The Cold War in Europe and the Developing World

While the Cold War has been largely understood as a non-shooting war between the United States and the Soviet Union between 1946 and 1991, the effects on the nations of Europe and the developing world cannot be overestimated. In both Europe and the developing world, sides were created by the U.S. and USSR and proxy wars emerged from time to time. In addition, the burgeoning political landscape of the developing world, including the frequent outbreak of civil wars, was a principle outcome of the Cold War. In examining specific historical examples, we can better understand why Europeans and people in the developing world perceived the Cold War so differently from the U.S. and USSR.

In Europe, alliances were built centered on the U.S. and USSR in the forms of, respectively, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact. However, where this fault line was most pronounced was in Germany, where, by 1949, NATO- and Warsaw Pact-aligned nations emerged in West and East Germany, respectively. From the standpoint of the superpowers, the division of Germany was most acute during the Berlin Blockade and when the Berlin Wall was built. However, for average Germans, the experience was more consistently anxiety-producing. As the textbook points out, haggling by the superpowers over positioning of missiles in Europe, with a common adage in Germany at the time stating that "The shorter the distance of the missile, the deader the German."[1]

In addition, proxy wars erupted in both Europe and the developing world. In Europe, the most prominent case was the Greek Civil War, with the U.S. and USSR backing disparate sides for control over the country. The war was particularly destructive for a country that had suffered enormously under Nazi occupation, and for Greeks with no specific sympathy to a particular side, the war left the lasting impression that their lives were less important to the superpowers than the establishment of spheres of influence. This sense of superpower callousness also occurred in the civil wars that erupted in Korea and Vietnam, to varying extents.

The wars in Korea and Vietnam were the consequences of wartime partitioning of territories between U.S. and USSR spheres of influence. Elsewhere in the developing world, proxy wars arose in situations of power vacuums due to decolonization, which itself came as recompense for the participation of soldiers from developing nations. A key example of such a proxy war was the Angolan Civil War that began in 1975, with the decolonization process that began with Portuguese withdrawal. Sides were drawn between guerrilla organizations supported by the U.S. via South Africa, on the one hand, and those supported by the Soviet Union, East Germany, and Cuba, with this side's support dating back to guerrilla war against Portugal. The war went on far longer than many other post-colonial civil wars largely because of the claiming of interests by superpowers.

Ultimately, the effect of the Cold War on Europe and the decolonizing world was one of extensive anxiety and suffering. Because the primary battleground of the Cold War was Europe, the constantly looming threat of nuclear war left generations of Europeans anxious about their destruction by callous superpowers. In the developing world, this callousness was magnified by the proliferation of proxy wars like that in Angola that were devastating for the general population. Although U.S.-USSR proxy wars ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, new ones have arisen since then, particularly in Africa. Superpower positioning over spheres of influence has ended, but callousness with human life, unfortunately, has not.

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     [1] Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009), 502.

Effects of the Holocaust

For this week's assignment, I chose to write about a topic with which I'm very familiar, the Holocust. For years, I've conducted independent research on the topic and have published a fair amount of material. I think it's therefore safe to say that the Holocaust had extensive politics effects on Europe and the rest of the world. Although it is important to acknowledge that there were many innocent victims of the Nazis, not the least of whom were non-Jewish Polish citizens, Soviet POWs, and religious and political enemies, my focus here is on the largest victim group, i.e., the nearly six million European Jews killed during World War II.

Probably the most important political effect of the Holocaust was the creation within three years of the end of the war of the State of Israel. Although the Zionist movement had existed in its political form since the 1890s, it had had limited impact on the Jewish world at large. Because Orthodox Judaism rejected Zionism as heresy, while left-wing political organizations largely rejected it as bourgeois in its embrace of ethnic nationalism, Zionism in Europe was the province of eastern European, largely left-wing Jews, mainly in Poland, the Baltic States, and the Soviet Union. By the time the Holocaust happened, the political leadership of these Zionist groups was already in Palestine. The political effect of the Holocaust was a massive increase in support for Zionism, not only among the international community, which now agreed with the Zionism movement on the need for a Jewish state, but also among Jews themselves who had previously rejected Zionism but who now believed that continued Jewish survival in Europe was impossible. Although I believe that it is important to emphasize that the Holocaust did not "cause" Israel to exist -- the Zionist movement would ultimately have been successful in its goals; in fact, the Peel Commission under the U.K. Mandate for Palestine had voted for partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1937 -- it is undeniable, I believe, to state that the Holocaust expedited Israel's creation.

Obviously, given the long-term Arab-Israeli conflict that arose in connection to the creation of Israel, the Holocaust clearly had repercussions outside of Europe as well. Several important works on the topic have demonstrated an important role of Holocaust remembrance -- not to mention, unfortunately, some exploitation on one hand and denial on the other -- in post-World War II politics. In his book The Holocaust in American Life, the late historian Peter Novick argued that the Holocaust had a lasting impact on American culture and foreign policy over the course of the 20th century.[1] From the Israeli perspective, Tom Segev has argued quite convincingly that the Holocaust has been a frequent topic evoked by Israeli politicians, particularly when they find their own governments to be experiencing moments of crisis (e.g., a series of crises for David Ben-Gurion in the late 1950s culminated in Israel's capture, trial, and execution of Adolf Eichmann).[2] Finally, scholars of Holocaust denial have repeatedly noted a strong current of denial in the Arab world, particularly in the 21st century.[3]

Finally, recognition of the Holocaust, not to mention the Armenian Genocide of World War I, resulted in the U.N.'s adoption of its Convention on Genocide in 1948. Although the efficacy of this convention has been debated extensively, particularly given the failure of the United States to ratify it, it nevertheless was evoked when genocidal violence erupted in the former Yugoslavia beginning in the late 1980s, with the ultimate result being the establishment of the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia, which has tried and convicted several war criminals, not the least of whom was the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. Arguably, had the Holocaust not happened, the ability of the U.N. to enact the Convention on Genocide -- and perhaps even its inspiration to do so -- might well have been absent.

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     [1] Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (Boston: Mariner Books, 2000).
     [2] Tom Segev, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (London: Picador, 2000).
     [3] See, e.g., Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2009).

How Dictatorships Mobilize Support

The ability of extremist political movements of the interwar period might have maintained their power on the basis of coercion, but there was nevertheless a core group of people at the center of these movements -- not to mention a not insignificant number of the rank and file -- that supported them. In Germany, National Socialism ultimately garnered a plurality of voters to place Adolf Hitler as the Chancellor of Germany. In Italy, Mussolini's March on Rome with Fascist supporters culminated in his achieving the office of Prime Minister. In the Soviet Union, Stalin might have attracted a smaller personal following than either Hitler or Mussolini, but his cadre of supporters was sufficiently loyal to guarantee that supreme power rested in his hands.

Selections from Hitler's autobiography/political manifesto Mein Kampf provide insights into how Hitler was able to attract supporters to National Socialism. For instance, in the first section on anti-Semitism, Hitler writes, "Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator: by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord"[1]. Hitler was raised Catholic but was not religious as an adult; nevertheless, the line is crafted to combine an appeal to many people's religious sense with the mobilizing effect of anti-Semitism in identifying a common enemy. Other anti-Semitic sections provide appeals to German authorities (Schopenhauer, e.g.), appeals to racism and politics, and even appeals to conspiracy (i.e., The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion). In short, no stone remains unturned by Hitler to explain his anti-Semitism and convince others to feel the same way. More direct and honest is the section on propaganda, in which Hitler plainly states that propaganda must be simple and memorable, rather than complex or scientific; as Hitler writes, "The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be."[2]

Hitler learned about the ability of propaganda and simple symbolism to encourage the masses in part from observing Mussolini, who rose to power eleven years earlier than he did. In "What Is Fascism?" Mussolini, assisted by Giovanni Gentile, appeals to romantic notions of action (rather than thought), emotion (rather than intellect), and war (rather than peace). A line from the essay that is characteristic is "The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide: he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, but above all for others -- those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after."[3] However, although "What Is Fascism?" lacks the intellectual depth of Gentile's Doctrine of Fascism, it nevertheless asserts nationalism as a core belief of the Fascists. By appealing to potential followers' patriotism and militarism, Mussolini can better mobilize a party ready to undertake action. When Mussolini writes, "For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence,"[4] he is relying on the ability of jingoism to overshadow any possible objection to the subordination of the individual and his/her rights, as expressed elsewhere in the excerpt.

Finally, with the speech "The Tasks of Business Executives," from 1931, when the industrialization plan of the first Five-Year Plan was in full swing, Stalin argues that the goals for growth in the coming year must be met, although they had not been for the previous year. To encourage his audience to achieve these goals, Stalin evokes the enemies of the Communist Party thus far identified: Shakhty and the so-called Industrial Party, accused of sabotage and wrecking since the beginning of the Five-Year Plan. Beyond these internal enemies, Stalin mentions the historical international enemies of Russia:

She was beaten by the Mongol khans. She was beaten by the Turkish beys. She was beaten by the Swedish feudal lords. She was beaten by the Polish and Lithuanian gentry. She was beaten by the British and French capitalists. She was beaten by the Japanese barons. All beat her — because of her backwardness, because of her military backwardness, cultural backwardness, political backwardness, industrial backwardness, agricultural backwardness.[5]

In this way, Stalin is able to motivate his audience by fear. Although there are other appeals interspersed in the speech (support for the party, socialism's superiority to capitalism, etc.), ultimately it is the specter of foreign invasion and control that Stalin knows will mobilize the party the most.

In conclusion, Hitler and Stalin both mobilized support for their radical causes by appealing to enemies, respectively, Jews and internal and external opponents of Soviet communism. Hitler added an uncharacteristically honest acknowledgement of how propaganda generally works as a force for mobilization. In contrast, although there are abstract enemies such as democracy, liberalism, etc., evoked by Mussolini, his primary mobilizing force is nationalism and the promise of empire, although, to be fair, elsewhere in his writing and speeches, Hitler evoked the same ideas to garner support for the Nazi Party. Even Stalin makes a faint appeal to patriotism, albeit in a negative sense by hoping to encourage his followers to defend Russia against its enemies. In the end, all three political ideologies gained supporters, although they all eventually lost them as well, demonstrating that mobilization itself cannot sustain a movement; ultimately, it has to deliver on what it promises to attain longevity.

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     [1] Adolf Hitler, Excerpts from Mein Kampf, Jewish Virtual Library, accessed July 4, 2016, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/kampf.html, p. 60, para. 4.
     [2] Ibid, Chapter 6, para. 3.
     [3] Benito Mussolini, "What Is Fascism, 1932," Modern History Sourcebook, accessed July 4, 2016, http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.asp, para. 2.
     [4] Ibid, para. 9.
     [5] J.V. Stalin, "The Tasks of Business Executives," Marxists Internet Archive, accessed July 4, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1931/02/04.htm, para. 42.

Source Analysis: Women in Interwar Radical Politics

On the surface, the ideologies of the Soviet and Nazi regimes were diametrically opposed. On the one hand, the Soviets were on the far left and sought (at least in theory) to create a society in which everyone was equal; on the other hand, the Nazis were on the far right and sought to impose an order on society in which Aryans were on top and Jews were on the bottom. These differences were also reflected in their policies on women. The Soviets publicly stated that their goal was the full equality of women under the law, with equal participation and contribution to the state in exchange for equal benefits and protections. The Nazis, as radical traditionalists, wanted to roll back the progress in women's rights of recent decades and return women to Heim und Herd (home and hearth). However, as the horseshoe theory of politics posits, as political ideologies tend more toward the extremes, they tend to resemble each other more. If we consider writings and speeches from both societies and compare the actual policies, we can see the truth of this theory. 

Approaching the writings chronologically, the speech by Clara Zetkin from November 1922 comes first, and it poses certain problems because, while Zetkin was German, the speech was given in Soviet Russia and its topic is Soviet communism. That said, Zetkin's speech is intended to explain to her audience the role of the International Women's Secretariat within the Communist International (Comintern), i.e., both to integrate women who are already communists into the structure of the Comintern and to persuade working- and middle-class women to become communists. On the former point, Zetkin's speech offers a sort of "state of the union," with some parties within the Comintern (e.g., Bulgaria) doing better than others (the United Kingdom). On the latter point, Zetkin references the "pitiless inroads present day conditions make into the lives of millions of women, causing many of them to awaken from their torpor."¹ On the whole, Zetkin's speech is a call to action to communist women to mobilize women inside and outside the party to transform the conditions for women worldwide.

The second selection, from the writings of Aleksandra Kollontai -- one of only a very small number of women to have held a position in the government of the Soviet Union -- addresses the topic of transformation of male-female romantic and sexual relationships in the wake of communist revolution. Broadly speaking, Kollontai argues that the free love engendered the Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent Civil War, which she characterizes as "wingless Eros," might have been appropriate for the time, but "winged Eros" must soon displace this free love, which poses a challenge because its "love is woven of delicate strands of every kind of emotion,"² i.e., it is based on interpersonal commitment rather than momentary pleasure. To accommodate this paradigm shift, Kollontai argues that the traditional bourgeois notion of married love must be replaced with "love-comradeship," based on equality, mutual recognition by each partner of the rights of the other, and "comradely sensitivity," all packaged within a communist collective that demands a greater tie to itself than either partner to the other.³ Such love, according to Kollontai, would be more equal and more rational.

Unfortunately for both Zetkin and Kollontai, the reality of women's position in the Soviet Union was inferior to that envisioned by both women. As already noted, Kollontai was part of a very small minority of women with real political power, and Zetkin enjoyed political power, but in Germany and not Russia. Moreover, as noted by Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, economic realities kept women in a subordinate position in the post-Civil War USSR because, under the New Economic Policy, women "were generally the first to feel the pinch of job cutbacks."⁴ In the seventy years of its existence, no woman ever held supreme political power in the Soviet Union, in comparison to several other countries that afforded significantly less lip service to the equality of women (e.g., India, Pakistan, Israel, the United Kingdom, and others). As a consequence, the Soviet experiment in communism, while making big promises, ultimately delivered comparatively quite little in real results, notwithstanding the legal equality of women.

Turning to the case of National Socialist Germany, the 1934 speech by Adolf Hitler to the National Socialist Women's League makes a clear case for radical traditionalism. In a society in which, since World War I, women had received a variety of legal rights, including suffrage, the Nazis made it clear that it was time to return to an earlier time where a woman's place was in the home. Hitler states, "We do not consider it correct for the woman to interfere in the world of the man, in his main sphere. We consider it natural if these two worlds remain distinct."⁵ As was his wont, Hitler characterizes women's emancipation as a "Jewish" creation that must be reversed.⁶ In addition, Hitler ties the traditional role of women to natalist policies, implying that women being ensconced in the home results in stronger family ties, which in turn result in "the willingness of the woman to risk her life to preserve this important cell and to multiply it."⁷

In her speech from two years later, Getrud Scholtz-Klink, leader of the same organization addressed by Hitler, characterizes this role for women in a more revolutionary sense than the Führer. Like Hitler, she denounces the proto-feminism of the preceding generation and its emphasis away from family and particularly from childbirth and motherhood. She goes a step further, however, in stating, "It is therefore our task to awaken once again the sense of the divine, to make the calling to motherhood the way through which the German woman will see her calling to be mother of the nation. She will then not live her life selfishly, but rather in service to her people."⁸ Interestingly, despite the very different final role that Scholtz-Klink sees for women, her exhortation to the greater good is not unlike that of Kollontai thirteen years earlier. Importantly, also like Kollontai, Scholtz-Klink sees the role of women as being equally important to that of men.

Given the clear point of view expressed by Hitler and the emphasis placed in Nazi German society on the Führerprinzip, or leadership principle, it is unsurprising that the place of women largely returned to a more traditional context in the National Socialist period. At least legally, the law tended to reflect this principle, particularly the natalist anti-abortion laws and the positive incentives offered for couples to have large families. Nevertheless, as in the Soviet Union, economic realities undermined the full implementation of this goal. Again, as pointed out by Gilbert and Large, only four years in Nazi rule in Germany, some of these pro-birth policies were reversed to provide incentives to women to go back to work, given the urgent need for workers in the context of German rearmament.⁹ Even when slave laborers were brought to Germany during the war, a percentage of these laborers were women, even if they were largely domestic workers for upper-class Germans and party elites.¹⁰

1 Clara Zetkin, "Organising Among Women," Marxists' Internet Archive, accessed July 4, 2016, https://www.marxists.org/archive/zetkin/1922/ci/women.htm, para. 13.

2 Aleksandra Kollontai, "Make Way for Winged Eros: A Letter to Working Youth, Love as a Socio-Psychological Factor," in From Symbolism to Socialist Realism: A Reader, ed. Irene Masing-Delic (Brighton, Mass.: Academic Studies Press, 2012), 162.

3 Ibid, 171.

4 Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009), 209.

5 Adolf Hitler, "Hitler’s Speech to the National Socialist Women’s League (September 8, 1934)," Germany History in Documents and Images, accessed July 4, 2016, http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=1557, para. 4

6 Ibid, para. 1.

7 Ibid, para. 4.

8 Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, "To Be German Is to Be Strong," German Propaganda Archive, accessed July 4, 2016, http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/scholtz-klink2.htm, para. 12

9 Gilbert and Large, 266.

10 Ibid.

Four Writers on Interwar Europe

Between World War I and World War II, European culture underwent a remarkable transformation as a result of both the continuation of philosophical traditions that had begun in the previous century and the massive loss of life that the war caused. On the one hand, writers and thinkers like Sigmund Freud saw during the interwar period the opportunity to push humankind forward based on the previous foundations of rationalism. On the other hand, literary writers like and José Ortega y Gasset, T.S. Eliot, and George Orwell saw decadence with little hope in sight, although it is worth noting that some of these writers offered small indications of a better future.

Sigmund Freud's theory of psychoanalysis built on the findings of previous scientists and philosophers, including Charles Darwin and William James. Darwin posited evolution on the basis of natural (i.e., sexual) selection, and James introduced the notion of identity arising from a stream of consciousness; Freud sought to explain how the drive to reproduce sexually impacted the consciousness. While this approach might seem individualized, it reflects societal concerns because societies are collectives of individuals; therefore, the extent to which the individual can improve his/her psychological functioning is directly proportional to how well society functions. Freud demonstrates this line of thinking in "The Structure of the Unconscious," in which he describes his division of the mind into the id, ego, and superego. He writes, "In popular language, we may say that the ego stands for reason and circumspection, while the id stands for the untamed passions"[1]; in championing the ego over the id, Freud indicates that humankind in general can eliminate neurosis and become more rational, enunciating a positive vision for the future.

However, Freud's selection is the only one for the week with a positive, or even neutral, outlook. In comparison, the José Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses is quite negative. In the selection, the author discusses fascism as a movement of mass mobilization, and he draws conclusions based on this nature about the lack of independent, strong intelligence among the mass followers of leaders such as Mussolini. "The characteristic of the hour," he writes, "is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will."[2] This characteristic, Ortega y Gasset writes, results in barbarism and the abandonment of reason. The average person acts without thinking; "Hence, his ideas are in effect nothing more than appetites in words."[3] In so far as Freud had identified the id with the appetites and appealed to humankind to override the id to overcome neurosis and embrace reason, Ortega y Gasset sees Europeans in the interwar period doing the opposite. Offering no solution, at least in the selection, the tone is decidedly negative.

Whereas Ortega y Gasset addresses political disintegration, George Orwell's emphasis in Down and Out in Paris in London is primarily on social decay, although political decay is present as well. On the latter point, the sheer volume of Russian emigrés whom Orwell encounters in Paris is a direct result of the Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, from which they are refugees; e.g., Orwell's friend Boris seems emblematic of the refugees, although there is dead wood as well: "Boris told me of an exiled Russian duke whom he had once met, who frequented expensive restaurants. The duke would find out if there was a Russian officer among the waiters, and, after he had dined, call him in a friendly way to his table [to arrange for a free meal."[4] In London, Orwell encounters the true economic consequences of the post-war recession, finding himself in flophouses and unable to find gainful employment. Nevertheless, the memoir ends on a note of hope, with Orwell recognizes that he has found his own sense of empathy: "I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning."[5]

Finally, T.S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" examines spiritual decay. In its fragmented form, the poem repeatedly evokes the war, e.g., in lines concerning the wife of a demobilized soldier who has had an abortion in his absence ("I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face, / It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said."[6]. These lines evoke the destroyed morality of the post-war "unreal city" of London. In addition, the repeated references to the blind prophet of Greek myth, Tiresias, makes oblique mention of Freud (Tiresias is a character in Sophocles's Oedipus the Tyrant), while those to the Tarot and the Arthurian cycle of mythology evoke an unending but futile cycle of life and death. However, even in this bleak landscape, Eliot is able to find a glimmer of hope. At the end of the poem, in the shadow of London Bridge falling, the final line -- "Shantih shantih shantih," which Eliot renders in his note as "The Peace which passeth understanding,"[7] indicates the possibility of finding peace by escaping the unending cycle of life and death. While perhaps not "hopeful" in the sense that Orwell's ending is, it nevertheless offers more hope than Ortega y Gasset's observations, while simultaneously concluding that interwar society is in ruins.

In conclusion, Freud offers a utopian vision of the future in which, through psychoanalysis, humankind can transcend their inherent neuroses and, as more functional individuals, form more functional societies. Ortega y Gasset sees in fascism not that ideology's own utopian promises, but rather the dystopian effects of mob mentality. Orwell sees a dystopian post-war Europe in political and economic upheaval, but he is able to wrest some sense of a greater understanding of the human condition as a result. Eliot collapses under the sheer weight of this postwar European dystopia, offering instead a possible way out through renunciation of the cycle of life and death.

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     [1] Sigmund Freud, "The Structure of the Unconscious," accessed June 26, 2016,http://anupamm.tripod.com/freudst.html, para. 9.

     [2] José Ortega y Gasset, Revolt of the Masses (excerpt), The History Guide, accessed June 26, 2016,https://web.archive.org/web/20121019190503/http:/historyguide.org/europe/gasset.html, para. 4, emphasis in original.

     [3] Ibid, para. 9.

     [4] George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, The Complete Works of George Orwell, accessed June 26, 2016, http://www.george-orwell.org/Down_and_Out_in_Paris_and_London/index.html, Chapter VIII, para. 1.

     [5] Ibid, Chapter XXXVIII, para. 4.

     [6] T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land," accessed June 26, 2016, http://eliotswasteland.tripod.com/, lines 160-61.

     [7] Ibid, line 433.

Isaac Rosenberg on Trench Warfare

Trench warfare was comparatively horrific when contrasted with earlier forms of warfare, primarily because of the very instruments listed by the textbook authors in discussing combat during World War I: "the hand grenade, the spade, and the machine gun."[1] In their own ways, each tool is emblematic of how warfare had changes from earlier generations. The spade was the tool with which the trenches were dug, the hand grenade was the weapon that was most feared by the men while in the trenches, and the machine gun posed the threat to men when going "over the top." In the poetry of the British poet Isaac Rosenberg, himself killed at the Battle of Arras in 1918, all these new aspects of trench warfare make appearances.

The most important aspect of trench warfare was the trenches themselves. Each side dug long trenches in which their combat soldiers would wait to launch or defend against a charge. In rainy seasons, the trenches would fill with water, giving rise to the worsening of already poor sanitary conditions. In addition, the presence of rotting corpses both in the trenches and on the battlefields between the trenches of each side proved a fertile ground for rats, who would also infest the trenches. Rosenberg addresses one of these rats in his poem "Break of Day in the Trenches," in which the poet writes, "Now you have touched this English hand / You will do the same to a German / Soon, no doubt, if it be your pleasure / To cross the sleeping green between."[2] In these lines, Rosenberg as a British combat soldier recognizes the common predicament of soldiers on both sides. While the home fronts and home governments demonized enemies, World War I soldiers often recognized the common humanity of the men on the other side.

While men in the trenches awaited a charge, a common experience was to lob grenades at the other sides' trenches or to have grenades thrown at oneself. Given the confining nature of the trenches, the fear of a grenade landing in one's trench and the certain injury or death it promised made combat in World War I frightening in a way combat had not been before. Lines from Rosenberg's poem "Marching" evoke the image of the hand grenade when, considering the Roman god of war, Mars, and how his craft has changed, the poet writes, "Blind fingers loose an iron cloud / To rain immortal darkness / On strong eyes."[3] The soldier in the trench is blind to the soldiers on the other side and throws a weapon that rains iron on its victims. Rather than meeting his enemy face to face as in previous wars, in World War I, soldiers could for the first time kill one another without seeing each other.

Finally, the mettle of the men in the trenches was tested when they were commanded by their platoon leaders to go "over the top" and charge the other side, which usually waited with machine guns trained on the chargers. Again, Rosenberg describes the scene in a poem, "Dead Man's Dump": "The air is loud with death / The dark air spurts with fire, / The explosions ceaseless are."[4] Here, Rosenberg makes clear the real wages of war: in the end, dead is dead. Whereas earlier poetry about war written by British poets had been celebratory, whether it was the "band of brothers" monologue from Shakespeare's Henry V or the far more recent "Theirs but to do and die" of Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade," war was seen as a noble endeavor in which man met his destiny. With Rosenberg, this tradition seems to have ended. In no small part, we can see that it was the very different nature of combat in trench warfare that contributed to this change of perspective on the nature of war.

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     [1] Felix Gilbert and David Clay Large, The End of the European Era, 6th edition (New York: Norton, 2009),  106.

     [2] Isaac Rosenberg, "Break of Day in the Trenches," Poetry Foundation, accessed June 20, 2016, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/13535, lines 9-12.

      [3] Isaac Rosenberg, "Marching," Poetry Foundation, accessed June 20, 2016, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/13534, lines 14-16.

      [4] Isaac Rosenberg, "Dead Man's Dump," poetry Foundation, accessed June 20, 2016, http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/47411, lines 36-38.