Unpatriotic History of the Second World War: Review

[bricolage]

a spiked review of a book by a guy from spiked (so obviously as self-congratulatory as usual), but nevertheless looks quite interesting and makes some very valid points especially on 'the importance of challenging powerful myths and ideologies, no matter how unpopular that can prove to be'.

http://www.spiked-online.com/site/reviewofbooks_article/13025/

[hetz]

Over the years 1939 to 1941, all the major powers went to war to defend their honour and their export markets
And we're supposed to buy this bullshit?
The USSR, obviously a major power, "went to war" (?) to defend its honor and "export markets"?

[Bakunin Knight]

Looks interesting, I'll check it out. Hopefully the author doesn't just focus on the outward operations of states, but also on the international elites that control them.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Most of the book (based upon that review) seems to be about the UK's involvement in the war, how the UK had economic interests riding on the conflict, and how the war was not simply a glorious fight between the forces of good and the forces of darkness (fascism). Probably not a very illuminating read for people on the far-left, to say the very least. Preaching to the choir.

[hetz]

I skim-read it, just wanted to see the author's justification for putting the USSR in the same basket with the others. Didn't find it.
It isn't a groundbreaking book, but useful if you still haven't heard of for example the Bengal famine, racism in the Allied armies and so on.

[Invader Zim]

Well, I read the review, but it quickly became painfuly apparent that neither the author of the book nor the reviewer are aware of much of the voluminous literature that has been addressing these precise same questions for the entire span of the post-war period. I'll keep this to just one of the case studies employed in the book and discussed by the reviewer, British society on the Home Front:

The entire image (of de-mythologising Home Front, etc.) the presented is one which professional historians, such as Angus Calder, were aguing well over 40 years ago (for instance see Calder's The People's War (1969). It also appears to be blissfuly ignorant of the argument of historians such as the late Arthur Marwick who very much disagreed that, 'It [WW2] was a war whereby class hostilities were intensified, rather than ‘put aside’, as draconian restrictions, longer working hours and lower wages were enforced in Europe and America.' Indeed, significant work has been conducted arguing that, in actual fact, the war reduced the gulf beftween social classes and gender- both economically, socially and culturally. Historians have pointed towards the levelling influence of mass and extreme austerity and rationing, which improved calorie intake among the working classes while lowered it among the middle and upper classes. They have pointed to the increased infiltratuion of women into heavy industry and noted that while women's wages never matched those of their male counter-parts the gap did reduce.

"Domestic life was not unaffected by the militarisation of international relations. Some of the most fascinating chapters in Unpatriotic History are those that uncover how the war impacted on civilian life. As Heartfield makes clear, the organisation of war industries, the regimentation of war workers, farming and rationing all remade civilian life along military lines. The intensive mobilisation, Heartfield points out, was underscored by a constant haranguing from the Ministry of Information in Britain to ‘Turn that Light Out’, ‘Make Do and Mend’ and ‘Keep Mum!’. Today, jailing individuals for ‘offensive’ tweets smacks of a new form of authoritarianism, but arguably such petty clampdowns echo earlier forms of repression. For example, ‘a man had been sent to prison for telling a woman in a fish shop that Britain had no chance of winning the war’. Defence Regulation 18b gave the authorities the right to detain people without trial, whether British Union of Fascists members, leftists or labour militants – as well as anarchist anti-war campaigners."

Of course, it is true that some individuals were indeed imprisoned for petty acts of vandalism against the wartime infastructure or, that nebuous term, 'morale', particularly during the height of the 'Fifth Column' panic, but the author here is vastly over-stating the issue. It is also bizarre to see, of all the critiques which can (and have both at the time and by historians) be levelled at the MoI, it is the relatively innocuous poster campaigns regarding wartime 'recycling' (to be a little anachronistic) and reminders of black-out regulation. Surely, the author could and should have, to make this point, instead turned towards the socially harmful, morale damaging and plainly vindictive 'Silent Column' anti-rumour campaign, which entreeted individuals to ask their neighbours to restrain themselves from rumour mongering and, ultimately, inform on individuals who did. Or perhaps conaidered the actual underlying, though much loved, 'careless talk' campaign with its famous posters by the Punch artist Fougass. Where the author does get it, albeit only marginally, correct is discussion of 'detainment'. That issue is indeed a particularly nasty one, but again the author misses the woods for the trees. Rather than considering the unfortunate circumstances of the BUF thugs, and political groups on the left (who found themselves inexlicably found themselves categorised in the same position as the BUF), the author would have been better discussing the wider issue of internment policy - which was a remarkably unpleasant, misguided, xenophobic, harmful, alienating and grossly unfair. It was an extremely ugly policy, formulated during an extremely ugly media led public panic, in an extremely ugly chapter of the 'home front' story.

"The conclusion also forcefully slams down any nagging doubts that this is ‘yet another’ history of the war."

Yet, all the issues raised in the review suggest that it is precisely that. Indeed, it sounds like this book is an unwitting rehash of the arguments made in plenty of early books, both good and bad. I stopped reading at that point. There is plainly nothing, if this review is a genuine reflection of the books arguiment and contents, in the book that is in anyway revelatory and in many respects it appears it might be, in fact, woefuly misleading. It appears that both the author, and the reviewer, are many decades behind the curve.

For people genuinely interested in this stuff, and the debate regarding the alleged 'levelling of class', gender relations, wartime myths, propaganda, etc, (and to see just how old these questions actually are) then see the following:

Angus Calder, The People's War (1969).
Angus Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (1992)
Arthur Marwick, Britain in the Century of Total War (1970).
Arthur Marwick, War and Change in the Twentieth Century (1974).
Arthur Marwick (ed.), Total War and Social Change (1988).
Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale (1979).
H, L. Smith (ed.) War and Social Change (1990).
Richard Titmus, Problems of Social Policy (1950).