Pre-war Policy Research Articles

France in 1940 in British Eyes

Although British views on the fall of France in 1940 were mixed, the disaster triggered a latent Francophobia which expressed itself in popular resentment at France’s military defeat and armistice with Germany. While nowadays historians generally agree on the military causes of the fall of France, British popular attitudes to France at the time of the defeat were influenced by the myths that rapidly formed around Britain’s stance in 1940. By the end of the war the British had developed a sense of superiority over continental Europeans. But they also felt guilty about Britain’s failed pre-war policy of appeasement. Questions for historians to ponder include how far this feeling of guilt covered – if at all – Britain’s lukewarm diplomatic and military support for France.

Research papers of Ukrainian Soviet students 1956—1960

The presented article is devoted to the historical-Ukrainian issues of the second half of the 1950s. It is a period of de- Stalinization, which radically changed the socio-political life of the republic and made significant adjustments in all spheres of human activity. The author's interest was focused on the scientific field, namely, research papers prepared by Ukrainian Soviet students who received higher education during the Khrushchev "thaw". Several collections of student works published on the basis of various educational institutions of the Ukrainian SSR were processed by the method of content analysis. The geography of scientific achievements of Ukrainian Soviet students, without exaggeration, is great. Judging by the periodicals preserved in the Book Chamber of Ukraine, not only the capital's, but also regional universities and institutes had powerful bases for training future scientists. The article prepared by the author includes research works of students from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Simferopol, etc. As for the palette of scientific interests of students of the USSR, the latter covered a variety of fields of technical and humanitarian knowledge. During the study of student research in Soviet Ukraine in the second half of the 1950s, the author came to the following conclusions: 1) the dominance of purely scientific content in the research of students of the USSR in 1956—1960; 2) low rate of use of party documents in them, in general, and the lack of references to the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On overcoming the consequences of the cult of personality", in particular; 3) the obvious priority of practical summarization over general theoretical considerations. In addition, according to our author's observation, at the post-Stalinist stage of the development of Soviet Ukraine there was still parity between the Russian and Ukrainian-language universities of the USSR, which was explained by the inertial action of the pre-war policy of Ukrainization.

Вторая мировая война в кривом зеркале западной историографии

Today we are witnessing another surge of Anti-Russian sentiment, resuscitating the old myth of Russia’s eternal aggressiveness. Obviously, it was needed for the West anti-Russian forces in order to dictate our country their conditions and rules of the game. Ultimately doodle, these goals are also served to distorting the truth about World War II. This scientific article discusses a number of the most controversial issues in the history of World War II. From the point of historicism view and scientific objectivity, their interpretation of Western historiography and politicians of anti-Russian orientation is criticized. The efforts of modern Anti-Russian sentiments are equating the pre-war policy of the USSR with the aggressive policy of Nazi Germany had exposed. Myths about the allegedly “preventive” nature of the treacherous attack of the latter on the Soviet Union are refuted, as well as attempts to justify the collapse of the “blitzkrieg” not by the heroic resistance of the Red Army, but by difficult climatic conditions, huge distances and numerous water barriers on the way of German troops. The authors of the article draw attention to the fact that in many Western military-historical works, the main reasons for the defeat of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front by the filing of German “memoirs” generals are primarily called Hitler’s incompetence and stubbornness, betrayal of satellite countries, etc., but not the superiority of Soviet military strategy and operational art, the ability to fight, the courage and steadfastness of a Soviet soldier who fought both for the freedom of his Fatherland and for the liberation of all Europe from the Nazi yoke.

Beyond the War: Nazi Propaganda Aims in Spain during the Second World War

This article argues that the objectives pursued by Nazi propaganda in Spain went far beyond merely securing Spanish participation in the Second World War. Through the examination of under-utilized materials from Spanish and German archives, including the previously inaccessible archive of José Luis de Arrese, general secretary of the Falange, this article shows that propaganda campaigns varied in means, content and dissemination, depending on the evolution of the conflict. The aims of these campaigns reflect in turn Nazi interests in Spain, from protecting economic assets in the Peninsula, to ensuring the supply of raw materials to the war effort, and turning Spain into a bridgehead for German interests in North Africa and Latin America. The article shows how a combination of ideology and opportunism, conveniently balanced by the ambassadors’ realpolitik, allowed for fruitful collaboration with the Falange. This was central to the development of the propaganda campaigns. I contend that by looking more closely at the ramifications of Spanish neutrality, we can further analyse how Spain fitted into the Nazis’ overarching foreign policy and evaluate whether this was the product of opportunism or historical continuities with pre-war policies, including German propaganda aims in Spain during the First World War.

The Origins of World War II in Contemporary Russian and British Historiography: A Trajectory of Interpretations

This article focuses on the peculiarities of the most arguable aspects of the causes of World War II in contemporary Russian and British studies. Relying on the concept of historical memory, the author analyses the motives behind the prewar policy of appeasement carried out by London, and the meaning of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact concluded between the USSR and Germany in 1939. As countries that had won World War I, Great Britain and the Soviet Union were prepared to concede when it came to Hitler’s expansionist ambitions, which has survived in the memory of Russian and British societies as a reason for the major war conflict of the 20 th century. Referring to a large number of resources, the author concludes that the topic of reasons for World War II which has a history of over 70 years is not only still topical in the 21 st century but also finds new unexpected interpretations of the prewar 1930s. The fact that there are still varying interpretations of the events that had a traumatising influence on the historical memory of Russian and British societies, proves that the topic in question in still relevant and politicised. The comparison of the two historiographic traditions of the interpretation of the most ambiguous aspects of prewar history calls for close attention from contemporary Russian and foreign historians and historiographers.

Erosion work ethic of the soviet peasantry in the postwar decades (on materials of the Ulyanovsk Region)

Modern problems in the agricultural sector are rooted in the fact that for decades the state agricultural policy was characterized by neglect of the interests of the main producer, non-economic coercion to labour, alienation from the land and produced goods, infringement of social rights of the peasantry which inevitably led to urbanization, population migration from villages. On the basis of the study of the scientific literature and archival documents which have been analysed for the first time, the complex process of destruction of the collective farmerss attitude to work in the public sector is explored. According to the author, the material difficulties of rural society in the war years led to the recovery in the agricultural society of previous forms of economic activity, namely the one-man operation in its stead. The victorious conclusion of the war led to the restoration of the pre-war state policy in the field of agriculture, but farmers continued to ignore social work. The author believes that public campaigns aimed at the restoration of collective farmerss labor discipline were unsuccessful because in the absence of material incentives the collective farmers were not ready for selfless labor in social production.

Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps. By Kim Wünschmann (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 2015) 367 pp. $45.00

In the history of the Holocaust, the words Jews and camps are virtually coterminous. The wartime camps—from “pure” extermination facilities like Belzec to the complex Auschwitz–Birkenau–Monowitz system—allocated Jews from Germany and across Europe to either instant death or its ever-present threat. Historians have told this story repeatedly since 1945, even if new facets are always being identified. But the premise of Wünschmann’s impressive and deeply researched study is that the unfamiliar history of Jewish Germans in the very different circumstances of Germany’s concentration-camp system before the war has received far too little attention. Skeptics will attribute this lack of interest to the fact that the political logic of the concentration camps bypassed the incarceration of Jews, who were supposed to be driven into emigration, not detained for the purposes of “re-education.” As a result, the number of Jews in the camps was tiny—about 5 percent of the camps’ population, according to Wünschmann’s evaluation of fragmentary statistical evidence. Moreover, until 1938, most of these people were held not simply because they were Jewish (a category of inmate that did not exist until 1938) but because of some other political or social identity that they shared with other detainees.While accepting some of this picture, Wünschmann makes a strong and sustained case for her primary claim—that the status of Jewish men and women in the camps demands to be investigated because of the role it played in the regime’s pre-war policies of categorizing, segregating, and stigmatizing Jews. Identifying Jews was not only the work of the discriminatory legal and administrative enactments adopted after 1933; it also took place in the lawless zone of the concentration camp—a zone legitimated, nonetheless, by the quasi-legal instrument of “protective custody.” The exceptionally brutal treatment that Jewish men received in the camps was intended to intimidate other Jews, not least as part of a sustained campaign to harass them into emigration and to extort their property. But for the wider “Aryan” public (including Jews’ fellow inmates), the causes for which Jews were detained and the treatment inflicted on them deliberately identified them with political extremism and subversion, with criminality, vice, and parasitism. The segregation and mistreatment of individuals also acclimatized Germans to subsequent arrests and deportations on a massive scale, encouraging SS guards to cultivate their power over a racially defined enemy shorn of all rights.Pursuing avenues of social theory opened by Lüdtke and Wildt, Wünschmann argues that the incarceration and violent mistreatment of Jews were embedded in social practices that aimed to legitimate and reinforce the public projection of Jews as an alien and hostile presence in Germany, whose elimination would help to consolidate the national community or Volksgemeinschaft.1 She demonstrates how the apparently isolated universe of the concentration camp thus served a process of stigmatic categorization that bled across the frontier of the camp fence—not least because the vast majority of Jews detained before 1939 were released. Although some of them were able to emigrate, others were destined for the worse fate of the wartime camps.Wünschmann gives as much weight to victims’ experiences as to the actions of policymakers and their executives. Her strategy thus answers Friedländer’s call for an “integrated history” of Jewish persecution in two senses—by embedding the concentration camps in German society under National Socialism rather than seeing them as essentially isolated, and by stressing the interdependent behaviors of Jews, other inmate groups, and guards.2 Concomitantly, Wünschmann successfully resists the teleological pull of the Holocaust, which makes everything before it appear as no more than a prelude to the final catastrophe. This approach gives her study what she calls a “natural cut-off point” at the outbreak of war in 1939, when the function of the camps in enforcing the distinction of German Jews from “Aryan” Germans lost its purchase as the population of non-Germans exploded and the camps’ purposes changed. With its discriminating integration of racial, gender, and political dimensions, this book is a valuable exemplar of the new, counter-teleological history of the pre-war concentration camps.

The Kings and the Pawns: Collaboration in Byelorussia during World War II, Leonid Rein (New York: Berghahn, 2011), xxii + 434 pp., hardcover $120.00/ 75.00, paperback $39.95/ 25.00; electronic version available

Defining what constitutes collaboration during World War II, especially in the lands of the former Soviet Union, is a tricky business. “Collaboration” connotes treasonous actions by people working with their country's enemy in a “black-white” moral universe; but no such morally tidy world existed in the Axis-occupied territories of the USSR, where the indigenous populations had been or were being subjected to inhumane policies by both the Soviets and the Nazis. How should historians evaluate the actions of Soviet citizens under occupation during this period, given the nature of Soviet prewar policies, particularly collectivization, the purges, deportations from the territories annexed in 1939, and the ruthless exploitation and enslavement that the Germans practiced in the occupied lands? Leonid Rein seeks to answer such questions in his study, explicitly refuting the consensus of Soviet and Belorussian historians that Belorussia's experience of German occupation is defined by resistance. Unlike previous studies, which limited their focus to particular regions or specific organizations (for example, Martin Dean's examination of local police collaborators), Rein investigates Belorussian collaboration throughout the entire territory and through multiple organizations. The first three chapters provide a theoretical framework, historical background, and an overview of German occupation policy. Subsequent chapters focus on Belorussian efforts to “build” a state through self-help and youth organizations; the relationship of the Belorussian Orthodox Church to the occupation authorities; the role of the “official” Belorussian press; Belorussian participation in the Holocaust; and Belorussian contributions to the German military effort.

Terms of trade and Italian economic growth: accounting for miracles

The work argues that post-war political and economic conditions led to the rejection of the pre-war policy of autarchy in favour of an open economy. This decision had implications not only for external trade and payments, but more importantly for the very structure of the Italian industrial sector. The authors show how the performance of this emerging industrial structure was conditioned by the performance of the prices of imported raw material, and subsequently semi-manufactured industrial inputs and the prices at which the final products could be sold in export markets. This so-called industrial terms of trade is combined with the previously existing explanations of post-war growth period that does not have to rely on “miracles” as explanation.

Shaw and Bertrand Russell versus Gilbert Murray on Britain's Entry into World War I

Shaw and Bertrand Russell versus Gilbert Murray on Britain's Entry into World War I

Labour and the 1949 Parliament Act

This article examines the reasons why the Attlee government passed the 1949 Parliament Act to reduce the House of Lords' power to delay legislation from two years to one year. It is argued that this was a departure from pre-war Labour policy and ideology on the upper house, which was located firmly within the progressive tradition, and that therefore this change needs explaining. The article argues that under Attlee the government's approach to the Lords became more conciliatory as a result of the experience of working with the upper house. Both the constitutional and the political nature of this experience are examined here. This article also seeks to explain why the government entered into negotiations with the Conservatives about the future of the Lords and why these talks were more or less doomed to failure.

Rational or reckless? Georgia's zugzwang in the Caucasus

Although the 2008 Russian-Georgian war was a military defeat for Georgia, it has only reinforced Georgia's westward trajectory. One noteworthy difference from Georgia's pre-war policy is a new regional strategy — the North Caucasus Initiative — that seeks to create a soft power alternative to Russia's military dominance in the region. We suggest that this approach is rational rather than reckless, as some critics have claimed. It represents a carefully calculated strategy that is already benefiting Georgia and from which all concerned parties, including Russia, stand to gain. If the South and North Caucasus were more open and less divided — a direction in which this new initiative appears to point — the Caucasus could become more prosperous and more stable. That would serve Russia's long-term interest by significantly reducing the cost of subsidies to sustain and stabilize the volatile region.

The origins and innovatory nature of the 1946 British national birth cohort study

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Nationalism, anti-Bolshevism or the will to survive? Collaboration in Belarus under the Nazi occupation of 1941–1944

This paper examines how the issue of collaboration was presented and dealt with in Soviet, Western and post-Soviet Russian and Belarusian writings. Furthermore the paper discusses the national, socioeconomic and political preconditions of collaboration with the German occupation forces in Belarus. The author highlights the relationship of collaboration with the prewar Soviet policies and analyses the politics of Belarusian nationalists and independentist émigrés from 1917 to 1941. The Nazi recruitment of Belarusian exiles of different military, political and intelligence organisations and the funding of Belarusian pro-German oriented right-wing organisations are described. The reactions of the Belarusian civilian population and its attitudes vis-à-vis the German occupation authorities and Soviet partisans at the initial stage of the war are then discussed. The paper underlines the complexity of motives and the variety of forms of collaboration. The collaboration movement in Belarus was far from homogeneous: some people supported the Germans on the basis of their political principles, nationalistic ideas and state-building aspirations; some collaborated because they rejected Soviet economic and cultural polices, while the majority just wanted to survive the war and improve their postwar chances. Particular attention is devoted to the nature and peculiarities of Nazi polices in the occupied territory of Belarus. The harsh measures introduced by Germans (requisitions by the troops, forced labour program, collective reprisals and the genocide of Belarusian Jewry etc.) jeopardised the positive or neutral attitude of the local population toward the Germans, aroused hostility and became one of the main factors that caused the change in attitude. Finally, the paper analyses the transition from collaboration to resistance in late 1943–1944 on the basis of several considerations: the change in the course of the war, the influence of propaganda, and an emerging understanding that the Soviets would emerge victorious.

A weakness in diffusion: US technology and science policy after World War II

The post-war shift in US technology and science policies has been somewhat misunderstood. It was not only a shift toward support for research, but a shift away from support for diffusion. Pre-war policies centered on agriculture. They sought to foster the spread of improved farming practices in order to raise living standards at a time of widespread rural poverty. Post-war research policies, motivated by national security, relied on military procurement to drive diffusion. Radically different objectives have obscured the overall nature of the policy shift. Today, the consequences of the US neglect of diffusion are most evident in health care, with government spending huge sums on research while disregarding service delivery.

BRITAIN AND GLOBALISATION SINCE 1850: II. THE RISE OF INSULAR CAPITALISM, 1914–1939

AbstractAt the end of the First World War, the British government attempted to return to the pre-war policy trade-off of fixed exchanges rates on the gold standard, capital mobility and free trade, which entailed a sacrifice of domestic monetary policy. But the attempt proved difficult between 1919 and 1931 when the pursuit of international economic polices was constrained by a growing concern for their domestic economic and political repercussions. In the 1930s, a new policy trade-off emerged: managed exchange rates, capital controls and protectionism, with a greater concern for domestic monetary policy. The essay explains the reasons for the emergence of constraints and the subsequent abandonment of the pre-1914 policy trade-off in terms of five variables: changes in the performance of the economy and its impact on different actors; the politics of the national debt and the constraints on interest rates; the impact of capital exports on debt repayment and as an alternative to interest rates in influencing the exchanges; an adjustment in assumptions about flexibility of wages and costs; and a breakdown in the political culture of free trade and gold.

Holocaust justice: the battle for restitution in America's courts

The Holocaust was not only the greatest murder in history; it was also the greatest theft. Historians estimate that the Nazis stole roughly $230 billion to $320 billion in assets (figured in today's dollars), from the Jews of Europe. Since the revelations concerning the wartime activities of the Swiss banks first broke in the late 1990s, an ever-widening circle of complicity and wrongdoing against Jews and other victims has emerged in the course of lawsuits waged by American lawyers. These suits involved German corporations, French and Austrian banks, European insurance companies, and double thefts of art--first by the Nazis, and then by museums and private collectors refusing to give them up. All of these injustices have come to light thanks to the American legal system. Holocaust Justice is the first book to tell the complete story of the legal campaign, conducted mainly on American soil, to address these injustices. Michael Bazyler, a legal scholar specializing in human rights and international law, takes an in-depth look at the series of lawsuits that gave rise to a coherent campaign to right historical wrongs. Diplomacy, individual pleas for justice by Holocaust survivors and various Jewish organizations for the last fifty years, and even suits in foreign courts, had not worked. It was only with the intervention of the American courts that elderly Holocaust survivors and millions of other wartime victims throughout the world were awarded compensation, and equally important, acknowledgment of the crimes committed against them. The unique features of the American system of justice--which allowed it to handle claims that originated over fifty years ago and in another part of the world--made it the only forum in the world where Holocaust claims could be heard. Without the lawsuits brought by American lawyers, Bazyler asserts, the claims of the elderly survivors and their heirs would continue to be ignored. For the first time in history, European and even American corporations are now being forced to pay restitution for war crimes totaling billions of dollars to Holocaust survivors and other victims. Bazyler deftly tells the unfolding stories: the Swiss banks' attempt to hide dormant bank accounts belonging to Holocaust survivors or heirs of those who perished in the war; German private companies that used slave laborers during World War II--including American subsidiaries in Germany; Italian, Swiss and German insurance companies that refused to pay on prewar policies; and the legal wrangle going on today in American courts over art looted by the Nazis in wartime Europe. He describes both the human and legal dramas involved in the struggle for restitution, bringing the often-forgotten voices of Holocaust survivors to the forefront. He also addresses the controversial legal and moral issues over Holocaust restitution and the ethical debates over the distribution of funds. With an eye to the future, Bazyler discusses the enduring legacy of Holocaust restitution litigation, which is already being used as a model for obtaining justice for historical wrongs on both the domestic and international stage.

Rosie the Riveter Remembers

In all wars fought by Americans, women have played major roles on the homefront as well as on the battlefield. During World War II, the government and media launched a cam paign to encourage women to support the war effort by getting a job. (These were, ironically, the same women who had been told during the Great Depression that they should not take jobs from men.) By the end of war, six million women had entered the labor force for the first time. American women put on their work overalls-they handled lathes, cut dies, traced blueprints, and inspected plane parts. They also filled many civil service jobs, especially those involving clerical work. They ran the trains and busses and did every type of work imaginable. Women made up twenty percent ofthe labor force in 1920; by 1945 they comprised thirty-six percent. Once the war was won, government and businesses launched a new campaign to return women to their domestic sphere as consumers. Women were laid off from their jobs despite the fact that many would have preferred to continue working. Companies reinstated their prewar policies against the hiring of married women. But the seeds had been sown for what became the women's movement of the 1970s. Mothers like Frankie Cooper (whose reflections appear below) told their daugh ters, don't have to be just a homemaker. You can be anything you want to be.

The Political Genesis of Air Raid Precautions and the York Raid of 1942

ON THE EARLY MORNING of 29 April 1942 the city of York endured its only large-scale air raid of World War Two, one of the 'Baedeker' series aimed at English cultural centres. The sounding of sirens and the first fall of bombs occurred simultaneously at 2.42 a.m., and the undefended city was then subjected to a harrowing night of violence in which 100 people were killed and as many more seriously injured. This was a heavy toll, comparable to assaults on larger population centres. But the raid was also a grim audit of the political and budgetary conflicts which had shaped Air Raid Precautions CARP) before the War. The impact of these formative troubles was particularly evident in York. The ancient city was a county borough, responsible for its own ARP, and this, coupled, with its openness to assault provides almost a laboratory example of the effects of pre-war British policy in civil defence. In that sense, the experience of York tells much of the political culture of a nation pushed reluctantly towards war.

Noguchi Shika: the eternal mother of modern Japan

This article examines how the narratives about Noguchi Shika and her son, Noguchi Hideyo (Japan's first world-renowned microbiologist), were presented in school textbooks for the purposes of teaching about the essence of motherhood. It argues that the presentations about Noguchi Shika in the prewar textbooks were part of the State's endeavours to turn Japanese women into responsible mothers. The article also argues that the prewar policy of 'good wife, wise mother'( ryôsai kenbo ) evolved into a medium for empowering women rather than acting solely as a regressive agent. It therefore shows how the narratives about the Noguchis in both prewar and postwar textbooks concentrated on Shika and her son while excluding Noguchi Sayosuke (the father). By erasing the father from the narratives, the State, as is argued here, furnished women with a social status that undermined the foundations of paternal authority. The core reference materials for this analysis are school textbooks containing narratives about the Noguchis which were published between 1932 and 1980.