War Emergency Research Articles

Seeking labour's aristocracy? The ‘Westphalian incident’ and Polish nationality policy in the immediate aftermath of war*

ABSTRACT. In the immediate aftermath of World War II the Polish state placed a high value on national homogeneity. The Polish Committee of National Liberation signed population exchange agreements with its socialist neighbours in September 1944 and expelled the German population who remained within the new Polish borders. Far less frequently discussed are the Polish state's efforts to persuade ‘Poles’ in Western Europe to move to Poland. This paper analyses how Polish policy towards ‘Westphalian Poles’ and the British reaction to Polish claims offer insight into both Polish and British nationality and citizenship policy in the immediate post‐war period. I argue that the quality of potential labour played an important role in both British and Polish thinking. The paper also contends that the ‘Westphalian incident’ gives useful insights into the emergence of the Cold War.

Strange Species: The Boomer University Intellectual

As historians, we do take opposing positions, but we seem to be united on one thing: reluctance to debate controversial topics in American history. So said Richard White, president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH), recently. Worried about scholarly timidity and a prickly overprofessionalization, White notices there has been a culture of caution-that has begun to influence all of us. We have become each other's hostages in university system that exists to minimize controversy, and where new genteel ethic rewards cautious historical interpretations and scholarly demeanor. Politics has been shorn from informed historical critique, and academics hide behind the authority of credentials. On the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the OAH, White believes, In profession where we should wear our wounds proudly and confront our critics gladly, we prefer to be safe and guarded and fear that we have enemies who can cost us our reputations. ... We should celebrate scholars who draw strong reactions, he worries. Instead, we shy away from them. Certainly, this development is not new regarding the place of intellectuals within both the American university system and society at large. The critical writings and political stances of academics have consistently elicited internal and external pressures since the post-Civil War emergence of the modern university, especially during times of conservatism, social upheaval, war, or anti-intellectualism. Writing more than forty years ago, Laurence Veysey explained how university administrators worked to maintain the integrity of their institutions, where was jealous master. It required, first of all, certain solemnity of countenance; it frowned upon the humor born of irreverence.... Still more importantly, noted Veysey, dignity urged that the institution, no matter how torn with dissent, appear united and harmonious to all who look upon it from the outside.... If unfavorable publicity prevented such posture, then insisted that the leadership take visibly stern measures against the threat to its authority. Much like the recent past, the early modern university had little room for

Réflexions sur les débuts de la guerre au Néolithique en Europe occidentale

The emergence of war during prehistoric times is a recurrent subject that has often been treated in archaeological literature. The present publication, in the light of a synthetic analysis of traces of violent death observed in Neolithic graves in France and completed by new data information obtained from excavations in Germany, in Austria and in Iberian Peninsula, raises the issue of emergence of a real climate of collective violence in the first farmer communities in Europe. From that moment on, violence ascent during Neolithic times can be reported to several factors: factual causes in relation to disputes over territorial boundaries, economic motivations to permit forcible seizure of wealth or valuable objects by incursions, raids and razzias, and to finish social reasons because victorious conflicts are a demonstration of strength of one community against another and they confirm the prestige of the group or the chief. However, the recognized or established examples of violent death and slaughter remain very few in the end within the first farmer and peasant communities in western Europe. They don’t justify the hypothesis of armed disputes on a large scale. We cannot speak of “war”. Actually, this collective violence is the early beginning of real war in this definition, that is to say an aggressiveness organized, managed, socialized and used for the group at the expense of a neighbouring group, referred to other implications. War is established notably by specific armaments adapted to hand-to-hand fight and to collective fight. Moreover, a society dedicated or consecrated to war includes a military caste or a military aristocracy. Once again, the appearance of a warlike elite is not discernable before the beginnings of the Bronze Age.

Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany (review)

Reviewed by: Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany Michael Heaney Homecomings: Returning POWs and the Legacies of Defeat in Postwar Germany. By Frank Biess. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-691-12502-3. Photographs. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xiii, 367. $35.00. As World War II entered its final phase in the West in 1944–45, Germans and Germany, having "sown the wind" of war, in the words of Winston Churchill, began to "reap the whirlwind" of devastating loss and utter defeat. By the time of Germany's unconditional surrender in May 1945, about three million German soldiers had become POWs held in precariously underprovisioned Soviet prison camps. They were not completely repatriated until 1956, more than a decade after the war had ended. About 750,000 never returned. The scale of this frightful German experience, which many non-Germans (and some Germans) saw merely as the Nazis' just desserts, had a deeply disturbing and long-lasting impact on the captives themselves and their families, and on Germany in general, and arguably defined much of the politics and culture of postwar society in both East and West Germany. In his book, Frank Biess tells the story of the troubled reintegration of this mass of former German combatants into their home society during the decade or so following Germany's defeat. It is largely a cultural history of postwar Germany, centered on the soldier "returnees" (Heimkehrer), but told in the context of pertinent political and social factors, and key international developments, particularly the Cold War and the postwar division of Germany. Biess's main argument is twofold: first, that the POW issue was so large and disturbing for Germans that it virtually defined Germany's "post-war" period and national "narrative" of the war; and second, that despite the Cold War emergence of two very different polities and "top-down" influences in East and West Germany, ordinary Germans in both societies experienced the POW issue in similar ways, and responded "from the bottom up" in similar fashion, especially at the individual and family levels. He makes the important corollary point that the POW phenomenon delayed Germans' willingness to examine their responsibility for unprecedented wartime criminality and genocide. Cultural history is a tentative affair, and depends on selected and circumstantial, [End Page 272] rather than comprehensive and direct, evidence. As Biess points out, there are often large discrepancies between "official" and private narratives and memories, and there are inevitably entire spectrums of private recollections and interpretations. (Is a historian more apt to "find" those that support, or that challenge, his or her thesis?) Biess has done a judicious job marshalling facts in support of his arguments, using an imaginative array of primary sources and a solid and fair selection of secondary ones. Where a scholarly consensus is challenged, or does not exist, he lets us know. The work for the most part is free of "problematizing" jargon, and the writing is clear. I would have liked even more text describing individual experiences of German soldiers as combatants on the Eastern Front, and as POWs in Soviet camps, and the postwar adjustment experiences of spouses and other members of returnees' families. (Biess gives us some of this.) The work would also have benefited from more information on the social and demographic makeup of the Wehrmacht returnees relative to the larger German population. These would add to the reader's understanding of one of the author's essential—and I believe accurate—claims: the trauma, scale, and ultimately nationwide impact of the Eastern Front POW's experience. This is a very useful, well-researched, and briskly written work. It contributes much to the historiography of the two postwar Germanys, and to the field of veterans' history in general. It is timely, and advances our general understanding of the varied individual and social costs of war, especially of defeat. It should be read by anyone with these interests. Michael Heaney Rutgers University New Brunswick, New Jersey Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History

Rousseau's "social contract": contracting ahead of its time?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, born in Geneva in 1712, had an important influence on political philosophy in the 18th century and since, in particular through his book The contract, published in 1762. (1,2) This monumental work is part of the family of older, major writings on contract theory by Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Locke (1632-1704). The relationships between individuals, the and government form the key components of Rousseau's social contract. A first principle to govern these relationships is that man has no authority over other human beings and sheer force exercised by one individual over another does not justify authority. Rather, legitimate authority must find its rationale in so-called pacts or contracts. (2) Secondly, competition among men stimulate the need for a pact, so that each can preserve oneself and be protected by the will enacted by the people. (3) The contract purports to provide a proper alternative to the state of For Rousseau, the of nature was initially peaceful, with this harmony attributable--among other things--to the small size of the population, the abundance of nature and the absence of competition. (3) Gradually society became more complex, introduced private and created new forms of dependence among men, resulting in economic and inequalities. The of greed and competition that came into being led Rousseau to propose a new pact, in broad agreement with Hobbes. Hobbes proclaimed men to be rational and interested in such a pact, as it would bring them a better life compared with the of nature. (3) In addition, for Locke, a particularly strong reason to abandon the of nature and for men to contract with government was the emergence of war. Rousseau compares the contract to an act of association whereby there is reciprocal commitment between the and the individual. The individuals as citizens share sovereign power, but as subjects put themselves under the laws of the state. Rousseau also defines government as one of the principal actors: it is an intermediary body between the subjects and the with the main tasks of executing the laws and preserving and political freedom. (2) Interestingly, Rousseau uses economic reasoning in the evaluation of the contract, by comparing losses and gains: What man loses by the contract is his and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is and the proprietorship of all he possesses. (2) (Note here that natural liberty is constrained by the physical power of the individual, whereas it is the general that defines the contents of civil liberty. In addition, property is based on a legal tide whereas possession is the result of man exercising force.) According to Rousseau, the result of this kind of cost-benefit analysis is clearly positive: individuals get net benefits, as the contract preserve them and protect them through the general which is shaped by the same individuals. Furthermore, the adoption of a contract is rational, as without it the of nature (which is also referred to by Roussean as a primitive condition) is put under such pressure that it would collapse. How can we now assess Rousseau's contract within the context of the development of contractual arrangements, such as in the health sector? (4) The contract is focusing on principles of political organization and cooperation at the highest levels of society, and its usefulness for practical approaches at the micro- or meso-levels is scant. In particular, the process of seeking agreement for specific contracts does not find ready and practical advice in Rousseau's book, but its principles help in understanding the rationale for cooperation in the health sector. …

Nelson A. Rockefeller’s Office of Inter-American Affairs (1940-1946) and Record Group 229

Nelson A. Rockefeller’s Office of Inter-American Affairs (1940-1946) and Record Group 229

Erosion of the Rule of Law as a Contributing Factor in Civil Conflict: The Case of Sierra Leone

The purpose of the paper was to review the extent to which autocratic tendencies, suppression of civil liberties, and government mismanagement between 1968 and 1985 eroded confidence in the Sierra Leone government and laid the foundation for the country’s civil war that began in 1991. It was argued that numerous factors were at the basis of the war, and that corruption, autocratic and patrimonial rule by Siaka Stevens and his ruling party, the All People’s Congress, divided the country and made it ripe for a takeover. The creation of an armed paramilitary organization, the Internal Security Unit, demoralized and alienated both the regular Sierra Leone Police force and the Sierra Leone Army. The climate of corruption and greed—deliberately encouraged by Stevens himself undermined state legitimacy and the rule of law. Furthermore, the creation of a one‐party system of government made the Siaka Stevens regime arrogant and incapable of objectively evaluating government policies and foreseeing weaknesses. The government based its system of giving rewards not on merit, but on loyalty to the party, which in time became synonymous with the state and two primary ethnic groups. Youth unemployment blossomed as the government spent less and less on education. All these factors contributed to the emergence of civil war in 1991.

The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry (review)

The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry Nancy L. Zens The story of the Massachusetts 54th Colored Troop emerges as a portion of the larger story of black slavery, pre-war abolitionist activities (especially those of John Brown, Frederick Douglas, and Governor Andrew of Massachusetts), and the emergence of a white man's war based on disagreements over the slavery but not dedicated to the ending of the institution. Union failures on the battlefield, decreasing white enlistments, growing disillusionment with the war, along with black fugitive flight to Union lines and insistent free black political activities finally bring President Abraham Lincoln to the conclusion that ending slavery is a necessary war measure needed to weaken the South and add much needed manpower to the Union war effort. The film, directed by Steven Ives and Ben Loeterman, emphasizes the struggles faced during the initial recruitment efforts of Governor Andrew, who sought to create an elite colored regiment of free blacks who had risen above the ranks of common laborer. Despite the persuasive powers of Frederick Douglass, there were insufficient volunteers from Massachusetts to [End Page 52] fill the regiment, and it was necessary for him to send recruiters to other states. Black men originally enlisted for the same pay and uniform, under the same conditions as white volunteers, yet only white officers were appointed for black troops. Within months, the U.S. Congress passed laws lowering the pay scale from a soldier's pay of $13.00 a month to camp laborer pay of $10.00. The 54th refused to accept pay throughout the war until this law was altered to provide full soldier's pay, causing serious hardship for the men's families. Though promising good coverage of the 54th Massachusetts, the majority of the film's narrative covers political side issues. The majority of the photographs used throughout this film are men in uniform or in battle situations; the actual narrative includes little coverage of battlefield experiences. The 54th's first action on the battlefield on St. James Island or the more famous vanguard position in the attack on Fort Wagner, Charleston, S.C. both receive only a few minutes' coverage. The further activities of the 54th until the end of the war also receive little attention. It is clear that the intent of the filmmakers was to explore the broad aspects of African American experiences before and during the war. The broader political/social issues are intertwined throughout the film in logical thematic fashion but illogical chronological fashion. To someone not thoroughly familiar with the early 19th century, the issues causing the Civil War, and the Civil War itself, all seem to be happening at the same time so that, although the facts are accurate, the final impressions are misleading. From a historical standpoint, this film could be a useful summary of the abolition movement, slavery, complex Civil War politics that do not include blacks as the center of war time attention, and the attempts of abolitionists and free blacks to bring it to center stage, but students would need a good grounding in the progression of events if they are not to become confused in viewing the film. The film could be very useful to an American Studies approach to the Civil War or a portion of black history where the scholarly emphasis is on social and philosophical themes. Archival photographs of individuals and groups of black soldiers, period etchings of wartime conditions, modern film of historic buildings and locations, and shots of newspaper clippings are skillfully woven together using various musical renditions of songs popular among black soldiers during the Civil War, letters written home by soldiers narrated by modern actors, oral histories told by descendants, and historical assessments by reputable historians like James Horton and Barbara Fields. The visual images are skillfully edited so that the narrative flows well. Nancy L. Zens Central Oregon Community College Copyright © 2006 Historians Film Committee

How War Began (review)

Reviewed by: How War Began Barry Kass How War Began. By Keith F. Otterbein. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58544-329-8. Maps. Photograph. Illustrations. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xv, 292. $60.00. Keith F. Otterbein is one of the most preeminent scholars in the area of anthropology and war studies. He has been researching and writing about various topics related to the origins, evolution, and sociopolitical characteristics [End Page 1190] of war and violence in human societies since the 1960s. His book, How War Began, is the culmination of an academic career devoted to research and analysis of topics related to the nature of war in human history and culture. Otterbein defines war in the broadest sense as "armed combat between political communities" (p. 9). He draws on a wealth of information from the fields of primate research, prehistoric archaeology, and comparative studies in cultural anthropology to set forth his thesis that there were two separate origins for war. The first origin occurred during the time of the big-game hunters of the Paleolithic era, when males who were armed with deadly hunting weapons and who were bound together into fraternal interest groups based on ties of kinship, began to fight males from different kin groups over hunting territories, habitation sites, and women. The second origin, tens of thousands of years later, occurred when the first states emerged in different parts of the world from earlier peaceful agricultural societies. These first states ultimately evolved the economic and sociopolitical attributes of complex societies, which necessitated the emergence of a military establishment. For his thesis that the first beginnings of war occurred between hunters of the Paleolithic age, Otterbein's evidence is quite speculative and scanty: observations of primate aggression and occasional tool use in the wild, highly unusual Upper Paleolithic cave art which seems to depict humans attacking each other with weapons, and the very rare finds (given the enormous length of the Paleolithic era) of stone projectile points embedded in human bone. Otterbein's case that there was a second emergence of war in the human record—among four original, or 'pristine' states that he identifies as the Chavin/Moche of South America, the Zapotec of Central America, the Uruk/Sumer in Mesopotamia, and Hsia/Shang in northern China—is, of course, much better documented by archaeologists and historians and on much more solid ground than the author's conjectures about the earlier origin of war during the Paleolithic period. Otterbein's otherwise excellent, well-written, and intriguing book could be improved in some ways. A classic work in the literature of the anthropology of war, Robert Gardner's and Karl Heider's Gardens of War—Life and Death in the New Guinea Stone Age (New York: Random House, 1968), and its associated film, "Dead Birds," does not figure in Otterbein's work, when in fact the book and the movie had a major impact, I believe, on the view held by many contemporary anthropologists that primitive war was basically "ritual" war, whereas Otterbein argues that primitive war was "serious" war. Gardner's and Heider's classic and vivid account of war among tribal peoples in New Guinea must be cited in any study with the scope of How War Began. Also, with regard to his argument that war first originated among the big-game hunters of the past, it is unfortunate that he makes little mention of the ethnographic record of the Eskimo and Aleut peoples of the American Arctic, one of the very few known cases of modern humans whose subsistence economy revolved almost entirely around hunting and fishing. The extent to which such people were warlike or not should be included in the author's discussions about the relationship between big-game hunting during the Paleolithic [End Page 1191] era and the first hypothesized origin of war. Finally, the only illustrations in How War Began are charts and diagrams. Photos and drawings would have added significantly to the impact of the book. For example, illustrations of early cave art depicting human violence, which I had not heard of or seen previously in any work, would have been most welcome. Keith...

Celling Black Bodies: Black Women in the Global Prison Industrial Complex

The past two decades have witnessed an explosion in the population of women prisoners in Europe, North America and Australasia, accompanied by a boom in prison construction. This article argues that this new pattern of women's incarceration has been forged by three overlapping phenomena. The first is the fundamental shift in the role of the state that has occurred as a result of the neo-liberal globalization. The second and related phenomenon is the emergence and subsequent global expansion of what has been labeled a ‘prison industrial complex’ made up of a intricate web of relations between state penal institutions, politicians and profit-driven prison corporations. The third is the emergence of a US-led global war on drugs which is symbiotically related and mutually constituted by the transnational trade in criminalized drugs. These new regimes of accumulation and discipline, I argue, build on older systems of racist and patriarchal exploitation to ensure the super-exploitation of black women within the global prison industrial complex. The article calls for a new anti-racist feminist analysis that explores how the complex matrix of race, class, gender and nationality meshes with contemporary globalized geo-political and economic realities. The prison industrial complex plays a critical role in sustaining the viability of the new global economy and black women are increasingly becoming the raw material that fuels its expansion and profitability. The article seeks to reveal the profitable synergies between drug enforcement, the prison industry, international financial institutions, media and politicians that are sending women to prison in ever increasing numbers.

The discourse of war after 9/11

The article traces the emergence of war as the dominant term for responding to the events of 9/11. It does so by focusing on speeches, interviews and newspaper headlines in the immediate aftermath of the attacks in their discursive-pragmatic contexts. In order to account for the salience and circulation of an expression such as war, it proposes for the public sphere a principle of discursive amplification. The article also highlights, however, the unevenness of the adoption of the term war by showing how differently it was inflected at different moments and in different sections of the public sphere. In addition, other modes of expression could have been adopted. The article provides some discursive reasons why war prevailed.

Private Military Companies Against Development

The post-cold war emergence of Private Military Companies (PMCs) is part of a larger phenomenon, the privatization of violence in general and warfare in particular. While a minority of scholars argue that once legalized and regulated, PMCs could turn into facilitators of development through the restoration of peace in war-torn countries, this paper argues that such a position misunderstands certain basic aspects of PMCs and highlights the issues of accountability and transparency that prevent corporate mercenaries from being actors for peace and development.

The Campaign to Sell a Harsh Peace for Germany to the American Public, 1944-1948

In the spring of 1944, a group of prominent US opinion-makers launched a campaign aimed at convincing the American public of the need for enforcing a harsh peace on Germany. By exploring the dynamics of this campaign, which revolved around the activities of the Writers’ War Board and the Society for the Prevention of World War III, this article focuses on an episode that has generally been neglected in the historiography of US post-war plans for Germany. It also adds a new dimension to the literature on the domestic mood in the United States during the crucial period between the end of the Second World War and the onset of the cold war, by first demonstrating how these anti-German spokesmen worked successfully to generate a hardening of popular opinion during 1944 and 1945, before charting how they found it increasingly difficult to sustain their campaign during 1946 and 1947. This failure was not simply a product of the natural cooling of wartime passions or even the emergence of the cold war. It also stemmed from the lobby's inability to sustain the networks it had created during the Second World War, not to mention its tendency to overreach and oversell at key moments.

Malnourished children and supplementary feeding during the war emergency in Guinea-Bissau in 1998–1999

Supplementary feeding programs (SFPs) are intended to mitigate the deterioration of nutritional status and the increase in mortality among malnourished children. We investigated the effect of an SFP on malnourished children in Guinea-Bissau who were returning to their homes after having been displaced within the country because of war in 1998-1999. The effect of the war on the nutritional status of children aged 6-59 mo who were present in Bissau sometime from September 1998 to June 1999 was evaluated by comparing the mortality and the prevalence of malnutrition with the values expected had the war not occurred and by comparing the severity of malnutrition in malnourished children before and during the war. The quality of the SFP was also evaluated. Children with midupper arm circumference < 130 mm were provided weekly medical consultations and supplementary feeding until recovery. The degree of malnutrition did not increase during the war. The prevalence of malnutrition increased with the start of the war but then decreased. The mortality of malnourished children did not increase during the war. Seventy-four percent of the referred children received treatment; of those, 1% died, 67% recovered, and 32% abandoned treatment. Compliance was 89%. The recovery rate was 13.1. 1000(-1). d(-1), and the median time to recovery was 48 d. Better compliance was associated with shorter time to recovery. Our findings may be biased by changes in the cultural and socioeconomic background of the malnourished children. However, 3 different analyses indicated a beneficial effect of the SFP. Thus, the home-based SFP probably prevented nutritional deterioration during the war in Guinea-Bissau.

How “New” Are “New Wars”? Global Economic Change and the Study of Civil War

Attempts to comprehend, through empirical inquiry and philosophical reflection, the likely effects of deeper, seemingly unstoppable processes of socioeconomic change on patterns of violent conflict within and across societies are not new. Indeed, the relationship between the momentous transformations wrought by industrialization and the longterm prospects for war and peace was a prominent theme of political and sociological thought in nineteenth-century Europe. In a celebrated lecture, delivered at the London School of Economics in 1957, Raymond Aron observed how thinkers such as Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, both profoundly conscious of in a period of transition, had been prepared to make prophecies about the future of war boldness and dogmatism astound us. (1) By the time Aron himself came to reflect on the subject, the horrors of two world wars and the terrifying prospect of another even more destructive conflict ensured that long-range historical predictions were decidedly out of fashion. Instead, the Cold War came to be marked by an acute concern with the present; a concern that shaped and, in important respects, also distorted thinking about war and peace. The latter was true in particular for the study of civil or intrastate wars, wars whose local sources and regional dynamic were often overshadowed by a preoccupation with the central strategic balance and the competition for influence between East and West. The end of the Cold War, then, involved more than just a release from the balance of terror. It also had a liberating impact on the study of conflict, causing a strong feeling of living in a period of transition to again permeate much of the writings and debates about sources of war and peace in the international system. While the emergence of industrial society had preoccupied an earlier generation of thinkers, has, to many, assumed a similar role of describing the sense that we are living through a period of universal, far-reaching, and irreversible changes. Structure, Qualifications, and Argument in Brief Of special interest to this article is the more specific suggestion that processes of globalization have contributed to changes in the nature of war so profound that one is justified in talking of Wars. (2) This claim to newness rests, in part, on the assertion that changes in the nature and workings of the global economy, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, are impacting uniquely on the patterns and character of intrastate and/or region-wide conflict around the world. This article examines this assertion in greater detail. It does so, however, against the backdrop of a wider debate, one that has focused on the economic agendas of belligerents, local populations caught up in conflict, and external actors in the emergence and consolidation of contemporary wars. There are two reasons for thus widening the debate. In the first place, the salience of economic agendas in contemporary wars is considered by many to be directly and causally connected to changes in the global economic environment over the past quarter century or so. Secondly, by assessing the comparative importance of one set of factors, the article hopes to contribute to a broader discussion, which the New Wars debate has helped to stimulate, about the nature of contemporary wars. It is a basic premise of the article that this can most usefully be done by drawing upon the actual knowledge, however incomplete and fragmentary, that we now have of individual conflicts. As such, what follows is not an exercise in grand theorizing about global economic change and war. It represents a more modest, though necessary, effort to test generalizations, unspoken assumptions, and implied causal connections that are often made about contemporary forms of warfare, against our understanding of individual cases. To this end, special attention is given throughout the article to what we know (and, indeed, what we do not fully comprehend) about wars in West and Central Africa, Algeria, and the former Yugoslavia. …

The Limits of Interracial Compromise: Louisiana, 1941

There is no little divergence of opinion as to the extent of segregation and discrimination in the interpersonal sphere. The literature tends to emphasize interesting individual experiences, which may be exceptions. In eliciting opinions as to the extent of segregation and discrimination, there exists enough divergence of interest to result in the collection of beliefs rather than facts. These beliefs are important data in themselves, but are no substitute for the facts. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma (1944) ********** IN 1941 AN AFRICAN AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL PRINCIPAL IN FRANKLINTON, Louisiana, explained to a researcher from Fisk University that race relations in the town had improved after a series of murders several years earlier, which had ended with the shooting of one of these fresh crackers by a Negro. The principal, Robert W. Johnson, quoted with considerable pride a saying of local residents: You know, these niggers around here will kill you. (1) In Monroe, Louisiana, another Fisk investigator noted the buoyancy of spirit among local African Americans as well as recognition of racial separation. Although black citizens in Monroe understood their place, the investigator learned from a black confidant that white people also have place. When they get out of it, these Negroes will put them back in it. Indeed, while riding a crowded local bus the investigator noticed whites were sitting in the back and some colored people sitting near the front or middle. The confidant recalled a problem once because a Negro sat in front of a person. The black passenger insisted that he was going to sit down. If the man wanted him to get up, come up there and make him move. (2) The team of black social scientists from Fisk University, who came to Louisiana in the fall of 1941 under the direction of the eminent sociologist Charles S. Johnson to study black elementary and secondary schools, recorded interviews and observations that are especially relevant in light of historians' growing interest in how black and southerners together shaped peculiar society during the Jim Crow era. (3) As historians like Robin D. G. Kelley and Michael K. Honey have shown, day-to-day black resistance, such as black passengers' refusal to abide by segregation laws on buses, became commonplace in southern cities during World War II, as round-the-clock defense production triggered overcrowding in urban areas. (4) But as testimony collected by the Fisk group in Franklinton and Monroe suggests, black Louisianians in late 1941 displayed self-confident behavior even without the stress of a population boom caused by the war emergency. In fact, the Fisk investigators did not find the static system of oppression and black powerlessness described in the monographs of contemporaries, social scientists like John Dollard, Hortense Powdermaker, Allison Davis, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner of the late 1930s and early 1940s, or in the bleak interpretations of more recent historians like Neil R. McMillen and others. Instead the Fisk team noted in certain Louisiana parishes a more dynamic racial paradigm that grew from a variety of factors. Close kinship ties, similar economic concerns, and the important element of leadership, both black and white, contributed to the creation of a pattern of black assertiveness and flexibility not usually attributed to race relations in the Deep South on the eve of World War II. Although the example of interracial compromise observed by the Fisk team in late 1941 reflected only a very fragile truce in a tension-filled Jim Crow society, it nonetheless suggests a degree of fluidity and protest in the pre-World War II era that historians are just beginning to understand. (5) The caste monographs, which focused on two towns in Mississippi, cannot be thought of as offering a definitive model of race relations across the South in the 1930s, any more than Birmingham or Selma, Alabama, can be considered as typical of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. …

A Good International Citizen: H.V. Evatt, Britain, the United Nations and Israel, 1948-49

Dr H.V. Evatt, Australian Deputy Prime Minister, Attorney-General and Minister for External Affairs in the Chifley Labor government, presided over Australian foreign policy at a critical juncture in the history of his nation, the British Empire and international relations. Assertion of distinctively Australian interests coincided with the evolution of the Empire into a Commonwealth of Nations, the emergence of the Cold War, and the development of a world body and an international jurisprudence aimed at preventing a recurrence of global conflict. Personally active in framing the United Nations Charter at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 and a recognized champion of the smaller powers, Evatt was intimately involved in a number of initiatives within the United Nations in the post-war years, some of only indirect Australian concern. Palestine was one of these. Evatt's role in the adoption of the proposal in 1947 to partition the British Mandate of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states with an internationalized zone for Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Holy Places, has been analysed elsewhere. Some measure of disagreement has been evident amongst scholars, but it is generally accepted today that Evatt piloted partition through the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Palestinian Question, which he chaired. The Ad Hoc Committee, representing all United Nations member states, was formed to consider the findings of the investigative United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) which had by a majority recommended partition. Seven of its eleven members had produced a report in favour of partition; three had produced another in favour of a federal state with minority safeguards for the Jews. Only one member Australia, represented by John Hood and Sam Atyeo had abstained from making any recommendation, but Evatt's desire to appear neutral ahead of the 1947 vote for the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly goes far to explain his ambiguous behaviour in this period. Having lost that vote and being elected to chair the Ad Hoc

Medical care for all the people. 1944.

THE PRESENT WAR emergency has given the problem of social security renewed significance, and the Wagner–Murray–Dingell bill endeavors to merge the existing state insurance schemes into a uniform federal system. It proposes at the same time to broaden the scope of social insurance so that it will include health insurance. The bill is violently attacked by those groups who stand for unchecked free enterprise and oppose all forms of government planning and coordination, and also by the groups who stand for unlimited states’ rights and object to any form of interference by the federal government. They overlook the fact that uncontrolled free enterprise has led the country, and not only ours, into depressions and wars, and also do not see that with the present means of transportation the country has become much more uniform than in the past. If the Wagner–Murray–Dingell bill is defeated, as it is likely to be, since our present Congress is very conservative, we may expect another similar bill in the near future because the need will remain as acute as ever. . . .

Hollywood, Jews, and America

Americans believe in democracy and religious tolerance-up to a point. When Jewish movie stars called on Congress in December 1938 to boycott German products until Hitler stopped persecuting Jews and other minorities, they were barraged with scores of anti-Semitic letters. Pray tell me, I. E. Schoening, a self-proclaimed Bible Christian wrote to Edward G. Robinson, is the greater sinner, Hitler in his treatment of the Jews and Christians or the movie industry producers whose rotten movie-plays are corrupting the minds of American boys and girls and turning them into criminals and sex perverts.' J. P. Thompson of St. Louis denounced Warner Brothers' Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939) as 'gross Jewish propaganda'' and told the brothers their film 'will more people hating the Jew because a Jew produced it to show his hatred' (p. 197). A decade later, Hollywood moguls were subject to anti-Semitic diatribes by FBI informants who insisted that the junk dealers, fur traders, push cart operators and their like who run the studios have never learned that there is a moral code in America against which you cannot buck. They still feel that the man with the dollar can do anything he likes.2 In Hollywood and Anti-Semitism: A Cultural History Up to World War II, Steven Alan Carr argues that such attacks were not peculiar to the 1930s and 1940s, but were part of a long tradition of anti-Semitism and fear of Jewish control over a wide array of American institutions: banks, newspapers, theaters, and especially movies. Much broader than the title suggests, Carr's book surveys the history of anti-Semitism from 1880 until the emergence of the Cold War in the 1940s. In the wake of recent outbreaks of anti-Semitic

Political violence, ethnic conflict, and contemporary wars: broad implications for health and social well-being

Ethnic conflict, political violence and wars that presently shape many parts of world have deep-seated structural causes. In poor and highly indebted countries, economic and environmental decline, asset depletion, and erosion of the subsistence base lead to further impoverishment and food insecurity for vast sectors of the population. Growing ethnic and religious tensions over a shrinking resource base often escort the emergence of predatory practices, rivalry, political violence, and internal wars. The nature of armed conflict has changed substantially over time and most strategic analysts agree that in the second half of the 20th century, contemporary wars are less of a problem of relations between states than a problem within states. Despite the growing number of armed conflicts and wars throughout the world, not enough attention has been paid to the local patterns of distress being experienced and the long-term health impact and psychosocial consequences of the various forms of political violence against individuals, communities, or specific ethnic groups. The short or long-term impact assessment on civilian populations of poor countries affected by war have been scarce, and studies focussing on experiences of collective suffering and trauma-related disorders among survivors are beginning to emerge in the scientific literature. The medicalization of collective suffering and trauma reflects a poor understanding of the relationships among critically important social determinants and the range of possible health outcomes of political violence.