Military Defeat Research Articles

The Politics of Symbols, Semantics, and Sentiments in the Weimar Republic

Contests over the term politics, over the boundaries that distinguished politics from non-politics, were one of the distinguishing features of the Weimar Republic. Not only did the disciplines of history, philosophy, law, sociology, and pedagogy each define this boundary in different terms, but participants in the debate also distinguished between ideal and real politics, politics at the level of state, and the dissemination of politics through society and citizenry. The fact that Weimar began with a revolution, the abdication of the Kaiser, and military defeat meant an eruption of politicization in 1918–19, whereby political organs of state and civil society sought in unprecedented fashion to draw Germans into parties and parliaments, associations, and activist societies. “The German people would still consist of ninety percent unpolitical people, if Social Democracy had not become a political school for the people,” Otto Braun claimed in Vorwärts in 1925. Politics and politicization generated not only political acts—votes, strikes, and vocal demonstrations—but also cultural milieus of Socialists and Communists, Catholics and liberal Democrats, nationalists, and eventually Nazis. In Weimar Germany there was little room for the “unpolitical” citizen of the prewar era, held up as a model in a famous tract of 1918 by Thomas Mann.

The Troubled Patriot: German Innerlichkeit in World War II

How German society responded to the Holocaust, military defeat, Allied bombing and the mass flights from the Eastern territories in 1945 needs to be seen in relation to the larger question of morale and attitudes towards the continuation of the war per se. Any attempt to assess German morale inevitably involves psychological and emotional analyses, and this article explores how these issues operated at the level of individual subjectivity. It focuses on the personal diary of August Topperwien, a German Protestant, who was not a Nazi and yet maintained a loyal patriotism to the end. In so doing, it probes the troubled conscience of someone whose conflicting senses of personal duty and political obligation found their vent in pages of silent self-reflection, and so reveal with an unusual clarity the underlying frames of moral reference, which so often remain implicit and unargued in the short-hand and commonsense of other diaries and family letters, let alone macro-level surveys of popular opinion. Many historians have followed the lead of Martin Broszat and accepted that, after the Battle of Stalingrad, German society was increasingly alienated not only by the demands of the Nazi regime but by the war itself, and retreated into privacy. Careful reading of a diary such as this one reveals that support for the Nazi regime and for the war were not the same thing, and questions how much interiority remained untouched by the emotional and moral claims of war.

Development of Military Doctrine: The Particular Case of Small States

In this article, the development of the Norwegian Armed Forces' Joint Doctrine of 2007 is analysed in order to illustrate some distinct characteristics of the development of small state doctrines. First, small states have limited freedom and limited institutional capacity to realise their own ideas about the use of their military forces. Furthermore, their contribution of forces to multilateral military operations signals political support for an institution (NATO) or a cause, but they are too small to make a real difference to the military operation. Hence, the operational experiences of these forces differ from those of larger countries. The stakes are lower, and they are unlikely to suffer military defeat in a decisive way. They may suffer losses, but they will not lose a war. As a consequence, small state doctrines at the strategic level have become detached from the question of operational effectiveness and are instead utilised for the purpose of promoting political, legal and ethical messages to the military, to a domestic audience, and to international allies.

Coming to Terms with Separatist Insurgencies

Although insurgencies may begin their rebellions with expressed desires for outcomes unacceptable to opposing governments, the desired insurgent outcomes sometimes undergo modification, creating conditions that can make governments more amenable to external mediation. In certain separatist conflicts, the likelihood of external mediation increases when the political redefinition of the state insisted upon by the insurgents undergoes a revision, from secession to self‐determination, understood as a variant of autonomy.In the same vein, although it may not happen concurrently, insurgent movements become more amenable to external mediation if and when opposing governments revise the preferred conflict outcome from a military defeat of the insurgents to a containment of the movement. These two developments can serve as objective referents helping external parties to identify a ripe moment in the conflict and initiate mediation.But the implementation of an agreement ending separatist conflict may not occur if the government fails to submit the proposed territorial bounds of autonomy to prior review by constituents. Potential spoilers among government constituents should be identified and recruited to participate in the negotiations so that the likelihood of agreement rejection is reduced. In some states, however, the legal mechanisms and political opportunities for constituents to act as spoilers do not exist.

The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Conflict (review)

grieve, patricia e. The Eve of Spain: Myths of Origins in the History of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Conflict. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2009. xii + 312 pp.Every schoolchild knows that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue, an event that initiated Spain's rapid imperial expansion westward. Less well known is the fact that the same year marked an important ending in Spain's narrative of nationhood. With the of the Muslim Kingdom of Granada to Isabel and Fernando, the political power of Islam in Iberia (although by no means its cultural influence) came to an end. Patricia Grieve's new book studies the creation and evolution of Spain's most influential foundational myth, the story of the rape of the noblewoman known as La Cava by the Visigothic King Rodrigo. That legend of sexual misconduct and the revenge/betrayal that followed sought to justify a stunning military defeat, the fall of Christian Spain to the Muslims in 711. Grieve demonstrates that the story of the sinful couple of La Cava and Rodrigo has remained central to Spain's concept of itself as a pure - and purely Christian - nation. Eventually the seductive La Cava came to dominate a moralizing gendered narrative of nation building in which the slow Christian recovery of territory conquered in 711 was seen as a return to the paradise from which they had been expelled by the sin of the Eve. Such is the hold of this tale of and redemption on the Spanish cultural imaginary that as recently as 2004 Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar explained that year's terrorist attack in Madrid as Muslim revenge for the Christian Reconquest that ended triumphally in 1492 (9).The Eve of Spain is a solidly researched literary history focused on the longstanding symbolic link between the female body and the body politic. In its questioning of Spain's official history, it joins similar scholarship published the same year: Barbara Fuchs's Exotic Nation: Maurophilia and the Construction of Early Modern Spain, and Daniela Flesler's The Return of the Moor: Spanish Responses to Contemporary Moroccan Immigration. In its chronological scope and its intended readership, however, it is significantly more ambitious. The author readily acknowledges the risks inherent in a project that covers thirteen centuries of Spanish history in two hundred and fifty pages and that was written with both specialists and general readers in mind.In Act One: Fall and Redemption (711-1492), Grieve discusses how as early as the mid-eighth century Muslim and Christian chroniclers began crafting a tale that slowly and increasingly came to blame La Cava for her rape and for informing her father Count Julian of her dishonor, thereby triggering Julian's treasonous invitation to the North African Muslims to invade southern Spain. An important secondary character in the legend became the Christian warrior Pelayo, who from the mountains of Asturias began the eight-centuries-long push southward to wrest control of Muslim-dominated lands. The author points out the interesting fact that it was, indeed, the Muslim chroniclers who introduced the story of La Cava's rape, which was subsequently elaborated by misogynistic Christian writers in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries before receiving Pedro de Corral's defining treatment.Grieve identifies two distinct traditions arising at this time: the more general decadence tradition, focused on the iniquity of the population at the time of the Muslim conquest, and the more individualized rape narrative, which locates that decadence in the bodies of a sinful couple. The latter tradition began to dominate with Archbishop Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada's chronicle De rebus Hispaniae (1243) and the anonymous Refundicion toledana de la Cronica de 1344, composed around 1440, both of which still locate the cause of the more in Rodrigo's than La Cava's lasciviousness. Although these accounts expand the role of La Cava, none of them make her rape central to the legend as does the version created by the fifteenth- century minor author Pedro de Corral, whose historical romance Cronica del Rey don Rodrigo, postrimero rey de los godos was written around 1430. …

Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice (review)

Reviewed by: Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice Mark Jurdjevic Horodowich, Elizabeth — Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. 258. In Language and Statecraft in Early Modern Venice, Elizabeth Horodowich examines numerous connections between language — and more often the spoken word — and Venetian political culture in the sixteenth century. She demonstrates that Venetian political anxiety, whether caused by sharply rising numbers of recent immigrants to the city, the presence of marauding foreign armies, or more purely internal tensions between aristocrats at the top of the social ladder and those further down, always manifested itself, among other ways, in attempts to regulate, control, and thereby dominate language and speech. The Venetian government was particularly sensitive to the ways in which mastery of the rules of language and a monopoly over the terms and boundaries of its proper use were a particularly effective political tool for shoring up elite hegemony in a contestatory republican setting. Her analysis considers the intersection of language and politics from several perspectives. The first chapter surveys the linguistic component of the broader pan-Italian genre of Renaissance conduct literature. Books such as Castiglione's Il Libro del Cortegiano and Giovanni della Casa's Il Galateo laid out detailed and widely influential rules governing aristocratic and courtly speech. Horodowich interprets such texts less in terms of a literary preoccupation with the rhetorical theories of classical antiquity, or literary debates over the relative merits of Latin and the volgare, and more as a fundamentally social and political attempt by Italian elites to define themselves in the midst of the Italian Wars and their related growing sense of powerlessness. By complicating and then mastering elaborate rules of linguistic etiquette, Italian elites, whose elevated position lacked the legal and military foundation typical elsewhere in Europe, both defined themselves as a group and attempted to demonstrate their superiority (if only to themselves). The second chapter turns to Venice, looking in particular at the Esecutori Contro la Bestemmia, the magistracy established in 1537 to investigate and punish blasphemy. Horodowich provides abundant evidence to support David Lawton's argument that blasphemy emerges as a controversial issue in direct proportion to the degree to which its surrounding society is internally divided. She concludes that the Venetian government established the blasphemy magistracy as a response to a sudden escalation in the immigrant population in Venice, the result of shifts in the city's domestic economy and Venetian military defeats on the mainland. The magistracy's records reveal an unsurprisingly distinct tendency to identify blasphemy with the city's most recent and unwanted immigrants (and a tendency not to punish noble blasphemers). In addition, and somewhat more surprisingly, the magistracy occasionally expanded its jurisdiction to include the punishment of purely secular verbal insults made by non-nobles to nobles. The fourth chapter looks in more detail at the legal punishment of insults. Horodowich considers examples from several additional archival sources — the Council of Ten, Avogaria di Comun, Signori di Notte al Criminal, and Provveditori sopra le Pompe. The records of these magistracies reveal the [End Page 263] government's aggressive patrolling of servants' speech, coarse talk by gondoliers, and other members of Venice's labouring classes. The government concentrated the vast majority of its coercive power on the prosecution of insults against nobles. Horodowich plausibly connects this development with the increasing monopolization of the government by an ever smaller aristocratic oligarchy. The government defined itself in terms of its noble class and hence viewed insults towards individual nobles as conceptually synonymous with assaults on the government itself. Chapters 5 and 6 shift the focus from law to culture by considering the role of gossip in Venetian public life and the speech of Venice's famously eloquent courtesans. Both chapters are good examples of the anxieties and contradictions that accompanied Venetian awareness of the political implications of speech. While gossip was generally condemned as a frivolous and potentially destructive form of distinctly female speech, it nevertheless was an essential method of political deal-making and intelligence-gathering in the ostensibly masculine culture of republican politics. Similarly, Venetian courtesans, who sold verbal companionship as well as sex, were clearly in fundamental...

Book Review: Defeat and Memory: Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era. Edited by Jenny Macleod. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. ix + 259 pp. £50 boards. ISBN 978 0 230 51740 0

Book Review: Defeat and Memory: Cultural Histories of Military Defeat in the Modern Era. Edited by Jenny Macleod. Palgrave Macmillan. 2008. ix + 259 pp. £50 boards. ISBN 978 0 230 51740 0

Financial Institutions in Interwar Romania (Le Istituzioni Finanziarie Della Romania Nel Periodo Infrabellico)

This paper provides an historical account of the development of Romania’s banking system and covers the period going from the outbreak of World War I to the end of World War II. In addition, the study investigates the role of historical and political circumstances affecting the structure of banking industry as well as the banking legislation in Romania during these turbulent decades. Thanks to the establishment of foreign financial institutions (mainly of Central European countries) the Romanian banking system had attained a diversified structure and adequate operational standards at the turn of the century. However, a dangerous behaviour in bank management, inspired to mixed banking in the style of German universal banks, began in these years. It is worth noting that both a lax banking regulation and supervision as well as deposit-taking institutions’ direct involvement with industry, agriculture and commerce, were two phenomena considered at that time to be rather positive for speeding up economic development of the country. In 1916 Romania entered the war on the Allied side in return of promises of territorial gains and, as a member of the victorious coalition, had a place at the Peace Conference of Paris, but, disappointingly, obtained less than had been promised. However, with the unexpected annexation of Bessarabia, Romanians were able to fulfil the old dream of building a nation-state encompassing most of Romanian speaking people of the Carpatho-Danubian area (România Mare). Once national unity had been achieved, Romania, thanks to well conceived reforms, could enjoy an age of domestic political stability as well as of social and economic progress. Although still placed among less developed countries in Europe, Romania played a remarkable role in international relations, as it was considered a regional bastion against both defeated countries’ revanchism and Soviet expansionism. Nationalisation of banks which had connections with financial groups of Central Europe increased the share of Romanian capital in domestic banking industry. In addition, inflow of foreign capital and financial know-how from a number of western industrialised countries gave a substantial contribution to change in the financial environment, by increasing financial deepening and financial inclusion, and finally to further growth and broadening of the Romanian banking system. The great depression hit severely Romania’s economy and financial system and, as a result, many bank failures occurred. Furthermore the crisis caused social unrest and political instability. The financial reconstitution followed to the crisis resulted in more power given to the Banca Naţionala a României also in terms of banking regulation and supervision, but the enlarged functions of the central bank were integrated into a new framework of steady and generalized government control. The position of relevant supplier of raw materials in continental Europe allowed Romania, on the one hand, to gain a quick economic recovery in the years before the outbreak of World War II, but, on the other hand, gave rise to foreign appetite and intrigues as well as to domestic political turmoil. The default of guarantee of Romanian territorial integrity after the collapse of France resulted, first, in the loss of territories (ceded to Soviet Union, Hungary and Bulgaria) and, second, in the shifting of the country into the sphere of German hegemony followed by the conferment of its natural resources into Germany’s wartime economy. The political and economic dominance of Germany was reflected also in the Romanian financial sector where some leading institutions changed governance accordingly. Participation to the invasion of Soviet Union in 1941 with the aim of recovering the lost territories brought about the direct engagement of the country in the Second World War. Romanian banking system was fully involved in financing the war effort. Military defeat, followed by Romania’s capitulation, caused the surrender of Bessarabia, Northern Bucovina and Southern Dobruja and, eventually, the fall of the country itself under Soviet rule. A Soviet-type government-owned and centrally planned economy was established in Romania and, consequently, a socialist banking was enforced by means of nationalization and concentration of financial intermediaries. The socialist banking system established in the country, although usually called monobanking, in reality had three financial institutions: (1) a state bank performing central and commercial banking functions as well, (2) an investment bank and (3) a savings institution which provided rudimentary banking services to the public and channelled savings into the state budget.

Sir Orfeo and English Identity

Sir Orfeo and English Identity Dominique Battles Scholars have long noted how the abduction of Queen Heurodis in the Middle English Sir Orfeo is as much, if not more, a political crime as a personal one, and how the loss of Heurodis very quickly turns into the loss of a kingdom.1 The nature of the crime attests to this. Rather than taking her outright, the Fairy King approaches Heurodis in the orchard, takes her against her will on a tour of his kingdom, then returns her to the orchard, only to then steal her again the next day. The intervening time turns what would have been a private act (i.e. an abduction/rape) into a public and political act, as Heurodis reports to King Orfeo on the extent of the Fairy King's holdings, his "palays … castels & tours, / Riuers, forestes … / & his riche stedes ichon" (lines 157–61), and as Orfeo assembles an army into a defensive maneuver.2 Orfeo's failure the next day to protect the queen becomes, therefore, not simply a personal loss but a military defeat of sorts, witnessed by hundreds of fighting men, to a foe whose land holdings, as far as we can tell, outclass Orfeo's own. The invasion of Orfeo's realm, the failure of his forces, and the subsequent exile of the king himself clearly mirror the storyline of political conquest. In this article, I explore how the land holdings, castles, and military strategies surrounding this crime, among other aspects of the poem, to some extent cast the central conflict between Orfeo and the Fairy King in cultural terms that suggest an [End Page 179] awareness of racial difference between Anglo-Saxon and Norman long after the Conquest. In order to explore the Anglo-Saxon aspect of Sir Orfeo, it is necessary to establish that as late as the early fourteenth century, when Sir Orfeo was written, an awareness of ethnic difference between the Normans and the Anglo-Saxons prevailed. While the French influence on English society and literature in the post-Conquest period remains indisputable, recent studies have argued for the persistence of Anglo-Saxon cultural identity well beyond the Conquest. Nick Webber, for instance, explores how the inescapable cultural conflict that resulted from the Conquest served to solidify and polarize English and Norman identities, from both perspectives, throughout the colonial period.3 Hugh M. Thomas explores several important texts that uphold English honor against the backdrop of rampant prejudice against the English as rustic, militarily inept, and incompetent.4 (Of course, the Normans more or less created this model of Englishman by killing off most of the native English aristocracy.) The subject of ongoing English resistance to Norman dominance is a growing area of study, chiefly among historians, and one that holds important implications for literary scholarship of the Middle English period. A select body of scholarship has begun to explore the survival and expression of this "Englishness" in post-Conquest English literature. Thorlac Turville-Petre has written extensively on the survival and assertion of an English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) national identity in opposition to the Norman, and earlier Danish, invaders in a host of literary, as well as historical, texts and manuscripts.5 His study of the famous Auchinleck manuscript, which preserves the earliest and best version of Sir Orfeo, demonstrates just how pervasive native English identity could still be, even as late as the early fourteenth century.6 Mark Amodio's recent study argues that Anglo-Saxon poetry did not, in fact, die with the Norman Conquest. Instead, it went underground, from which it resurfaces [End Page 180] in the Middle English period in the form of themes (e.g. exile) and story patterns (e.g. the return song) that appear in Sir Orfeo.7 Most recently, Robert Allen Rouse explores the survival and proliferation of the memory of Anglo-Saxon England in the romances of the fourteenth century. Examining the Matter of England romances, among other texts, Rouse explores how English identity is negotiated, revised, but nevertheless preserved well beyond the Conquest. He argues that "the Anglo-Saxon past, far from being marginal to post-conquest English culture, occupied an important role within the...

Sri Lanka in 2009: From Civil War to Political Uncertainties

Political developments in Sri Lanka in 2009 centered primarily around the end of the protracted civil war between the state and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), with the total military defeat of the LTTE. Sri Lanka subsequently entered an uncertain phase of post-civil war political reconstruction. The announcement to hold early presidential elections in January 2010 added to uncertainties to Sri Lanka's post-civil war political process. Sri Lanka also moved away from the West toward other Asian and Middle Eastern powers.

Le sconfitte dei Romani

In Roman culture, military defeats are recorded as negative erempla, especially epoch-making defeats such as the river Allia, Cannae, Carrhae or Teutoburg. This depends on several factors. Originally, the responsibility of military victories or shortcomings was not attributed to the single commander, but as a deed concerning the whole community. Moreover, the dates of major defeats were included in the calendar as dies nefasti and, in some particular cases (as the Allia and Cannae) as dies vitiosi. With the Principate, this tradition begins to change. The transformation can be seen by the end of Augustan age, with the elaboration of a legende noire of unlucky commanders like Crassus and Quinctilius Varus.

NS-Unterlagen aus dem Berlin Document Center und die Debatte um ehemalige NSDAP-Mitgliedschaften

NS Records of the Berlin Document Center and the Debate on Former NSDAP Memberships«. The Berlin Document Center (BDC) - today a part of Germany's Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) - with its holdings of Nazi files and documents has been and still is a central point of public interest. As a result of the military defeat of Germany, the BDC was founded in July 1945 by the American Armed Forces in Berlin-Zehlendorf as a collecting point for NS state and party records and documents of varied origin which had been confis- cated by the American troops during the last months and weeks of World War II. The center piece of these collections were the NSDAP membership file cards of almost 11 million party members transmitted from Munich to Berlin in late 1945. Additionally biographical data and person-related files of various Nazi organizations were kept at the BDC under American administration. In 1994, the BDC holdings were transferred to the Bundesarchiv and German leg- islature provided rules for public access to the Nazi files for the first time. About 10.000 requests with regard to the former BDC files still reach the Bundesarchiv every year. The recent disclosure of several German celebrities' nominal membership in the NSDAP has re-stirred a public and scientific de- bate over NSDAP memberships, the circumstances of enlistment, and the NSDAP membership files themselves. In this article, the subject is discussed from a BDC and Federal Archives insider's perspective.

PROPHETS AND PRIESTS OF THE NATION: NAGUIB MAHFOUZ'SKARNAK CAFÉAND THE 1967 CRISIS IN EGYPT

This quote from a character in the 1974 novelAl-Karnak(Karnak Café) by Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) sums up the reaction of millions of people in Egypt and the Arab world to the June 1967 Arab–Israeli war. Why did this war shatter their worldviews? A military defeat may occur for purely military reasons, in this case the better preparation of Israeli troops. Why should it cast doubt on a whole way of life? The answer to this question lies in the social and cognitive structure of nationalism, which I examine in a moment of crisis, after the 1967 war, when it became necessary for nationalist intellectuals to debate issues that had previously been taken for granted.Al-Karnak, which was made into a highly profitable and controversial film, provides a good starting point for studying these debates. However, it is important to understand them as products of the nationalist project of which Mahfouz was a part. I first analyze the history of that project, explaining its raison d'être and its success by the 1960s.

PROPHETS AND PRIESTS OF THE NATION: NAGUIB MAHFOUZ'S KARNAK CAFÉ AND THE 1967 CRISIS IN EGYPT

Similarities between religion and nationalism are well known but not well understood. They can be explained by drawing on Pierre Bourdieu's sociological theory in order to consider symbolic interests and the strategies employed to advance them. In both religion and nationalism, the “strategy of the prophets” relies on charisma while the “strategy of the priests” relies on cultural capital. In 20th-century Egypt, nationalism permitted intellectuals whose cultural capital was mainly secular, such as Naguib Mahfouz, to become “priests of the nation” in order to compete with the ʿulamaʾ for prestige and influence. However, it severely limited their autonomy, particularly after Nasser took power and became a successful nationalist prophet. Mahfouz's novel Al-Karnak, which explores the fate of the Nasser regime's political prisoners and the effects of Egypt's 1967 military defeat, reflects this limitation. Under a nationalist regime, the film adaptation of the novel contributed to Mahfouz's heteronomy.

Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (review)

Reviewed by: Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition Robin Darling Young Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition. By Claudia Rapp. [The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, Vol. 37.](Berkeley: University of California Press. 2005. Pp. xii, 346. $55.00. ISBN 978-0-520-24296-3.) If its title provides a near occasion for cognitive dissonance, it is not because this book lacks an interesting thesis and rich documentation: Rapp amply illustrates the activities and aims of the numerous early Christian leaders whose rise as a new order of politicians revolutionized the Mediterranean world. An exception proves her case. Paul of Samosata, bishop of Antioch from 260 to 272, lost his job for doctrinal error, but his accusers added charges of moral turpitude for good measure; yet he could be deposed only after his protector Zenobia suffered military defeat. If holiness could not secure his office, its alleged lack demonstrated the justice of his punishment. The book has two parts. The first, chapters 1 through 4, describes the quality of holiness as a necessity—no less than for the ascetic—for the bishop and traces it through three aspects. The second part, chapters 5 through 9, considers bishops' specific contexts in late antiquity and the institutions that grew out of them. Rapp begins her treatment with a review of previous scholarship on the episcopacy in early Christianity. She distinguishes three groups of previous studies: histories of the episcopacy's development, ending with Constantine; the "public role of bishops" in urban or rural sees; and biographies of particularly notable bishops. Rapp wants to dispute the importance of the reign of Constantine, particularly dear to European historians as a watershed, and, by making the chronological range of her book the third to sixth century, to discount the corrosiveness of imperial sponsorship upon Church and bishop. She also recommends a "more integrative approach" in the studies of particular [End Page 779]bishops to link their activities within Stadtherrschaftto "their religious position as Christian leaders" (p. 13). In part 1, Rapp groups the "pragmatic," "spiritual," and "ascetic" aspects of this leadership. The method and content of this part might be called theological, because, compared with the second, it is based upon the concept of the "holy man," especially following the discussion of Peter Brown; and because, to extend the concept from the ascetic and patronusdescribed by Brown, it gathers examples from various works to arrive at a synthetic portrait of the quality of episcopal holiness. By contrast, part 2 is more empirical, beginning with a contrast between two bishops—Synesius of Cyrene and Theodore of Sykeon—and going on to examine social contexts (chapter 6, cities (chapter 7, empire (i.e., the relationship between empire and bishops in the imperial system [chapter 8]), and ending in chapter 9 with a description of what was, after all, a notable change in the significance of this highest Christian office—the transition "from model Christians to model citizens" (p. 275). Here the book seems to revert to a previous historiographical model, by claiming that "[i]n the two centuries after Constantine, a new understanding of the episcopate developed that privileged the bishop's pragmatic authority over his ascetic authority" (p. 274)—in other words, it reduced prior expectations for holiness and drew upon status and money to make the bishop an indispensable urban and imperial official. A few errors should be noted—the Apostolic Traditionis known to be a composite of the fourth century, not a witness to the second; the Didacheprobably favors local officials, not the mobile "prophets and teachers" against whom it cautions; and in the fifth century, the miaphysite Peter the Iberian certainly did not support Nestorius. Robin Darling Young University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2009 The Catholic University of America Press

‘Work and Don't Lose Hope’: Republican Forced Labour Camps during the Spanish Civil War

AbstractThis article examines the use of forced labour in Republican Spain during the civil war. Although much has recently been written on Francoist camps, very little research has been undertaken on their Republican counterparts. As a consequence the significance of Republican camps has not been recognised. Although some historians argue that the Republicans used forced labour only in a desperate attempt to avoid military defeat, this article demonstrates that labour camps were an integral aspect of Republican ‘popular justice’. Work, it was argued, would redeem ‘fascists’ by allowing them to contribute to the economic reconstruction and transformation of Spain.

"I Am Not So Patriotic as I Was Once": The Effects of Military Occupation on the Occupying Union Soldiers during the Civil War

"I Am Not So Patriotic as I Was Once":The Effects of Military Occupation on the Occupying Union Soldiers during the Civil War Judkin Browning (bio) When Joseph Barlow, a corporal in Company I of the 23d Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, wrote his wife from New Bern, North Carolina, in April 1862, he was not a happy man. Though his unit had just helped capture the eastern North Carolina ports of New Bern and Beaufort, the twenty-eight year-old former shoemaker from Newburyport, who had originally enlisted in the army on April 15, 1861, wrote, "I have had just about as much to do with the army as I want" and hoped for a speedy end to the war. On December 26, 1862, after performing tedious occupation duty in eastern North Carolina for eight months and hearing about Union military defeats on far off fields, Barlow complained, "we are all getting sick of this war." Five months later, after the latest Union defeat at Chancellorsville, Barlow despaired that "this war has played out." In October 1863, while still in New Bern, the disheartened Barlow strongly suggested that he might leave the army, claiming, "I don't think much about enlisting again."1 However, on December 2, 1863, Barlow did reenlist. In September 1864, [End Page 217] after a brief sojourn in Virginia, Barlow's unit was back in New Bern, performing the occupation duty in which it had been engaged for nearly two years, yet Barlow manifested a decidedly different spirit. Reaffirming his commitment to the Union cause, Barlow wrote to his wife that he opposed Gen. George B. McClellan's presidential bid as the Democratic candidate running on a peace platform. The Massachusetts soldier avowed, "The soldiers will not vote for a man that will dishonor them and so our ticket is Lincoln and Johnson." Reflecting his determination to win the war, he declared that there should be "no peace with Rebels until they lay down their arms and surrender."2 Barlow had often griped about the war and his service ever since he first began participating in occupation duty in the spring of 1862. The monotonous experience of occupation and the military defeats suffered elsewhere frequently caused his morale to sag. Yet his determination to serve until final victory illustrates that soldiers can still be committed to their military service even if their morale suffers at times. Like Joseph Barlow, occupying Union soldiers exhibited a relatively high level of commitment to their duty, while frequently suffering through disheartening stretches of despair. While several scholars have analyzed soldiers' motivations and what sustained their morale particularly through harrowing combat situations, practically nothing has been written on how the experience of military occupation affected Union soldier morale and motivation. James McPherson, Gerald Linderman, and Earl Hess have written excellent, if not always congruent, studies of what motivated men to fight, and how the experience of combat shaped soldiers' definitions of personal courage and either sharpened or blunted their motivations to continue serving.3 But what of those soldiers who enlisted for the same patriotic reasons but were forced into tedious occupation duty and had very rare opportunities to experience traditional combat? For soldiers on occupation duty, there was no opportunity for glory, none of the exhilaration or anticipation of engaging in combat, and few chances to build the bonds of camaraderie that battle experience helped forge between [End Page 218] soldiers. Instead, they acted as police units, forced into constant contact with white southern civilians and black slaves; they became victims of clandestine attacks and carried out Federal policies (such as emancipation and confiscation) of which several disapproved. This was not why they had enlisted, and they voiced a decided lack of satisfaction with their duties as a result. The experience of occupation and its many disagreeable duties forced soldiers to reexamine their views on the war and the nation that they fought to preserve. For many soldiers, their experience fostered a less idealistic view of the nation and its aims, and several became far more cynical than they had been when they enlisted. Yet, they persevered despite their disgruntlement. This article will explore the ways soldiers sustained their motivations while...

This new theory of war is nothing but an uninhibited transfer of the principle of art for art's sake to war: Ernst Jnger, Walter Benjamin, and the New Right

Walter Benjamin's reception of Ernst Jnger and the new nationalists grouped around him during the years of the Weimar Republic is notable for establishing a link between their aestheticization of the war experience and Germany's military defeat. Benjamin's interpretation can also be extended to the new nationalist politics in the 1920s: the failed attempt to work out a programme which would reconcile the forces of nationalism and socialism gives way to a view of politics as style, hierarchy, and leadership. A parallel process is at work in Germany today among intellectuals of the New Right: through its project of intellectualization, the New Right seeks to distance itself from National Socialism and present itself as heir to the supposedly alternative tradition of the Conservative Revolution. The project fails, and the New Right moves towards the aestheticization of politics mapped out by the new nationalists.

The August 2008 war in Georgia: from ethnic conflict to border wars

Following the five days’ war between Georgia and Russia, a highly politicized debate began about ‘who started the war’. While this debate is far from over, it is important to analyse whether the 2008 war marks an important evolution in the series of conflicts that started in the Caucasus simultaneously with the weakening and collapse of the Soviet Union. While in the late 1980s and early 1990s the conflicts were the result of mass mobilization around the banner of the nation, marking a revolutionary period of paradigm shifts, the 2008 war was much closer to classical wars between states and their centrally commanded armies. The direct Russian military intervention, Moscow's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as ‘independent’ states, further modifies the nature of the Caucasus conflicts. The 2008 war also reveals how much the Georgian state has evolved since the Rose Revolution, from one described as ‘weak state’ to a state capable of surviving a military defeat without internal collapse.

Hitler's priests: Catholic clergy and national socialism

Shaken by military defeat and economic depression after War World I, Germans sought to restore their nation's dignity and power. In this context the National Socialist Party, with its promise of a revivified Germany, drew supporters. Among the most zealous were a number of Catholic clergymen known as who volunteered as Nazi propagandists. In this insightful study, Spicer unearths a dark subchapter in Roman Catholic history, introduces the principal clergymen who participated in the Nazi movement, examines their motives, details their advocacy of National Socialism, and explores the consequences of their political activism.Some brown priests, particularly war veterans, advocated National Socialism because it appealed to their patriotic ardor. Others had less laudatory motives: disaffection with clerical life, conflicts with Church superiors, or ambition for personal power and fame. Whatever their individual motives, they employed their skills as orators, writers, and teachers to proclaim the message of Nazism. Especially during the early 1930s, when the Church forbade membership in the party, these clergymen strove to prove that Catholicism was compatible with National Socialism, thereby justifying their support of Nazi ideology. Father Dr. Philipp Haeuser, a scholar and pastor, went so far as to promote antisemitism while deifying Adolf Hitler. The Fuhrer's antisemitism, Spicer argues, did not deter clergymen such as Haeuser becuase, although the Church officially rejected the Nazis' extreme racism, Catholic teachings tolerated hostility toward Jews by blaming them for Christ's crucifixion.While a handful of brown priests enjoyed the forbearance of their bishops, others endured reprimand or even dismissal; a few found new vocations with the Third Reich. After the fall of the Reich, the most visible brown priests faced trial for their part in the crimes of National Socialism, a movement they had once so earnestly supported.In addition to this intriguing history about clergymen trying to reconcile faith and politics, Spicer provides a master list - verified by extensive research in Church and government archives - of Catholic clergy who publicly supported National Socialism.