Post-war Success Research Articles

Japanese Postwar Success: The Impact of Moral Re-Armament and the Quality Movement

Japanese Postwar Success: The Impact of Moral Re-Armament and the Quality Movement

Chaos and comedy: The narrative of Samuel Turner III

The advent of World War I in Britain saw a politicisation of profit, heightened by pre-existing labour unrest, State intervention, industrial disruption and claims of profiteering. During this time, the prominent industrialist Sir Samuel Turner III (1878–1955) published two books on the role of business, and particularly profits, in society. As an example of contemporary media, we use these books to highlight how Turner conceptualised profits as representative of Britain's path to post-war success – a transition from darkness into light. We adopt narrative historiography and the genre of comedy to provide a framework for analysis. In doing so, we demonstrate how profit becomes a totalising and taken-for-granted concept representing both economic and social progress.

Revisiting “empowered rural women” in postwar Japan

AbstractIn Japan, both rural studies and government policies commonly represent rural women in the same way: as oppressed within their feudalistic family farm system before the Second World War and as successfully empowered by rural democratization policies after the war. This study revisits the often unproblematized representations of the postwar success story of empowered rural women on which these accounts are frequently based. We examined rarely analysed source material of a project that is frequently referred to, the Rural Life Improvement Extension Service (RLIES). This source material consists of essays written by rural women who participated in this project, which was implemented by the US occupational forces and the Japanese state in the 1950s and 1960s, for representations of empowered rural women through the lens of a feminist reading of Foucault's biopower. Our analysis identified three subjective typifications of rural women in the essays: the New Rural Woman, the Rural Professional Housewife, and the Farm Mother. By illuminating these typifications, we show how—even in the source material of unproblematic celebratory accounts—rural women exercised unexpected agency by engaging in the changing power relations that surrounded them. The example provided by our feminine subjectivity study encourages researchers to be more careful with respect to simple celebratory narratives of empowered rural women.

Synesthetic Realism Motif in the Film, The Man with the Golden Arm

필름 누아르의 전형은 부유한 현실에 안주하는 미국의 배후에 밤의 어두운 세계가 숨어 있음을 포착하여, 표현주의 이미지와 사운드로서 전후 성공의 이면에 담긴 부패와 비인간성을 폭로하는 것이었다. 영화 <황금 팔을 가진사나이>(1955)는 해피엔드의 가능성이 없는 비관적 분위기의 필름 누아르와 달리, 헤로인 중독자를 선한 희생자로삼아서 악한 유혹자와 맞서고 존재 이유를 자각적으로 물으며 주체적인 상태에 머무는 인물로 그렸다. 프레밍거가창조한 히어로와 멜로드라마의 캐릭터는 불확실성을 지닌 인물이더라도, 윤리적 실존에 따라 스스로 무력과 절망을 느끼므로 관객의 공감을 이끈다. 프레밍거는 마약 복용자를 하층 계급의 범죄자로 국한하지 않으려고, 프랭키 머신을 중산층 관객이 식별할 수있는 캐릭터로 계층을 높였다. 프랭키를 특정 사회나 정치 세력의 희생자가 아닌 사악하고 타락한 유혹자들과 맞서면서 자기 운명을 책임지는 영웅으로 만든다. 이런 변형하기의 각색으로, 영웅 서사의 중심 플롯과 멜로드라마의서브플롯을 지닌 중층적 서사 구조를 형성한다. 그리고 스토리텔링의 구성 중 가장 중요한 행동인 트리트먼트, 즉헤로인 중독과 마약 끊기(cold turkey) 사이의 갈등을 위하여 프로타고니스트(프랭키, 몰리)와 안타고니스트(루이,슈비프카, 조쉬), 코믹 릴리프(스페로우, 바이, 존) 등 기능적 배역을 설정한다. <황금 팔을 가진 사나이>는 공감각적 실존 모티프가 뚜렷하다. 디아스포라 의식을 바탕으로 국가나 인종, 계층, 관습, 이데올로기 등의 한계를 극복하기 때문이다. <황금 팔을 가진 사나이>는 독일·동유럽 표현주의의 이산영화(diaspora film)가 아닌 미국 할리우드의 융합 영화(fusion film)로서 탈脫영토화된 디아스포라 의식에 충실하다. 음악, 영화, 시각 예술 등이 디아스포라 경험의 구성 요소로 간주하는 상호 문화주의에서 이득을 취하듯이, 이영화도 융합과 혼종을 회피하지 않았다. 필름 누아르의 통념에 머물지 않고 새 영화의 길을 동시대 예술가들과 함께 개척했다. 영화 내용의 실체가 히어로와 멜로드라마의 캐릭터 연기가 중심이라면, 영화 표현의 실체는 솔 바스에 의한 그래픽 이미지와 엘머 번스타인에 의한 쿨 재즈 사운드의 아이덴티티가 핵심이다. 이런 스토리텔링의 표현을 위한 상호텍스트성 미학은 혁신적이고 유의미한 시도였다.A typical film noir storyline aims to capture the darker world hiding behind the rich facade ofthe United States, revealing the corruption and inhumanity behind postwar success throughexpressionistic images and sounds. However, unlike the typical film noir, which has a pessimisticatmosphere with no possibility of a happy ending, the film, The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)depicts a heroin addict as a noble victim, an independent figure who stands up to an evil tempterand asks why he should live at all. Though the character created by Preminger by fusing a herocharacter and a melodrama character may be an ambiguous figure, he earns the sympathy ofthe audience because of the helplessness and frustration he experiences in the pursuit of anethical path through life. To avoid stereotyping drug users to lower-class criminals, Preminger raised the status of FrankieMachine to a character that could be identified by middle-class audiences. He made Frankie ahero who takes responsibility for his destiny; not a victim of certain social and political forces,but someone contending with evil and corrupt tempters. With these variations, the film has amulti-layered narrative structure with a central plot of a hero narrative and a subplot of melodrama. The most important of the storytelling components is treatment; that is, the conflict betweenheroin addiction and going “cold turkey.” For the conflict, functional roles are set up: protagonists(Frankie and Molly), antagonists (Louie, Schwiefka and Zosh), and comic relief characters (Sparrow,Vi and John). The film, The Man with the Golden Arm clearly shows a synesthetic expression of the motifof existence. This is because, based on a diasporic consciousness, it overcomes limitations suchas nationality, race, class, customs, and ideology. It is not a diaspora film of German and EasternEuropean Expressionism, but a fusion film of Hollywood, and is faithful to the de-territorializeddiaspora consciousness. Just as music, movies, and visual arts benefit from interculturalism,considered a component of the Diaspora experience, The Man with the Golden Arm did notavoid convergence and hybridization. Instead of staying in the conventional genre of film noir, itpioneered the path of a new film with contemporary artists. If the core of the movie’s contentwas centered on the acting of the hero and melodramatic character, the core of the movie’saesthetics can be found in the graphic images created by Saul Bass, and in the distinctive cooljazz sounds created by Elmer Bernstein. The intertextual aesthetics used for this type of storytelling was innovative and meaningful.

Middle-class interests, redistribution and the postwar success and failure of the solidaristic welfare state

According to the conventional view of over three decades of research on the welfare state, the postwar success of solidaristic welfare reform depended on the left’s ability to ‘tailor’ to middle-class interests or at least ‘synthesize’ working- and middle-class demands. This article offers a different perspective on the dynamics of postwar solidaristic welfare reform. It argues that key middle-class groups such as skilled wage earners often had a strong incentive to oppose such reform but were not always well-positioned to do so. The article distinguishes between two main avenues through which they could exert political influence and argues that their ability to mobilize against solidaristic welfare reform depended primarily on the structure of the labour union movement. The article illustrates its claims by contrasting the postwar success of solidaristic old-age pension reform in Belgium and the Netherlands with its failure in Britain and Germany.

Embers of Empire: Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918

Embers of Empire: Continuity and Rupture in the Habsburg Successor States after 1918

Introduction: Burdens and Beginnings: Rebuilding East and West Germany after Nazism

AbstractThe introduction discusses the state of the current research on the post-1945 history of East and West Germany, explains the agenda of the special issue and discusses its main topics. The focus is the politics of survival in the chaos of collapse and the controversial debates about the agenda of the reconstruction. In these discussions different visions competed, from the restoration of traditions to efforts of a post-fascist modernization. The introduction questions the postwar success narrative by discussing the “burdens” of the Nazi past, such as Nazi perpetrators, displaced people, expellees and refugees, including the returning German-Jewish survivors. It also engages with the problems of the Cold War division by exploring the “new beginnings”, which were debated in relation to the past of Nazi, Weimar, and Imperial Germany, among them: cultural diplomacy, welfare policy and eldercare, family policy and gender roles, and popular culture. The essay calls for more comparative and transnational research of the postwar era, especially in the areas of the integration into the Cold War blocs, the postwar shifting of borders and peoples, narratives of victimhood, and memory tropes about the war and postwar.

Mozambique’s post-war success story: Is it time to revisit the narrative?

ABSTRACTOver the past years since the signing of the Rome peace Accords, Mozambique has generally been regarded as an exemplary African post war success story. However, events in the last four years illuminate something different. This article will show that the low intensity but violent clashes between FRELIMO government forces and former rebel group RENAMO are not just a mere manifestation of Mozambican’s government inability to consolidate post war gains. These clashes could be framed and located within the broader context of complexities associated with transforming a peace Accord into a genuine and sustainable postwar peace dividend. It seems the success was largely registered in terms of reducing direct violence by creating negative peace. Even though negative peace was good, it was unfortunately not adequate. This article also argues that the success narrative lulled many including Mozambicans into ignoring fissures in the area of structural violence which effectively limited the country’s ability to progress towards positive peace. Despite all this, however, this article will concur with the belief that an outright full scale war is still highly improbable, but not impossible because RENAMO is still capable of spoiling and eroding the registered post war gains.

How Germany’s anti-Keynesianism has brought Europe to its knees

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the (lack of any lasting) impact of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory on economic policy-making in Germany. The analysis highlights the interplay between economic history and the history of ideas in shaping policy-making in postwar (West) Germany. The paper argues that Germany learned the wrong lessons from its own history and misread the true sources of its postwar success. Monetary mythology and the Bundesbank, with its distinctive anti-inflationary bias, feature prominently in this collective odyssey. The analysis shows that the crisis of the euro today is largely the consequence of Germany’s peculiar anti-Keynesianism.

How Germany's Anti-Keynesianism Has Brought Europe to Its Knees

This paper investigates the (lack of any lasting) impact of John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory on economic policymaking in Germany. The analysis highlights the interplay between economic history and the history of ideas in shaping policymaking in postwar (West) Germany. The paper argues that Germany learned the wrong lessons from its own history and misread the true sources of its postwar success. Monetary mythology and the Bundesbank, with its distinctive anti-inflationary bias, feature prominently in this collective odyssey. The analysis shows that the crisis of the euro today is largely the consequence of Germany’s peculiar anti-Keynesianism.

Race, Place and Historic Moment Black and Japanese American World War II Veterans: The G.I. Bill of Rights and the Model Minority Myth

The most commonly touted social change in the United States following the end of World War II is the expansion of the American middle class. The more frequently invoked narrative holds that the G.I. Bill, by providing veterans previously unavailable educational opportunities, elevated the socioeconomic status of a substantial segment of the American population as they entered their most productive working years. Black and Japanese American soldiers who fought abroad in racially segregated units to “make the world safe for democracy,” returned to fight, with others, for full citizenship rights at home in the civil rights movements of the mid twentieth century. During this period second generation Japanese Americans (Nisei), but not blacks, achieved near economic parity with whites causing some to characterize them as a “model minority.” Historian Roger Daniels, writing that “the transformation [of Japanese Americans] from ‘pariah to paragon’ [was not] merely a mechanical adjustment of market forces,” urged historians to more closely examine the factors contributing to the relative post-war economic success of Japanese Americans. This chapter takes on an aspect of Daniels’ challenge. It asks whether the advantages allegedly conferred on WWII veterans who received G.I. Bill benefits explains the current socio-economic status of Japanese Americans, or whether other factors better explain their relative postwar success.

‘Don’t Play a Lone Hand’: A century of leadership in American art education, 1840–1940

Abstract Knowledge of the field and visions for the future are vital for transformational leadership in art education, according to current scholars. With the development of common schools and hierarchical bureaucracies in Massachusetts, in a context of belief in artistic genius, early historians of art education told stories of heroes and experts. During the 1870s, Walter Smith (1836–1886) lectured students at Massachusetts Normal Art School that great men demonstrated commitment to work, indomitable courage and persistence in their heroic leadership. In the mid-1890s, Massachusetts’ agent for industrial drawing Henry Turner Bailey (1865–1931) categorized art supervisors as geometric solids: sphere, cube and cylinder. About a decade later, Bailey called for a servant model of leadership, with traits that can be interpreted as stereotypically feminine. Networked leadership emerged in the early twentieth century as administrative progressives worked together to construct a business of art education with engaged stakeholders, distributed leadership and a rationale emphasizing functions of visual arts in everyday life. Royal Bailey Farnum (1884–1967) served as central node for most of the overlapping leadership networks. As Executive Vice President of Rhode Island School of Design during the 1930s and 1940s, he introduced strategic planning that prepared the School for post-war success. Leadership in American art education has changed in response to cultural contexts, social factors, institutional demands, and male and female performances of power. How will art educators play the leadership game in the years to come?

Everyone to skis!: skiing in Russia and the rise of Soviet biathlon

Nowhere in the world was the sport of biathlon, a combination of cross-country skiing and rifle marksmanship, taken more seriously than in the Soviet Union, and no other nation garnered greater success at international venues. From the introduction of modern biathlon in 1958 to the USSR's demise in 1991, athletes representing the Soviet Union won almost half of all possible medals awarded in world championship and Olympic competition. Yet more than sheer technical skill created Soviet superiority in biathlon. The sport embodied the Soviet Union's culture, educational system and historical experience and provided the perfect ideological platform to promote the state's socialist viewpoint and military might, imbuing the sport with a Cold War sensibility that transcended the government's primary quest for post-war success at the Olympics. William D. Frank's book is the first comprehensive analysis of how the Soviet government interpreted the sport of skiing as a cultural, ideological, political and social tool throughout the course of seven decades. In the beginning, the Soviet Union owned biathlon, and so the stories of both the state and the event are inseparable. Through the author's unique perspective on biathlon as a former nationally-ranked competitor and current professor of Soviet history, Everyone to Skis! will appeal to students and scholars of Russian and Soviet history as well as to general readers with an interest in skiing and the development of twentieth-century sport.

Nestlé coping with Japanese nationalism: Political risk and the strategy of a foreign multinational enterprise in Japan, 1913–45

This paper focuses on the strategy adopted by the MNE Nestlé in Japan between the establishment of a branch at Yokohama in 1913 and the end of World War II. It highlights the difficulties encountered by the firm in its attempts to open up and operate production facilities due to strong opposition from local condensed milk makers, supported by the state. Eventually, in 1934, Nestlé opened a factory by founding an incorporated company, ARKK, all of whose shareholders were Japanese working for Nestlé. Although the war drastically curtailed the activities of both Nestlé Japan and ARKK, the organisational facilities set up during the inter-war period provided a springboard for Nestlé's post-war success in Japan.

The Taiwan hat industry: Pre-war roots of the post-war miracle

Taiwan's pre-war hat industry was a precursor of the export-oriented living-room factory industries which played a leading role in Taiwan's post-1960 economic miracle. After World War I, success in the global hat trade required quick reaction to ever-changing fashion. Taiwan's hat industry was based on a flexible subcontracting system which could respond quickly to fashion change and ramp up production at short notice. Taiwan's early hat industry has been overshadowed by its larger agricultural exporting industries, but the hat industry itself was, by many standards, large and influential. Evidence suggests that Taiwan's early experience in the hat trade was a key factor behind Taiwan's later post-war success.

Never Events

Never Events

RETHINKING THE EDWARDIAN CRISIS OF CONSERVATISM

ABSTRACTThis article reconsiders the culture of popular Conservatism in Edwardian Britain, when it has often been claimed that the Unionist parties underwent a profound crisis. According to Ewen Green, for example, in the immediate years before the First World War, Conservative leaders failed to offer policies that could unite their party or enable it to develop an effective popular appeal. Consequently, the party appeared to be drifting towards potential disaster and disintegration. Whilst historians are correct to argue that deep divisions emerged within the Unionist ranks, inhibiting their electoral prospects, the vibrancy of rank-and-file Conservatism in Edwardian Britain nevertheless tends to be underestimated. By embracing a variety of populist causes in 1913–14, the Conservative party appeared to have found a way to overcome its electoral malaise. Moreover, by taking important steps to widen their social appeal, the Conservatives laid the foundations for post-war success during these years of supposed ‘crisis’.

The Role of Global Value Chains for German Manufacturing

Since the 1960s, Germany has established itself as European manufacturing centre, and its export of goods made in Germany has become a pillar of its economic post-war success. In recent years, many German firms have further deepened their international involvements with links to global value chains. Lower costs of doing business internationally and increasing possibilities to source material and service inputs in multiple countries have triggered new forms of organizational adjustments. Such novel types of adjustment faced by firms have, in turn, further pushed the issue of global value chains to the forefront of the policy and academic debate, and have often been surrounded by public fear about job losses and foreign competition.This paper investigates the role of global value chains in the organization of Germany´s manufacturing activities and its recent economic developments. In particular it asks: how important are global value chains for German manufacturing firms? Why do firms use global value chains? What are the implications for Germany of the use of global value chains? The paper measures the extent of Germany’s link into global value chains, discusses the causes and consequences of such, and concludes with a brief outlook on the likely future of such international production chains.

Serpentine Science: Charles Kellaway and the Fluctuating Fortunes of Venom Research in Interwar Australia

Australian medical research before the Second World War is predominantly viewed as an anodyne precursor to its conspicuous postwar successes. However, the expanding intellectual appeal and state support for local research after 1945 built upon scientific practices, networks, facilities and finances established between 1919 and 1939. Arguably the most prominent medical scientist working in Australia during this period was Charles Kellaway (1889?1952), director of Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute from 1923 until 1944. Facing both financial challenges and a profoundly unsupportive intellectual climate, Kellaway instigated a major research programme into Australian snake venoms. These investigations garnered local and international acclaim, allowing Kellaway to speak as a significant scientific actor while fostering productive laboratory collaborations. The venom work spurred basic research in tissue injury, anaphylaxis and leukotriene pharmacology, yet delivered pragmatic clinical outcomes, particularly an effective antivenene. By selecting a problem of continuing public interest, Kellaway also stimulated wider engagement with science and initiated a pioneering ad hoc Commonwealth grant for medical research. In tracing his training, mentors and practices within the interwar milieu, this article argues that Kellaway's venom studies contributed materially to global biomedical developments and to the broader viability of medical research in Australia.

Hitlers Kriminalisten: Die deutsche Kriminalpolizei und der Nationalsozialismus, Patrick Wagner (Munich: C.H.Beck, 2002), 218 pp. 12.90.

Augmenting his groundbreaking work on the German Criminal Police (Kriminalpolizei—Kripo) detective force,1 Patrick Wagner studies the detectives themselves in this volume: their frustrations with the constitutional limitations of the Weimar Republic, their satisfaction in reducing crime during the first years of Nazi rule, their application of Nazi racial principles to preventative policing—and their postwar success in distancing themselves and their agency from Nazi crimes. Wagner also focuses attention on perhaps the most “forgotten” victims of the Nazi regime: “asocials” and “habitual criminals.”2 During the last years of Weimar, police had to cope with rising crime rates, negotiate their way around constitutional protections of defendants’ rights, suffer criticism in a free press, and struggle to police coalescing criminal syndicates. Beleaguered police departments channeled resources into uncovering networks of professional burglars and bank robbers and those who fenced or laundered their ill-gotten gains. Fixated on Berufsverbrecher (career criminals), increasingly theoretical-minded Kripo leaders concluded that permanent incarceration of the “criminal class” might eradicate crime itself from German society. Frustrated with what they considered democratic coddling of criminals, or simply eager to back a winning horse, police officers were attracted by Nazi promises to roll back constraints on police investigations. Wagner identifies Arthur Nebe, chief of the robbery section in the Berlin Criminal Police and later chief of the Reich Kripo Office, as the “prototype of an engaged Nazi criminal police specialist.” Because he perceived the nation as a biological and pan-generational phenomenon, “a living being that could sicken or be healed like an individual person,” Nebe, like others among “Hitler’s Criminal Police Specialists,” favored preventative policing because he perceived criminal police work to be “hygienic” (pp. 12 and 54–55).