The Slide to War: A European Civil War?

Outside of politics, did European society engage in civil wars?

With the exceptions of Ireland and Finland, I would have to say that, for the period between the end ofthe Russian Civil War and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, European society did not engage in civilwars. Given the presence of Ireland and Finland at peripheries of Europe, it's unsurprising that these wars are less often considered as impactful for the continent as those of Russian and Spain, although at least in the case of Finland, the issue of an emergent left lay at the root of the conflict. Thus, if we consider the period between the wars as one of reaction to Bolshevism specifically and the left generally, we should probably consider the period to be one primarily of coups rather than civil wars.

The other key question would seem to be whether Europe at large engaged in a civil war of left vs. Right over the entire interwar period. I'm sure many of us have "go-to" authors on particular topics; mine on civil war is Stathis Kalyvas, whose definition is "armed combat within the boundaries of a recognized sovereign entity between parties subject to a common authority at the outset of the hostilities."[1] Given this definition, it's hard to say that the idea of a Europe-wide 30 Years War truly obtains, at least in so far as such a war would be considered a civil war. Europe was not a recognized sovereign entity with a common authority in 1918. Nor do I think it's fair even to consider the lull in outright civil war between those in Russia and Spain to be a sort of left-right "cold war." The presence in the political center of some of the governments in Europe, particularly Germany, until the financial crisis of the late 1920s and early 1930s attests to the opposite being true. And in those places where it was not, there was not, as noted, civil wars so much as coups.

Therefore, Dan Diner strikes me as being mistaken when he writes, "The front lines in an emerging universal civil war would thus have far-reaching consequences for the territorial makeup of the new nation-states in Central and East Central Europe."[2] However, this disagreement is one of definition, since the examples of violence that he marshals are legitimate examples of coups, ethnic cleansing, and/or revolution. As far as Donald Watt's observations are concerned, he seems closer to the mark in writing that the "'European civil war' came to embrace a very much larger section of what might loosely be stigmatised as 'European opinion'; and that the existence of this set of perceptions has been almost entirely neglected in the development of European historiography of the origins and course of the Second World War."[3] Definitions, after all, matter.

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[1] Stathis Kalyvas, The Logic of Violence in Civil War (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge UP, 2006), 17.
[2] Dan Diner, Cataclysms: A History of the Twentieth Century from Europe's Edge (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 65.
[3] Donald C. Watt, "The European Civil War," in The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, edited by Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Lothar Kettenacke (Crow's Nest, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1983), 5.

Forging a New World? Peacemaking at Paris

Was peace doomed from the beginning? Or did the ‘economic consequences’ of the peace undermine the achievements of the peacemakers? How valid are the criticisms of Keynes?

After reading the materials for this week, I remain convinced that the key failure of the Paris Peace Conference and Treaty of Versailles was economic, i.e., that the terms imposed upon Germany were onerous to the point of nearly guaranteeing its future economic instability and, thus, political instability. However, although far more has made said about the reparations payments Germany was required to make being the core reason why the treaty ultimately failed, it seems more important was the extraction of such a large proportion of Germany's resources, rendering it unable to make these payments. Had it retained more of its resources or had access to them on the market or had it lost its resources but not been subjected to reparations, Germany might have become sufficiently economically and politically stable.

In this regard, I really do find Keynes's arguments persuasive. For one thing, he does not suggest that any type of monetary punishment of Germany would be too onerous. Oh the matter of coal, for example, he writes, "This [annual delivery of coal to France for 10 years] is a reasonable provision if it stood by itself, and one which Germany should be able to fulfil if she were left her other resources to do it with."[1] Elsewhere, he is even more blunt: "There is no question but that Germany lost lose these ore-fields. The only question is how far she is to be allowed facilities for purchasing their produce."[2] He makes his case perhaps no more clear than when he writes, "Yet if these feelings [of victors' justice] and these rights are allowed to prevail, beyond what wisdom would recommend, the reactions on the social and economic life of Central Europe will be far too strong to be confined within their original limits."[3]

Among the cases made against Keynes, Zara Steiner's is perhaps the most vociferous, but I don't find it particularly compelling. First, she claims that Keynes found the reparations clauses "morally unjustified and financially unworkable,"[4] but she cites no source on this point, nor does she stipulate why he saw the terms as unworkable. In directly addressing Keynes's argument, which she considers "pernicious but brilliant,"[5] she does little more than argue that the terms of Versailles were not so bad because the terms Germany dictated to the Soviets at Brest-Litovsk were worse. Her most direct statement, i.e., "Even in the short term, the Versailles treaty did not leave Germany prostrate; on the contrary, Germany industry revived, and some historians believe that stabilization might have come earlier had the political structure been less fractured,"[6] i.e., is also unsourced.

Moreover, it seems to put the cart before the horse to some extent, in placing the fractured political structure of Germany because the cause of the treaty's failure, rather than considering that the cause and effect might have been reversed. In fact, with a broad social democratic government including liberal parties, it is hard to argue that Germany was badly political divided in 1919. The Kapp Putsch was a year off and based at least in part on the ultimate imposition of Versailles. Thus, I don't find Steiner's criticisms valid.

====

[1] John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Row, 1920), 86.
[2] Ibid, 98.
[3] Ibid, 94.
[4] Zara Steiner, The Lights that Failed: European International History, 1918-1933 (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 64.
[5] Ibid, 67.
[6] Ibid, 67-68.

Contra Lewy: The Armenian Genocide

In 1996, Gregory H. Stanton, a law professor, former Fulbright scholar, and employee of the United States Department of State, presented a briefing paper in which he promulgated his theory of genocide, which encompassed eight stages. Regarding the eighth stage, Stanton wrote that “every genocide is followed by denial,” and its characteristics range from getting rid of evidence to blaming the victims for their treatment. “They [the perpetrators] block investigations of the crimes,” Stanton continued, “and continue to govern until driven from power by force, when they flee into exile.”[1]

Certainly the behavior of the Ottoman government following the 1915-1916 genocide of Anatolian Armenians fits this bill. However, the denial stage of the Armenian genocide has persisted for a hundred years, with steadfast refusal to accept responsibility by governments of the successor state to the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Turkey. Moreover, an ongoing public relations campaign of denial by the Turkish government has swayed no small number of Anglo-American scholars. Among these scholars is Guenter Lewy, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In addition to a book on the topic published in 2005,[2] Lewy sought a wider audience by publishing an essay the same year in the neoconservative publication Commentary.[3] Although Lewy seems to make a compelling argument that the case of the Ottoman Armenians was not genocide, he relies on insinuations of disloyalty and selective or incomplete readings of primary sources to make his points.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the definition of genocide has been heavily debated. For his own part, Lewy appeals directly to Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term in his 1944 book Axis Rule in Occupied Europe and contributed to the 1948 Convention on Genocide promulgated by the United Nations.[4] This convention is notable, particularly to Lewy, for its emphasis on "acts committed with intent."[5] Lewy's explicit claim is that the violence committed against Armenians in 1915-1916 does not constitute genocide due to a lack of intent or, to use Lewy's word, "premeditation," which forms as he says the "crucial problem to be addressed."[6]

Lewy begins his argument by outlining the history of the Armenian Revolution Federation (ARF), known in Armenian as the Dashnaks, to establish that violence against Armenians was committed within the context of anti-insurgency. After briefly summarizing Dashnak violence against Ottoman targets beginning with the party's founding in 1890, Lewy states that the Dashnaks resumed guerrilla warfare against the Ottomans with the onset of World War I, in which the Ottomans were matched against Russia, whom Lewy calls "the Armenians' traditional ally."[7] Citing a report to Washington of Henry Morgenthau, Sr., then the U.S. ambassador to the Sublime Porte, Lewy claims that no fewer than 10,000 guerrillas were active by April 1915, but perhaps more than twice that number.[8]

In a mere paragraph, Lewy misrepresents the history substantially. First, while Lewy suggests that Dashnak militancy against the Ottomans began with the start of the war, the record is somewhat different and the number of omissions alarming. In one of his books on the Armenian genocide, Taner Akçam (Clark University, Mass.), who has undertaken among the most thorough investigations of Ottoman documents to date, concludes on the basis of these documents "that the events in question do not in fact constitute an organized rebellion, and […] that there was no popular involvement"; in fact, Akçam demonstrates, the Dashnak leadership itself dissociated itself from the violence and offered its assistance to Ottoman authorities.[9]

Second, Lewy fails to mention the extreme violence meted out by the Ottoman government against Armenian civilians in the so-called Hamidian massacres in 1894-1896, in which hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians were killed by government forces. In discussing the violence in 1915, Donald Bloxham (Univ. of Edinburgh) notes, "If not all forms of resistance were at the time responses to genocide, most were based on past experience, including of discrimination and massacres."[10] Arum Arkun, executive director of the Tekeyan Cultural Center (N.J.), concurs with regard to the Armenian resistance in Cilicia and Zeitoun, on the Mediterranean, to which Lewy himself refers.[11] Arkun writes, "Any clashes that occurred were interpreted by both sides in light of their fears: for the Muslims, that the Armenians were ready to rebel and collaborate with Allied states potentially interested in occupying Ottoman territory; and for the Armenians, that the Muslims were planning another massacre."[12] Past behavior of Ottoman authorities played an important role in the actions of those Armenians who did rise up.

Finally, Lewy makes only oblique reference to the transnational nature of the ARF; he refers to Dashnak organizations in Sofia, Bulgaria, the Balkans, and the Caucasus, but he never explicitly acknowledges that these party organizations operated separately from each other. For instance, Lewy notes that the Armenian guerrilla Andranik Ozanian meeting with the Russian General Aleksandr Mishlayevsky in 1914,[13] but fails to mention that the Ottoman Anatolian-born Ozanian had left Ottoman territory ten years earlier and moreover had left the ARF in 1908.

Most disconcerting, however, is Lewy's treatment of the aforementioned Morgenthau message to Washington. The actual message, a telegram sent on May 25, 1915, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing and classified as confidential, has been widely cited by defenders of the Ottomans in the same manner as Lewy does here. However, the presentation by Lewy is again incomplete. Before addressing the matter of Armenian guerrillas, Morgenthau writes, "The sharp oscillations in the treatment to which it [the Armenian community] has been subjected since the Turkish Revolution [i.e., the Young Turk revolution in 1908] have taken a markedly unfavorable turn by reason on the War."[14]

Morgenthau acknowledges that many Armenians likely compare their lot in the Ottoman Empire with the comparatively better lot of their people in Russia; given the recent memory of the Adana massacre in 1909, in which anti-Young Turk loyalists to the deposed monarch massacred thousands of Armenians, he comments that it would not be surprising if many Armenians and Turks both were suspicious of the government. He further states that the Armenians are no more willing or able to "give expression to their wishes."[15] Then, he notes that some Armenian attempts at desertion from the Ottoman military have been met with "savage repression" and that "entire villages have been destroyed, with the invariable accompaniments of murder, rape and pillage. A more systematic policy than has been customary in the past, appears to have been pursued, in the wholesale deportation of the population.[16] Morgenthau subsequently recounts the refusal of Red Cross aid for Armenian refugees by Turkish authorities.[17]

Only then does Morgenthau mention an Armenian insurgency. It is worth quoting the passage at some length:

In the Eastern regions of the Empire, although news is extremely scarce and unreliable, it would seem as if an Armenian insurrection to help the Russian had broken out in Van. Thus a former deputy here, one Pastermadjian who had assisted our proposed railway concessions some years ago, is now supposed to be fighting the Turks with a legion of Armenian volunteers. These insurgents are said to be in possession of a part of Van and to be conducting a guerrilla warfare [sic] in a country where regular military operations are extremely difficult. To what extent they are organized or what success they have gained it is impossible for me to say; their numbers have been various estimated but none puts them at less than ten thousand and twenty-five thousand is probably closer to the truth.[18]

The remainder of the telegram addresses the mutual fears of the Armenians and the government of one another, the unreliability of incoming information, and the disarming of Armenian and Greek soldiers in the military and their assignment to labor battalions. He notes in concluding that loss of life seems "to have been but a few cases."[19]

Clearly, Lewy has included only those parts of the telegram that most serve his purpose of depicting the Armenians as widely involved in a major insurgency. Besides omitting reports reflecting Ottoman violence against Armenians, he also fails to include Morgenthau's clear statements about the unreliability of the information in the telegram, although it is also worth noting that the estimate of the number of Armenian guerrillas under Russian military control at the time is accurate, and Garegin Pastermadjian was indeed one of the leaders, according to his own admission.[20]

Elsewhere in the essay, Lewy deploys writings from Morgenthau to explain that the Turks sought to expel its Armenian population because they "had come to consider the Armenians a fifth column."[21] Again, however, the telegram says more than what Lewy lets on. This second telegram, dated July 10, 1915, begins, "Persecutions of Armenians assuming unprecedented proportions."[22] Moreover, the segment quoted by Lewy is directly followed thus: "Most of the sufferers are innocent and have been loyal to the Ottoman government. Nearly all are old men [and] women."[23] The penultimate sentence of the same paragraph reads, "There seems to be a systematic plan to crush the Armenian race."[24] Lest there be any mistake about the content of Morgenthau's communiqués during this period, a telegram six days later uses the phrase "race extermination" regarding the Ottomans' treatment of the Armenians.[25]

The obverse of the coin of Lewy's argument about sources is, as he writes, "no authentic documentary evidence exists to prove the culpability of the central government of Turkey for the massacre of 1915-16."[26] Here, Lewy pre-emptively attacks The Memoirs of Naim Bey by Aram Andonian, which he declares is "considered a forgery not only by Turkish historians but by practically every western student of Ottoman history."[27] Comparing the case of the Ottoman Armenians to that of the European Jews during World War II, he concludes, "Barring the unlikely discovery of sensational new documents in the Turkish archives, it is safety to say that no similar evidence exists for the tragic events of 1915-16."[28]

Unfortunately for Lewy, Akçam's exploration of the Ottoman archives did just that. In addressing one of the so-called Andonian telegrams, quoted in The Memoirs of Naim Bey, in which the Ottoman Minister of the Interior Talaat Pasha defends the deportation of Armenians to ensure the posterity of Turks from perpetual treason, Akçam remarks, "The contents of this telegram are nearly identical to those of Talat [sic] Pasha's directive of 29 August 1915 to all provinces […] The similarities of the telegrams published by Aram Andonian to this and other extant Ottoman documents make a reexamination of the validity of the Andonian telegrams necessary."[29]

Perhaps Lewy's most grotesque gambit is to suggest that the continued presence of Armenians in some districts of the Ottoman Empire until the end of the war is counterevidence of genocidal intent. He writes, "This would be analogous to Hitler's failing to include the Jews of Berlin, Cologne, and Munich in the Final Solution."[30] Beyond the clear problems such a statement encounters with regard to simple logic (e.g., that there were survivors of the attacks on the World Trade Centers on Sept. 11, 2001, does not negate the intention of Al-Qaeda to kill everyone in the buildings) and to the complexities of Nazi deportation, labor, and extermination policy during World War II, the statement ignores the realities of Young Turk social engineering.

In his survey of the rise of the Turkish nation-state, Uğur Ümit Üngör (Utrecht Univ.) argues persuasively that the experience of losing territory, particularly in the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, strengthened the ethnic nationalism of the Young Turks; this experience, "especially [in] the eastern provinces, would give birth to unprecedented forms of population politics and social engineering."[31] Mark Levene (Univ. of Warwick) expands on the economic motivations underlying this ethnic/social engineering -- specifically the creation of an ethnic Turkish middle class, remarking, "The physical destruction of Ottoman Armenians throughout Anatolia in this sense represented the intent to remove a communal group perceived to represent a domestic obstacle in the CUP's [Committee of Union and Progress -- the name of the Young Turks' political party] race for modernization."[32]

Most persuasively, Akçam uses Turkish documents to demonstrate that the removal of the Armenians and the genocide thereof was the most radical expression of a policy designed to leave no district under Ottoman control with a non-Turkish population of more than five to ten percent, thereby guaranteeing Turkish ethnic homogeneity throughout the empire.[33] Thus, the mere presence of Armenians in Constantinople or Smyrna, which Lewy states implies no intent of genocide, does nothing to belie this overall goal, provided that the remaining non-Turkish population in these cities was less than ten percent. In fact, given the removal of ethnic Greeks from these areas during the same period, any policy against Armenians was likely to be less thorough, particularly in comparison to eastern Anatolia, where the ethnic heterogeneity was much greater. Lewy ignores these factors in suggesting a lack of intent on this basis.

In conclusion, while to a layperson, Guenter Lewy might seem to make a strong argument that the treatment of Ottoman Armenians in 1915-1916 was not genocide, a more exacting examination of other scholars’ work and of the primary sources that Lewy cites result in the opposite conclusion. Lewy clearly misrepresents through selective quotation the reports of Ambassador Morgenthau, not only with regard to the intent of the Ottomans but also regarding the scale of Armenian insurrection at that time. Lewy is correct in his essay in urging the two sides in this historical debate to find common ground, but doing so requires an honest reckoning with the historical record.

References

Akçam, Taner. The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and

Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 2012.

Arkun, Arum. "Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide." In A

Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark, 221-243. New York: Oxford UP, 2011.

Bloxham, Donald. The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the

Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians. New York: Oxford UP, 2005.

Levene, Mark. "Creating a Modern 'Zone of Genocide': The Impact of Nation- and State

Formation in Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923." Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 393-433.

Lewy, Guenter. "The First Genocide of the 20th Century?" Commentary, 61, no. 11

(December 2005): 47-52.

Morgenthau, Henry, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, May 25, 1915. In United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917, edited by Ara Sarafian, 32-34. Princeton, N.J.: Gomidas Institute, 2004.

Morgenthau, Henry, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, July 10, 1915. In The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide, edited by Alan Whitehorn, 293-294. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2015.

Morgenthau, Henry, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State

Robert Lansing, July 16, 1915. NARA RG 59, 867.4016/76.

Stanton, Gregory H. “The 8 Stages of Genocide” Genocide Watch. Accessed May 1,

2011. http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf

Üngör, Uğur Ümit. The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia,

1913-1950. New York: Oxford UP, 2011.

United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of

Genocide. Human Rights Web. Accessed September 10, 2016. http://www.hrweb.
org/legal/genocide.html

---

[1] Gregory H. Stanton, “The 8 Stages of Genocide,” Genocide Watch, accessed May 1, 2011, http://www.genocidewatch.org/images/8StagesBriefingpaper.pdf

[2] Guenter Lewy, The Armenian Massacres in Ottoman Turkey: A Disputed Genocide (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2005).

[3] Guenter Lewy, "The First Genocide of the 20th Century?" Commentary, 61, no. 11 (December 2005): 47-52.

[4] Ibid, 47.

[5] United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Human Rights Web, accessed September 10, 2016, http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html, Article II.

[6] Lewy, “First,” 48.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Taner Akçam, The Young Turks' Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 2012), 163-64.

[10] Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 91.

[11] Lewy, “First,” 48.

[12] Arum Arkun, "Zeytun and the Commencement of the Armenian Genocide," in A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire, edited by Ronald Grigor Suny, Fatma Müge Göçek, and Norman M. Naimark (New York: Oxford UP, 2011), 270.

[13] Lewy, “First,” 49.

[14] Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, May 25, 1915, in United States Official Records on the Armenian Genocide, 1915-1917, edited by Ara Sarafian (Princeton, N.J.: Gomidas Institute, 2004), 32.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid, 32-33.

[17] Ibid, 33.

[18] Ibid, emphasis mine.

[19] Ibid, 33-34.

[20] Armen Garo and Aram Torossian, Why Armenia Should Be Free: Armenia’s Rôle in the Present War (Boston: Hairenik Publishing, 1918).

[21] Lewy, “First,” 49.

[22] Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, July 10, 2015, in The Armenian Genocide: The Essential Reference Guide, edited by Alan Whitehorn (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-Clio, 2015), 293-94.

[23] Ibid, bracketed material inserted by Whitehorn.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Henry Morgenthau, U.S. Ambassador to the Sublime Porte, to U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing, July 16, 1915, NARA RG 59, 867.4016/76.

[26] Lewy, “First,” 50.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid.

[29] Akçam, 254 note 90.

[30] Lewy, “First,” 51.

[31] Uğur Ümit Üngör, The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (New York: Oxford UP, 2011), 50.

[32] Mark Levene, "Creating a Modern 'Zone of Genocide': The Impact of Nation- and State-Formation in Eastern Anatolia, 1878-1923," Holocaust and Genocide Studies 12, no. 3 (Winter 1998): 407

[33] Akçam, 29-62.

Did Germany Actually Win the War?

My post for this week is inspired by the following quotation, which I read only two days ago for the first time. It surprised me at first and then struck me as somewhat perceptive. Now, however, I see the authors as having emphasized Germany's "victory" too much:

In strategic terms Germany had won the Great War. Its industrial base remained intact; it lost little territory of value; it now fronted on one major power (a debilitated France) rather than three (France, Austria-Hungary, and Russia). Its industrial strength, its geographic position, and the size of its population gave it the greatest economic potential in Europe, while the small states of Eastern Europe and the Balkans were all open to German political and economic domination.[1]

The authors, Murray and Millett, go on to discuss the Dolchstoss (stab in the back) myth that emerged with the armistice and Versailles treaty, suggesting that the reality of the peace settlement was quite different from the myth that persisted into the 1920s.

Considering each of Murray and Millett's points, we can both determine the extent to which they are valid claims and include that points that they do not consider. First, the claim that Germany's "industrial base remained intact"[2] seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. While the Ruhr region remained under German sovereignty, the coal of the Saar region was ceded to France, leaving Germany without an important power source. Moreover, in losing urban regions in the east -- particularly those around Danzig -- other important industrial bases were lost. Thus, while the most important industrial region was intact, there were important losses, and these losses were made more severe by the reparations regime imposed on Germany under the Versailles treaty. It is somewhat unfair to consider this lost territory as lacking value.

Second, it is true that Germany how had only one major power on its frontiers, rather than three. Austria-Hungary had been an ally, so its dissolution actually might have been considered more of a threat were it not for the inherent weakness of the successor states that emerged. France, which already had a smaller population that Germany, had now an even smaller population due to combat losses. Most importantly, there was now a cordon sanitaire separating Russia and Germany, consisting of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. Any assault on Germany from the east would afford quite a bit of warning for Germany going forward, which was a major defense advantage.

Third, while the economic potential for Germany certainly existed after World War I, as noted above, the reparations regime and, more importantly, the means by which Germany sought to fulfill its obligations -- specifically the printing of money, resulting in hyperinflation -- had catastrophic effects for Germany during the 1920s until implementation of the Dawes Plan to stabilize Germany's currency. As a result, any real economic potential of Germany was gravely compromised by the terms of the peace.

Finally, there is the question of a sphere of influence for Germany among the new states in central and eastern Europe. This seems to have been largely true in 1919, although with the emergence of fascist Italy in 1922 as a regional power, this potential for Germany to establish a sphere of influence was somewhat diluted. Moreover, the terms of the Versailles treaty and subsequent League of Nations resolutions prevented Germany from pressing its hard to heavily in the region. For example, while ethnicity and internal Austrian political trends dictated that Germany's influence would be strong in the new Republic of Austria, attempts at political union were squelched and even economic cooperation was frowned upon as an attempt at German expansion.[3]

Therefore, I think it's safe to conclude that, while Germany was successful in maintaining its continued existence, its ability to preserve itself was compromised. That said, considering the alternatives that could have been foisted upon Germany, including its complete dissolution -- it was, after all, less than 50 years old as a state -- it was at least technically preserved, although the extent to which such a state could persist in the long term given the crippling reparations imposed on it is questionable.

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     [1] Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap, 2001), 3.
     [2] Ibid.
     [3] Steve Beller, A Concise History of Austria (New York: Cambridge UP, 2007): 197-230.

Political Destabilization in WWI Germany

It is axiomatic that World War I had tremendous impacts on Germany, and these effects were political, economic, and social. These effects were, to a very large extent, interrelated, since economic causes often underpin political and social changes. However, in terms of the long-term effects of the changes wrought by Germany's involved in WWI, I believe the political changes were the most important.

In his book, Michael Howard notes that tension arose in the last two years of the war between the High Command, which attained control over the German economy in 1917 to assure full economic mobilization, and the Reichstag, i.e., the popularly elected legislature, which controlled government spending.[1] The most popular political party in Germany was the Social-democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which had finished first in election in Germany since its legalization in 1890, but it had been prevented from holding political power on the basis of Germany's constitution not guaranteeing proportional representation. A combination of factors in early 1917, including the Russian Revolution and the entry of the United States into the war, caused a split in the SPD on the basis of ongoing support for the war.[2] While the newly formed United SPD opposed the war on principle, the remaining SPD sought to turn the situation with the High Command to its advantage by asking Chancellor Bethmann for democratic reforms. Instead, Theobald von Bethmann was pushed out of the Chancellery in favor of Georg Michaelis, who supported the High Command's position and helped them to consolidate their power under the Banner of the Fatherland Party.[3]

On short order in 1918 came the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with Russia and the March offensive in the west by General Ludendorff. When it ultimately failed, the High Command appealed to U.S. President Wilson for peace on the basis of the latter's Fourteen Points. Michaelis was replaced by Prince Max of Baden, who immediately sued for peace. In this environment, the SPD was able to push their earlier democratic reforms, including proportional representation, through successfully, with an SPD member, Philipp Scheidemann, even entering the cabinet in the fall as the de facto Foreign Minister.[4] The long-brewing mutiny in the military begin in Kiel on November 4, the Kaiser fled the country on November 8, and the following day, Scheidemann proclaimed Germany to be a republic. The new government was dominated by the SPD and signed the armistice ending the war on November 11, with the new Chancellor Friedrich Ebert telling the press that the revolution was over.[5]

Thus, Ludendorff's offensive in early 1918 can be seen as a last-ditch attempt by the High Command to prevent the inevitable -- a truly democratic government led by the SPD that would make peace without annexations, proving that the whole effort of the war had been for naught. The High Command's actions thereafter provide further proof of the nature of the offensive. Of course, the new SPD-led government would lay the groundwork for future disaster, not only in signing and then continuing to defend the humiliating Treaty of Versailles signed in 1919 -- which would come to be known as the "stab in the back" to which Hitler would often refer -- but also in empowering the right-wing Freikorps militias in using them to put down the Bolshevik-inspired rebellions that occurred in the same year. As historian David Blackbourn has written, however, the SPD did manage to institute several important social reforms, as well as prevent right-wing authoritarian takeovers like that in Hungary, which experienced similar left-wing revolutionary activity.[6] To that extent, although the fight against authoritarianism ultimately failed in Germany, it was successful in the short term owing to the efforts of the SPD.

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     [1] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford UP, 2007), 1584, Amazon Kindle.
     [2] David Blackbourn, The Long Nineteenth Century: A History of Germany, 1780-1918 (New York: Oxford UP, 1998), 486.
     [3] Ibid, 487-89.
     [4] Ibid, 491.
     [5] Ibid, 492.
     [6] Ibid, 493.

Armistice: Wilson vs Pershing

In a country like the United States, where the Constitution states that the President is the commander in chief of the armed forces but that person is by definition a civilian, conflicts can arise between members of the military and the President. The disagreement between President Harry S. Truman and General Douglas Macarthur during the Korean War is probably the most famous. A less known dispute emerged between President Woodrow Wilson and General John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, over the issue of whether to grant an armistice to Germany. Ultimately, the harsh terms of the armistice dictated by the Allies demonstrate the resolution of this conflict.

In October 1918, the Germans approached President Wilson to negotiate an armistice based on the latter's Fourteen Points. Three weeks later, at Senlis in northern France, General Pershing attended a meeting where the terms of the armistice were discussed. At that meeting, Pershing expressed the opinion that the terms of any armistice should render unable to fight again should the armistice fail. These terms included, among others, the vacation of occupied territory, including Alsace-Lorraine, Allied occupation of the Rhineland, the return of French and Belgian railroad equipment, and the surrender of all submarines to a neutral power. These terms were, according to historian Bullitt Lowry, less harsh than France's ideas and more harsh than those of the United Kingdom.[1]

Wilson, however, worried that terms dictated by the military would be overly harsh. Two days after the Senlis conference, Wilson sent a telegram to Pershing explicitly disagreeing with the latter's ideas, arguing that only the demand that Germany vacate occupied territory was reasonable, and even then, Germany would only have to surrender some of its weapons.[2] According to Lowry, of the several ways in which Pershing could have responded to the telegram, he chose an action that "would allow him to seek harsh terms but which would not leave him open to charges of direct disobedience … He suddenly opposed granting any armistice at all."[3]

To express this new viewpoint, Pershing sent a letter on October 30 to the Supreme War Council of the Allies. In 13 numbered points, Pershing argues against the armistice. For instance, after surveying the man- and firepower of the respective sides, he writes, "An armistice would revivify the low spirits of the German army and enable it to organize and resist later on and would deprive the Allies of the full measure of victory by failing to press their present advantage to its complete military end."[4] In addition, he makes it clear that only surrender is acceptable: "A cessation of hostilities short of capitulation postpones, if it does not render impossible, the imposition of satisfactory peace terms, because it would allow Germany to withdraw her army with its present strength, ready to resume hostilities if terms were not satisfactory to her."[5] He closes the letter by calling for "unconditional surrender."[6]

Two competing interpretations exist for Pershing's writing of the letter. For his part, Lowry argues that the letter was a feigned statement of positions designed to assure that the armistice that did emerge would contain terms as harsh as he had recommended at Senlis. "[T]he evidence," Lowry writes, "indicates that Pershing did not resist granting an armistice; he only resisted granting a lenient one."[7] He justifies this position on the basis of an absence of significant influence on Pershing to change his position between the Senlis conference and his receipt of Wilson's telegram.[8]

In contrast, Lowry's sometime colleague at the University of North Texas, Frank E. Vandiver, argues that there was a significant incident in the four days between Senlis and the telegram: specifically, according to Vandiver, Pershing spent those days sick with the flu, which caused him to be out of the loop. Moreover, Vandiver continues, because another telegram received by Pershing over this period, from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, requested Pershing's continued input into the armistice process, resulting in a simple misunderstanding. Vandiver writes, "Pershing took this to mean that he could express his ideas to the Supreme War Council; Baker and Wilson meant it as a courteous invitation to private correspondence with them."[9]

Whether the letter was a deliberate tactic or a mistake, its influence on the final terms of the armistice are undeniable. For instance, in the clauses regarding the western front, the document reads, "Immediate evacuation of invaded countries: Belgium, France, Alsace-Lorraine, Luxemburg, so ordered as to be completed within fourteen days from the signature of the armistice.[10] In addition, clauses five and nine, respectively, require evacuation of the Rhineland and Allied military occupation thereof (albeit excluding Alsace-Lorraine). Finally, clause four demands the surrender of significant numbers of Germany's guns: 2,500 heavy guns, 2,500 field guns, and 25,000 machine guns.[11] -- a number greater than Pershing states in his first point that Germany has overall.[12]

In the end, Wilson, not Pershing, negotiated the armistice, but the terms were largely Pershing's. Thus did the roles of the president and military remain separate. As commander-in-chief and head of the cabinet, Wilson maintained the prerogative to make the final decisions about the terms of the armistice. However, because of his trust of the military to understand matters on the ground better than he, Wilson took Pershing's suggestions seriously, as a President should of his military leaders. In this manner, the distinct leadership roles of both men were honored.

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[1] Bullitt Lowry, "Pershing and the Armistice," Journal of American History 55, no. 2 (Sept. 1968): 282-83

[2] Ibid, 283-84.

[3] Ibid, 285.

[4] John J. Pershing, Commander of the American Expeditionary Force, to the Allied Supreme War Council, October 28, 1918. United States Department of State Office of the Historian. Accessed September 7, 2016, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1914-20v02/d124, point 6.

[5] Ibid, point 9.

[6] Ibid, point 13.

[7] Lowry, ibid, 287,

[8] Ibid, 285.

[9] Frank E Vandiver, "Commander-in-Chief-Commander Relationships: Wilson and Pershing," Rice University Studies 57, no. 1 (1971):

[10] "Allied Armistice Terms with Germany," firstworldwar.com, accessed September 7, 2016, http://www.firstworldwar.com/source/armisticeterms.htm, I.ii.

[11] Ibid, I.iv, v, ix.

[12] Pershing, ibid, point 1.

The Sixtus Affair

Several political, social, and economic realities impacted the home fronts in the nations engaged in World War I. For Austria-Hungary, perhaps the most substantive political event was the death of Emperor Franz Josef on November 21, 1916, after a reign of almost 68 years. The Emperor was quite old by the time the world broke out. Michael Howard writes, "His successor, the young Emperor Karl, at once established 'back channels' with France to discuss peace terms,"[1] but his summary of Karl's efforts is a true understatement.

By the time Franz Josef died, the Austro-Hungarian military had proved itself essentially worthless, losing hundreds of thousands of soldiers but gained nothing in the process. Moreover, the responsibility of the Reichswehr to the Austrians under their treaty obligations had the Germans commented that, in their alliance, they described themselves as an eine Leiche gekettet (shackled to a corpse). Given these conditions, it was only reasonable that Karl would pursue a peace settlement, although perhaps not a separate peace that would not involve Germany.

Early in 1917, Emperor Karl sent letters to the French government via Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, his brother-in-law, to determine whether the French would be agreeable to pursuing a separate peace. The negotiations failed but came to light the following year when French Prime Minister Clemenceau leaked the details to the press. Rather than admit the attempt was true and risk seeming to have betrayed his German allies, Karl instead denied the contacts and prevented any further negotiations with the Triple Entente from occurring.

The Austrian historian Martin Mutschlechner writes, "The Sixtus Affair was a diplomatic débacle of the first order for Austria and deprived the Habsburg Monarchy of the little freedom of movement in foreign affairs it still possessed. Emperor Karl now had no option but to fall in step with Germany’s intensified war effort."[2] The subsequent dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian Empire upon its loss to the Entente demonstrates the extent to which Karl's shift in goals in war contributed to his own eventual downfall.

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     [1] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford UP, 2007), 1206.

     [2] Martin Mutschlechner, "The Sixtus Affair: A Major Diplomatic Débacle," trans. by Peter John Nicholson, The World of the Habsburgs, Accessed September 4, 2016, http://ww1.habsburger.net/en/chapters/sixtus-affair-major-diplomatic-debacle, para. 8.

Hasty Mobilization in World War I

For Germany, a hard-learned lesson of the first year of the war was that how it interpreted the act of military mobilization was not the same as other nations' interpretations. As a result of this assumption, Germany declared war on Russia although it is not clear that Russia undertook mobilization for reasons other than preparedness in the event that a negotiated settlement to the Austrian-Serbian conflict failed. Because of Germany's declaration against Russia, the conflict truly became continent wide, with Germany's first move the violation of Belgium's neutrality and the U.K.'s entry into the war -- an action it undertook because it believed that it had to eliminate the threat of France to successfully counter Russia.

Michael Howard writes in his book on the war, "On 30 July Czar Nicholas II, with extreme hesitation, ordered the mobilization of all Russian armed forces. It was generally assumed that mobilization led inevitably to Aufmarsch, the deployment of armies for the invasion of their neighbors, and that such deployment led with equal inevitability to war."[1] On July 28, 1914, Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia when the latter refused to submit to all of the demands made on it in the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Immediately, Russia undertook steps to mobilized its armed forces, seeking to protect its own interests, as well as its Orthodox Christian ally.

Canadian historian Gordon Martel has written extensively on the topic of the initial mobilization, and he emphasizes the deliberations that occurred between July 28 and the declaration of war by Germany against Russia on August 1. For instance, Martel writes that, on July 29, "A message announcing a general mobilization in Russia had been drafted and ready to be sent out [sic] by 9 p.m. Then, just minutes before it was to be sent out, a personal messenger from the Tsar arrived, instructing that it the general mobilization be cancelled and a partial one re-instituted. The Tsar wanted to hear how the Kaiser would respond to his latest telegram before proceeding"[2]

Over the next two days, Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Wilhelm volleyed back and forth over whether mobilization would mean war. The day of the war declaration, Martel notes, "Nicholas said he understood that, under the circumstances, Germany was obliged to mobilize, but he asked Wilhelm to give him the same guarantee that he had given Wilhelm: ‘that these measures DO NOT mean war’ and that they would continue to negotiate ‘for the benefit of our countries and universal peace dear to our hearts'." [3] Despite this assurance from the Tsar, who truly did not want war against Germany, Germany declared war the same day.

Although Martel's depiction of the negotiations is intricate, it is important to bear in mind that they occurred over only three days and not in person. A 12-hour ultimatum issued by Germany to Russia was an overly hasty act, motivated by worry among the Germans about the French-Russian alliance and concern that a two-front war would be impossible to fight. Thus, in the mistaken belief that France could be easily knocked out of the war, particularly if the U.K. hesitated to intervene, Germany forced the hand of Russia and mobilized against Belgium, forcing the U.K.'s hand as well. The length of Germany's campaign in the west was far longer than expected, and Germany ended up getting the two-front war it sought to avoid.

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     [1] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford UP, 2007), 626.
     [2] Gordon Martel, "The month that changed the world: Wednesday, 29 July 1914," OUPblog, accessed September 1, 2016, http://blog.oup.com/2014/07/29-july-1914-russian-mobilization-first-world-war/#sthash.JHq57BWe.dpuf
     [3] Gordon Martel, "The month that changed the world: Saturday, 1 August 1914," OUPblog, accessed September 1, 2016, http://blog.oup.com/2014/08/1-august-1914-germany-declares-war-on-russia/#sthash.pZxmFsiY.dpuf

Ottoman Entry Into WWI

I've begun my next course, this one on World War I. Only five discussion posts in this class, but a longer research agenda is coming soon.

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Of the countries participating in World War I, perhaps no country was undergoing quite as extensive a shift in national identity at the time as the Ottoman Empire. For hundreds of years a multi-national, multi-religious (although Muslim majority) empire run by a Turkish elite, a series of wars beginning in the early 18th century had taken their toll on the empire's territorial integrity. These losses were most precipitous in North Africa and the Balkans, so that by 1912, the empire's European holdings consisted only of parts of Albania, Bulgaria, and Serbia and the Greek areas of Thrace, Macedonia, and Epirus -- and these territories were all lost by 1913. As a result of this contraction in territory, the Young Turks, in theory a modernizing party with ecumenical interests that had seized power in a 1908 revolution, turned to Turkish nationalism as a way of galvanizing the population around the national idea as a way of preventing further losses.[1] From the standpoint of Clausewitz's "trinity" of government -- government, military, and popular "passions"[2] -- the Young Turks'  nationalist campaign can be understood as a linchpin in the Ottomans' decision to enter World War I and the side it chose.

Regarding government, the Young Turks as the ruling party saw its primary goal as the prevention of further territorial loss from the empire. However, it was not only wars that threatened the empire. The population of Anatolia -- now viewed by the Young Turks as the launching ground for a larger pan-Turanian movement -- was ethnically and religiously divided, particularly in the eastern provinces. There, in addition to Arabs and Kurds, who were Muslims, there were large populations of Christians, mostly Armenian, who were a focus of resentment exploited by the Young Turks to unify ethnic Turks.  Subjected to periodic massacres by previous governments, most recently in 1909, the Armenians sought international protection, which came in the form of a quasi-protectorate created in the six provinces in which Armenians constituted a majority, the security of which was guaranteed by Russia and France, the latter of whom held a large proportion of the empire's debt.[3] While theoretically intolerable to nationalists like the Young Turks, the leadership had no option but to accept the "solution" imposed in February 1914 but knew a war would free its hand to alter the demographic situation through radical social engineering. This desire dictated, to no small extent, the Ottomans'  decision to side with Germany and Austria-Hungary in the war.[4]

However, military concerns were also important. Here, in addition to the aforementioned unwelcome influence of Russia in the eastern provinces, there was already Russian expansion into the Caucasus, including Georgia, Azerbaijan, and eastern Armenia, that threatened the eastern border directly. In addition, given the Orthodox  and Slavic causes that led Russia to enter the war on Serbia's side, Russian intervention in the Balkans could directly threaten the imperial capital of Constantinople, which was still the most important city in Orthodox Christianity despite annexation by the Ottomans in the 15th century. This interest on Russia's part was not merely religious; control of Constantinople meant control of the Dardanelles and, by extension, control over the entire Black Sea. Thus, Russia and the Ottomans both had economic motives underlying the military incentives that they saw as essential to their war goals. Thus, by allying with Russia's enemies, the Ottomans hoped to maintain control of its remaining territory and perhaps extend its influence in the Caucasus.[5]

The most complicated piece of Clausewitz's formulation is the "passion"  component. By 1914, the Ottoman population was extraordinarily war-weary. To this extent, therefore, the Ottoman people were certainly not clamoring for war when it broke out.  As a result, it was necessary for the Ottoman leadership to deploy two strategies to motivate the population. First, it was necessary, with German prodding, for the caliphate to declare that the war against the Entente was a jihad, and thus a religious obligation for all Muslims. Although this call motivated some, the response to this call was generally anemic; it also decidedly lacked an effect on non-Muslim populations in the empire, who were still fairly numerous.[6] Therefore, the second strategy of identifying internal enemies -- particularly in the form of the Armenians to also extended to non-Turks generally at certain points -- as fifth columns participating in the empire's collapse. This was an effective strategy in so far as these populations also existed on the other side of the empire's borders with Russia and Persia. Of course, it also resulted in murderous violence against the Armenian population, who, in keeping with the political motivations for war, were expelled en masse from their homes toward the Syrian desert and subjected to massacres along the way.

In conclusion, while political and military considerations are easy to identify for the Ottoman Empire in its choices at the beginning of World War I, the issue of popular enthusiasm was decidedly lacking. Unlike other participants in the war, rather than a primary goal of expanding its territory, the empire sought to prevent even further losses and to reverse what it considered to be foreign encroachment on its sovereignty. However, like the other participants, nationalism was a key component in the attempts to prevent such losses. The extent to which this nationalism was embraced by the population varied over time, although it eventually became the national ideology of the modern Turkish republic. Nevertheless, it did not save the empire from complete disintegration.

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     [1] Donald Bloxham, The Great Game of Genocide: Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Destruction of the Ottoman Armenians (New York: Oxford UP, 2005), 4.
     [2] Michael Howard, The First World War: A Very Short Introduction (New York, Oxford UP, 2007), 1.
     [3] Notably, entering the war on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary afforded the Ottoman Empire the opportunity to renege on repaying this debt.
     [4] Eugene L. Rogan, The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East (New York: Basic Books, 2015), chapter 3, page 5, EPUB.
     [5] Ibid, chapter 2, page 5.
     [6] Ibid, chapter 5, page 42.