The Biggest Happening of the 20th Century?

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I would say it was the battle of Stalingrad and then the capturing of Berlin by the Red Army. Just because it was the colliding of ideologies and destruction of fascism with the triumph of the Red Army.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti0chm8_ihk&feature=related

What do you think?

[Per Levy]

What do you think?

the first world war tbh, it changed more then ww2, monarchys fell, revolutions swept the lands and there was quite a chance that capitalism was done for.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I see what you mean. But i personally don't think feudalism is comparable to Fascism. Had the Soviet Union not defeated Fascism, we would live in a racist, genocidal, totalitarian nightmare.

[dodger]

" The Chinese People have stood up !" 1949. Our shit-house cleaner at work was in Canton in the Royal Navy he bought a 12yr old girl for 100 Capstan, Full Strength. He owned her.His property. 1948 or so...things hotting up.....I asked if he had 'sold her on'. No came the reply...he had taken the child to a beauty parlour to be trained as a beautician/hair stylist. She could not remember the name of her village.He told the owner he would return in a year and if the girl was not there, he patted his revolver. Of course Sid never returned. He had a strong bond somehow, maybe his own child back home. 'COS he got very animated when I asked "did you?" "HEAVENS NO, SHE WAS A CHILD" "You know me Sid, mind like a sewer!" "There's 800m...they've all got the same hairstyle Sid." "Yes, Dodge, I think of her every day of my life, how she prospered!" Sid left with his ship, they" fired broadside after broadside at troops on the port side. Until that is, a radio cable said the troops were Nationalists fleeing south. Splendid Sid, your Internationalist Intervention probably 'saved the day'. I asked him if he had been in Malaya or Vietnam or any other similar situation. "I was in St Petersburg in 1917!" "Sid-Sid-Sid, impossible you were only 13/14yrs in '17 !" " Woz!..on a 3 master Baltic Trader!"..."Jeeze Sid, tell me about it tomorrow- my arse has turned to jelly sitting here!"

[Railyon]

the first world war tbh, it changed more then ww2, monarchys fell, revolutions swept the lands and there was quite a chance that capitalism was done for.

This. After that maybe the creation of the USSR which was also partly the cause of fascism as a reaction to the Bolsheviks (anti-Marxist and anti-Bolshevik rhetoric was a big part of fascist temptation) and the whole domino chain reaction that resulted in, like WWII.

[Rafiq]

Colliding with Ideologies, fuck no...

The most important event was the first proletarian revolution.

[Deicide]

1917 Bolshevik revolution.. despite its catastrophic failure and the tragedy (and farce?) of Stalinism

[Luís Henrique]

the first world war tbh, it changed more then ww2, monarchys fell, revolutions swept the lands and there was quite a chance that capitalism was done for.

I don't think there were two wars, just one with a truce amid it.

What is a "happening"? Is the murder of the Franz Ferdinand a happening of itself, or just a part of the actual happening of WWI? Or was the murder itself a complex conjunction of happenings?

Luís Henrique

[Brosa Luxemburg]

I don't know if I would consider these the biggest happening of the 20th century but
1. The Vietnam War
2. The Cuban Missile Crisis
3. Assassination of JFK
4. World War I
5. World War II

shaped and effected the world in different ways.

[Deicide]

I think the United States dropping nuclear weaponry on two Japanese city's was quite a big event..

[Tommy4ever]

1917 Bolshevik revolution.. despite its catastrophic failure and the tragedy (and farce?) of Stalinism

This.

The October Revolution of 1917 totally defined the next 70 years of world history.

[Comrade Samuel]

WWII as a whole probably tops the list but one I would like to point out is the death of Stalin, the world would of been alot different had he lasted longer or at least had a worthy successor (I swear If this is met with a some stupid one-liner...)

Surely there is more important things than the world wars and failed revolutions right? Some good sub-topics would also be technological, social, economical advances of the 20th century.

[Omsk]

The death of Leon Trotsky.

[Ostrinski]

I don't know if I would consider these the biggest happening of the 20th century but
1. The Vietnam War
2. The Cuban Missile Crisis
3. Assassination of JFK
4. World War I
5. World War II

shaped and effected the world in different ways.Disagree with all these except maybe 2

[Ostrinski]

I think one thing[s] that hasn't been mentioned yet is all the technological advances and innovation that took place in the twentieth century, namely the internet

[Franz Fanonipants]

haha look at this thread non-historians trying to make generalities true

[ed miliband]

the biggest happening? why, woodstock obviously!

[gorillafuck]

3. Assassination of JFKthis did not really have an effect on the world political situation.

[Manic Impressive]

This.

The October Revolution of 1917 totally defined the next 70 years of world history.
which might not have happened without WW1 therefore WW1 is the more significant event.

[Invader Zim]

As everybody else has gone for war and revolution, here are a few alternatives that revolve around science, technology, medicine and industry:

1900 - Landell de Moura transmits a human voice over wireless.

1901 - The Oldsmobile Curved Dash enters production.

1903 - The Wright brothers perform the first manned, controlled, powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine.

1926 - Robert H. Goddard launches the first Liquid Fuel Rocket.

1928 - Alexander Fleming discovers Penicillin.

1930 - The first automated condom production line is patented.

1934 - Percy Shaw invents 'cats eyes' road reflectors.

1935 - Invention of canned beer.

1936 - Alan Turing publishes his vision of a hypothetical computing machine that can simulate the logic of any computer alogrithm.

1944 - Tommy Flowers heads the team that build the Colossus Machine - the first electro-mechanical semi-programmable computer.

1946 - The invention of the Microwave oven.

1954 - Pincus, et al. develop the combined oral contraceptive: the pill.

1958 - Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce invent the integrated circuit.

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

I dunno. it's a big ass century, no one event or person stands out as having the most significance.

[seventeethdecember2016]

Dang, I thought I was the only person the used the word happening.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

OK, i have revised my above statement and will have to say: State Capitalism has been the single most important development of the 20th century. Without Billions and Billions being spent in the USSR for science and forcing the western states and mainly the US to compete with the USSR in fields of technology and science, we would not be sitting here. Either way, State Capitalism.

[Zealot]

October Revolution...Pulled Russia out of WWI, showed the world that a Marxist revolution was possible inspiring many other countries to break out in revolution and founded the Soviet Union which eventually went on to play a huge role in stopping the rise of Fascism, technology and defined much of the 20th century with the Cold War etc.

[Psy]

The Great Depression as the crisis fueled WWII and capitalists never really solved the crisis just displace it in time.

[JAM]

October Revolution. It changed the world forever, marked a whole century and still has ramifications in the world in which we are living today. Apart from that, I would also add the rapid industrialization of USSR in the 30's (never seen before) and the victory over Nazism.

[Geiseric]

October was the greatest event in human history, let alone the 20th century. It changed EVERYTHING. Capitalists were shitting their pants for a few years, untill the purges happened.

[Zukunftsmusik]

October was the greatest event in human history

slight exaggeration, no?

especially because there's one every year. badabombsch

[A Marxist Historian]

I would say it was the battle of Stalingrad and then the capturing of Berlin by the Red Army. Just because it was the colliding of ideologies and destruction of fascism with the triumph of the Red Army.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti0chm8_ihk&feature=related

What do you think?

That was certainly one of the biggest happenings. I note you leave out the truly most decisive battle of WWII, namely the siege of Moscow in December 1941. Until then, the Nazi Blitzkrieg was carrying all before it. Afterwards, though the Nazis hadn't actually lost the war yet, that happened at Stalingrad, they were no longer winning it, and the dream of a "thousand year reich" with Germany as the master of the world was basically over.

But Stalingrad is just a consequence of the most important event of the twentieth century--the Bolshevik Revolution.

Without that, no city would have ever been named Stalingrad. And, for that matter, Hitler would never have come to power, as the rise of Nazism was essentially a backlash to the Bolshevik and then the German Revolutions.

White Russia would then have become the world center of reaction, genocide and mass murder, and the twentieth century world would have been a very different and much uglier place.

-M.H.-

[Omsk]

Could we not theorize that the Bolshevik revolution was a result of,among other things,the World War? (Although the economic factors where the main reason.)

[A Marxist Historian]

slight exaggeration, no?

especially because there's one every year. badabombsch

Not really an exaggeration. The main competition would be the French Revolution. You could make a case that was equally important.

A revo every year? Sure. But even if all revolutions are equal, some are more equal than others. The twentieth century was basically the story of the Russian Revolution.

In fact, historians like to talk about a "short twentieth century," beginning either in 1914 or 1917, not a great difference as WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution are part of the same package, but always ending in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR, or in 1989 with the Berlin Wall coming down.

-M.H.-

[Geiseric]

Could we not theorize that the Bolshevik revolution was a result of,among other things,the World War? (Although the economic factors where the main reason.)

Well the world war was a result of Capitalism, so by your logic since Capitalism created socialism the American Revolution of 1776 was the greatest event in human history since it created the first Capitalist state which in turn created socialism?

[Omsk]

We are talking about the events of the 20th century Syd.There is a time border.What you wrote is completely irrelevant.

[Art Vandelay]

November 16th 1938, Professor Alber Hofmann first synthesized lsd.

[Rusty Shackleford]

the chinese revolution was pretty massive. such a large nation, millions of people, decades of struggle to finally almost completely unify and set the goal of socialism while resisting the yoke of imperialism.

the russian revolution was a pretty big thing too


but by far the biggest is probably jan 1 1900 when the century began :lol:

[Invader Zim]

Well the world war was a result of Capitalism, so by your logic since Capitalism created socialism the American Revolution of 1776 was the greatest event in human history since it created the first Capitalist state which in turn created socialism?

The USA wasn't the first capitalist state....


The twentieth century was basically the story of the Russian Revolution.

I can only assume that the 20th century isn't your specialism. The Russian Revolution was a product of the events of the early part of the century and the century before it, and it did not define those events. Furthermore, it did not 'create' the events that followed it and nor did it define them. Any number of different factors played a role in what happened after, and the influence of the revolution was but one. The idea that the Russian Revolution made the Cold War (in this instance taken to have begun in 1946), for example, inevitable is laughably long sighted.


In fact, historians like to talk about a "short twentieth century," beginning either in 1914 or 1917, not a great difference as WWI and the Bolshevik Revolution are part of the same package, but always ending in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR, or in 1989 with the Berlin Wall coming down.

And we also talk of the 'long twentieth century'. Defining the history of the 20th century as the diplomatic relationship between the USSR and the Western Powers is, from anything other than a diplomatic perspective, small minded. And if we are going to define it that way then the 20th century should be even shorter, 1946-1991; the period that the relationship between east and west was at its most significant and not overshadowed by imperial conflict and total war, both of which were arguably a culmination of factors that were a legacy of the 'long 19th century'. Of course the whole 'long' and 'short' centuries is a silly notion to begin with. World history, if such a thing can be seriously studied (and I've yet to see any compelling evidence that it can), does not fit into an easy calender-based framework to neatly begin and end study. Indeed, no history does. A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War does not confine itself to the immidiate events prior to 1 September 1939, indeed Taylor is just as interested with the origins of the Great War far back into the 19th century. And that is because the origins of an event have both specific causes and profound causes.

If we are going by this set of criteria you seem to have formed, then the Great War was vastly more important an event than the Russian Revolution, because without it there wouldn't have been a Russian Revolution.


And, for that matter, Hitler would never have come to power, as the rise of Nazism was essentially a backlash to the Bolshevik and then the German Revolutions.

Wrong. Just wrong. To reduce Nazism, its origins and its rise to power, to anti-communism is to ignore the majority of the essencial elements of Nazi ideology.

[ColonelCossack]

The most important technological event of recent decades was the internet. This was a result of the development of those computers they used in WW2, which was a result of the October revolution, which was sparked (arguably) by WW1, which was a result of tensions from the 19th century, which was because of capitalism, which came about because of blah blah blah...

The causes of things go right down through the centuries and the centuries. if the Romnans hadn't defeated ancient Greece, I've heard it speculated that we'd have a colonies on Europa etc.

But I'd have to agree with lots of people here and say the October Revolution. It caused a large amount of what had happened in the last century; it also has a symbolic significance as the first proletarian revolution that held power for more than a few days. But it can't be denied that most things happen because of class antagonisms etc.

[Pretty Flaco]

Biggest happening? Probably when I was born.

[Franz Fanonipants]

itt - poor causality and the great man theory

[Brosa Luxemburg]

Anyone mention the fall of the Soviet Union yet? That was pretty fucking huge!

[A Marxist Historian]

the chinese revolution was pretty massive. such a large nation, millions of people, decades of struggle to finally almost completely unify and set the goal of socialism while resisting the yoke of imperialism.

the russian revolution was a pretty big thing too


but by far the biggest is probably jan 1 1900 when the century began :lol:

The Chinese Revolution was very important, but it was a consequence of the Russian Revolution, so secondary to it. Without the Russian impulse, hard to say what would have happened but probably peasant insurrections would have been drowned in blood in the usual historical Chinese fashion.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I can only assume that the 20th century isn't your specialism. The Russian Revolution was a product of the events of the early part of the century and the century before it, and it did not define those events. Furthermore, it did not 'create' the events that followed it and nor did it define them. Any number of different factors played a role in what happened after, and the influence of the revolution was but one. The idea that the Russian Revolution made the Cold War (in this instance taken to have begun in 1946), for example, inevitable is laughably long sighted.

Yes, I am primarily a 20th century historian, as it happens.

All events are consequences of previous events and have consequences on events afterwards, but being unwilling to talk about which are more important, more decisive, and more historical turning points is cowardly analysis, rather typical of all too many historians today who have given up look at the big picture and want to write little books about the history of cooking and sex and personal hygiene and whatever else is fashionable this year.

In that context, the Bolshevik Revolution was definitely the defining event for the twentieth century, the first half of which can be described as a three-cornered "thirty years war" as so many historians describe it among fascism, communism and liberal democracy, which meant primarily the USA, the USSR and Germany, and the second half of which was reduced to a two-way affair. (From WWI on, the importance of Uncle Sam's debtors Britain and France was steadily headed downhill, falling off a cliff to essential insignificance on the world scale after WWII).

And the Cold War began in 1918 when US troop landed in Siberia and Archangelsk. But didn't engage in much fighting...




And we also talk of the 'long twentieth century'. Defining the history of the 20th century as the diplomatic relationship between the USSR and the Western Powers is, from anything other than a diplomatic perspective, small minded. And if we are going to define it that way then the 20th century should be even shorter, 1946-1991; the period that the relationship between east and west was at its most significant and not overshadowed by imperial conflict and total war, both of which were arguably a culmination of factors that were a legacy of the 'long 19th century'. Of course the whole 'long' and 'short' centuries is a silly notion to begin with. World history, if such a thing can be seriously studied (and I've yet to see any compelling evidence that it can), does not fit into an easy calender-based framework to neatly begin and end study. Indeed, no history does. A. J. P. Taylor's The Origins of the Second World War does not confine itself to the immidiate events prior to 1 September 1939, indeed Taylor is just as interested with the origins of the Great War far back into the 19th century. And that is because the origins of an event have both specific causes and profound causes.

If we are going by this set of criteria you seem to have formed, then the Great War was vastly more important an event than the Russian Revolution, because without it there wouldn't have been a Russian Revolution.

If you think that world history can't be studied, you are virtually alone among contemporary historians. In case you haven't noticed, courses in and study of world history is the major trend in the profession these days. And by and large a good one, though to some degree it reflects the "globalization" myth of the 1990s.

Yes, many, perhaps most historians prefer to date the beginning of the "short 20th" from 1914, which is arguable. I prefer 1917.

Why? Because the big transformation between the prewar and postwar era was the revolutions that overthrew the Russian, German and Habsburg empires. These were not necessary consequences of WWI, indeed only the Russian Revolution was really a success. So I think it is better to see WWI as part of the leadup to the Russian Revolution, which was of course the direct impetus for the other revolutions, and for Nazism and Italian fascism as backlashes against it.

By the way, unlike most historians, I do still think there is value in Taylor's "Origins of WWII," which most historians dismiss these days as crap. But methodology is exactly the worst area for anyone considering himself a Marxist to want to follow Taylor. He is an utter empiricist and enemy of applying any theoretical model to history.

But as a pure piece of diplomatic history, damn near ignoring the whole social and ideological background, it's quite good. Especially, he did get the number of the Polish colonels real well in that book!




Wrong. Just wrong. To reduce Nazism, its origins and its rise to power, to anti-communism is to ignore the majority of the essencial elements of Nazi ideology.

Au contraire. Hitler's hatred of "Judeo-Communism" is the very essence of Nazi ideology. Nazism in Germany, like fascism in Italy, was a backlash to Russian communism in general and the revolutionary disturbances in Germany and Italy in particular. The Russian Whites were the ideological vanguard of Nazism, as the best historian of the Whites, Pter Kenez, explained long ago.

Historians have reluctantly begun to be willing to acknowledge this lately, impossible during the Cold War.

The beginning of wisdom for you would be to read Arno Mayer's very valuable book, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? (despite certain errors in his analysis of the actual workings of the Holocaust, as opposed to his analysis of the root cause, which he nails perfectly.)

Or hell, there is always Mein Kampf, where Hitler makes that perfectly clear. A useful compilation, The Jews in the Modern World (Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, 2nd. ed., Oxford UP 1995) prints the key excerpt on pages 637-639, where Hitler explains that "the scales dropped from my eyes" on the "Jewish question" when he realised that Jews were the leaders of socialism in his native Austria. (Which they actually were as it happens)

-M.H.-

[Invader Zim]

Yes, I am primarily a 20th century historian, as it happens.

So am I. The Second World War as it happens. Which is why I find your position most purplexing.


but being unwilling to talk about which are more important, more decisive, and more historical turning points is cowardly analysis

This is a strawman. Virtually all historians do measure the 'weight' of events, whether they are producing a grand narrative of diplomatic events leading upto the Second World War (as Taylor did) or they are discussing the "the history of cooking and sex and personal hygiene and whatever else is fashionable this year."

And your evident distain for social history and apparent love of sweeping grand narratives of diplomatic history is to rather miss the point. Social history informs diplomatic history. For example, you cannot write a serious history of british diplomatic history between the wars without understanding what the British intelligence agencies were saying at the time, and you can't understand what the intelligence agencies position without understanding how they worked and the social and cultural influences that dictated that. And it is for that reason people who write these big narratives typically don't do any archival research in the making of those books. They work from the existing literature, which includes all the small books with specific focus you dislike. In order to write the grand narrative you need to understand the details, and to understand the details you require the little books.


In that context, the Bolshevik Revolution was definitely the defining event for the twentieth century

So not the Second World War, the Great War, the Cold War or if we want to think outside the diplomatic box for a moment; female emancipation, the birth of the modern computer, the revolution in medicine, the birth of powered flight, the invention of the sub-machine gun all of which had a greater impact on the majority of people's everyday lives around the world than specific diplomatic events.

And of course, the invention of the atomic bomb, admittedly sped up by the Second World War, which defined the character of the Cold War and diplomatic history for 40 years (and still does to a lesser extent). Or is that too fashionable?

Evidently, we approach this question from very different perspectives. You seem to like grand diplomatic narratives about 'great men' and how they directed the fate of nations. I, like Marx, am interested in people and their lives and how society directed 'great men'.


the first half of which can be described as a three-cornered "thirty years war" as so many historians describe it among fascism, communism and liberal democracy, which meant primarily the USA, the USSR and Germany,

Only if, of course, we ignore, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the rest of the world for that matter.


and the second half of which was reduced to a two-way affair.

So, in this two way affair, the internal history of Vietnam, Korea, Turkey, Cuba, Guatemala, Britain, France, China, etc, etc, etc, are irrelevent are they?


(From WWI on, the importance of Uncle Sam's debtors Britain and France was steadily headed downhill, falling off a cliff to essential insignificance on the world scale after WWII).


Hmm... from a diplomatic perspective sure, but not from a cultural or social perspective. Arguably The Beatles played a far greater role in a majority of people's lives across the world than the Vietnam War ever did or was capable of doing. And social and culture play a major role in how states behave and how politicans and civil servants form and operate policy. The Vietnam War, for example, ended in no small part because it was hugely and increasingly unpopular among significant portions of the American population; this limited the extent to which American politicans were willing to increase American involvement at any given time. Thus cultural and social factors, both home grown and imported, dictated foreign policy. Thus to discount importers of culture to the States is to miss a significant piece of the puzzle.



And the Cold War began in 1918 when US troop landed in Siberia and Archangelsk. But didn't engage in much fighting...

The Cold War was a period of diplomatic tension, that diplomatic tension existed prior landing troops in Siberia and Archangelsk which was a product of that tension. So if you are going to make that argument that the Cold War was pre-1945 or 46 (which, incidentally, I actually agree with) then surely you must date the Cold War from even earlier than 1918 and to the Revolution itself.


If you think that world history can't be studied, you are virtually alone among contemporary historians.

No, I'm not. Global history and World History are relatively minor branches of historiography because of the impracticalities of conducting a truly 'global' history. Indeed, even sub-'worlds', which also take on a macro approach, such as the Atlantic World school of historiography (which is vastly more popular that World History) has a long list of critics because they inevitably ignore key details.


In case you haven't noticed, courses in and study of world history is the major trend in the profession these days.

I haven't noticed because it isn't true. Most history departments will offer perhaps one module, if that, on World History. You are far more likely to find undergraduate courses, at least beyond the first year, in subjects such as New British History, the Atlanic World, the Medieval World, the Mediterranean World than you are for World or Global history - at least beyond the first year.

For example, the department I work at doesn't teach it at all, it does however teach courses on macro-level stuff like Imperial history, etc. And that is pretty much the standard setup. Of course you will find modules such as 'XYZ in the Modern World' or whatever, but they still retain a considerable degree of specificity.



Yes, many, perhaps most historians prefer to date the beginning of the "short 20th" from 1914, which is arguable. I prefer 1917.

You are confusing Eric Hobsbawm and his (in my view rubbish) book with 'most historians'.


I prefer 1917.

Even if we ignore the inherent flaws in trying to define a century into a distinct era, 1917 is a flawed place to do so because it discounts WW1 which had huge ramifications across the rest of the century.


So I think it is better to see WWI as part of the leadup to the Russian Revolution, which was of course the direct impetus for the other revolutions, and for Nazism and Italian fascism as backlashes against it.

Firstly, viewing WW1 as a prelude to the Russian Revolution is farsical. There is no basis for it. And the Russian Revolution did not lead to the fall of the Kaiser or Victor Emmanuel III, and it didn't lead to the rise of fascism in Germany or Italy. Fascism has more roots in the 1919 peace settlement and the material conditions created by the economics of inter-war Europe than it had in the Russian Revolution. Yes, they were virulently anti-communist, but that was just one platform of their 'ideology' and not necessarily the most relevent in their rise to power. Afterall, the liberals and conservatives of the period were also hardened anti-communists. The fascists had extra appeal.


which most historians dismiss these days as crap.

Which it is. His whole thesis that Hitler was nothing other than an opportunistic statesman just doesn't hold water, and I doubt Taylor even believed it. He was basically a windup merchant and wrote it knowing it would piss off people like Hugh Trevor-Roper - admittedly a worthy cause.


He is an utter empiricist and enemy of applying any theoretical model to history.

A bizarre criticism given that empiricism is at the heart of Marxist historiography and any other worthwhile approach to interpreting the past.



But as a pure piece of diplomatic history, damn near ignoring the whole social and ideological background, it's quite good.

Except, of course, that it ignoring the ideology of the Nazis in forming their approach to international diplomacy is precisely the reason why it isn't any good and Taylor's conclusions were so wide of the mark. It is also the reason why English History was so much better than Origins.


Hitler's hatred of "Judeo-Communism" is the very essence of Nazi ideology.

So rabid nationalism, expansionism and a desire to overthrow Versailles have nothing to do with it? You suggested I read Mein Kampf, but clearly that is advice you should take, and you should also glance over the National Socialist Programme which doesn't mention either communism or the USSR.



Historians have reluctantly begun to be willing to acknowledge this lately, impossible during the Cold War.

Eh? Historians noted the centrality of anti-communism, along with eveything else, in the Nazi platform decades ago. After all given that Hitler wrote, in Mein Kampf, that he wanted to "enslave the Soviet peoples" it is rather difficult to ignore. But Hitler also railed considerably more against the 1919 peace settlement than he did about communism.


The beginning of wisdom for you would be to read Arno Mayer's very valuable book, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?

I already have, along Mommsen, Browning, Broszat, etc. And none of them reduce Nazism to a 'backlash' to the Russian Revolution. Certainly Mayer, in my view, over-emphasised (as other did before him) the role of anti-communism in Nazi ideology and policy presenting the holocaust as a part of a genocidal crusade against the USSR, but he did not discount everything else. Like a number of historians who reviewed his work, and argued that he was a bizarre form of holocaust denier, you have strawmanned his position. What he actually did was suggest that anti-Semitism was of no greater, or perhaps even lesser, significance to the rise of Nazism than all of the Nazis' other platforms, including extreme nationalism, virulent opposition to the 1919 peace settlement and anti-communism among others. While he rather bizarrely, as you suggest, suggests that anti-semitism was a product of their anti-communism he does not reduce nazism down to nothing more than anti-communism. Perhaps you should try reading the book... better yet, don't bother, and you can do better than both him and Nolte.

Oh, and Browning's book is much better.

[A Marxist Historian]

And your evident distain for social history and apparent love of sweeping grand narratives of diplomatic history is to rather miss the point. Social history informs diplomatic history. For example, you cannot write a serious history of british diplomatic history between the wars without understanding what the British intelligence agencies were saying at the time, and you can't understand what the intelligence agencies position without understanding how they worked and the social and cultural influences that dictated that. And it is for that reason people who write these big narratives typically don't do any archival research in the making of those books. They work from the existing literature, which includes all the small books with specific focus you dislike. In order to write the grand narrative you need to understand the details, and to understand the details you require the little books.

You totally misread me. I am primarily a social historian, my impression was that you were a military/diplomatic historian, which is certainly how your postings read.

What was the Russian Revolution? It was the greatest social transformation of the twentieth century, and arguably of human history. The working class seized power from the dominating class of the era, the capitalist class. Indeed, the first time in human history that the oppressed classes took the power.

What could possibly be a more profound social transformation than that?



And it is precisely because I am primarily a social historian that I see all the ideological, political, and even military/diplomatic transformations of the twentieth century as consequences of this profound social event.
So not the Second World War, the Great War, the Cold War or if we want to think outside the diplomatic box for a moment; female emancipation, the birth of the modern computer, the revolution in medicine, the birth of powered flight, the invention of the sub-machine gun all of which had a greater impact on the majority of people's everyday lives around the world than specific diplomatic events.

WWII, which on the European continent essentially boiled down to the war between Germany and the USSR in military terms, and the Cold War were both direct consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution. And most of the other things you mention are merely technological change, consequential ultimately of the scientific revolution and the Renaissance, themselves closely correlated to the collapse of feudalism and rise of capitalism.

You are I hope familiar with the works of Perry Anderson, "Passages from Antiquity" and "Lineages of the Absolute State"? If one wanted to teach a graduate level course in world history, his two books would be the main textbooks I'd choose. And then Hobsbawn's six books for the last couple centuries...

As for female emancipation, you do know, I hope, that Soviet Russia was the first important country to grant women the right to vote?



And of course, the invention of the atomic bomb, admittedly sped up by the Second World War, which defined the character of the Cold War and diplomatic history for 40 years (and still does to a lesser extent). Or is that too fashionable?

The atom bomb was developed by often-leftish Jewish scientists like Einstein in fear of the world dominion of Hitler (and of course the extermination of the Jews). It was a reaction to Nazism, just like Nazism was a reaction to Bolshevism. But the funding for the Manhattan Project was provided by the US government, which had other things in mind.

The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, of course, an attempt by Truman to cow Stalin in particular and the world in general. Gabriel Kolko is the best historian on this. A fairly direct result of the Bolshevik Revolution.



Evidently, we approach this question from very different perspectives. You seem to like grand diplomatic narratives about 'great men' and how they directed the fate of nations. I, like Marx, am interested in people and their lives and how society directed 'great men'.

Only if, of course, we ignore, Britain, France, Italy, Japan and the rest of the world for that matter.

So, in this two way affair, the internal history of Vietnam, Korea, Turkey, Cuba, Guatemala, Britain, France, China, etc, etc, etc, are irrelevent are they?


These countries were all caught up in the same historical pattern in one way or another by the revolution of the Russian working class, a world-historic event.

Not "great men," but a great social movement of an entire oppressed social class, which in itself was the peak moment of the worldwide movement of revolt of the working class embodied in the worldwide socialist movement that arose in the years before WWI.



Hmm... from a diplomatic perspective sure, but not from a cultural or social perspective. Arguably The Beatles played a far greater role in a majority of people's lives across the world than the Vietnam War ever did or was capable of doing.


The Beatles? The Beatles? The Beatles?

I think John Lennon would be the first to disagree with you. An idea like that lacks ... imagination. Listen to "Imagine" and you will understand how wrong that is.

The Beatles were a part of the youth revolt of the '60s, which the Vietnam War had everything to do with. And Lennon's own radicalization had everything to do with the Vietnam War.

Hobsbawn btw is very good on that.



And social and culture play a major role in how states behave and how politicans and civil servants form and operate policy. The Vietnam War, for example, ended in no small part because it was hugely and increasingly unpopular among significant portions of the American population; this limited the extent to which American politicans were willing to increase American involvement at any given time. Thus cultural and social factors, both home grown and imported, dictated foreign policy. Thus to discount importers of culture to the States is to miss a significant piece of the puzzle.

Ah, culture. Culture is ... superstructure. The turn of historians away from social history to cultural is in itself not unrelated to the general rightward turn in world society whose critical moment was the collapse of the Soviet Union.



The Cold War was a period of diplomatic tension, that diplomatic tension existed prior landing troops in Siberia and Archangelsk which was a product of that tension. So if you are going to make that argument that the Cold War was pre-1945 or 46 (which, incidentally, I actually agree with) then surely you must date the Cold War from even earlier than 1918 and to the Revolution itself.

The Cold War was far, far from a merely diplomatic event.

From the American perspective, the Cold War began with the landings, as before that Wilson posed as a "friend" of the Russian Revolution, deluding many American socialists. From the perspective of other imperial powers, Cold War is not a useful term, as military conflict with the Russians got pretty hot. Even the Brits did some genuine fighting around Archangelsk, till working class opposition made that impossible.



No, I'm not. Global history and World History are relatively minor branches of historiography because of the impracticalities of conducting a truly 'global' history. Indeed, even sub-'worlds', which also take on a macro approach, such as the Atlantic World school of historiography (which is vastly more popular that World History) has a long list of critics because they inevitably ignore key details.

I haven't noticed because it isn't true. Most history departments will offer perhaps one module, if that, on World History. You are far more likely to find undergraduate courses, at least beyond the first year, in subjects such as New British History, the Atlanic World, the Medieval World, the Mediterranean World than you are for World or Global history - at least beyond the first year.

For example, the department I work at doesn't teach it at all, it does however teach courses on macro-level stuff like Imperial history, etc. And that is pretty much the standard setup. Of course you will find modules such as 'XYZ in the Modern World' or whatever, but they still retain a considerable degree of specificity.

A truly British perspective. Of course the Brits aren't very interested in world history, Britannia no longer rules the waves. Here in America world history has been popping out all over in academic departments since the collapse of the Soviet Union, as until recently the American imperialists thought that they truly had become the masters of the world.



You are confusing Eric Hobsbawm and his (in my view rubbish) book with 'most historians'.

I confess to being a definite Hobsbawn fan as a historian, despite his quite reformist politics.



Even if we ignore the inherent flaws in trying to define a century into a distinct era, 1917 is a flawed place to do so because it discounts WW1 which had huge ramifications across the rest of the century.

Firstly, viewing WW1 as a prelude to the Russian Revolution is farsical. There is no basis for it. And the Russian Revolution did not lead to the fall of the Kaiser or Victor Emmanuel III, and it didn't lead to the rise of fascism in Germany or Italy. Fascism has more roots in the 1919 peace settlement and the material conditions created by the economics of inter-war Europe than it had in the Russian Revolution. Yes, they were virulently anti-communist, but that was just one platform of their 'ideology' and not necessarily the most relevent in their rise to power. Afterall, the liberals and conservatives of the period were also hardened anti-communists. The fascists had extra appeal.

Here we will disagree. The problem is that you are a narrowly political/diplomatic historian, and I am a social historian in the Marxist fashion, i.e. a historian who sees the axis of history in class conflict. You can't tell the difference between social phenomena like the Beatles and truly important social phenomena, like wars and revolutions and class struggle.

Fascism was a backlash to the upsurge of the proletariat all over Europe after WWI, whose height was the successful Bolshevik Revolution, resulting in the sailors of the German fleet imitating the Kronstadt sailors and the workers of Berlin etc. forming workers councils, and of course of the Russian Revolution-inspired "bienio rosso" in Italy. etc. etc.

The fascist were anti-communists as they were the last guardians of the bourgeois order vs. workers revolution. For social reasons, not diplomatic!

The fascist ideology is extreme nationalism because that is the logical extreme bourgeois response to Marxism and socialism. Marxists see the world defined by class struggle, fascists by national and race struggle. Fascism also involved anti-Semitism all over Europe except in Italy, as Jews were heavily involved in Marxism, socialism and revolution all over Europe except in Italy (though Mussolini himself was viciously anti-Semitic and was delighted when he could finally do to the Jews what he wanted to in the Salo Republic).



Which it is. His whole thesis that Hitler was nothing other than an opportunistic statesman just doesn't hold water, and I doubt Taylor even believed it. He was basically a windup merchant and wrote it knowing it would piss off people like Hugh Trevor-Roper - admittedly a worthy cause.

Oh, certainly. I got the impression from your posting that you were a Taylor fan, which I am not.

But, as a purely diplomatic piece of history, it's useful. That's because Taylor did at least understand what so many other historians refused to understand, that for Hitler, destroying the Soviet Union was the be all and end all of his politics, and everything else was secondary.

I haven't read any of Taylor's writings on British history, not my field. I will say that I thought his successor book to "Origins," on the course of WWII itself, was pretty good, better than "Origins" actually.



A bizarre criticism given that empiricism is at the heart of Marxist historiography and any other worthwhile approach to interpreting the past.

Except, of course, that it ignoring the ideology of the Nazis in forming their approach to international diplomacy is precisely the reason why it isn't any good and Taylor's conclusions were so wide of the mark. It is also the reason why English History was so much better than Origins.

By which I take it you mean empirical research? That of course is crucial. But that's not what "empiricism" is, "empiricism" is a school of philosophy, a particularly British one whose American equivalent is "pragmatism."

Unfairly oversimplifying for the benefit of the non-scholars reading this, empiricism is best described as refusal to apply theoretical understanding to research, and a narrow commitment to "just the facts ma'am." A.J.P. Taylor is in fact a perfect example of the problems with narrow empiricism.



So rabid nationalism, expansionism and a desire to overthrow Versailles have nothing to do with it? You suggested I read Mein Kampf, but clearly that is advice you should take, and you should also glance over the National Socialist Programme which doesn't mention either communism or the USSR.

Eh? Historians noted the centrality of anti-communism, along with eveything else, in the Nazi platform decades ago. After all given that Hitler wrote, in Mein Kampf, that he wanted to "enslave the Soviet peoples" it is rather difficult to ignore. But Hitler also railed considerably more against the 1919 peace settlement than he did about communism.

Which he blamed on the Jewish Marxist conspiracy stabbing the German nation in the back, so you have raised a distinction without a difference.

Do you think Hitler was the only German who hated the 1919 peace settlement? Everybody in Germany opposed it, all the way over to the German Communist Party, and for that matter the Soviet Communist Party. It was oppressive and reactionary.



I already have, along Mommsen, Browning, Broszat, etc. And none of them reduce Nazism to a 'backlash' to the Russian Revolution. Certainly Mayer, in my view, over-emphasised (as other did before him) the role of anti-communism in Nazi ideology and policy presenting the holocaust as a part of a genocidal crusade against the USSR, but he did not discount everything else. Like a number of historians who reviewed his work, and argued that he was a bizarre form of holocaust denier, you have strawmanned his position. What he actually did was suggest that anti-Semitism was of no greater, or perhaps even lesser, significance to the rise of Nazism than all of the Nazis' other platforms, including extreme nationalism, virulent opposition to the 1919 peace settlement and anti-communism among others. While he rather bizarrely, as you suggest, suggests that anti-semitism was a product of their anti-communism he does not reduce nazism down to nothing more than anti-communism. Perhaps you should try reading the book... better yet, don't bother, and you can do better than both him and Nolte.

Oh, and Browning's book is much better.

I'm fairly familiar with the German historians you mention, though Browning is the only one I've read more than a few articles by, my main field being, as you can probably guess, Russian/Soviet history.

I think that basically Mayer is better than them as an analyst of Nazi ideology, despite certain errors of his about the Holocaust itself, where he overgeneralized the Theresienstadt experience, Hitlers' showcase for a relatively "rational" Holocaust, to the entire Holocaust. Unsurprising as that is where his parents died. And datewise, his idea that the Holocaust might not have happened if Hitler had successfully conquered the USSR is not only clearly wrong, but contradicts his own analysis. As Holocaust scholars are more and more acknowledging, the Holocaust began on the day German troops invaded the USSR, and was simply the other side of the coin of Operation Barbarossa.

Browning's book "Ordinary Men" is a marvelous refutation of that nutcase Goldhagen, and a wonderful and very useful piece of research. But his theory that the essence of Nazi ideology was racism is simply wrong. In fact, Nazi racism had a commonality with that of the German right wing in general. Hitler's search for "Lebensraum" was not so much the program of the Nazi party as of the German general staff in WWI.

What was distinctive about Nazism was that it wasn't simply an extreme form of racism and imperialism, Ludendorff and Hindenburg's right wing, but a counterrevolutionary response to workers revolution in Russia, Austria and Germany.

-M.H.-

[Invader Zim]

You totally misread me. I am primarily a social historian, my impression was that you were a military/diplomatic historian, which is certainly how your postings read.

What was the Russian Revolution? It was the greatest social transformation of the twentieth century, and arguably of human history. The working class seized power from the dominating class of the era, the capitalist class. Indeed, the first time in human history that the oppressed classes took the power.

What could possibly be a more profound social transformation than that?

It seems we misread each other, because I am not a diplomatic or political historian either.

As for the Russian Revolution, I disagree that it was the first such event; it had its own precursors too. I would also disagree with your assesment of it. I don't hold it to have been a successful workers revolution, and I would suggest that the old elite removed from power was, within a decade, replaced by a bureaucratic elite. I, personally, wouldn't like to live under either.


WWII, and the Cold War were both direct consequences of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The latter, yes and no, the former no. Both Mayer and Nolte, who drew broadly the same conclusion, though for diametrically opposite reasons, in my view, get the Nazi regime very wrong. And while nazi Germany isn't my specialism, but based on my reading of the relevent historiography, most specialists don't agree with his view on the relationship between roles of anti-communism and anti-semitism in Nazi ideology. That said, I don't disagree with his functionalist thesis that it was the failure in Russia that radicalised already violent and murderous Nazi anti-semitism into a full blown policy of extermination, but as noted, I think Christopher Browning has produced the most convinsing work that takes that line. But you should read Browning for yourself on that one. I also think that Kershaw's synthesis of the intentionalist school and functionalist/structuralist school was interesting.



Which on the European continent essentially boiled down to the war between Germany and the USSR in military terms

This isn't really the place to disuss the debate on the relative impacts of the European War in the East as opposed to the West. That said, of course I agree that the lionshare of the fighting was won and lost in Eastern Europe, though I do think it is unwise to discount the impact of a quater (or something in that region, I'd have to go through Paul Kennedy again to find the ratio) of German strength left in the West and the loss of a third of the Luftwaffe's strength in 1940, or the economic impact of lend-lease. Though Comrade Om is the member of this forum to talk too about that last point.


And most of the other things you mention are merely technological change, consequential ultimately of the scientific revolution and the Renaissance, themselves closely correlated to the collapse of feudalism and rise of capitalism.

And the same precise argument can be made of the Great War, the Second World War, the Russian Revolution and Cold War. But if we are to postulate the single most important 'happening' of the 20th century, then I would argue that the invention of the computer has, certainly from a western perspective, created a most profound and fundermental shift in how human beings live their lives. Computers are now ubiquetous. For a start, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation were it not for computer technology.



As for female emancipation, you do know, I hope, that Soviet Russia was the first important country to grant women the right to vote?

It is just a shame that Stalin liquidated the Opposition.


The atom bomb was developed by often-leftish Jewish scientists like Einstein in fear of the world dominion of Hitler (and of course the extermination of the Jews). It was a reaction to Nazism

As was the computer. but that does not make the chicken more important than the egg.


just like Nazism was a reaction to Bolshevism.

So you, Nolte and Mayer believe. But as noted, very few other people. Not that I am not open to be convinsed, perhaps this is an unfashionably empiricist line to take, but I am more than willing to allow the facts to persuade me one way or the other, and nothing I have read thus far (including Mayer) has yet done so.


But the funding for the Manhattan Project was provided by the US government, which had other things in mind.

Sure. But in fairness, it did also have winning the Second World War on its mind too. It strikes me as highly doubtful that without the immidiate impeteous of a 'hot' war of the scale of WW2 it would have been developed as quickly as it was or when it was. But this is a debate for another thread.



The use of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was, of course, an attempt by Truman to cow Stalin in particular and the world in general.

Ah, good old Gar Alperovitz. His thesis is intruiging, and I have a lot of time for it, however not for his research and use of sources which is in my view, quite frankly, appauling.


Gabriel Kolko is the best historian on this.

Really? I'm vaguely familiar with his work on the Progressive Era (not my topic), but I didn't know that he had written anything on early atomic politics.


Not "great men," but a great social movement of an entire oppressed social class, which in itself was the peak moment of the worldwide movement of revolt of the working class embodied in the worldwide socialist movement that arose in the years before WWI.

Thank you for your clarrification on that. As said, I wrongly had you pinned as a diplomatic historian of the 'great man history' variety.



I think John Lennon would be the first to disagree with you

Are you sure? He claimed he and his band were "bigger than Jesus". And, you know what, he was probably right. It is a massive error, as I suggested previously, to underestimate the power of culture in determining attitudes, be they political or social.


The Beatles were a part of the youth revolt of the '60s, which the Vietnam War had everything to do with.

Sure, i'm not saying that Lennon's politics were developed in a vacuum, but how much did he, in turn, influence others?


The Cold War was far, far from a merely diplomatic event.

No, it was a period of events that formed a lengthy period of diplomatic tension beginning with the Russian Revolution in 1917.


From the American perspective

Given that the cold war involved more powers than merely the US and the USSR, that is a moot point. British hostility to the revolution, for instance, dates back to its outset. And in 1917 Britain was still a very big fish.


A truly British perspective.

Not really. Atalntic history, for example, is Bernard Bailyn's baby, and Bailyn is an American Harvard historian. New British History is actually also highly 'unBritish' in perspective, unsupprising given that Pocock spent most of his formative years in New Zealand. And Arnold Tonybee, one of the father figures within the World History bubble was very British indeed, and McNiell owes a huge debt to Tonybee.

I also think you have it wrong. The US is the only country in which World History is really popular, largely because American historians, if I may match your gross and crass generalisations and stereotypes here a bit, only seem to have noticed the rest of the world in the last couple of decades or so, and now want to play with a new toy, so to speak.

And it still doesn't stop World History from having huge methodological problems, as any macro- study of that scale can and will do, which in suspect is a far greater cause for its relative failure to take off. That isn't to say it can't or won't be good, but like I said, I've yet to see any evidence.


I confess to being a definite Hobsbawn fan as a historian, despite his quite reformist politics.

When he sticks to the topics he knows about he is fine, when he steps out of that, like he did with the 20th century... not so fine. Though I enjoyed his autobiography and the other two works in his 'pop history'.


you are a narrowly political/diplomatic historian

Nope. I'm not. I study the impact of war on gender and social class.


You can't tell the difference between social phenomena like the Beatles and truly important social phenomena, like wars and revolutions and class struggle.

Well, the point wasn't so much about the Beatles per-say, but the influence of pop-culture. Trying to ascribe importance in the manner you do is short sighted. You think that the Russian Revolution is the most important event in history. Fine. But just remember, when the Soviet Union is merely history, and beyond living memory, people will likely still be playing Back in the USSR. Nice irony for a person who wishes to emphasise the importance of the Russian Revolution over a pop band, and vice versa. But that is, of course, part of the point.


The fascist were anti-communists as they were the last guardians of the bourgeois order vs. workers revolution.

The problem with this rather poor anaysis, which I realise has been popular among Marxists for 70 years, is that unlike other applications of Historical Materialism - it is ahistorical and skips over actual analysis of material conditions in fascist countries. Yes, it takes the accurate line that the fascists were reacting against a percieved threat to capitalism; but it ignores everything else that the fascists did and stood for while ignoring the society that produced them. So really, this thesis is not just an example of poorly applied historical materialism, it isn't an example of historical materialism at all.



The fascist ideology is extreme nationalism because that is the logical extreme bourgeois response to Marxism and socialism.

QED. You ignore the other burning things that the fascists were reacting against, not least of which included the perceived evidence of the decline of their nations. Yes, fascism was about preserving capitalism, indeed fascism is the last aggressive death throw of capitalism. Thus in the case of Germany, for example, they reacted against the loss of WW1 and the position of being a major European power, the humilating peace treaty that only confirmed their view and the massive economic impact of depression. The facists saw themselves not merely as guardians against communism, but against the decline, and all its various manifestations, generally.


that for Hitler, destroying the Soviet Union was the be all and end all of his politics, and everything else was secondary.

That isn't actually what Taylor says. Taylor argued that Hitler didn't really have a foreign policy. Yes, Hitler and the rest of the Nazis envisioned a great war of conquest, preferably at the expense of the Soviet Union, but had no grand political master plan to get to there. Furthermore, Taylor also argued that the Fascists wouldn't have gone to war if they thought they would lose. Instead Taylor argues that Hitler and the Nazis just went with the tide of events and took advantage of the situations that arose. He does not argue that Hitler's sole use for politics was to destroy the Soviet Union. That would imply that Hitler had coherant goals and plans, as opposed to far more intangible general ambitions.


But that's not what "empiricism" is, "empiricism" is a school of philosophy, a particularly British one whose American equivalent is "pragmatism."

I know what empiricism is. I've read Von Ranke too. But you are wrong in supposing that naive empiricism is at the heart of British historiography. Ever heard of the Communist Party Historians Group?

[Robespierres Neck]

November 16th 1938, Professor Alber Hofmann first synthesized lsd.

Haha.


I'd have to agree with what most of everyone said. The Russia revolution was very important, as it was the first successful Marxist revolution. Of course, the seize of Berlin & overthrow of Nazi Germany thanks to the Soviets. All the wars: WWI, WWII, Vietnam, ect. which influenced everyone in some sort of way.

[A Marxist Historian]

It seems we misread each other, because I am not a diplomatic or political historian either.

As for the Russian Revolution, I disagree that it was the first such event; it had its own precursors too. I would also disagree with your assesment of it. I don't hold it to have been a successful workers revolution, and I would suggest that the old elite removed from power was, within a decade, replaced by a bureaucratic elite. I, personally, wouldn't like to live under either.

"A bureaucratic elite" is a class-neutral term. As I'm a Marxist (my impression is you aren't. True?) I am deeply suspicious of the idea of rule by "a bureaucratic elite." Bureaucrats are just bureaucrats, they always are on somebody's payroll and serve somebody's class interests. In the case of the USSR, the sociology indicates, and like I said I am very much a social historian, that the Soviet regime served the interests of the working class.

Evidence? The obvious stuff, full unemployment, free medical and health care, etc. etc. The absence of democracy and "workers control," which many here see as key, I see as a secondary phenomenon, merely political.

I notice you are careful to say it wasn't a "successful" workers revolution. The empirical evidence that the Bolshevik Revolution was a workers revolution is, of course, undeniable.

Was it the first workers revolution? Well, there was the Paris Commune, but it only lasted a few months. And was of course the great model for 1917 in the eyes of the Bolsheviks.

Popular revolutions against the ruling classes have of course been common, but they have never succeeded before in history except when one sector of the previous dominant classes, such as the Third Estate in the French Revolution, took them in hand. The Bolsheviks, by contrast, were a sociologically over 90% working class party with no connection whatsoever to any sector of the Tsarist ruling classes.


The latter, yes and no, the former no. Both Mayer and Nolte, who drew broadly the same conclusion, though for diametrically opposite reasons, in my view, get the Nazi regime very wrong. And while nazi Germany isn't my specialism, but based on my reading of the relevent historiography, most specialists don't agree with his view on the relationship between roles of anti-communism and anti-semitism in Nazi ideology. That said, I don't disagree with his functionalist thesis that it was the failure in Russia that radicalised already violent and murderous Nazi anti-semitism into a full blown policy of extermination, but as noted, I think Christopher Browning has produced the most convinsing work that takes that line. But you should read Browning for yourself on that one. I also think that Kershaw's synthesis of the intentionalist school and functionalist/structuralist school was interesting.

It was when I read Kershaw's compilation on the Historikerstreit that I first got interested in Arno Mayer. Kershaw is a good historian, though his "synthesis" is too eclectic for my tastes.

Of course most specialists don't agree with Mayer's views on the relationship between anti-communism and anti-semitism. But that is, quite frankly, because of the class position of bourgeois academia. Mayer's position would be dreadfully uncomfortable for your average professor in the US or America or, worst of all, Germany, make it much harder to get tenure.

Empirical research has demonstrated that, contrary to Mayer and to some degree to Browning, that the Holocaust began together with Barbarossa. After all, how many Jews were killed in Russia before the Wannsee Conference? Don't have the figures at my fingertip, but wasn't it at least a million? That's the Holocaust in operation. Several recent books have come out emphasizing this fact.

You are quite right to guess that I found Nolte's Three Faces of Fascism very interesting. As a purely ideological history of fascism, it is probably the best IMHO.

Which is in a sense exactly what is wrong with it. To really understand fascist ideology, you have to be able to sympathize with it at some level, and his studies of Nazi ideology in an ethereal, purely-ideological matrix were, IMHO, what turned him into a Nazi.

I agree by the way that this is the wrong thread to repeat our discussion of a few months ago on the military aspects of WWII.


...
And the same precise argument can be made of the Great War, the Second World War, the Russian Revolution and Cold War. But if we are to postulate the single most important 'happening' of the 20th century, then I would argue that the invention of the computer has, certainly from a western perspective, created a most profound and fundermental shift in how human beings live their lives. Computers are now ubiquetous. For a start, you and I wouldn't be having this conversation were it not for computer technology...

I would like to think, at least, that my life is not about having conversations by computer!

I disagree. Arguments like the one we are having now are facilitated by the Internet, but in previous periods were not necessarily any different really, just slower and with fewer people involved.

I am not at all sure that that is an improvement, given all the crap you see on the Internet. But that I suppose is just a sign of aging.

Computers or no computers, we all still have to work for a living unless we own capital. You still have unemployment, war, racism, homelessness, all the basic features of modern day society, despite TV and computers and viagra and Ipods.

And if you want good ones, you need money. Just like in the time of Augustus Caesar, when you needed lots of money then too to live the lifestyle of the Roman rich and famous.

Far more important than technological changes has been the ending of slavery and serfdom, the rise of capitalism, etc. etc. And that workers revolution in Russia, which for the first time meant that socialism was not just a utopian dream but something which might actually be a practical possibility.


...

just like Nazism was a reaction to Bolshevism.

So you, Nolte and Mayer believe. But as noted, very few other people. Not that I am not open to be convinsed, perhaps this is an unfashionably empiricist line to take, but I am more than willing to allow the facts to persuade me one way or the other, and nothing I have read thus far (including Mayer) has yet done so.

Then perhaps we can continue the conversation.

That both Hitler and Mussolini believed this to be the case, as did millions of other people at the time, is to me more significant than the fact that most bourgeois professors find the idea uncomfortable.

And my best evidence for the above is indeed Nolte's fine-tuned though far too sympathetic analyses of fascist thought.

I particularly recall his quote from Mussolini that fascism was basically the answer to the French Revolution.

It wasn't simply the Bolshevik Revolution fascism was a reaction too, but the French one as well. And, as we all know, there are all too many bourgeois ideologues who see the Jacobin dictatorship as a "totalitarian" prequel to communism.


...

Ah, good old Gar Alperovitz. His thesis is intruiging, and I have a lot of time for it, however not for his research and use of sources which is in my view, quite frankly, appauling.

Really? I'm vaguely familiar with his work on the Progressive Era (not my topic), but I didn't know that he had written anything on early atomic politics.

Alperovitz is an easy straw man to knock down, I don't think much of him either. But the thesis that the nuking of Hiroshima & Nagasaki was primarily directed vs. the Soviets is upheld by lots of American historians, indeed it would probably be the consensus view, except that if it were, a lot of history departments would lose funds.

Indeed the "neorevisionist" consensus view could not unfairly be boiled down to saying that yes, it was directed to intimidate the Soviets, and what's wrong with that?

Kolko is my personal favorite. I find his theories as to Progressivism rather questionable actually, but his "The Politics of War" is, in my opinion, the best diplomatic history of WWII in print. You should check it out.

He's a better military/diplomatic historian than a social historian. That his stuff on Progressivism is more influential is due essentially to the vagaries of academic fashion.



...
Not really. Atalntic history, for example, is Bernard Bailyn's baby, and Bailyn is an American Harvard historian. New British History is actually also highly 'unBritish' in perspective, unsupprising given that Pocock spent most of his formative years in New Zealand. And Arnold Tonybee, one of the father figures within the World History bubble was very British indeed, and McNiell owes a huge debt to Tonybee.

I also think you have it wrong. The US is the only country in which World History is really popular, largely because American historians, if I may match your gross and crass generalisations and stereotypes here a bit, only seem to have noticed the rest of the world in the last couple of decades or so, and now want to play with a new toy, so to speak.

And it still doesn't stop World History from having huge methodological problems, as any macro- study of that scale can and will do, which in suspect is a far greater cause for its relative failure to take off. That isn't to say it can't or won't be good, but like I said, I've yet to see any evidence.

From the US perspective, "Atlantic History" was just a stepping stone to world history. To paraphrase Hitler, today the Atlantic, tomorrow the world!

I do not disagree with your "gross and crass" but pretty accurate generalization about American historians, who naturally reflect American arrogance towards the rest of the world in general.

When Clinton and the Bushes started seeing the world as their toy, Americans historians suddenly became very interested in world history...

To tell the truth, Anderson and Hobsbawn are the only "world historians" I'm terribly fond of. I'm not even too big on Braudel, and I thought the "world systems" bubble of a few decades ago was erroneous.



...
Well, the point wasn't so much about the Beatles per-say, but the influence of pop-culture. Trying to ascribe importance in the manner you do is short sighted. You think that the Russian Revolution is the most important event in history. Fine. But just remember, when the Soviet Union is merely history, and beyond living memory, people will likely still be playing Back in the USSR. Nice irony for a person who wishes to emphasise the importance of the Russian Revolution over a pop band, and vice versa. But that is, of course, part of the point.

Yes, maybe they will, but if they no longer remember the USSR, they won't understand it, it will be like us trying to figure out the humor in an ancient Greek play by Aeschylus, only the scholars can make any sense of it.

The question is not whether Beatles' songs will be remembered, but whether they matter or not. "Greensleeves" has been around for a very long time, pleasant tune, people still listen to it, but does it really mean anything anymore?

I hope people remember "Imagine" for a very long time...



The problem with this rather poor anaysis, which I realise has been popular among Marxists for 70 years, is that unlike other applications of Historical Materialism - it is ahistorical and skips over actual analysis of material conditions in fascist countries. Yes, it takes the accurate line that the fascists were reacting against a percieved threat to capitalism; but it ignores everything else that the fascists did and stood for while ignoring the society that produced them. So really, this thesis is not just an example of poorly applied historical materialism, it isn't an example of historical materialism at all.

It's an abstract general pattern, which naturally has to be filled in with the immediate social content. But a valid one. Generalizations are useful--not least because if I went over the particular material conditions country by country, I'd be writing one or several books, not posting to Revleft!




QED. You ignore the other burning things that the fascists were reacting against, not least of which included the perceived evidence of the decline of their nations. Yes, fascism was about preserving capitalism, indeed fascism is the last aggressive death throw of capitalism. Thus in the case of Germany, for example, they reacted against the loss of WW1 and the position of being a major European power, the humilating peace treaty that only confirmed their view and the massive economic impact of depression. The facists saw themselves not merely as guardians against communism, but against the decline, and all its various manifestations, generally.

That's true enough , but that's more or less a given. Some Germans reacted to all of this by choosing communism, not Nazism.

Revolutions and counterrevolutions happen when countries are in crisis. That fascism was a reaction to the crisis of the German nation is true, but it was a particular reaction among several, the most important other reaction being, of course, communism, its polar opposite.

And the story of Europe as a whole, not just Germany, between the World Wars was the story of social polarization, with the middle dropping away and, finally, war between Germany and the USSR, which was seen by most everyone at the time as a war between fascism and communism.

And, as Europe was still the master of the world until WWII, that meant that this was the story of the world too, by and large. With only the USA and Japan, Europe's only rivals for world mastery, as partial exceptions.



That isn't actually what Taylor says. Taylor argued that Hitler didn't really have a foreign policy. Yes, Hitler and the rest of the Nazis envisioned a great war of conquest, preferably at the expense of the Soviet Union, but had no grand political master plan to get to there. Furthermore, Taylor also argued that the Fascists wouldn't have gone to war if they thought they would lose. Instead Taylor argues that Hitler and the Nazis just went with the tide of events and took advantage of the situations that arose. He does not argue that Hitler's sole use for politics was to destroy the Soviet Union. That would imply that Hitler had coherant goals and plans, as opposed to far more intangible general ambitions.

It's true that isn't what Taylor says explicitly, but that is because he was a true empiricist, who denied that he had an analysis altogether. But there is no such thing.

In practice, a more or less correct analysis of the nature of the Nazi crusade against the USSR was implied, though never stated as such.




I know what empiricism is. I've read Von Ranke too. But you are wrong in supposing that naive empiricism is at the heart of British historiography. Ever heard of the Communist Party Historians Group?

I am not accusing all Brits of being narrow empiricists. Certainly Hobsbawn is none such. He was in that group, wasn't he? And there are other British historians I am quite fond of, Christopher Hill for example. He was a member too I think?

I admit to a bit of a prejudice against Brits as an American, I mean after all, we fought a revolution against you, and it was a very good thing. YOu are still stuck with a monarchy, a House of Lords and an established church to this day, and your libel laws are dreadful. But I try to keep it in bounds.

-M.H.-