Postwar Career Research Articles

Translating Radio Productions into Television Programmes: The Post-War Career of BBC Writer/Producer Nesta Pain

When BBC Television resumed broadcasting in 1946, BBC radio still dominated the airwaves. However, within a decade, television had swiftly become the dominant medium. BBC radio producers from the Features Department were eager to try their hand at translating their audio productions into visual ones, although few were successful. BBC producer Nesta Pain ultimately remained in radio production, but she successfully translated some of her radio plays and productions into television programmes, including John Mortimer’s The Dock Brief (1957), A Shaft of Light (1958), and Simon Raven’s The Move Up Country (1961). As one of the few women, and one of the more successful BBC Features writer/producers of the 1940s and 1950s, Nesta Pain’s approaches to translating her work to television and the obstacles she encountered trying to move from audio storytelling to a more visual media offers a glimpse into the difficulties radio producers faced in switching to new methods. This article discusses the successful, as well as challenging, moments she faced in attempting this transition and also explores how access to Pain’s personal papers has greatly enhanced this understanding.

Charles Bettelheim and World War II, or The Making of a Planning Doctor

Abstract The French Marxist economist Charles Bettelheim (1913–2006) conducted after the end of World War II important scientific activity on economic planning, together with an international consulting activity in developing countries, as a non-Soviet expert on Soviet planning. He was the Frenchman who whispered the Soviet way of planning in the ears of Nasser in Egypt, Nehru in India, and Che Guevara in Cuba, to mention only three obvious examples. The expression “planning doctors” is proposed in this article to designate this kind of economist who advised governments in the setting up of socialist five-year plans. In order to understand how Bettelheim became a planning doctor, the article reconstructs the formative period of his career and what role World War II played in this making, starting with his studies in political economy in France, his trip to the USSR in 1936, and his works on Soviet statistics. It is shown how World War II affected Bettelheim from an intellectual point of view, with his study of the German economy at war, and from an institutional point of view, as his encounters during the war proved instrumental for the setting of his postwar career as a planning doctor.

“LORD” OF STARA RAŠKA: WAR BIOGRAPHY OF SS-STANDARTENFÜHRER KARL VON KREMPLER (1939–1945)

The paper chronicles the life of Karl von Krempler, a war criminal who was a Yugoslav “Volksdeutscher”. The emphasis is on the period of the Second World War, when he attained high positions within the structure of SS and police in the occupied Serbia. Besides his pre-war, war and post-war career, the attention is devoted to the analysis of Krempler’s intriguing personality. The paper is prepared on the basis of the archival documentation preserved at: the Archives of Yugoslavia, The State Archives of Serbia, Historical Archives of Belgrade, the Military Archives, Historical Archives “Ras” in Novi Pazar, Historical Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina, The Political Archive of the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and Federal Archives in Berlin.

Le Judas Confedéré: James Longstreet’s surprising alliance with Black politicians in New Orleans

ABSTRACT In a remarkable political about-face, Confederate general James Longstreet embraced Congress’s Reconstruction Acts in 1867 and thereby became a pariah among unreconstructed white Southerners. Longstreet’s conversion launched him on a decades-long career as an influential Republican operative and iconoclastic critic of his own society. Historians have overlooked the most significant aspect of Longstreet’s postwar career: namely his alliances with Black politicians during Reconstruction. Those alliances reveal the depth of Longstreet’s commitment to the Republican party; the source of the white-hot animus against him on the part of conservatives; and the ultimate limits of white Southern Republicans’ tolerance for transformative change.

Persecutee in the Third Reich, full professor in the GDR: The communist physician Carl Coutelle (1908-1993) and his post-war career as pathologist.

As an avowed communist, Carl Coutelle was one of the few (future) pathologists persecuted for purely political reasons in the Third Reich. Despite this peculiarity, his life has received little attention. The present article takes the existing research desideratum as an opportunity to elaborate on Coutelle's fate during the Nazi era, but also on his academic rise to the position of full professor at the University of Halle (GDR). The analysis is based on extensive files from various German archives. The article pursues a twofold question: On the one hand, it seems necessary to clarify how Coutelle's life between 1933 and 1945 can be characterized and classified, and on the other hand, it is of interest whether he owed his career in the GDR primarily to scientific merit or to state support.It can be shown that Coutelle's career path reflects the prevailing political power relations: With the beginning of the Third Reich, Coutelle was completely disenfranchised because of his political views; he was forced to emigrate, interrupted his nascent scientific career, and became actively involved in the international anti-fascist resistance. After the war, Coutelle became one of the protagonists of the socialist transformation and denazification of the health care system in the Soviet Occupation Zone. Now his career took the opposite course: Although his research performance was below average compared to other pathologists from the GDR, the avowed communist was appointed full professor - due to state intervention and against the declared will of the faculty in Halle.

Jeremy A. Crang. Sisters in Arms: Women in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War.

Over half a million women joined the three British women’s auxiliary forces during the Second World War, including its most well-known member, an eighteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth. Jeremy A. Crang’s Sisters in Arms: Women in the British Armed Forces during the Second World War offers a well-researched and highly readable new history of these organizations that both contextualizes and challenges the tales of plucky young women selflessly “doing their bit” that filled the pages of the popular press. It follows a chronological and thematic structure, covering the development of the women’s services from the 1930s, and exploring key aspects of the servicewomen’s experiences, including their training, work, discipline, health, social lives and habits, and social status. Unlike some studies that end in 1945, a welcome and original aspect of this study is its focus on the postwar careers of servicewomen, and on the extent to which war service offered them new opportunities within or without the military. The final chapters offer a useful overview of political debates around and attitudes toward demobilization, including some fascinating case studies of the impact of war work on women’s postwar lives.

“Those Deluded, Ill-Starred Men”: Frederick Douglass, the New National Era, and the Paris Commune

The Paris Commune was the apotheosis of what unfolded in the 1848 European Revolutions, the first time the working class actually took political power, although briefly. Frederick Douglass covered the events of the Paris Commune closely in his newspaper, the New National Era. Douglass’s views on the Paris Commune, as of yet unexplored in detail by scholars, illuminate his relationship to democratic and social movements both abroad and in the United States. This essay examines in-depth the writings in Douglass’s newspaper on the Paris Commune and argues Douglass’s commitment to mass movements and oppositional politics did not necessarily extend to oppressed wage workers and was therefore situational, specifically as it related to class, labor, and republicanism. The Commune abroad and labor unrest at home motivated Douglass to examine the “labor question” for his readers. This brought to light his free labor prescription, with its assumption of a harmony of interests between capital and workers, to the problem of inequality and the exploitation of labor. Douglass supported, at key junctures, revolutionary movements and action both in Europe and at home, but his reaction to the Paris Commune exposes the limitations of his liberal political thought to take on an internationalist analysis of class conflict and labor struggles, especially when compared to contemporaries such as Benjamin Butler, Wendell Phillips, and Karl Marx. This study offers a unique contribution to Douglass scholarship while also building on research on Americans’ views of the Paris Commune and the retreat from Reconstruction. Douglass’s writings on the Paris Commune and the labor movement deserve more attention. They provide opportunities for historians, political theorists, and labor activists to augment our understanding of Douglass’s post-war career.

Stephen A. Swails: Black Freedom Fighter in the Civil War and Reconstruction by Gordon C. Rhea

In this book, Rhea chronicles the life and career of a Civil War soldier and South Carolina politician whom he considers to be a “giant” in the Black freedom struggle (153). Born into a free Black family and raised in Pennsylvania and New York, Swails enlisted in the famous 54th Massachusetts in 1863, serving in numerous engagements and ultimately rising through the ranks to First Lieutenant, despite prohibitions on Black men receiving officers’ commissions in the United States Army. After the war, Swails settled in Kingstree, South Carolina, where he raised a family, practiced law, and served actively in Republican politics. He held many elected offices during Reconstruction, including mayor of Kingstree and state senator (also serving as speaker pro tempore of the South Carolina state senate).Rhea devotes a substantial portion of the biography to piecing together Swails’ service in the 54th Massachusetts, when, as Rhea argues, Swails served honorably while fighting against individual and systemic discrimination against Black soldiers. Swails participated in his unit’s fight for equal pay and, subsequently, advocated and won the right to receive the commission of a Second Lieutenant as a line officer. By focusing on Swails’ experiences in the 54th Massachusetts, Rhea laudably attempts to shift focus away from Robert Gould Shaw to a Black soldier. Unfortunately, because Swails’ military service did not leave much of a paper trail, Rhea relies heavily on Luis Emilio’s regimental memoir as well as Shaw’s papers.1 Swails, therefore, often disappears from the narrative for several pages; in fact, his own words are not recounted until the third chapter.Once Rhea reaches the Reconstruction era, the lack of documents dissipates, and Swails’ work with the Freedmen’s Bureau and his career as a Republican politician come alive. In the years following the war, Rhea contends that Swails worked tirelessly to secure Black freedom—first attempting to facilitate fair labor contracts between Black farmers and white landowners and later serving myriad roles in local and state politics. Attempting to capitalize on his northern birth, Swails courted Black and white voters from among both Republicans and Democrats. By the mid-1870s, he wielded significant political and patronage power in his own Williamsburg County and beyond. Republicans were forced to contend with Swails’ influence. Democratic Redeemers ultimately charged Swails with corruption, chasing him out of South Carolina and threatening to kill him if he ever returned. In these chapters about Reconstruction, Rhea is at his best, centering Swails in order to offer a concise and clear picture of the interplay between politics and vigilantism in South Carolina.Throughout the biography, Rhea provides an engaging narrative that general readers will appreciate. Yet at times, Rhea makes his important arguments only by intimation, in a manner that scholars may find frustrating. Rhea suggests that Swails’ military service paved the way for his postwar career and his long fight against discrimination; the professional experience that he gained as a commissioned officer prepared him for both militia and political leadership. Rhea could have hammered this point home more forcefully. He also implies (in the same vein as other historians) that Swails earned his citizenship on the battlefield; academic readers may well lament that he did not make this connection more explicitly. Furthermore, although Rhea’s citation style enables smooth reading, it can blur the distinction between reconstructed narrative and direct evidence. Scholars, again, may find this by-product of the framework inconvenient. The decision to make the book accessible to a wider audience, however, makes sense. Rhea brings to life a lesser-known participant in the Black experience of Reconstruction, encouraging his readership to consider carefully the role that Black veterans played in shaping postwar politics.

Jill Craigie and the BBC: Postwar television, feminist histories and modern femininities

Using the BBC Written Archives Centre’s records, this working paper explores a documentary about the suffragettes written by feminist, socialist filmmaker Jill Craigie for the BBC in 1949 – illuminating her previously unconsidered efforts to bring the women’s movement to life in an innovative, modern way on the small screen. Although Craigie later withdrew from this project, this paper explores how archival traces of Craigie’s television work offer new insight into her postwar career as a filmmaker, writer and onscreen personality, and shine new light on her place in a feminist genealogy concerned with the historical fight for women’s rights.

George C. Marshall and the Early Cold War: Policy, Politics, and Society

Much has been written about General of the Army George C. Marshall, one of the most significant and respected Americans of the twentieth century. Winston Churchill declared him the “true organizer of victory” as U.S. army chief of staff during World War II, and he will always be a model for military officers (p. 241). William A. Taylor has compiled a volume of fine essays on Marshall's equally distinguished postwar career, which included perhaps his most well-known contribution to his nation and the world—the European Recovery Program (Erp), which bears his name, the Marshall Plan. Numerous authors have produced an important body of literature on Marshall, including the award-winning Marshall biographer Mark A. Stoler, who penned the foreword for this anthology. Taylor's introduction and conclusion and the nine original essays rely heavily on the extensive secondary literature, but collectively they provide contemporary students of military leadership and national...

"Надо привести в порядок не только литературу, привезённую из Москвы, но и мысли, впечатления, стимулы...": из переписки А. В. Исаченко с советскими коллегами

In this paper the letters of A.V. Isachenko (1910-1978), the Czechoslovak-Slovenian-Austrian linguist of Russian origin, to ethnographer P.G. Bogatyrev and philologist A.V. Fedorov, his Soviet colleagues, was analyzed. At the same time these letters are published with scholarly commentaries. If Isachenko met Bogatyrev in interwar Czechoslovakia, then a personal meeting with Fedorov took place in 1958 in the USSR. These letters are in the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Central State Archive of Literature and Art of St. Petersburg. They cover the period 1945-1965, reflecting the different stages of the post-war career of Professor Isachenko. So, the letter of 1945 to Bogatyrev shows Isachenko's intention to return to his homeland and integrate into the Soviet humanities. In letters to Fedorov in 1958, Isachenko shares his impressions of the journey to the International Congress of Slavists in Moscow, described the successes and difficulties of his work in Slovakia. In the messages of the 1960s Professor Isachenko wrote Bogatyrev on his work in East Berlin at the invitation of the German Academy of Sciences, discussed a scientific problem. The analyze of the presented correspondence contributes to the study of the biography of the famous linguist, whose scientific profile was formed at the intersection of different intellectual traditions - Russian, Czechoslovak, Slovenian and Austrian. Moreover, the Professor's fate fully reflected the sharp turns in the history of the 20th century. At the same time, the analysis of correspondence also contributes to the understanding of the relationship and interaction between the two Russias - Abroad and Soviet.

Unsettling Realities of Nazism and the Legacy of the German Neurological Society.

On behalf of the German Neurological Society (DGN), a study was conducted into how far former chairmen, honorary chairmen, and honorary members could be regarded as incriminated from the National Socialist period. While an online supplement of this journal presents seven individual biographies (in six papers) by way of example, this paper offers an overview summarizing the project results and introducing the biographies. The first part and the methodological section discuss the difficulties of retrospectively identifying neurologists involved in the Nazi movement. Formal characteristics (eg, membership of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) or other Nazi organizations or participation in Nazi crimes) and content-related clues (eg, statements reflecting Nazi ideology, personal contacts with Nazi officials or active support of the system) can be helpful. The second part summarizes the principal results of a study of 28 German and Austrian neuroscientists with regard to their involvement and their post-war careers. Six of the seven "founding fathers" of the DGN were former NSDAP members; 10 of the 13 presidents in office until 1976 had belonged to Nazi organizations-the NSDAP, the SA ("Brownshirts") or the SS ("Blackshirts"). Moreover, seven out of 10 honorary presidents had formal or substantive links to National Socialism. Of the German and Austrian honorary members appointed up to 1985, two-thirds had leanings to Nazi ideology or the National Socialist system. This paper concludes by outlining how the DGN and its members are currently addressing this historical legacy in order to establish a responsible culture of remembrance. ANN NEUROL 2021;90:546-557.

Introduction: Three Shades of Brown: The Nazi Past and Postwar Careers in Germany and Austria

Introduction: Three Shades of Brown: The Nazi Past and Postwar Careers in Germany and Austria

Niemiecka Republika Federalna jako azyl dla nazistowskich zbrodniarzy wojennych. Analiza wybranych aspektów ścigania i skuteczności karania

West Germany had to come to terms with its wartime past in order to function on the international arena. This topic was also widely commented on in Polish press. Poland, which was one of the countries most affected by the extermination policy of Nazi Germany, was inevitably interested in holding the Nazis accountable for their crimes. Moreover, the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland wanted German crimes to be exposed all the time. In this way, the topic of Soviet crimes was avoided. Hence, the theme of punishment for Nazi war crimes was often discussed in the press. Many articles emphasised the pathological system of prosecuting the Nazis in West Germany, pointing to the post-war careers of the war criminals. Reluctance to face the past, exhibited primarily by the older generation, was also emphasised. The young generation of Germans, untouched by the war past, was to strive for moral renewal. It should be stressed that the post-war trials concerned only a small number of actual criminals, and the penalties were often disproportionate to the crimes committed.

The Aleksander Kulisiewicz Collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: An Introduction

Envisioned by its founders as a storehouse of historical evidence — material artifacts, written and oral testimonies, photographs and films — the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC is the repository of a significant archive of music salvaged from the Nazi ghettos and camps. This paper focuses on the Museum’s single largest music collection, that of the Polish camp survivor Aleksander Kulisiewicz (1918—1982). A native of Kraków, Poland, who spent over five years as a political prisoner in Sachsenhausen, Kulisiewicz in later life grew obsessed with documenting the repertoire that his fellow Poles and an international cadre of musicians, authors, and artistes created and performed while captives of the Germans. The collection he amassed during his final decades consists of hundreds of songs, choral works and instrumental pieces gathered from survivor memoirs, manuscripts, and multiple recorded interviews with former inmates. Approximately 70,000 pages of documentation encompass music-related artworks, biographical details of camp poets and composers, and copious additional corroborating material. Apart from providing an overview of the collection, the paper will discuss Kulisiewicz’s cultural and intellectual background in interwar Poland, and postwar career as a performer, activist and author. Music illustrations will be drawn from Kulisiewicz’s archive of sound recordings, including selections from his own series of autobiographical songs written in Sachsenhausen. A final set of musical examples demonstrates the collection’s utility as a resource for musicians and programmers seeking overlooked, yet revivable repertoire, and for composers inspired to create new works based on “rescued” music preserved in the Museum’s archive.

Political follower or loyal National Socialist? : On the role of former DGP President Herbert Siegmund (1892-1954) in the Third Reich.

Herbert Siegmund (1892-1954) was undoubtedly one of the most influential German pathologists of the 20th century. He received numerous high honors both during the Third Reich and after 1945. He was, among other things, rector of the University of Münster (1943-1945), holder of the Goethe Medal awarded by Hitler (1944), honorary doctor of the University of Cologne (1949), recipient of the Paracelsus Medal (1953), and president of the German Society for Pathology (DGP, 1954). The almost seamless post-war career was possible above all because Siegmund was counted among the politically uninvolved university physicians after 1945. It was not until after the turn of the millennium that this picture cracked. The article is based on primary sources from the State Archives of Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, the University Archives of Münster, the Federal Archives of Berlin, the University Archives of Cologne, and the City Archives of Stuttgart, some of which were evaluated for the first time. Two questions are at the center of this article: (1)To what extent can it be proven that Siegmund benefited from the Nazi state in terms of his career after 1933? (2)Are there indications that he served the Nazi regime and its networks? In addition, we will discuss how Siegmund himself described his role in the Third Reich and whether his statements stand up to critical scrutiny. The paper concludes that Siegmund contributed to valorizing the Nazi system. After 1945, he did not position himself at acritical distance from his activities in the Third Reich; rather, he drew of himself - largely unopposed - the image of apolitically blameless scholar.

The Showa Restoration movement in transwar perspective: the case of Kageyama Masaharu, 1910–1979

This article explores the career of ethno-nationalist leader Kageyama Masaharu, who was active during the greater part of the Showa era. It argues that though the notion of ‘Showa Restoration’ is typically understood in terms of the bloody coup d’état attempts of the prewar era, the postwar career of its participants necessitates a broader understanding of the term. Kageyama is best known as a conspirator in the failed terrorist attack known as the Shimpeitai Incident of 1933, but he also played a major role in nationalist politics in the postwar era. His activities ranged from lobbying for the recuperation and repair of physical and temporal institutions related to the imperial house, such as rituals at Ise Shrine and National Establishment Day, to the nurturing of young ethno-nationalists at his Great East Institute. The ideas and platforms of Showa Restorationists like Kageyama survived the US Occupation and the Cold War era in the form of ethno-nationalist (minzokuha) activists and lobbyists.

An engineering career as industrial mission: Jack Keiser in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT British mechanical engineer Jack Keiser’s postwar career in industrial education was simultaneously a career in justice work and Christian industrial mission. This paper examines the Christian critique of industry Keiser developed early in his career, as he transitioned in 1949–1950 into his life’s work in firm-based industrial education, and asks how historians of technology might interpret a critique that characterized industry in hyperbolic terms as enslaving or demonic. Keiser’s was part of an international critique connected to three important post-war Christian institutions: Student Christian Movement, the Industrial Mission Movement, and the World Council of Churches. He engaged with justice at both an intimate and a cosmic level, intimately through face-to-face relationships with apprentices and trainees under his supervision, and cosmically by engaging with the biblical prophets through whom God called for justice.

Władysław Szpilman’s Post-War Career in Poland

Władysław Szpilman’s Post-War Career in Poland

The Meanest and “Damnest” Job: The Civil War Experiences and Civilian History of Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker by Michael P. Rucker

Reviewed by: The Meanest and “Damnest” Job: The Civil War Experiences and Civilian History of Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker by Michael P. Rucker Gregory S. Hospodor The Meanest and “Damnest” Job: The Civil War Experiences and Civilian History of Colonel Edmund Winchester Rucker. By Michael P. Rucker. (Montgomery, Ala.: NewSouth Books, 2019. Pp. xii, 305. $28.95, ISBN 978-1-58838-382-2.) Edmund Winchester Rucker (1835–1924) was an archetype of a specific kind of Old/New South man: ambitious, adaptable, capable, and successful—a man on the make. As such, he is worthy of detailed examination. Born into a respectable family near Murfreesboro, Tennessee, in 1835, Rucker manifested an abiding ambition, venturing to Nashville just shy of the tender age of eighteen to better his prospects. Largely self-educated, Rucker landed a job building the Tennessee and Alabama Railroad, acquiring skills and experience as a surveyor. He parlayed these into another railroad construction job, and, when that project failed financially, he moved to Memphis, where he served as a city surveyor and studied engineering. When the Civil War began, Rucker was in his mid-twenties and a founding partner in an engineering concern. Rucker seems not to have questioned too deeply the issue of secession. For him, the Civil War probably represented opportunity. Having made a promising start to his career, Rucker secured an initial officer appointment as an engineer; he later served in both the artillery and the cavalry. His Civil War activities included supervising construction of Confederate defenses at Columbus, Kentucky; commanding Rucker’s Redan as captain of artillery at Island No. 10; and suppressing dissent in East Tennessee. He spent the balance of the war in charge of cavalry units, most famously, perhaps, with Nathan Bedford Forrest at the battle of Brices Cross Roads. Rucker’s war ended in the aftermath of the battle of Nashville, where he was wounded and captured while covering the Confederate retreat. After the war, Rucker worked initially on several railroad startups, often with Forrest. In 1880 Rucker relocated to Birmingham, Alabama, where he fortuitously teamed up with James Withers Sloss, one of the city’s earliest boosters. Rucker played a major role in industrializing the city, serving in senior leadership roles for a seemingly endless list of companies. Michael P. Rucker’s treatment aptly outlines precisely what the title of the book suggests: “the Civil War Experiences and Civilian History” of his distant relative. The thirty-six brief chapters march through Edmund Rucker’s life with clear and direct prose. The strongest portion of the book deals with Rucker’s Civil War service, which makes up fully 90 percent of the whole book. If Edmund Winchester Rucker was there, Michael Rucker describes it and more besides. As such, the author provides a decidedly individual and interesting view of operations in the western theater. This is not, however, a biography. Here the author was limited by the sources available to him—namely, a cache of personal papers. Consequently, while the timeline of Edmund Rucker’s life emerges, the man himself remains a mystery, as his voice is largely absent. Clearly, he was ambitious and capable, but did he support the Confederate cause because he was personally committed to it or because it offered a pathway to advancement? So, too, are readers left to wonder about the nature of Rucker’s friendship with Forrest. That they were committed to each other and cooperated in business after the war is obvious, but did their [End Page 479] friendship lead to political cooperation as well? These questions and others linger. Finally, the author’s brief recounting of Rucker’s immensely interesting and significant postwar career serves only to whet the appetite for more. In sum, this book calls attention to an underexamined but noteworthy figure in the history of the Civil War and New South eras. However, those hoping to learn more about what made a man who successfully straddled the Old and New Souths tick will have to look elsewhere. Gregory S. Hospodor U.S. Army Command and General Staff College Copyright © 2020 The Southern Historical Association