE JEWS (AND 220,000/700,000 GYPSIES) TO THE WAR:
Would the "Final Solution" have been possible or undertaken without the war?
Speech of Jan. 1939: A new European war will bring the destruction of the Jewish people. But
when and how was physical destruction decreed? Long-term project or improvisation?
"Intentionalism" vs. "Functionalism." The decision as a reflection of exuberance, summer 1941,
or reflection of stalemate, December 1941? A word on terminology: “Holocaust.”
GEOGRAPHY, SOCIAL PATTERNS, AND DEATH TOLLS.
Patterns of Jewish settlement in Europe. Ashkenazim (Germany and Eastern Central
Europe: Poland and Galicia, Lithuania and Latvia, Ukraine (the old Polish-Lithuanian
Commonwealth), western Russia (the “pale” of settlement), Romania, Hungary), Sephardim (
Middle East and Mediterranean, Spain until 1492, Ottoman empire thence to Salonike,
Netherlands, New World).
Social patterns of settlement in Eastern Europe vs. western Europe and Germany and
Austrian empire (urban communities, adoption of “Enlightenment”, more intermarriage, ascent
in professions—the idea of “assimilation,” adoption of host-nation loyalties in Germany,
France, N. America, Italy, etc.). Late l9th century, early 20th century migrations of
Russian/Polish Jews to New York, London, Buenos Aires, South Africa, France.
Populations and destruction (in thousands): 165/500; Austria 60/206; France 76/300;
Belgium 29/90; Netherlands 102/112; Italy 6.5/ 34 ; Greece 60/70 Yugoslavia 64/80
Hungary 550/(400+325of annexed territory), Czechoslovakia 260/356 (but of these 120/146
lost in territory given to Hungary); Romania 210/600; Poland 2.7-3m; Soviet Union;
2.1/2.9m.
SOURCES OF THE PROJECT:
Anti-semitism: religious, racial, “communal”: in Germany, in Eastern Europe and
elsewhere. Earlier antisemitic outbreaks in Europe: l870's, l890's, 1917-22. Role of
antisemitism in Germany before Hitler; comparisons elsewhere.
Racial and Colonial violence: Herrero war 1906.
Eugenic thinking and euthanasia (“life unworthy of life”).
GERMAN MEASURES BEFORE THE WAR:
Pre-Holocaust measures under Nazism: l933: Boycott and dismissals from public
services (including teaching); concentration camps established inside Germany for political
prisoners, "asocials," some Jews, esp. after l938 (Dachau and Oranienberg, Sachsenhausen,
Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, etc., etc., satellite camps); 1935 Nuremberg laws
and racial definitionsof Jewishness; Kristallnacht, Nov. 9, 1938; 1939-40: expulsions of Jews
into France, from Warthegau into Gouvernement General. Madagascar project.
GHETTOIZATION AND MURDER SQUADS: SEPTEMBER 1939-JANUARY 1942
Effect of war: Emigration slowed; inability to move refugees. Radicalisation of Hitler's
concept. Euthanasia resumed (70,000 killed). Ghettos established in Warsaw, Lodz, Vilna, etc.
(Rations in Warsaw winter l940: Germans: 2300 calories/day, Poles: 930, Jews: 200.)
(5) After Barbarossa (6/22/41) (1) Einsatz-gruppen (2,000 SS troops) sent out for mass
shooting: perhaps 1 to 1.5m victims, 1941-42: Riga, Kiev (Babi Yar), Odessa, etc. Police
batallions. (2) Gas vans used at Chelmno after Serbia. (3) Participation of other peoples:
Ukranians, Romanians, Croatians and question of German “guilt.”
IV. THE FINAL SOLUTION: When was decision taken? Summer to late l941: relation to progress
of Russian Campaign. What happened at the Wannsee Conference, Jan. 1942? SS hierarchy:
Himmler, Heydrich, Eichmann. Roundups in France summer l942; Netherlands; remaining
German Jews (Theresienstadt, Riga, Auschwitz); Belgium, Greece, Serbia, Bohemia-Moravia,
Slovakia. Hungarian deportations summer l944, then finally resisted. Extermination camps:
Chelmno, Belczek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek, Auschwitz (including Birkenau, Monowitz
& I. G. Farben plant). Difference from regular KZ (concentration camps).
V. WHAT COULD OTHER POWERS HAVE DONE?
Immigration? German Jews before 1939: 102,000 to U.S., 63k to Argentina, 52k to
UK, 30k to France (which also takes many Polish Jews). 30k to Holland, 12k to Belgium,
9k to Australia, 6k to Canada, Brazil 8k, Bolivia 7k, Palestine 33k. The impediments to
immigration.
German desire for cooperation from local authorities. Bulgaria vs. Netherlands;
Denmark and rescue. Romania and Hungary begin with compliance (and massacre in
Romanian occupied Soviet territories: Transnistria) then reverse course. Russians arrive
in Romania; Germans occupy Hungary; install Szalasi.
Vichy France: Effort to keep distinction of French Jews and foreign Jews.
Preoccupation with preserving autonomous state induces more cooperation. Commissioner for
Jewsih affairs. “Vel d’Hiver” and Drancy, August 1942. Germans insist on 40 percent quota
of “French Jews; distinction between those naturallized before or after l933 then l927.
Italy: Adoption of racial laws in l938. Jewish deportations in North after German
occupation Sept. 1943: “Garden of the Finzi-Contini” Ferrara, the Rice Factory in Trieste.
Roman Jews and Ardeatine Cave reprisals. Mitigating role of Italian army in Croatia and Nice.
Role of the Papacy (Pius XII) and the Catholic Church.
TROUBLING QUESTIONS:
1. Passivity or Resistance of Jews? Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963). Warsaw
ghetto uprising April 1943 and other smaller ones.
2. Role of Allies? Resistance to knowledge; dislike of diversions to military objectives and
refusal to bomb Auschwitz. Why?
3. Role of Poles (“Shoah”) in a country that lost 3 m Jews, and about 3m non-Jews.
4. Did Germans know? How much? Recent historiography: Goldhagen, Bankier, Kershaw.
5. How was it possible? Division of labor; role of local helpers. Bureaucratic mentality (RRs):
a job to be done. Role of dehumanizing "discourse": gradual definition of non-people -- "life
unworthy of life." Progressive segregation as separation from species. “Lessons of the
Holocaust”?
6. The suicides: Amery, Borowski, Celine, Levi, Bettelheim, Kosinski.
HSB-54/H1890E
Dec. 15, 2006
War Crimes Trials and Reprisals
I. BACKGROUND TO NUREMBERG (1945-46)
Decision to have a multi-national tribune to try Germans and Japanese. Precedents after World
War I and failure of Leipzig trials. Notion of trials and denazification agreed to at Potsdam.
II. ALLIED TRIALS
Trials of major war criminals. Charges at Nuremberg: planning aggressive war; war crimes;
crimes against humanity (a category around since Hague conventions), and Anglo-Saxon
notion of “conspiracy” to commit any of the above.. What was not in indictment: domestic
repression. Concept of “criminal organizations” –SS, higher echelons of NSDAP – introduced.
13 death sentences including General Jodl, Julius Streicher; 20 years for Albert Speer, life
imprisonment for Hess, 10 years for Adm. Doenitz. Papen and Schacht acquitted. Change in
attitude toward Nuremberg: originally a concern with “victors’ justice.” Problem of
retroactivity. War crimes were violations of Geneva accords, but “crimes against humanity’
and “planning aggressive war?” Today seen as valuable precedent for Hague Tribunal. Could
Germans have tried the Nazis?
Other trials: Diplomats’ series (incl. Weizsäcker) and industrialists’ series (incl. Alfried
Krupp). Prison sentences imposed. Commutations by l950-51. Also return of many
concentration camp leaders or military commanders to country where abuses committed
(Hoess; SS generals to Yugoslavia, etc.) Eichmann capture and trial in Jerusalem.
German trials by late 1950s: “Auschwitz trials,” – a new generation of Germans open
investigations.
Tokyo Tribunal: Difficulty of emperor’s impunity. Dissent by Indian judge over notion of
aggressive war, but guilt for allowing war crimes under one’s command (Yamashita doctrine).
III. DENAZIFICATION IN DIFFERENT ZONES Effort to reconstruct Germany and Japan; remove
roots of aggression. Role of emigre social scientists. Different national approaches: Soviets:
institute socialism (fascism a disease of capitalism); British: democratization and
encouragement of unions and SPD; U.S.: individual de-Nazification and political pluralism,
federalism. Economic deconcentration a semi-success. The American “Questionnaire” and
special hearings. Grades of participation; penalties could include prison, confiscation of
property, suspension from office.
Problem of broad participation in party and regime. Unevenness of sentencing..Gradual
relaxation; impact of Cold War. Some elites hardly subject to sanctions: judiciary, university
professors.
IV. THE PURGES (EPURATION) AND POLITICS
Initial reprisals in France, Italy, etc. Shaming of women. Problem of numbers killed. Up to
10.000 in France; several hundred in Belgium/Netherlands. Resistance coalitions take decision
to try collaborators. Who was guilty? Major defendants: Pétain, Laval, Quisling, etc. vs. lesser
criminals. “National degradation” (civic disenfranchisement) as penalty (cf. “lustration” after
l989). Role of intellectuals: the trial of Brasillach. Problem of economic collaboration
(Belgium, Italy ); procedures bog down in courts. Purges as a surrogate for social revolution,
but have to be pursued individually and not by class. Left parties press trials in “Resistance
coalitions” that last from late 1945 to 1947. Reaction against moralism of Resistance parties by
1946-47. Uomo Qualunque (Everyman) movement in Italy. Gradually abandoned.
V. EXPULSION OF THE GERMANS 12m. flee West. 9-10m from East Prussia, Pomerania,
Silesia. (new Polish territories –Danzig (Gdansk), Posen (Poznan), Breslau (Wroclaw). 3m.
expelled from Sudetenland (“Benes Decrees). 1-2m die. Assimilation into Germany.
HSB54-H1890E
December 5, 2006
ENDING THE JAPANESE WAR
I. THE THEATERS OF WAR
1. Burma theatre: British retreat into Bengal, April 1942; loss of Burma Road;
unsuccessful British offensives, l942-43. Japanese encourage "Free Asia": Ba Maw in Burma
(declared "independent" in in 1943, as are Philippines). Suhas Chandra Bose (Provisional
government of Free India in Singapore; Japanese and Bose lay siege to Imphal, Mar.-July 44;
then rollback: Mandalay reached overland, March l945, Rangoon by April.
2. China Theatre. Nationalists (Kuomintang=KMT) in Chunking under Chiang Kaishek; Communists in North; a nominal United Front. Stilwell, Clair Chenault (Flying Tigers).
l944 offensives: demoralization, inflation, floods and rural uprooting.
3. Islands: A. General Problems: huge distances; absence of deep water ports in New
Guinea; shortage of air bases; shipping crises(but resources in manpower and equipment=
Europe before Overlord)
B. Dual strategy (SW Pacific vs. Central Pacific) dictated by division of American
command: Gen. MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz. Also desire not to lose resources to Europe
on part of Adm. King.
1. MacArthur wants to take Rabaul (foremost Japanese base off New Guinea)
and advance up New Guinea, thence to Philippines. Guadalcanal (Solomon Islands), August
42-Feb. 43. Rabaul bombed (Dec. 43) but bypassed. MacArthur retakes NE New Guinea, then
advances through W. New Guinea (by May l944). Philippines (October 1944): destruction of
Japanese battleship fleet at Leyte Gulf (Oct. 44). Luzon taken by Jan. 45. 90% of Japanese
merchant marine destroyed by March l945; submarine warfare.
2. Washington favors Nimitz and Central Pacific. Air Force backs Navy on
island strategy; envisages use of new B-29. Tarawa on Gilberts (Nov. 20,43): 1000 dead and
2000 wounded to take 5000 Japanese on 3 sq. miles (reefs and low tides). Then attack on
Marshall Islands (Eniweitok); Saipan in Marianas (June l944) sought as B-29 base. Battle of
Philippine Sea. Resignation of Tojo Cabinet, and prospect of defeat. Tinian, Guam (Marianas)
taken; battle for Iwo Jima Feb.-Mar. 45. Okinawa (April-June, 100,000 Japanese dead) and
Kamikaze missions.
II. RUSSIA AND DIPLOMACY FOR THE PACIFIC WAR: Need for the Russians presupposed (to
pin down 1.5m Japanese troops in Manchuria. U.S. Naval vs. Army estimates on eve of Yalta
conference. Soviets promise entry into war three months after V-E day. Plans for landing near
Tokyo spring l946 and varying expectations of resistance.
III. THE AIR WAR, NOV. L944-AUG. L945:
No defenses for Japan. B-29 raids unopposed. Tokyo incendiary raid, March 9/10,
1945 (100,000 killed?). Stimson asks review. Development of fission bomb: Meitner and Hahn
(chain reaction); Stagg Field; Manhattan Project (Groves and Oppenheimer). Search for
fissionable material: Oak Ridge for U235, Hanford WA for plutonium: "Thin Man," vs. "Fat
Boy." Potsdam ultimatum, July 26, 1945; Baron Suzuki response, July 30. Atomic bombs
dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Aug. 6 and 9. Why was the bomb used?
Problem of surrender. Japanese govt divided; fear of coup. Hirohito's intervention. VJ Day, Aug. 14/15, 1945; surrender Sept. 2. From defiance to submission.
HSB-54/H1890E
Dec. 19, 2006
War and Memory
WHAT DO WE DO WITH THE PAST when it involves so much suffering and enmity? How do we
come to terms with those we fought; those who killed us or our families (cf. the new Daniel
Mendelsohn book)? How do we honor the memory of those who fought? Can we legitimately
honor those who fought on the other side – a comradeship of arms?
I. THE POLITICS OF JUSTICE: TRIALS AND PUNISHMENT… (See preceding outline)
II. THE POLITICS OF MEMORY AND MEMORIALS.
“Collective memory” as an object of study. This has changed in significant ways.
While Communism prevailed in Russia and Eastern Europe, Communist martyrs
singled out; singularity of Jewish victims obscured. Monuments “to the victims of fascism.
National memory; Jewish memory since the Six Days War; Japanese memory:
Hiroshima. Nanjing massacre; the Enola Gay (Smithsonian) controversy. in 1995
The preoccupation with “landscapes of memory’ (lieux de memoire), visits to camps or
battlefields…Monuments less evocative, less successful than those of World War I
The return of memory (The Vichy syndrome...), and the memoirs of memory (Saul
Friedlander, When memory comes...). The last trials: Barbes, Papon.
Why so intense a return of memory?. (a) D-Day. 1994-95: the passing of a generation?
And the effort by a new generation to catch their parents at their most heroic or problematic. A
“feel-good” war for Americans and Brits? (b) In France and Italy, the freeing up of memory
from Left politics (The end of the Cold War and of the official Communist party lines. The
Resistance no longer as a battle of good vs. evil, but as civil war. freeing up of ambiguous
memory: Civitella controversy over partisans. In the Netherlands, the toll of the Holocaust a
problem. In Germany: theme of victimization through l950s, then generation break and little
reference to cost of war for Germans – this theme reviving.
III. THE POLITICS OF REPARATION: Adenauer and Israel and Jewish negotiations of early
l950s. The slave-labor settlement.
III. MEMORY VS. HISTORY. What is the difference? Can historians endow war or other
experience with “significance”? (War as absurdity literature: “Catch 22”; Paul Fussell, “In
Wartime.) Explaining vs. interpretation. (Answering the question, “why?” vs. answering the
question, “So what?” Possible frameworks of significance for WW II: (a) an era of
violence/war, unparalleled since; (b) the end of Empire; (c) the rise of the U.S.; (d) the defeat
of Nazism and Fascism. The changing nature of war and violence.
HSB54-H1890E
Dec. 7, 2006 (Pearl Harbor + 65)
AFTERSHOCKS: THE AXIS DEFEAT AND THE END OF EMPIRE
OVERVIEW: (1) A. Europe reduced and discredited in Asia. Contrast with Mandate
system after WWI, when France and Britain had inherited German and Ottoman territories. (2)
Resistance and Collaboration confused concepts: Anticolonial resistors pre 1942 become
Japanese collaborators in Asia, then divide. Communists vs. Non-Communists. Ethnic
divisions (Chinese vs. Malays); Burmese highlanders vs. lowland South; Thakin Party vs.
British and then vs. Japanese. Soekarno (Sukarno) vs. Dutch, then vs. Japanese. (3)
Decolonization and triumph of national and national-communist movements. (Chinese civil
war and victory of Mao by 1949 .) Impact of war and Japanese victories on non-Europeans.
FDR's anti-imperial agenda vs. Churchill on India. U.S. out of Philipines (1946). But America
to become increasingly distrustful of nationalists as Cold War deepened.
THE PROCESS OF JAPANESE RETREAT: North Burma, 1944: Japanese atrocities grow
against highlanders; distrust pro-Communist Thakins. Ba Maw (head of Burmese
collaborationist govt.) vs. Aung San, head of Burmese Defense Army. Economic devastation
1942 and 1944; famine conditions. INA (Subha Chandras Bose) decomposes. Japanese retreat
from Rangoon and British turn toward Aung San. Independence in l948.
Malaya: Chin Peng (pro Mao) vs. conservative Malays. “Emergency” or antiguerrilla
war does suppress largely Chinese communist resistance movement. Malaysia and Singapore
established.
BRITISH POSSESSIONS ELSEWHERE: (1) INDIA: Congress vs. Muslim league. 2m Indians
serve in armed forces; but "Quit India" movement, arrest of Congress leaders, and growing
conflict. 1942 Cripps Mission (offering later dominion status for end of agitation) fails.
Churchill succeeded by Labour Party 1945. Decision to partition and get out, August (1947),
(2) MIDDLE EAST:Palestine (partition in l947), Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, later Central Africa. Ethnic
wars as British leave (Muslims-Hindus, Muslims-Jews, Greeks-Turks in Cyprus).
THE EAST INDIES (INDONESIA): Dutch resist Sukarno takeover. 1946 direct agreement
for a federation and union with Holland under the Queen. Breaks down; agreement brokered
by Americans then sabotaged; Sukarno vs. Communists; American pressure leads to
capitulation in 1949.
FRENCH POSSESSIONS: Syria and Lebanon lost. In Africa de Gaulle seeks to retain
colonial position by offering "integration." and assimilation. Setif Algeria) repression, May 8,
1945; Madagascar repression l947. Indochina (effort to stem Viet Minh, 1945-54): Ho Chi
Minh takes Hanoi, Aug. 45; French retake Saigon control in Sept. Agreement with Ho
denounced by French; Haiphong shelled while Vietminh negotiating in Paris, Nov. 46. War
continues until 1954. French troops acquiescence to Tunisian and Moroccan independence;
Algerian war l954-62.
KOREA AND THE SOVIET-AMERICAN DIVISION: Korean Nationalist movement:
Syngman Rhee vs. Kim Il Sung; decision to divide country on 3th parallel. Hardening of
regimes l945-50. Stalin consents to Northern invasion after Chinese Communists in power:
6/25/50. The Global Cold War and the Emergence of the new imperial structures…